I assume the removal of the 1% resist (and binary resists) is for the sake of blizzard's 'e-sport' arenas. The major failing of arenas is that any dice-roll as extreme 'fail or win' removes a lot of the aspect of player skill. It's for this reason that anti-stun mechanics were changed to -duration rather than +resist chance. Its another example of PvP affecting PvE, although for this time it may be for the better (even though it nerfs magic absorbtion).

Frostfirebolt can be partial resisted. Partials are very abundant in WotLK. I wear about 65 spell pen (I wear s3 gear) and still see pretty frequent 10% partial resists.

Magic attunement does NOT affect Blink.

Why are people still going on and on about WG? Ffb is the more dangerous issue. Double dipping is almost certainly simply a bug. Once fixed, it's wait and see to compare how we measure up against the classes. (Warlocks did just get DS back, although only 10%, and imp soul leech is pretty big)

I would have hoped they changed it for pve balance reasons as well, considering that physical dps has no such limitation, while spell caster dps does (did?).

I'm not completely sold on the "all for arenas being an e-sport" idea, as the skillfully timed stun procs are still present on mace spec warriors/rogues, and things such as impact and frost bite are still only a chance to occur rather than something the players can control.

This issue of the ported tooltip error on Arctic Reach reminds me, I've been meaning to add to my testing list (and ask Zaldinar to add to his): does Arctic Reach affect Deep Freeze?

Parry, Dodge, Glancing Blow, Armor vs. Full Resist, Partial Resist

Melee does have equivalent damage reduction.

If crushing blows are gone, does that mean glancing blows are, too?

I get glancing blows on my Death Knight a fair amount, so no they have not been removed.

Technically for spell casters there is Miss, *Partial Resist.

Oh and since level based resists can not be removed (spell pen) it is the equivalent of (iEA) armor.

*Partial resist can include 100% resist.

I assume Magic Absorption isn't affected when dealing with low-level creatures, such as when farming SM? Its some pretty hefty mana return when you constantly resist everything the casters throw at you. I wonder if it now distinguishes between a Resist and a Miss.

I'll check in a little bit if nobody else does.

That's the part that seems to be gone now.

I don't have concrete evidence but from what I could tell by blowing up hordes and hordes of low level elite mobs in that instance in Org with rank 1 AE that 1% chance to always miss with spells is gone.

That's very interesting if true, but would need some testing to confirm. And some testing against higher level mobs as well to see if it's a level based thing or not.

False. Theorically it can. The old old blue posts hint at it being possible. Actual testing showed that case to never happen.

Couldn't it just be astronomically unlikely?

On a similar vein wasn't there a time pre-bc when there was differentiation between spell resists and spell misses? I seem to recall misses being white and resists being yellow at one point.

Is there really a practical difference between astronomically unlikely and a case where it never happens ?

You're right, I messed up and included 4T6 in my calculations. This changes the results by about 2% (as the scaling is unaffected). Including 1 tick of each Fireball goes the other way by about 0,5% (or 13 DPS).

I didn't include Cold Snap, but a fire build could have it while keeping everything else. I also didn't include AP + PoM-Pyro, which is slightly superior to Icy Veins. Modeled Combustion as a flat 2% crit, so it did give higher benefits to FFbolt. The model is also a bit false, given that the crit-equivalent value of Combustion drops as your crit rate increases (and FFbolt has a higer crit rate). It goes from 3% @ 20% crit to 1,6% @ 50% crit, hitting 2% @ 40% crit. I didn't take any point in Playing with Fire (I'd rather have Blast Wave), but the maximum you would realistically spend is 1 (or 2 if you sacrifice 1 point in MoE). I also made the error of giving 2 points in Pyromaniac, which is impossible in a 34/37 build.

So, corrected, approximate numbers with Elemental Oath (and 2/3 PwF in the FF build): solo FFbolt has a 7,1% advantage over Arc/Fire. Without Elemental Oath, it's 5,2%. Numbers at 2000 spell damage and 15% or 20% base crit.

Seeing the enormous effect of including Elemental Oath on the scaling difference between the spells, perhaps Blizzard should look into fixing the crit bonuses from it and the CSD.

In that case once you cap resistance, the average 75% resist can be represented only by 100% chance to resist 75%, which is similar to 0 resistance being 100% chance to resist 0%. If the resistance is changed like that it is extremely good.

As for binary effects, do they get duration reduction through resistance now? Or nothing at all since armor doesn't affect non-damage physical effects?

Our numbers don't look that different anymore then I guess
Now that you mention Elemental Oath (and CSD meta), Ice Shards multiplies the effect by 2, Ignite multiplies it by 1.4 on top of that. FFB essentials benefits twice as well from it. Which explains the large impact of the small buff.

I'm really curious how +dmg and +crit compare in this build in numbers (42.88 crit rating = 1% crit at 80 will be the conversion).
Numbers from post 2 WoW Forums -> Combat Ratings from 70 to 80

For the higher gear set, I used 20% crit from intellect and gear, which shoots me to ~48% crit with Molten/ToW/Judgement/WC, talents and combustion.
That amount of crit is kind of overkill and heavily favours FFB in the calculations. 20% base isn't much, but there is so much crit added from buffs and debuffs, it's beyond funny.


Also, I fixed my numbers with the broken scaling.
I also added the well scaling spells of other caster classes to have a first comparison:
[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion

I'm aware that this will be outdated once the patch is up today, and no spec can really sqeezed into one spell.
The sky's not falling, but it might become a rough winter for those who only try half-heartedly.

@Roywyn -- Your recent numbers don't really imply to me that anything is wrong with Frostfire Bolt or WG scaling. The only spec that stands out above the pack if a raid stacked with 5 Ffb mages. Factor in curse of doom and the fact that Imp Soul Leech makes life tap almost unnecessary and I'm not really sure FFb is too strong, maybe the alternatives are just too weak. Ideally, shouldn't mages sit a few % above a CoD lock?

The Barrage specs are also using, what, like 55% more mana too? Plus they run into haste cap issues. (Heroism + Moonkin proc etc)

TBH, I'd like to see what happens when:
- a large improvement to fireblast, say 2.5/3.5 coefficient
- a reduction in Ice Lance global to 1sec through a deep talent
- a small nerf to ffb coefficient
- treat barrage as 3.5 coefficient

Buff up that fireblast filler, the fading ice lances on WG, and reward the mana consumption of Arcane. But we've probably got many patches to go.

I've always felt that a real problem for any Arcane spec is just the horrible crit modifier and the fact that crit is so largely improved through raid buffs, Arcane is relatively negatively impacted.

Some news, according to Koraa on the beta forums, the arcane blast debuff has been changed. Now the debuff only lasts 3 seconds, and instead of decreasing the cast time it increases damage done by 15% per debuff charge.

I'll take the time to point out that the dps benefit of casting AB at 1.5 seconds is a 66.67% dps increase, whereas the change now makes AB only a 45% dps increase at 2.5 second cast time.

Yay for needless nerfs to AB?

Hmmm interesting change. Depends on how they tweak it. But it might make arcane blast more useful to Arcane rather than a spam or nothing spell. For one thing, at 2.5 seconds, it will now have a lot more leeway to benefit from haste just like other spells. Unlike now where you go down to 1.5 seconds by the third cast.

The mana drain from using AB also won't be so big now. Since you aren't blowing so much mana every 1.5 seconds. I still think AB is good even with this change. Which spell has a built in arcane power in it? Only AB.

They just need to make AB also proc missile barrage and I would happily go pure arcane instead of using an off spec spell as filler in my arcane barrage rotations. Perhaps with this change, they will. Before this, the concern was probably that there was too high a chance to proc missile barrage with AB spam if AB could proc it.

But with this change, I hope they reinstate AB as being able to proc missile barrage.

Theres more in store for AB, This change is not going to be by itself.



"Mages are still in line for more changes, most of them are talent oriented so it's not really as easy to copy and paste for you. The talent calculator should be updated soon, though." - Koraa