Myrdinn

Got a quick question for people in Hyjal/BT (working on KT atm, we expect to down him soon).
Is deep frost and utilities talents useful there ? I mean permafrost, imp blizzard especially.

With my numbers : 546 int, 1000 +dmg, 300 crit rating, 167 hit rating, 17 haste rating, molten armor, no totems, no bloodlust, T5 bonus, RED enabled (I hope Vontre model it like CSD)

10/48/3

[top]
8:1 fb/scorch rotation : 1323 dps
AB spam : 1397 dps

40/18/3 (AP not included)

8:1 fb/scorch rotation : 1251 dps
ABx3 FBx2 : 1302 dps
AB spam : 1748 dps

40/0/21 (WC on target)
======
Frostbolt : 1262 dps (1156 without WC)
ABx3 FBx3 : 1352 dps (1291 without WC)
AB spam : 1748 dps

0/0/61
=====
Frostbolt : 1308 dps

Technically, 10/48/3 is better in 2.3 but I feel not comfortable with this spec which is awful in PvP... Was about to give 40/18/3 a try, but frost numbers look interesting finally.
Is pet easy to keep alive in Hyjal/BT ? What pet uptime is ok to expect ?

 

Northerner

I'd say no but I honestly am not deep frost right now. In general however, uncontrolled roots are bad and blizzard is just plain lousy as an AE period these days. I guess you can keep hyjal trash snared if you are so inclined but I see little point.

Pet survivability is an ongoing problem as is the lack of pushback protection. The WE is going to die in a number of nasty ways on a number of MH/BT fights and that's all there is to say about that really. He could really use at least some basic resists or AE immunity or something. The lack of any pushback protection at all is going to seriously hurt dps on a number of fights also but that's a design issue that's been around forever. These two together are the biggest obstacle right now for frost overall use, although hey, it all will depend on what parses come out for me later when 2.3 is released. There are very few fights right now that actually hinge on mage dps to say the least.

 

Prod

Just a heads up that if you didn't think mages were nerfed enough this patch, TLC now has a 2.5 second cooldown (on the lightning bolt, not on charges). It no longer works on aoe. I guess this removes any doubt of arcane bringing inferior dps and utlity, as the cooldown will also screw up AB spam.

 

Vonwen

Nevermind*

 

Roywyn

Ouch. <headdesk>

I don't see how it affects AB spam though?
The cooldown only matters if you get 3 crits within 2.5 seconds, or am I missing something?
So, it only affects crit streaks with hasted AM, and AoE. But you said it won't work on AoE anyway.
I don't really see how it impacts AB spam, hm.


Also, 25ms spellcast spam with a G15 is out again, cast attempts trigger a GCD now (GCD disappears when the client receives the "cannot cast yet" message from the server).

 

Prod

Yeah I see what you mean with that, I guess I missed out one important note. Apparently the new tooltip says the charges themselves have a 2.5 cooldown, and right now it is working on a bolt 2.5 cooldown. It's likely Blizzard will fix it and properly nerf it harder.

 

Pintofbrew

Lame with a capital L... Making the bolts go off on, say, 5sec CD was decent of them, it would impact the item little, but making the charge-gain one-per-2.5sec max means it losses value moderately on arcane blast rotations, hugely on arcane blast spam and scorch spam and becomes worthless for AM spam all together... Happily, it's still (in terms of game mechanics) valid for frostbolt and fireball, but any haste will relatively reduce it for frost. Not that anyone sane would equip it outside a BG;

On the other side I'm happy to see a kara trink get nerfed into it's place. It's simply unacceptable to have a dilema along the lines of "TLC simply can't go, so it's either going to be Gul'dan or Sextant that gets the bankage".

 

Vonwen

Yes but it also affects pvp, with Molten + TLC, and I even wonder if it's not the main reason to this nerf, rogues whining about being killed by a trinket ?

So if we sum this up, AM spam is destroyed with the MSD nerf, AB just doesn't scale enough anymore compared to fireball, and even the TLC will no more grant a decent output while aoeing and AM spamming. I guess with T6 gear a 17/44 will be appropriate then.

Is anyone here using AToI with fireball spam ?

 

Vhad

I may be a little too optimistic, but all these changes specifically hurting Arcane specced mages, could that mean they have some bone to throw us? Could it mean they realized the stupid item dependancy for arcane and will compensate one way or the other?

What!?

 

aznxk3vi17

Unfortunately, rather than throwing a bone to Arcane Mages, they have put in the final nail in the coffin: WoW Forums -> Lightning Capacitor Nerfed on PTR?

Looks like there's no hope for Arcane whatsoever in 2.3. Get out your Scryer Bloodgems, folks, time to start gearing back up for Fire.

 

koetjeka

I was wondering, are there any dps simulations that do include the pushback of frostbolts?

 

Malentra

Interesting changes to TLC and MSD. It looks like they are trying to make a paradigm shift for Arcane dps. Without those two items available for maximum dps, it looks like the devs can truly gauge how effective Arcane dps is at the end-game and tweak it accordingly. Perhaps not for 2.3, but hopefully in time for the 51-pt talent trees in anticipation of WotLK.

Also, in terms of combat log parses and/or theorycraft, has anyone checked out a 33-28 build utilizing a 3xAB 2xFireball rotation in the 2.3 patch? I remember reading a post by galzohar calculating dps higher than 10-48-3 at the 2pc t5 level. I'm wondering if this still holds.

 

ebbv

You say this as though it weren't possible for them to create an Arcane Mage wearing full T6 themselves and run fights with him. They did not need these nerfs to see what kind of numbers Arcane is putting out. These nerfs are to kill a spec/combo that they consider exploitative.

This exact question has been asked several times in this thread already.

 

Frostie

Nail? Meet coffin.

Thread's over, folks. Nothing to see here. Come 2.3, us arcane lovers get to wait for the expansion where there will be new talents, probably complete talent reviews and new items for us to get nerfed. Fun while it lasted. I'm not one to complain but I really don't see what Blizzard sees as arcane's obvious advantage as a primary tree. Like, what makes it on par, situationally, with frost or fire. I guess grats on your 40% threat reduction. You won't need it.

 

Vhad

I'm just as frustrated as everyone else and have deleted more than a few posts before posting because I figured I would just get an infraction for whining. The more I think about it though, couldn't this easily mean they actually realize the problem with Arcane? That is the extreme dependance on gimmicky items TLC MSD and tier5 to be competitive? I agree it's a weird way to go around it, but realistically they couldn't directly buff arcane before these items were "normalized". I may just be a fool for putting a little trust in Blizzard's design team and woe will most likely be me, I'll await further changes anyway - I think they are quite sure to come.

What!?

 

Vonwen

They would have to greatly increase AM's scaling, for instance with buffing empowered AM, and add few things to buff AB (crit chance, base dmg...), or add AM to Arcane Impact. This would make arcane spec competitive (if done right) without being that dependant to specific gear. Bit I highly doubt it will happen, I personnally think that blizzard never intended the arcane tree to be a primary dps spec, hence the 40% threat reduction, and they realized in 2.2 that arcanes actually became a viable, if not top, raiding spec.

There will be no bone I'm afraid...

 

Zinaida

Some quick napkin math shows the LC losing about 35% of its damage output with an AB rotation (with a 28% average crit chance) which seems to balance the trinket quite nicely with the others (sextant, icon), so on first impressions the trinket itself doesn't seem to have become useless. Note that my model here is fairly inaccurate, so i may be a little off. If someone can do some more accurate theroycraft then please do.

Despite this it's still a nerf to arcane dps and something is needed to bring arcane back in line with fire and frost if it is to be seen in raids again. I do like seeing these "gimmick" items nerfed though, it just remains to be seen if arcane will get its core dps buffed.

 

Vhad

My point was more so that in order to actually go ahead and MAKE those changes, however difficult it may be, they HAD to normalize said items before they could work on balancing the spec without making it extremely overpowered in conjunction with those items. Now the slate is clean and they COULD fix arcane, they may not, but it will be alot easier now.

What!?

 

◊ manly

Well, as I said before, they need to do some serious makeover of the arcane tree if they want it to compete at all. I even called the TLC nerf if they wanted to homogenise things. I think that the arcane tree should scale towards the rock bottom DPM end of things (in a non-AB fashion, 1min spam is not usefull under any circumstances for the most part). To fix arcane scaling they need to either fix the crit multiplier, or vastly increase the crit rate to make up for it. Like for instance, just adding +1% crit per imp. missiles would be a start. Then I still firmly believe in what I said earlier, that probably the cleanest way to fix AM scaling would be a new 2 point talent that reduces by 10% / 20% AM cast time. They can't just give straight up better DPS and DPM to the arcane tree; that would not give any incentive to pick arcane over fire or frost, in the sense that it wouldn't offer a 'extra mana -> less threat' convertion over the other trees.

thinking back about it, here's what I propose:
imp missiles: +2% crit / point
emp. missiles: +20% / 40% / 60% spell damage.
new talent (2pt) (req. 3pt emp. missiles) : Reduces AM cast time by 15% / 30%.

These changes wouldn't mess up PVP in contrast to my earlier proposed increased crit multiplier.

Log on with different model:
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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Tyrian

Surely the Blizzard class designers use this forum (and threads just like this) as a great resource when designing or changing talents/spells for a given Class spec. They'd be foolish not to, since this is where the best results/conclusions of their game design come from.

Put me in the fan-boy corner if you will, but I do trust that Blizzards nerfing of these items surely means they are well aware of the Arcane-spec state at the moment and want to address it. Of course, this might not happen until the expansion..

If blizzard intends to wait until WOTLK before major talent restructure / changes - fair enough.

But small, modest changes like these should be something they really can add in to any content patch. I really do hope they consider it, even if the changes are somewhat temporary until WOTLK until a more thorough review.

 

Malentra

I went through every page, I saw 33/28 mentioned but not against other specs using 3xAB/2xFireball rotation, just the 10xFB/1xScorch comparison and the 3xAB/4xScorch comparison, and also a write-off that the Arcane portion of the spell damage in an AB/Fireball rotation doesn't benefit from the 202 hit rating. I would just like to see the dps comparsions recently posted with 33/28 instead of 40/18/3 spec and the 3xAB/2xFB rotation instead of 10xFB/1xScorch or 3xAB/4xScorch that I've seen above.

Perhaps they want to see how players react in the new patch without benefit from MSD/TLC before they consider how much to modify the Arcane tree for WotLK. Also, they probably want to see actually in-game numbers vs. their own in-house numbers. We all know how valid Blizzard's in-house dps tests are after the introduction of the Fireball/Frostbolt damage tax, even though almost any mage could have proven with theorycraft that it made Warlocks scale better than us in the end-game. In-house tests rarely represent reality. If only the players on these boards could be involved in such testing, I'm sure we'd see a more finely tuned Arcane tree.

Regardless of the intent, the effect will be that Arcane will do less damage in 2.3 unless more changes are incoming. This will probably mean even fewer mages spec Arcane, which will in-turn result in changes to the tree. (we can hope)

Yes, I agree completely. Even if they are trying to gauge Arcane dps in-game without the "exploitation" of certain items, they shouldn't make an entire spec nearly redundant for a class. Especially while they work extra hard to make all 3 trees raid viable for Druids, Paladins, and Shaman.

It would be nice if Blizzard would give some clear communication on how they consider the current state of Arcane dps/utility. Do they intend for it to be a low/equal dps spec to fire while being more mana hungry and harder to use, just for the added value of lower threat generation? It seems Blizzard needs to advise the player base on their current vision of the tree and where they are trying to go with it, so we can give more constructive criticism.

 

Tyrian

They clarified the wording:



Sidenote: How many people believe the Blizz Class designers (responsible for all these types of changes) actively read this forum, threads like this - and use information/conclusions from here when it comes to game design? I know Tigole etc reads and posts - but wouldnt you think a forum like this would be considered must-read-material for game designers at Blizzard?

 

ebbv

What other spec would use 3xAB/2xFB? Why would you spec any other way with that rotation?

Scrubs will do whatever they want and min-maxers will spec whatever is most effective. Just like always.

They know what is most effective (except when there's some combination oversight like MSD + TLC + AM) so they know what people will do.

 

tedv

I certainly haven't played my mage as much as most of the posters here have, but my general feeling was that Arcane Missiles simply cost too much mana. Is that still part of the core problem, and would, say, a 10% reduction in mana cost help that? Or have Judgement of Wisdom and Shadow Priests made that a non-issue?

 

Alruna

JoW and SPs have made that far less of a problem. AB spam is far more mana consumptive than AM spam as well...