PLEASE who ever reads this from Blizzard support/dev team/whomever, please pass along this feedback.
Mages are clearly upset about the P7 bonus and how its played out in Naxx. Now, we see that P8 extends the issues into the next phase and makes the channeling time 50% longer!
This is not what the mage community wanted. Which is clear in the Mage Discords, forums, in-game. Zirene has said to post here about the feedback as he is not responsible for the Set Bonuses.
2p P8 Mage Bonus is a mistake. Mages are only competitive if they take full advantage of a 8second channel without interruption/damage/pull timer errors. Its already become an annoyance to guilds to provide 10-12 second pull timers for mages to correctly buff up. But now that will be extended by another 4 seconds? So 15+second pull timers so mages can correctly get evocation up. Also, if fight durations are over 90seconds, a second evo is just 8-12 seconds of doing nothing. No buttons, no interaction, no movement. Just standing still during a boss encounter. I don’t believe this matches the epic mage fantasy.
If you are committed to Evocation being a part of Mages in the next phase, then there are many suggestions on changes to the 2p bonus (Make evo a non-channeled buff, make evo castable while moving, etc)
But my vote would to be a bonus that completely replaces and is exclusive to the evocation one from Naxx. That way mages no longer need to use Evocate as a DPS cooldown.
Thanks for your time.
[[[[[EDIT ADDING MORE DISCUSSION]]]]]
Further Discussion:
The mage discord brough up an important point about gear setup.
Currently Evocate interacts with both 2p AND 4p T3. The bonus from 2p, and the cooldown reduction on a 8min timer for 4p.
Without both these bonuses, even the new 2p bonus fails. Which means we cant keep a consistent set of gear to maintain 4p T3 and 6p (T4? Unsure what to call next set.)
Result:
The current thinking is an equipment manager addon is REQUIRED for high level play.
15sec Pull Timer
Equip 2p+4p T3
Start channeling Evo for 12 seconds
SWAP to full T4 after channeling
Pull Timer Done and fight starts.
Without swapping in/out of T3 gear, you wont get the bonus and you wont get the reduced cooldown, meaning you wont have it for trash or next boss if they are close together.
This can’t be desired behavior out of these bonuses. Im not sure how many times in WoW’s history that a set bonus from a different tier is directly referenced in the tier after it.
The item clearly calls out the Frostfire Regalia bonus, but if a mage doesn’t have it (reroll or new mage or whatever. Or just skipped NAXX) its a pointless bonus. There is no skipping T3 with current implementation.
I think the best solution is to find some bonus that pulls us away from the T3 bonus entirely! However, if it is to remain a core part of mage dps, then it needs to be usable without gear swaps, without awkward 12 second channels, without weird pull timers, without all these issues that make it terrible to use. Regardless of how big the bonus is in terms of dps, just on a pure gameplay level.
Thanks again for your time.