(I've edited the original post to remove the inaccuracies around the attack speed - this indeed did not adjust melee attack speed even though it does fool around with animations a little)
So as a test in the old "nobody likes it, so I'll try it to see if they're all just missing out" school of thought, I switched my spec from trusty 0/54/7 to 41/17/3. Slow, regardless of what you may read from the thottbot description, has the following effects:
627 mana cost with Arcane Mind
15 second duration, instant cast, only on one target at a time
Reduces ranged attack speed , cast speed, and movement speed by 50%.
It is applied last, so it ends up being a double multiplier. If a target has Curse of Tongues on it and you Slow them, they are doubly slowed and take around four times as long to cast. If a creature isn't immune to Arcane Magic for the most part, it is vulnerable to Slow. This includes Raid Bosses and Horrible Trash. So far I've slowed Doomwalker, random trash in Serpentshrine, everything in some Heroics from start to finish, and Instructor Razuvious ('cause there was a raid ongoing to jump into for some odd reason on Sunday). I only just switched the spec around yesterday, but it is amazing to see that everything is vulnerable to it - it is ruthlessly effective (which somewhat justifies the large cost).
Tonight, my guild will be doing Magtheridon and maybe some Serpentshrine afterwards, so I'll be testing this out aggressively, but on Magtheridon at least, you can immediately see the use in Phase 1 (which is really the hardest part of the fight; once you're in the latter parts you're all set assuming nobody who is clicking disconnects) - slowing the cast time and attack speed of the Channelers; this buys a longer window for countering and mitigates half the melee damage (or more accurately, delays it). With current raid gear, I can keep this up for quite a while: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...efiend&n=Groat
I'll post back with results I find from this, but so far, Slow seems to be amazing (unlike what I was expecting).
Is there anyone out there who has actually tried it in a current raid setting?
Last edited by Groat : 06/07/07 at 5:26 PM.
Reason: Removing some inaccuracies
Do you have any data if the debuff is actually taking effect in all situations? ie: if someone could get a combat log parse of when the debuff was up and when it was down and figure out if the attack speed is in fact slowed by 50%, or if the debuff is just being applied and doing next to nothing.
The extra slow on cast speed is definitely something to consider, especially on fights such as Magtheridon where the casts on the later adds can cause some havoc in a new guild learning the fight.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell
I've seen it put on the blood elf dragony things (the big ones that mana burn/charge) in TK, and it had no (visible) effects. We watched it's attack speed without it on, and then we watched it with it on. Didn't seem to do a damned thing.
I believe that, as Cel said, it doesn't do anything but take up a debuff slot on non-casting mobs, and will slow their cast if vulnerable (very useful on things like Mag trash if it does work, possibly doesn't stack with CoT/Mind Numbing).
And yes, arcane mind will do nothing to the cost, it's based on base manapool like decurse/poison/dispel/shapeshifting.
The tooltip is very specific in only mentioning ranged attack speed and casting speed. Slow has no known effects on melee attack speed. If you are claiming otherwise you should provide some evidence that the tooltip is wrong.
If I understand it correctly, it only affects movement speed, casting speed, and ranged attack speed. It doesn't affect melee attack speed. Still, 3 out of 4 isn't bad. Seems great on any boss that casts spells.
Arcane Mind adjusts your base mana pool for how it is calculated (if you have it, your cost for Blink, Slow, Spellsteal, and your buffs increase as they are pegged to it) - and yes, we stacked both CoT and Slow onto players and the casters in Heroic Blood Furnace (slowest Summon attempt / shadowbolt / fireballs ever). Melee is slowed - they get a 50% slower animation, so it ends up looking silly watching them swing - and yes, I tried that on Razuvious in addition to every single creature in Heroic Blood Furnace, and a bunch of people in PVP.
You know the horrible pulls right at the end of the Blood Furnace before the boss? With slow, you could kite the demons to death and again, their swing timer was halved by slow. It is brutally effective.
(All right, again, I was basing this off the animation for the attack speed - it adjusts the swing animation in some cases, but that wasn't adjusting the actual attack speed for melee attacks - that was inaccurate)
Last edited by Groat : 06/07/07 at 5:28 PM.
Reason: Adjusting inaccuracies
Arcane Mind adjusts your base mana pool for how it is calculated (if you have it, your cost for Blink, Slow, Spellsteal, and your buffs increase as they are pegged to it) - and yes, we stacked both CoT and Slow onto players and the casters in Heroic Blood Furnace (slowest Summon attempt / shadowbolt / fireballs ever). Melee is slowed - they get a 50% slower animation, so it ends up looking silly watching them swing - and yes, I tried that on Razuvious in addition to every single creature in Heroic Blood Furnace, and a bunch of people in PVP.
You know the horrible pulls right at the end of the Blood Furnace before the boss? With slow, you could kite the demons to death and again, their swing timer was halved by slow. It is brutally effective.
That's pretty intense... sounds like a bug almost. Still way too much mana to keep on a boss, but I suppose an arcane mage could keep up slow during enrage? That seems too good, actually.
I love it in Heroics, I'd probably like in PvP if I did that more often. Kinda kicking myself for never busting it out on Magtheridon, though. Certainly it would be a great help during phase 1.
I use it during the Aran encounter, but just on a Water Elemental. I could not keep it up the entire time, that's for sure. I can't see it being too beneficial for Prince. I've not yet been subjected to SSC or TK trash, I can't comment there.
I would really like to see a parse that shows the melee attack speed being reduced. If I recall correctly, Slow did in fact, use to decrease melee attack speed, but it was changed to not affect it before the end of TBC Beta.
I have never seen any ability that is a % of base mana that increases with a talent increasing int.
All mage buffs are also direct mana cost, not linked to base mana pool.
Sorry to say it, but you're digging yourself into a hole here.
Not trying to start a fight or anything, but I already explicitly stated that I understand what is listed on the Thottbot Entry - I've been testing it in game myself, not trying to "dig myself into a hole"; also, the mana cost for Blink, Spellsteal, Slow, Arcane Brilliance (and self buff) all increased as a result of taking the talent. Bug? Possibly - but that's how the game functions right now. Yes, Dampen and Amplify are Static - those other spells are modified. It is a side issue and doesn't matter though - that wasn't even part of the discussion - if you want, I can be completely wrong about mana costs - doesn't matter to me too much - the discussion is on Slow.
Regardless, I'll post back with results of this in actual raiding tonight.
Dukes - it doesn't matter - that isn't the subject in the first place; this is talking about Slow. Great, the mana costs don't change after all for blink. Super great. That's a side issue and doesn't matter with regards to the effectiveness of Slow in a Raid Environment. As I said before, I'll observe how effectively it actually works in practice on several raids.
Slow costs way too much mana for too little benefit imo. I have had it in the past and it always just seems to bog me down manawise when I actively use it.
Having a shadow priest would probably make it a bit more viable.
Sorry, I'm just feeling a little pissed off right now after having had the raid cancelled because not enough people decided to show up for Al'ar which is annoying as we're really starting to get the hang of it.
As for slow, I'd still like to see it working. The problem is, our mages have enough mana problems as it is without "spamming"/situationally using slow (not to mention that fire is, in general, the best dps spec currently and they're still not, generally, doing as much damage as the warlocks/spriests/rogues in the raids, although I believe quartz may start to change that).
Will be interesting to see how much of an effect slow has, but I'm still not sure about the exact "usefulness" of the skill raid-wise even if it has a large direct effect.
Oh sure, hands down, I'm an advocate of deep fire and do considerable damage (much like most other high DPS Mages I've got the 3/3 and 2/2 tailored pieces along with Tier 4 shoulders and pretty well maxed out other slots) - this isn't testing something for damage output, but instead for mitigation to trivialize something - as long as there isn't an enrage timer, if this lowers the amount of healing needed for something or whatever else, it could certainly be quite interesting - and yes, I'd likely get a group with a Shadow Priest and a Shaman for trying this out, much like the group I get for doing the Ogre Council. It certainly has potential and I'm going to try and see how effective it can be.
If slow does effect raid bosses, the mana cost is irrelevant. If it took 4 shadow priests to give a mage enough mana to maintain slow while doing nothing else, a raid that did that would be vastly more powerful than one that didn't. +50% attack time is a disgustingly powerful debuff -- in many situations it'll increase a tank's survivability more than another healer would. I can't think of any possible justification for not having and using slow if it works.
If Slow affects raid bosses' melee swing speeds, it would undoubtedly be unintended. No amount of mana usage could justify a debuff of that power, from a balance perspective. It's still an interesting question whether it does, but I just want to be clear that if it does and the knowledge gets out, you shouldn't expect it to stay that way for long.
Can somebody just test this, instead of more back-and-forth? A quick PvP test would be fine. 50% is easily enough to see with the naked eye. Somebody with the talent log in and check.
As fairly anecdotal evidence I recall that using slow on maexxna caused her to skip one move out of her cycle (typically web wrapping people on the wall would stop happening) and threw class call timers on nef way off. The last time we ran either was pre-tbc so this may have changed/been fixed (or it may not even apply, as bosses these days work off of cooldowns instead of fixed timers for everything).
Slow used to do melee attack speed in Beta, it hasn't in live from a lot of testing. Its really easy to test, duel a warrior with a 3.x swing speed 2H and count on your fingers how long it takes him to attack. It does stack with MN poison and CoT for casting time, we use a mage with slow to kite/kill priest adds on Moroes if they're in the raid. Its really amusing watching a 6s mana burn castbar.
Also in beta most bosses were not immune to it, this has changed in live as well as it didn't take Blizzard long to realize how rediculous it made some fights, how would you balance a casting boss like Aran in a 10 man if 1 raid has slow and the other doesn't? Its either nearly impossible for one raid or a joke for the other hence, well no more fun on bosses.
Its still a great talent for heroics, it allows a mage to easily CC 2 mobs, sheep 1, kite 1 -- like the seduce/fear Warlock combo but actually reliable *jab warlocks, in all seriousness y'all know how hard the secuce/chain fear is to pull off*.
Naxx bosses/all non-TBC content bosses are a different story as they weren't designed with the 2.x talent trees existed so they most likely aren't flagged to be immune, have fun beating up all of your old world content with it.
It does indeed slow down swing animations; but animations dont tend to be linked very closely with whats actually going on. I cant say for sure on incoming damage, but it is easy to see with a two hander that all the effects of a swing happen as a character is just beginning his back swing.
Someone will need to check the time between attacks to find out if it indeed works, and not just how fast it looks. Shouldn't be a hard test.
If indeed it works on raid bosses, the only reason it hasn't been nerfed yet is because nobody specs slow. If this information is indeed correct, and it starts getting used; I wouldnt be surprised to see blizzard go so far as to make every elite mob in every raid instance immune to slow in a hotfix. The debuff would trivialize difficult encounters.
Slow used to do melee attack speed in Beta, it hasn't in live from a lot of testing. Its really easy to test, duel a warrior with a 3.x swing speed 2H and count on your fingers how long it takes him to attack. It does stack with MN poison and CoT for casting time, we use a mage with slow to kite/kill priest adds on Moroes if they're in the raid. Its really amusing watching a 6s mana burn castbar.
From the current patch notes-
"Mind-Numbing Poison" will no longer stack with both "Curse of Tongues" and "Slow".
That is ambiguous wording though to be honest and may well mean that MNP no longer stacks with CoT and no longer stacks with Slow. It doesn't implicitly mean that CoT and Slow are stacking with one another.
Whatever the deal is though, I'm unconvinced that Slow has sufficient applications to be worth speccing at this point. If it affects melee speed I've never seen that on Live and would surely be a bug and while the casting speed reduction is situationally nice it hardly critical and never worth the mana upkeep in encounters that I've done. If for some wild reason it were to be affecting melee speed and intended to do so, it would be the stupidest mechanic ever implemented anyhow. Hell, at least Tigur's didn't need refreshing every 15 seconds =)
05/21/07, 2:24 PM
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