Mage forums are going to be entertaining this afternoon, that's for sure.

AP Frost is now dead.

Ice Barrier is still shit (No mention of any change)

They fucked up the frost tree. You have a floater point to get to teir 3, and there are no good floater point talents.

I like the changes to the arcane tree alot. New arcane sub is amazing. New the mage armor talents makes me :lol: Rest of the changes are good. AP took a nerf.

I give the new fire tree a big ?:[

To what I see, best PvE spec is now 21 arcane / 30 frost.

Changes are nice overall.

Edit: Overally is not a word.

Well, to be fair the old talent had absolutely zero use in PvP. The new one gives some spell penetration. It's also a buff, effectively, in the 95% of situations where mages aren't walking on pins and needles with regard to aggro. Having all crits cause half threat is a pretty decent aggro reduction across the board. Probably -20% threat or so in practice.

As for "gg Alliance," well, we have yet to see the shaman revamp, totem mechanics, and Tranquil Air in particular.

Mages certainly didn't seem to particularly enjoy "aggro control" meaning investing talent points that got no use at all 95% of the time and having to spam their worst and most mana-inefficient spell.

Wait, you're kidding, right?

Oh, wait, you're Alliance, aren't you..

Ice Barrier had its cd and duration rates swapped. Pvp boost, pve irrelevance.

I may be missing something, but with the new arcane I really don't see these much-lauded 'elementalist' changes.

Ice barrier's cooldown is 30 seconds yay!

Wouldn't you have to have a 40% crit rate to make it a 20% threat reduction?

Am I wrong to say less threat on crits is a good thing?

Hmm. I might retract my state about ice barrier. Although they still fucked up the teirs in frost.

Why is Wand Specialization still there?

Fire seems to have been buffed overall, and both the other trees nerfed a bit. Combustion makes me want to take it now. If there's no longer the +50% crit on frozen targets, frost is pretty screwed D:

Wodin: Giving mages +200 armor makes them have more than rogues? Are you sure? (I don't know myself, it just seems a little odd.)

Edit: improved counterspell and PoM are still down in arcane, which disappoints me.

It's about 17%. Arcane Sub turns crits into hits for aggro purposes(50% of 2x damage = x). So at a 20% critrate, you end up with 1.2X total damage, whereas you end up with X aggro. 1/1.2 -> .83repeating.

21 arc/30 fire is going to to be ruthless now with the right gear, I think.

3/3 arcane sub 5/5 arcane focus
5/5 clearcasting
1/1 arcane resilience 1/2 magic attunement
3/3 arcane med 2/2 improved counterspell
1/1 PoM

improved fireball 5/5, impact 5/5
--
improved scorch 2/2, pyroblast, burning soul 2/2
improved scorch 3/3, master of elements 3/3
critical mass 3/3, blast wave [looks to be untied to improved flamestrike now?]
fire power whatever is left

Massive +crit chance to scorch for bonus mana return and reduced threat on said crits. Scorchlocking Sons of Fankriss for the win?

Edit: How is multi-critting with Flamestrike going to work with Master of Elements?

This is fucking stupid.

I can't believe they actually made us worse. Congrats on 200 armor and 5% arcane explosion crit. BTW you still die at a stiff breeze and now can do less damage without pulling aggro.

I don't think very many frost mages have a 20% crit rate against raid bosses (where it would matter). There aren't any +crit frost talents aside from shatter which is now nerfed, so all you'd get is the 3% from arcane instability in an optimal build.

I'd wager most frost mages are sitting at 11-12% crit sans shatter.

Hm. Outside of Broodlord, what are the agro sensitive encounters (Ouro is the only one I can think of)?
(Currently ingame, who knows wtf happens in Nax)

BoS makes me stupid. Sorry :(

(At least the new Arcane Sub is amazing for Alliance!)

As a Fire Mage, with all the crit talents, I have a Fire crit rate of around 20% (hovers between 19-22, depending on gear). That's a significant amount of crit for a mage -- Frost mages will be lower. If, as some people had previously mentioned, spell crits were no longer generating additional aggro (ie, no 1.5 multiplier).

Let's say I'm using Fireball. I cast it 100 times, and I have a crit rate of 20%. Average damage of 1200.

80x1200=96,000 damage
20x1800=36,000 damage (which becomes 18000 threat)
20x720=14,400 damage (Ignite -- no threat reduction).

Pre-changes, this would have generated 146,400 threat. Post-changes, it generates 128,400 threat. Comes up to around a 13% decrease in threat generated -- and that's with a very high crit rate. That's a pretty goddamn big nerf, coming from a situation where it was a 40% decrease and we were STILL able to pull agro if we weren't careful.

Short of implementing "per-class totems," I can't see it being any different, even if they did increase the effectiveness of the totem.

I enjoyed it a lot more than standing there doing absolutely nothing, which is what we'll be doing a lot of on threat-capped encounters.

:wth:

Pretty sure you don't mean Nefarian, but otherwise, yeah. Any boss with a large %-based deaggro is going to cause problems for mages. We'll probably end up changing our Ouro strategy entirely under these new changes, for example.

I agree with those except for Ebonroc and Onyxia and Nefarian (but I'm typically being a decurse bitch anyway so I don't get a chance to do damage).

Anyway, these changes are next to worthless in my opinion, Blizzard just doesn't fucking get it, I'd rather they just left the class alone if this is the idea they have for us.

Threat for frost is as:

(1 + crit)

Threat for arcane and fire is as:

(1 + .5*crit)

Threat post-sub is:

(1 + .5crit) and (1+.25crit)

Reduction for frost:

(1)/(1+crit)

Reduction for arcane/fire:

(1-.25crit)/(1+.5crit)

20% overall threat reduction for frost implies a 25% crit rate; e.g.

25% crit rate on a 1 damage frostbolt implies your average damage output, and hence threat output, is 1.25 per FB.

If you only generate half threat on crits, although you're generating 1.25 damage worth of threat, you're only generating 1 threat for that damage (75% at 1 threat, 25% at... 1 threat)

For fire/arcane, you need around 30% spellcrit to generate a 20% threat reduction.

Is there any chance they are going to make AM do considerably less threat by default, thus making the old Arcane Sub talent useless and giving grounds to remove it?

I could feel the bile raising in my throat as I read this. Here is what is wrong with this "revamp":

- Eliminates any innate non-crit threat reduction we had
- Arcane Focus is still a garbage talent
- Wand Spec is still a garbage talent
- Arcane Concentration is still 5 talent points when hybrid classes (shaman and druid) get their equivalent at Tier 3 for 1 talent point
- Arcane Resilience is complete garbage
- You need to spend a garbage point to get to 15 points in the Arcane tree
- Improved Fire Ward is still a garbage talent
- Master of Elements is still not going to make elementalist viable
- You need to spend a garbage point to get to 15 points in the Frost tree
- Frost Warding is complete garbage
- Shatter build nuked into the ground

Some of the simplest shit that could be done would be to replace Arcane Resilience with 1 point Arcane Concentration, remove Wand Spec, replace Arcane Concentration with something else, and rework Arcane Focus because it's completely narrow. (Hell, even Bread/Water Spec would be better.)