Ozymandis

PoM every two minutes, you mean... Arcane Flows is amazing. I, for one, am thrilled with changes after a cursory look. I rather like the emphasis on Arcane Blast over Barrage in this new build. With the exception of Burnout, it seems like Blizz is starting to get it. Improved Scorch is an interesting locus of synergy now, as it extends to include DK's. The Winter's Grasp nerf seemed inevitable, but even as a self-only target debuff its rather effective.

 

Ulthwithian

Ozy: Improved Scorch is also possibly a buff to Moonkin Druids. I believe right now that Moonkin have TCed them into Wrath spammers. This might go some way to correct that issue.

 

the_nell_87

Pure conjecture, but I imagine that DoTs and channelled spells will all use up only one charge, and the effect will last for the duration of the spell. Stagger focus magic among several mages in a raid and it can only make us more wanted.

I'm LOVING the new fire tree. But am also a little worried, as I'm going to have to leave quite a lot out to get either focus magic or icy veins.

 

Ozymandis

That's very true. I had processed it in the back of my mind, but I was thinking primarily of the 'nerf' to our synergy with DK's.

 

AC

I am wondering if one could forget about the 6% crit to AE and instead only take 3 in fire, focusing the rest on damage mitigation (imp mana shield, arcane fortitude, prismatic cloak) and go suicide Incanter's Absorption AE style.

(Mana Shield + Shatter Shield + PW: S) + AP/PoM Flamestrike followed by AE spam should generate alot of threat which will subsequently turn into rather large amounts of spell damage.

 

Ulthwithian

My only concern for Arcane Mages right is that their 'raid buff' (Focus Magic) is so low in the tree that every Mage could conceivably obtain it. This puts Arcane Mages in the bind of 'better damage or no slot', it would seem.

 

Arazan

Maybe I'm just being nitpicky but you really should say 53/3/0/+15. There's no point in putting 8 points in the fire tree because imp fireball is pretty useless without ignite.

Also, I completely agree with you about fire mages and only needing 1 fire or elementalist mage who can provide imp scorch, but I feel like 53/3/14 will be a better build for the remaining deep arcane mages.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...40323122500351

Under that spec, arcane blast should be better dps than fireball, and fits better with ABar and the cooldown to minimize clipping. Because of that, what you'd want isn't an offspec nuke that hits hard, but rather one that's very efficient and can be used in place of AB, for which frostbolt fits perfectly.

 

Kailhasa

Hang on a sec. The new Arc Potency is +30% crit while clearcasting OR PoM is active... doesn't that mean you could just sit on PoM and spam missiles forever?

 

the_nell_87

Well, the point behind 11-point talents is that they CAN be used by all mages. I think it's deliberately placed to act as an alternative to icy veins for fire/frost mages.

I was thinking of this kind of thing for a raiding fire mage.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

I think burnout's mana inefficiency promotes clearcasting and focus magic over icy veins. But I'm not at all sure.
I also left out incineration and world in flames, because they just don't affect spells I'll be using regularly in a raid environment. But again, I'll leave it to the more hardcore TCers to figure out whether either/both of these is better than firestarter.

 

Ulthwithian

Kail: SHHHHHHHH! Don't let that get out! It's our huge damage buff!

Nice catch. Perhaps instant spells will eat PoM now?

Edit: My point regarding Focus is that if I read the tree right, it's the only source of raid synergy that a deep Arcane mage is likely to have. (I.e., no Imp Scorch or Imp WE)

It might be interesting to see what would happen if PoM and Focus switched places. This would give PoM to Fire Mages (hi, Pyro) and Frost Mages (instant Deep Freeze looks interesting). It might also shore up Arcane's place in raids.

 

Rocknrolf

Start without PW: Fortitude and have someone cast it on you and/or Blessing of Kings.

 

◊ nathanbp

My big question right now is does Focus Magic have more trainable ranks or is that the level 80 version? 150 extra spellpower seems about right for level 70, a little low for 80 (if your raid can eat all those charges before it's up), and rather overpowered for level 20 (when you can first get the talent).

Edit: Also, the first thing that came to mind on seeing Brain Freeze (15% chance for frost damage spells to make the next Fireball instant and free), was a spec based around that plus Frostfire Bolt (since frostfire bolt & fireball will benefit from the same fire talents). Something like 0/28/43. No clue if it's more or less viable than the other FFB specs that have been tossed around tho.

Also, Deep Freeze seems to have been changed so the target is no longer considered frozen while stunned. Or am I misremembering how it worked at one point?

 

Finkum

The changes to Frost are a bit disappointing for PvE.

Fingers of Frost now essentially gives a flat +5% crit if you have the 7 points in imp nova and shatter. While this is still a respectable dps increase per talent, it's still a significant nerf quite apart from the stacking issue, in that only the next spell will be affected, rather than the next 2 - 3.

Brain Freeze (15% chance for instant free fireball) is probably placed too deeply in the tree as it's a very marginal dps gain for deep frost specs. At 2k spell power, 20% base crit, (so 40% for Frostbolt with WC stacked, 25% for Fireball - and that's generous as you'd be a fool to waste a Fingers proc on a fireball), with only self-buffs, napkin math suggests Brain Freeze is worth about 16dps per point (whoopee). Obviously these numbers improve if you can afford 10 points in Fire for ignite, but this requires that you sacrifice many of the Frost utility talents, and if you do so it would almost definitely to better to go a complete elementalist spec.

But then, for elementalists, taking Brain Freeze will preclude taking the full five points in Fire Power (let alone Molten Fury), which should be stronger choices (especially with cooldown stacking).

Having the Water Elemental return health to the party is baffling. Even more baffling is the removal of its extra health and mana. The health return is really pretty trifling (assuming 15k hp on average for end game raiding, it's 450 hp5) and in most cases where it is useful (lots of raid splash damage) the elemental itself is most at risk. Even in terms of PvP this seems a weak effect.

Overall I'd say Frost will now lag so far behind elementalist or arcane specs as to be pretty much only viable for PvP, although I'm sure Roywyn will be able to describe the situation more accurately once he updates his sims.

 

Mekasha

Could be wrong, but it seems the mmo talent trees all display the max rank of trainable stuff, so it's most likely 150 at 80 (unless that's tuned for 70, and they haven't put in the lvl 80 skills yet).

On a side note, since you can talent Ice Barrier to basically be Shatter Shield, wonder if we're ending up with a new lvl 80 spell?

 

Zaroua

It also sounds like a very big buff to Fire's solo capabilities.


The new talent, Focus Magic seems like a pretty big change. Deep Fire doesn't look like it will be competitive with deep Frost spamming FfB or Arcane.


And after taking the changes in, how does this build look like for FfB spam? http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

7 points leftover for Critical Mass, Brain Freeze and Chilled to the Bone.



Also, Shattered Barrier strikes me as being potentially overpowered against melee if, and only if Shatter Shield is still making it into the game. Having access to 4 on-demand freezing effects and Deep Freeze is looking quite scary.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Assuming you get rank 1 at level 20, rank 7 lines up perfectly with level 80, and the calculator shows rank 7.

If every magic attack while it's up does an extra 150 damage you're looking at an instant cast debuff that will do 7500 damage. That sounds pretty solid but I wouldn't be surprised if they tweak the numbers a bunch more.

 

Zeldyrr

Am I reading this right or did frost just get looked over for raiding DPS? The only scaling that had us equal to arcane was multistacking WG. The new talent doesn't even let a single frost mage get 2 FBs + an IL. Did frost mages get something else I am missing?

 

Finkum

The "something else" is the reworked Brain Freeze, but as I napkin-mathed above, it's pretty disappointing for deep Frosties (although fun for pvp burst), and faces strong competition from equivalent Fire talents for elementalists. Most of the Frost changes seem to have been made with PvP in mind, with (almost) none of the interschool synergy now present in the early Fire and Arcane trees. Hopefully more tweaks are forthcoming!

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Several people did.

 

Hidden

Yes sorry, I seemed to miss it over all the Frost and Arcane discussions going on.

Edit: Is there anyone else who finds Student of the Mind pretty weird as it is? Increasing a mostly useless stat by 10% for 3 points?

 

• Dreadsinger

I'm not 100% certain on FfB mechanics, but wouldn't throwing points into Firepower and Playing with Fire be better than 15 seconds longer on WE and 3% damage on FfB? So 9% damage done + 2% taken vs 15 seconds more on WE per summon overall. The WE might die or be OOM before a minute is up, but the 9% would be constant.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

Assuming it gets benefits from all +frost/fire damage talents, ignite and Ice Shards, I don't see how any deep fire/frost build could really compete with that, assuming scaling doesn't become a major issue as gear upgrades come about at 80. (Or set bonuses like 2/5 T5 affecting a main nuke)

 

Fortris

Couple of thoughts that came to me over the past couple hours :

1) Imp Scorch now affects Arcane, Frost and Fire. Does this mean FFB gets a 1.20x multiplier? or 1.10x?

2) Arcane Blast is now a genuine primary nuke, with Arcane now in the (interesting) position of having TWO primary nukes, both of which work better when used in combination than in individuality. Arcane Barrage has a 3 second cooldown, and needs a filler spell to reach max DPS potential. Arcane Blast needs to have a 3 second break between casts in order to not start affecting DPM overmuch. Working in unison, AB/ABarr provide what is essentially a 2-spell primary nuke, with a 4 second rotation allowing both to be cast in sequence ad infinitum with both high DPS and high DPM.

3) Fiery Payback is, quite obviously, completely rife for exploitation, and i would advise refraining from TCing to much with it, because in its current form it is completely unbalanced. Expect it to be changed to something along the line of 'When reduced below 35% health, your next Pyroblast cast time is reduced by 3.5s', or something of the like.

Overall, i am genuinely excited for the mage class for the first time in yonks. Arcane is finally in a state where it is a competitive spec, but more importantly, its competitive while being simple. Even the most mentally challenged player can handle the concept of 'Cast Arcane Barrage then Arcane Blast and repeat, casting Arcane Missiles when the proc goes off'. And with the diversity of people playing this game, the reality is that in order for a spec to work, it needs to be simple.

 

Zaroua

I was looking at the new insane healing component of Imp. Water Elemental. Depending on how it works, the Water Elemental could potentially be a high healing priority target for healers while it's up in raids. But if it does suck then yes, more points in Fire would seem like the obvious choice.

Dogma also claims that God has a sense of humor and at times presents Him as a joker of sorts, thus again lowering Him to human level. While I am certain God has a "sense of humor" since He gave it to us, I find it most difficult to believe He finds humor in sin since He will cast the unforgiven sinner into the lake of fire for eternity. Not very funny at all.

 

Last_Human

What excites me is the extra rank of prismatic cloak, with the current 3 second fade time I presume that invis will now be instant and down to a possible 2 min cooldown with other talents. How viable arcane will be in pvp is still to be seen but I find this very nifty.

 

Hidden

The problem about it is that it would only really heal much if the whole raid takes damage, in those situations however the elemental is likely dying itself, so it'd need some sort of big survivability buff to be a useful raid heal which isn't going to happen for PvP reasons. I also don't think that you could get healers to make an elemental a high priority target, it's still better if the elemental dies than anyone in the raid.