Blue Watch

This website (like some others) tracks the latest official "blue" posts:

http://blue.mmo-champion.com

Some nuggets:

Warlocks got to crazy land with the % modifiers to their damage output (specifically with Demonic Sacrafice), that's been toned down. Warlocks should never be able to out DPS a Mage with no pet out. Alike a Hunter, their pet should factor into their total damage output. Warlocks that sacrifice pretty much all utility talents should come very close to Mage DPS, but those who invest in group/raid utility should be lower.

Nerf locks!

And on mages:

There are some significant Fire changes coming in an upcoming build, I'll see if I can get the web team to update the calculator.

Fire is intended to do compelling single target damage, as it's traditionally been. When first designing the classes, we always intended the Mage to be the king of AOE and for AOE to be an important part in the game. Living Bomb, and other talents in the tree are intended to bring the Mage back in line with our original vision. Part of what pegged the Mage down a notch was Seed of Corruption, which ended up being better than we anticipated.

That said, again, we do want Fire to be a strong single target DPS spec along with Frost and Arcane. Frost is not intended to be the Mages "PvP spec" and Fire isn't intended to be the "PvE spec," they only turned out that way because of unintended factors. We're trying to make Frost more viable in raiding by allowing you to effectively freeze the target without having to nova it, allowing you to throw in some "shatter combos" in your rotation. Arcane, Frost, and Fire (and a mix thereof) should all more or less be viable in as many aspects of the game as possible. Where they should be different is in playstyle and gameplay differences (stacking Scorch vs. freezing and shatter etc.).

AOE will be more prevalent in encounters in the game, yes. However, Fire mages are assuming they're being converted into a pure AOE spec, which is not the case. We want the strong AOE to just be a feature of the Fire Mage. The Fire Mage doesn't need a new single target DPS nuke or ability as a 51-point talent in order to continue to be a good single target DPS class. [

Gallowyn wrote:

When first designing the classes, we always intended the Mage to be the king of AOE and for AOE to be an important part in the game. Living Bomb, and other talents in the tree are intended to bring the Mage back in line with our original vision. Part of what pegged the Mage down a notch was Seed of Corruption, which ended up being better than we anticipated.

I'm confused by this comment, when our MH experience has proved beyond reasonable doubt that in a pure AoE situation, mages still come out tops, despite Seed of Corruption "ending up better than they anticipated"?

For straight up AoE, seed of corruption is NOT better than mage AoE.

Gallowyn wrote:

Warlocks got to crazy land with the % modifiers to their damage output (specifically with Demonic Sacrafice), that's been toned down. Warlocks should never be able to out DPS a Mage with no pet out. Alike a Hunter, their pet should factor into their total damage output. Warlocks that sacrifice pretty much all utility talents should come very close to Mage DPS, but those who invest in group/raid utility should be lower.

So they're gonna make mages:

• King of AoE
  
• Better DPS than locks (since locks can only "come close" when we sacrifice our utility)
  
• King of single target CC

again?

Why are Bllue and Luna complaining about their new talents being boring?

Thematically I think it makes sense for a lock to be tuned for better performance with a pet out in most situations. However, it's not clear where they expect the lock to be in terms of dps standings (both single target and aoe).

Perhaps the intention is for locks to make up for the dps gap with utility, e.g. in the form of debuffs. We've seen that CoE and CoR can help raid dps considerably. This would be in line with the concept of a lock as a dps-debuffer rather than flat-out dps.

In the end I guess we'll have to wait for actual numbers to see how things will work out. Any idea whether locks have undergone the "polish" review for WotLK yet?

Gallowyn wrote:

In the end I guess we'll have to wait for actual numbers to see how things will work out. Any idea whether locks have undergone the "polish" review for WotLK yet?

Locks are getting a host of changes, some of which are already implemented (no more CoS). One thing they seem to have trouble deciding is what the top tier talents are supposed to be. As it stands, Metamorphosis is a fancy self-heal for pvp.

The talents seem very boring, not saying that the dps/aoe side of things may be bad, i just dont see a great amount of hype for the mage, where as locks are getting rather cool spells, but as things are changing my opinion on the mage is rising for WOLTK, and im actually looking forward to leveling my mage to 80

the talents are not boring, i'm actually glad that blitz is trying to make mages useful in raids dps ranking aside, there is clearly more synergy amongst fire and frost mages... though arcane mages should have more... overall, i'm satisfied with the improvements done so far. Ty blitz, u've finally hearing our pleas. I agree with spend, the only reason why locks who don't spec utility should be around the top dps region is because they can't do anything else, and the dps is needed then.

I'm beginning to wonder whether the devs are playing the same game as us?

I agree that mages need to be brought up to speed in the raid DPS dept, to be competitive with locks who sacrifice their utility. Unfortunately Blizz seems to forget that the raiding game is just one part of the game.

There are different utility requirements for small group vs big group play. Mages have always been more useful in smaller groups cos of their burst dps, food/water and having the best CC in game (other than specific demon-heavy instances). Locks are generally more useful in bigger groups, cos of the multiplier effect of their debuffs. Who brings a lock in 5-mans cos of healthstones or soulstones?

I really hope the devs are not balancing the entire game based on raid DPS/utility alone, cos locks could potentially be so gimped in 5-mans.