Yep, that is how it will work with +damage. However, things like the +frost glove enchant and the of Frozen Wrath items will also help the Barrier.

This calls for a Venn diagram!

Did they reduce Imp. Blizzard back down to where it was?

Wow, there are suddenly quite a variety of raid options. It's a bit hard to visualize without seeing the trees, but something like 36/15 Frost, PoM in either direction, and uber-Fire (maybe something like 10/38/3) all seem viable.

And of course, since you can't really run out of mana on Firemaw, the best way to use it is to dump it into Ice Barrier every 30 seconds :-P .

These new changes make the elemental PvP build a lot better for PvE

I think, definitely, Imp. Blizzard. What's the point of 1/2 Magic Attunement? Anytime Dampen/Amplify are important, the people with 2/2 will be casting it anyway (and that should easily be coevered by the PoM builds).

Hm btw, do you think the new -30% threat talents will stack with Salvation?

Probably multiplicatively, as per discussion on Mechanics thread.

The talent changes are pretty amazing imo, besides them leaving the arcane tree useless (I can see spec'ing for CS/PoM still, but rest of the tree is pretty meh), and leaving arcane missles as an ass spell.

My only complaints about the frost tree now is there's too many goddamn good things to get there now and not enough points to allow a great elementalist build. +6% spell hit for a 3pt tier1 frost talent? lol yes I'll take it. -30% threat added to the -15% mana frost talent? haha no brainer. The new ice barrier looks sexy as well, with 30 sec cooldown and PW:S not eating it. The 454 dmg on the blue description is for rank1, its around 800-850 for max rank (+50-60 hp from the +10% frost dmg bonus).

All in all I'm pretty torn on if I want to go with a heavy frost build with goodies like barrier and winter's chill, or a more mixed elememtalist build with stuff like shatter+blastwave for pvp face melting. That's a good thing - the best we can hope for is being torn between which -good- talents to take instead of taking a bunch of ass talents to fill a cookie cutter build because most of them suck.

Hopefully we'll see some real diversity in mage specs after this patch; I'm looking forward to it.

i was thinking of trying this one out for raids: http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?kbZxxMzbcZVA0ssfzho as it gives a bit more flexibility between frost and fire. being able to pyro off NW focus every time will be awesome for sure.

I've decided to go for a 32 point fire 19 ice spec build for the moment, so I'm still useful in MC & BWl but also have fire for outside those instances.

I've been ice spec for 9 months now, I want COmbustion, big fireballs and things that go BOOM for once. I'll just have to try to live without Iceblock on raids now, which wil be painful...

This is what I'm thinking if I go fire http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?of0y0ocZxgM0fcht0b

This is what I'm thinking if I go frost http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?of0y0ofZZii0ckfzVo

That fire build is pretty similar to what I'm planning to try out first, for PvE ^_^

http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?Rf0E00cZVgM0fcht0b

2/0/49 is now clearly the best build. I can't believe the power of these changes.

Are most of you forgetting that they're passing out Frost Resist gear for Naxx? That seems to indicate to me that a Fire build is going to be optimal, if not necessary, in 1.11.

I don't have 8/8 nw, and yes, I´ve been thinking about pyro and blastwave as well. We'll see what I end up using, though pyro would only be usable with combustion and blast wave is pretty damn situational in pve.

I'm torn between 21/30/0 and 0/30/21 for my alt. I can't decide if PoM and Clearcasting are worth spending fifteen points on less appealing talents. The nice thing about Evocation and instant AE being talented was that you had a lot of good things to spend points on to go heavy into Arcane. But now, it's not as easy.

I was kind of hoping they'd do more to address the mana efficiency of frost vs fire, but Master of Elements will be sweet nonetheless.

Possibly, but just b/c a mob does Frost Damage does not necessarly mean it will have a high resist to Frost.

Even if a few bosses do have the resists, Locks have the Curse of -75 resist and the Arcane talent reduces it by another 10.

i think we can quietly accept Kel'Thuzad at least to be immune to Frost spells. But then every Lich in the game is.

Its not an elemental dungeon so there won't be a lot of pure frost resist guys going around. but then a lot of them will be piling on heavy frost, nature and shadow damage

Har har no.

Ras is highly frost resistant but he can be hit with frost spells. (this is one instance in which 5 piece Enigma comes in very handy :toot:)

Just noticed that Winter's Chill now takes 10 frost spells to reach the 10% more crit (Used to be 5 spells).