Blizzard considering removal of downgraded spells, later mage boosters

[gilley]

I just got the latest beta patch for WotLK. I logged in and noticed my rank1 arcane explosion was making me go OOM fast! It seems Blizzard has made all ranks cost the same % of mana. So my rank1 blizzard spell costs about 2100 mana and so does my rank8 blizzard. If this goes through this is a HUGE nerf to mages in PvP, and casters in general. I used my level70 mage to boost my other toons up to 70. I won't be able to round up those mobs very easy anymore. I thoroughly enjoy rounding up an entire low level instance and then AoE'ing the hell out of them. I regularly use R1 arcane explosion, blizzard, polymorph, frost armor, dampen magic, frostbolt, firebolt when doing PvP on my mage. I just see rogues tearing me up even more now that I can't pull them out of stealth/vanish without wasting huge amounts of mana.

If this change goes through, I'm probably going to be finished playing WoW. It dumbs the game down too much. I guess the beta is still on-going so I'm going to continue testing this stuff and voicing my concerns. Who knows, maybe they'll do some other drastic change that will offset this downranked spell change.

I'm not a very happy camper right now.

[kitss]

If that happens Im pretty much done playing clothys. That would just take away 3/4 of the strategies used for CC and etc.

[Otlecs]

Official announcement

I don't understand why they feel the need to change this, but I don't see this as game-breaking at all.

Yes, I'll miss my rank 1 blizzard to act as a kind of flare when I'm waiting for a flag to cap, and I'll probably miss rank 1 arcane explosion and frost nova, but... well, it's all a bit /shrug really.

It definitely doesn't break my mage boosting style, which mainly consists of running through things to get their attention in any case.

It might have a more significant impact to healers, but I've never bothered down-ranking heals anyway.

Overall... I'm very much in the "so what" frame of mind on it.

[Drizzit]

This really sucks. Where they thinking before they did this? I have a healer and i down rank like 3 or 4 lvls. I have to do this so i don't oom so quick. Doing this i will only get like 20 heals in instead of 100 (don't know the number off the top of my head). I play a sham healer, solo, and there mana is not that great to begin with and now they are doing this. Guess like i will not be playing that sham anymore.

[Naysayer]

All player spells now cost a percentage of base mana rather than a fixed cost.

I don't understand what they want to accomplish with that. Pretty lame. No more frostbolt rank 1 which is very important as a mage. WTF, so lame.

We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.

Holy crap batman... Prepare for 6 months of beta testing and unbalanced pvp...

[jtbndy]

Very short sighted of Blizzard. If they wanted to remove the effectiveness of lower ranked spells they should have just increased the resist rate.

As in use rank 1 frostbolt on a lvl 70, 95% chance to resist or something like that. Removing downranking removes a very important mana conservation aspect to casting in general.

Bad change in my opinion. Blizzard is just getting lazy ... instead of coming up with specific mana costs for each spell, they would rather just have to say x %.

[Drizzit]

I don't understand what they want to accomplish with that. Pretty lame. No more frostbolt rank 1 which is very important as a mage. WTF, so lame.

Same thing with scorch for mage and lock. This was import for the wizard of oz to keep strawman dazed. A lot of tactics will be messed up now. End game will not be that easy anymore. I know in gruuls the mage has to spam something too and they use lvl 1 to do that. I wonder why they are making all these stupid changes for.

[Drizzit]

Quoted

We anticipate there being some balance concerns due to this change, and our development staff will be ready to implement new spells, abilities, or talents to resolve those issues as the testing process continues.

Holy crap batman... Prepare for 6 months of beta testing and unbalanced pvp...

hopefully this goes away like the life tap on the lock (another stupid idea). I don't think that this will hurt dps as much as healers. I think healers will suffer more, they are going to be over healing a lot more which is a huge problem for saving mana. Healers will be more concerned with mana that they will probably only heal when the tank or someone is half life. Great now after every pull we will need to drink.

[HTeam]

I don't think it would hurt healers at all. If healers can't get the job done, then the raid can't get the job done. So obviously they'd balance around that.

Single pulls will a low agro rank 1 spell will now be expensive but that's just one cast.

The place it will hurt is typically where a rank 1 is spammed over and over. Paladins or mages gathering things up with AE. My priest will no longer be able to use rank 1 shadow word: pain against cleanse happy paladins.

But healers no longer being able to downrank spells will show up very obviously when it comes to balancing content, and that won't be a problem. Sure, you'll think, "if I could downrank I would have had mana through this fight." But the reality is that if you could downrank, then the fight could have been made correspondingly tougher.

[pegasus00000]

very bad idea, my healer will likely be OOM early in the fight, if it happens probably need to get a secondary healer in the party.