Arcane blast is just a concept right now really. As a concept, I think it adds some flare to mages, notably a way to convert mana into damage quickly at the cost of efficiency. The concept of Arcane Blast appeals to me, the "current" implementation (which isn't even a beta yet) is very lacking in appeal, but that's the kind of stuff alpha/beta is for, to get feedback on this kind of stuff and tweak it.
I'd hazard a guess that the version being analyzed here wasn't given as much forethought by the designers as is being given to it by the posters on this forum. Hopefully, this initial version was a proof of concept to see if arcane blast is a "fun" spell. Balancing it against the alternatives should happen before the real expansion is released.
another issue that no one seems to mention with the arcane tree is the lack of +range talents. Arcane by far has the smallest range right now and as mages we live by keeping the longest range we can at all times. This is one of the reasons I really dislike the way arcane missile/ arcane blast spam sets up.
If we're interesting in having a way for mages to dump mana for super dps... instead of messing around with a "burst" spell that has a low-dps mana-inefficient ramp-up~
EQ wizard manaburn?
=) Sorry for the digression, but this is exactly what I thought the spell's design was meant to be (in spirit).
It would be pretty fun working in synergy with molten fury too.
Manaburn was a pretty lousy (and quite fun!) mechanic in EQ pre-nerf but it just wouldn't work in WoW for several reasons. The primary problems are that it is obviously not balanced for PvP and that in WoW, mana regeneration options are simply too available and especially so for Mages. I've always had a soft-spot for the inefficient but hard-hitting (high dps, low dpm) spell option but fireball essentially fills that gap in WoW for the moment. I do think that ABlast is intended to be even higher dps with even worse dpm but the ramp up time and present lack of an arcane crit bonus increaser make me wonder if this will pan out. I would advocate at least a talent to increase AM and ABlast crit bonuses by 50/100% for a couple of points spent. AExplosion obviously has some balance problems in PvP if we scale it much more. Alternately, if we are committed to keeping arcane as the sole +150% crit school, a talent that increased arcane-only crit rates by 15-20% or so would give a similar yield.
I do wonder though what is ever intended for AMissles. It's original uses are long since gone and presently as well as going forwards, I just don't find it having much purpose at all. That's a shame too, it is an interesting base mechanic for a spell, just not something that really works well in real fights using the actual spell mechanics.
Actually, Shaman kill all of Arcane Blast's potential for me. Bloodlust/Heroism are going to be required for burst DPS situations. Arcane Blast's casting time being reduced to under 1 second does so little compared to speeding up Fireball (under 2 seconds) or Frostbolt (1.625 seconds).
The listed arcane blast is lvl 64. All the nukes we compare it to are 62. Thus, arcane blast is actually worse than all the math presented so far at equal spell levels.
I hope at least Blizzard learned and makes all nukes have a lvl 70 max rank.
Fireball tops out at 66
Frostbolt 68
Scorch 70
Looks like we will end up with another aq20 tome situation again, with countless posts asking this time why Fireball gets a bigger upgrade sigh.
The listed arcane blast is lvl 64. All the nukes we compare it to are 62. Thus, arcane blast is actually worse than all the math presented so far at equal spell levels.
I hope at least Blizzard learned and makes all nukes have a lvl 70 max rank.
Fireball tops out at 66
Frostbolt 68
Scorch 70
Looks like we will end up with another aq20 tome situation again, with countless posts asking this time why Fireball gets a bigger upgrade sigh.
If that goes live and if the spells scale with level as they do now, then scorch will be the only viable fire endgame nuke. 4 levels is too much to overcome for a spell that as only advantage has more damage. Scorch can get away with being lower level such as it is now since it is supposed to be mana efficient and not the highest DPS.
Of course they could always make the top ranks equal in power regardless of level, but then fireball mages might be a tad overpowered around level 66.
Looks like we will end up with another aq20 tome situation again, with countless posts asking this time why Fireball gets a bigger upgrade sigh.
If that goes live and if the spells scale with level as they do now, then scorch will be the only viable fire endgame nuke. 4 levels is too much to overcome for a spell that as only advantage has more damage. Scorch can get away with being lower level such as it is now since it is supposed to be mana efficient and not the highest DPS.
Of course they could always make the top ranks equal in power regardless of level, but then fireball mages might be a tad overpowered around level 66.
I'm guessing the difference in spell level won't be that big of deal because of how much +spell damage we'll have. I'd expect a mage to have at least +1000 spell damage from gear at lvl 70. Also, doesn't fireball scale better than scorch because of the reduced casting time talent and still getting the +damage bonus for a 3.5 second cast?
If you want absolute burst damage with arcane blast, I bet the mage class ZG trinket http://thottbot.com/?i=51979 in conjunction with the shaman +10% crit totem would be pretty nasty. Of course, who knows what kind of burst trinkets will be available in the expansion.
Fireball scales about the same as scorch when you assume that the fireball mage does not have the improved scorch buff up. And more crit helps scorch more due to higher probability of rolling ignites.
I looked at the datamined spell numbers. 2 lvl 70 scorches do only slightly less damage than 1 lvl 66 fireball, and that factors in imp fireball and not imp scorch and incinerate. And scorch benefits much, much more from impact and clearcasting. Thus, with the current numbers, I think that scorch is the best option in a low latency environment.
Blizzard really, really needs to make all main nukes/attacks have a level 70 rank. Otherwise we will be artificially constrained in our choices one way or another.
Originally Posted by Wilton
Originally Posted by Aphyrax
Originally Posted by Cagalli
Fireball tops out at 66
Frostbolt 68
Scorch 70
Looks like we will end up with another aq20 tome situation again, with countless posts asking this time why Fireball gets a bigger upgrade sigh.
If that goes live and if the spells scale with level as they do now, then scorch will be the only viable fire endgame nuke. 4 levels is too much to overcome for a spell that as only advantage has more damage. Scorch can get away with being lower level such as it is now since it is supposed to be mana efficient and not the highest DPS.
Of course they could always make the top ranks equal in power regardless of level, but then fireball mages might be a tad overpowered around level 66.
I'm guessing the difference in spell level won't be that big of deal because of how much +spell damage we'll have. I'd expect a mage to have at least +1000 spell damage from gear at lvl 70. Also, doesn't fireball scale better than scorch because of the reduced casting time talent and still getting the +damage bonus for a 3.5 second cast?
If you want absolute burst damage with arcane blast, I bet the mage class ZG trinket http://thottbot.com/?i=51979 in conjunction with the shaman +10% crit totem would be pretty nasty. Of course, who knows what kind of burst trinkets will be available in the expansion.
Fireball scales about the same as scorch when you assume that the fireball mage does not have the improved scorch buff up.
Err.. but that doesn't make any sense as an assumption. Fire Vulnerability lasts 30 seconds. One mage casting one Scorch in every 30 seconds still counts as "fireball spam", imo, and as far as I've seen it seems to be high enough priority that it pretty much never gets knocked off, so that's not an issue.
in a low latency environment.
No matter how low your latency goes, it's still significant, and Scorch takes double the hit. The lowest I've ever seen impact from latency, using Fastcast, is +0.15s per cast. So that's 1.65s scorches, and 3.15s Fireballs. And that's VERY unusual. Typically, in raids, it's more like 0.2-0.3s.
<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl
I still consider the latency loss from scorch to be pretty much a wash versus fireball just because of the 4% crit bonus. Obviously though fireball has a better overall return on +damage gear over casting time (dpdps?... perhaps just +damage throughput) and is far preferable for building ignite stacks. Scorch is better for maintaining them though, making the two spells to be excellent complements to each other. I do look forward to running ToAD 12.5-man sometime next year though for my level 70 class books.
Fireball scales about the same as scorch when you assume that the fireball mage does not have the improved scorch buff up.
Err.. but that doesn't make any sense as an assumption. Fire Vulnerability lasts 30 seconds. One mage casting one Scorch in every 30 seconds still counts as "fireball spam", imo, and as far as I've seen it seems to be high enough priority that it pretty much never gets knocked off, so that's not an issue.
in a low latency environment.
No matter how low your latency goes, it's still significant, and Scorch takes double the hit. The lowest I've ever seen impact from latency, using Fastcast, is +0.15s per cast. So that's 1.65s scorches, and 3.15s Fireballs. And that's VERY unusual. Typically, in raids, it's more like 0.2-0.3s.
Fire vulnerability lasts 30 seconds indeed. But in the new raiding environment there is a decent chance that you will be the only fire mage in the raid (if they succeed in making arcane a viable main tree that is) since we have 3 trees and 3 mages per raid. So you will have to apply the vulnerability yourself and cannot count on freeloading. The question is, why spend the talent points to improve both fireball and scorch when there is so little to gain.
Right now scorch is 4 levels behind fireball and it still holds its own quite well. There are many mages that spam nothing but scorch. If scorch will be 4 levels above fireball (a swing of a whooping 8 levels in relative power), fireball needs something to keep it attractive as a primary nuke, and empowered fireball ain't it.
Manaburn was a pretty lousy (and quite fun!) mechanic in EQ pre-nerf but it just wouldn't work in WoW for several reasons. The primary problems are that it is obviously not balanced for PvP and that in WoW, mana regeneration options are simply too available and especially so for Mages. I've always had a soft-spot for the inefficient but hard-hitting (high dps, low dpm) spell option but fireball essentially fills that gap in WoW for the moment. I do think that ABlast is intended to be even higher dps with even worse dpm but the ramp up time and present lack of an arcane crit bonus increaser make me wonder if this will pan out. I would advocate at least a talent to increase AM and ABlast crit bonuses by 50/100% for a couple of points spent. AExplosion obviously has some balance problems in PvP if we scale it much more. Alternately, if we are committed to keeping arcane as the sole +150% crit school, a talent that increased arcane-only crit rates by 15-20% or so would give a similar yield.
I do wonder though what is ever intended for AMissles. It's original uses are long since gone and presently as well as going forwards, I just don't find it having much purpose at all. That's a shame too, it is an interesting base mechanic for a spell, just not something that really works well in real fights using the actual spell mechanics.
Well, in the expansion, they've drastically nerfed the threat reduction aspects of Frost Channeling and Burning Soul, so I guess you'd use Arcane Missiles/Blast for low aggro, high dps situations.
Well, in the expansion, they've drastically nerfed the threat reduction aspects of Frost Channeling and Burning Soul, so I guess you'd use Arcane Missiles/Blast for low aggro, high dps situations.
Wait... damnit! I didn't notice that! So now an elemental damage mage has -less- agro control than a warlock? o.O
I assume the US site is probably the one that's correct, so basically with this talent and Blessing of Salvation you'll have a 37% total threat reduction, a very slight buff for Horde mages and a huge nerf for Alliance mages. I suppose Blizzard feels this is justified since we'll have Tranquil Air totems now? :S
Edit: oops, missed the "l" in ".html". Links should work now.
So I thought I'd do some calculations on arcane missiles just to see where it could go if you were fully specced for it.
I'm assuming some of the best gear you can get currently, with level 60 spells, but the level 70 talent tree. Empowered arcane missiles, arcane instability, mind mastery, and arcane mind.
My theoretical mage had 386 int self buffed, +696 dmg/all, +9% hit and 15% crit with arc instability.
This translates to 509 int buffed with arcane mind, kings, and motw. There are probably other int buffs you could put in but this is what I went with.
This gives you 127 additional +dmg, for a total of 823 +dmg. Multiplying this by 1.45 for empowered arcane missiles, we get 1193. Further, arcane missiles gets (correct me if I'm wrong) 5/3.5 application of +dmg, meaning 142% of +dmg because of it's 5 second casting time. This means we multiply 1193 *1.42, which gives 1620.
Base arcane missiles is 230*5 damage, 1150. Adding 1620 to it gives 2770 damage over 5 seconds, *1.03 for arcane instability is 2853. Adding in the 15% crit with 150% crits, we get 3064 damage on average over 5 seconds. With 19% total arcane +hit, we should only ever resist on the 1% unavoidable resist rate.
3064 damage over 5 seconds is 612 damage/second. Casting arcane missiles is 655 mana, multiplied by 1.10 for the empowered talent, and we get 720 mana. 3064/720 is 4.25 damage/mana.
The dps isn't awful, although I'm pretty sure you could do better than that with fire with lesser gear. The damage/mana also isn't bad, but with those +dmg totals I'd shudder to think the mana efficiency of frost.
Based on these numbers, I don't think arcane missiles will be viable. Neverminding the fact that if you get cut off in the middle of a cast or the mob dies after the first tick, you're wasting a metric assload of mana.
This gives you 127 additional +dmg, for a total of 823 +dmg. Multiplying this by 1.45 for empowered arcane missiles, we get 1193. Further, arcane missiles gets (correct me if I'm wrong) 5/3.5 application of +dmg, meaning 142% of +dmg because of it's 5 second casting time. This means we multiply 1193 *1.42, which gives 1620.
I'm reasonably sure it currently gets 120% of the damage bonus, spread out over the five ticks. I'll check when I get home, but it's probably the easiest of the spells to check when it comes to +dmg.
I'm reasonably sure it currently gets 120% of the damage bonus, spread out over the five ticks. I'll check when I get home, but it's probably the easiest of the spells to check when it comes to +dmg.
I haven't had it on my hotbar since like level 15.. haven't cast it in probably a year. :) I'm also at work and a quick search didn't turn anything up, probably because nobody cares because the spell sucks so bad.
And you guys correcting me on the multiplier just makes it worse.. so.. gg arcane. Good knowing you!
It's a 1.2 spelldamage modifier on AM. They didn't go the distance and decouple it from casting speed, just tweaked it a little.
The idea I think they are trying to promote is to use the "on clearcasting, get crits" talent in conjunction with AM but unless they change how clearcasting procs you will always lose some casting time switching from whatever nuke of choice to AM. The other annoying hurdle is the 1.5 crits on arcane of course, which while not totally fatal is a flaw that itemization makes even worse. I'm not writing off arcane by any stretch (and especially 41/20 arc/frost) but I think I'll hold off the detailed theorycrafting until later on. If indeed fire especially loses the 30% aggro reduction then I just don't see myself staying with it in the long term and arc/frost makes much more sense than arc/fire going forward.
08/30/06, 5:28 PM
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