05-04-2006, 06:20 PM
That seems to be the impression that I got from this revision as well. A few nerfs to the burst damage - Arcane Power (not Power Infusion btw!), Shatter now being only 1 point, and even Combustion is changing to a different effect. The freeing up of the points, the general rearrangement of talents and some new talents seem to be aimed at boosting Mage's average damage (and it probably did go up, but I have not done the numbers).
I also really expected some new talents that will help Fire mages in PvE, especially given Naxx is right around the corner. With a lot of spell damage, Frost can put out the damage not that far behind Fire, while using only 1/2 or so mana - and that Fire damage is limited by aggro anyway. I'm really confused there - it's like Blizzard wants mages to be useless in Naxx.
Now, before mages start screaming in protest, Blizzard did mention that they are implementing some new things that will help with the downtime between fights and are modifying the aggro system. We will see what will happen of that.
Caution: Math
Also, here is my attempt to quantify the new Combustion - is it better or even worse then before? It might seem that the new Combustion is better - but with a good crit percentage, the new combustion "charges" could have been eaten by crits that would have happened anyway.
Assuming a normal fireball spell with some moderate +damage and with the appropriate talents - we can easily achieve 900 damage fireballs. Let's also assume 25% crit - a fairly high number, but achievable thanks to talents/items, and something that a lot of Fire mages will probably want to go for with the even higher orientation for crits in the new Fire tree.
A crit on a fire spell gives mage 2.1 times the damage of a normal spell, thanks to Ignite. On average, ignoring resists, our 900 damage fireball will do ~1150 damage.
Old Combustion - With 100% crit, our fireball will do 900 * 2.1 = 1890 damage, or 740 extra damage.
New combustion - We have to figure out when will the 3 crits happen on average. With the new 35% crit, and severaly simplifying, it will happen on average at 9 fireballs. On average, with 35% crit the fireballs do 1250 damage. This translates to about 100 extra damage per fireball, 900 extra total damage.
Thats a very small difference between the two, at the cost of losing the guaranteed burst damage that the old Combustion gave. Unless the cooldown is significantly shortened, I really don't see people using this talent at all.
I also really expected some new talents that will help Fire mages in PvE, especially given Naxx is right around the corner. With a lot of spell damage, Frost can put out the damage not that far behind Fire, while using only 1/2 or so mana - and that Fire damage is limited by aggro anyway. I'm really confused there - it's like Blizzard wants mages to be useless in Naxx.
Now, before mages start screaming in protest, Blizzard did mention that they are implementing some new things that will help with the downtime between fights and are modifying the aggro system. We will see what will happen of that.
Caution: Math
Also, here is my attempt to quantify the new Combustion - is it better or even worse then before? It might seem that the new Combustion is better - but with a good crit percentage, the new combustion "charges" could have been eaten by crits that would have happened anyway.
Assuming a normal fireball spell with some moderate +damage and with the appropriate talents - we can easily achieve 900 damage fireballs. Let's also assume 25% crit - a fairly high number, but achievable thanks to talents/items, and something that a lot of Fire mages will probably want to go for with the even higher orientation for crits in the new Fire tree.
A crit on a fire spell gives mage 2.1 times the damage of a normal spell, thanks to Ignite. On average, ignoring resists, our 900 damage fireball will do ~1150 damage.
Old Combustion - With 100% crit, our fireball will do 900 * 2.1 = 1890 damage, or 740 extra damage.
New combustion - We have to figure out when will the 3 crits happen on average. With the new 35% crit, and severaly simplifying, it will happen on average at 9 fireballs. On average, with 35% crit the fireballs do 1250 damage. This translates to about 100 extra damage per fireball, 900 extra total damage.
Thats a very small difference between the two, at the cost of losing the guaranteed burst damage that the old Combustion gave. Unless the cooldown is significantly shortened, I really don't see people using this talent at all.