Mage mana costs to be slashed across the board

by Daniel Whitcomb Oct 5th 2008 at 7:00PM

So Mages. Do you think you spend way too much mana to cast your spells? If you answered yes, here's some good news: The dev team agrees.

However, says Ghostcrawler, they didn't want to reduce the cooldown on Evocation anymore, nor did they want to make Mage Armor so powerful that other Mage armors were no longer worth using. Thus, they simply lowered the mana cost on Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion.

Of course, we still won't know exactly how much until the next build hits the Beta servers, but it seems like it's got to be good news if it's anything of a significant cost reduction. Of course, some Mages are still hoping for a more active mana regeneration mechanic such as the Warlock's Life Tap, but in the meantime, hopefully this reduction is enough to make a difference.

[Thanks to VyseV1 for the heads up!]

Tags: arcane-blast, arcane-explosion, arcane-missles, evocation, fireball, frostbolt, frostfire-bolt, ghostcrawler, Life-Tap, mage-armor, mana, mana-conservation, mana-cost, mana-use, molten-armor, wrath-beta

Filed under: Mage, News items, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

joemr Oct 5th 2008 7:06PM

Awesome news! Hopefully AB will become viable once again.

Aigarius Oct 5th 2008 8:14PM

No. Arcane Blast will never be a spammable spell. Learn the new Arcane rotation - Arcane Barrage, Filler, Arcane Barrage, if Missile Barrage procs -> Arcane Missiles instead of the filler. Arcane Blast can be the filler spell, so can Fireball and Frostbolt, but before 80 the filler is likely to be just the Arcane Blast.

ENOUGH! Oct 6th 2008 2:12AM

Do you think promises of class balancing will make raiding more available to your class?

Well if you use mana and do can do high bursts of damage, maybe not. Because it seems that Blizzaed is balancing classes on PvP burst damage.

Since you can't output burst damage for the duration of a whole boss fight, guess what happens to your DPS? It goes down in raids.

It looks like Blizzard has shortchanged millions of their customers who raid just to make arena work.

NoTomorrow Oct 5th 2008 7:06PM

man, arcane explosion just got even better. Wheeeeee! Corpse piles ahoy!

Marc Oct 5th 2008 7:07PM

I like this change. It sucks to run out of mana when melee classes can keep going indefinitely. Mages are one of the classes that are dependent on mana for all damage but cannot heal themselves at all.

Spoonman Oct 5th 2008 7:11PM

I really hope they don't use this as an excuse and not give us a better mana return ability, cause this is hardly enough

Arcaria Oct 5th 2008 7:54PM

How do you know? They haven't announced anything by way of actual figures. Way to open your mouth and spew garbage before actually having any knowledge.

blkmasta55555 Oct 5th 2008 7:29PM

Sweet. If AB cost is nerfed enough as to become viable, even better.

Phoulmouth Oct 5th 2008 7:31PM

Hopefully they will be doing this for resto shamans as well.

Taedirk Oct 5th 2008 7:32PM

Because the solution to a passive regen dps class is to just keep throwing more resources at it and hope it goes away. The entire Mage playstyle has been to just keep throwing more mana at it and hope you last. Gems, pots, evocation, and now slashing the cost. The problem isn't mana cost of spells, it's the entire mechanic behind the Mage class. Without an active ability, you'll eventually reach this same point later down the road.

tl;dr: Devs are burying their heads in the sand and hoping Mages go away rather than fix the real problem.

Jeff Oct 5th 2008 7:39PM

Yes, that's it. They want to kill off your class because they hate you and are evil bastards.

Devs are always evil and want to destroy their very livelyhood by driving people away from games. It's true.

Taedirk Oct 5th 2008 7:47PM

I never said that they hate my class and want it to die. What I said was they're doing it wrong. The Mage mechanic is flawed and they're following the wrong path towards a real solution.

Warlocks and Hunters, the other two major mana-based DPS classes, have very active based mana regeneration which keeps them afloat when they hit empty. All Mages have is the ability to keep throwing more mana at their pool and pray to whatever damage gods they worship that they don't run down to empty before the big bad thing dies. More mana doesn't treat the disease, it treats the symptom.

MisterMoose Oct 5th 2008 7:56PM

That wasn't what he was saying at all. His point was that Mages need an active way to get mana back, as part of a rotation or the like. Until then there are just band-aids on the problem.

Aigarius Oct 5th 2008 8:21PM

Mages have the most spirit of the casters and have Mage Armor we can put on if mana is an issue. That and the insane range of active mana restoration abilities (mana gem, mana pot, evocate) is perfectly adequate.

Most of the time good mages can find a way to do 'ok' DPS while still regenning mana to really blow stuff up when the next mana restore cooldown is up.

One of the key characteristics of the class is to manage mana and damage in such was as to have 0 mana when the boss dies and do the most total damage in the process. That is one of the essential challenges of playing this class. Really. Learn it, love it.