Mage Talent Review

faust

faust

New Member
It's been posted, by a blue to go look here: Mage Talent Review.

IMO, frost mages got seriously nerfed. Shatter only increases your chance to crit by 10% now, instead of 50%. To be honest I don't understand why they got hammered so much. :confused:

Arcane Explosion will indeed be instant now (w/o talents), the new IAE talent will give you 1-5% greater chance to crit w/ arcane explosion.

Evocation is now trainable at lvl 20. In it's place is a talent that will allow you to add 50% of your INT to your armor. IMO, a near worthless talent.

Interestingly in the fire tree is a rather nice talent now called Master of Elements (MOE), which gives you 10/20/30% of your mana back when you crit on either fire or frost spells. Since it helps frost mages, I am confused why this is not in the arcane tree, perhaps having a dependency on arcane concentration (which gives you clearcasts), since that would make more sense to me.

A number of talents have been reduced to 3 talents to get the full effect, when 5 was required before.

Overall I am a bit surprised at the changes as a whole. Seems like fire mages got a small to medium size buff, elementalists got a massive buff, and frost mages got a significant nerf (primarily because of shatter). Perhaps I am looking at things incorrectly though. Nothing was done to help mage's pvp survivability, if that was an issue you were concerned about.... though imo a lot of that is due to itemization (mage gear needs more stamina :D).
 
Yup, as a fire mage, I am pleased overall. There are some things I has wished they would have covered but I do feel my overall build got a buff. I am a 28/23/0 - commonly known as a Crit build. These changes will give me %5 chance of a crit on my Arcane Explosions (use them all the time for aoe). It will also free up 4 talent points on things I use already and they will be used on the Master of Elements with the remaining balance to be placed in fire ... likely. Overall, not bad for me :)
 
Last edited:
I found out that shatter was not nerfed. pc.ign.com made a mistake, and they have fixed the article. Apparently shatter is the same (10/20/30/40/50% more crit), but now requires frostbite (which is now a lower tier talent). IMO, this means that frost mages aren't as bad off as was originally posted. Another interesting thing is that *any* spell will now crit off of a shatter. That means you could cast fireball instead of frostbolt, for more dmg.

Though looking over the talents, I think the new winter's chill isn't very useful in either pve or pvp (when do mobs last long enough for you to proc it 5 times for the full 5% crit increase chance?.... perhaps when soloing elites?). So to be honest there doesn't appear to be much reason to go higher than 24 talents in the frost tree (for ice block and 3/3 in imp cone of cold).
 
Looks like I'll have to get my mage in order here soon so I can take full advantage of the changes. I also think I'll stay a Fire Mage as I've never been a fan of the Ice tree.
 
Here are two (hopefully interesting) builds I could think of right off the bat:
Mana Efficient Fire (w/ a little frost): Efficient Fire (combines clearcasting and master of elements [moe]... I guess I can call it the "moe fire" build :p )

Shatter Fire build (remember fireball also gets +50% off a shatter now): Shatter Fire Build (FN + Fireball --> cold snap --> FN + Fireball)
 
Interesting

Hmm, I will have to ponder a new build for my mage. The changes seem quite good actually.

The closest to my current build (that I would seriously consider using) seems to be a mostly fire build. However, I am thinking about moving into a crit build or possibly one that is similar to the one i posted, but giving up combustion (and two other fire points) for PoM. I'm not sure I like the new combustion too much.
 
Actually I think that the new Combustion is better. Your chance to crit a fire spell increases by 10% every time you cast a fire spell, until you crit 3 times. That's better imo than 1 fire spell with 100% crit.
 
I agree that it can be better in many situations. However the way I use combustion now, when soloing, will be toast (which I am not too concerned about).

Sometimes I want to two hit kill a mob (that is my level), by hitting them with a combusted pyro and a fireball, works quite well, and often kills the mob in just those two hits.

The main thing I use combustion for now is a combusted blastwave, especially if I have two mobs pounding on me and my health is not doing so well. My combusted blastwave can hit both mobs for around 700 ish, often killing the mob i had been working on and helping me escape from a difficult situation.

Like I said, I am not too concerned about them changing this; in a group I rarely use it as it is. I was planning to repec at 60 anyways and was thinking about giving up combustion, so I will just adjust my playstyle, it is not too hard to adapt. However, what I liked about combustion was that it gave you a crit exactly when you needed it and that ability will be lost with this change.
 
Here is the build that i'm considering. It focuses mostly on crit chance and limited mana consumption, as well as bonuses when crits hit. It's a fire/frost utility build, IMO, but it's biggest weakness will be long fights. if you hit a long string of non-crit spells, you're goign to suck down mana really fast.

I'll miss Arcane Concentration, Improved Counterspell, and Arcane Meditation tho
 
Well, since I'm new to the mage class and only level 35, I'll level an alt for a few days after the patch, read all the critiques/reviews I can, then make my decision on how to respec. Since I have a "nuke em til they glow, shoot em in the dark" approach while playing Samage, I figure most points will go for fire/crit stuff.

Yes, I amuse myself by throwing pyroblasts at the helpless little rabbits then /lol. Gnomes have such a maniacal laugh.

/lol
 
Ok, for those following the mage review, there has been a change from the original review. Based on this update, the new talent calculator has been released and here is the current build I am favoring. For those of you who are familiar with the original changes, the following is the list of updated changes ...

Arcane

tier 1
• Arcane Subtlety - Ranks 2 - Reduces your target's resistance to all your spells by 5/10 and all of your Arcane spells cause 20/40% less threat edit Reduced ranks, aggro reduce effects arcane only


tier 2
• Wand Specialization - Ranks 2 - Requires 5 points in Arcane Talents - Increases your damage with Wands by 13/25% edit reduced to 2 ranks
• Magic Absorption - Ranks 5 - When you resist a spell, you regain 1/2/3/4/5% of your max. mana and increases all resistances by 2/4/6/8/10 edit New ability

tier 3
• Improved Arcane Explosion - Ranks 3 - Requires 10 points in Arcane Talents - Increases the critical strike chance of your Arcane Explosion spell by an additional 2/4/6% edit reduced to 3 ranks, max crit % increased.

Fire

tier 3
• Burning Soul - Ranks 2 - Requires 10 points in Fire Talents - Gives your fire spells a 35/70% chance to not lose casting time when you take damage and reduces threat by 15/30%. edit added threat reduction

tier 4
• Improved Scorch - Ranks 3 - Requires 15 points in Fire Talents - Your Scorch spells have a 33/66/100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Fire damage. This vulnerability increase the Fire damage dealt to your target by 3% and lasts 15 sec. Stacks up to 5 times. edit increased vulnerability effect to 3%


Frost

tier 1
• Frost Warding - Ranks 2 - Requires 5 points in Frost Talents - Increases the armor and resistances given by your Frost Armor and Ice Armor spells by 15/30%. In addition, gives your Frost Ward a 10% chance to reflect Frost spells and effects while active. edit moved tiers: up 1 slot, left 1 slot
• Elemental Focus - Ranks 3 - Increases chance to hit with Fire and Frost spells by 2/4/6% edit new ability in place of Permafrost(moved)

tier 2
• Frostbite - Rank 3 - Requires 5 points in Frost Talents - Gives your Chill effects a 5/10/15% chance to freeze the target for 5 sec. edit moved tiers: right 1 slot (to replace forst warding)
• Improved Frost Nova - Ranks 2 - Reduces the cooldown of your Frost Nova spell by 2/4 sec. edit moved tiers: down 1 slot, right 2
• Permafrost - Ranks 3 - Requires 5 points in Frost - Increases the duration of your Chill effects by 1/2/3 sec and reduces the target's speed by an additional 4/7/10%. edit moved tiers: down 1 slot, right 1 (under Imp. Bliz.)

tier 4
• Frost Channeling - Ranks 3 - Requires 15 points in Frost Talents - Reduces the mana cost of your frost spells by 5/10/15% and reduces threat caused by Frost spells by 10/20/30%. edit added aggro reduction
• Shatter - Ranks 5 - Requires 15 points in Frost Talents and 2 points in Imp. Frost Nova - Increases the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 10/20/30/40/50%. edit Changed prereq. from Frostbite to Imp. Frost Nova

tier 6
• Winter's Chill - Ranks 5 - Requires 25 points in Frost Talents - Frost spells cause a debuff that increases chance to crit with frost effects by 2%, which stacks up to 5 times edit New functionality

tier 7
• Ice Barrier - Ranks 1 - Requires 30 points in Frost Talents and 1 point in Ice Block 305 mana/instant/30 sec cooldown - Instantly shields you, absorbing 454 damage. Lasts 1 min. While the shield holds, spells will not be interrupted. Now stacks with PW: Shield and gains 10% of +Frost dmg gear. Absorb effects now prioritized over Mana Shield. edit added functionality
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top