Stuff from the PTR:

[Band of the Eternal Sage] is now a 10 second buff. They fixed it finally.
[Design: Mystical Skyfire Diamond] is 320 haste for 4 seconds. It still *DOES* affect the first cast after it procs.
[Ashtongue Talisman of Insight] still does *NOT* affect the first cast after it procs.

Still looking for a Combustion/Icy Veins macro without /stopcasting that not bug out the Combustion coldown timer.

I agree with most of your points, but Blizzard also hasn't really done anything to make arcane viable for raiding.
Sure 2.2 AM was overpowered because of item abuse, but the 2p T5 bonus is the same way overpowered that TLC, MSD etc. where in 2.2.
Where is arcane viable actually? In T5 content with T5 gear. Why - because of an overpowered 2p bonus and the fire and frost immunity bosses. So arcane is actually only viable in/with bugged content. (and for people reaching lvl70 wich <600 spell dmg for some weeks till they get gear)

About the spirit: The main problem is, that spirit and int don't add spell dmg for casters like str and agi add ap for meeles.
I'm not sure if Blizzard ever can fix this problem which is now over 3 years old. They have already changed the agi>ap conversion for Hunters, so something like that is possible and the release of BC would have been a good time for that.
We'll have to wait for the WotLK beta to see how Blizzard wants to solve the manareg mechanic.

For now I agree that spirit should be made useful instead of removing it, but there are 2 problems:
1. Warlocks manareg relies on converting health into mana and having some healing functionalities (more HP talent, Healthstones, Life Tap, set bonus, fel armor, ...). So their manareg works fine (at least in pve) - they only need a little more stamina on their gear because of their talent and this stamina has a cheap item budget.
Mages manareg relies on spirit and that costs just too much item budget. The arcane tree is int focused, but spirit is much more useful in terms of manareg with the 2.4 formula. To make spirit on gear really viable (at least for arcane) we would need some arcane talents which actually do something with that spirit (like arcane mind also increasing spirit, mind mastery based on int+spirit and add a talent wich converts spirit to crit so spirit gear can be without crit - useful for spriests too).

2. Problem: The spirit on our sets is only viable for one spec. We would need 2 different sets as someone already mentioned and I don't see Blizzard doing that.
The only solution for that would be some good talents easy reachable in the arcane tree, or spread out some spirit->[someting useful] talents in all 3 trees.

The problem with the arcane tree still remains, over the last 3 years the arcane tree was either mandatory (evo+imp. cs+instant ae), useless or only viable with item abuse (including 2p T5), immune bosses or unjustified nerved coefficients.
Also the little tricks with AM+<some cast> for a tick OO5SR and AB casting with stacked (reduced) casting time but not stacked mana cost, are in the same category as the old MSD,TLC, ... tricks - not really intended by the developers.
All the changes you list at the end of your post are not done for arcane, they are general changes for many classes and specs.
Really? Nothing has changed for AM scaling and should AB spam really be the future of mage raiding? Arcane has only one AoE spell and no real buffs for the other AoE spells. (Sure the cap gets increased by 50% but that only shows how bad that cap is actually and how stupid the concept of a fixed cap is. All the arcane talents buffing AE already work even with the lower cap (more crit chance, more crit dmg).
I'd like to see arcane getting what you've written, but right now I don't see Blizzard really doing the needed actions for.

PS: Anyone know what's the reason that some caster classes/speccs get 10% spell hit for free reducing the need for hit on gear towards 0 and other classes/specs only get 3%. That totally jumbles caster itemization.


EDIT:
I'd rather call it high-spirit classes with int gain massively.
As useless the "remove spirit from mage sets" is with WotLK on the horizon so understandable is it. This whish is not born with the 2.4 PTR notes, it exists much much longer. Mages live the whole addon with the problem that we are wearing gear which is a whole tier worse than other classes gear. The reason this topic gets big now is that blizzard reduced a barely useful stat (stamina) from all T6 sets leaving back an even more useless stat (spirit) on the gear. Which very directly and painfully shows the itemization problem. And while removing spirit totally from the new T6 items might not be wise in the long term, with a reduction of spirit by ~50% on that 3 pieces I only would see advantages.

Without want to sound hysterical, it's because when the game first launched Blizzard had absolutly *no* idea how to gear for casters at all. They were very much in the EQ mindset of "more mana is more damage for mages, like strength if for warriors" - that's a paraphrased quote from Tseric back then. Look at the -to mana cost items in the first version of the game, or the molten core class sets. Or the fact that spell hit as a stat wasn't even introduced until BWL, where it appeared on a whole two items (Trinket and bracers).

I'd bet a large amount of money that Blizzard would like to lower the 10% hit talents to 6% or lower, but they simply aren't ready to do that after everyone has geared around the 10% cap. My guess would be that in WotLK, the talents get changed, as they really do hamper itemisation for casters on a massive scale, and it's already messed up enough as it is.

I never implied arcane has been changed sufficiently or satisfactorily. I am aware AM has not changed at all barring the proc-per-pulse. Why do you see AB spam as a bad choice in terms of "future of raiding"? It's useless in PvP, it's hopeless in solo, it's extremely intensive in 5-mans where the mana cost causes massive down-time drinking so I see no problem in making it very "needy" in exchange for it dominating PvE Raid content. Do you really think AB spam is so bleak a future? As though Fireball spam or Frostbolt spam is somehow better? Unless there's some unforseen massive change in the oven, I see a 2/5*T5 talent appearing deep in the arcane tree in WOTLC, or at least some rework to make it competitive without it, obviously.

You say AB-rotations are unintended, I completely disagree. They've been around since forever and are not in any way gimicky; they don't rely on item abuse or ability abuse but simply mesh rotations exactly like an SP, or an Affli does. If it truly was not intended by devs then the AB debuff would last 15 or 30sec, just like Winter's Chill or Imp. Scorch. 8sec neither makes sense nor is consistent with the intention of having it up and maxed out asap, like W.Chill or I-Scorch.

You state spirit has no use, short of flat regen. I disagree that it should have additional functionality; When a stat affects everyone, like say Stamina, it makes sense that classes that function fundamentally more stamina-based than others get some modifier to it. So that gives us Warlocks and Warriors each having a Sta modifier. When a stat affects only 3 classes to begin with (priests, mages, druids) and two of them get a substantial modifier to the stat to begin with, then is there really a point to give the 3rd one too? The spirit change as it stands already seriously inflates spirit's value for us in 2.4. Scaling with sqrt(int) means we gain a lot more mana from a given amount of spirit if we stack lots of Int (and personally I'd prefer if we only had one stat we wanted to pump) than if we stack clean spellpower. Int currently in 2.4 for arcane gives: More manapool than in other specs, more crit than in other specs, more mp5, spellpower, more mana from Evo and increases the value of spirit. Depending on how you simulate your arcane, int is very competitive with spelldamage and in certain scenaria has been proven to be worth 1.5spell damage per point. With Spi coming in a very, very respectable 0.59dmg equivalent I think we can't complain about spi being underpowered. With this output spi is almost as good as crit.

Of course, I'm not claiming by any means that spi or indeed int is valuable in anything other than arcane. Including an integrator talent in each tree relating to spirit would be silly though, we hardly have talents to integrate Int which out of all the stats is clearly the one which is more "magey" in one tree and I see no reason to integrate spirit into fire, given it's regen is purely MoE or frost, given it's regen is not needed. Other than desire to see value from a stat on gear there is no other realistic reason to do so.

You find a problem in that arcane has only one aoe? DB, CoC and BW are all utility spells and ones with cooldowns at that. They are AoE in that they affect multiple targets based on range but they are not AoE in that they are a fundamental source of damage in an AoE scenario. Essentially the only AoE which can do the bulk of our work is Flamestrike, Blizzard, and AE. "Arcane has only one AoE spell and no buffs for other AoE spells" you say. Please elaborate as to why you find this a problem. AE is currently the AoE DPS of choice, increasing it's cap 50% and giving it benefit from haste will make AToI-IV-AE spam utterly destroy SoC.

Lastly, what do you mean "why do some classes get 10% and others 3%"? Would you rather we all had the same talents and needed the same gear? Just because you're cloth doesn't make every cloth drop the same for everyone, and that's one of WoW's biggest successes. Variety and disparsity between classes/spec mean that a multitude of gear can be catered for with subtle but clear differences. Why does Emp. Fireball get 15%coef. and Empowered Frostbolt 10%coef. and 5%crit? Variety. Difference. It's what keeps this game with 10M players and Lineage II with less than 300k.

No, Frostboltspam is not really better, but just AB spam is even more monotone and boreing than frostboltspam.
I'd rather like to see AB rotations with some flexibility with the filler spells and the number of stacks to be the future.
And I'm not very happy that best gear for Arcane spec includes 2p T5.

You understood me wrong, AB rotations are fine. The small tricks we get advantages from are not intended. AB-AB-AB-AM-SC-AB in this rotation the last(=first) AB gets reduced casting time without increased mana costs if the timing works. This is one trick, the OO5SR tick after an AM is the other one.

I don't say spirit is underpowered, but its item budget is too high(probably for the other classes to). And yes, int actually buffs a lot of things which already goes too far for me in 2.4, this leads to extreme high int values and manapools which take forever to drink to full.
But if spirit shall has a future on mage gear, mages and spriests will share cloth gear and they have different priorities on stats, which could be easily solved with such talents.
Again we have to wait for the WotLK changes with spirit and spirit buffing manareg only is ok for arcane specc.
But if we'll still only have 1 mage set in the future, there is some need to justify spirit on mage gear for not so mana hungry mage speccs and there I'd like to see some additional uses for spirit which also would give us more flexibility in itemization and gemming.

There is a major difference between int and spirit for fire and frost speccs. (let's neglect the int>crit conversion for a moment)
Int for fire and frost has a similar role than stamina has. You wouldn't gem or enchant it if you have alternatives, but you can't live completely without it and in general more is always better, although you can't say how much you really need.
Spirit for fire and frost speccs is a complete waste, if you could trade 200 spirit for 10 spell dmg, fire and frost mages would do it.
At the end there is the question if you want to have 1 mage gear (set), or do you want 2: 1 with spirit, 1 without. I want only 1 set, but then spirit must either have a value for all mage speccs or spirit mustn't be on that set.
I agree that int is more the "magey" stat, but that leads to the removal of spirit from mage gear again ...

No, but "THE AOE Tree" should have a bit more to offer for AOE than just one spam spell with maximized dmg. AoE for me not only consists of dmg, but also of utility and control, especially since other classes don't have such abilities. Their AoE spells are only dmg, so AoE control is one of the niches for mages. If mages should be AoE Kings we need more than just dmg. AToI-IV-AE has some cd involved and I can already see the nerv bat incoming to the AToI trinket ...


Diversity is fine, but in this case it has a huge impact on itemization and the itemization failed with too much mandatory hit on items (T6). With the 2.4 items the situation looks better, but you probably have to socket hit and if you then want to respecc to arcane you would have to regem your equipp, which can't be intended. Hit is a very special case, since its use is very hard-capped at a easily reachable value and Blizzard should be more careful here.

Arcane is not "The AoE Tree". Yes, it has the most powerful, low-threat AoE. Mages are the masters of magics (my plural). When you need control, you have Frost Nova or Blast Wave or Improved Blizzard; when you need damage, Arcane Explosion is your friend.

Diversity means that different classes/builds value items differently. Some issues with stat allocation are getting fixed on the PTR, and more issues will be fixed before it goes live. Whenever you respec, you certainly will have to reconsider all of your gems and enchants to keep from wasting points; it's a fact of life. When I get a new piece of gear, I budget about 250 gold to get new gems and enchants and replace some gems; more if a metagem is involved.

This diversity and "inventory management" is part of what makes the game fascinating, and keeps it interesting after more than three years. It allow me, with my arthritis and 55-year old reaction times, to be very competitive with the 18-year olds on many fights because the extent of my preparation is so deep. Having linear formulae and clear delineations is extremely rare (the three-line graph from a year ago that Lhivera published). Being able to understand, at least intuitively, the simultaneous equations that make up proper gearing appeals to both the game player and the math nerd in me.

Item abuse: the 2-piece Tier 5 bonus does not involve item abuse. The increased damage is paid for with increased mana cost, much like Arcane Power. The abuse that PoB refers to is when the epiphenomenal consequences drastically exceed expectation; when you move into geometrical or exponential increases in power with only a small set of steps. The AM/MSD situation made you "God like" for seconds at a time; it was hardly intended. The 2-piece T5 set bonus is definitely intended, and although it may synergize with other talents and items (AP), it is hardly unexpected by anybody looking at or playing with the talent.

Respeccing is serious business. It will cost you 50 gold for the respec, 20 gold for the spells (2.4 might change that on a respec, the wording is not clear), and regemming and reenchanting to balance things out. However, you will spend quite a lot any time you get new gear.

You should consider using a web tool, such as Search Results for " ctprofile.net ", or an in game tool, such as WoWEquip, to test drive new gearing and see what you can achieve for balancing of stats.

Blizzard now makes the PTR a well-defined preamble to any patch release. While they may have unfortunate troubles with character copies, those are usually temporary and are solved before the patch goes live -- they have to be as the copy and update process use much the same code as upgrading a character when a patch is released.

So, make sure you use one or two of your character copy slots for loading up a character with all of the gold, gems and enchants you can to check out a new spec. Oh, and make sure and test a little of the content to pay Blizzard back for the use of their test facilities.

Kadgar: The AOE tree does have much to offer. In getting your 11 frost points to get IV you can simply spec Ice Shards and result in a much higher CoC damage output. Arcane arguably has much higher crit rate than frost unless you're nova->shatter but it's rather clear that two GCD in order to force a crit is a DPS loss compared to an AE->CoC. Very high utility AoE is the Fire tree's business, nobody said Arcane had any kind of utility. Indeed, you'll notice arcane has the least in terms of utility. None of the spells have pushback protection, none have range increase, and barring Slow (and technically counterspell and poly) none offer any utility whatsoever. While fire and frost offer slow, freeze, DOT, stun and daze. Arcane was never about anciliaries.

Zalath: No it would not make sense to have the same hit req for all specs, too many of you are obsessing over making the class a one-gearset-fits-all, with stat equivalencies accross the board, I'm sorry but I simply disagree with that. One of Arcane's benefit, and affliction's for that matter, is it's high hit-from-talent makes it very good value early on when hit is sparse and sorely needed, with this benefit less apparent later on. I find it thankfully refreshing that not every damn piece I wear is perfect for everything and that sacrificing adaptability in order to excell in one spec/playstyle/setup is a good thing. How amazingly monotonous and boring, not to say horribly competitive would it be if there was an automatic best-in-slot item ranking irrespective of spec/class? Can you immagine only one set of shoulder pads being the best for Affli, Destro, SP, Arcane and Fire?

Why not switch Arc Med with a tier one talent? Because it's too powerful to be a tier 1 talent, simply. Why not switch Molten Fury with Imp. Scorch so Frost can get it too? Because it's a Tree-Defining ability. Same with Arc. Med.

Is there a need to ever re-gem to hit? Aren't there enough hit items that are better than it's upgrades if not hit maxed such as:

Cowl of the Illidari High Lord > Helm of Arcane Purity
Chronicle of Dark Secrets > Heart of the Pit

So that you can just switch gears if you want to mess around with hit? This is definitely the case in live.

The gems allow you to adapt what you have to what you need. The stats that are important to you can be placed where you need them, as your spec and gear requires. The flexibility of this aspect of the gearing process provides a depth to the game.

Very few people have the luxury of a complete alternate gear set of similar iLevel. In your case, you assume there is nobody not doing post Tier 6 content, and that all drops have fallen to them. This is patently false on so many levels.

It's not just at the T6 vs post-T6 level, although that's what a previous poster was fretting about. And from a optimization point of view, the max gear is what matters and there won't be hit gems as of now.

There are enough flexibility when upgrading from the previous tier / obtainable hit items to new no-hit items that if you just keep the outdated hit gear, you shouldn't have to re-gem. Ex.

Robes of Rhonin > Robes of the Tempest
Belt of Blasting > Anetheron's Noose
Mana Attuned Band > Eternal Sage/Ancient Knowledge
Tirisfal Wand of Ascendancy > Eredar Wand of Obliteration
Ashyen's Gift > Violet Signet of the Archmage

Besides, if you are raiding with an elemental shaman, and she is able to keep totem up for you about 30% of dps time, spell damage becomes more valuable than hit for a very easily obtainable 113 hit (alliance). Considering that some fights the shaman can do this 100% and sometimes 0%, it makes a very compelling case to have gears to switch around (unless you switch gems between bosses) anyway, making hit gems redundant.

Hoping for some quick Theorycraft confirmation. I've been content for months to simply glean all the information on these boards, but ever since 2.3, Lhivera's Calculator has been telling me that my highest (realistic) sustained damage spell rotation is Fireball, instead of the expected Fireball Scorch Rotation. I can only assume I'm using the calculator incorrectly - but for the life of me I don't see what i could be doing wrong. Is it possible that this is in fact the case, that my relatively mediocre T4/T5 gear has created a strange situation? I'm importing my stats, attaching relevant buffs and food and pure death, etc, leaving out all other class dps buffing, since we are short on support classes, then comparing classic fire and IV fire builds. [edit] and manually adding my uber 42 spell haste.

I suppose I'm looking for confirmation mostly on how to use the calculator since I pretty much base all of my gear selections on it, and I would be quite dissapointed if I'd been doing it wrong all this time. But was interested if anyone else might have noticed this abnormality. Anyways, sorry if this is the wrong thread for this, I'm often confused as to what is an appropriate line of discussion, and here's the dps parse as the calculator reports it:

Dmg/Sec Spell/Rotation Threat/Sec
1,447.12 Fireball (< 20% health) 1,302.41
1,431.16 Fireball x8 / Scorch x1 (< 20% health) 1,288.05
1,314.28 Arcane Blast / spammed (< 20% health) 788.57
1,240.34 Fireball x8 / Scorch x1 w/MF avg'd 1,116.31
1,207.24 Fireball 1,086.51
1,192.64 Fireball x8 / Scorch x1 1,073.37
1,095.24 Arcane Blast / spammed 657.14
965.10 Scorch 868.59
753.89 Pyroblast 678.50
674.66 Arcane Blast / single cast 404.79
649.02 Arcane Missiles 389.41
566.20 Frostbolt 566.20

why did you expect fireball scorch? scorch is just there for the debuff, if you let someone else scorch debuff for you, the results would be that pure fireball is better dps

Ah, so you are saying the calculator is including the 5 stack scorch debuff in its calculations, that makes sense, and I suppose I should have figured that out. It just seems odd that it uses different language for the debuff existing in the top 3 outcomes when incorporating the Molten Fury Time into the equation, but omits pointing out that the debuff is up in the two lines I have highlighted. Thanks. [edit] Actually I suppose it doesn't really show any difference in language, but is odd that it assumes its presence when reporting jut fireball spam. All makes sense now though.

Using Vontre's spreadsheet to compare [Collar of the Aldor] (with MSD and 12 spell dmg gem) and [Cowl of the Grand Engineer] (with 3x 12 spell dmg gems).

As far as the spreadsheet goes, the T4 helm is about 20 dps higher than the Cowl doing Frostbolt spams using a 40/0/21 spec. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. With the gems I'm using in the helms. Using the Cowl over the T4 one would mean that I'm giving up 4 spell crit rating and 3% spell crit dmg, but gaining 36 spell dmg instead. Is the 3% spell crit dmg really that much better than 36 spell dmg?

Thanks ahead for any help/clarification.

Oh, one more question. I'm using 40/0/21 with 3/3 in EP (so with the bug that's 6% spell hit to frost spells). From playing around with the spreadsheet for a while, why does it seem that the benefits of spell hit kinda "tops off" at around 13% (~90 spell hit rating)? When it should be at the commonly accepted 16%?

It seems that after hitting the 90 spell hit rating mark with gear, any more gear that has spell hit in it (and thus lower spell dmg and crit rating than a similar piece of gear without hit) will always drop my DPS/dmg done. This kind of debunks the whole "16% or bust" rule no? At least for 40/0/21?

I'm going to assume this is an answer to my question?

I have two different spell rotations set up for comparison. One is just spamming frostbolts, the other is using an AB/Frostbolt rotation. With the question I was posing, it is in both cases that anything above 90 spell hit is having a negative effect on my DPS.

Are you sacrificing too many of the other stats for spell hit?

The problem with spirit on mage gear extends far beyond the arcane vs fire mage spec debate; it effects end-game raiding in general. With BC raiding, it's clear that Blizzard designed encounters based on the assumption that casters and healers would have unlimited mana. In terms of balancing, this change was necessary. If casters did not have unlimited mana, then the classes that did not rely on mana for their roles (ie: rogues and warriors) would be far superior in longer fights. If you were to buff casters/healers so that they would be more effective in shorter fights, then melee classes would be completely removed from these short encounters. Changing encounters to an unlimited mana situation was necessary for the evolution of end-game raiding.

However, Blizzard currently in a bind in regards to spirit. First, spirit is designed to be a mana-regeneration stat. It provides very limited benefits aside from that (no increase in survivability and minor boost to healing/+spl if you have divine spirit). Second, spirit in its current state is a far inferior form of mana regeneration when compared to shadowpriests and mana pot spam. Finally, the most daunting issue is that even without the buff in spirit, most casters/healers can fight at unlimited mana given shadowpriest and mana pot spam. Therefore, in order to make spirit a competitive stat, Blizzard needs to do at least one of three things:

#1: Make spirit give additional benefit (similar to what they did for healing perhaps: +1 spirit gives +1/3 spell damage)
#2: Allow for a way to convert additional mana into additional DPS (ie: arcane blast) or additional healing.
#3: Increase the mana consumption/mana regeneration requirements for a fight so that casters and healers can no longer maintain unlimited mana with just shadow priests and mana pots.

If you think about it, none of these changes can be easily made or implemented without greatly effecting other aspects of the game. The easiest thing to do is probably #1, to make spirit give an additional benefit(s). However, Blizzard would then need to balance the additional benefit received by spirit classes (priest, druids, and mages) with non-spirit classes (shamans, paladins, and warlocks). Currently, arcane mages are the only class that can take advantage of the extra mana regeneration provided by the spirit buffs, so this would need to be extended to other classes. Point #3 may be the most difficult to implement, as that would bring into discussion mana-using classes vs non-mana using classes in raids.

As a final note in regards to mages, if Blizzard does intend to make Arcane the dominant end-game PvE raiding spec, then the question remains of what to do with fire. In terms of PvP/arena, fire is still inferior to frost in terms of both survivability and burst. Although 33/28 will receive a buff via improved blink and molten armor, it's doutbful whether this will overcome the benefits of the WE. In terms of heroics/10 mans, fire is the worst amongst the 3 trees because of its reliance on ignite. Mobs would die too fast for a deep fire spec to be ideal in these instances. Fire would basically turn into what arcane is right now: a dead tree. The best situation for Blizzard is to buff the arcane tree enough to make it the ideal tree for running heroics and 10-mans and keep fire as the dominant PvE end-game raiding tree. Frost will continue to serve as the best PvP/arena spec and will also serve as an alternative raiding spec.

Not at all (at least I don't think so).

For example (and this leads back to the first of my posts for today). I am swapping between [Collar of the Aldor] and [Cowl of the Grand Engineer]. Using the Collar I have 92 spell hit from gear (have CSD and Glowing Nightseye in the Collar). Using the Cowl I have 108 spell hit from gear (have 3x 12 spell dmg gems in the Cowl). However, using the Cowl takes my Frostbolt spam DPS down by 20 and Frostbolt/AB spam DPS down by 16. If anything I think I'm gaining dps stats using the Cowl, but it seems going over that ~90 spell hit mark tanks my overall DPS.

There never was a "16% or bust" rule. Hit is like every other stat in that it has a ratio between it and other stats based on your current stats. It just so happens that it has the highest returns, which is why most people try to cap it. For example you'll have lower dps wearing Ashyen's Gift and capping hit vs wearing Ring of Ancient knowledge and needing 21 hit.

Probobly a silly question, but does anyone know if the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond meta gem gains any ground with arcane in 2.4 over the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond?