Post by fahid on Jun 25, 2014 22:20:55 GMT
This the first draft of a document regarding the mage talent trees. It is an evolving document and subject to editing, as it will be quite long.
General
Mages get two talent trees, which for the most part do not work well together, and serve two different purposes. Following the WoW template, fire damages and ice snares and provides protection. Some talents provide are class critical and are must haves, and building a talent tree usually involves figuring out a way to get to those talents and not many of the junk talents along the way.
Fire
Critical for Player vs. Environment dungeoning and PvE, fire spec has two of the three best area of effect spells, a passive "fire and forget" damage pulse, casting acceleration, passive spell power buff, and the only teleport.
Most reasonable mages that intend to dungeon are pigeonholed into at least 20-25 points in fire talents, which gets you zeal (our only mana regeneration talent), flame overload (makes fireball spammable with no cool down) and flaming mind (periodically erases the cast time of a spell dos boost). Zeal especially is almost impossible to fight bosses without, and the lack of anything like it in ice tree prevents mages from really raiding as heavy ice.
Fire talent ratings
Tier 1:
Shockwave ***** Staple AoE, taken even by frost mages pvping. Mana hog, cool down reduced by second tier talent.
Improved fireball: ***** Mages gear for crit and well over 80% of casts in a dungeon will be fireball. It gets boring but fireball spam is usually your best decision. Improve the spell.
Blasting flame: ***** Mages want every ounce of crit they can get, as it is tied to their regen and instant casts. This spell only affects fire tree spells, and is why there are very few reasons why u would want to cast an ice spell if u have a fire spell available.
Tier 2:
Fireflow: ***** Must have, as it is one if the few buffs that effect both trees and every spell equally. Scales as your gear improves, it will always be 10% more spell power.
Cyclone: **** utility nuke that has added value depending what debuffs you have on your target. Usually isn't taken unless the plan is sink 3 points into improving it. When improved, it becomes an auto crit instant cast nuke as long as u cast have a fireball debuff up, and a three second instant cast freeze if u have the ice bolt debuff up. Autocrit + versatility + a spell you can cast when moving = value for the 4 talents.
Burnout **. As with all cool down reduction talents, subject to personal taste and how much u use the spell. Because I only really cast Shockwave when I can't cast Fire Barrage (see next), or to farm a critical hit in a large group, I often improve 2 points or zero points.
Fire Barrage ********. Holy Hell I love this spell. I love this spell even more when I'm on a tank and someone else is casting it. A long cool down aoe with a daze effect, FBarr becomes BESTMAGESPELL when u sink 5 points into its following improvement talent flame charge. When fire barrage is fully improved, its cool down resets whenever you crit, and is usable again instantly. Because it provides a 1.5 second stun, you can cast it again before the stun wears off and achieve stunlock as long as it crits at least one mob. It essentially makes your group immune to trash as long as u have mana and u can maximize your crit math, which is why if you have a fire barrage mage, pulls counter-intuitively become less dangerous the more mobs you pull, as each additional monster presents another chance to crit and start the daze cycle all over again. If I party with you in a dungeon and you don't have this spell, I'll spam global that you are a terribad mage that hates good advice.
to be continued...
Lightning shield **** passive damage buff that fires three times and can crit, has most of its value in letting you do something else while it ticks. Its a spell that you activate and go back to fireball spam on a boss, letting it go its damage and periodically farm a crit for you. Has extra value on boss one of Relics Key, which can only be harmed by non targeted spells due to a bug. Lightning shield nukes the boss three times for far less mana than three casts of an aoe would. Is a terrific spell in PVP, as it punishes melee for approaching you and permits you to cast other spells while Lightning shield burns your attackers. Only draw back is incredibly short range, and the fact you will need to stand at melee range on some bosses while it ticks. For bosses with aoes, it can stress your healer to have another dos taking close in damage. All in all, still worth it.
Chain Lightning ** shortens cooldown for lightning shield, often worth a point or two if pvping or farming relics key. Seldom worth three unless you have punted the ice tree and have room for all the fire talents.
Flame charge: *****. Fire barrage is a sub par spell without this. Fire barrage is an amazing spell with this. U can shave a point out of it, going down to 4, or u can skip it if you need heavy ice talents for a pvp build. Any serious fire dungeoning build should have at least 4 points.
Windwalker: *. A group 20% run speed buff. Run speed buffs are useless in almost every video game ever. This one is most useful running back after a wipe. That should tell you all you need to know.
Flaming phantom, zeal, flame overload: collectively *****. A family of talents for 9 total points, basically turns Fireball into a spammable self buffing source of nana regen. Those are good. Flaming phantom puts up a buff every time fireball crits, which adds 3% more crit AND spell power for 10 seconds. You can stack it up to three times for +12% if you crit again before it expires. Most of your boss fights will be spent hoping for fireball crits, and trying to get another one as soon as possible and generally doing everything u can to maximize flaming phantom uptime. Add Zeal to that and that buff also returns a small but useful amount of nana. Finally flame overload lets you constantly cast fireball, which obviously is critical since casting as many fireballs as possible is how u buff yourself and how bosses die. Take these talents and throw fireballs.
Flaming mind: *****. Great for increasing dps, lets you get around the long cast times of elemental finishing (see next) and fireball by converting the next spell after a crit to instant cast 25% of the time.
General
Mages get two talent trees, which for the most part do not work well together, and serve two different purposes. Following the WoW template, fire damages and ice snares and provides protection. Some talents provide are class critical and are must haves, and building a talent tree usually involves figuring out a way to get to those talents and not many of the junk talents along the way.
Fire
Critical for Player vs. Environment dungeoning and PvE, fire spec has two of the three best area of effect spells, a passive "fire and forget" damage pulse, casting acceleration, passive spell power buff, and the only teleport.
Most reasonable mages that intend to dungeon are pigeonholed into at least 20-25 points in fire talents, which gets you zeal (our only mana regeneration talent), flame overload (makes fireball spammable with no cool down) and flaming mind (periodically erases the cast time of a spell dos boost). Zeal especially is almost impossible to fight bosses without, and the lack of anything like it in ice tree prevents mages from really raiding as heavy ice.
Fire talent ratings
Tier 1:
Shockwave ***** Staple AoE, taken even by frost mages pvping. Mana hog, cool down reduced by second tier talent.
Improved fireball: ***** Mages gear for crit and well over 80% of casts in a dungeon will be fireball. It gets boring but fireball spam is usually your best decision. Improve the spell.
Blasting flame: ***** Mages want every ounce of crit they can get, as it is tied to their regen and instant casts. This spell only affects fire tree spells, and is why there are very few reasons why u would want to cast an ice spell if u have a fire spell available.
Tier 2:
Fireflow: ***** Must have, as it is one if the few buffs that effect both trees and every spell equally. Scales as your gear improves, it will always be 10% more spell power.
Cyclone: **** utility nuke that has added value depending what debuffs you have on your target. Usually isn't taken unless the plan is sink 3 points into improving it. When improved, it becomes an auto crit instant cast nuke as long as u cast have a fireball debuff up, and a three second instant cast freeze if u have the ice bolt debuff up. Autocrit + versatility + a spell you can cast when moving = value for the 4 talents.
Burnout **. As with all cool down reduction talents, subject to personal taste and how much u use the spell. Because I only really cast Shockwave when I can't cast Fire Barrage (see next), or to farm a critical hit in a large group, I often improve 2 points or zero points.
Fire Barrage ********. Holy Hell I love this spell. I love this spell even more when I'm on a tank and someone else is casting it. A long cool down aoe with a daze effect, FBarr becomes BESTMAGESPELL when u sink 5 points into its following improvement talent flame charge. When fire barrage is fully improved, its cool down resets whenever you crit, and is usable again instantly. Because it provides a 1.5 second stun, you can cast it again before the stun wears off and achieve stunlock as long as it crits at least one mob. It essentially makes your group immune to trash as long as u have mana and u can maximize your crit math, which is why if you have a fire barrage mage, pulls counter-intuitively become less dangerous the more mobs you pull, as each additional monster presents another chance to crit and start the daze cycle all over again. If I party with you in a dungeon and you don't have this spell, I'll spam global that you are a terribad mage that hates good advice.
to be continued...
Lightning shield **** passive damage buff that fires three times and can crit, has most of its value in letting you do something else while it ticks. Its a spell that you activate and go back to fireball spam on a boss, letting it go its damage and periodically farm a crit for you. Has extra value on boss one of Relics Key, which can only be harmed by non targeted spells due to a bug. Lightning shield nukes the boss three times for far less mana than three casts of an aoe would. Is a terrific spell in PVP, as it punishes melee for approaching you and permits you to cast other spells while Lightning shield burns your attackers. Only draw back is incredibly short range, and the fact you will need to stand at melee range on some bosses while it ticks. For bosses with aoes, it can stress your healer to have another dos taking close in damage. All in all, still worth it.
Chain Lightning ** shortens cooldown for lightning shield, often worth a point or two if pvping or farming relics key. Seldom worth three unless you have punted the ice tree and have room for all the fire talents.
Flame charge: *****. Fire barrage is a sub par spell without this. Fire barrage is an amazing spell with this. U can shave a point out of it, going down to 4, or u can skip it if you need heavy ice talents for a pvp build. Any serious fire dungeoning build should have at least 4 points.
Windwalker: *. A group 20% run speed buff. Run speed buffs are useless in almost every video game ever. This one is most useful running back after a wipe. That should tell you all you need to know.
Flaming phantom, zeal, flame overload: collectively *****. A family of talents for 9 total points, basically turns Fireball into a spammable self buffing source of nana regen. Those are good. Flaming phantom puts up a buff every time fireball crits, which adds 3% more crit AND spell power for 10 seconds. You can stack it up to three times for +12% if you crit again before it expires. Most of your boss fights will be spent hoping for fireball crits, and trying to get another one as soon as possible and generally doing everything u can to maximize flaming phantom uptime. Add Zeal to that and that buff also returns a small but useful amount of nana. Finally flame overload lets you constantly cast fireball, which obviously is critical since casting as many fireballs as possible is how u buff yourself and how bosses die. Take these talents and throw fireballs.
Flaming mind: *****. Great for increasing dps, lets you get around the long cast times of elemental finishing (see next) and fireball by converting the next spell after a crit to instant cast 25% of the time.
