The only other long ranged/no-cooldown/damage/instantcast spell in the game currently to my knowlege is moonfire. Ice lance spamming on a non-rooted target especially as a fire mage would be viewed pretty much in the same light as moonfire spamming. "Ooh that tickles."

Talking with my friends about ice lance being instant cast, they all (none of them play mages) immediately said "OMG so overpowered" "it needs a cooldown" etc.

:(

Except that Shield bash is more rage efficient than sunder, unless a warrior has improved sunder armor.

Shield Bash has a 12 second cooldown and costs 10 rage. It generates 180 threat/10 rage (18 Threat/rage) vs. 260 threat/15 rage (17.3 T/R) for unimproved Sunder Armor.

Anway, I highly doubt expending 10 rage and 1 global cooldown every 12 seconds is going to make or break the tanking cycle anyway.

It also costs a global cooldown (1.5 seconds) where that warrior coulda have done a much higher threat Devastate. Costing "40 talent points" a stretch. Most raid dps would throw in 31 points regardless into combat. I'm quite confidant that a sword/mace/fist rogue going 41 points into combat would gain quite a bit and be able to keep daze up on that mob indefinately. It requires no extra cooldowns, and attaches itself to a skill used almost everytime its available.

Since we don't know the upside of dazing a mob (It's good, trust us!), it's hard to quantify whether its worth the downside (5 talent points at a minimum). Not all warriors will have devastate, not all rogues will have blade twisting, but all warriors will have shield bash.

You're confidence appears to be misplaced, a sword/mace/fist rogue would be far better off going 30/31/0 in terms of damage, and not to be a dick or anything, but you try telling a someone to put an extra 10 points into a tree which would be better spent elsewhere so that he/she let all of two (I think just mage & warrior gain from dazed targets, though I could be mistaken here) other classes do more damage.

The mage talent reads as "Increases the damage and mana cost of all spells by 6% for 8 seconds after you hit a dazed opponent with a fire spell". Would that be a 6% spell damage increase for the entire raid if the target is dazed?

Apples and oranges IMO, lots of other classes can daze opponents, even then, presuming that a rogue was the only one dazing a mob, it would probably add about the same utility as hemo rogues currently do. There's technically some utility there, but overall the raid would be better suited had they spec'd combat instead. But that's purely speculation on my part.

But see, it's not the "best" per point. Relentless strikes is about 8% more backstab damage. Adrenaline rush is 5% more backstab damage. Oppurtunity is 4% more backstab damage. Improved Backstab is about 15% more (~10% without lethality) backstab damage. Surprise attacks is about 3.7% backstab damage increase. Its a decent talent now as long as we only spend 1 point on it, but its far from being the "best" per point.

And once more I find myself referring to regarding 31-40 point talents as minor DPS boosts, 41 point talents as toys and the best DPS builds being 31 in one tree and 30 in another.

Funny that.

It might be viewed as that, but when your kiting any class and dont have time to cast and used all your regular instants (fireblast, CoC, blastwave, etc.) would you rather be spamming arcane explosion for low dmg at high mana cost or ice lance for low dmg and relatively low mana cost(Longer range and scales better with gear too). Not to mention the effect instant ice lance will have for fire mages on frozen mobs( I already planned on using this even if its not instant).

I personally rather have instant cast Ice Lance be a talent (like arcane explosion used to be) deep in the frost tree lets say replacing the 6% less dmg taken from frost/fire. Then all they have to do is make empowered frostbolt a bit better (maybe crit instead of hit) and replace artic winds with a pve dps talent and frost starts looking pretty solid.

Where are you getting this information, I'm curious as to if there is a new rank of Blessing of Light in TBC. I'd also like to know what else is getting upgraded and to what. Thanks.

The alpha spells were featured in a curse-gaming.com database. I know the curse guys are working on getting it updated with the newest build, so maybe the old database is not available atm.

However, those spells were what were in the alpha client at one time. I recall seeing new ranks of BoM/BoW, but I don't recall seeing a newer BoL (that doesn't mean there isn't one, just I don't recall seeing it).

Actually they changed Howl of Terror to have a 1.5s base casting time, not 2s.

So basically with 2/2 Imp. HoT it's instant cast.

Weak sauce =/ I suppose with 25 man raids we wont get to use BoL much anyways though.

Edit: Found it: Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing the effects of Holy Light spells used on the target by up to 580 and the effect Flash of Light spells used on the target by up to 185. Lasts 5 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

185 is pretty sick.

Onion, there is a new rank of BoL:

Blessing of Light
Rank 4
Requires Level 70
30 yd range180 Mana
Instant cast
Places a Blessing on the friendly target, increasing the effects of Holy Light spells used on the target by up to 580 and the effect Flash of Light spells used on the target by up to 185. Lasts 5 min. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time.

Edit: Opps missed your edit somehow..

Affliction locks are going to be crazy-powerful. They might pass by SL as the PvP lock of choice.

I'm not a mage, but that water elemental sounds damn cool now. 700 DD and Ranged frost nova?! Jeez.

I'm not saying that it is useless, just as moonfire spamming in certain situations can be useful (however rare these situations are). I was just relating it to spells currently in the game and how it would stack up against them. Relating it to current spells helps people understand how it would be used and how useful it would be. It also has the triple damage against frozen targets as an added dimension just as the dot is the extra dimension on moonfire.

Think of it as a dot that triggers the global cooldown and costs mana each time it 'ticks' and you'll see that in most situations it falls within the balancing scheme. However, I could be completly wrong and it is just a mistake that this is instant cast and we are left with a fairly one dimensional spell. (still cool just not nearly as versatile)

Meh, targetted frost nova is pretty sexy for PvP I guess or for obligatory AE work on occasion but it certainly won't sell me on a 41 point talent in frost just by itself. If the elemental is good for 250ish dps 45 seconds out of 180 and costs essentially just a GCD, it might well be enough to cover the dps loss from speccing so deep into frost but I have my doubts. I certainly plan on levelling as frost once again though so I should have ample time to play around with him.

I really am holding out for a water fountain though.

Hey that's cool, it's not like Death Coil was enough, HOW ABOUT INSTANT AE FEAR TOO?

Permission granted.

Damn, now I'm gonna have to find some points for imp HoT. Thank goodness Shadow Embrace is absolutely worthless.

What is great about the new Lock trees, is all of them are seem really good for PvP (Afflicition for crazy DoTs, Demo for SL and the Felguard, and Desto for the crazy fire damage and spellcasted stun). I lean towards Afflicition personally, killing people for dispelling buffs seems like a lot of fun.

Is SL the PvP spec most popular? I thought Conflag would be more popular with 2 instant damage spells.

While 700 waterbolting pet is overpowered in today's 60 world, in tomorrow's 70 world with cheaper stamina and resilience preventing crits, 700 doesn't seem that much. Still, it is a burst damage, a surprise, and another source of freezing.