Permafrost makes kiting an elite quite a bit easier. I'm a fan. More than one point in improved Blizzard is really only worthwhile if you intend to do a significant amount of AoE grinding.
I don't think GC really understands the spirit issue.
Mages are a dps class. That's all we do. You can't BOTH make spirit attractive and "Have a mage with spirit doing the same dps as a mage completely without it" which is pretty much what he's said.
It's stupid reasoning.
*guh*
I know what's going to happen. They're going to bandaid the dps every patch instead of actually giving mages decent scaling, so mages will be on-par for the beginning of each patch and lagging well behind in the end when everyone is geared.
Man fuck that.
Clearly you have successfully divined the inner thinking of the Devs and revealed what could be the ONLY SOLUTION
[/sarcasm]
Consider this:
When a piece of cloth comes around right now, and it has Spirit, it presents an item that least optimized for mages. A large portion of the item's budget is used up in a stat that does literally nothing for a Mage.
What if that stat granted the mage something that would be on equipment that didn't have spirit?
Take hit rating for example, very rarely do you see an item with both +Hit Rating and +Spirit, couldn't we then wager that the two could be interchangeable and mages who itemize spirit are going to walk out with roughly equivalent power to mages who don't? (Since Mages that avoid Spirit are likely to end up with Hit Rating instead) This is strictly an example of how they can make Spirit worthwhile but at the same timenot make it a 'necessary' stat.
Or even go out into left field and have some of the Mana Regen abilities that mages have scale with Spirit. Again the difference in damage output will probably be unnoticable since those mages who forego spirit are likely to hit more often.. etc.
I don't necessarily believe that either of these two outcomes are what the Devs are going to decide upon, but both present cases where choosing whether or not to stack Spirit can still present with similar outcomes.
They both have a situational rotation. Well, now that Circle of Healing has a cooldown, so do Healers.
As for the citation:
Mage gear has a lot of Spirit on it that doesn't help them much at the moment. We want to improve that. We are not going to turn mages into a class that stacks Spirit at the expense of all else, and we're not going to let Spirit provide "free" dps to mages that elevates them above the average dps of warlocks
Mage gear has a lot of Spirit on it that doesn't help them much at the moment. We want to improve that. We are not going to turn mages into a class that stacks Spirit at the expense of all else, and we're not going to let Spirit provide "free" dps to mages that elevates them above the average dps of warlocks
Not above is not the same thing as BELOW. They want them to be equivalent, not better or worse. I don't know how you get "they outright said they want Mages BELOW Warlocks" from that.
we're not going to let Spirit provide "free" dps to mages that elevates them above the average dps of warlocks
This part here is important. They don't want to allow spirit changes to magically make mages suddenly do more damage than warlocks. This does not mean that they want mages to do less dps than warlocks, they just don't want a stat change within a class to magically mean they rape warlocks in damage. They want to balance a spirit change to make it worthwhile to mages, while not giving them 1k dps boost on the meters.
So I'm leveling my baby mage, frost atm and I've started to REALLY pay attention to when I'm getting Fingers of Frost procs, and I'm 90% sure it's coinciding with frostbite procs. This seems like it would be a bug if true (unless I'm reading the tooltip wrong) and really cuts into the effectiveness of having both talents. Is this a known bug or are my dice just fucking with me?
we're not going to let Spirit provide "free" dps to mages that elevates them above the average dps of warlocks
This part here is important. They don't want to allow spirit changes to magically make mages suddenly do more damage than warlocks. This does not mean that they want mages to do less dps than warlocks, they just don't want a stat change within a class to magically mean they rape warlocks in damage. They want to balance a spirit change to make it worthwhile to mages, while not giving them 1k dps boost on the meters.
But MY big issue is more that they gave Warlocks a free DPS boost with Spirit, and then turn around and tell Mages they are baffled by how to make it useful for them.
Imagine if Blizzard said they wanted Rogues to use Strength, so Strength now provides crit rating. Well, now they want Hunters to use strength to. And insist they are baffled as to how they would go about doing this.
It's not like Warlocks and Mages are so different in what they do that "extra DPS from a buff based on your stats" is ONLY gonna work for one class. And the two classes aren't NEARLY close enough for 30% of a Mages spirit would skyrocket him over a Warlock (Unless you make a habit of bringing shitty Warlocks). The issue isn't Warlock vs Mage DPS, but Blizzard has already done this exact thing without a problem, and without even mentioning they wanted to make Spirit more useful, and yet we're told they're baffled.
Because it outright says they don't want us to do more DPS than a Warlock?
Oh right it's forty.
You're obtuse.
They don't want the same sort of disparity that happened between mages and warlocks in TBC to happen again. They don't want us to do significantly more damage than warlocks, and that would happen if they gave the same sort of buff for spirit that they gave locks. They want the damage output from mages and warlocks to be reasonably close, and if they gave us the same sort of buff they did for warlocks and spirit, we would probably pull way ahead.
TheTish on
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
I don't think GC really understands the spirit issue.
Mages are a dps class. That's all we do. You can't BOTH make spirit attractive and "Have a mage with spirit doing the same dps as a mage completely without it" which is pretty much what he's said.
It's stupid reasoning.
*guh*
I know what's going to happen. They're going to bandaid the dps every patch instead of actually giving mages decent scaling, so mages will be on-par for the beginning of each patch and lagging well behind in the end when everyone is geared.
Man fuck that.
Clearly you have successfully divined the inner thinking of the Devs and revealed what could be the ONLY SOLUTION
[/sarcasm]
Consider this:
When a piece of cloth comes around right now, and it has Spirit, it presents an item that least optimized for mages. A large portion of the item's budget is used up in a stat that does literally nothing for a Mage.
What if that stat granted the mage something that would be on equipment that didn't have spirit?
Take hit rating for example, very rarely do you see an item with both +Hit Rating and +Spirit, couldn't we then wager that the two could be interchangeable and mages who itemize spirit are going to walk out with roughly equivalent power to mages who don't? (Since Mages that avoid Spirit are likely to end up with Hit Rating instead) This is strictly an example of how they can make Spirit worthwhile but at the same timenot make it a 'necessary' stat.
Or even go out into left field and have some of the Mana Regen abilities that mages have scale with Spirit. Again the difference in damage output will probably be unnoticable since those mages who forego spirit are likely to hit more often.. etc.
I don't necessarily believe that either of these two outcomes are what the Devs are going to decide upon, but both present cases where choosing whether or not to stack Spirit can still present with similar outcomes.
Crazy, I know.
First of all, there are lots of items with +hit and +spirit.
That aside, even taking your example, you only want so much +hit. Just until you're capped. That's it. You don't want more.
It's my understanding that spirit is loaded onto Ulduar gear whether we want it or not. I haven't actually looked at the data mining files but that's what word around the campfire happens to be.
If I have that much of an item budget wasted on a stat that hardly matters to me, I think it's only fair that stat be made useful.
Instead, they've nerfed what use it did have by lowering the mana regen from it.
Instead, they've nerfed what use it did have by lowering the mana regen from it.
that's not quite true
for mages, the mana regen in combat will be approximately equal - to repost my earlier statement, we were getting 60% regen out of 100% spirit with mage armor and a relevant mana regen talent. with the changes to the mage class, total spirit regen is down to 60%, but our talents / mage armor have been buffed to 100% meaning the only 'nerf' is to outside-5-second-rule regen.
cjeris is currently lvl 34. He's not gonna be casting Ice Lances any time soon. Honestly, Arcanis is partially correct, at around 34, AoE leveling is pretty damn good.
Later on I'd say you should be casting a lot of Frostbolts, but at around 34...not so much.
If I take Improved Blizzard to put a chill on my Blizzards, does every tick of the Blizzard have the 15% chance to proc Frostbite, or is it once for the whole spell?
cjeris is currently lvl 34. He's not gonna be casting Ice Lances any time soon. Honestly, Arcanis is partially correct, at around 34, AoE leveling is pretty damn good.
Later on I'd say you should be casting a lot of Frostbolts, but at around 34...not so much.
If I take Improved Blizzard to put a chill on my Blizzards, does every tick of the Blizzard have the 15% chance to proc Frostbite, or is it once for the whole spell?
Every tick will apply the chill, and so another chance to root.
Because it outright says they don't want us to do more DPS than a Warlock?
Oh right it's forty.
You're obtuse.
Well, let's see if putting everything in bold type helps you out:
They don't want ANY class to do more theoretical DPS than a warlock. Just like they don't want ANY class to do more theoretical DPS than a hunter, mage, or rogue.
And YOUR proof for that bullshit statement would be...?
Because whereas mine at least made sense in context, yours is pulled out of your ass as far as I can tell.
It would be the multitude of posts since WotLK beta where GC says they want the four pure DPS classes to be about even for damage, and slightly ahead of the six hybrid classes -- which you've somehow forgotten or ignored for the purposes of being as thick headed as possible.
And YOUR proof for that bullshit statement would be...?
Because whereas mine at least made sense in context, yours is pulled out of your ass as far as I can tell.
It would be the multitude of posts since WotLK beta where GC says they want the four pure DPS classes to be about even for damage, and slightly ahead of the six hybrid classes -- which you've somehow forgotten or ignored for the purposes of being as thick headed as possible.
Yes but Blizzard never keeps their fucking word, for one thing. For ANY class. Warriors, Druids, Paladins, and DKs all perform very well (and the first three don't have a problem approaching and even outdoing the full DPSers)
And secondly, Rogues and Hunters for a while were well beyond Warlocks and Mages. Now Hunters are getting reigned in...after casters in general take a bit of a shot and Mages get left behind. And I still have doubts that Hunters are suddenly gonna find themselves much lower on the DPS meters.
All of that is a problem with execution, not intent. The only time in WotLK that rogues have been "well beyond" warlocks and mages was when the HaT bug was being abused. Since then they have been placing well below mages. And they're trying to address some of those other issues as well (fury warrior and DK DPS being too high) in 3.1 along with leveling out the classes a little better. Whether or not that will happen remains to be seen, but 3.1 has never been about Ghostcrawler donning his Snidely Whiplash outfit and twirling his mustache while he ties up mages and puts them on the railroad track.
Also, lulz@u if you think druids and paladins are outperforming mages and co. at the high end. I recommend you pay a visit to wowmeteronline before complaining about how bad "your class" has it.
I'd like to just point out that Druids, Paladin and Shaman who gear and talent for DPS are full DPS classes. I hate the absurd notion that just because they can cast heals and are considered a hybrid class as a whole they should have lower dps than the classes who can't. It's idiotic. If you are dps spec, you need to be dps. Nothing else. The fact that you can heal does not mean you should, everything else being equal. The sign of a good hybrid is that you'll toss a heal now and then if a group needs it in a tight spot, but this should be extremely rare or the group/raid you're running with has different problems in the first place.
It's not so much that they can heal or tank in DPS spec/gear (which, for most hybrid DPS specs, they can't really), but that their class has the option of filling a role other than DPS. For the four "pure" classes, the only role they can fill is that of DPS.
I still don't follow the line of logic that says this entitles them to better dps. In raids, roles are based on what spec you are, not what spec you may be. A hybrid might be asked to switch to heals if there is a shortage, but this doesn't happen in an ideal situation. And, in fact, in many situations the hybrid wont' have enough gear to switch at all. This doesn't make them any different from a pure dps class for the purposes of raiding, which to me, is all the game should be balanced around in the first place.
Another problem with giving the pure dps classes a buff over the hybrids is they will become prefered to getting the dps gear. Hybrids would be second place because the game is designed for them to be worse at their prospective job than pure dps. Casual raiders wouldn't really care, but what about min/maxing guilds?
I just find the whole line of logic that pure dps is somehow special for being restricted to just that flawed. Just how many hybrids actually want to branch out and play their other specs? A few might do it occasionally, and even few more might actually like it enough to switch entirely, but the vast majority who are dps probably only want to stay dps. I just don't see why blizzard should essentially punish them for a choice they'd never actually make.
Cilla Black on
0
AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
I still don't follow the line of logic that says this entitles them to better dps. In raids, roles are based on what spec you are, not what spec you may be. A hybrid might be asked to switch to heals if there is a shortage, but this doesn't happen in an ideal situation. And, in fact, in many situations the hybrid wont' have enough gear to switch at all. This doesn't make them any different from a pure dps class for the purposes of raiding, which to me, is all the game should be balanced around in the first place.
Another problem with giving the pure dps classes a buff over the hybrids is they will become prefered to getting the dps gear. Hybrids would be second place because the game is designed for them to be worse at their prospective job than pure dps. Casual raiders wouldn't really care, but what about min/maxing guilds?
I just find the whole line of logic that pure dps is somehow special for being restricted to just that flawed. Just how many hybrids actually want to branch out and play their other specs? A few might do it occasionally, and even few more might actually like it enough to switch entirely, but the vast majority who are dps probably only want to stay dps. I just don't see why blizzard should essentially punish them for a choice they'd never actually make.
I see it as a question of incentive. If the hybrid classes can DPS just as well (theoretically speaking) as a non-hybrid DPS, what incentive is there to play a non-hybrid class? Necessary raid buffs are pretty much the answer at that point.
As a non-hybrid class, I want there to be some incentive for limiting my options.
I'd like to just point out that Druids, Paladin and Shaman who gear and talent for DPS are full DPS classes.
I would say yes for druids, no for shaman and paladins. Specifically, when the paladin is ret and the shaman is enhancement. They have talents that swing some of their AP to count as spellpower, which, yes, does affect their DPS. But it also buffs their healing ever-so-slightly. Spot-healing is a task. Those two specs (ret and enh) are, without a doubt, the only true hybrids in the game.
I'd like to just point out that Druids, Paladin and Shaman who gear and talent for DPS are full DPS classes.
I would say yes for druids, no for shaman and paladins. Specifically, when the paladin is ret and the shaman is enhancement. They have talents that swing some of their AP to count as spellpower, which, yes, does affect their DPS. But it also buffs their healing ever-so-slightly. Spot-healing is a task. Those two specs (ret and enh) are, without a doubt, the only true hybrids in the game.
Balance druids can certainly dust off their healing skills when the time calls for it. A well played Tranquility, for instance, is a raid saver.
Derrick on
Steam and CFN: Enexemander
0
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I'd like to just point out that Druids, Paladin and Shaman who gear and talent for DPS are full DPS classes.
I would say yes for druids, no for shaman and paladins. Specifically, when the paladin is ret and the shaman is enhancement. They have talents that swing some of their AP to count as spellpower, which, yes, does affect their DPS. But it also buffs their healing ever-so-slightly. Spot-healing is a task. Those two specs (ret and enh) are, without a doubt, the only true hybrids in the game.
Balance druids can certainly dust off their healing skills when the time calls for it. A well played Tranquility, for instance, is a raid saver.
True, but I mean, we could get into the shape-shifting nonsense. Or we can get this conversation into another thread. <.<
I'm fine with pure dps classes having very slightly better dps if hybrids bring other things to the raid, like class specific buffs/debuffs and special class specific abilities like battle res&tranquility&enervate, bloodlust, mind control, auras, misdirect and so on. I'm not sure how I feel about a specific class being "needed" for an encounter, but I think it's fair that a group with 1 of each class/spec be superior to one running multiple copies of only 2 or 3 different class/specs.
I think blizzard is doing OK at this and as long as there is a good reason to bring each class along on a raid I will be happy. I want all classes to have comparable dps, but if a class doesn't really bring much in the way of raid buffs/debuffs/abilities I'm OK with that class being very slightly better in DPS with the same gear level.
Mages used to be kings of AOE and CC, guaranteeing raid spots. Now many classes have good AoE and CC isn't really required. Therefore mages need to have strong DPS to get raid spots.
Look at paladins, they were brought on raids mostly for the -30%threat buff which was kinda required for most boss fights. When they redid threat and made the -30% threat buff obsolete they also buffed paladins overall to compensate.
Dman on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
Maybe one day, "bring the player, not the class" will extend to, "bring the player, not the role," and we can have 10-man groups of all mages getting through raid content.
I would love to see the holy trinity game design get punched in the cunt, but that's never going to happen in WoW.
Perhaps the mysterious next generation MMO will break that mold? And, if not, there's still Diablo 3 for escaping the holy trinity.
One of the games without the holy trinity I played was Asherons Call, and I can say that having almost everyone be able to tank, heal and dps simultaneous by themselves did not a better game make.
I don't see why not. D2 did fine, there weren't really any 'healer's or 'tank's.
Team of 8 Sorceress/Wizards, Act 1 to Act infinity Hell, go go go.
Because holy trinity design is too deeply embedded in WoW's design and a lot of players' expectations to be removed realistically.
As for Asheron's Call, the game sucked for reasons that really had nothing to do with the lack of holy trinity. Boring and ultra repetitive combat being one of the main ones.
I still don't follow the line of logic that says this entitles them to better dps. In raids, roles are based on what spec you are, not what spec you may be. A hybrid might be asked to switch to heals if there is a shortage, but this doesn't happen in an ideal situation. And, in fact, in many situations the hybrid wont' have enough gear to switch at all. This doesn't make them any different from a pure dps class for the purposes of raiding, which to me, is all the game should be balanced around in the first place.
Another problem with giving the pure dps classes a buff over the hybrids is they will become prefered to getting the dps gear. Hybrids would be second place because the game is designed for them to be worse at their prospective job than pure dps. Casual raiders wouldn't really care, but what about min/maxing guilds?
I just find the whole line of logic that pure dps is somehow special for being restricted to just that flawed. Just how many hybrids actually want to branch out and play their other specs? A few might do it occasionally, and even few more might actually like it enough to switch entirely, but the vast majority who are dps probably only want to stay dps. I just don't see why blizzard should essentially punish them for a choice they'd never actually make.
I see it as a question of incentive. If the hybrid classes can DPS just as well (theoretically speaking) as a non-hybrid DPS, what incentive is there to play a non-hybrid class? Necessary raid buffs are pretty much the answer at that point.
As a non-hybrid class, I want there to be some incentive for limiting my options.
The exact same thing applies to majority of hybrids though. If they do less dps then the only reason to bring one is the potential raid buffs they provide. The reason you would bring pure dps classes is not only due to loot, but because a hybrids usefulness diminishes to zero after you have a couple in the raid if even that. You never need 17 people tanking or healing. In fact really the only encounter where I would say being a hybrid is a huge advantage is 10 man Sarth+3 and this is more because the fight is badly designed to nearly require 3 tanks and healing requirement spikes for 30 seconds.
Also I would have to disagree with Henroid. The only hybrids that I've found to be useful without a gear/spec change are shadow priests, balance druids, death knights and though I haven't seen it I assume elemental shamans fall in the same bucket. This is almost entirely due to the gear overlap between the two different tasks and dks being a special case where having cooldowns that mitigate damage are useful for short duration tanking.
Nope. It's intentional that they proc at the same time. I'm not sure how it works if you only have one of the talents maxed, though.
I'm sure I missed this discussion when the talent trees were first released in this form, but doesn't the Fingers of Frost tooltip seem like it has nothing to do with frostbite? As it works now it's really just 'improved frostbite' which I suppose allows it to proc on mobs that can't be frozen? As a leveling it's a bit underwhelming to get this and realize that having both this and frostbite kind of overlaps and feels like I'm not getting my money's worth out of those talents. Was there a statement by blue back in beta that this was intentional?
The only hybrids that I've found to be useful without a gear/spec change are shadow priests, balance druids, death knights and though I haven't seen it I assume elemental shamans fall in the same bucket.
You spelled "feral druids" incorrectly. Unless you actually use crittable tanks for things.
Nope. It's intentional that they proc at the same time. I'm not sure how it works if you only have one of the talents maxed, though.
I'm sure I missed this discussion when the talent trees were first released in this form, but doesn't the Fingers of Frost tooltip seem like it has nothing to do with frostbite? As it works now it's really just 'improved frostbite' which I suppose allows it to proc on mobs that can't be frozen? As a leveling it's a bit underwhelming to get this and realize that having both this and frostbite kind of overlaps and feels like I'm not getting my money's worth out of those talents. Was there a statement by blue back in beta that this was intentional?
Yes, it's intentional. FoF's chief purpose was to allow shatter to be useful in group PvE. It also has value in PvP since you can still get the shatter bonus even if your target breaks/dispels Frostbite right away.
It's not a particularly good leveling talent, no, and it's not intended to be. There are still situations where it will see some use, though, especially if you're good at pulling off the "Frostbolt + Ice Lance on the last charge of FoF" glitch. Unless that was fixed in one of the more recent patches...
The only hybrids that I've found to be useful without a gear/spec change are shadow priests, balance druids, death knights and though I haven't seen it I assume elemental shamans fall in the same bucket.
You spelled "feral druids" incorrectly. Unless you actually use crittable tanks for things.
This a specific reference to 10 man Sarth+3 add tanking where a DK in dps gear can contribute almost 100% of his dps and still tank all the adds removing the requirement for a 3rd tank. I may be mistaken, but while feral druids can switch gear and perform either role I was under the impression they can't effectively perform both while in combat. Admittedly this is a very specific case, but is one of the very few where being a hybrid is a big advantage in a single fight.
A bear with cat gear and a cat spec is a better tank than a DK in frost presence with DPS gear and a DPS spec. The bear will have similar armor and health but more avoidance and be uncrittable.
Posts
Clearly you have successfully divined the inner thinking of the Devs and revealed what could be the ONLY SOLUTION
[/sarcasm]
Consider this:
When a piece of cloth comes around right now, and it has Spirit, it presents an item that least optimized for mages. A large portion of the item's budget is used up in a stat that does literally nothing for a Mage.
What if that stat granted the mage something that would be on equipment that didn't have spirit?
Take hit rating for example, very rarely do you see an item with both +Hit Rating and +Spirit, couldn't we then wager that the two could be interchangeable and mages who itemize spirit are going to walk out with roughly equivalent power to mages who don't? (Since Mages that avoid Spirit are likely to end up with Hit Rating instead) This is strictly an example of how they can make Spirit worthwhile but at the same timenot make it a 'necessary' stat.
Or even go out into left field and have some of the Mana Regen abilities that mages have scale with Spirit. Again the difference in damage output will probably be unnoticable since those mages who forego spirit are likely to hit more often.. etc.
I don't necessarily believe that either of these two outcomes are what the Devs are going to decide upon, but both present cases where choosing whether or not to stack Spirit can still present with similar outcomes.
Crazy, I know.
As for the citation:
Not above is not the same thing as BELOW. They want them to be equivalent, not better or worse. I don't know how you get "they outright said they want Mages BELOW Warlocks" from that.
Oh right it's forty.
You're obtuse.
This part here is important. They don't want to allow spirit changes to magically make mages suddenly do more damage than warlocks. This does not mean that they want mages to do less dps than warlocks, they just don't want a stat change within a class to magically mean they rape warlocks in damage. They want to balance a spirit change to make it worthwhile to mages, while not giving them 1k dps boost on the meters.
Imagine if Blizzard said they wanted Rogues to use Strength, so Strength now provides crit rating. Well, now they want Hunters to use strength to. And insist they are baffled as to how they would go about doing this.
It's not like Warlocks and Mages are so different in what they do that "extra DPS from a buff based on your stats" is ONLY gonna work for one class. And the two classes aren't NEARLY close enough for 30% of a Mages spirit would skyrocket him over a Warlock (Unless you make a habit of bringing shitty Warlocks). The issue isn't Warlock vs Mage DPS, but Blizzard has already done this exact thing without a problem, and without even mentioning they wanted to make Spirit more useful, and yet we're told they're baffled.
They don't want the same sort of disparity that happened between mages and warlocks in TBC to happen again. They don't want us to do significantly more damage than warlocks, and that would happen if they gave the same sort of buff for spirit that they gave locks. They want the damage output from mages and warlocks to be reasonably close, and if they gave us the same sort of buff they did for warlocks and spirit, we would probably pull way ahead.
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
First of all, there are lots of items with +hit and +spirit.
That aside, even taking your example, you only want so much +hit. Just until you're capped. That's it. You don't want more.
It's my understanding that spirit is loaded onto Ulduar gear whether we want it or not. I haven't actually looked at the data mining files but that's what word around the campfire happens to be.
If I have that much of an item budget wasted on a stat that hardly matters to me, I think it's only fair that stat be made useful.
Instead, they've nerfed what use it did have by lowering the mana regen from it.
that's not quite true
for mages, the mana regen in combat will be approximately equal - to repost my earlier statement, we were getting 60% regen out of 100% spirit with mage armor and a relevant mana regen talent. with the changes to the mage class, total spirit regen is down to 60%, but our talents / mage armor have been buffed to 100% meaning the only 'nerf' is to outside-5-second-rule regen.
If I take Improved Blizzard to put a chill on my Blizzards, does every tick of the Blizzard have the 15% chance to proc Frostbite, or is it once for the whole spell?
They don't want ANY class to do more theoretical DPS than a warlock. Just like they don't want ANY class to do more theoretical DPS than a hunter, mage, or rogue.
Holy hell, you are unbelievably thick.
Because whereas mine at least made sense in context, yours is pulled out of your ass as far as I can tell.
And secondly, Rogues and Hunters for a while were well beyond Warlocks and Mages. Now Hunters are getting reigned in...after casters in general take a bit of a shot and Mages get left behind. And I still have doubts that Hunters are suddenly gonna find themselves much lower on the DPS meters.
Also, lulz@u if you think druids and paladins are outperforming mages and co. at the high end. I recommend you pay a visit to wowmeteronline before complaining about how bad "your class" has it.
Another problem with giving the pure dps classes a buff over the hybrids is they will become prefered to getting the dps gear. Hybrids would be second place because the game is designed for them to be worse at their prospective job than pure dps. Casual raiders wouldn't really care, but what about min/maxing guilds?
I just find the whole line of logic that pure dps is somehow special for being restricted to just that flawed. Just how many hybrids actually want to branch out and play their other specs? A few might do it occasionally, and even few more might actually like it enough to switch entirely, but the vast majority who are dps probably only want to stay dps. I just don't see why blizzard should essentially punish them for a choice they'd never actually make.
I see it as a question of incentive. If the hybrid classes can DPS just as well (theoretically speaking) as a non-hybrid DPS, what incentive is there to play a non-hybrid class? Necessary raid buffs are pretty much the answer at that point.
As a non-hybrid class, I want there to be some incentive for limiting my options.
Battle.net
I would say yes for druids, no for shaman and paladins. Specifically, when the paladin is ret and the shaman is enhancement. They have talents that swing some of their AP to count as spellpower, which, yes, does affect their DPS. But it also buffs their healing ever-so-slightly. Spot-healing is a task. Those two specs (ret and enh) are, without a doubt, the only true hybrids in the game.
Balance druids can certainly dust off their healing skills when the time calls for it. A well played Tranquility, for instance, is a raid saver.
True, but I mean, we could get into the shape-shifting nonsense. Or we can get this conversation into another thread. <.<
I think blizzard is doing OK at this and as long as there is a good reason to bring each class along on a raid I will be happy. I want all classes to have comparable dps, but if a class doesn't really bring much in the way of raid buffs/debuffs/abilities I'm OK with that class being very slightly better in DPS with the same gear level.
Mages used to be kings of AOE and CC, guaranteeing raid spots. Now many classes have good AoE and CC isn't really required. Therefore mages need to have strong DPS to get raid spots.
Look at paladins, they were brought on raids mostly for the -30%threat buff which was kinda required for most boss fights. When they redid threat and made the -30% threat buff obsolete they also buffed paladins overall to compensate.
Perhaps the mysterious next generation MMO will break that mold? And, if not, there's still Diablo 3 for escaping the holy trinity.
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One of the games without the holy trinity I played was Asherons Call, and I can say that having almost everyone be able to tank, heal and dps simultaneous by themselves did not a better game make.
Although I do look forward to diablo 3.
As for Asheron's Call, the game sucked for reasons that really had nothing to do with the lack of holy trinity. Boring and ultra repetitive combat being one of the main ones.
The exact same thing applies to majority of hybrids though. If they do less dps then the only reason to bring one is the potential raid buffs they provide. The reason you would bring pure dps classes is not only due to loot, but because a hybrids usefulness diminishes to zero after you have a couple in the raid if even that. You never need 17 people tanking or healing. In fact really the only encounter where I would say being a hybrid is a huge advantage is 10 man Sarth+3 and this is more because the fight is badly designed to nearly require 3 tanks and healing requirement spikes for 30 seconds.
Also I would have to disagree with Henroid. The only hybrids that I've found to be useful without a gear/spec change are shadow priests, balance druids, death knights and though I haven't seen it I assume elemental shamans fall in the same bucket. This is almost entirely due to the gear overlap between the two different tasks and dks being a special case where having cooldowns that mitigate damage are useful for short duration tanking.
It's not a particularly good leveling talent, no, and it's not intended to be. There are still situations where it will see some use, though, especially if you're good at pulling off the "Frostbolt + Ice Lance on the last charge of FoF" glitch. Unless that was fixed in one of the more recent patches...
This a specific reference to 10 man Sarth+3 add tanking where a DK in dps gear can contribute almost 100% of his dps and still tank all the adds removing the requirement for a 3rd tank. I may be mistaken, but while feral druids can switch gear and perform either role I was under the impression they can't effectively perform both while in combat. Admittedly this is a very specific case, but is one of the very few where being a hybrid is a big advantage in a single fight.