Cracks starting to show?

[Maledict]

Why are you acting all surprised that mage as a class is a complete faceroll?

Because the other two trees aren't ?

This is pretty much Cataclysm system design in a nutshell.  Nothing is consistently high quality, a number of trees are obvious rush jobs after they shitcanned the original 51 point trees halfway into development, and all over the place you see fucking weird shit

Oh come on. I don't even play the game anymore but that's just ridiculous stretching that's pure nonsense purely to bash cata. Talent trees have ALWAYS been fucked that way, and probably always will due to the difficulty in balancing them. In terms of mages, Cata was a damn site better expansion that anything that went before:

 - vanilla was broken due to resists crucifying mages in the first two raid instances,and mana being the issue in AQ40. Thanks to the bug re. Rolling ignites fire mages were overpowered in Nax, but for the majority of the expansion the best spec was half frost half arcane due to the utter terribleness of the trees and resists.
 - TBC the class was nerfed early on for no apparent reason, and spent the entire expansion as complletely pointless shit versions of warlocks. Inferior AE, vastly inferior single target, and 0 buffs. Arcane was a viable spec due to a trinket and the 4 piece tier 5 set bonus for about 2 months total, but for everything else in the expansion you had to go fire for PvE.
 - Wrath we had a different spec each patch depending upon how the numbers went, but the class overall still lacked complexity compared to other classes and flavour. Frost never got a look in for the second expansion in a row other than AEing with Blizzard on Nax trash...
 - cata at last introduced some really interesting and fun mechanics in the fire spec, and at launch this was the best spec to use. Arcane has unfortunately since then led better and been patched to be better, but the latest changes on test show fire gaining a substantial boost. The issue with arcane isn't that it's a one button spec, it's that the balancing hasn't worked. In cata the mana concept simply hasn't worked out like they wanted it, and they need to go back and revisit it because currently the spec can just faceroll to victory.

In terms of actual talent trees, as someone who played a Mage since launch, cata definitely had the best trees for mages we've had in the game. Mechanics were tightened up and made more interesting, and we did get to pick some survival talents - especially fire which had spare points to pick up cauterise, one of my favourite talents ever.

[Ironwood]

That's really my point though - You can't balance arcane blast.  It's either a shit ability or the ability you have to use.

If it pumped up other spells, it might have a point or be a rotation, but it doesn't.

[Nevermore]

I'm perfectly fine with the way Arcane is right now.  I find little difference between pushing one button over and over again vs pushing two buttons over and over again.  I like the mana mechanic Arcane has, makes it interesting to me.  And for people who don't like it, there's two other Mage specs so you can spam Frostbolt or Fireball instead.

[Ingmar]

The way it worked in Wrath was a little better in a sense, since you had to clear the stack with AM procs or you'd go OOM halfway through a fight (or sooner). The problem there was fishing for the procs and it didn't quite have the same level of interestingness in the mana management without the mastery thing. I think they can probably split the difference somehow and have it feel good. What I'm wondering is how they'll work barrage into the actual rotation.

EDIT: I don't know if you've tried fire recently but it really isn't very spammy at all, since you're keeping living bomb up, dealing with hot streak procs, tossing in scorch if the critical mass debuff falls off and you don't get a proc, etc.

[Nevermore]

I love Fire for pvp, but there's too much annoying shit going on for it to be fun in pve.

[Ironwood]

You people are fucking strange.

[Sjofn]

I'm mostly with Nevermore here. I like how arcane plays right now. I find it fun. I have other classes to play if I don't want that level of button simplicity. And if you don't want that as a mage, the other two specs are perfectly fine.

[Ironwood]

Look, fine, I didn't disagree.

My point was about the design.  It's utterly retarded.

[Sjofn]

It's fun. <shrug> That's the most important thing to me, design-wise.

[Nevermore]

Look, fine, I didn't disagree.

My point was about the design.  It's utterly retarded.

In today's stunning news, different people like different things!  Personally, I think the design of Frost is much more retarded for having to rely on that stupid elemental ranged freeze for fingers procs to get decent dps out of it.

[Ironwood]

Well, for a start, that's utter horseshit.

For a second, please grasp this important fact :  I'm don't give two tugs of a dead dogs cock what people 'like'.  That's not the discussion.

[Nevermore]

It's not horseshit that having to use a ground targeted ability tied to a pet is more retarded design than using a single ability (actually two abilities since you need to use barrage or missiles to clear the buff stack) to manage a balance between damage and mana.  Not only are ground target effects in WoW already a pain in the ass, but having to also deal with the range of the ability from the pet instead of from your character, as well as the line of sight from the pet, that's just stupid.

You also seem to have lost sight that entire point of the design of any of these classes is with the goal that people have fun.  Ie: what they like.  Divorcing design from fun is pretty much the biggest red 'you're doing something wrong' flag there is.  Saying 'I don't care about the fun, just the pure design' misses the point entirely.  It's being either discognitive or disengenous.

[Ingmar]

I think there's probably room for 'simple class' and 'hard class' (or spec if you prefer) in MMO class design. The sort of core question you have to figure out as the designer though is, is it ok for one player to work half as hard (arcane) to do the same damage as the more complex class. If you decide the more complicated class has to do more damage because he's working harder at the keyboard, then you end up with only that class being considered viable for the role at endgame, but if you don't, you have people going for the more expedient option.

Then it gets exacerbated by the wildly different fight lengths in different kinds of content too. Probably arcane really is too simple right now, and fire might be a little too complex - if they nudge arcane up enough so you're using all 3 of your spells instead of mostly just one, and perhaps nudge fire down so you're not watching 8 things, there could still be a complexity gap without it feeling quite as stark as it is right now.

And that all sets aside the question of utility, of course.

[Ironwood]

You also seem to have lost sight that entire point of the design of any of these classes is with the goal that people have fun.  Ie: what they like.  Divorcing design from fun is pretty much the biggest red 'you're doing something wrong' flag there is.  Saying 'I don't care about the fun, just the pure design' misses the point entirely.  It's being either discognitive or disengenous.

I kinda disagree.  For me, as a Frost Mage for most of my life, I found the chilled/FoF build was the most fun time.  Simple blizzard all the time, nothing else, beat everything.  Hell, with multiple mages you didn't even need a tank until you got to bosses.  For me, that was fun.  But it was fun because I was an utterly overpowered motherfucker and, actually, it was kinda boring.

I find the same thing with the Arcane Mage and AB right now.  Sure, it's fun to an extent watching the BIG NUMBERS and crushing everything, but it's also kinda boring and, worse than the Blizzard situation, it's kinda exclusive.

But anyway;  I'm bowing out because I really don't care THAT MUCH.  I was just pointing out how fucking stupid and ridiculous I found it and I think I've justified my feelings on the matter.

[Sheepherder]

Oh come on. I don't even play the game anymore but that's just ridiculous stretching that's pure nonsense purely to bash cata. Talent trees have ALWAYS been fucked that way, and probably always will due to the difficulty in balancing them.

No.

Up to Wrath they've always been fucked up in a "Arms is for PvP, Fury is for PvE" way, along with an inability to do basic math and the encounter design guys early on being utterly fucking retarded with handing out resists.

This is an entirely new brand of retarded.

[Outlawedprod]

How do we mudflation?!

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3258652

[Merusk]

PCs just can’t quickly perform math on very large numbers, so

[Ingmar]

Player Characters, not Personal Computers.

[Xanthippe]

This thread is funny.  I remember getting yelled at in some other thread that the "wow sucks" thread is over that a way.  Now all the wow lovers are in this one!

Carry on.

[Kail]

How do we mudflation?!

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3258652

Mega Damage
The first solution could include changes like adding commas and the like to large numbers. We could also compress all of those 1000s to Ks and all of those 1,000,000s to Ms, much like we do with boss health today. Internally, we have been calling this the “Mega Damage solution” because instead of your Fireball hitting for 6,000,000 damage, it would hit for 6 MEGA DAMAGE (queue the Arcanite Ripper guitar solo).

-eyetwitch-

[dd0029]

Player Characters, not Personal Computers.

That's what I thought too. But nope, it really seems to be talking actual computers.

If we can make numbers such as floating combat text and boss health and item stats a little easier to read at a glance, then maybe we can endure numbers increasing exponentially for many digits to come. Now there are some very real computational limitations. PCs just can’t quickly perform math on very large numbers, so we’d have to solve all of those problems as well. Even today, tanks can hit the ten digit threat cap on some encounters.

[Kirth]

How do we mudflation?!

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3258652

Mega Damage
The first solution could include changes like adding commas and the like to large numbers. We could also compress all of those 1000s to Ks and all of those 1,000,000s to Ms, much like we do with boss health today. Internally, we have been calling this the “Mega Damage solution” because instead of your Fireball hitting for 6,000,000 damage, it would hit for 6 MEGA DAMAGE (queue the Arcanite Ripper guitar solo).

-eyetwitch-

Is glitterknight a new class?

[Sir T]

For those not getting the injoke

[Special J]

Hmmm. Cash store pet that is tradeable.  Gold selling has arrived.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3840440/Guardian_Cub_Tradable_Pet_Now_Available-11_1_2011#blog

[Merusk]

Welcome to 4 weeks ago.  

ed: They also aren't selling well and are suffering from the usual AH undercutting.  On my server there's 12 on the AH ranging in price from 25,000 to 7900 gold.


Ed: whoops, too many zeroes on the ~8k price

[Ingmar]

The price drops hourly, I don't think they're selling much if at all.

[Merusk]

I don't believe anyone thought they'd sell for a lot in the first place.  Anyone who wants them that bad can pay Blizz the $10 for them.  Much simpler than farming up $8k, particularly since money problems seem universal for some reason.

[Rendakor]

I bought 2 for 7k apiece, which isn't really a lot of gold to me.

[Ingmar]

How much gold per hour do you make farming gold? And how much do you get paid hourly at your job? (Obviously I don't actually want you to answer, just to think about the value of time.) The price would have to drop awfully low before it seems to me like it would make sense to spend gold if I wanted one of these things.

Time is money, friend!

[Evildrider]

I bought 2 for 3500 gold each.

And the only reason I did that is cuz I'm done with WoW in a month anyway.  I gave them away to some new players in Goldshire.

[Rendakor]

Uh, farming gold? I spend about 30m playing the AH per day, and make about ~3k a day. I'm up to almost 300k server wide.

[Fordel]

How much gold per hour do you make farming gold? And how much do you get paid hourly at your job? (Obviously I don't actually want you to answer, just to think about the value of time.) The price would have to drop awfully low before it seems to me like it would make sense to spend gold if I wanted one of these things.

Time is money, friend!

You're just a Hat-Less peasant, you always have been. You were QQing you couldn't drop 50 dollars for your epic mount speed back in the day too!

[SurfD]

The only way anyone made any mad money off the guardian cubs was playing the AH on the first wave of them.   Since it takes 24 hours from time of purchase in the Blizz Store to when you can list them, the first wave would have all gone up as soon as possible.  Rampant undercutting ensues, then a smart person buys as many of them as possible at the massive undercut price, waits for the rest to dissapear off the AH (which on the first day will happen really fast), and re-lists them for big bucks.  Since very very few more will be coming back into the AH untill the next 24 hour batch cycles through, all the late logging compulsive buyers have no choice but to go to the guy who now owns the market for the next 10-15 hours.  I know someone on my server who made something like 300k gold profit doing this on the first rush.  Now, there are so many flooding the AH and undercutting is so bad that you cant get away with that trick.

[Special J]

Welcome to 4 weeks ago.  

Why do I only find out about these things now? Apparently I suck.  Carry on then.

At any rate, successful or not, it's an attempt to do it.  Though I do wonder what happens after the first few waves and the people with big piles of gold have their pets now.

[Azazel]

If it were account-wide instead of character-specific, I'd potentially be interested. Lucky this pet looks pretty crappy.