That is correct, because MN was stacking with CoT, so you could have Slow CoT and MN up, pretty OP. They nerfed it to MN or CoT, and slow will stack on that from what i understand.
Okay, so we just finished up on Magtheridon - the Channelers and the Warders both can be Slowed (and it does indeed really help make the fourth and fifth Channelers trivial) however when I first tried to Slow Magtheridon, a big "IMMUNE" displayed on my screen and I wept inside. Still did okay damage:
Rogue, Affliction Warlock, Rogue, Deep Fire, Shadow Priest, ME, Deep Fire
It isn't a completely gimp spec and certainly helps out with things in there - on to Serpentshrine for hilarity.
Okay, from everything we've encountered so far tonight in Serpentshrine:
Coilfang Frenzy - Can be slowed (but no reason to due to how they spawn / despawn)
Underbog Colossus - IMMUNE
Collossal Rager - Can be Slowed (AOE adds after certain Colossus Types)
Greyheart Tidecaller - Can be Slowed
Greyheart Shield-Bearer - Can be Slowed.
Fathom-Lord Karathress - IMMUNE
Fathom-Guard Sharkkis - IMMUNE
Fathom-Guard Caribdis - Can be Slowed. (Priest)
Fathom-Guard Tidalvess - Can be Slowed. (Shaman)
I'm sorry but I think you are on your own here. The difference between having CoT/Mindnumbing poison on magtheridon adds and having slow on them is a very trivial part of the encounter. The main crunch of the encounter is getting people to click cubes from what ive seen.
Since it doesnt slow attack speed there is very little justification of speccing to an inferior raid dps spec for this high mana cost-low output spell.
Unless of course it did do melee attack speed on bosses then it would just be imba.
It actually does substantial damage in that spec - we just downed Fathom-Lord Karathress and I was #7, right behind two Fire Mages. It is fairly good on each encounter I've tried it with, surprisingly enough.
Its not the arcane spec im doubting, but the one point in slow that could have gone into fire at say 2% more fire damage.
I find it very hard to agree with this level of min-maxing. I understand people want to do as much damage as possible but sometimes the return you get is really not worth it. Case in point: playing with fire. 3% of damage for 3 points is a shitty return to begin with, and it has a drawback as well? Ugh. In this case though, slow may not be a great raiding ability but it has powerful uses (caster mobs) and additionally is VERY strong in other areas of the game, such as pvp, heroics, soloing (if the shit hits the fan). I find it hard to argue that 2% more fire damage would be worth a great deal of utility, even if it is situational utility.
Blast Wave, on the other hand... that I could see.
What about for Solarian? Seems like all her abilities are channeled or instant :o I guess I can't think of any viable raid role here.
Just a shot in the dark... it may work on channeled spells after 2.1. Since channeled spells are being changed to be affected by spell haste, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that they may become affected by slow as well.
Obviously, pure speculation... sorry bout that. I'd suggest a test on the PTR, but with 2.1 likely going live in a few hours...
I find it very hard to agree with this level of min-maxing. I understand people want to do as much damage as possible but sometimes the return you get is really not worth it. Case in point: playing with fire. 3% of damage for 3 points is a shitty return to begin with, and it has a drawback as well? Ugh. In this case though, slow may not be a great raiding ability but it has powerful uses (caster mobs) and additionally is VERY strong in other areas of the game, such as pvp, heroics, soloing (if the shit hits the fan). I find it hard to argue that 2% more fire damage would be worth a great deal of utility, even if it is situational utility.
Blast Wave, on the other hand... that I could see.
It depends on one's perspective. I've had 1/3 PWF and 3/3 several times. I've actually got Impact right now because I like it for lolpvp and Heroics. That said, 2% increase in total damage is damned nice and I'll be back to 3/3 soon enough.
I can understand where incremental improvements might seem small but from where I stand, squeezing out another 2% dps is a pretty good thing. I'll definitely agree that the talent is poorly designed though.
Just to throw this up here: had an Arcane Mage in my previous guild (who did awful damage: our deep Fire Mage tank died when Maulgar was at 40% while the Arcane one lived to the end and despite wearing stam/FR gear, the Fire Mage still outDPSd our Arcane Mage...) who said that Gruul was immune to Slow, but not Maulgar. But he was really bad so don't take this information as the ultimate truth.
Theorycrafting procedures per role:
DPS = Theory -> Spreadsheet -> Practice
Healing = Theory -> Practice -> Logs
Tanking = Theory -> Theory -> Theory
Okay, figured I'd provide an update on this after much more fun with slow. We had our first kill of Vashj and I got to help out with the kiting role on phase two thanks to Slow working just fine there (kiting them primarily with hunters and making sure that I maintained slow on it to keep it well behind them). Vashj herself is also vulnerable to slow, but it really is only worth it for dealing with the kiting part.
Ultimately, the ability provides additional benefit in lots of locations AND on fights where you don't have mana issues (Void Reaver being a big example of that) assuming your group has a Shadow Priest / Shaman (depending, we'll often have a dps group or two containing Mage, Mage, Shadow Priest, Resto Shaman, Mage/Warlock) you can dump huge amounts of damage in the spec - the main problem always is efficiency, but it was far less bad than I expected.
Yes, it is weaker on Mogorim Tidewalker as you lack Blast Wave / Dragon's Breath, but for the most part it has been a solid choice - I've stuck by it.
Slow isn't bad to have at all and certainly simplifies aspects of fights AND is very helpful on godforsaken trash. Overall I've been pleased enough by the experiment to stand by the spec of 41/17/3.
Slow is obviously pretty situationally useful, but here's a related spec question - what kind of casting rotations are you then using with a deep Arcane build? We have a few mages who swear by Slow for heroics/etc, but I'm unsure how you'd DPS as arcane vs. the usual deep fire (while maintaining a similar sustainability). Are you throwing out Arcane Blast to 1 stack and then Fireballing with AM on clearcast, or making AM your mainstay? Actual discussion can go in the other forum, I just had that quick question upon reading this thread.
Oh sure, I've actually flipped (now that I have 2/5 Tier 5) to doing approximately 2 fireballs / 2 arcane blasts. For shits and giggles last night we ended with Gruul and I exclusively spammed Arcane Blast on the fight (+evocation/gems/combat mana pots only/Shadow Priest/Resto Shaman) and still came out around #6 on total DPS - ahead of one of the other mages.
2 Arcane Blast 2 Fireball has a tiny overlap gap so it can either be filled with a third fireball, a fireblast, or a scorch; I was using that rotation for phase 1 and phase 3 of Vashj. By tiny overlap I mean until the debuff falls off (after the six seconds from Fireball casts, you have a fraction of a second left of Arcane Blast debuff).
As always, you adjust your DPS based on mana / boss health left / future available mana - for Max DPS, Arcane Power is used every time it is up - otherwise it is only mostly used the first time it is up with a PoM. Arcane Blast nuking is my end of boss move usually now (3-5k arcane blast crits, every 1.5s go!) if mana is holding up.
1) It does NOT slow melee swing times, though it slows animations.
2) It does NOT stack with Curse of Tongues.
3) Many raid targets are just flat out Immune.
Can anyone provide evidence to contradict 1 or 2? I had it for a while but I found 1 & 2 to be true and thus dropped it. Given the immense cost and relatively short duration, CoT is preferrable.
Just to throw this up here: had an Arcane Mage in my previous guild (who did awful damage: our deep Fire Mage tank died when Maulgar was at 40% while the Arcane one lived to the end and despite wearing stam/FR gear, the Fire Mage still outDPSd our Arcane Mage...) who said that Gruul was immune to Slow, but not Maulgar. But he was really bad so don't take this information as the ultimate truth.
I enjoyed this post.
I'd only consider bringing a Mage solely for Slow on things that need to be kited where Hunters are busy, or where casters need to be interrupted easier and Warlocks are at a premium.
1) It does NOT slow melee swing times, though it slows animations.
2) It does NOT stack with Curse of Tongues.
3) Many raid targets are just flat out Immune.
Can anyone provide evidence to contradict 1 or 2? I had it for a while but I found 1 & 2 to be true and thus dropped it. Given the immense cost and relatively short duration, CoT is preferrable.
#2 is not correct - it DOES stack with CoT AND it stacks with CoEx. Likewise, #3 is not exactly correct. Very few raid targets are actually Immune; they just functionally are because it doesn't accomplish much against them. Technically it works on a ton of targets, just there are some cases where they are immune to movement impairing effects, have no ranged attacks that aren't instant, and don't cast spells - they can be hit by it, but it doesn't do anything. It still does work on many raid targets. Very few are flagged as Immune (I was surprised by how rarely I'd actually see it - Vashj, Lurker, Leo are all perfectly vulnerable to it).
My alt mage is specced 48/13/0 for heroics, and has been that spec since he hit 70. I have tried slow on just about everything, including several Karazhan bosses, and I can guarantee you that it does nothing useful against any boss. Aran, the best example that I can think of that you might want this ability for in raiding, is definitely immune to it, and I think it is safe to assume that any other caster bosses would have the same immunity.
Slow may be applied successfully to a mob, but that does not necessarily mean that it is snared. If a mob is otherwise immune to snares, it is almost certainly immune to the snare portion of slow. Also slow does nothing against melee attack speed, and as soon as curse of tongues and slow stop stacking, slow will be 100% useless in raiding as long as you have a warlock available.
So what is slow useful for? Slow is awesome for heroics, it makes kiting mobs very very easy. Slow is also extremely useful in PvP, against just about any class. It is especially brutal against casters, when you cast slow on them, followed by arcane missiles. If they try to get any cast time spell off it is very easy to CS them. If they have a means of dispelling slow, and do so, it is pretty much guaranteed that they are going to try to cast something - so you have a full 1.5 second warning for when it comes.
Well, again, I took the experiment further and have been using it against raid bosses from Gruul on up through SSC and the Eye. Magtheridon was Immune (his adds were not and it helps on them), Fathomlord Karathress and his Hunter were Immune, but his Shaman and Priest were not, and one or two types of trash have been Immune. Most of the rest has been vulnerable and it is something that has potential uses for Vashj and Kael both (we used it on Vashj and that was a help for us on beating the encounter) - and it has plenty of other spots where it can be used, but yes, it doesn't affect melee and a lot of things it just isn't effective against even if they are vulnerable.
I honestly think Blizzard should just make Slow a trainable and change the 41 point talent to, you know, something compelling enough for us that we actually have to weigh taking it versus Blast Wave or Ice Block.
I just blew 100g confirming what I already knew. Slow and CoT do not stack. They can both be on a mob at once but Slow's casting effect is ignored in favor of CoTs 60% reduction.
I know part of every Mage wants Slow to be useful but it just isn't.
I honestly think Blizzard should just make Slow a trainable and change the 41 point talent to, you know, something compelling enough for us that we actually have to weigh taking it versus Blast Wave or Ice Block.
I was talking about this subject exactly yesterday with some of my friends on vent. I realize this won't ever be implemented nor would it be really good, but some sort of arcane explosion on death as 41 point talent would be fun. Either by activation or just passive on death you explode for 100% of your mana AOE.
I like slow though, I'm specced 50 11 0 at the moment and have tons of fun with it in raids and pvp. Given the somewhat cheesy pom pyro combo it's still a nice build and slow does have its uses.
Making the current slow trainable would make pvp pretty ridiculous for a mage in its current form. If they change up the spell a bit for pvp I could see it being trainable.
As long as we are throwing out new 41 point talents. Brilliance Aura (in some non-sucky implementation) would be great and tie in well with the fact that arcane spells just suck down mana quite rapidly.
05/21/07, 7:17 PM
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