I have posted this question before, if our Water Elemental was going to benefit from the Mage’s Spell Hit. It has now been confirmed by a Blue Post! Along with a big list of Mage questions have been asked by the Mage community, with many of them have been answered by Ghostcrawler. [src]

This might also mean that Hunter’s Pets will also be benefiting from their Master’s Hit.

I probably can’t answer all of these. It’s a very long list. But I can pick and choose a few.

Q u o t e:
- Will mages continue to have mana issues as much as they do currently, or is something planned to help?

Yes, we are working on mage mana issues. They seem to run out too fast.

Q u o t e:
- Will mages be expected to be dominant AoE DPS? Or is AoE DPS also being flattened across the board?

Great AE damage isn’t a good niche in a game with so many single-target fights. Your AE will be good, but so will that of warlocks and moonkin. We won’t keep your single target dps down in order to justify high AE dps.

Q u o t e:
- Will Frost be able to dps as strongly if not more strongly than Arc/Fire in PvE? Or is that still the PvP spec?

We would like to see similar dps from all 3 trees. However, if you go for a heavy PvP build (in any tree), you will probably sacrifice some dps to get there.

Q u o t e:
- Will Arcane Blast be modified so it can be used as a main nuke? Or is that ship sunk?

We want Arcane Blast to be used a lot. It’s not Pyro.

Q u o t e:
- Scaling plagued mages throughout BC, will this be closely examined so it doesn’t repeat in WOTLK?

Yes. We aren’t happy with what happened to mages in BT and Sunwell.

Q u o t e:
- Mages from BC have a stigma attached (see top guild interviews regarding least useful class), will we be given something to help justify bringing us to raids?

We’ll make your dps competitive. We’re trying not to give *anyone* the one ability that gets them invited to raids.

Q u o t e:
- Will Evocation ever be updated? Lowered Cooldown? Made like Innervate instead of channeled?

I don’t know the answer to that yet. I think Evo is fine if mages don’t run out of mana in 5 seconds. Evo could be part of that solution or not.

Q u o t e:
- Will Frostfire bolt be given a purpose, now that double dipping is gone. Is it simply an “immunity” fight fallback?

No, we want it to be the kind of spell you can use all the time. But we want to get Frost, Fire and Arcane feeling good first.

Q u o t e:
- Will ignite ever be fixed (ignite “munching”)?

We are aware of the problem (of course). It’s just not easy to fix.

Q u o t e:
- Will the Water Elemental get more survivability? More resist? More +hit? More scaling?

All pets should inherit the hit of the master now.

Q u o t e:
- Will mages have purpose other than dps in raids so that so called “hybrid” classes won’t fill in the mage spots after the single obligatory Winters Chill/Food/Scorch mage has been invited?

Just be better / do more dps than those other classes and you’ll earn a spot. We’re not going to give you a reason other than that that someone HAS to take you.

Q u o t e:
- Is the numbers pass starting soon? We’re worried that you may be running short (5 weeks) on time to properly see data regarding the dps passes.

We’ve been in the middle of it for weeks. Don’t worry about the time. We don’t. If we looked at the ship date as a deadline, then we’d get sloppy and do dumb things. The truth is that in an MMO, game balance is a process not a destination. Even after the patch goes live, we’ll have opporunities to make changes before you can head to Northrend. With all the changes we’ve made, there are going to have to be some quick patches to fix things we missed. And overall we’d like to address balance problems that do erupt in a more timely fashion – consider, before we could always say “Eh, they’ll still take the X for his Y buff even if his dps is low.” We can’t say that anymore. Now we just have to get stuff fixed.

Some good news for Mages, and very good news for Squirtle. Hurray for Blue Posts!

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