Imp Counterspell... and that's it. I'm trying to figure out a good path to arcane instability for my build, and I can't.

Arcane Subtlety is nice, but after that, for a PvP build, I can't really figure out anything else to use as filler.

Are you getting Magic Attunement? I know several AP mages that use points in Improved Dampen right now, and if they're increasing the effect of dampen, magnifying it further is even more redux.

Same issue as Gilliam is describing. Few people raid with more than 3-4 Warlocks. To get said threat reduction we'd have to give up 10%+ Shadow damage, 10%+ Frost damage and something like 5% physical damage from Recklessness. I'd like a threat reduction that didn't hurt my DPS as massively as the current options. (I have 8/8 Nemesis and use it on Broodlord and Huhuran to name a couple, but otherwise go with Mish, Cabal etc).

Also, if you want to keep Warlocks as anything remotely close to the debuff role, you don't touch our curses. It's about all we've got to boost the effectiveness of other classes.

Hit is better than crit even with Ruin, in my opinion, because DoTs can't crit. Sure, with instant Corruption it's just a 1.5-second delay to recast, but it's still time taken away from shadow bolting or otherwise DPSing. The hit cap for Affliction spells is lower for me, though, because I have five points in Suppression - essentially +10% spell hit.

There's also the benefit to 100% Banish landing, and as a Demonology spell Banish gets no benefit from Suppression.

I'm not going to dig around for my old DPS calculations, they're in a couple places for folks who know where to look. Essentially, when trying to decide whether to take 1% hit or x +damage, calculate 1% of your shadow bolt DPS. This is roughly what the +hit is worth. Is that more damage upgrade than the +damage piece? If so, and if you're under the hit cap for whatever mobs you're fighting, you're better off with the +hit.

That formula won't take into account CoA or Corruption, but it will give you a rough guideline for choosing what gear is really optimal for DPS.

Surely, most PvE mages that are planning on going down the arcane tree down to PoM, meditation or imp CS will get two points in magic attunement over IAE.

Read up, Improved Shadow Bolt really is surprisingly powerful for a tier 1 talent.

Edit: To add to that, if you're heavy Affliction you should have at least three points in Suppression anyway.

This seems to have gotten lost in the mass of over night post, so i'll re-post it:

My pvp build

Sure it’s kind of a gimmick and you drop both PoM and Imp. CS but look at some of the highlights you pickup from the other trees;

1) Fire ward gives you 20% reflect while frost reflects 10% of there given spell schools, while that sounds marginal you have to keep in mind if your even remotely decent at PvP your already going to have either of these on your bar and hot-keyed. Why not just go a step further and give yourself a chance to reflect the full damage of that huge instant cast and AP / trinket fueled pyroblast back on the retard who tried to one shot you?

2) The rest of the fire tree speaks for it’s self, doing more damage with critical hits and reduced casting time along with added range. What isn’t to like?

3) Frost speaks for it’s self for the most part, the big highlights being the new 30 second ice barrier (assuming it’s not going to have just an insane mana cost) is honestly just to sick to give up in a heavy frost pvp build. It’s just ridicules, the amount of pure damage soak over the course of any sort of 1v1 or 1v2 situation you can think of.

4) Given the current state of shatter and depending on any change till live on how shatter will work this build would still allow for some sick burst off of the Imp. cone of cold and fireblast (too say nothing of having ignite along with that).

5) Cold snap just out of habit, not horribly impressed with dropping another point into imp. frost ward either.

I'll post my PvE build after I go buy a pack of smokes and walk the dog.

Yeah but in almost all cases, you wont be the only person with improved shadowbolt so it will end up being up a fair bit of the time anyway. Share the load. I wouldnt want to wear a bunch of crit with the expectation of keeping imp shadow bolt up there, ill pull aggro quite easily. A few warlocks with a balance of hit and crit as well as points in imp shadow bolt is what id like to see, rather than people with more crit gear.

I don't know which things affect periodic resists (it's kind of tough to test). I'm pretty sure spell penetration does (this is basically the whole point of Arcane Focus), but I have no idea about spellhit.

So landing a Spell Crit gives extra threat? I thought crits only gave threat from the extra damage to does, but you example has the crit giving extra threat.

Some in a raid should have Magic Attunement. The PoM builds will have it naturally though, so I don't think others will have to worry about it.

After playing a Mage for over a year before switching to tank for the guild, here are my thoughts:

All in all I think the new talents are pretty exciting, though they dropped the ball in one key area; complete removal of the reliance on Arcane. By not making Counterspell silence innate, 17 points in Arcane is still required for any Mage that wants to PvP. I'd love to try out Elementalist now (24Fire/27Frost looks sick), but without ICS the build will still get housed by any healing class with a clue. They really should have made Counterspell silence innately and made the talent reduce the cooldown by 2.5 seconds per point.

The change to Arcane Subtlety actually set the class back in terms of threat management. Pre 1.11, at least we had a fallback, low-threat nuke to use on encounters that required it, namely Broodlord. Sure, it was lower DPS, but at least we were able to do something. Now we're really no better off than Warlocks in terms of threat management, and are actually worse off than MD spec 'locks or 'locks in full Nemesis. Either rework Arcane Subtlety to reduce threat from all schools by 5% per point or leave the talent alone entirely.

Arcane Resilience needs to be rethought if it's going to remain linked to Arcane Meditation and Arcane Mind. As a single point talent it definitely doesn't need to be spectacular, but I think buffing it to 100% of total Intellect would be appropriate and wouldn't feel like the waste of a point that it currently does. Also, the feeling of wasting talent points up to ICS and PoM permeates the early portions of this tree. Previously, with the big 18, at least it didn't feel like a waste because you just plaing knew you had to have them. Now, it feels like points 11-16 and 19-20 are just a choice between the lesser of a few evils. Why is Wand Spec still there? Why does Improved Mana Shield still suck? Replace Wand Spec and buff Improved Mana Shield and we might actually have something here. Also, the new IAE seems rather weak considering Arcane crits don't have a talent to increase their damage.

The Frost tree seems really bottom-heavy in 1.11. There's just so many good talents in the first four tiers that I don't see anything other than 34/17 Frost/Arc ever spec'ing Winter's Chill. Also, when spec'ing up to Shatter, there's a break point at 19 points where you're forced to dump a point in filler. This problem is shared with Arcane when spec'ing to PoM, but the filler dumps in Arcane are actually worse now. Perhaps published numbers on the Dampen/Amplify buff will make Magical Attunement feel like less of a waste. All in all though, the new survivability talent and Frostbite's new position in the tree make Frost a very attractive tree in 1.11.

At first glance, Fire seems rather solid now. It's still a bit bottom heavy, but not painfully so like 1.11 Frost. Pyroblast is still garbage without PoM, Improved Fire Ward is still comparatively weak though potentially devastating to another Fire Mage, and Blast Wave still seems unnecessarily tied to Improved Flamestrike. Lowering point costs in Improved Scorch and Improved Fireblast was a good move, and the Burning Soul buff might be interesting now with Concentration Aura for Alliance Mages. Combustion still seems like too big of a trade-off for PoM though. Blizzard needs to realize that the 31 point talents in both of the elemental trees need to be exceptionally attractive considering that they cost the player PoM. That's always been the big upside to AP despite the giant "KILL ME NOW" sign it gives the Mage; you get a huge burst talent in AP and you get arguably the best talent availabe to a Mage in PoM.

In closing, I feel that they're close with this review thus far. But ultimately it feels like, in their effort to "make the Elemental spec more attractive", they just added and moved some nice talents in Fire and Frost while making the early talents in Arcane look like garbage to convince players Elemental is the way to go now. If they want to do it right, in summary they need to:

-Make Counterspell silence by default and make ICS reduce cooldown by 2.5 seconds per point.
-Replace Wand Spec.
-Adjust Arcane Subtlety to reduce threat from all schools by 5% per point and remove the crit mechanic or just leave the current 1.10 talent alone.
-Buff Arcane Resilience to 100% of total Intellect so it doesn't feel like a waste.
-Rethink the new Improved Arcane Explosion.
-Buff Improved Mana Shield.

Now, all three trees are attractive without making Elementalist look good only because getting to ICS or PoM feels like a waste.

Again, they're close to perfect right now. But close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.

Assuming 15% critrate (5ish from int, 5 from talents, 5 from gear), you're looking at a 10% (rough) DPS boost from ISB, versus less than 5% from Cataclysm. (As you're not Shadow Bolting all the time).

You need to keep in mind that the extra damage delivered via ISB is added to the next bolts, rather than a 70% boost to your critted bolt, so you're not actually getting extra threat on it. (Although gear to make ISB more powerful also increases your aggro:damage ratio slightly).

I really can't see why you'd want to skip one of the most awesome talents for endgame DPS. Even though we're holding back a lot, there are still tons of fights where I want every bit of DPS I can squeeze out, eg. Huhuran <30%. If the extra 10% DPS from ISB pushes you over the edge, aggro-wise, on the sensitive encounters, you can always hold back even more.

I thought we had disproven the crit = extra threat theory?

I haven't thought crits gave extra aggro for a while now?

This needs some fresh empirical tests, stat. I know for a fact that about 8 months ago when I did aggro testing at length, the following was true:

1) Mage nukes mob for 800 noncrit. I autoattack. Once I've done >800 damage, it turns to me.
2) Mage nukes mob for 1600 crit. I autoattack. Once I've done >1600 damage, it stays on him. 2000? Stays on him. After a couple hundred more, it turns.

People report that this may no longer be the case, and that would be a very good change if true, since punishing people for critting never made much sense to me. But it really needs to be tested.

If you're Horde, I recommend using the neutral elk in Azshara. They don't do anything fancy that will throw off aggro testing, and it's a pretty simple set of experiments.

Obviously, one person stacking only crit to keep up ISB for other Warlocks is gonna be at risk for pulling aggro if he has bad luck with spikes. However, 4/4 Warlocks with ISB will always be better than 3/4 Warlocks with ISB, even if the fourth one has very little crit gear.

I might just try this to confirm at some point.

It seems the recent testing of Maul was pretty conclusive, though.

I have around 7% crit (2% from gear, 1% from talent, 4% from the moon I guess).

You need to keep min mind it adds the damage bonus to the next shadow damage sources, which may or may not be shadow bolts. With 4 warlocks on a raid we generally have 2-3 Corruptions, 1-2 Siphon Lifes and a CoA on everything that takes more than 10 seconds to die. Corruption/Siphon are, as I've stated before, about 35% of my DPS, so I don't really want to give that up for a <10% damage boost from ISB. Nor do I feel it's right to ask all my fellow warlocks (some of whom, like me, have Nightfall and benefit even more for having Corruption on a mob) to avoid casting DoTs.

I try very, VERY hard to minimize crit on my equipment. It's an inefficient use of item budget points relative to +hit and +damage, especially since I don't have Ruin. Some have claimed (and are in this very thread) that spell crits no longer generate additional threat, but I suspect they do. When I was pulling aggro on Ouro, I was getting unlucky crit strings - crit rate around 17% instead of my usual 6-9%. Given I took a 1-minute no spells break and still managed to pull aggro shortly thereafter, I strongly suspect there's more threat being generated than simple 1800 damage crits would account for.

The following, from above, contradicts your premise:
If the debuff boosts all dot ticks from all warlocks without consuming any charges, that seems like a big deal to me. Does it?

Actually, tests show that ISB improves the damage of all sources, but only Shadow Bolts count towards the four charges. Essentially, you can get 20% on four Shadow Bolts, as well as on 6 ticks of Corruption and 3 ticks of Siphon.

Well shit. I've never seen testing data to suggest that, and my personal experience (watching an ISB fade between my shadow bolt casts, with only 3 other warlocks in the raid) would seem to contradict that. We may need to test that as well. If true then yes, it's an extremely good rank 1 talent and a much better boost to DPS than I'd anticipated.

Mosh, can you provide a link to recent tests of ISB?

I’m really not a fan of the idea that ICS is completely necessary for pvping as a mage, fucken hell just learn to watch the other caster and time it right. I’m not going to lie; it’s stupidly helpful when going up against a 1v2 or more fight with a healer, ICS the healer then PoM sheep and go from there. For all it’s gimp usefulness it’s still just a 2 second silence considering how most people use it, easy enough to work around honestly.