For 10-man instances, I'd question the value of any tallent taken purely for 'raid synergy', simply because you will struggle to find enough classes drawing on that synergy to truly justify it. 10 classes and 10 slots means an average of 1 of each class, 1/3rd of each spec. So how many people are getting SIGNIFICANT buffs from imp. scorch? If you're lucky, 2. And thats assuming you're deep fire and benefitting from it as well. Frost mage/Death knight synergy might be effective, but is it regular enough to be worth taking an otherwise inferior spec? I'm not saying frost is inferior, I don't beleive it will be. But the point is, is it worth modyfying your spec based on a CHANCE you might be grouped with a destro lock (fire), frost knight (frost), boomkin(arcane) or whatever. The only 2 possible outcomes of this that I can see are either:

1) Everyone respecs before any given 10-man raid in order to maximise efficiency/synergy, or

2) Everyone specs for best personal contribution to the raid and throws synergy to the wind.

Personally, I think the 2nd option is more likely (which currently means arcane is your friend in 10mans, offering competative DPS and other functions for the raid).

Although, a frostfire build the can buff imp. scorch AND WC might just be enough all-round synergy (and personal DPS) to be worth taking.

On the subject of tanking in 10-mans; I'd like to think that 1 dedicated MT and 1 OT (possibly off-spec) would be best. The warrior tallent vigilance to me seems to be perfectly suited to 10-mans; throwing on an off-tank who might not otherwise be ideally spec'd for the role (ret paly in prot gear, DK that skipped some tank tallents, whatever). Bringing 2 full prot classes with little functionality in DPS is far from ideal (even though prot warrior in WotLK looks like a far more capable DPSer than they are currently, with better AP scalling and more damage on abilities).

I guess we'll see how it pans out.

PS: Christ Lance is the best name for a spell ever. My hat goes off to the gentleman above who came up with it.

I don't really have a lot to go on with this, but my assumption is that the kind of people who are forming tight, regular setups are the kind that are hitting 25-mans. It just seems like a more hardcore mentallity to me and since 25-mans are going to give better loot, I'd assume they would be harder and hence more suited to such hardcore folks.

Its only my gut speaking now, but I figure 10-mans would be more casual and therefor people hitting them would see more alts, players with lesser playtime swapping in/out throughout a raid week, etc. I guess there would be a demographic of folks with a dedicated 11-12 man setup but the way 10-mans are going right now it just seems to me that its way more casual than that.

This touches on my one anoyance with the proposed - that 25-man raids will be more rewarding yet more challenging than 10-man content. Has any 10-man player ever said they wanted an easier ride for less reward? I'd gladly enter a 10-man instance thats of equal difficulty to a 25-man or, hell, even harder difficulty for the sake of getting equal quality loot. I'm not sure where they get this idea that 'More people = harder'. The only challenge that comes from getting 15 more people in the raid is dealing with all the drama. Difficulty of content is entirely maleable by blizzard beyond that.. Should players really be rewarded for putting up with more people in their raids?

But I digress. Christ lance is the funniest name I've heard since 'hellfire man-parts'

More people is always more difficult. Witness the latter half of Sunwell, where a single mistake from any person in the raid can (and frequently will) lead to a wipe. Getting perfect play from 25 people is inherently more difficult than getting perfect play from 10 people.

10mans are a far different animal from 25mans. In 25mans, generally you have 10-12 classes purely there for utility (tanks, healers, whatever gimmick the fight requires), and the other 13-15 classes are there JUST to dps.

In 10mans, generally you have 2 tanks (one can be an OT to fill both dps and utility) 2-3 healers, and 5 dps... but dps almost ALWAYS has an innate utility that they're brought for. Whether it's a fight gimmick that requires specific classes and sometimes even specific talent specs (Wizard of Oz event in Karazhan is a perfect example), or whether it's common utility (polymorph, banish/enslave, traps, etc).

10man instances, especially when they're progression-level, are FAR less forgiving in terms of class makeup, so you can't get to the point where you're bringing 4-5 WG mages, because you won't have the required utility to make it through. As the poster above put it, it's very hard to build a lot of raid synergy in 10man instances... so my advice for mages (all classes, really) is to spec for best personal performance for the 10man setting.

As it stands right now, were I to make a frostfire bolt build designed PURELY for 10man raids, I don't think I'd even take WG.

So Tom Chilton basically confirmed Frostfire bolt will be affected by frost and fire talents in the WotLK dev panel today. Looks like an elemental or tri-spec will be the way to go, probably a 0/33/38 spec to get Winter's Grasp and Molten Fury, maybe 33/11/10 + 17 tri-spec as a WG leech.

This has been discussed quite a bit. You neglected 50-fire specs to get to Burnout.

Ultimately, unless we're looking at arcane spec, FFB will also offer a very nice alternative to mages for those pesky immune mobs. While a FFB as frost or fire may not be as good as a FrB or FiB at the same spec, it'll definitely allow us more options than the 100g trip to org.

I left out 5x fire spec due to the "fix" which guts the usefulness of burnout. The previous math by Lhivera shows deep fire falling behind even Arcane. With, I would assume, an expected nerf to Winter's Grasp, I can only see Frostfire bolt specs pulling ahead.

I think it's a very good bet you will see some small, tightly-knit progression-oriented guilds forming around 10-man raids, putting the same kind of time into the content that 25-man-oriented progression guilds do currently.

Have you guys read any of the WWI news?

News from the WWI '08 WoW Dev panel - WOW Insider

Mages
Will get a Frostfire bolt to make Elementalists more viable.

Note that each class had 3+ points except the mage class.

In the QA section:

"Now that every other class has CC, what are you going to do so that Mages are more viable?"

Make sure their damage is competitive. They are "sidelined" by Warlocks now. Intended for Mages to be kings of AoE but Seed of Corruption was too effective. Scale up Mage damage, make sure they can overtake AoE.

Is anyone else really deflated with this lack of direction or information.

I find the information given reassuring. They understand our issues, have identified them, and are presumably going to address them. The lack of specifics matters less than intent.

A while back on the official forums Lhivera point blank posed a question to Blue as to their intentions for the direction of the class. Many mages felt they had lost their identity in TBC. This statement is a satisfactory response to that question and gives mages a mission statement and a clear idea of what the developer intent is.

Agreed. I don't mean to be completely negative, but most of us have been around on this pony ride once before. Promises of candies and flowers are just that - promises.

Best to work with what little substantive information we have than kick back and say it's all good "because Chilton said so."

=)