Wait... What. [dev1206]

EDIT: I misunderstood the protect/shell changes, and am not sure how I feel about them, personally I don't think it needed changing.

And Fire I, Fire II and Fire III are 1 spell, that cost more and more mana as you level.

The Fire I,II,III change seems completely the reverse of the other change.

Currently mages have much more choice about how to use Fire, wether they just need to drop a small amount of MP to do a bit of damage to help finish a mob off, or if they want to Nuke it for maximum damage.

Surely, a much better method, and perhaps a culmination of the two play styles, would be a casting bar, that charges the power and cost of Fire.

E.g.

1. Start casting (presuming mage has ability to cast Fire III)

[___________]

2. Trigger cast when bar is this much charged sets off Fire I

[|||________]

3. Trigger cast when bar is this much charge sets off Fire II, doing more damage and costing more MP

[|||||||____]

You get the jist.

In conclusion, I feel the protect/shell changes to be very very random, and not really making much sense, and a feel that the damage spell changes lessen and restrict the usefulness of those abilities.

To answer your question on Pro/Shell read This. And the Patch notes explain actually if you re-read them, they are a combined buff not 2 separate buffs. I'm not sure I like that but I guess I will see.

The loss of Tiered spells has been an ongoing debate since last month I believe when it was mentioned in the class change preview. Have to see how well that works out once patch is released.

Apologies! I understand now and shall edit my post accordingly.

My guess is they are going to see how it works and go from there. Most likely they are trying to avoid ppl who exclusively dd or dont understand the mechanics of tiered magic whining on the forums about mages getting 10 extra abilities.