[WoW] Mages: Spreadsheets and macros are for warlocks.

khain

I haven't heard of people using a feral druid for this specific task, though maybe it works. I'm not the feral druid expert, but I think the DK has an advantage where he can slap DnD down on the portal and keep dps on the boss where the feral druid would have to actually take time to round the adds up which kind of defeats the point to begin with.

Zerokku

Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.

:O

Henroid

Zerokku wrote: »

Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.

:O

You fucker, I was going to post that. Only like this:

Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.

Zerokku

Henroid wrote: »

Zerokku wrote: »

Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.

:O

You fucker, I was going to post that. Only like this:

Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.

It's a nerf

Enthorn, from EJ

At 45.9 crit rating per 1%, 5% crit rating is 229.5 critical strike rating, which is 25% of 918 spirit. Every 4 spirit is giving 1 critical strike rating, thus, 183.6 spirit converts to 1% crit. Raid buffed, I run with 346 spirit in my current gear (Frostfire). This converts to 138.4 critical strike rating, using Glyph of Molten Armor (40% of spirit), or 3.01%.

Thus, if I switch no more gear between now and 3.1, I will lose 2% crit, assuming that the original 3% crit that Molten Armor supplied is being replaced by the spirit conversion. If so, this is an especially detrimental nerf to the 5% crit that molten armor (and its glyph) was supplying for fire in PvP gear.

http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t45439-upcoming_mage_changes_3_1_a/p34/

Henroid

I enlarge it because it begs attention. Also, OP updated with this stuff:

* Mage T8 2P Bonus -- Your Arcane Blast, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, and Fireball spells have a chance to grant you 350 spell power for 15 sec.
* Mage T8 4P Bonus -- You have a chance for the effect of your Missile Barrage, Hot Streak, or Brain Freeze talent not to be consumed when you cast the spells which benefit.

Fire

* Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.
* Improved Scorch now increases spell critical strike chance against the target by 1%.

Frost

* Winter's Chill now increases the chance spells will critically hit the target by 1%. (Down from 2%)

Edit - Also got rid of the large "FUCK" in the OP in case anyone is at work for that. Also, thread title is the best I could think of on the fly regarding the spirit nonsense. I appreciate their effort in making one armor spell be affected. Now it needs to not suck and maybe include the other two types.

TheTish

Yeah... 25% is kinda low i think. I think i lose almost 2% crit in the change if i'm doing my math right.

Henroid

I have a feeling it might suck less with Ulduar gear and beyond, but really, why don't they fit the new content to the existing standards? Our crit buff is going to suck balls all the way up to this next level of end-game raiding. It's like, different from when TBC dropped and the game was balanced for level 80, and all levels below were unbalanced to shit. Only now it's gear based. Ugh.

Super Namicchi

good for us arcane mages who have been stealing all the priest gear with +spi and +haste ;p

Cilla Black

Alecthar wrote: »

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.

We're sort of off the topic now, but you can pretty much answer your own question since right now hybrid classes are doing nearly the same if not in some cases more dps than pure classes. So why don't you play one? (assuming, of course, you actually don't. if you do, well, pretend. :P) The reason (and correct me if I'm wrong) is probably that you enjoy the mechanics of a mage (or whatever) and prefer to play as that dps rather than a hybrid. The only people who would move to a hybrid would be the min-maxers who get their enjoyment from being the best at raiding/pvping/whatever and have no qualm about jumping ship to something else to remain so.

And that's fine. They aren't doing me any harm so I've got no problem with them. But I would wager they probably don't make up the larger part of the population. So long as your dps is high, why exactly do you need more incentive to play something you would play regardless? Especially if that incentive is a detriment to another class. I'm not suggesting that hybrid dps should be better than yours, simply that it should be relatively the same so that everyone wins.

The Muffin Man

Wait, did they ADD that or CHANGE that?

If it's the former: THIS IS WHAT WE WANTED!
If it's the latter: Goddammit Blizzard how do you fuck something so easy up?

Henroid

It's changed, not in-addition-to.

Darkstryke

That hot streak set bonus is looking nice though.

Alecthar

If Molten Armor becomes 3% Crit and 25% spirit as crit rating, I'll take it.

Henroid

This is still a problem.

Fire mage specs aren't as consuming on mana, especially FFB spec. So you can lax up on your mana regen and not need Mage Armor. Bingo, you have crit from Molten Armor right?

If you go arcane spec, I see this as an issue. Now, I'm not geared up much, so I don't know how much of an impact another 50% mana regen from mage armor makes. Or if it outweighs having the crit from Molten Armor. Assuming it does, the spirit factor to Molten Armor means absolute dick to us. So spirit appeal to mages at this point is limited.

The Muffin Man

Henroid wrote: »

It's changed, not in-addition-to.

"We want to make spirit useful, but not mandatory. So to do this, we're crippling a really good skill to make it necessary."

Thanks guys!

Alecthar wrote: »

If Molten Armor becomes 3% Crit and 25% spirit as crit rating, I'll take it.

This is exactly what I wanted. But apparently it's not? I hope it's clarified that we're all freaking out over nothing and it is how it works.

Henroid

MMO Champion has a mouse-over of the tooltip. It clearly states it will do 170 damage and then add 25% of spirit as crit rating. There's nothing in it about 3% crit.

Also, why are all ranks 170 damage? What's the point of multiple ranks now?

forty

Isn't mage armor better for arcane specs than molten armor anyway? Just trying to find out if this change will really affect arcane mages at all.

forty

Henroid wrote: »

Also, why are all ranks 170 damage? What's the point of multiple ranks now?

Has to be a typo/data error. Any sort of static damage thing like that has to scale with level in some way (either built into the ability or through having multiple static ranks) or it's too good at a low level or too awful at a high level.

Henroid

forty wrote: »

Isn't mage armor better for arcane specs than molten armor anyway? Just trying to find out if this change will really affect arcane mages at all.

That's what I said a couple posts above yours. They managed to make spirit interesting to mages in very specific regards, but not to the class as a whole.

Alecthar

Cilla Black wrote: »

Alecthar wrote: »

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.

We're sort of off the topic now, but you can pretty much answer your own question since right now hybrid classes are doing nearly the same if not in some cases more dps than pure classes. So why don't you play one? (assuming, of course, you actually don't. if you do, well, pretend. :P) The reason (and correct me if I'm wrong) is probably that you enjoy the mechanics of a mage (or whatever) and prefer to play as that dps rather than a hybrid. The only people who would move to a hybrid would be the min-maxers who get their enjoyment from being the best at raiding/pvping/whatever and have no qualm about jumping ship to something else to remain so.

And that's fine. They aren't doing me any harm so I've got no problem with them. But I would wager they probably don't make up the larger part of the population. So long as your dps is high, why exactly do you need more incentive to play something you would play regardless? Especially if that incentive is a detriment to another class. I'm not suggesting that hybrid dps should be better than yours, simply that it should be relatively the same so that everyone wins.

Honestly, if I could have an 80 of any class, I might be a Paladin right now. Or maybe a priest.

But I do so love the magery. And really, I don't have an issue with hybrids. I'm mostly desperate for balance, I'd really like to beat the hell out of my guild's Blood DK.

Cilla Black

Oh yeah, well, DKs are exempt from the equation.

We should all hate them equally.

Super Namicchi

actually, spirit matters a lot for arcane mages... you know why? because +haste gear also tends to have a lot of +spi on it. so the change to molten armor might actually be worth replacing mage armor with it... but we'll see.

Beasteh

From MMOchamp:

Why is spirit still significantly less valuable for us than warlocks?

GCs response:

Apples to oranges. Agility is significantly less valuable to mages than it is to rogues.

fucking what

what

Henroid

Fucking bullshit, that's what. Here's the entire Dev Q&A.

Glyph of Living Bomb
We suspect the glyph (and fire mages) would probably be overpowered if those crits on periodic damage powered Hot Streak etc. That would be a pretty big dps boost. The glyph is just supposed to let Living Bomb do more damage. (Source)

Developer Q&A (Source)
Why is the molten armor spirit change a nerf to pvp, solo, and anyone not in full 25man epics / raid buffs?
Realistically, most mages are never going to notice a change to crit while soloing unless it was a really large number. Soloing is generally not difficult and you are generally going to defeat everything you fight within a few GCDs. For PvP it is a nerf to those mages using Molten Armor, but very few mages use Molten Armor in PvP. If we like what the Molten Armor change does, then we might consider doing something similar to other mage armors down the road.

Why is spirit still significantly less valuable for us than warlocks? Why is it still better to use non spirit items except for in the few cases where the spirit item's ilevel was higher to begin with?
Apples to oranges. Agility is significantly less valuable to mages than it is to rogues. Yes, I realize you don't share gear with them, but if your concern is that warlocks will end up doing more damage as a result of that Spirit on their gear, we understand the concern and we think we have it under control.

Why was scorch singled out as too powerful when it is obvious there are other raid buffs just as powerful?
For starters, because characters already had very high crit numbers in the first tier of content. We aren't really trying to make all buffs equal at this stage. Sunder, for example, is still a huge damage multiplier for classes that do physical damage. But buffs that feel like they do swing the pendulum too far are good things to discuss on these forums.

Why do mages still have an archaic evocation tool that is risky and can virtually kill our dps like no other class has to deal with? Why can we be screwed over through rng because of this?
We understand the problem with Evocate in PvE. We aren't likely to turn it into Innervate, but we would like to come up with a solution that keeps you from getting boned when you happen to take a big blast of AE damage. I will also point out that there is a skill difference here too. Good mages know when the best time is to use Evocate (say KT just did a big blast so you know it isn't happening again). Less-skilled mages hit it the second they need it without paying attention to their surroundings.

Why do improved scorch and winter's chill still have no personal benefit? Why is it still a dps loss and the cost of a major glyph to make use of scorch? What is the point now that warlocks will apply the debuff with their main nuke?
Selfish benefits are something we would like to add to all talents. For those we haven't done yet, it is usually because we would have to nerf the tree somewhere else to make up for the inflated damage. One of the questions we often ask ourselves is whether a class would already take that talent just because it's such a good talent for them. For example, if Battle Shout was a talent, almost every warrior would still take it even if they knew 100% that another player could provide the buff in a group. Why? Because it still grants them so much damage when solo, in BGs, etc.

Why is frost still horribly lackluster in pve? Why is frostbolt still spammed and the ice lance glyph does nothing to fix this?
I suspect I don't need to explain this to mages, but we can't make Ice Lance any better without making Frost even more dealy in PvP. We talked about making the glyph better, and we still might, but the problem is most PvE Frost mages take the glyphs of Frostbolt, Molten Armor and Water Elemental already, *and* inflating the glyph to something like 8x damage would make Frost mages the most insane leveling spec in the world.

Ideally, yes, we would love to get Frost into PvE and Fire into PvP in a bigger way. In the grand scheme of things though, mages have Arcane, Fire and Frostfire specs doing very competitive dps with each other in PvE and Frost and possibly Arcane as viable in PvP. That's definitely an improvement over where the class has been historically, so while it is something we want to work on, it doesn't feel like a crisis.

Why has it been some five ptr builds with absolutely zero attention to our concerns? I promise GC, we aren't just complaining for the sake of it, and we're not all looking for massive damage buffs. Some of us would like to see our legitimate concerns at the very least commented upon.
Just understand that your concerns and our concerns are not always in perfect agreement. We like to get feedback from the community, but ultimately we don't sit down and say "How can we address all these problems that the community wants us to fix?" We have to do what we think is right for the game. Sometimes you are going to applaud those changes and sometimes you might not "approve" of the change.

I try and comment on what I can, but my time on the forums is limited. I tend to comment on things that are fresh in my mind from discussions the designers are having. If I answer 5 shaman posts and no mage posts in a given week, that is probably because we are working a lot on shamans at the moment. It really just makes the forums controversial when you argue about parity in responses or when yor why you "deserve" to have questions answered. Hence, I ask you not to do that.

Henroid

OP updated with that chunk of stuff. When the patch drops, I'm gonna delete all the notes in the latest news section and replace it with the damn patch notes. Clutter sucks in a bb-code sensitive post.

Okay, anway, I like how they dodged the issue brought up in the question regarding Imp. Scorch / Winter's Chill. It was something I never even thought about. Warlocks have a talent, first tier, that provides the crit buff. And given the way Blizzard wants them to slam out Shadowbolts now, it's like what the fuck is the point of wasting our talent points on deeper-talents?

I don't like the note about "down the road" for the other armor spells if Blizzard likes the changes to Molten Armor. We're getting a half-assed effort on spirit appeal, and getting mocked for it with a comparison to agility and rogues.

forty

Henroid wrote: »

Okay, anway, I like how they dodged the issue brought up in the question regarding Imp. Scorch / Winter's Chill. It was something I never even thought about. Warlocks have a talent, first tier, that provides the crit buff. And given the way Blizzard wants them to slam out Shadowbolts now, it's like what the fuck is the point of wasting our talent points on deeper-talents?

Warlocks have been asking the same thing about Curse of Elements for months...

Alecthar

I'm really irritated by this spirit nonsense. The idea is apparently to have mages who grab spirit gear and mages who grab non-spirit gear and have only incidental amounts of spirit, do the same damage (roughly). Molten Armor, is, I suppose, the equalizer. But that leaves us in the hole, because mages using a self-buff providing vastly reduced benefits in comparison to its current form are going to be doing the same amount of damage as mages who are getting crit buffs from stacked spirit, but are losing the significant stat increases on gear that lacks spirit.

Henroid

So... the people with spirit gear are still losing in the end.

The Muffin Man

Beasteh wrote: »

From MMOchamp:

Why is spirit still significantly less valuable for us than warlocks?

GCs response:

Apples to oranges. Agility is significantly less valuable to mages than it is to rogues.

fucking what

what

Apples to oranges, Beasteh!
Everyone knows Warlocks need Spirit for Mana Regen while Mages can Life Tap it back up, making Spirit an almost worthless stat for them.


(Okay in the real world Spirits pretty useless for Mages too)

Also, that Q&A is basically insulting. The Scorch nerf makes little/no sense (Mages either spend an entire talent tree getting the debuff, or a major glyph slot. Warlocks get a first tier talent that they can spam all day.), the insistance that Warlocks totally needed that buff guys I mean seriously is just...it's really aggrivating.

Evocation: "Good mages know when to use it!" And every Druid never has to worry about when to throw out Innervate because all it takes is a mouseover macro and you're back in Cat form and lose like, 2 Claws or whatever. Stop acting like an unfair disadvantage is somehow a skill choice (Polymorph. Sure, a 50 second CC is great! But now in PVP everything lasts at most 10 seconds. Now Polymorph went from "Best CC" to "Holy shit why don't I just get a Priest to Mind Control him and cast Greater fucking Heal".

EDIT2: And if, when you mention a change, it sounds like a threat? You've done something wrong.

If we like what the Molten Armor change does, then we might consider doing something similar to other mage armors down the road.

IF YOU DON'T QUIET DOWN, WE'LL DO IT TO ALL YER ARMORS!

Jasconius

This is an unbelievably tragic cluster fuck by Blizzard. It appears that we are back to being water vendors.

Also, I love the "we didn't want to up Frost PVE because it would make Frost PVP ridiculous"

Yes because it's soooo powerful right now. That's why there was only one Mage in the top 10 qualifiers last week, as opposed to handfuls of DK's, Warlocks, and Paladins.


Thanks for nothing, GC!

Henroid

I can use my "insert 25 copper" macro again, at least. Then again we have that refreshment conjuring shit now. So maybe something about popping open a keg.

The Muffin Man

Jasconius wrote: »

This is an unbelievably tragic cluster fuck by Blizzard. It appears that we are back to being water vendors.

Also, I love the "we didn't want to up Frost PVE because it would make Frost PVP ridiculous"

Yes because it's soooo powerful right now. That's why there was only one Mage in the top 10 qualifiers last week, as opposed to handfuls of DK's, Warlocks, and Paladins.


Thanks for nothing, GC!

My friend refuses to believe Mages aren't that great in PVP.
Look just because your Shaman got shot down by a Mage because you have no way to really effectively close the gap doesn't mean Mages are OP.
For fuck sake your mains a Hunter. You of all people should know how easy we fold.

Jasconius

The Muffin Man wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

This is an unbelievably tragic cluster fuck by Blizzard. It appears that we are back to being water vendors.

Also, I love the "we didn't want to up Frost PVE because it would make Frost PVP ridiculous"

Yes because it's soooo powerful right now. That's why there was only one Mage in the top 10 qualifiers last week, as opposed to handfuls of DK's, Warlocks, and Paladins.


Thanks for nothing, GC!

My friend refuses to believe Mages aren't that great in PVP.
Look just because your Shaman got shot down by a Mage because you have no way to really effectively close the gap doesn't mean Mages are OP.
For fuck sake your mains a Hunter. You of all people should know how easy we fold.

Yes, there's a lot of people out there who think that it's still 3 years ago and Mages are man gods in PVP.

We aren't. We're possibly the worst of the pure DPS classes (competing only with Warlock for that honor and based on the numbers this month it seems that Warlocks can't be that bad).

We had ONE trick, post-BC, and that was PoM/AP, and they took it away from us.

Alecthar

I might actually level my Rogue for reals now.

khain

Jasconius wrote: »

The Muffin Man wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

This is an unbelievably tragic cluster fuck by Blizzard. It appears that we are back to being water vendors.

Also, I love the "we didn't want to up Frost PVE because it would make Frost PVP ridiculous"

Yes because it's soooo powerful right now. That's why there was only one Mage in the top 10 qualifiers last week, as opposed to handfuls of DK's, Warlocks, and Paladins.


Thanks for nothing, GC!

My friend refuses to believe Mages aren't that great in PVP.
Look just because your Shaman got shot down by a Mage because you have no way to really effectively close the gap doesn't mean Mages are OP.
For fuck sake your mains a Hunter. You of all people should know how easy we fold.

Yes, there's a lot of people out there who think that it's still 3 years ago and Mages are man gods in PVP.

We aren't. We're possibly the worst of the pure DPS classes (competing only with Warlock for that honor and based on the numbers this month it seems that Warlocks can't be that bad).

We had ONE trick, post-BC, and that was PoM/AP, and they took it away from us.

Are we totally disregarding the EU results, because 4 out of 10 or 5 out of 20 is pretty damn good compared to other classes. It's also a little amusing that you compare yourself to locks for the worst spot among pures when rogues have worse representation in both brackets. I don't want to draw to many conclusions from 20 teams, but using those results to complain about mages doesn't make any sense to me.

Jasconius

khain wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

The Muffin Man wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

This is an unbelievably tragic cluster fuck by Blizzard. It appears that we are back to being water vendors.

Also, I love the "we didn't want to up Frost PVE because it would make Frost PVP ridiculous"

Yes because it's soooo powerful right now. That's why there was only one Mage in the top 10 qualifiers last week, as opposed to handfuls of DK's, Warlocks, and Paladins.


Thanks for nothing, GC!

My friend refuses to believe Mages aren't that great in PVP.
Look just because your Shaman got shot down by a Mage because you have no way to really effectively close the gap doesn't mean Mages are OP.
For fuck sake your mains a Hunter. You of all people should know how easy we fold.

Yes, there's a lot of people out there who think that it's still 3 years ago and Mages are man gods in PVP.

We aren't. We're possibly the worst of the pure DPS classes (competing only with Warlock for that honor and based on the numbers this month it seems that Warlocks can't be that bad).

We had ONE trick, post-BC, and that was PoM/AP, and they took it away from us.

Are we totally disregarding the EU results, because 4 out of 10 or 5 out of 20 is pretty damn good compared to other classes. It's also a little amusing that you compare yourself to locks for the worst spot among pures when rogues have worse representation in both brackets. I don't want to draw to many conclusions from 20 teams, but using those results to complain about mages doesn't make any sense to me.

I recognize the EU data, but I am not basing this entirely on charts. I'm basing it on two months of S5 of trying everything I could to break 1700 and watching Hunters and Rogues do with incredible ease what everyone thinks Mages can do. Namely, rapidly dispose of opponents with little to no consequence or effort.


I can't explain the lack of rogue-age, but I suspect it might have to do with that they could possibly (and I do not know this for certain) be relatively ineffective against paladins and DK's, the two most exploited classes.

It's not about damage output either. I'm sure in a vacuum the output of Rogues, Mages, and Hunters are quite similar.

The difference is that Rogues can do back to back vanish, blind, and CoS, three incredibly ridiculously unmatched powers in PVP, and Hunters not only have very powerful pets but now they can do that spell deflect nonsense which is even stronger than CoS, on top of their high armor and incredible damage.

Meanwhile mages are still fumbling around with Blink which has been easily defeated by every class since BC, and Ice Block which we can no longer to back to back and cannot attack during it, as our counterparts can. Oh yeah, and the entire load stone of Frost PVP is based on diminishing returns and break-on-damage.

Note that this is different then warlocks who fear only as a means to delay punishment.

We have to root shit to deal Ice Lance damage, and it is disintegrated simultaneously by two different game mechanics, and gets worse the larger the teams are.

I could be wrong, but as far as I know, Mages have had only one reactionary PVP buff since the release of BC, and that was the changing of our Armor spells from Magic to uncategorized, so it was even worth it to cast them after they gave nearly every class a dispel. Arcane Barrage might qualify except they hurt the arcane tree pretty badly by the PoM nerf and since then everything I've read suggests that Arcane PVP is a novelty at best.

The Muffin Man

khain wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

The Muffin Man wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

This is an unbelievably tragic cluster fuck by Blizzard. It appears that we are back to being water vendors.

Also, I love the "we didn't want to up Frost PVE because it would make Frost PVP ridiculous"

Yes because it's soooo powerful right now. That's why there was only one Mage in the top 10 qualifiers last week, as opposed to handfuls of DK's, Warlocks, and Paladins.


Thanks for nothing, GC!

My friend refuses to believe Mages aren't that great in PVP.
Look just because your Shaman got shot down by a Mage because you have no way to really effectively close the gap doesn't mean Mages are OP.
For fuck sake your mains a Hunter. You of all people should know how easy we fold.

Yes, there's a lot of people out there who think that it's still 3 years ago and Mages are man gods in PVP.

We aren't. We're possibly the worst of the pure DPS classes (competing only with Warlock for that honor and based on the numbers this month it seems that Warlocks can't be that bad).

We had ONE trick, post-BC, and that was PoM/AP, and they took it away from us.

Are we totally disregarding the EU results, because 4 out of 10 or 5 out of 20 is pretty damn good compared to other classes. It's also a little amusing that you compare yourself to locks for the worst spot among pures when rogues have worse representation in both brackets. I don't want to draw to many conclusions from 20 teams, but using those results to complain about mages doesn't make any sense to me.

5 mages among how many Warlocks, Paladins, and DKs though?

The lists I saw showed that there was a Paladin, a Warlock, or a DK on almost every team.

khain

The Muffin Man wrote: »

khain wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

The Muffin Man wrote: »

Jasconius wrote: »

This is an unbelievably tragic cluster fuck by Blizzard. It appears that we are back to being water vendors.

Also, I love the "we didn't want to up Frost PVE because it would make Frost PVP ridiculous"

Yes because it's soooo powerful right now. That's why there was only one Mage in the top 10 qualifiers last week, as opposed to handfuls of DK's, Warlocks, and Paladins.


Thanks for nothing, GC!

My friend refuses to believe Mages aren't that great in PVP.
Look just because your Shaman got shot down by a Mage because you have no way to really effectively close the gap doesn't mean Mages are OP.
For fuck sake your mains a Hunter. You of all people should know how easy we fold.

Yes, there's a lot of people out there who think that it's still 3 years ago and Mages are man gods in PVP.

We aren't. We're possibly the worst of the pure DPS classes (competing only with Warlock for that honor and based on the numbers this month it seems that Warlocks can't be that bad).

We had ONE trick, post-BC, and that was PoM/AP, and they took it away from us.

Are we totally disregarding the EU results, because 4 out of 10 or 5 out of 20 is pretty damn good compared to other classes. It's also a little amusing that you compare yourself to locks for the worst spot among pures when rogues have worse representation in both brackets. I don't want to draw to many conclusions from 20 teams, but using those results to complain about mages doesn't make any sense to me.

5 mages among how many Warlocks, Paladins, and DKs though?

The lists I saw showed that there was a Paladin, a Warlock, or a DK on almost every team.

American Top 10 Arena Team Distribution
Europe Top 10 Arena Team Distribution

There's the links, but my post was more about using the results to call mages the worst of the pure dps classes and comparing to locks somehow, when neither is true using the top 10 teams from each bracket.

The Muffin Man

Well when I refer to it I mean raiding.

I don't give two shits about PvP, which makes it even more aggravating when we get an across-the-board nerf because PvP is "unbalanced".

EDIT: Also, according to those graphs...ONE mage in the US arena teams, and a fuckton of Warlocks.
Europe seems to have actual mage representation. Whoo.

Bobble

So I hear Arcane is great for leveling once you hit 64? Problem is I know jack-all about the arcane tree. So yeah, go ahead n tear apart this potential build if you could, gracias: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ocxVcz0IzxGuMttd How much am I gonna miss ice barrier?