Ive really been wondering what the lvl 80 arcane talent point would be, but not sure its worth another thread

Im really hoping its some sort of augmentation of the cool shapable DPS/DPM dynamics of arcane blast and/or ways to further improve the synergy of Arcane Missiles (which seems to be the spells unique niche at the moment, synergy based optimisation)

Some ideas mages in our guild threw around during a boring Kael trash clear:

- Max arcane talent = Lets your arcane blast stack to (4) where the 4th stack does double damage but triple the mana cost. The actual mumbers are just example, but the general idea was you give AB an **even faster ** way to burn mana in a very quick, controlled period. You could make the (4th) stack something you could choose to spam like we currently do on (3) - or something thats only allowed once every 10 seconds - like leader of the pack, to prevent spamming (if you had 2 spriests in your group lol)

- An 5-10 minute cooldown arcane talent that automatically casts 3 AB at once, with all the damage in a single arcane blast, and starts your stack off at (3) immediately, where you can then begin your normal rotation. This would be the perfect opener on something like Solarian. Of course, in conjunction with something like Pom pyro it would create overpowered burnst damage (triple ab + pyro etc) so to counter that you would just make the arcane talent 'spell lock yourself' - so you could only arcane spells for a 10-15 second following activation of the talent. This would be my ideal opener for AP/heroism :P Instant 3 stack+1.5 second spam here I come!



Anyway Id love to hear some ideas/examples of potential arcane talents for lvl 80 that people have thought up. Particulary im most interested in talents that really build on the current unique playstyle of arcane mages (highly shapable dps/dpm with arcane blast and the great synergy we can get through trinkets/rotations etc with the unique mechanics of Arcane Missiles).


edit - When I think about it, some trinkets ingame (eg, The Lightning Capacitor, Ashtongue exalted trinket) would make for very unique and cool talent ideas!

How about this for the 45 point talent.

Improved Arcane Blast 0/5
Your Arcane Blast spells have a 20% chance to apply a debuff to the target that increases all Arcane Damage taken by the target by 2% and increases the critical chance of all arcane spells used against the target by 0.5%. Lasts 30 seconds. Stacks up to 5 times.

New 35 point talent

Arcane Reach 0/2
Increases the range of all Arcane Spells and the radius of Arcane Explosion by 10%.

That would certainly make our Moonkin drool. Maybe a bit too powerful even.

I still think mages need to get an AR buff. I'm not sure why it's the only school resistance buff that doesn't exist in game yet...

Mana Wrath
Increases your spell damage by 5% of your current mana. Spells cost 20% more mana to cast. Lasts 15 seconds.
(3m CD, costs 25% of your current mana to cast).

Assuming a full bar of 8k current mana, this spell would cost 2k mana to cast which leaves you with 6k current mana. 5% being 300 spell damage bonus at the cost of your spells costing +20% more mana.

Of course the numbers need to be tweaked, thats just my guesstimate. Its effect diminishes the farther you are from a full mana bar. Throw in the possibility of popping a potion / gem to get an increased effect, and you have a theorycrafter's nightmare talent.

If we're throwing out wish list ideas, arcane needs an instant cast single target spell, imo. Something to use on mobile fights when you have to reposition from something (void reaver orbs, kael's flamestrikes, etc..) Make it instant cast, decent dpm, medium dps (lower damage then fireblast, higher dpm) but silence you for the normal cast time afterwards. Like, an untalented frostbolt's dpm/dps, with a 2.5 second silence debuff, and 10 second cooldown.

Frost needs something along the lines of icelance's frozen mechanic, that works on raid mobs (or just make freeze effects work on raid mobs for icelance/shatter purposes, just not root them in place), and fire needs some kind of reactionary/totally new mechanic spell to be less boring for good players. Fireball when you can, scorch every 27-28 seconds, rinse repeat.. gag me. Can't wait for 2 piece t5...

I agree wholeheartedly with the first two ideas. Even a 3-4 second silence would be perfectly fine on an instant arcane spell. Or if it put one AB debuff on you instead to use it as a tactical spell for those movement intensive fights to keep your AB stack right where you want it all the time. And going deep frost you spend too many points to get the nova/shatter/frostbite talents, they ought to count for something on bosses... like the way Rag worked back in the day with Frostbite able to proc on him. I don't know about how something could be added to fire to keep with the same general flow that it has now (slow and steady, not changing throughout the fight for the most part). I agree that fire needs something, but what exactly is hard to pin down while keeping with the theme.

Soon as this patch comes out, I wont be going arcane. I was arcane during most of our progression, since then i've tried a number of things with arcane, and im not impressed with the tree at all. You blow tons of gold popping mana pots, you sit and rely on your group in a raid to perform at an acceptable rate.

Come this upcoming patch (and even right now) i am speccing deep fire. I'm not quite sure what I will do with this buff to haste. I will definately be wearing 1 haste ring and illidan staff. I am not sure about the mantle/bracer/ring/belt which I have all of so I will be trying it out.

Here is what I consider into what I believe will be the best spec for 2.3.

1) MSD
2) Skull of Gul'dan
3) Haste gear (amount unknown)
4) 4/5 t6

Not in any particular order. I am still unsure of how much +haste gear I will use and to which trinket I will use as trinket #2. Ashtongue trinket would be ideal if your crit rating is able to exceed a certain limit, but using MSD limits to +12sp gems, and 4/5 t6 taking up some slots for very high +crit items, i dont believe this trinket will be ideal for a fireball spamming build. So that leaves me with Crusader vs Icon..

I'll end up trying arcane, but I have very low expectations of the returns on it.

Given that 2-piece tier-5 is more or less required for competitive AB dps, I hope they roll the functionality into the empowered AM talent next expansion and nerf the set bonus in much the same way as they did with 3-piece Transcendence. They could either stick with the current flat percentage increase (7/14/20% over 3 points) or rework it to modify the coefficient bonus so it behaves the same way as empowered AM.

I think the stackable arcane debuff mentioned by Rounced is a great idea too; if nothing else it would hopefully lessen the current stigma suffered by raiding moonkins. I'd probably change it to a 5%/5% damage/crit bonus given that Blizzard doesn't seem to be very keen on fractions of percents in talent points. Even better is if moonkin receive a complementary debuff; I've always envied warlocks and shadow priests their incredible 2-way synergy.

Also, being a lore geek the ideal 51 point talent in my mind is some variation of Brilliance Aura. To make it a bit more interesting than a flat mp5 increase, include some bonus function like: "all party members gain your 10% chance to clearcast. Upon consuming the clearcast, the party member receives a 15-second buff granting full OOC regen and increased spell damage/healing equal to 25% of your intellect." Arcane Concentrarion and Arcane Potency would be prerequisite talents, naturally.

This is an awesome idea. To pick up on the idea: what about a talent that lets spell potency scale with your mana (or mana deficit). For example, as you get to 50% of your total mana your spells passively get some spell bonus (which you put as an activated spell). Maybe when you get to -20% total mana your spells cast time and damage is increased.

The basic idea is just a cool 'the closer to oom a arcane mage gets, the more dangerous/destructive he becomes' and maybe when you actually hit the oom poinnt (say less than 500 mana) you blow up , or released a tlc like discharge, 10 minute cooldown. - i think its a cool spin on the usual thinking in wow.

The usual thinking is the closer you go oom - the more useless you become to the point of being useless (when your actually ooom) and would give arcane mages a way to break this thinking by getting more powerful the closer to oom they are - and finally going out with a bang when they hit that point (itd be exciting to go oom!)

Is this worth a new thread? I REALLY hope our new raiding talents next expansion show some innovation and not just a 'increase range by 20%' (which is a talent we also need :P)

Thats a great idea, much more exciting/innovative than the general brilliance aura ideas thrown around (eg a boring 'increases spirit by x')

I posted a concept for a Brilliance aura on the WoW forums that I really liked. The concept was more about raid utility and also to deal with the issue of a brilliance aura that affects your party makes it so that the raid will want to spread the mages around when it currently makes more sense to group the mages together to get Spriest support.

Brilliance Aura
Level 70
Instant Cast
100 mana
Surrounds the target with an Aura that increases their mana regeneration by 100% and the regeneration of any group member within 40 yards. Does not stack with additional Brilliance Auras on people in the same group. Can only be applied to one target per mage. Lasts 30 seconds.

The duration is definitely up for debate but one of the reasons I made it so short was to suggest that there were other ways to deal with concept of mages doing too much dps in raid settings without resorting to a heavy-handed nerf like the mage tax (it was posted in one of those Mage Coefficient argument threads). Since having to use a GCD every 30 seconds would achieve the same dps decrease as that seen from the damage tax without interfering with gear scaling.

If it was going to be used as the 51 point Arcane Talent then the duration should be changed to 10 minutes.

Reason why it says mana regeneration is that this also affects Mp5 as well as Spirit regen and would also affect Evocation at the same time helping to fix the current issues with that spell.


Original Post - WoW Forums -> RE: Mage Coefficient Nerf

I'd aim for a better neck, wand, and trinkets, and then you'll be in great shape. Prince's neck would be a rather big upgrade from that blue quest reward you're using now. Also, either of the wands from Heroic Underbog or Magtheridon would again be large upgrades over the blue pieces. The addition of the stats, plus a little more damage for those times when you actually are oom and need to wand briefly makes a difference. Finally the trinkets... I'd say if you have your heart set on a crit trinket, replace your Xi'ri's Gift with Shiffar's, and then drop the pendant (maybe not, depends on the result of the theorycrafting with it on the PTR; I haven't kept up with it.) for the Icon.

P.S. - I don't know how to make item links like Manly.

Just do "item" tags, like the ones you get if you quote a post, toss an item name in-between and you're good.

[The Nexus Key]

Aah, okay. Thanks. I was trying to go about figuring it out the overly-geeky way... I did a View Source and scrolled to Manly's post... turns out there's a lot of html generated from those item tags, and I got lost and confused.

[Shiffar's Nexus-Horn]

1st Blast = 1.5sec (on the 2nd and later loops)
2nd Blast = ~2.3sec
3rd Blast = ~1.9sec
Missles = 5sec
Scorch = 1.5sec


Only 2 of the 5 casts in the rotation should be 1.5sec. If all your blasts are 1.5sec, you're doing it wrong (and that explains your DPM problems). You want the debuff to wear off WHILE you're casting the first blast.

We do it so you don't have to.

Everytime we do Teron Gorefiend, I wish there was a talent that makes Evocation uninterruptible.
Ending Evocation with 2300 mana because you only got one tick from it is so much fun*.

As for a range talent, hm, I don't know. I mean yes, it would be very nice to have, but then again, you can just drop 13 points into fire and get a viable 41 yard nuke for the occasions when you need more range, like Kael'thas and Supremus kite phases. Then again, it feels odd to invest into another tree and another spell school for more range. Feels a bit like mana potions - not a clean solution to the problem, but it gets the job done and I accepted it.
Remember that shadow priests can manage with far less than 30 yards as well.

As for the Mana Wrath idea - I don't think we need another Arcane Power talent. APPoMTrinketPyroblastFireBlast still is a pretty hefty burst, and double trinketing was removed for a reason.

I like the idea of Arcane Blast causing a vulnerability debuff, because that's what Arcane needs to stay competitive with fire and probably frost.

If you just stack hit until the cap, then damage and crit, the Arcane will be inferior. You need to cherry pick your gear to make arcane pull ahead.
2/5 T5 for AB spam/cycles, Ashtongue/TLC and a MSD meta for AM spam, and maybe a Wrath of Cenarius as well. You need to stack those to make arcane specs shine, and a shadow priest because of the higher mana cost.
AM mana cost seems to be balanced around the assumption of 100% JoW uptime.

If you don't have any of those gimmicky pieces of gear, I cannot see arcane pull ahead.
It feels awkward to still use a level 60 trinket from time to time, but it's nothing compared to requiring two TBC raid trinkets to make AM viable in WotLK.

So, I think base talents that would be required are a "2/5 T5" talent, and some "Arcane Vulnerability" debuff as arcane damage scales worse than fire/frost.
I kind of like Brilliance Aura as an idea (giving a group buff is nice), but you usually stack mages in a group instead of separating them. So, either they stack, or it's a "only one needs to spec it for raids" thing again.
I think I'll just let myself surprise what they invent

* - Not really.

How plausible is it that blizzard class designers knew raw arcane (aka without the gimmicky must-have items+shadow priest) wasnt acceptable when TBC went live ... and instead of working to fix it simply made the 'ultimate arcane set' aka tier 5 - which was intended as a short-term solution to last us until the next expansion - until such time where the lvl 80 talents will fix the trees current problems (aka rolling the tier set bonus into talents etc)

Do people think that sounds like wishful thinking, or could it really be blizzards intention? :S

Not to mention that another 'AP' talent would just cause a clusterfuck in pvp further than we have arguably suffered (ie: getting viewed by the community as 'nerf mages i just got crit for 13k pyroblast). I will never be for another burst dps talent.

What really irks me is that mages don't really have much, in my mind, to bring to the raid. I know we can decurse and polymorph, for the very rare times it comes in handy. But other than that, if you dont need either, you're probably better served with a warlock (and before I hear anything here, in the context where you swap a mage for a 4th lock, and the lock gets to use COD, which gives said warlock quite a hefty dps boost). Warlocks are always welcome for curses (yes, even for curse of tongues) as well as ISB. Everyone is happy to have their COS/COE/COR. And that is not to speak of -5% dmg talent (shadow embrace) thats very nice to have while learning new bosses.

Mages, in comparison, only have realistically imp scorch to bring to the raid. Sure, we do AI too, but arguably imp is more interesting anyway. And please, before someone mentions it, nobody cares about slow. But otherwise, imp scorch isn't really interesting for the raid as a whole. In the same sense, even though I do agree with the underlying principle that AB should apply a debuff, scorch style, that increases arcane damage, it would just exacerbate the problem that we don't really help the raid as a whole. ISB helps almost every warlock spec. They have some cross-build 'synergy', whereas we have none. Frost couldn't care less about fire vulnerability, fire doesn't gives a damn about winter's chill. Now add possibly an 'arcane vulnerability', we still haven't done much to help the raid. Imagine fire vulnerability would be modified to be a nightfall-like debuff, increasing all spell damage by 15%, and winter's chill giving +10% spell crit, im sure everyone would give some very serious considerations to have more than just one mage spec, and you wouldnt have to worry about stacking fire mages (beyond considerations of 'lets keep that buff up'). I would probably recommend to have the AB debuff be something like JOW, which could arguably fix the 'consumables issue' for caster dps (and hunters). Of course, I am aware that those changes would clearly overpower warlocks due to extra multipliers, but I posted mostly for the principles behind it, not the actual values.

If anything, I propose raid synergy rather than straight out buffs. And certainly not another AP talent.

I was thinking the 1.9sec 3rd blast was actually 1.5 along with the 1st (looped) blast. With the scorch injected, the debuff does wear off while midcast.

so the a MSD proc would save me .8 seconds on blast 2 (2.3 - 1.5gcd) and .4 seconds on the 3rd blast (1.9 - 1.5gcd). One 1st blast (looped) and scorch there is no impact and on AM it's 50% less time.

so 3 out of 5 spells in rotation would benefit partially from the MSD proc.

I do like the idea of getting off a talented FBall (1.5 second with MSD proc) when AM procs MSD.

I am not sure if it's worth sacrificing my Spellstrike Hood for a T4 helm to get MSD though... T4 is just horrible... Once it get T5 it's a no brainer

Manly is hitting on the point of mage (and rogue) raid utility: there's sheep, there's decurse, there's 40 or so of what's probably the worst stat in the game, and beyond that you have debuffs that affect... other mages and no one else. Winter's Chill and Improved Scorch only affect frost and fire, and there's no other class that uses fire to a large extent, or frost at all, in a raid setting. Warlocks and Shadow Priests have a nice thing going on, with both of us increasing each other's damage, but if you left the mages home the only people that would miss the damage debuffs are the mages that you already left home. Fire and frost need a raid-buff of some sort, that affects more people than just them. Arcane might be able to get away with just a +arcane damage buff if moonkin become more common, but I doubt that's happening.
Brilliance Aura sounds like a good idea, but it could run into the problem of sticking the mage with the healers, outside of the spell dps buffs. It seems that dps is having more mana issues these days than healers, so maybe. A melee attack speed dehaste would be thematically consistent with the frost tree (preferably shallow so you do arcane-frost). Fire is probably (yet another) crit increase, or perhaps a fire-shield effect on the tank for extra agro. Or maybe a spec-independent base class ability post-70.

how about frost spec being synergistic with the frost ( tanking ) spec for deathnights.