As we expected, we already have the first preview of the changes that will be made to the class Wizard en Cataclysm. These changes are those published by Blizzard and make the class designers' intentions regarding this class quite clear. Note that these changes are preliminary and things can (and will) change during the Beta phase of Cataclysm.
In addition, I recommend you visit this article regularly as we will update it as more information about the Magi appears. They usually answer user questions to clarify or reveal a few more things.
These are the most significant changes of the class:
- Flame Orb (new ability available at level 81): Inspired by the abilities of Prince Taldaram in Ahn'kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the magician to cast a flaming orb that travels in a straight line, sending blasts of fire at the close targets.
- Temporal distortion (new ability available at level 83): Grants a passive haste effect, similar to Bloodlust or Heroic, to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the wizard's movement speed.
- Wall of mist (new ability available at level 85): Create a frost line in front of the mage, 30 meters from one side to the other. Enemies that cross the line are slowed and take damage.
- The Consumption talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.
You can find the rest of the information after the jump.
In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, we are making a lot of changes and additions to class talents and abilities. In this preview, you'll get to see some of the things we have in store for the wizard, including an overview of some of the new spells, abilities, and talents, and a preview of how the Mastery system will work with the different talent specs.
New Wizard Spells
Flame Orb (Available at level 81): Inspired by the abilities of Prince Taldaram in Ahn'kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in a straight line, sending blasts of fire at nearby targets . Once cast, the wizard can begin to cast other spells as the orb travels. While the spell will be useful for any spec, fire mages will have talents to upgrade, possibly causing it to explode upon reaching its destination.
Temporal distortion (Level 83): Grants a passive haste effect, similar to Bloodlust or Heroic, to the party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the wizard's movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive to Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning that you can't benefit from both if you have the Exhaustion debuff, although the speed boost will still work even under the effects of that debuff.
Wall of mist (level 85): Create a frost line in front of the magician, 30 meters from one side to the other. Enemies that cross the line are slowed and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make it efficient against groups and not against individuals. This spell is intended to give wizards a way to help them control the battlefield, whether the wizard is damaging approaching enemies (Blizzard can be channeled over the wall) or protecting the flag on a battlefield. 10 second duration, 30 second cooldown.
Changes to skills and mechanics
In addition to introducing new spells, we are planning to make changes to other abilities and mechanics that you are already familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes listed below are by no means comprehensive, but should give you a good idea of what we're looking for for each spec:
- Arcane Missiles is being redesigned to become a proc-based spell. When the mage deals damage with any spell, there is a chance that arcane missiles will be activated, similar to the warrior's overwhelm operation. The damage and mana cost of this spell will be redesigned to make it very palatable to use when available. This change should make the gameplay more dynamic for the magician, particularly at low levels.
- We are planning to remove spells that have no definite purpose. Amplify Magic, Dim Magic, Fire Ward, and Frost Ward will be removed from the game, and we may remove more.
- The ability to conjure food and water will not be available until higher levels (probably around level 40), as we are making changes to ensure that the mage does not run out of mana generally at low levels. Once mages learn to conjure food and water, the conjured item will restore both health and mana.
- Scorch will give bonus damage to the magician's fire spells. Our goal for Scorching is for it to be part of the mage's rotation and a useful ability when it comes to dealing damage, even if someone is already giving the party the critical strike debuff with spells. Scorch will provide the mage with more specific benefits, which can also be enhanced by talents.
New talents and talent changes
- Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including arcane missiles that are not launched. We want Arcane Mages to have various talents that play with how much mana the character has and that give the player enough tools to manage their mana.
- The talent playing with fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, rather than its current effect.
- Arsonist will provide haste when three or more targets are being damaged by the damage over time (DsT) effects of your fire spells.
- The Consumption talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.
Passive Mastery Bonuses to Talent Branches
Arcane
Spell damage
Spell Haste
Mana Adept
Fuego
Spell damage
Spell Critic
Ignition
Frost
Spell damage
Critical damage with spells
Deadly frost
Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based on how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane Mages will deal much more damage at 100% mana than at 50%. If they start to run low on mana, they will surely want to increase it again to increase their damage.
Ignition: All direct fire damage spells will add a small DsT component when cast. The idea is similar to the fireball operation; however, the DsT component will be much stronger.
Deadly frost: Casting Frostbolt provides a mage buff that increases the damage of all Frost, Fire, and Arcane spells. The only spell that will not be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.
We hope you enjoyed this preview, and we look forward to your initial feedback and reactions to these additions and changes. Please keep in mind that this information represents a work in progress, and is subject to change as development continues on Cataclysm.
Actualización
Flame Orb it is not a channeled spell. It may have a cast time, but once cast you can forget about it, it's just fire. We want to try to stay in line with this idea since there is no spell that works this way. Giving him a target to pursue would make it a more fanciful Time Damage - maybe useful, but it wouldn't be anything really new. It will be balanced to deal single target damage, but if you can cast it in a way that hits multiple targets then it will be impressive.
Wall of mist it is not a channeled spell. We don't yet know how wide it will be, but wide enough to make it look more like a "barbed wire" area rather than a Frost Trap area.
We like the style of play of Good luck. With low crit ratings, we expect it to look more like a bonus when active rather than a penalty when it avoids activating. We may reduce the overall magnitude for the same reason.
As for the Arcane Missiles, the base of the spell is pretty good. The problem lies in the way the spell works, which makes it difficult to balance the current design. Either it is very expensive and does little harm, or the other way around. This is particularly true at the low level, and as long as we think that the experience of a low level magician is a bit repetitive. The change is that you cannot launch Arcane Missiles whenever you want. The icon is in a gray tone. However, when you do damage, you have a chance that the Arcane Missiles icon will light up and then you are definitely going to want to launch them. At higher levels of Fire and Frost we can think about their elimination giving preference to other spells, or if we like the mechanics, it may be something that also happens in Fire and Frost, but less often than in Arcane.
Regarding the subject of Mastery bonusesPlease understand that this is a new design for us and that very few people have seen them in action yet. We ran the risk of Mastery bonuses specifying so generic that the Mastery stat is uninteresting or so complex that players actually like to play a certain branch. This is the kind of thing that will require a lot of iteration and the reason why we're trying to cover the whole gamut from relatively complex to relatively simple to see that it's okay.
The reason behind Deadly frost (Frost Mastery) is not spamming more Frostbolt in Frost. It's to make mages spam less Frostbolt. If you cast nothing but Frostbolt, you will be wasting the Deadly Frost bonus.
We're shifting food and drink to higher levels because we don't want players to have a lot of downtime at lower levels. We are not trying to make leveling up more difficult; we are reducing the need to drink or eat so we are throwing the need to a higher level (although it is really food and water at the same time in the case of wizards).
The intention behind Mana Adept (Arcane Mastery) is to take advantage of the fact that Arcane currently has a fun mana management game, at least at a relatively high level. We thought it would be fun to extend this concept even further, where Arcane Mages who use mechanics to keep their mana high will do more DPS. I find predictions that Arcane is doomed in PvE very premature based on the limited information out there at this time.
As for the Temporal distortion vs. BloodlustWe're really trying to give groups flexibility in who they lead in 10-player raids to an even greater degree than we did in the Lich King. We've heard over and over that the Shaman still felt like a required class on a raid. The more we hear now there will be no reason to carry more X class / spec, the happier we will be. The reason should be that you are a good player, not that your mere presence makes everyone do their jobs better. It's fun that he seems more powerful in a group - we get it and we're not going to completely sideline group synergy. But it has to be secondary to the skill of the players involved.
I understand that some magicians like it fire shelter o dim magic. Perhaps the words "no clear paper" were not the best choice, but we are trying to eliminate mechanics from the game that we think are not working. When we asked players about putting more new spell buttons on their action bars, we just thought it's fair to try to get more space on the action bar at the expense of less interesting spells. There is no need to worry so much about the balance of this part. Many things need an adjustment. Worry more about whether you felt it was a fun decision to use these spells.
For those of you who are focused on Arena's RMP (Rogue, Mage, Priest) composition, I really think you're going to see a change in PvP as Cataclysm will balance out the Battlegrounds. There will still be players playing Arenas for sure, but many of the players currently making Arenas are going to switch to Rated Battlegrounds instead.