This past Friday (or Saturday I guess, if you live in the USA) brought with it the mage class changes preview for Cataclysm. That’s right. With italics.

The full post can be found here.

First off, let’s look at some new spells.

New Mage Spells

Flame Orb (available at level 81): Inspired by Prince Taldaram’s abilities in Ahn’kahet and Icecrown Citadel, this spell allows the mage to cast a flaming orb that travels in front in a straight line, sending beams that cause fire damage to passing targets. Once it’s cast, the mage is free to begin casting other spells as the Flame Orb travels. While the spell will be useful to any spec, Fire mages will have talents that improve it, possibly causing the Flame Orb to explode when it reaches its destination.

Time Warp (level 83): Grants a passive Haste effect much like Bloodlust or Heroism to party or raid members. It also temporarily increases the mage’s own movement speed. Time Warp will be exclusive with Bloodlust and Heroism, meaning you can’t benefit from both if you’ve got the Exhaustion debuff, though the movement-speed increase will still work even when under the effects of Exhaustion.

Wall of Fog (level 85): Creates a line of frost in front of the mage, 30 yards from end to end. Enemies who cross the line are snared and take damage. The mana cost will be designed to make Wall of Fog efficient against groups, not individuals. This spell is intended to give mages a way to help control the battlefield, whether the mage is damaging incoming enemies (Blizzard can be channeled on top of Wall of Fog) or protecting a flag in a Battleground. 10-second duration. 30-second cooldown.

Flame Orb and Wall of Fog look like they’ll be amazingly useful in PvP, and it’s clear Blizz is trying to make Fire a viable PvP spec. Time Warp is basically a copy of Heroism/Bloodlust, that gives you a run speed boost when you use it. I know all the shaman of the world are crying out in anger because of that change, but I’m sure they can deal without being a unique special snowflake from now on.

Wall of Fog I suppose would act as a big wall that anyone who tries to go through gets frozen. Kind of like a trip wire that fills the boots of anyone who crosses it with icy slush. Think about it, would you like to run around when your shoes are full of snow?

And last but certainly not least, is Flame Orb. I don’t know, this spell sounds so cool I might just have to respec to Fire.

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Arcane Missiles is being reworked to be a proc-based spell (kind of like a warrior’s Overpower or a DK’s Rune Strike), and every arcane missile that misses is supposed to give us back mana. I don’t think this means that we’re supposed to miss spells, but rather that spells that don’t fire because of knockback or something similar. After all, arcane mages will have to conserve as much mana now because of their Mastery bonus Speaking of that…

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Arcane
Spell damage
Spell Haste
Mana Adept

Fire
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Ignite

Frost
Spell damage
Spell Crit damage
Deathfrost

Mana Adept: Arcane will deal damage based on how much mana the mage has. For example, Arcane mages will do much more damage at 100% mana than at 50% mana. If they begin to get low on mana, they will likely want to use an ability or mechanic to bring their mana up to increase their damage.

Ignite: All direct-damage fire spells will add a damage-over-time (DoT) component when cast. The flavor will be similar to how Fireball works; however, the DoT component will be much stronger.

Deathfrost: Casting Frostbolt places a buff on the mage that increases the damage for all frost, fire, and arcane spells. The only damage spell that won’t be affected by this buff is Frostbolt.

Ignite will hopefully improve Fire’s DoT and make it pack more of a punch. Deathfrost looks like it is intended to make Frost more interesting; just casting frostbolt over and over isn’t exactly the greatest idea of fun in the world.

What I’m curious about though, is Mana Adept. So apparently, we can do more damage when we have 100% mana than say, 50% mana, and so on and so forth. So doesn’t that mean that we’ll just be really awesome toward the beginning of a fight and not so much toward the middle or the end. Arcane is kind of a heavy mana using spec, so I’m not sure how this will work in our favor.

In Other Abilities news, we’re losing Conjure food and water until Level 40ish, because Blizzard says we’re supposed to be having better mana regen before then. I think I’ll miss this a lot. spending a bunch of time conjuring two pieces of bread/pastry/whatever at a time every time I logged in always gave me this odd sort of immersion into the game. We’re also losing Amplify and Dampen Magic, long with Fire and Frost Wards. I never really saw the point for the Damplify Magic (de)buffs, and I never really used them anyway, but Fire and Frost Ward did have their situational uses, and any spell that allowed me to get out of taking damage (except for mana shield) is a bonus in my book.

Scorch will provide a damage bonus to the mage’s fire spells. Because it didn’t already do this. Only now we get both the group spell crit increase AND the damage bonus. \o/

New Talents and Talent Changes

  • Arcane Focus will now return mana for each spell that fails to hit your target, including Arcane Missiles that fail to launch. We want Arcane mages to have several talents that play off of how much mana the character has and give the player enough tools to manage mana.
  • The talent Playing with Fire will reduce the cooldown of Blast Wave when hit by a melee attack, instead of its current effect.
  • Pyromaniac will grant Haste when three or more targets are getting damaged by the effects of your damage-over-time (DoT) fire spells.
  • The Burnout talent will allow mages to cast spells using health when they run out of mana.

So yes, as I said Arcane Focus will allow us to regain mana for missed spells, which I don’t see much of a use in because we’re supposed to not miss in the first place. Playing with Fire just seems stupid, because a good mage won’t let himself get hit in melee in the first place.

Pyromaniac sounds pretty awesome, considering every fire spell is supposed to put a DoT on a target now, and I certainly have a crush on Haste Rating. It’ll be like a constant Icy Veins on crack.

Burnout seems okay, though I’m not sure if I’ll use it very much. It seems to warlocky, and I don’t want heat (get it?) from the healer for running around setting myself on fire. Then again, setting myself on fire and running around like a maniac in Arathi Basin does sound fun…

All in all, I like where the mage class is going. I’m even tempted to switch one of my specs to fire just because it looks so awesome.