View source for Mage 1.17.2 Changes

Mage is luckily one of those classes that does not struggle with viability, being a class that’s always been a staple for levelling and amongst groups for all types of content. Fire and Frost both have their spots and deal good damage, but their rotations are infamously bland compared to other classes, meanwhile Arcane has a lot of issues with its viability and identity, being a specialization locked to one single target and one area of effect ability. For this reason we’ve added a few things for Fire and Frost to add another layer to their rotations and have done a major rework on Arcane, making it a specialization fitting the nature of Arcane as a spell school that’s wild and uncontrollable.

== '''Baseline Changes''' ==
New Spell: Arcane Surge: Blast your target with overloaded mana, dealing X-Y Arcane damage. Only usable after one of your spells are fully or partially resisted. This spell cannot be fully or partially resisted.

(Flat mana cost, 8 second cooldown. Instant cast, 65% Spellpower Scaling)

This ability is learned at Level 32 with new ranks at Level 40, 48 and 56.

* Rank 1 (Level 32): 85 Mana Cost, 202 - 244 Arcane Damage

* Rank 2 (Level 40): 110 Mana Cost, 290 - 349 Arcane Damage

* Rank 3 (Level 48): 140 Mana Cost, 398 - 474 Arcane Damage

* Rank 4 (Level 56): 170 Mana Cost, 517 - 612 Arcane Damage

----Increased Arcane Missile's spellpower scaling coefficient per missile for ranks above level 20 increased from 28.6% to 32.8%. 

''Developer Comment: This coefficient was initially 20% in Vanilla and was raised to 28.6% in our first batch of class changes, which still felt short on competing with the scaling values of Frostbolt and Fireball when their cast times were reduced by their respective "improved" talents.''   
''This change might seem quite minor at a glance but equals to a 21% increase in spellpower scaling for one complete channel of Arcane Missiles and this scaling increase also scales multiplicatively with Arcane Rupture's damage and mana cost increase effect. With this increase Arcane Missiles should be equal to the scaling values of the aforementioned spells even when they're talented to cast faster.''
----Dampen Magic and Amplify Magic now only have one rank, cost 6% of your base mana and now grant the following:

* Dampen Magic: 2% Reduced magic damage taken and 1% reduced healing taken.

* Amplify Magic: 2% Increased healing taken and 1% increased magic damage taken.

----The mana cost of Arcane Intellect have been reduced to the following:

* Rank 1 (Level 1): 60 -> 50

* Rank 2 (Level 14): 185 -> 100

* Rank 3 (Level 28): 520 -> 240

* Rank 4 (Level 42): 945 -> 340

* Rank 5 (Level 56): 1510 -> 445

----The mana cost of Arcane Brilliance have been reduced to the following:

* Rank 1 (Level 56): 3400 -> 1200

== '''Arcane''' ==
Arcane has been a specialization that has been left in the dark both damage and flavorwise, only serving to be the specialization for utility spells such as conjuring, teleportation and portals with a side of actual damaging abilities. We plan to fix this with our rework and give Arcane a proper rotation and flavorful talents and abilities. 
Wand Specialization: Now also increases your chance to hit with Wands by 5/10% and gives your wands a chance on hit to grant you an amount of mana equal to 150% of your level. This chance is increased with every point.
----Magic Absorption: Now requires 3 points instead of 5 points, mana return reduced from 1/2/3/4/5% of your total mana to 1/2/3% of your total mana, cooldown increased from 1 second to 2 seconds but now triggers when one of your spells is partially or fully resisted instead of fully resisting a spell cast on you.
----Arcane Concentration: Now has a 8 second cooldown.
----Arcane Impact: Now affects all arcane spells.
----Magic Attunement: Now requires 1 point instead of 2 points, effect increase is increased from 25/50% to 100% and now allows you to cast Amplify Magic and Dampen Magic on targets below level 63.
''Developer Comment: These abilities have been reworked, refer to the Baseline Changes section for details.''
----New Talent: Arcane Rupture (3rd Row Keystone): Rupture your target with concentrated arcane force, dealing X-Y Arcane damage and increasing the damage and mana cost of your Arcane Missiles by 25% for 8 seconds.
(Flat mana cost, 2.5 second cast time, 15 seconds cooldown, 100% Spellpower Scaling)

* Rank 1 (Level 20/Talent): 80 Mana cost, 111 - 125 Arcane Damage

* Rank 2 (Level 28): 145 Mana cost, 189 - 209 Arcane Damage

* Rank 3 (Level 36): 210 Mana cost, 334 - 366 Arcane Damage

* Rank 4 (Level 44): 270 Mana cost, 416 - 475 Arcane Damage

* Rank 5 (Level 52): 320 Mana cost, 556 - 605 Arcane Damage

* Rank 6 (Level 60): 390 Mana cost, 703 - 766 Arcane Damage

----Improved Mana Shield: Decreases the mana lost per point of damage taken when Mana Shield is active by 13/25% instead of 10/20%.
----New Talent: Temporal Convergence (4th Row / 3 Points): Your Arcane Missiles have a 5/10/15% chance to reset the cooldown of your Arcane Rupture spell and cause it to refund its base mana cost on its next cast. This effect can only occur once every 15 sec.
''Developer Comment: The buff that refunds the mana cost on the next cast lasts 12 seconds.''
----Arcane Meditation: Mana regeneration while casting increased from 5/10/15% to 7/14/20%, additionally this effect is now tripled while below 35% total mana.
----Arcane Instability: Moved from the 6th row to the 5th row and now does the following instead: “Your successful damaging Arcane spells have a 8/16/25% chance to uncontrollably erupt, consuming 2% of your base mana to deal 25% more damage.”
----New Talent: Accelerated Arcana (5th Row Keystone): Increases the casting speed of your Arcane spells by 6%. In addition, casting speed increase effects increase the cooldown recovery speed of your Arcane spells and the tick speed of your Arcane Missiles, reducing their duration.
''Developer Comment: Arcane abilities include: Presence of Mind, Evocation, Arcane Power, Arcane Surge and Arcane Rupture.''
----Arcane Potency: Moved from the 6th row to the 5th row, now requires 2 points instead of 3 points and increases your critical strike damage bonus by 50/100% instead of 17/33/50%.
----New Talent: Resonance Cascade (6th Row / 5 Points): Your successful damaging Arcane spells have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to duplicate for 50% of the damage. This effect can trigger off of itself and duplicated Arcane Missiles are channeled in tandem with the original cast.
''Developer Comment: Self trigger has a hard limit of 4 duplications, as the damage after that is too insignificant to calculate. Only one target is subject to duplication for Arcane Explosion, meaning no matter how many targets you hit, the original and duplicated explosions only roll their trigger chance once. Additionally these additional casts do not trigger on hit spell effects.''
----Arcane Power: Completely revamped, now does the following: “When activated, your casting speed is increased by 35% while draining 2% of your maximum mana every second and reducing all mana gain by 75%. Falling below 10% maximum mana causes you to violently combust from uncontrollable power, killing you instantly. Lasts 20 sec and cannot be cancelled.”
----Brilliance Aura: Removed.

== '''Fire''' ==
Fire is one of the top performing specializations in raids, for this reason we do not think it requires a lot of number tuning. Mechanically though, Ignite has a few issues that we aim to resolve which we talk about in detail in Ignite’s section. Additionally, Fire’s rotation is dull, similarly to Frost, outside of upkeeping the Scorch debuff on the target which we plan to remedy with the addition of Hot Streak.
Ignite: Now deals its damage over 6 seconds instead of 4 seconds. The threat generated by ignite is now split amongst all Mages that have contributed to the Ignite damage.
''Developer Comment: Ignite has issues with being a debuff that is contributed to by all the Fire Mages in a group but loading all the threat into the initial applying Mage. In addition to this, we’ve foreseen that Fire Mages might have difficulties with the uptime of Ignite due to Arcane now being a much more desirable specialization and in result reducing the amount of Fire Mages.''
''For this reason we’ve also increased the duration of Ignite, increasing the window of upkeep. We’re aware that this reduces the DPS of the effect, but we believe that this is compensated by the mages no longer requiring to stop their spells to avoid Ignite reaching critical threat values and possibly causing a wipe due to it.''
----Improved Fire Blast: Now also reduces the global cooldown of your Fire Blast by 0.17/0.34/0.5 seconds.
----New Talent: Hot Streak (5th Row / 3 Points): Gives your Fireball and Fire Blast spell criticals a 33/66/100% chance to grant you the Hot Streak effect.  The Hot Streak effect lowers the cast time of your next Pyroblast spell by 0.5 sec per stack, and lasts 30 sec.  Stacks up to 3/6/9 times.

== '''Frost''' ==
Frost performs pretty well for most parts of the game, but has one apparent problem: the rotation is entirely composed of a single ability in most raid encounters, which is Frostbolt. We don’t want to complicate rotations too much due to Vanilla being much simpler than its expansion counterparts, but we felt like Frost was too simple even for Vanilla standards. For this reason we’ve added new functionality to Ice Barrier to reward its upkeep, a new rotational ability called Icicles and the Flash Freeze talent that synergizes with Icicles and primarily activates against creatures due to its trigger condition.
Moved Piercing Ice to the 2nd row.
''Developer Comment: This change was done for a smoother talent progression in the second and third rows of the tree.''
----Improved Blizzard: Slow amount reduced from 30/50/65% to 20/30/40%.
----Shatter: Critical strike chance bonus reduced from 10/20/30/40/50% to 7/14/21/28/35%.
----New Talent: Icicles (5th Row Keystone): You draw upon frost leylines, becoming frozen in place, and you launch icicles at the enemy, causing 101 Frost damage every second for 5 sec. Damage taken has a high chance to shatter your icy prison, dealing 30% of your base health as Frost damage to you. Cancelling the effect early, won't remove the root effect.
(Flat Mana cost, 30 Second Cooldown, 5 Second Channel, 30 Yard Range)
(Every Icicle has a 40% Spellpower scaling coefficient.)

* Rank 1 (Level 30) - 200 Mana Cost, 101 Damage Per Icicle

* Rank 2 (Level 40) - 265 Mana Cost, 147 Damage Per Icicle

* Rank 3 (Level 50) - 330 Mana Cost, 213 Damage Per Icicle

* Rank 4 (Level 60) - 400 Mana Cost, 272 Damage Per Icicle
''Developer Comment: We’ve opted to give this new part of the Frost Mage rotation a downside and the inability to slow your targets as we want to avoid giving even more power to Frost Mages in Player vs Player scenarios as they’re already a strong contender in that field while giving another tool to your rotation for Player vs Enemy scenarios where these downsides are much less likely to matter. The freeze effect functions like any other root effect and can be broken with Blink and other effects.''
----New Talent: Flash Freeze (6th Row / 2 Points): If your target is immune to freeze effects whenever one is applied, you have a 50/100% chance to gain Flash Freeze instead, finishing the cooldown of your Icicles spell. Additionally, your next Icicles spell has 400% increased channel speed. Lasts 10 sec.
''Developer Comment: This effect can be triggered by your Frostbite talent and Frost Nova, the former allowing this effect to naturally trigger from your Frostbolt rotation.''
----Ice Barrier: Now increases your Frost damage by 15% while active.

''Developer Comment: This change allows Ice Barrier to be an overall damage gain if it lasts for the majority of its duration, rewarding proper timing of its activation such as being aware of area of effect damage while not majorly affecting Player vs Player scenarios due to it being much more likely to break.''
[[Category:Classes]]
[[Category:Patches]]