HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
How about spirit affects the different armor types in different ways, in different amounts? Adds to the crit of Molten Armor, adds to the armor of Ice Armor, and... fuck, mage armor and the mana regen talents cap out the MP5 while casting.
All I want to do is spend my paladin's badges on trinkets for my mage but I need my tanking chestpiece as I'm prot and ooooooooooooooh maaaaaaan. I'm refusing to level her until I finish out the shards for a grand staff of jordan and at least one eye of the beast .
All I want to do is spend my paladin's badges on trinkets for my mage but I need my tanking chestpiece as I'm prot and ooooooooooooooh maaaaaaan. I'm refusing to level her until I finish out the shards for a grand staff of jordan and at least one eye of the beast .
Honestly, I don't fucking understand what they're intending. They're saying they want to make spirit more useful, which at the moment it boosts mana regen, but they also don't want us to have too much mana at our disposal, or last too long before going OOM. My fear is that we're going to see a rise in mana cost for our spells.
Here's what I'm guessing their intent is. Right now, mages (in general) don't care for spirit. They don't shoot for gear with high spirit (unless it's an upgrade in the other stats), and in general they can pick up more damage stats by avoiding spirit (since that's how the item budget system works). The reason they can do this right now, apparently, is that they do not have mana issues even without wearing any spirit gear.
Blizzard would probably rather see a mage with no spirit on his gear going OOM in fights that last more than a couple minutes (this apparently isn't the case now), so that mages are forced to gear for some amount of spirit in order not to go OOM. In other words, they plan to make spirit not a "wasted stat" for mages.
In short, I think they want the 0 spirit mages to go OOM and the mages who pick up a good amount of spirit to not go OOM. It's a noble cause, I guess, but there's probably going to be some collateral damage.
forty on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Honestly, I don't fucking understand what they're intending. They're saying they want to make spirit more useful, which at the moment it boosts mana regen, but they also don't want us to have too much mana at our disposal, or last too long before going OOM. My fear is that we're going to see a rise in mana cost for our spells.
Here's what I'm guessing their intent is. Right now, mages (in general) don't care for spirit. They don't shoot for gear with high spirit (unless it's an upgrade in the other stats), and in general they can pick up more damage stats by avoiding spirit (since that's how the item budget system works). The reason they can do this right now, apparently, is that they do not have mana issues even without wearing any spirit gear.
Blizzard would probably rather see a mage with no spirit on his gear going OOM in fights that last more than a couple minutes (this apparently isn't the case now), so that mages are forced to gear for some amount of spirit in order not to go OOM. In other words, they plan to make spirit not a "wasted stat" for mages.
In short, I think they want the 0 spirit mages to go OOM and the mages who pick up a good amount of spirit to not go OOM. It's a noble cause, I guess, but there's probably going to be some collateral damage.
Honestly, I don't fucking understand what they're intending. They're saying they want to make spirit more useful, which at the moment it boosts mana regen, but they also don't want us to have too much mana at our disposal, or last too long before going OOM. My fear is that we're going to see a rise in mana cost for our spells.
Here's what I'm guessing their intent is. Right now, mages (in general) don't care for spirit. They don't shoot for gear with high spirit (unless it's an upgrade in the other stats), and in general they can pick up more damage stats by avoiding spirit (since that's how the item budget system works). The reason they can do this right now, apparently, is that they do not have mana issues even without wearing any spirit gear.
Blizzard would probably rather see a mage with no spirit on his gear going OOM in fights that last more than a couple minutes (this apparently isn't the case now), so that mages are forced to gear for some amount of spirit in order not to go OOM. In other words, they plan to make spirit not a "wasted stat" for mages.
In short, I think they want the 0 spirit mages to go OOM and the mages who pick up a good amount of spirit to not go OOM. It's a noble cause, I guess, but there's probably going to be some collateral damage.
I think they are trying to reach a balance of giving mages a reason to pick up items with spirit, but not make it manditory to where it significantly penalizes those that do not take many items which have it. They seem to be happy with mage mana regen in general, as the changes to the in-combat mana regen abilities we have from talents and mage armor are being changed to balance out the overall mana regen changes.
I like Henroid's idea of having spirit do different things (damage, crit, or haste) based on what armor you are using at the time. That would be the easiest way to make it useful and provide some flexibility to apply different types of stats depending on your spec or the situation.
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-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Honestly, I don't fucking understand what they're intending. They're saying they want to make spirit more useful, which at the moment it boosts mana regen, but they also don't want us to have too much mana at our disposal, or last too long before going OOM. My fear is that we're going to see a rise in mana cost for our spells.
Here's what I'm guessing their intent is. Right now, mages (in general) don't care for spirit. They don't shoot for gear with high spirit (unless it's an upgrade in the other stats), and in general they can pick up more damage stats by avoiding spirit (since that's how the item budget system works). The reason they can do this right now, apparently, is that they do not have mana issues even without wearing any spirit gear.
Blizzard would probably rather see a mage with no spirit on his gear going OOM in fights that last more than a couple minutes (this apparently isn't the case now), so that mages are forced to gear for some amount of spirit in order not to go OOM. In other words, they plan to make spirit not a "wasted stat" for mages.
In short, I think they want the 0 spirit mages to go OOM and the mages who pick up a good amount of spirit to not go OOM. It's a noble cause, I guess, but there's probably going to be some collateral damage.
I think they are trying to reach a balance of giving mages a reason to pick up items with spirit, but not make it manditory to where it significantly penalizes those that do not take many items which have it. They seem to be happy with mage mana regen in general, as the changes to the in-combat mana regen abilities we have from talents and mage armor are being changed to balance out the overall mana regen changes.
I like Henroid's idea of having spirit do different things (damage, crit, or haste) based on what armor you are using at the time. That would be the easiest way to make it useful and provide some flexibility to apply different types of stats depending on your spec or the situation.
It's such a good idea I'm tempted to go waving it around on the official mage forum!
I assumed people had already proposed the idea (perhaps multiple times) since Fel Armor has been giving Spirit->SP for months now.
But I think it's more than just "let's have spirit give some sort of damage bonus to mages." They want the regeneration from spirit to be the difference between a mage going OOM on Sapphiron or having enough mana.
You asked, "how do they achieve this?" *Shrug* But that's why I made my foreboding comment: "but there's probably going to be some collateral damage."
They aren't. Those buffs were just done to counterbalance oo5sr regen being nerfed. Those changes should result in no net change to mage regeneration (except during non-casting portions of fights, where all classes have been nerfed to some extent).
Well, I think it's a tough situation right now, since mages are already top tier damage. If they were suddenly getting 30% Spirit->SP (or something to that affect), they'd have to be nerfed in some other way to keep things balanced.
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
/sigh
It's not that I didn't see the loss of 5% off Imp. Scorch coming, but it does irritate me.
Well, I think it's a tough situation right now, since mages are already top tier damage. If they were suddenly getting 30% Spirit->SP (or something to that affect), they'd have to be nerfed in some other way to keep things balanced.
Yeah I mean look at Warlocks.
Their DPS got knocked to shit after that buff.
Yep. They never did much damage at all after that.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
Spirit: The amount of mana regeneration granted by this stat has been reduced by 40%.
CONSIDER ME APPEALED TO!
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
Spirit Mana Regeneration uses "Nerfing itself" against your excitement for Mage class changes!
Okay I'm now officially moving on from "Annoyed but understand that we're in a good place" to "Jesus christ we're not OP stop listening to the forums."
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
Well, to be fair, the spirit changes are relatively unimportant for us at this point, and the 5% nerf on Imp. Scorch is really not Mage-specific, but rather a nerf to that whole type of debuff, so really at this point we haven't been nerfed specifically, given that the 5% loss on the Imp. Scorch debuff should lower damage for casters across the board.
Plus Blood DKs are getting hit with the bat a bit, and Fury Warriors lose damage by grabbing Titan's Grip now, unless Rogues, Hunters, Kitties and Enhance Shammies end up with the new hotness in 3.1, things should actually work out okay.
Though I've gotta admit that I'll probably be sticking with Fireball/TTW after the patch, I'm sure a straight loss of 5% crit will make FFB considerably worse than any of the other mage specs.
Blizzard used to talk about wanting every Mage spec be a top end DPS spec with different uses.
They've kicked Arcane (though not hard enough so I'm still wary) and are looking at Frostfire Bolt.
SHIT WHO KNEW THIS ABILITY THAT STACKS AMAZINGLY WELL, JUST HOW IT WAS DESIGNED, WOULD STACK SO WELL!
i like the idea posted earlier about the different armors allowing spirit to contribute a bonus. i definitely would consider spirit if it provided me some fucking haste, nevermind if we got the warlock treatment.
but yeah, the overall MP5 from spirit news is a bit old. as far as it goes though, mage regen is going to come out the same now because we'll be getting 100% of our (now) 60% regen, where before we were getting 60% of our 100% regen, if that makes any sense.
mathematically speaking, mages aren't really getting nerfed or buffed, as the numbers should come out identical; it's the healers who are getting fucked.
EDIT: basically, say you had 100 mana regen. with the mana regen talents and mage armor you'd get 60% of that, so 60. now that spirit contribution is being reduced by 40%, we'll be getting 60 mana regen where we were getting 100... but now with the upped while-casting regen talents and mage armor, we'll be getting 60 anyway.
Blizzard used to talk about wanting every Mage spec be a top end DPS spec with different uses.
They've kicked Arcane (though not hard enough so I'm still wary) and are looking at Frostfire Bolt.
SHIT WHO KNEW THIS ABILITY THAT STACKS AMAZINGLY WELL, JUST HOW IT WAS DESIGNED, WOULD STACK SO WELL!
See, now I usually love Blizzard pretty thoroughly, but even a set of cursory logical thoughts when I heard about this ability in July(?), when I hadn't played WoW in eight months or so, led to a grasp of how much this spell would be pumped up by talents and stats. I mean, how does one not see FFB doing large damage? This apparently lack of forethought given their nearly glacial development and balancing cycles is aggravating.
Blizzard used to talk about wanting every Mage spec be a top end DPS spec with different uses.
They've kicked Arcane (though not hard enough so I'm still wary) and are looking at Frostfire Bolt.
SHIT WHO KNEW THIS ABILITY THAT STACKS AMAZINGLY WELL, JUST HOW IT WAS DESIGNED, WOULD STACK SO WELL!
See, now I usually love Blizzard pretty thoroughly, but even a set of cursory logical thoughts when I heard about this ability in July(?), when I hadn't played WoW in eight months or so, led to a grasp of how much this spell would be pumped up by talents and stats. I mean, how does one not see FFB doing large damage? This apparently lack of forethought given their nearly glacial development and balancing cycles is aggravating.
Oh, they saw it coming. The talent trees were very nearly designed to make the spec work. And so far they haven't deliberately targeted FFB, but rather they've reduced the bonus given by Imp. Scorch and its (forthcoming) counterpart Imp. Shadowbolt, so FFB loses 5% crit, which given its dependence on critical strikes, is much more damaging for it than Fireball/TTW or Arcane.
Did a blue post actually state something like "We're looking at FFB because it's so good"?
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
I am too, but it's affecting my mage far less than it's affecting everyone else. I sense danger in the way of my arcane spec, but if it becomes too much of a problem I'll just spec right back into Fireball spec and be done with it.
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
I'm kinda irritated too. We haven't really gotten anything cool at all, and we're catching a lot of incidental nerfitude.
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
It's not enough nerf to make me mad though. It's like, oh that sucks, but it happens. It doesn't change the structure of our spell casting, or change the theory behind talent lines. As long as those things are consistent, feh.
The problem with spirit sucking is that it is a mana management stat.
With the exception of Arcane mages, mages don't manage mana whatsoever. Even Arcane does mana management lite.
Mages start the fight with one rotation, and use that rotation until they are forced to stop casting completely, because they are completely out of mana. The % of mana left in a mage's mana bar at the end of a fight is completely outside of the mage's control. They cast the only rotation they had until the target fell over dead, how much mana they had left is just a curious byproduct of how long the target took to die.
Mages never stop casting, and they never make decisions to vary their rotation based on the current state of their mana bar. There are not any 'priority levels' associated with dps other than "MOAR". Healers oshit heal, they 'good enough to get you by' heal. They will even sit there and watch someone die when it is the choice between keeping someone up and causing a wipe because they screwed up their mana management when they were running on fumes.
Until Blizzard makes the mage flow chart anything other than (Mana ? Continue Rotation : Stop Rotation), spirit isn't going to be important.
Sure, having spirit means you get mana back, and having mana means you continue your rotation. However, since you NEVER vary your rotation (unless your Arcane), the value of that spirit is a constant value that is set solely by the length of the fight. Mana per Second x Seconds in fight. So its just gussied up MP5. It is gussied up MP5 because mages NEVER stop casting until they are completely out of mana, which has part of the value of MP5 vs spirit. MP5 vs spirit is a choice because still get MP5 even when casting (which is why healers like MP5, since unlike spirit, its a stat they know they will always get at full power, unlike spirit, which gives them more pieces for their mana management jigsaw puzzle).
So for a mage, adding spirit, or adding MP5, or just plain adding (mana x seconds in fight) to their mana pool at the start of the fight is exactly the same damn thing. Except the bigger mana pool means more benefit from replenishment and evocation.
Bottom line is that Blizzard at a bare minimum needs to add dps and dpm rotations to every mage spec before they even bother looking at making spirit desirable for mages. Figuring out a mechanic to make mages decide to just flat out stop casting, even though they still have mana in their bar, and have that decision be the correct decision, would be even better. Because without mana management, whats the bloody point of trying to sell a mana management stat?
The problem with spirit sucking is that it is a mana management stat.
With the exception of Arcane mages, mages don't manage mana whatsoever. Even Arcane does mana management lite.
Mages start the fight with one rotation, and use that rotation until they are forced to stop casting completely, because they are completely out of mana. The % of mana left in a mage's mana bar at the end of a fight is completely outside of the mage's control. They cast the only rotation they had until the target fell over dead, how much mana they had left is just a curious byproduct of how long the target took to die.
I was about to go on a tirade saying how this isn't true, but no, since 3.0 it is very true actually, and sadly.
In BC I would raise so many eyebrows because I would work scorch into my rotation to ensure that I went OOM as soon as the boss died, and then when I kicked their asses on the meters wearing PVP gear that came to an end.
I thought I could be a big shot and carry that over into WotLK but now in 3.0 there is so much disparity between spell potency in terms of scorch/fire blast versus the primary nuke that using scorch any more than necessary is basically going to kill your DPS.
It's very sad that Mages have become so polarized, I used to enjoy the fact that I could spec in such a way that was both competent for raiding and also fun in battlegrounds. But, enough people bitched on both sides of the aisle and now mages are a heaping pile of edge cases that are really hard to design around because of all the retarded damage/stamina inflation.
Mages start the fight with one rotation, and use that rotation until they are forced to stop casting completely, because they are completely out of mana. The % of mana left in a mage's mana bar at the end of a fight is completely outside of the mage's control. They cast the only rotation they had until the target fell over dead, how much mana they had left is just a curious byproduct of how long the target took to die.
the rest of your post was well thought out, but this part of the post really irks me because it just isn't true for Arcane mages.
I agree that as compared to the wider range it is 'mana management lite', but there is a bit of nuance as to optimal mana management, not to mention you're seriously off your rocker if you think arcane DPS is about spamming one rotation until you run out of OOM and that arcane mages have no control over their mana pool. it's just the opposite, in fact.
if you want my impression, i would say you're pretty out of touch with optimal arcane mana management in a raid rotation, and i would recommend you spend some time with arcane with one simple goal in mind: end every raid boss fight where you go out of mana right as the boss goes down. it's a lot harder than you think, and that's where mage mana management comes in.
plainly put, if you're not going OOM as the boss goes down, you're not using the right rotations at the right time.
sorry for focusing on you because i hate to pick nits, but it really grinds my gears when people just assume DPS and by extension mages are just 'so ezmode olololol', especially because I'm a little OCD when it comes to my raid performance. sure there are arcane mages out there who just use one rotation and just press two buttons until the boss dies, but we call those people scrubs.
Because they do in fact manage mana. I've been playing Arcane and that is the basis of why I'm saying what I'm saying. As Arcane I'm going "oh hey I remember this, I used to do it on my healer all of the time, I think its called making decisions about mana and which spell to cast".
Now, an Arcane mage will NEVER stop casting unless they screwed up their mana management and are forced to stop casting. The fact that the decision to stop casting is basically never the right decision makes it mana management lite. Which is why even for Arcane mages, spirit is just dressed up MP5. The appeal of spirit is that you get substantially more mana by correctly managing your casting and non casting time in such a way as to have the most time out of the 5 second rule.
Since mages don't ever enter the situation in which spirit is good, then why would they want to take spirit?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
What things are there for us to do aside from evocate, mana gem, and mana potions to keep our mana 'managed'?
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
I'm having problems deciding on a spell rotation. It's like, should I wait on 2 Arcane Blasts stacks or 3, and should I wait to have the stacks before using Missile Barrage procs? Blarg. One method burns my mana like fuck and the other at least makes it last a tad bit longer without too much DPS loss.
I'm having problems deciding on a spell rotation. It's like, should I wait on 2 Arcane Blasts stacks or 3, and should I wait to have the stacks before using Missile Barrage procs? Blarg. One method burns my mana like fuck and the other at least makes it last a tad bit longer without too much DPS loss.
The way I do it (topping out at around 5k DPS) is such:
ABlast x3, Barrage
If Missile Barrage procs, cast it (sometimes I throw up Presence of Mind to increase my crit chance, or even just to throw off a Blast to increase its' damage)
If the boss is almost dead, ABlast till he dies.
Okay I've heard people say that it's good to spec arcane for leveling when you hit the mid 60s. I'm not quite there yet (63) but what is it that makes arcane good at that point? I've been frost the whole time I've been playing a mage so I'm a little unsure on other specs. Does anyone have an example of the arcane spec that is good for leveling?
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Edit - I guess haste on the Mage Armor then.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Destromath&n=Talderas
It's oh so worth it.
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Blizzard would probably rather see a mage with no spirit on his gear going OOM in fights that last more than a couple minutes (this apparently isn't the case now), so that mages are forced to gear for some amount of spirit in order not to go OOM. In other words, they plan to make spirit not a "wasted stat" for mages.
In short, I think they want the 0 spirit mages to go OOM and the mages who pick up a good amount of spirit to not go OOM. It's a noble cause, I guess, but there's probably going to be some collateral damage.
Yeah, but again, how do they achieve this?
I think they are trying to reach a balance of giving mages a reason to pick up items with spirit, but not make it manditory to where it significantly penalizes those that do not take many items which have it. They seem to be happy with mage mana regen in general, as the changes to the in-combat mana regen abilities we have from talents and mage armor are being changed to balance out the overall mana regen changes.
I like Henroid's idea of having spirit do different things (damage, crit, or haste) based on what armor you are using at the time. That would be the easiest way to make it useful and provide some flexibility to apply different types of stats depending on your spec or the situation.
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
It's such a good idea I'm tempted to go waving it around on the official mage forum!
But I think it's more than just "let's have spirit give some sort of damage bonus to mages." They want the regeneration from spirit to be the difference between a mage going OOM on Sapphiron or having enough mana.
You asked, "how do they achieve this?" *Shrug* But that's why I made my foreboding comment: "but there's probably going to be some collateral damage."
Or make casting mage armor free, and any other armor free if you have mage armor up?
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
"WE DUNNO WHAT TO DO ;_;"
You fucking did it with Warlocks and they seem pretty happy.
It's not that I didn't see the loss of 5% off Imp. Scorch coming, but it does irritate me.
Battle.net
Their DPS got knocked to shit after that buff.
Yep. They never did much damage at all after that.
It's super effective!
Battle.net
Still shitty to catch now regardless. Yeah, make it more appealing. It damn sure better add haste or crit or some fucking shit for us now.
Now that it sucks!
Okay I'm now officially moving on from "Annoyed but understand that we're in a good place" to "Jesus christ we're not OP stop listening to the forums."
Plus Blood DKs are getting hit with the bat a bit, and Fury Warriors lose damage by grabbing Titan's Grip now, unless Rogues, Hunters, Kitties and Enhance Shammies end up with the new hotness in 3.1, things should actually work out okay.
Though I've gotta admit that I'll probably be sticking with Fireball/TTW after the patch, I'm sure a straight loss of 5% crit will make FFB considerably worse than any of the other mage specs.
It was fun while it lasted, though.
Battle.net
They've kicked Arcane (though not hard enough so I'm still wary) and are looking at Frostfire Bolt.
SHIT WHO KNEW THIS ABILITY THAT STACKS AMAZINGLY WELL, JUST HOW IT WAS DESIGNED, WOULD STACK SO WELL!
but yeah, the overall MP5 from spirit news is a bit old. as far as it goes though, mage regen is going to come out the same now because we'll be getting 100% of our (now) 60% regen, where before we were getting 60% of our 100% regen, if that makes any sense.
mathematically speaking, mages aren't really getting nerfed or buffed, as the numbers should come out identical; it's the healers who are getting fucked.
EDIT: basically, say you had 100 mana regen. with the mana regen talents and mage armor you'd get 60% of that, so 60. now that spirit contribution is being reduced by 40%, we'll be getting 60 mana regen where we were getting 100... but now with the upped while-casting regen talents and mage armor, we'll be getting 60 anyway.
See, now I usually love Blizzard pretty thoroughly, but even a set of cursory logical thoughts when I heard about this ability in July(?), when I hadn't played WoW in eight months or so, led to a grasp of how much this spell would be pumped up by talents and stats. I mean, how does one not see FFB doing large damage? This apparently lack of forethought given their nearly glacial development and balancing cycles is aggravating.
Oh, they saw it coming. The talent trees were very nearly designed to make the spec work. And so far they haven't deliberately targeted FFB, but rather they've reduced the bonus given by Imp. Scorch and its (forthcoming) counterpart Imp. Shadowbolt, so FFB loses 5% crit, which given its dependence on critical strikes, is much more damaging for it than Fireball/TTW or Arcane.
Did a blue post actually state something like "We're looking at FFB because it's so good"?
Battle.net
Battle.net
With the exception of Arcane mages, mages don't manage mana whatsoever. Even Arcane does mana management lite.
Mages start the fight with one rotation, and use that rotation until they are forced to stop casting completely, because they are completely out of mana. The % of mana left in a mage's mana bar at the end of a fight is completely outside of the mage's control. They cast the only rotation they had until the target fell over dead, how much mana they had left is just a curious byproduct of how long the target took to die.
Mages never stop casting, and they never make decisions to vary their rotation based on the current state of their mana bar. There are not any 'priority levels' associated with dps other than "MOAR". Healers oshit heal, they 'good enough to get you by' heal. They will even sit there and watch someone die when it is the choice between keeping someone up and causing a wipe because they screwed up their mana management when they were running on fumes.
Until Blizzard makes the mage flow chart anything other than (Mana ? Continue Rotation : Stop Rotation), spirit isn't going to be important.
Sure, having spirit means you get mana back, and having mana means you continue your rotation. However, since you NEVER vary your rotation (unless your Arcane), the value of that spirit is a constant value that is set solely by the length of the fight. Mana per Second x Seconds in fight. So its just gussied up MP5. It is gussied up MP5 because mages NEVER stop casting until they are completely out of mana, which has part of the value of MP5 vs spirit. MP5 vs spirit is a choice because still get MP5 even when casting (which is why healers like MP5, since unlike spirit, its a stat they know they will always get at full power, unlike spirit, which gives them more pieces for their mana management jigsaw puzzle).
So for a mage, adding spirit, or adding MP5, or just plain adding (mana x seconds in fight) to their mana pool at the start of the fight is exactly the same damn thing. Except the bigger mana pool means more benefit from replenishment and evocation.
Bottom line is that Blizzard at a bare minimum needs to add dps and dpm rotations to every mage spec before they even bother looking at making spirit desirable for mages. Figuring out a mechanic to make mages decide to just flat out stop casting, even though they still have mana in their bar, and have that decision be the correct decision, would be even better. Because without mana management, whats the bloody point of trying to sell a mana management stat?
I was about to go on a tirade saying how this isn't true, but no, since 3.0 it is very true actually, and sadly.
In BC I would raise so many eyebrows because I would work scorch into my rotation to ensure that I went OOM as soon as the boss died, and then when I kicked their asses on the meters wearing PVP gear that came to an end.
I thought I could be a big shot and carry that over into WotLK but now in 3.0 there is so much disparity between spell potency in terms of scorch/fire blast versus the primary nuke that using scorch any more than necessary is basically going to kill your DPS.
It's very sad that Mages have become so polarized, I used to enjoy the fact that I could spec in such a way that was both competent for raiding and also fun in battlegrounds. But, enough people bitched on both sides of the aisle and now mages are a heaping pile of edge cases that are really hard to design around because of all the retarded damage/stamina inflation.
the rest of your post was well thought out, but this part of the post really irks me because it just isn't true for Arcane mages.
I agree that as compared to the wider range it is 'mana management lite', but there is a bit of nuance as to optimal mana management, not to mention you're seriously off your rocker if you think arcane DPS is about spamming one rotation until you run out of OOM and that arcane mages have no control over their mana pool. it's just the opposite, in fact.
if you want my impression, i would say you're pretty out of touch with optimal arcane mana management in a raid rotation, and i would recommend you spend some time with arcane with one simple goal in mind: end every raid boss fight where you go out of mana right as the boss goes down. it's a lot harder than you think, and that's where mage mana management comes in.
plainly put, if you're not going OOM as the boss goes down, you're not using the right rotations at the right time.
sorry for focusing on you because i hate to pick nits, but it really grinds my gears when people just assume DPS and by extension mages are just 'so ezmode olololol', especially because I'm a little OCD when it comes to my raid performance. sure there are arcane mages out there who just use one rotation and just press two buttons until the boss dies, but we call those people scrubs.
tl;dr - arcane is harder than you think it is.
Because they do in fact manage mana. I've been playing Arcane and that is the basis of why I'm saying what I'm saying. As Arcane I'm going "oh hey I remember this, I used to do it on my healer all of the time, I think its called making decisions about mana and which spell to cast".
Now, an Arcane mage will NEVER stop casting unless they screwed up their mana management and are forced to stop casting. The fact that the decision to stop casting is basically never the right decision makes it mana management lite. Which is why even for Arcane mages, spirit is just dressed up MP5. The appeal of spirit is that you get substantially more mana by correctly managing your casting and non casting time in such a way as to have the most time out of the 5 second rule.
Since mages don't ever enter the situation in which spirit is good, then why would they want to take spirit?
Begging for Innervates from Druids.
And being put in the resto shaman group.
Take a ret paladin hostage and use him for your diabolical purposes.
ABlast x3, Barrage
If Missile Barrage procs, cast it (sometimes I throw up Presence of Mind to increase my crit chance, or even just to throw off a Blast to increase its' damage)
If the boss is almost dead, ABlast till he dies.
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