In the whole Fire tree, there is only two talents that have something to do with mana. Master of Elements, which refunds 10/20/30% of fire or frost spell base mana cost on a critical hit. And Pyromaniac, which reduces mana costs of fire spells by a whopping 3%. In the Frost talent tree, you can get another whopping 3% mana cost reduction.
Let’s say a fire mage has 33% crit. Master of Elements has only 1/3 chance to refund 1/3 of mana cost of a fire spell. You will need a total of 9 spells in order to get enough mana back to cast one more fireball. During this time you have lost 3600/3825 mana. This is quite useless to put points in, especially in PvP.
Fire tree could use some mana efficiency or mana regeneration buffs without forcing mages to go up 20 points in Arcane tree. In PvP you get oom very quickly and you do not even need to cast many spells, basic survival costs lot of mana. You can forget about using mana shield because it will hit your mana pool too hard.
A bit funny that mana shield is Arcane / Fire mage’s only protection but they cannot use it because it drains their mana, leaving them unable to cast spells. You are doomed either way.
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So you play fire mage in pvp? Kind of explains all the complaining about losing every bg you enter.
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I disagree. Fire has the benefit of damage, frost has the benefit of mana efficiency (among others). Being really annoyed at not having enough points for talents or not having all the talents you want is just kind of part of the game.
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The benefit of damage melts away when in the middle of a raid encounter you have to stop for evocation for 6 seconds. And the whole point of this topic was the fact that you can get all mana talents and they still will not make a difference. The talents are simply too weak in design to sustain mana.
Another point I forgot to mention is molten armor vs. mage armor. Mage armor allows 30% of mana regeneration to continue while casting. Molten armor provides +3 crit which fire mages need in order to deal proper damage. However, during raid encounters you are pretty much forced to use the mage armor.
In a nutshell, the Master of Elements talent is too weak, otherwise it could be worthwhile to spec into. If the talent would be stronger, then the fire tree design would make some sense.
This week in “stupid things Beyondo cries about” we have…
…Fire mages not having infinite mana?
Really?
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How can you possibly have mana issues as a Fire Mage, especially in a 25m setting?
Assuming you have 10k mana in a raid setting, plus around 5k from using a Super Mana Potion and the Mana Jade, you have enough mana for almost 40 Fireballs. But it doesn’t even and there because:
- You should have at least a 30% crit chance in a raid setting (9% from talents, 3% from Molten Armor, up to +8% from party buffs depending on raid setting, plus Judgment of Crusader on boss), which means that for every 10 Fireballs you’re recovering about enough mana for an extra fireball
- You should have at least around 100 mp5 just from GBoW and Mana Spring totem, which again means roughly 1200 extra mana per minute, which means another 3 fireballs every 20 you cast
- If 2 minutes pass (which will obviously do if you’re casting more than 40 fireballs) then you should be able to use another Mana pot and Mana Jade for an extra 5000 or so mana worth of fireballs
- If Judgement of Wisdom is on your target (and it should almost always be, on boss battles), then you also have an extra 50% of recovering 74 mana everytime you hit an enemy with a Fireball. Which effectively translates into yet another extra Fireball worth of mana every 10 you cast
And that’s before you even consider the presence of a shadow priest or a resto shaman in your party. You shouldn’t even need to Evocate to begin with before the 3rd-4th minute of fight - and, when you also add Evocate, you can easily go for 6+ minutes without incurring in mana issues. And that’s without considering that you could also go for a Clearcasting spec (foregoing Icy Veins), which would increase your mana regen even further, making it all but impossible for you to run out of mana in a 25m boss battle even if you’re chunkin’ out Fireballs all the time.
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Thanks for explaining the obvious in great detail, Zalanji. However, I do not see any Paladins, Shamans or Shadow Priests in the mage fire tree. You must have missed the point of this topic.
You lose about half of your total mana casting fireball in order to gain enough mana from Master of Elements to get one free fireball, do you think this is talent is effective? It is better than nothing, but do you think it is effective?
There are lot better things in the fire tree to put points in than 1-2 extra fireballs with 3 talent points in MoE.
A spec in an mmorpg (implying you’re playing with other people) doesn’t have literally everything it wants on its own in a raid (implying you’re playing with other people) environment
Wow who could’ve possibly thought, you’re so oppressed, fire mages rise up
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Dude, what are you even talking about? The entire dichotomy of arcane vs fire in PvE is that fire has infinite mana, and squeezes in additional dps by using destro pots, molten shield etc.
In PvP you play frost anyway and just lance them to death so w/e.
Your post makes no sense to me. Arcane you play your mana bar and pay druids to innervate you, fire you play cooldowns basically and haste scaling.
Hey look, it´s beyondo again. Don´t have to read the thread in order to know that it´s probably a whiney one.
You keep them coming, buddy. I expect 2-3 tear filled ones every day now.
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Considering I never have mana issues as a Fire mage in raids yes, I think it’s quite effective. Even when I’m farming alone, I only need to drink about once every 5 minutes or so.
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I specced my fire mage into Arcane Concentration (10/48/3) and I pretty much don’t run out of mana on boss fights. I generally do use a mana gem once per fight, and if half of your dps dies or your raid’s damage output is low for another reason you will probably need a mana pot as well. But this much is completely normal. If you’d never run out of mana no matter what then why even have mana?
What you need to look at in this issue, is Master of Elements a good mana restoring talent or not? In my opinion it is not and I have made my case about it. You all seem to agree with me because you all are unable address the actual issue and instead bring up shadow priests, mana totems and paladin buffs. All of these arguments actually support my position in this topic, because in order to not have any kind of mana issues, you need these classes as a fire mage. However, if some of these classes are missing, you will run out of mana even if you do all mage tricks.
Master of Elements is a broken talent because it does not refund enough mana compared to the investment you need to make in order to be able to cast one extra spell. In my opinion, this talent should be changed into something that would be worth putting points into. Either increase the effect or give an additional effect to the talent, or both.
most mages in my guild pops between 15 to 45 mana pots a raid.
Maybe you should to.
Not the issue here.
Is MoE worthwhile talent to points into, yes or no?
Every mana class except maybe Warlocks needs them (and even then, Warlocks have to spend a lot of time to Life Tap and their spells are possibly the most expensive among casters). Just ask an elemental shaman or a boomkin what is like to raid without JoW on the target, without blessings or shadow priests, and so on and so forth. Heck, they would kill to have our mana gem and Evocation - especially once we get T6 bonus that makes Evocation into a nearly complete mana restorer.
It is, it totally is, and it only gets better the better your gear is. Once you get to around 40% spell crit rate (which is perfectly achievable even in this phase - I’m wearing mostly Spellfire and T4-level gear and I still have over 30% spell crit unbuffed) in a raid, MoE alone is the equivalent of 80 mp5 or more. For comparison, an Elemental Shaman’s Unrelenting Storm will never give him that much, even with full raid buffs, and that talent costs FIVE points, not three.
Bottom line is:
- If you have mana issues while still having the support of raid buffs and a caster party, then you or your raid are doing something awfully wrong
- If you DON’T have blessings or other basic raid buffs, then again your raid sucks and it’s not a problem with your class
- If you expect to NOT have mana issues at all even while fully unbuffed - while still assuming the raid scenario of a boss taking several minutes to be killed, rather than, say, the super-fast kills of dungeon bosses - then you just don’t understand how TBC and WoW in general works, and you’re not qualified to understand whether a talent is good or bad
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I disagree, thus this post.
You disagree with what, exactly? Because there’s very little about what I said that is opinion based. The fact your class and spec has next to no mana issues is an objective fact, not something up to personal opinion. You just refuse to accept the evidence.
Isn’t fire the face melter and as such is mana intensive?
You want to be a mana saver then go frost.