Four Days Out: Mages

There’s a big change that I think is probably going to affect healers the most, but it bears mentioning here as well. Intellect no longer increases your maximum mana. You will have a fixed amount of mana, based on your level. The good news is that caster dps have generally been given a huge amount of passive mana regeneration.

I chain-cast Blizzard over and over and could not run out. Of course, thanks to Nether Attunement, haste now grants additional mana regeneration to Mages, so this could be an issue of being too well-geared, but basically you won’t have to worry about running out of mana, unless you are Arcane, which is of course built around this and would be pretty boring if you just sat at full mana at all times.

Another game-wide change is that reagents of all kinds (except Glyph/Talent clearers) are gone. You might still have some Runes of Teleportation and Portals in your bags, and Arcane Dust, but they are now grey vendor trash (if you’re an insane packrat like me, you might hold on to them for the nostalgia factor. I still hold on to Blinding Powder in my Rogue's bank, though that's partially due to the humorous flavor text.)

Armor spells no longer have a duration, but they do require a 1.5 second cast, meaning they’re slightly less simple to change on the fly. They also now all have both a defensive benefit and an offensive one. The defensive ones are the same, as far as I can tell, but Mage Armor now gives Mastery and Frost Armor now gives Haste.

Now here’s a big change: Frost and Arcane used to be the only two ranged dps specs that did not have any DoTs. Remember Ozruk before you could Blink out of Paralyze? Kind of a pain, right? Well, now all Mages will be using a “Bomb” spell. You even get a “Mage Bomb” button for when you haven’t selected one of the three options among your talents. It is kind of interesting, as this is the only set of talents that absolutely adds something to your core rotation (as far as I can tell.) Living Bomb works basically the same as it has, though it interacts less with Fire-specific effects. Nether Tempest does Arcane damage and zaps an additional target each time it ticks, but has no blast at the end. Frost Bomb has both a cast time and a cooldown. It lasts shorter and does more damage, then slows enemies hit by it, but I expect the cast time will make it less practical for a PvE rotation, and is probably intended more for PvP.

So let’s spec-by-spec:

Arcane: Arcane has been made somewhat more complex and far more sensible. The key is that most of your important spells interact with Arcane Charges, which stack up to 6, rather than 4. Arcane Blast generates them, and they function the way the old Arcane Blast debuff/buff worked. Arcane Missiles still requires a proc, but now it generates a charge while still being free, which makes it a very attractive ability. The proc also now has two charges, so you can save them up for when your Charges are higher. Arcane Barrage is now a key part of the rotation as the way that you reset your charges to conserve mana and also to do a huge burst of damage, hitting an additional target for every charge. Arcane Explosion gets in on the action as well, sometimes generating a charge. With this and your Mage Bomb, you’ll actually have a few more buttons to press, which is something Arcane probably needed. Arcane is the only spec not to get its own Orb spell, which is kind of sad, but c'est la vie. (I actually had an awesome idea for an ability called Chrono Orb that I'll get to later.)

Fire: Ignite is now your Mastery, and functions on every Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, or Pyroblast, regardless of whether it crit or not. Combustion has had its cooldown reduced to 45 seconds, which makes it more rotational than a cooldown. However, it no longer includes the damage of your Living Bomb (which you might not have, after all.) Finally, Fire Blast has been replaced with Inferno Blast, which is a guaranteed crit (good for forcing Hot Streaks) and spreads Ignite, the Pyroblast DoT, and Combustion. For the most part, Fire feels the same, though the faster Combustion recharge might make you more eager to set it off.

Frost: Finally, Frost has had its damage put in a place where you can actually do PvE with it. Ice Lance damage was made much higher, and of course you’ll now have your Mage Bomb ticking on the target. At least from the tooltip, it appears that Deep Freeze no longer has a damage component, which is somewhat sad, but at least now you can just Ice Lance away with impunity. Frostfire Orb has become simply Frost Orb. It looks different and hits every target around it, chilling and damaging.

Mages don’t feel all that different. The main thing to notice is that Arcane feels more like a real rotation (rather than AB-spam forever) and Frost is finally seeing numbers that they can be proud of. One thing I find kind of fun and flavorful is that they are really playing up Time Travel and Time Manipulation as a theme (particularly for Arcane.) As someone who loves anything time-travel related (Mage tier 13 is my favorite tier set ever) this makes me excited.

BONUS: Chrono Orb idea!

So Arcane gets left out of the 1-minute orb of magic damage. Here's what I would suggest: Chrono Orb. It travels to the target, doing fairly low dos. However, every time you gain an Arcane Charge while it's out, the Orb gets a charge as well. These are not cleared by Arcane Barrage. When it runs its course, it does an explosion proportional to the charges you've gained while it was out, with no cap