Suggestion: Replace RoP with Disciplinary Command

I saw a lot of posts from people wanting RoP gone and since people seem to want the fantasy of mages actually using different types of spells other than just their spec, replace RoP with Disciplinary Command and change it from a crit buff to just spell power. You can even put a spell like Frostfire bolt above it in the talent tree that counts as the other two spell types outside of your spec if you want to make it more streamlined.

Example for Fire mage: Launches a bolt of arcane frost at the enemy doing xxx% frost and arcane damage. This spell counts as a frost and arcane spell.

I think I’d actually hate DC more than RoP.

6 Likes

Disciplinary command would be interesting, but only if we had better ways to trigger it. We’d have to go DEEP into giving each spec more access to other schools of magic. And frostfire bolt counting as 2 elements would make it pretty uninteresting.

I could see myself liking this if 1) Disciplinary Command still has an internal cooldown and isn’t a maintenance buff and 2) our general tree gives us access to one or more procs from the specs we aren’t playing. I could see myself, as an arcane mage, casting something like an instant pyro because I got 2 crits (or nerf it to 3 for the general tree), but even now I hate casting Fire Blast because it just doesn’t synergize. If I have to cast fire blast JUST to proc disciplinary command, I’m not going to enjoy it. If I can somehow get a hot streak proc and save it for an opportune moment, it might be more interesting.

But at that point, we risk taking too much of what makes each spec “specialized” and putting it in the general tree.

2 Likes

Disciplinary command feels unnatural to use. Hate it and rop.

3 Likes

Disci will cause pvp issues, I’d like to see a buffed focus magic replace rop. Make it so the buff gives both targets 5% crit and when either crit, both get 10% damage increase. It would need tweaking but something like that competes against incanter’s flow without warping the class like rune of power does and it offers the mage a good bit of utility. By making the proc give both players damage regardless who crit and making the damage bonus high, in addition to the crit chance, it reduces the feel bad aspect when asked to spec it to help someone parse.

Honestly while I want to see RoP gone and buried forever, replacing it with just another % damage increase is basically replacing a potato with a different type of potato. Yes it removes the ‘stand still in this circle’ factor but it doesn’t take into account that flat damage buffs outside of the major cooldowns for the specs don’t typically feel good to use. If removing RoP (and IF) doesn’t result in just baseline increasing the damage of all spells like we had prior to MoP then at the very least replace it with something that changes the gameplay rather than just keeping our rotation the same but with 40% more output.

While definitely a better option than RoP, focus magic just causes further issues. Having a spell have to be balanced that increases someone elses damage feels a bit bad and you’re just going to put it on the strongest caster at the time. The end result is still a flat % increase to all spells, and it

I still think the better option is to remove RoP/FM/IF completely and baseline increase our spells a little, then in that talent spot put something that not only increases total dps but is a stand-alone spell to use. If it weren’t for the capstones, that talent row would almost be the perfect spot to have things like GS, Meteor or whatever Arcane gets. It still gives that dps increase, but it gives us more interaction, more gameplay and a better rotation.

1 Like

The amount of times you’re forced to spec into a thing to help someone else parse, someone else will be doing something to help your parse. I feel that is a minuscule issue. I’m also down for just axing these talents and moving damage into the mages baseline.

1 Like

Maybe, but maybe not. Typically if you’re not one of the top performers (and this may be due to your personal performance or your spec performance). I mean, I don’t recall outside of CN that any Mage would have been given PI for example. Either way, it still feels like a bit of a dirty talent because it will never be too strong for you because it buffs other people as well. I’d hate to be doing 10% less damage than I could be simply because someone else gets to do 10% more. I can only imagine how Priests would feel if they outright had the lowest hps because they could give someone PI. It’s just kind of more of a dirty feeling with these sorts of talents/spells, and while they are potentially good for progression they never really feel good for anyone except the one raid member who gets it every week.

I really hate Rune of Power … but I’m not a fan of Disciplinary Command either.

  • Rune of Power - it sucks because it makes mages into immobile gun turrets. Instead of “shoot-n-scoot” it’s “stand-n-plant”.
    • To me this is the antithesis of what mages should be about. We wear cloth armor and are super-squishy. We should never stand in one place for long if we can help it.
    • Unfortunately, Blizzard has a completely different concept from my own for how mages should play.
  • Disciplinary Command - I don’t like this lego because it is clunky to use.
    • You have to cast minor damage or utility spells for the sole purpose of triggering the lego. And you might accidentally trigger it at the wrong time if you need to use those utility spells for something else.
      • For example: you blink and ice block to avoid death… oops you just triggered the lego at the wrong time!
    • To get maximum benefit out of it you have to use a mod that tracks the internal cooldown so you know when to trigger it again. This is not a good gameplay design.

Personally, I think Blizzard should just delete both Incanter’s Flow and Rune of Power from the game.

  • Their presence doesn’t improve the mage gameplay experience and isn’t fun.
  • Incanter’s Flow is just there to trick players into thinking there is an alternative to Rune of Power when there actually isn’t.
  • Instead of replacing them with something similar that just boosts damage how about giving us something more interesting. Maybe some new big flashy damage spells to cast.
8 Likes

Why do we have to give up rune of power. Some players actually like it. I am not one of those players. lol.

Can we just get incanter’s flow buffed to where it is comparable to Rune.

3 Likes

There’s another thread about why RoP and Incanter’s flow are both bad. The short version is that RoP is simply too powerful and mages have been balanced around it, so our damage is pretty abysmal when we’re not in our rune. Those of us who’ve been playing with it for a long time are simply tired of it.

7 Likes

I’m not the biggest fan of RoP, but after playing it the entire expansion, I can honestly say Disciplinary Command would be worse.

3 Likes

In practice this would look really weird because we have so many burst damage cd’s it’d have to be something insane. I mean we could it would just look ridiculous. It might have to be a flat bonus too.

I mean if they absolutely have to keep ROP in there, then having the competitive option just be a flat % while not exciting at all would be a better option, and a little easier to balance. If ROP has a 50% uptime, and gives 40% damage then the obvious thing would be to make IF a flat 20%. This of course would need some adjusting depending on what they do with IP (because higher IV usage makes ROP more appealing), but it would be easy enough to tweak IF to make it competitive. It would mean lower burst, but would give a flatter damage profile. At the very least they could get it within a few % of ROP’s power, and make a lot of players happy.

1 Like

It’d need to be higher than 20%. Rop is about stacking bonuses into the window, so with strong trinkets i’m not sure just an avg increase would be sufficient. What i was hearing from arcane mages in BFA was they did most of their damage in Ap/Rop windows. This was trinket stacking and burning explicitly in those phases.

Because of Class Spec Identity. Or lack of. A third mage spec altogether would probably make sense allowing it to have a wide combo of spell types but alas new specific class designs aren’t favored if you are a cloth-wearing magic-wielding class in this heavily favored game now built around Hunters and Death Knights.

1 Like

You are correct, the interaction between RoP and cds/trinkets/procs does actually make it a little stronger than it seems on paper. I threw 20% out there using napkin maths, but realistically it would probably need to be 25% to make up for those burst windows.

The silly thing is that despite it still being the best talent for Frost, it’s even more powerful for both Arcane and Fire which have those big burst windows. Having it as a baseline talent makes it that little bit harder to balance as it will benefit some specs more than others.

Really the only thing left to do is remove it, or bake it in somewhere for Arcane (as it does fit the aesthetic) to compete against something else. It has no real place for Frost, and it never felt good to use as Fire.

2 Likes

I would VERY much prefer RoP over Disciplinary Command.

If we’re forced to make that decision, I’ll take Disciplinary Command. I don’t mind throwing out Fireblast when playing Frost or Arcane. I wouldn’t find Frostbolt a good fit for Fire, but it wouldn’t be the worst idea.

FFS no.

What about just deleting ROP and giving us real constant damage and more reasonable burst instead ?

Disciplinary command makes no sense in term of gameplay, especially when the best method to proc it is to nova and Arcane explosion while being out of range because you just want the buff, one of most stupid legendary.

If devs absolutly want to give us more setup which is actually not necessesary imo, just make it have sense and be fun.

AND NO MORE FLAT DAMAGE% BUFF FFS, THAT’S ABSOLUTELY AWFUL IN TERM OF POWER FEELING AND PLAYER FEEDBACK

4 Likes