Cryic

The thread WoLK Stuff has recently linked to several post at World of Raids and World of Ming that list out the new abilities / spells that have been data mined from the recent F&A patch that was up on the community site for a few hours. It seems that most people believe these are real, but the chance of fake info being slipped in is there. I would like to discuss specifically the mage parts and the hopefully change of the way the class is played and viewed.

We all know that the vast majority of the new talents / spells will change, but I still find it amazing to look at whats possible.

Here is what is being reported / found / faked? so far for mages:

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* Arcane Barrage - "Launches several missiles at the enemy target, causing $s1 Arcane damage."
* Burnout - Increases your spell critical damage bonus with all Fire spells by $s1% but every time you critical with a Fire spell you lose an additional $44450s1% of your total mana.
* Living Bomb - The caster becomes a living bomb, causing $44459s1 Fire damage to all enemies within $44459a1 yards every $44457t1 sec. After $44457t2 sec, a fiery explosion occurs causing an additional $44461s1 Fire damage to all enemies within $44461a1 yards.
* Chilled to the Bone - Increases the damage caused by your Frostbolt and Ice Lance spells by $s1% and reduces the movement speed of all chilled targets by an additional $s2%.
* Deep Freeze - Stuns the target for $d. Only usable on Frozen targets.
* New food = sweet potato pie and strudles
* Explosive Fireball - "Breathes a ball of fire at an enemy, dealing $s1 Fire damage. The ball explodes on impact, sending burning fragments at enemies within $50235a1 yards of the target. Each fragment deals $50235s1 Fire damage."
* Frostfire Bolt - "Launches a bolt of frostfire at the enemy, causing $s2 Fire damage, slowing movement speed by $s1% and causing an additional $o3 Fire damage over $d. If the target is more vulnerable to Frost damage, this spell will cause Frost instead of Fire damage. Movement slowed by $s1%. $s3 Fire damage every $t3 sec."

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It's extremely hard to tell the real value of most of these abilities because of the code in place. From a top level view, I'm extremely excited about these. Arcane Barrage could be the fix to Arcane missiles that arcane mages have wanted forever. Burnout would the mana dump that fire mages have wanted. Living bomb looks like a cast and forget AoE spell that looks fun as hell to boot. Explosive Fireball yet another bump to our AoE. And Frostfire bolt could ease the problematic nature of resist / immune fights that mages have had to deal with. Deep freeze looks like a great pvp addition.

If this post is not allowed, or just not needed, feel free to delete


Edit/ Update with Lhivera pile of info (source post: post784316: )

 

Thanahtos

D&D anyone?

 

aznxk3vi17

Too many of these talents feel like they were implemented to improve the non-Frost PVP aspect of the mage. Burnout looks good at first, but the % of the mana lost will make or break this talent. Even at 1%, this will be excessive. Fire mages may not have mana problems, but that isn't to say we are flooding with it (I am assuming Shadow Priest, Elemental Shammy, and no Innervate, as this is my common setup). If it is 1%, I am gone 35-45% of my mana pool in a fight.

Now, granted these would be for lvl 80ish players, but if these talents are opened up before the release of WotLK (as they were in TBC), taking this talent would mean sacrificing dps consumables for more mana regen. I would definitely be OOM with 40% of my mana lost. One could say that the extra damage being done will make up for this, but without knowing the exact values, I guess we can only speculate.

Also, these are in the Alpha stage, so we should take them with a grain of salt. God knows what mages would be like if the early mage of WoW remained today.

edit: of course, with a well-timed Evocate, my mana pool would be okay, but again, the crit damage increase will determine whether or not the sacrifice of dps consumables and Evocate time makes it a dps increase.

 

Tyrian

When I heard about burnout, my first thought was maybe its a sutble nudge to give us a desire to want and actually appreciate spirit on our gear. We're going to want that talent that increases our crits - of course we will - and what will we need to help counter it? Spirit = extra regen. I wouldnt pass final judgement on this talent until we see any finalised details on 'the new spirit' mechanics that have been promised for so long..

 

dblaikie

Without substantial in-combat regen (from something other than arcane) I doubt that'll happen. At best it'll just mean more mages using gems/pots/evo rather than flame caps/destro/no-evo again, if the balance is just right. Which I'm fine with, to be honest.

 

Soraxis

But that seems to be edging us back towards the train of thought that spirit regen is 'essential' for a mage. Yes I know it is for arcane mages and I am not disputing the fact that it is a welcome addition, but if fire mages were to -NEED- spirit as well, that would mean that we would be almost forced to use our mage armor/arcane meditation again, to me that looks like we would just be pigeonholed into only a few viable specs and nothing else. Right now its nice because we've got a few viable specs for PvE, 2/48/11, 40/0/21, 0/40/21 and the list goes on. If we were to NEED 18 points in arcane to get up to the arcane meditation to stay competitive, well that would cut down on a few of the options to say the least.

That being said, it could go the other way and this would be another way of opening up yet another way to spec that is competitive with everything else, if its balanced right and speccing 18/51/2 (random numbers Im throwing in showing what might become a popular spec) is pretty much on par in many scenarios with 2/58/11 and so on, I think it would be nice having a few options to choose from for each of our playstyles. I guess in my opinion, it would depend on how balanced the new talents are I guess, hopefully blizzard sees how tricky of a balancing act this could be, making burnout
a good but not overpowered talent in its own right and then make the other talent trees balanced as well so that we dont have our hands forced in any direction.

"Time is like a monkey, you think its there and then its gone eating a banana."

 

Risingstar

The problem I see with burnout is that it might become a joke talent that doesn't scale with gear.
A flat % gain in crit chance is hardly worth a flat % decrease in mana every time you crit. They should just change it to a flat mana cost.

 

aikiwoce

I put together a mage WotLK talent tree based on the available info - WotLK FF Alpha Mage Talents

Sources:
Wotlk Wiki Leaks
http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php
WotLK FF Alpha spell.dbc file - Don't have a link as they get removed frequently.

I hope to be updating this frequently.

NOTE: Changes to Arcane Focus, Magic attunement, and Prismatic cloak. Some values are best guess, as I don't have much experience reading dbc files.

 

Muphrid

Well, it says that it's an increase in your crit bonus--that is, you deal more damage on a crit.

It's nice to speculate, but we can imagine all of these abilities undergoing major tweaks--if not outright removal--before the expansion actually goes live.

 

Goedel

I think it's almost certain mages will want and appreciate spirit on gear, from more than just this "little nudge" (compensating for Burnout). The most shocking talent description in these leaked lists, from a current (2.4.2) caster standpoint, is the warlock talent increasing spirit. This would be widely derided in game right now, and I'm sure it will be useful in 3.0.

 

aikiwoce

Interesting moonkin changes:

Improved Moonkin Aura(3/3) - Your Moonkin Aura also causes affected targets to have a 100% chance to gain $50172s1% spell haste when they critically hit with spells for $48394d. This effect cannot occur more than once every few seconds.

Improved Faerie Fire(3/3) - Your Faerie Fire spell also increases the chance the target will be hit by melee, ranged and spell attacks by 1/2/3%.

Nature's Fury(5/5) - Converts 20% of your bonus healing into bonus spell damage. In addition, your Wrath and Starfire spells have a $h% chance of applying the Nature's Fury debuff on the target. The Nature's Fury debuff increases Nature and Arcane damage done to the target by 2/4/6/8/10%. Lasts $48509d. Stacks up to 3 times.

Now you'll have to take a boomkin to a raid.

 

Kewangeder

Goedel, I take your point to mean that spirit on a warlock, of all classes, is finally worthwhile. Granting that, I'll note that shadow priests also get Dark Spirit - straight up "spirit = damage" boost. I'm sure I saw at least one other spirit-damage talent in one of the trees. (Arcane mages also can spec for more spirit.)

Spirit in general seems to be getting heaps of new attention.

 

grayrest

The talents from the link above show it as 4/8/12/16/20% healing->damage and a flat 2% on the damage buff, both of which make a lot more sense.

 

Jarlyn

Frostfire Bolt scares me a little bit. The proper fix to this business of fire and frost immune mobs is to stop making them that way. If Frostfire Bolt isn't intended to be a primary nuke, then the question becomes will it be an excuse for lots of new immunities in boss fights, based on the premise "Well you have this Frostfire spell you can cast, you'll be ok!"

Of course, the fact that fire and frost immune mobs screw over large sections of the mage class has never stopped Blizzard from putting in those mobs anyway, so whatever.

 

Joq

I like the group synergies they're building on, especially with moonkins, so I'm really hoping they pull out a few mage ones to give us a reason to have our group spots. I'd take a rogue-like bump up in dps above other casters, but that's a bit boring.

On the mage talents, I'm confused at the addition to Prismatic Cloak in reducing invis time to 1 sec (fully talented). If anything this should be a deep fire talent, since that's the only spec that can honestly claim to have threat issues, or maybe it should be an EP-like valuable low tier talent. 27 points into arcane doesn't make any sense, unless they were just looking for a place to stick it in. That's a big change to arcane focus too, given the current divergence of gear we're seeing at the moment between deep fire/frost and arc/frost. Requiring spell hit like elemental builds pushes them together again. Maybe with the intention of making it easier to design tier sets that suit everyone?

My initial thought on Burnout was ooh, another cooldown to use, but it kind of sucks as a talent. It clashes with MoE for a start, and is there any other talent that adds a negative effect on to crit? Unless it's intended to be a haste-like way of forcing you to spend more mana as your gear improves. Tied in with imp moonkin aura haste effect this could be a big drain on mana.

Hot Streak seems very RNG dependent, in a bad way. The night you get that lucky 45% crit rate the effects will be amplified and the night you get that horrible 20% you'll have wasted a few talent points.

I'm not going to worry too much yet until these get confirmed properly though. Long time to wait still.

 

Cryic

If some of the new data mining is to be believed, the burnout looks like an on use mana dump for deep fire. Which I personally would love.

Name: Burnout (5 ranks, listing highest)
Description: Increases your spell critical damage bonus with all Fire spells by 25% but every time you critical with a Fire spell you lose an additional $44450s1% of your total mana.

Mix that in with Molten Fury and the 20% down on a boss would be nuts.


Other spells dug up:
http://urlshort.com/wotlk/site/talentlist.php

Name: Fiery Payback (2 ranks)
Description: Increases damage caused by Molten Armor by 20% and whenever you resist a spell the caster takes 50% of any instant damage that would have been caused. Damage caused by Fiery Payback will not exceed 50% of the caster's health.

Name: World in Flames (3 ranks, listing highest)
Description: If a Fire spell you cast hits 3 or more targets, the spell causes an additional 15% damage.

Name: Hot Streak (3 ranks, listing highest)
Description: Any time you score 3 spell criticals in a row, you have a $m1% chance the next spell will gain 100% increased chance to score a critical hit.

 

Arikuneric

* Arcane Barrage - "Launches several missiles at the enemy target, causing $s1 Arcane damage."


Isnt this just arcane missiles??? o.0!

 

grayrest

The mining sites are showing it as a relatively cheap, high damage instant with a 3s cooldown.

 

◊ manly

Random musings

1- the hot streak talent.
-> Does this means I can flamestrike (assume here I get 3+ crits) and then have the buff up almost garanteed ?

-> Does this means that with 50% base crit I can sustain a 100% crit rate after I get 3 consecutive crits ? Surely, this talent must have a cooldown on it or reset the counter after it gets a proc. It all depends on how its coded. Does the +100% crit spell can count towards the 3 crit? This will make a huge difference in the worthyness of the talent.

-> The other downside is that depending on how this works you have the problem that it scales exponentially the more crit you have. Going from 40% crit into 50% crit will give very very significantly different results.

2- frostfire bolt.
-> I admit, it seems innocuous at first. However, since we are devoid of information, the mind can only wander and think of the possibilities. This is where I concluded this could not be. Let me elaborate.

Imagine a tri-spec with Spell Power, Ignite and Ice Shards. And [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] while were at it.
I am not sure if those multiply together. I assume they do.

100 (base damage)
50 (base crit) * 1.25 * 1.50 * 1.03 = 96.5625
196.5625 base crit on frostfire. Then ignite applies, so 40% off that (78.625), giving a total of 275.1875% on frostfire crits.

Hm.

Then you also get frostbite, and shatter. I guess other people see where I'm going with this.

3- moonkin talents
-> this needs a nerf. It is too good. Maybe make it self-buff, but lets face it - this is a caster-version of windfury.

4- burnout.
-> this spell is pretty much exactly what I had in mind. It fits well the overall design of the fire spec. The real question is whether or not it is 245% fire crits or 227.5%, but my bets are on 227.5%. 1% of total mana lost seems like a fair deal; it is enough to affect our play and not necessarily go for all out consumables, but its also not enough to screw firespec completely out of whack.

5- mage armor.
-> finally, something usable. I know it was for arcane spec thanks to mana regen, but fact is for all other spec this was used only for the 18 resistance and nothing else. I can definately see a few cases where debuffs lasting half the time would come in handy. Things like kaz'rogal mana drain come to mind. I am sure a number of other cases will crop.

6- netherwind presence.
-> I know this is a silly question, but can every AM cast proc this, like a good reminiscent of AM SPAM spec ?

x- Overall note about all mage changes.
-> I think all of them fit well what I had in mind and go to where they should be going. Frost goes more towards control, which essentially is why you go frost in the first place. Its nice to have some damage increase talents in all tree, but unless your tree is only damage you want to use sparingly damage increasing talents. I personally believe arcane should have more burst options (deep in the tree though, not in the form of a talent accessible by all specs), and better threat mitigation.

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

 

hypetech

It's an instant cast, not channeled. So its' more like uber hasted arcane missiles

 

Jarlyn

Truthfully though, why shouldn't casters get something to match windfury? Melee has had this amazing, always-scaling, large damage increase buff since the beginning of WoW, what's wrong with us getting something similar?

I temper that remark though with the knowledge that if something like that is implemented for casters, you'll see an appropriate melee DPS increase to match it. I wouldn't call it overpowered without seeing what else is added.

And the whole "this is still alpha" thing, but again, whatever.

 

Nurru

Truthfully though, why shouldn't Warriors get something to match Polymorph?

The reason casters have not and will not get a "caster windfury" should be obvious when you compare the damage output of say, a fireball, to that of a melee auto-attack.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Jarlyn

It's not a full "caster windfury" in the sense that one fireball doesn't cause me to cast two more instant fireballs at significantly higher damage. You can't compare the two directly as it's apples to oranges - my point was, why should we not be given a buff that actually scales with gear, rather than everything currently that is just flat increases irrespective of gear.

 

Sorcerer

Coming from what i've seen so far there is not much stuff pvp wise and thats my biggest concern.

Brain freeze in deep frost seems a joke for arena. If something is under frostnova effect he is really unlikely to hit you or party members anyway. In case maybe a little peel off from a focused target.

Imp. Water elemental is another joke... Elemental is running oom without it after few seconds and this talent won't change anything. If its true blizzard wants us to be a robots in arena managing counterspelling , snaring , kiting , sheeping, watching focus and staying alive and maybe managing water elemental mana now? I am already tired of playing hardest class in arena especially considering that i have to lead the games most of the time too.

Living bomb seems seems nifty considering the burst potential but lets not forget the power of DISPELL...

Fiery payback how often you resist spells in pvp or pve...

Chilled to the bone i think we don't need any more snare % with all the mobility, counters other classes have or can provide during the arena games making it really not so usefull.

 

grayrest

The wording is the same, so I'm assuming yes until I hear otherwise. Put me in the 'disappointed at the lack of empowered AB' camp.