Arcane seems powerful in PvP

#0 - Oct. 30, 2008, 9:24 p.m.

Alright, I'm a ret paladin and this is a topic about arcane mages. FEAR NOT! I'm not about to QQ about ret, say we need to be buffed or anything.

I just want to know, now that you have a chance to see more opinions with this new forum, will you be looking at the damage done by arcane mages to figure out a way to stop them from two shotting people in the battlegrounds?

Now mages - Please don't come in here and say "lol nub. Get better gear". This is another ret paladin, my main ret is on an account that cannot post on the forums. Not only that but I have nothing but <3 for mages. I'm even leveling a 50 mage myself. I certainly don't want to see you nerfed to the ground.

Okay, I lied. I will say one or two things about ret: Vengeance. If it's going to be like deep wounds, will resilience of our targets affect the damage it does? If so, won't that make it kind of...Lame in PvP?

Edit: I have not played the WoTLK beta. If I am wrong, and mages are no longer 2 shotting people at 80 and it *is* balanced, disregard what I had said.

Ghostcrawler

#1 - Oct. 30, 2008, 9:29 p.m.

Here is just a big brain dump on Arcane mages. Warning: I am not specifically talking about any changes we might make. We might make none at all. But here are our thoughts at the moment.

1) It's fun to be able to run around and do instant Barrages.
2) Barrage does a ton of damage quickly, possibly too much, and it can't be interrupted.
3) Locking Arcane out of its school is very painful for them (no Blink etc.). Does this balance them at all?
4) Arcane Blast feels a little awkward to use and doesn't do enough dps.
5) One way to change Arcane would be to require you to build up 2 Blasts in order to get the big Barrage numbers, kind of like a Shatter Combo if you will.
6) This would make their PvE rotation more interesting too.
7) Is there enough skill involved in doing Arcane PvP, or is it all just killing time until Barrage's cooldown is up?

Ghostcrawler

#24 - Oct. 30, 2008, 9:54 p.m.

I took the liberty of changing the topic of this thread to be more informative.

Now I am going to go OT myself to respond to a Ret pally question. :(

Q u o t e:
GC, aren't you drawing conclusions based on incorrect data from level 70s PvP when the talents are meant to be for level 80 builds.

We tested (and continue to test) Arcane and Retribution in a variety of conditions, both in PvP and PvE, at 70 and 80, in different gear against different types of targets (not just undead) and with different buffs.

I think some disinformation was spread that we nerfed Retribution based on the QQ from other classes on Live, and the assumption was that we didn't test anything outside of PvP (or undead). We definitely heard plenty of QQ from other classes, and believe it or not in this situation their complaints turned out to be justified. But we are always very skeptical when one class asks for nerfs to another class.