Avoiding the clutter of the mage thread. I keep seeing high-ranked pvp mages dumping points into this. Tier 2 of arcane, 5 points, increases all magic resists by 10 and restores 5% of your mana pool on a successful spell resist. I'm wondering if someone can explain why this talent would be good, because I always thought it was a joke talent to be honest. 10 resist for 5 points is abysmal. 5% of mana pool on a resist is pretty huge, but with casters typically having 99% chance to hit does this ever proc in pvp? Enough to be worth 5 points? Any insight into why anyone would spec this is appreciated.

Mages usually dont get hit capped due to the low amount of hit they get from talents (unless they specifically gear for it, but I don't personally know of any mages that do) so I imagine the mana restore makes for "free" resists at least in terms of mana usage.

edit: hmm i should probably specify that non-arcane mages don't get much hit from talents.

The absorption only occurs when you resist a spell cast on you, not vice versa. I'm referring to instances of pvp only. The base chance to hit a spell against another player is 96%, before gear.

<edited my comment for being incorrect rubbish>

It's "spells you resist", meaning, someone else has to cast a spell at you, and you resist it. The idea is that the 10 magic resist would help you resist more spells, but it's a pitiful amount that for some reason does not scale with level (it was 10 resist at level 60 as well).

Err, chance to miss an equal level target is still 4% correct? That means you need around 36 spell hit rating from gear, or elemental precision (fire/frost), or 2/5 arcane focus (arcane). All of which you can get by randomly picking gear.

Being hit capped in pvp is basically a given.

What Vontre's asking about is why do mages spend 5 talent points to get 10 resist against all spells. It's clearly not for the off chance you resist a spell naturally based on level (1%). Therefore it must be for the 10 spell resist. Also, low tier arcane talents are garbage for PvP.

Therefore, we have to conclude that it's due to the the combination of a few helpful resist points plus the lack of a good alternative tier 1/2 pvp talent (clearcast in pvp? not so much).

I was actually surprised a lot of the high ranking arena mages in my BG did not take this talent. The real benefit from this talent is its synergy with the paladin and priest talents that reduce the chance of buffs being dispelled. With 10k mana and 5 points into magic absorption, you get 500 mana back every time you resist a dispel, which can happen multiple times from just one buff.

Now to go off on a tangent. Many arena mages I looked at have 5/5 in arcane focus, and I was wondering if anyone had tested to see if it provided any benefit in pvp past the 3% spell hit cap. I know there is speculation about arcane focus making sheep last longer, but I've never personally tested this. It could possibly also help counter improved concentration aura and the talents that most healers have to resist silences, but I haven't heard any word on this. Does anyone have any information?

Exactly.

Also, there is nothing better to take.

I think now that most high ranked mages whose survivalbility is vital to their team are at 10000 hitpoints unbuffed, people are learning to counter cs/sheep/ff combos, mitigation is going to be very important.

Neat, this is the answer I was looking for.

As to arcane focus, yes it definitely helps against silences resist on healers.

Last I checked (right after the Mage review patch), hit% could overcome binary resistsances. However, spell penetration would be a superior option after the hit cap due to the item budget.

The formula for a hit on a binary spell was (base hit percent + spell hit percent) * resistance. Capped at 99% of course. My quick math has 6% hit being equal to 20 spell penetration, so it's easy to see that hit% after the cap doesn't do a great deal as compared to spell penetration.

But a talent like improved concentration aura doesn't involve magic resist, so spell pen would be useless against it.

Isn't it capped at 99% before resistances, so that there is a hard spellhit cap given level, and you get no benefit after that, just like once you reduce resistance to 0 w/ penetration, there's no benefit?

Ok, so I tested magic absorption with the priest talent silent resolve and the reduced chance to have buffs dispelled is a different mechanic than resists. When a buff is not removed due to the talent, it's counted as a spell failure, not a resist and doesn't give back any mana. So this talent isn't really any good for arena.

I also did some short tests with arcane focus and hit gear (16% hit in total) vs. interrupt talents. It doesn't seem to do anything. In 20 casts vs. a paladin with improved concentration aura, I had 1 interrupt resisted, and 2 silences resisted. 3 resists out of 20 is 15%, although you could argue every cs is like casting 2 spells, a silence and an interrupt, and so 3 resists out of 40 is 7.5%. However, if spell hit worked against the anti-cs talents, you would expect to get only 1% resists. 20 casts is a very small sample but getting people to stand there getting cs'ed for over 10 minutes is pretty difficult.