YAWOWT - Mage talents in 1.11 revealed

[MrBond]

IGN did a story today on the new mage talents coming in 1.11.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/704/704665p1.html

Some talents are better, IAE and Evocation are trainable spells now. PoM is still a 21 point talent, so if you take it you miss out on the Fire/Ice 31 point talents. Looks like the Ice tree has had most of its damage potential taken away, with better snares. Ice Barrier has a 30 second cooldown now. Arcane Power now increases damage by 30% instead of 35.

Oh, and there's a Rank 7 food spell available now.

 

[thawolfman]

omg want to train rank 7 food for 6g! 😀

Edit: And that is the best penny arcade comic ever.

Period.

 

[Cheetah8799]

gogo Druid Innervate!

sorry, no comment on the Mage changes. My highest mage was ~20, so I don't know much about them...

 

[Schadenfroh]

I for one think that this is a great improvement:thumbsup:

But, Ice Mages are now useless as damage dealers in groups.

 

[torpid]

I quit just as I was levelling up an ice mage. Glad I did. I find it really irritating that there are so many classes where you more or less are required to respec in the end game. I can't imagine any of the ice snares work on any boss, so a respec is likely required now for ice mages.

 

[Saijin]

Can someone copy-paste the article here, if it's not too long, thanks.

 

[ArchAngel777]

The changes, in my opinion were very minor. They seemed to nerf (a bit) the Ice tree... Bummer... However, perhaps the ice tree is even better for AoE grinding now.

But the way I see it, is that we have gained IAE for free and also Evoc. Evoc should honestly have the cooldown reduced to 5 minutes and under, in my opinion. One note is that the 31 point talent in Ice Tree is REALLY nice now... a 30 second cooldowns means you can use it nearly every fight, or can use it twice to three times while fighting a difficult elite. This will give an ice mage plenty of ways to stay alive and well.

My Mage is only 28 right now, but I plan on bringing him to 60. He will be my third L60.

 

[MrBond]

Originally posted by: torpid
I quit just as I was levelling up an ice mage. Glad I did. I find it really irritating that there are so many classes where you more or less are required to respec in the end game. I can't imagine any of the ice snares work on any boss, so a respec is likely required now for ice mages.

A mage specc'ed into ice is painful to level unless you are AOE griding with a healer friend.

I'll keep my account subscribed long enough to test this on the test servers, but honestly I don't think I'm going to continue with my mage.

Fire mages could really shine in the new instance, except we have no aggro reduction (except for critical strikes with the new arcane subtley), so we'll still have to hold back so we don't pull aggro and get gibbed.

They really need to change Ice Barrier to make it scale better. Right now, it only absorbs 818 damage at the highest rank - if a hunter aimed shots you, ice barrier is gone in one hit. At least with the 30 second cooldown, you can reactivate it if you manage to survive the initial barrage.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: MrBond

Originally posted by: torpid
I quit just as I was levelling up an ice mage. Glad I did. I find it really irritating that there are so many classes where you more or less are required to respec in the end game. I can't imagine any of the ice snares work on any boss, so a respec is likely required now for ice mages.

A mage specc'ed into ice is painful to level unless you are AOE griding with a healer friend.

I'll keep my account subscribed long enough to test this on the test servers, but honestly I don't think I'm going to continue with my mage.

Fire mages could really shine in the new instance, except we have no aggro reduction (except for critical strikes with the new arcane subtley), so we'll still have to hold back so we don't pull aggro and get gibbed.

They really need to change Ice Barrier to make it scale better. Right now, it only absorbs 818 damage at the highest rank - if a hunter aimed shots you, ice barrier is gone in one hit. At least with the 30 second cooldown, you can reactivate it if you manage to survive the initial barrage.

Well, honestly, I am not sure an ice mage is difficult to level. I didn't spend any of my points all the way up to 26 (I was unsure what to spend them on, save for IAM). So I only spent 5 points in the arcane tree and was sitting with like 12 usable talents. I had no problems killing things.

However, I do agree with your points anyway. Just letting you know that, not even really using any of the talent points, a mage can still pull a punch for grinding.

 

[torpid]

Ice mages are (or were months ago when I was doing it) pretty easy to level, because the enemy is always slowed down and rarely gets to hit you. I never mastered AOE grinding so I can't speak to that one.

 

[MrBond]

I found fire spec to be a very fast way to level. I put the first 11 points into fire, went into Arcane all the way to PoM, then back into fire. Fire is pretty good DPS (better than frost), but it's not very mana efficent. This only really matters in instances, since no matter what your spec you'll probably be stopping to drink every 3-4 mobs anyway.

If you go with a scorch build and get arcane concentration, you can use scorch to trigger clearcasting, then let loose with fireballs. That's how I generally do instances, because otherwise I run out of mana way too fast and my party has to wait for me. It also minimizes the chances of me peeling aggro off the tank (I swear the last few instances I've done had tanks that never sundered armor).

Against mobs, I usually fireball, fireball, scorch, fireblast, then frost nova and run away before fireball and scorch again. If impact goes off, that's one more fireball. Lower level mobs are dead before they get to me, mobs equal to or one level below me usually require a frost nova.