what if you have the ZG mage trinket

what then

I see this all the time, but with only 50% bonus damage on arcane crits, here's something to ponder:

Lets say your AE hits for 300 (takes about +280 spell damage, pretty typical for a mage that's been 60 awhile, but hasn't raided much).

In order to get it to increase by 1% via +dmg (on average), you'd need an increase of 3 which would take 21 spell damage. (multipliers of 3/7 due to casting time and 1/3 due to aoe).

In order to get an increase of 1% via crit, you'd need an increase of 2% crit (b/c it's only a 50% bonus).

So for IAE, the break even point is about 10.5 damage, which is generally easier to attain than 1% crit (predictably due to stat budgeting).


That said, the benefits of mage crit with these new talents in terms of threat reduction and efficiency (especially if AoE spells can proc multiple instances of MoE if they crit separate targets) make the new improved AE an interesting talent choice.

Master of Elements is frost and fire only, not arcane.

What do you mages think is going to be the new optimum raiding spec?

Personally the mana efficiency of a Master of Elements/Winter's Chill build is sickening, and with a 5 enigma, 3 netherwind, plus some of the more crit oriented +dmg items, I have a feeling mages will be starting to approach rogue/warrior sustained dps. As a warlock, I feel the pain of zero dps life tapping in any fight over 45 seconds.

Given 203 mana frost bolts from Frost Channeling alone, mages can cast continuously for almost a minute and a half with an 8k mana pool.

Now include the crit mana return, and increased crit chance from winter's chill being up there all the time.

I'm getting jealous.


Anyone up for doing the math to see if there is a rank of frostbolt castable that can realistically keep a mage casting until evocation is cool again?

Now that I thought about it some more (and saw the talent calculator, and did some more thinking)

All these changes. Very... Meh. Not as pissed off as I was before, nor am I as happy. Its like... mages got a side grade. (Except horde*. Sorry :()

The new AE talent... is terrible. This is what I came up with, for PvE (with some PvP viability) full 31 Frost // 20 Arcane

-Arcane (20 points)
3/3 Arcane Subtlety
2/5 Arcane Focus
5/5 Arcane Concentration
4/5 Improved Arcane Explosion
1/1 Arcane Resilience
2/2 Improved Counterspell
3/3 Arcane Meditation

-Frost (31 points)
2/2 Improved Frost Nova
5/5 Improved Frostbolt
5/5 Ice Shards
3/3 Frostbite
3/3 Piercing Ice
1/1 Cold Snap
2/2 Arctic Reach
3/3 Frost Channeling
5/5 Shatter
1/1 Ice Block
1/1 Ice Barrier

It's going to take a lot of number crunching to try and figure out optimal builds now, from the look of things. I'm glad my last exam is tomorrow night.

After thinking about it:

The changes are OK. However, the main limiting factor on most fights for mages isn't the amount of damage they can theoretically do -- it's the threat that they generate. Basically, there's too much of it, and they have no effective way of reducing their threat short of "doing less damage." For a DPS class, this is a pretty annoying solution, and while a subtlety talent that effects all 3 schools is appreciated, its impact is minimal.

Presence of Mind/Counterspell still gives any talent build that includes at least 21 points in Arcane a huge edge in PvP combat.

Elementalist builds are more functional for PvE than they were, which is nice I guess.

I'll do a longer overview at some later point, but for the most part, this is where Blizzard screwed up with the revamp:

1) No effective threat reduction/removal. Mages are capped on the damage they can do, not from gear, or ability -- but strictly because they cannot go all out, or they will pull aggro, and they have no way to shed it. This was the biggest problem with the class with regards to raiding, and they've done absolutely nothing about it. At 20% crit, I have a ~13% decrease in threat generated. Oh, boy. Colour me massively unimpressed. Do they really not realize what the problem is? Or are they purposefully not giving us a solution to it?

2) Wand specialization. What the fuck is this still doing in our talent trees?

3) Improved Counterspell and Presence of Mind. The utility that these two talents present the user are of extreme importance in PvP; and they are both still buried deep in the Arcane tree, and so Mages that take part in PvP will still be stuck with something very close to their old cookie-cutter builds.

4) Pyroblast is still completely, utterly useless without Presence of Mind. In PvP, when am I ever going to have 6 seconds to cast a spell? I can tell you: never. In PvE, the DPS is below Fireball. Why would it ever be used without PoM? Hell, it's tough enough to get off a 3 second fireball a lot of the time in PvP. The fact that Pyroblast is useless without PoM makes PoM even more valuable to the PvP mage than it should otherwise be. They needed to change it to a 3.5 or 3 second cast.

5) Arcane Power. Still too good. Sorry. What will happen when I'm breaking +1000 damage in my regular gear? I'm currently at +615 or so... for Blizzard, which claims to be trying to remove the ability to one-shot people in PvP, they're doing a pretty poor job of it. While it's hilarious for a short period of time, it's a really, really lame element of PvP and doesn't lead itself to any interesting strategy.

6) Ice Block is still the biggest PvE talent in any of the trees. The closest thing to a "deaggro" we can get (which it isn't -- it just gives the tank 10 seconds to try and regain aggro), and it requires 21 points in Frost. If we had received an effective deaggro elsewhere, Ice Block would be much more reasonable.

7) Ward talents. Only useful in PvP. However, in PvP they're only really useful against other Mages. They're about as useful as Wand Specialization. If they wanted to make these abilities truly useful, they should have merged them into a single "Magic Ward" buff, or allowed talents to reduce their cooldowns to 15 or 20s. Still just wasted space in our talent trees.

I should get back to studying.

One concern I have is whether or not the Master of Elements mana refund generates threat. We'll have to wait for test.

Fire (31 points)

5/5 Impact
5/5 Ignite
3/3 Improved Fire Blast
2/2 Flame Throwing
2/2 Incinerate
3/3 Improved Flamestrike
2/2 Burning Soul
3/3 Critical Mass
1/1 Blast Wave
5/5 Fire Power

Frost (20 points)

2/2 Improved Frost Nova
3/3 Permafrost
5/5 Ice Shards
3/3 Frostbite
2/3 Piercing Ice
5/5 Shatter

This will probably be my spec to start. Not sure on the burning soul points but will have to test it to really know. This is going to be crazy good in PvP.

It's my current spec basically without improved counterspell and PoM but WITH shatter that works on fire spells. Not having improved counterspell isn't a big deal, the only time counterspell makes a difference in a fight for me is against a healer, and the only thing that matters there is the actual counterspell. Losing PoM may suck a bit in WSG but overall it's well worth it.

1) Agree 100%

2) Also Agree 100%

3) This would be my new pureply PVP build.

4) Why get it then? Honestly I wouldn't unless working towards Arcane Power.

5) 615? How the hell? Anyways I agree, leaving it as is dose nothing to stop the big crits people bitch about or detract from reality that a 31 point arcane mage in post MC epics basically gets a free win on any class not equally well geared. This argument can always be made for any class but in truth no single talent point across any class can so drastically change the PVP landscape, the single possible exception is Aimed Shot.

6) Again I agree 100% with you here, not having Ice block is simply not an option as a full time raiding mage. Hell as a near full time pvp mage I have a hard time really making an argument for not having IB vs. any of the other pure ability talents (e.g. any talent that gives you something you wouldn’t currently have; PoM, AP, etc.).

7) I only partly agree with you here, both wards are almost completely worthless depending on how the talent text is actually read in game. If it’s like it currently is to reflect 20%+ of the damage absorbed then yes it’s still trash, if it is however like IGN posted and 10% to 20% to reflect the full fire spell then that’s really worth considering for a pvp spec.

Yep I have to comment on this aswell. Like Hagakure said, if the new imp fire ward is truly a pure reflect of 20% of the fire spells, then it is definately worth considering for PvP. Hell, I'll even toss in one point in the frost equivalent and try it out in my elementalist PvP build.

Most people seem to think that it's still the old damage absorbed reflection, thus they say it's shit. But if you think about it, why on earth would they nerf the currently most useless talent in fire? Why on earth would they lower the insane 35% out of 585 absorbed down to 20%?

The answer is: the spell will be completly reflected, which has to be considered a really nice PvP addition, be it frost or fire reflection (pyro reflect, soul fire reflect, Frost nova reflect - bye shatter).

I will try it out for sure, I have about 6-7 different elementalist builds in stock with only a few points difference. And if these reflection talents sucks I will just quickly move on to another of the 7 builds.

P.S: I still don't dare to believe that shatter will work for fire spells. Tseric only confirmed that it's a 5 point talent, he didn't respond to the people asking if it will indeed work for fire, and who the hell trust IGN after all typos?

My new "Ultimate 3 Minute Mage" build for post 1.11

http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?RhbxtzuZxx0oZi0cuom

Frost Nova
Trinket
POM
Pyroblast

So you have an instant cast pyroblast with +40% chance to crit.

Byebye.

Crud, 2 pages too late, and Ming figured it out before me...

Ah well, still going to be a killer.

Why is this so outlandish? You can see my main raid set below, and I can push it a bit harder when I really want to have fun.

What I don't understand is why mages got a talent review that appears toboost their PvP options considerably, their 5 player instancing options quite a bit, and completely ignore them at raiding.

Whilst, in reality, mages currently are one of the strongest PvP classes, are great in 5 player instances, and weak on raiding.

It seems Blizzard wants the class to be a pvp specialist. I just hope they haven't decided to go the same way with shaman...

Here's hoping that there is an overall set of caster changes as promised to do with threat control - maybe make spirit reduce threat from spells for all casters?

Managing threat is very big words for standing still and doing nothing.

Im afraid Arc Sub is all we gonna see in this regard.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...5&p=#post882034

Well, I hate to sound drama queenish on these great boards, but I'm glad my guild allows people to swap their main characters over to an alt once in their lifetime then...

I honestly cannot understand the threat thing. Unless my guild is doing something incredibly wrong, mages are already low damage in BWL on : VAel, Broodlord, Firemaw, Ebonroc, Flamegore, Chromaggus.
From the fights I have experianced in AQ40, it's the same there.

I just don't understand how worsening our aggro "control" is a solution here.

What's so special about hunters 2K critical hits than they need a complete aggro wipe every 30 seconds?

----

Assuming that one would be keeping their mage character - is Iceblock still a completely necessery talent for raiding do you think? I honestly can't imagine not having it, but I've been a frost mage in some variation since level 50 or so.
It would be nice to try out 31 points in fire, but doing so would mean losing Iceblock...

I don't think it has ever been truly "essential" in the sense that Evocation is essential. Granted, it is probably the greatest single point pve talent other than Evocation, but you can definitely live without it.

Hello there, i'm just pointing out some future issues :

- Winter's chill debuff working properly on HL boss
- Debuff priority and winter's chill.

Hi from France :)

I like http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?kZExbobbhxihsz0Vo for PvP. Flame Throwing/Burning Soul could be substituted for Imp Flamestrike and Blastwave and I'll probably end up trying both.

The whole point of the build would be slowing with frost spells and damaging with fire. Then I'd Frost Nova and Pyroblast when I get a NW procs.

I’m better geared for one and since where guild mates I didn’t figure he was that high secondly. I get 544+ in my PVP gear but 3.8k+ HP and -30 resistance are nice from a personal prospective over full NW, at least 1v1 or 1v2.

what would be a great addition is a talent that increases your + damage bonus from equipped items by 20/40/60/80/100. Then mages will get back on top where they deserve, and i can imagine lore wise Mages being able to amplify the the enchantments on their own equipment.

myabe a 100% would be too significant but as its only the wequipped item bonus, maybe its realistic. Although 50% would be more likely.

a great 26-30 arcane talent in my opinion. but heck i've only been playing my mage for a month and she's only 32. but having played a priest for over a year and seen the increasing inneffectives of mage vs hunter/warlock dps in a raid, i'd say it'd definately balance the books again and put mages where they are described as being in the manual

Even 50% would be imba. I don't see Blizzard implementing that kind of talent.