Right, me forgetting the "not" in "Elemental Frostfire Bolt specs are broken and overtuned beyond hope, that's nothing new. But it's not just the fault of Winter's Grasp." wasn't exactly smart, but it should have been clear in context.

And the primary issue is *not* WG, it's FFB.
Even if you hard-wire something that FFB cannot affect/benefit from Grasp/Shatter at all, it's still the highest DPS and best scaling mage spec out there.

FFB with 0% Grasp is better than Frostbolt with 100% Grasp. If Grasp was changed to only effect the caster who procced it, then FFB would still be better than Barrage rotations (no Shatter/Grasp there), better than Arcane Blast spam.
What's so hard to get, why do people jump on the "Nerf WG!" bandwagon when even without it, FFB spam is one of the highest spammable DPS and most mana efficient spell out there and has the best crit scaling?


The question for other classes is actually an interesting one. Fireball in BC had quite good scaling, so I'll use the old Fireball as benchmark for BC scaling. So for other classes, estimate how they compared to Fireball in BC and estimate the impact of their new talents.

To emphasise scaling, I turned up spell power to 3.2k:

500 - Waterbolt over a 6 minute fight
4277- Starfire (Druid)
4349 - Frostbolt without WG
4760 - Frostbolt with only personal WG
4870 - Lightning Bolts (Shaman 52/0/19), shared Stormstrike

5009 - Fireball as BC Arc/Fire
5035 - Fireball as BC Fire/IV (missing Burnout/Hot Streak)

5123 - Lightning Bolt (Shaman 43/28/0), shared Stormstrike
5207 - Wrath (Druid), shared Stormstrike
5535 - Fireball as WotLK Fire/IV without bugs
5570 - Shadow Bolt, Destro/Sac
5624 - Frostbolt spam with 5 WG mages
5674 - Arcane Blast spam (no T5)
5847 - Frostfire Bolt without WG/Shatter
5949 - Fireball as Arcane/Fire

6172 - Incinerate/Immolate, Destro/Sac
6237 - Barrage rotation with Fireball filler
6339 - Frostfire Bolt with only personal WG

6730 - Arcane Blast spam with 2T5
7803 - Frostfire Bolt with 5 WG mages


So, what does it look like compared to BC fire specs?
* Deep Fire spec gets a ~10% boost. Arcan/Fire, Frostbolt/WG and Arcane Blast spam are ~10-20% ahead.
* I would guess that most other non-hybrid classes would land ~20% above old Fire, maybe 25%. 5-10% ahead now, 10-15% through new talent scaling.
* Arcane Barrage is around ~25% ahead of old Fire, which should compete well with other classes.
* Frostfire Bolt starts nearly 20% above old Fire without WG, which is comparable to Arcane/Fire.
Using only your own Winter's Grace, it would shoot past Barrage rotations. Stacking mages makes it go up to ~55% above old Fire with 5 WG mages.

So, I'm quite optimistic that mages will turn out quite competitive without WG or FFB.
Even when stacked to 5, Frost/WG mages are still behind Barrage.

Stacking 10 frost mages puts on only ahead of 10 Barrage mages if your pets survive at least half the time, and even then it's just a slighty ahead in the best case.
There is no exponential scaling and whatever people like to claim. You need more than 5 mages to break even, and mustn't have any raid damage that can kill pets. That is not really an incentive to stack frost mages.

If anything, then people stacking frost mages means that Barrage DPS is high enough that Arcane is finally a great spec that can stand it's ground without a gimmick set bonus and massive mana from outside.

I'll have another look at Frostfire once the multi-school mechanics get a review.
If however Winter's Grasp is culled to "fix mage stacking", we're all likely to face a future as FFB zombies.


Comparison to other Classes

Since I was curious, I decided to have a look how other classes' primary spells scale in comparison to ours.
I've used the exact same buff/debuff setting for fair comparison, even if it doen't make sense that a Balance druid has no Moonkin Aura, for example.
I've used the info from the Blizzard WotLK talent calculators with some things that have yet to be implemented.
I am well aware that most classes are still under heavy changes, redesign and bugfixing, but I decided to still give it a shot.

The given data is strictly for their primary spells. Druids may have to keep up Insect Swarm and Faerie Fire, Shaman have to drop totems and maybe renew Water Shield, Warlocks may have to Life Tap (unless current Imp. Soul Leech makes it to release) and will use a curse, etc.
It's just an estimate of the maximum potential scaling of their primary spell.


From the first glance, it seems that I was a bit too optimistic and other classes will give a very good run for their money.

[Edit I]: Fixed calculation errors.
[Edit II]: Added comparison of other caster classes' scaling.

Curious but, with a build built around Arcane Barrage, how much will haste benefit it? While it will benefit the spells cast in the interim, with Arcane Barrage being the main nuke, wouldn't it be wise to drop haste for another stat because of it being instant?

Has this been cofiremd? I was under the impression it was just a guess based on some unsure datamining.

Not to my knowledge, no.

I did this whole post completely forgetting about the GCD. Just ignore it.

I'm a little confused as to how haste will screw up an ABar>FB rotation. GCD from Abar + 3s on Fireball totals to 4.5 seconds before any haste effects, for a full 1.5 seconds over the cooldown of ABar. Since the goal of the rotation is to contain it within 3 seconds to always cast Abar on cooldown (correct me if this is the wrong idea) then it seems like a fire subspec can handle substantially more haste before the cycle is disrupted than frost subspec can. Someone discussed this in a post upthread concerning the Frostbolt rotation, since under BL/IV you drop under the 3s timer and could more profitably use Frostfire bolt. One of the main advantages of fire over frost, from what I've read, is that it doesn't run into those issues.

That said, I think you're correct when you say frost will have preferable mana control. The point spread required for fire is going to take some tweaking, I think.

Doesn't this mean though, seeing as how Fireball is a 3 second cast +GCD = 4.5 seconds, that for this spec, you'd need a hell of a lot of haste just to break even and be able to spam Arcane Barrage every three seconds? What about a 51/10/10 spec for Frostfire Bolt? (51/9/11?) Moving into the realm of conjecture, but seeing as Roy says that FFB scales better than all the other spells, would it be the spam spell of choice in the rotation? Or just during Icy Veins?

Keep in mind that as Arcane, Barrage is going to be the highest DPS spell you have. Using Fireball or Frostfire Bolt may increase your 'filler DPS', but this is very likely to be offset by a decrease in the amount of time you spend casting Arcane Barrage. Using a 3-second filler seems like a bad idea to me.

ABar isnt the highest DPS, FFB is.

I believe he meant the highest DPS spell in the normal ABar cycle, as opposed to the "filler" spells.

I did some napkin math about Abr with fire/frost rotations, and was bit suprised to find out that at 1500 dmg and 25% crit, fire lost only some ~10dps when compared to frost rotation. During bloodlust it even surpassed frost by ~100dps, although frost was 250 more dps when it used IV alongside that BL (and I didnt even account the synergy between IV+AP in this math).

Considering that fireball scales better than frostbolt, I'd assume that it will eventually surpass frost although I'm yet to do math for 1800/2000 sdmg setting. Besides, frost is "hastecapped" at around 15% haste, which is really easy to get, while fire can take around 25% haste before losing benefit.

In the end, it's a matter of preference which build you want to take, since the damage between the specs being only few % apart. Roywyn had also similiar results in his math somewhere earlier.

That's true, but the differing haste buffs that exist will cause problems. Given certain group compositions differing amounts of haste will be preferred. For instance, if you have WoA and NWP, you don't want more than 14.4% haste from gear if you plan to use Frostbolt as a filler. However, if you also have a moonkin in the group, you won't want more than 4.8% haste, so that your cycle doesn't drop below 3s when you crit and get the extra haste. That is assuming that the haste buffs don't stack. If they do (I've heard rumors that do, but I'd like to think it isn't true), then you'll have to use FB or FFB as a filler when you crit and get the extra haste, and you wouldn't want more than 4.1% haste from gear.

Alternatively, if you have a a ret paladin and NWP, but no WoA, you'll want up to 22.1% haste from gear, or 8.9% haste and switching to FFB or FB if you get a Heroism, assuming Ret Aura and Heroism don't stack. You'd want up to 5.7% haste if they do stack.

So, depending on your haste from gear, using a 3s filler spell is quite possible. And if all the haste buffs stack, I am curious if ABar will be worth casting, since your GCD would be hard capped at 1 second, while your frostbolts would be casting in 1.11 seconds.

Where are you getting these numbers from, Roywin? Is it all from Rawr? I get very different results from a quick spreadsheet made for the occasion. I get barely a 4% difference between full Fire and Elemental Frostfire (solo mage) at the 15-20% base crit rates, and 2k spell damage. It goes up to 5% if I push it to 3200 spell damage. I get 6,5% and 7% if I include Elemental Oath - assuming the bonus of Elemental Oath is calculated in the same tortuous way the CSD is calculated. (giving a 18% bonus to Frostfire and Frostbolt crit damage instead of 6%). In every case, a WG-less Frostfire Bolt is inferior to both Fireball specs.

Calculations in Excel: http://pages.videotron.com/lado/WotlKmage.xls

Unless there's something I missed, they specifically stated that they don't want haste buffs obtained from group or party buffs to stack... so boomkin aura haste wouldn't stack with WoA.

Also, in all the WoLK gear I've seen I have yet to see haste rating, so I wonder if they aren't going to not make haste available for the first few raids... similar to what they did in TBC.

Wowhead lists plenty of items with haste on them, both for melee and casters: Activist's Signet of Blasting, Cloak of Azure Lights , Choker of Betrayal, Horn of the Herald are just a few that pop up if you search, and they're available at low levels. That's not even getting into all the Haste gems available. It looks to be a very readily available stat in WotLK.

Arazan, I'm in full agreement with them on not allowing all the different haste buffs to stack. I think the game would be very broken if they all stacked. As it is, the ret aura one gives the ret pally 3% haste on top of anything else he gets, and is an okay substitute for WoA if you only have 1 shaman, such as in a 10 man. Allowing WoA and WF to stack for the shaman who casts Heroism/Bloodlust is fine as well, since that gives shaman extra DPS cooldowns, while also providing a wonder group cooldown. And Moonkin can probably use some haste love of their own. But the idea of a mage getting every haste buff and getting down to a 1.11 second Frostbolt before he adds in his own haste rating from gear is downright awful. There'd be no real way to balance it.

Still, I was informed that tests in the beta were performed and they were stacking, so I had to take it into account, even if I personally feel that their stacking is complete bullshit. Plus, if they don't stack, the WF and WoA changes are actually shaman nerfs, and I have no problem with shaman getting a nerf. Currently, a shaman provides 30% haste from Heroism/Bloodlust, and chaining that is a plausible reason to bring more shaman. But if it isn't stacking, then it becomes a 10% melee haste buff or a 20% caster haste buff, assuming moonkin aren't in the group, which is a good step down from the 30% it currently is.

What i mean in terms of ArB not scaling with haste is that with enough base haste gear or Icy Veins or even the spell haste talent, you begin to not be able to pair instants ((0.0 secs)Arcane Barrage + (1.5)Fire Blast + (3.0)Barrage becomes (0.0 secs) Arcane Barrage + 1.2 fire blast + 2.4-3.0 sitting around + 3.0 Arcane Barrage) or substitute that fire blast with a polymorph, or an ice lance, and suddenly you realize that that arcane barrage cooldown really needs to scale with haste or it begins to really hurt

Reading a few pages back,
I don't understand why some of you are even considering scenarios of mage stacking (5mages?) to increase WG uptime, knowing that Blizzard will surely do something to prevent this. (Assuming that stacking 5mages will yield you a significant advantage over using other classes).

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That's fair... I was unaware that it was all stacking in the beta. Do remember though that one shaman can't drop both WoA and WF totem, as they're both air totems, so that shouldn't be nearly as much of an issue in 10man raids as 25man raids.

Frankly, I just wish they'd make WoA something like the enhanced flametongue weapon is now. Something along the lines of "Enchants all raid members within 20 yards' main hand weapons to increase their spell power by 10%". Elemental shamans have an air totem that actually scales and is very valuable, but not stackable, and it really *should* stack with bloodlust and other haste effects, thus not making enhancement or elemental shaman's bloodlust into an effective 10% haste instead of 30%.

Then again, this would be getting back to the "if I were a dev" line of thought, which I'm doing my best to avoid

Why on earth would they introduce the new haste abilities of Moonkin and Retri Paladins and then immediately make them worthless in 25 player raiding by making Shaman totems overwrite them?

The current haste rules were built in mind with current gear and talents, and current arena, and they make sense. In WotLK, they can balance stuff around having all those ablities available and make them stack again. They certainly aren't going to finally give retri paladins and moonkin a very good reason to bring to your 25 player raid, and then just have a shaman dropping a totem every 2 minutes remove that reason.

Roywyn what ranks have you used in the calculation? The datamined ones from wotlkwiki.info ? I was just wondering if the new ranks of fireballs would catch up a bit..