Sackobones

My reaction to the changes is to respec forst to see if its competative now, then to fire if frost doesn't hold me.

Unfortunately without msd/tlc/etc... the am spam build is gone and with the 10% unnerfs on frost/fire the ab/am spam drops to third place in all categories.

Basically Blizz made arcane viable through changes and in one patch took that viability away and the mana issues no longer merit the only positive left for the build and that was the 40% threat reduction. 3rd place within a class talent selection that is still struggling to maintain dps against the other classes isn't a spec raiders will use.

My other issue is 5manning. Arcane spam is hard to use in 5 manning with limited mana pool and not shadow priest/jow. I hate to burn mana pots doing Heroic Mech. :|

 

Tyrian

The bit you missed is where many min-maxers liked having some choice when it comes to alterrnate specs. In 2.2/2.3 it wasnt so much that you *had* to go fire or arcane (assuming medium t5/t6 gearing) it was that you could do pretty darn well in either** and simply go with your favourite playstyle. That was great - you spec for what you enjoy. Being forced to spec into a spec simply because 'its the only spec that is competitive' is a little dull.

** assuming you had correct gear, which is another problem.

 

• Navaash

Quick comment: [complete massacre of the Arcane spec aside,] if they want to reduce the dependence on 2 piece T5, they're pretty much going to have to redo the set from the ground up given that it lacks hit.

 

Kir

Question: Are these 40/0/21 ABx3/Frstbltx2 rotations requiring 2pc T5 to be effective or are these numbers without it?

I was hoping to go frost spec next patch, switching from AM like everyone else, but if 40/0/21 with an AB/FrstB rotation is going to be higher dps then fire too, I may do that. I can live with losing ~30dps for going deep frost over fire. But, if I can get ice block and do the same or more damage then fire, that seems more appealing.

 

Sackobones

Do you have a winters chill mage in your raid?

If so I do think you will do fine spamming frost bolt. If not I think Fire will win out and so will a full frost build.

I think AB and AM had their last hurrah with this patch and the coeficient un nerfs. Maybe to be seen again in a future patch.

 

Sackobones

I have scoured threads and either missed it or it isn't present. Is there a listing with Spell haste and its effects on casting speed now?

I would love to see a mega thread compilation like the first page of the enhance shaman theorycrafting. A one stop shop of details.

I am looking to get a few Haste items in the next patch and am looking how much and what gear to swap out for spell haste gear.

 

Cardynal

40/0/21 ABx3/Frstbltx2, with WC, with 4t6 : 1548 dps
40/0/21 Frstblt spam, with WC, with 4t6 : 1677 dps
40/0/21 ABx3/Frstbltx2, with WC, with 2t5 : 1638 dps

I'm really not sure why AB is being discussed at this point. Since the patch increases the damage of frostbolt/fireball, it would only make sense that specs that focus on using either one of these spells with t6 is going to give you a higher DPS.

All 3 of these rotations/gear set-ups are weak in comparison to deep fire, and even deep frost when the pet stays alive.

 

macbeet

I ran tests on my Equip with Lhivera's Theorycraft-o-Matic (Lhivera's Theorycraft Script). Similar to many what people stated here before my, I get the result that 40/0/21 with 2t5 does good dps, which is fine for my equip.

Arcane Frost : 1,210.65 Arc Blast x3 / Frostbolt x3 w/AP averaged
Full Arcane : 1,204.05 Arc Blast x3 / Arc Missiles w/AP averaged (1 Scorch injected)
Full Fire : 1,187.00 Fireball x8 / Scorch x1 w/Molten Fury averaged
Arcane Fire : 1,166.55 Arc Blast x3 / Scorch x4 w/AP averaged
Full Frost : 1,106.81 Frostbolt + Waterbolt / Averaged

However when you drop t5 for better Equip, solid Fire and Frost Speccs tend to outdps an 3*AB, 3*FB rotation.

It's clear that Frost and Fire have their debuffs (+15% fire dmg from improved scorch, 10% crit from Winter's Chill) calculated in this simulator, but what is with the arcane specc?
Does it assume that another mage puts the frost debuff up and thats the only reason it works for some time?
Or does it not and can become viable if someone else assists?
The difference would result in plus or minus 71.94 dps approx, so let's say: considerable...

There is no contact address listed, so I could not ask Lhivera, so: Does anyone know if the simulator assumes 10% Frostcrit debuff applied or not, when in 40/0/21 mode?

this Calculation was made with T5 equivalent Equip and is therefore only limited valid... I highly doubt that this will change things in the t6 arena.

 

Cloudgatherer

Some of us aren't in T6 content yet, so +20% AB is a "big deal" =).

I got 2pT5 a while ago, and I settled on a 13/0/48 spec rotating ABxN/Frostboltx3 (where N is usually 3 or higher depending on my mana to boss' life), however I rarely see anyone posting ABx3/Frostboltx3 dps comparisons. A small amount of spell haste makes that workable to catch the cycle (Nimble Thought bracers), and in 2.3 with more spell haste being available outside of HJ/BT, you may see more T5 guilds have mages with spell haste and considering rotation options that weren't available before (at T5 level, soon with ZA). The tiny amount of spell haste also does not negatively impact AB spam hardly at all, since the GCD and the actual casts times are still very close together.

It's just a thought, in 2.3 mages pre-HJ/BT are going to have some "interesting" options that weren't available for the guilds currently at the end of the BC content.

 

Cardynal

With my current gear (mostly ssc/tk gear with a few items out of Hyjal)...I'm still seeing a 100dps increase with deep fire over a 3ab/3frostbolt rotation. This is if I change out gems for some +hit and take off TLC for icon.

 

Logun

If the cook pissed in your soup would you think he did it to make the next course taste better?

Blizzard could have introduced buffs to the arcane tree in conjunction with the MSD and LC nerfs. They did not. Blizzard has given us no reason to believe they are planning on buffing the arcane tree. It is foolhardy to assume that just because we received these nerfs, that arcane buffs are around the corner.

 

◊ Vontre

My only thought is that they believe the aoe dominance of the arcane tree justifies being completely inferior for anything else. I guess there's some merit to that thinking, would you want arcane mages for Hyjal? Maybe, but you sure as hell wouldn't want them around for the bosses.

Aside from that the only other explanation is curse synergy. After all, on your typical fight an arcane mage with CoS will hit a little bit harder than a fire mage without CoE. Maybe if you only have 2 warlocks? I don't know, this whole debate is kinda silly. It is really not fun to argue about which would be better, or accept those consequences, they ought to merge the curses into an all-magic curse and give our elemental shaman/moonkin friends some love as well. Mages are the only class that really use CoE, which kinda silly considering the other curses buff at least 2 classes.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

Tyrian

Small steps , small changes > large sweeping changes - is there design philosophy.

While you can say they gave us 'no reason to believe they are planning to buff the tree' you can also say the opposite - theres no reason to rule out a chance of incoming changes/buffs after taking these small (necessary) steps to normalise parts of the tree.

Since we're using rhetoric, is the glass half empty... or half full? Could be either - and hopefully we'll find out sooner rather than later.

 

Logun

Possible reason for the LC nerf and it is again thanks to a PvP exploitation.

WoW Forums -> If the LC nerf was because of Affix’s post

Too bad this is the only time you see Blizzard acting quickly.

 

zepi

Is there a better way to model DPS than Vontre's spreadsheet? I ran some numbers with 2p T5 trough it, and got very similar results for 10/48/3 and 40/18/3 with ~T5 level gear. (~1000dmg ~capped hit ~350critrate)

I was however using a self-deviced cycle of 3:2:1 AB:Fireball:Fireblast. I don't know if it's actually usable in real raiding situations due to latency, even with the new improved casting mechanics. Atleast in theory 2x 3sec + 1.5sec should fit into the 8s AB debuff window, atleast if you have a tiny bit of haste gear.

Deep fire seemed to scale better with gear (how suprising...) and had better manaefficiency, but AB cycles win in threat levels and in shorter fights you can get some DPS-advantage with AB-spam. Also, AB cycle is less reliant on CoE due to 45-50% of damage being arcane, rather than fire.

 

Vhad

That's a stupid analogy you can't logically apply here, I mean come on...

Arcane was good IF and ONLY IF you had MSD, TLC or 2 piece tier5, without either of these the spec is very subpar on everything but AoE. You could not realistically make any changes to Arcane tree that would be balanced without those items as they used to work, it would be crazy overpowered.

Now it's true we've not heard a single thing about any changes incoming or even a blue post verifying that they recognize the "arcane problem" as real. But with the normalizations in 2.3 PTR we have a much better chance to see a balanced Arcane tree that isn't based on TLC MSD or 2 piece tier5 (if they decide to do something about 2 piece tier5 too).

What!?

 

Soul

I simply don't understand this mindset that some mages have (in order to get buffed, you have to get nerfed).

I mean, we had people saying this very thing when shared DR was introduced on Frostbite and Frost Nova. Perma rooting even by chance was OP... by nerfing this, Bliz can now FINALLY balance mages for PvP. After, like, a month of Frost Mages getting owned, the change got reversed. Something similar happened when the damage tax got introduced. We got nerfed. Mages said it was a good thing because now they could address damage imbalances by making the class more interesting to play. Well, here we are, the better part of a year after it was introduced... and the primary change we're getting to compensate is that the tax is getting removed, which is Blizzard's way of acknowledging that it was totally uncalled for in the first place. And then there was the Counterspell debate. Counterspell was put on the global cooldown. Many mages protested saying it would drastically impact their playstyle. Other mages said, "Great! Now they can address our weaknesses against casters in PvP!" Months afterward, the only thing that was changed was that CS got taken off the GCD...

What indication is there at all that anything is going to change for arcane aside from these nerfs aimed at gear that made the spec viable? Arcane was not a viable dps spec for the entirety of vanilla WoW (aside from needing Evocation and IAE to be able to, like, play up to 1.10) and only became somewhat useful when 2 Piece T5 came into play and Fire and Frost were taxed. Given this track record, I honestly have little faith that Arcane will be viable again until at least WotLK.

 

Pintofbrew

Guys you mistakenly take "blizzard" to be one union of ten people around a table who discuss every day.

TLC was nerfed not by the board that reviews mages, their PvE dps, their PvP potential or their state. It was nerfed by Item Designers, who (about damn time) decided that for an Ilhoof drop it was way overpowered.


TLC nerf has nothing to do with whether or not they will buff arcane and pointing to the impact TLC nerf has had on arcane does Not mean arcane needs a buff to compensate. It most assuredly needs a buff because it scales shoddily and is ineffective and not competitive. No spec/mechanic should circle around one or indeed any collection of items. Does full fire work without 4xT6? Yes. Can you do it without? Yes. Therefore 4xT6 is balanced. Does AB rotation work without 2xT5? Most likely not, or if it does what's the point. Does this mean it's balanced? No. Same thing with TLC. Easy to abuse, contributed 8% to dmg done in AM spam. Balanced? No.

It is not smart to argue for mechanics/talents/scaling buffs and use item change as an argument. In fact, it points to gimmick abuse, exactly like 2.2 AM spec, something which thankfully is out of this game.

RIP TLC. You will be missed and equipped for BG Icelance abuse.

 

Muphrid

Is it reasonable to believe that systemic problems with the class will be fixed only after bandaids are nerfed? No, of course not. What should be hoped for is that those systemic problems will be addressed themselves, and then the bandaids removed.

 

Kavan

According to my numbers the TLC nerf is about 2.5% dps loss for arcane single target and about 10% dps loss for aoe (obviously the more targets there are a bigger drop in dps you'll see).

 

Logun

Here is the newest blue post on arcane mage concerns, enjoy.

WoW Forums -> Mage Arcane concerns

 

◊ manly

This reminds me the idea I had a while ago. To log on the PTR, and report the MSD cooldown to be bugged and hope some new programmer reads the bug report and corrects it.

Maybe thats a more effective way to give feedback. Who knows.

In other words, looking at that blue post, I think the proper answer would be giving a big post in the suggestions forums that explains dutifully arcane spec scaling (or lack thereof) versus firespec scaling. But then again, it will probably just get deleted.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Alvira

The problem is with POM and AP. Two conerstone talents that they will never remove. Any proper scaling given to arcane tree may potentially be unstabalizing when AP and POM are added on top of it.

Plus arcane talent scaling adds to damage and crit damage of all spells. As fire and frost tree also alraedy have scaling talents. When combined with arcane talents that scale up crit damage, it could again prove to be destabalising in pvp. So I don't see any easy solution. >_<

Consider spellpower. They could buff it up to 100% instead of 75% and arcane would scale well normally. But then a POM, AP pyroblast with deep arcane spec that crits will be doing so much damage you will have a flood of tears from people who get one shotted in pvp...

 

Dropsi

That leads us back to the "pvp-balancing destroys pve-balancing" discussion.

There were - and there are - two classical answers to that:

1. Answer to the equipment - problem: Add specific pvp-equipment to the game that can´t be used in pve content or is useless/less useful in pve-environments.

2. Answer to the talent-problem: Rescript the talents (and maybe the dps-output in general as well as some of the crowdcontrol skills) to have different effects in pvp and in pve. The crowdcontrol abilities already reflect that idea, but not much more at the moment.

 

Alvira

Yeah, but talents apply to both equally. And blizzard hates to make changes that result in different pve vs pvp treatment if they can help it. They don't want to have to put on the tooltip.

Arcane power - increases all spell damage by 30% for pve, but only increases spell damage by 10% for pvp.