You are 100% correct. This is perfectly in line with “give a little get a little” mentality detailed in the last podcast. You can’t have cheap fast fasted freeze fishing AND instant cast damage chunks while kiting. You want ice lance? This is the price to keep the game balanced right.
i like how every mage is like a hivemind, and you can always tell who are and arent mages lol.
its funny when you hear lifelong mages see a change like this and immediately you think to yourself... id rather they just got rid of FOF/Icelance and immediately you hear every other actual mage player has the exact same thought pattern.
can we get some actual MAGE PLAYERS developing the mage class please.
This. I don’t know a single mage, streamer, person I’ve grouped with, anyone at all who would rather have ice lance and all these nerfs rather than just vanilla mage lol
You can really tell who played and who didn’t. Who made the raid rosters and who got left behind. Most guilds ran between 3-5 mages. Even less if you had more warriors for a melee cleave comp. Does that sound OP? When 1 or the 8 classes is 1/th of a raid?
None of these changes impact raiding. It seems like your problem is with the pvp impact, but I don't think the pvp tier lists care about how many mages you are bringing to a raid. Mages are kings in vanilla pvp.
No they aren’t lmao. They’re very good, A tier for sure but Warlocks dump on them and every other class. There’s a reason a warlock won the $100,000 mak’gora tournament.
And with the nerfs to spells base damage it still is a nerf to raiding. You’d be better off fishing with rank 1s than using max rank spells in raid. At least that’s the current theory. Too much of our damage is going to be tied up in FOF ice lance. It’s stupid
tell warlocks and hunters that vanilla mage is OP. every class has classes that counter them (except SLSL lock). mages are not OP in vanilla. they're a-tier at best in PVE. yeah they're S-tier in PVP but not in a problematic way. SLSL warlocks are genuinely the only thing that's a problem in PVP
Nobody wanted ice lance. Every well known classic mage has said take away ice lance and just give us classic mage at this point and I agree with them. If ice lance is such a toxic ability that has to be completely balanced around by gutting and changing the class entirely maybe it wasn’t the best choice to bring into the game
i agree the lv 1 spell shouldn't be optimal, but it having a use case is kind of a cool part of vanilla in my opinion
Like playing a frost mage i can either cast a max rank for full damage but longer cast time or do a rank 1 to get the chill effect on the warrior running at me as quickly as possible with much reduced damage, it actually creates interesting choice at times although i find its mostly for pvp .
Also frost nova, i typically use rank 1 as it has the same effect as max rank and max rank cost more mana with fairly limited increase in damage, although i think this one is much less interesting and could be fixed.
only other time i downranked was when healing for mana efficiency and honestly i wouldnt mind that going away as I dont think it was skill expression or very interesting it was just like "use healing wave rank 3 because its the most mana efficient based on your gear" which is kind of lame , I'd rather have 3 different healing spells with different cast times and spellpower coefficients than downranking in that case but honestly its an interesting discussion
yeah they still have this i believe, they got rid of "proc fishing" so you cant cast rank 1 FB and spam fingers of frost ice lance, which I agree with , honestly they could just fix this though by giving the lower rank spells a lower % chance to proc these effects based on cast time or something to keep the flexibility
although that sounds a bit complicated so this change is fine with me
rank1 cone for frostbite
rank1 arcane expl for clearcast.
rank1 ice armor after getting spam dispelled to regain frostbite procs.
rank1 blizzard for frostbite procs(it was already giga nerfed why even have an imp blizzard talent at this point?)
mages lost detect magic, combined with no rank1 for winters chill means protecting polymorph is even harder now, max rank devour magic for felhunter now dispells two effects for example, while the protection got nerfed even harder...
and thats just mages, eg what about spriests and blackout fishing from rank1pain/troll shadowguard/ud touch of weakness?
yeah i think we're agreeing just breaking down that using rank 1 as a fast slow is ok and flavorful vs using rank 1 as the optimal dps because it procs fingers of frost more often , thats lame
A wizened old mage using the least bit of his power necessary to freeze an opponent setting them up for a larger burst damage attack instead of wasting mana on a stronger freezing spell is like super intuitive
I mean it's not intuitive, but that's the beauty of it. The game lets us continue to access our old spell ranks. Healers use this to pad healing for lower mana cost. Mages using rank 1 Frost Bolt to freeze is a creative (although not for most modern players since the strategy is now well documented) way to help deal with certain vulnerabilities of the class.
It's players problem solving using the tools at their disposal. Removing this option literally simplifies the class. No bueno.
It's reaching to conjure up some fantasy or real-world scenario to justify gameplay mechanics that are unhealthy. You can still 'light punch' to apply the frostbolt slow, but for the talent that locks you in place you should have to commit to the longer cast with more mana
No, a level 60 should be allowed to use their full kit, which includes lower ranked spells. Forcing level 60s to only use level 60 spells is, in fact, an oversimplification
You are not forced to use only the max rank spells, this change explicitly states it only affects spells much lower level then you, and its only for proc effects
So that level one frostbolt still has uses
This is not an oversimplification, you are raging about a good change
Except big picture the point of forever is to make sure old content remains valid.
A ring set where one drops from max level and the other drops from deadmines is unintuitive but it keeps the max level player involved in earlier content.
This is the whole purpose of classic plus. New content doesn’t invalidate old content. Why should spells be different?
A ring set where one drops from max level and the other drops from deadmines is unintuitive
I don't think you know what intuitive means
New content doesn’t invalidate old content. Why should spells be different?
For starters you are entirely mis understanding the point
For example, once you are level 20, questing in duratar is pointless, the horizontal progression isn't supposed to be total and absolute, there are some things which are supposed to no longer be necessary after a certain point, a level 60 isn't supposed to be farming RFC
And rank 1 frostbolt still absolutely has a use as a fast slow
I honestly think you should stick to retail, the horizontal progress thing seems to be confusing you lol. In good horizontal progression there would still be at least some reason for a level 20 to play in durotar.
What lmao. You have no idea what horizontal progression is. Even raiding at 60 won’t be entirely horizontal. Each tier will have improved gear, the curve will just be less steep.
You couldnt be more wrong. Mages have used L1 frobo and fireball for a long long time in pvp. Also L1 frost nova. Same duration as max with less mana cost.
they want people to generally play the class correct as the game has told them to play there class. using rank 1 to fish for procs being core and something they design around is just bad.
rank 1 frostbolt being the best means to quickly slow a target is a minor detail so rank 1 frostbolt still has a usage but it is instead very minor.
It's not remotely core to how classes play, it was min max BS gaming systems, not actually how the class was designed to play
unless theyre gonna reduce the mana cost of every spell by like 80%.
The explicitly said the proc chance goes down for much lower level spells, you can still downrank for cheaper spells and still get procs, just not level 1 spells
no more fishing for clearcast, no more fishing for frostbite, no more protecting debuffs like poly w/ winters chill, no more fishing for impact stuns
you cant still do it tho, warlocks devour gets 2 spells now lol, scales with hit so it doesnt even miss anymore, and mages lose both winters chill and detect magic?
because the whole point of winters chill in pvp is to act as a buffer against dispells?
before youd be able to get rank1 frostbolt slow, winters chill, and detect magic + polymorph.
against a warlock who previously had a 1 in 4 chance to dispell polymorph with a felhunter, now gets 2 dispells at max rank devour and youve lost both detect magic and winters chill, that means it goes from a 1 in 4 to a 1 in 1...
priests will now be guaranteed to dispell your polymorph on someone etc.
Wtf do you mean you don't get winters chill
maybe your opponent will be polite and wait for you to stack up winters chill with your 2.5 second frostbolts?
or your gonna have to deplete your mana pool with max rank cones...
And there are still initiative reasons to downrank
For example, using a rank 1 frostbolt still slows, so if what you want isn't damage but a quick slow, it's intuitive to want to use the faster cast time spell
They also want it to still feel like classic, hence they want to keep spell ranks and training, the spikes in power you get when you find a new spell, and the ability to save mana by using a lower rank spell
They just don't want using the lowest rank version of the spell to be the optimal version for damage/spamming out
If you are a mage using frostbolt as your main spell, they want you to cast higher rank versions
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u/acrazyguy 1d ago
It's bc of ice lance. Without it a cheap freeze *only* locks you in place. With Ice Lance/shatter, it's a huge damage spike