◊ Lord BEEF

So how big of a slap in the face is removal of wand spec?

 

Hidden

I'm going to miss laughing at people actually speccing into it, that's all for me.

 

Fortris

Amid all the excitement of the new mage changes, one devastatingly important ability added in the latest Beta build has passed unnoticed : The addition of the Inscription ability, Glyph of the Penguin.

"Glyph of the Penguin - Empowers a Minor Glyph to cause your Polymorph: Sheep spell to turn the target into a baby penguin."

 

Finkum

How is 3% of your max HP every 5 seconds "insane". If you have 15k hp (ballpark figure for raiding at 80) that's 450 hp every 5 seconds, or 90hps. It's essentially a gimp (but raid-wide) VE. It's true that if everyone in the raid is bunched up and needs the heal that's 2250 hps in total, but the low intensity means that raid healers can't (and won't) rely on it.

From a conceptual standpoint, mages have never had any healing powers associated with them and it seems very odd to tack one on to the Water Elemental now. Even if they tinker with the ability to make it a useful raid addition it just doesn't seem to fit well thematically (still, an expansion is a good time to redefine such things, I suppose).

Edit: Thematically, an aura that reduces elemental damage taken or similar would be an equivalent, but more palatable, mechanic in my view.

Edit 2:

I highly doubt they will let the auras stack :P

 

• Dreadsinger

Hm. You could always just grab a prot warrior, one shaman, and 23 mages? ~24% health/5 sec permanently if they rotate their WE's :p Assuming AoE isn't a huge issue, the raid would basically keep itself up, and the shaman could throw a few CH's on the MT as needed, + totems. Loot would be an issue.. but hey. I'd make for quite a fraps. :p

 

heel

Is 33 in Arcane the right call for every raiding build? If so, it seems like more buffs are in order.

 

Jarlyn

So a few thoughts:

Far and away my largest concern is that we're going to get pigeonholed into 11/x/y specs now, which eliminates a lot of possibilities for Fire/Frost specs. I realize it's an effort by Blizzard to create a reason to bring multiple mages to a raid, but it seems like it just created the absolute bitch spec of 11/18/x (+whatever). The idea is sound, the implementation seems sketchy.

The first half of the Fire tree is substantially better - Burning Determination is solid and I'd shit myself if it included spell pushback (hello arena) as well as Silence/Interrupt. Fiery Payback is an interesting way to make Pyroblast at least partially useful. Burnout and Hot Streak are still seriously underwhelming. Firestarter seems iffy - I don't think the time it would take to see the proc, use the targeting circle and cast the spell would be better than simply using AE, especially since it's buffed by World in Flames as well now.

Is Shatter Shield being replaced? MMO-Champion didn't say, but with the changes to Ice Barrier I no longer see the point of SShield as it was previously implemented. The change to Winter's Grasp is completely expected, so is a buff to Imp Water Elemental, although 3% hp every 5 seconds needs refining - it's too small and too spaced out to be seriously helpful in arena, and it'll be drowned out by shadow priests and things like Healing Stream Totem in raids.

Deep Frost (40pts+) has the same issues as deep Fire though: generally weak talents. Brain Freeze should include FFB and then it's ok. Chilled to the Bone probably needs even more help than Burnout, and the cast time on Deep Freeze needs to go away.

It's a solid start, I'll be waiting to see the refinements over the next few weeks.

 

Hidden

That's the reason why it's probably getting nerfed even though it's not that good anyway. Looks like Blizzard currently wants Arcane to be the king of single target and burst damage, Fire the king of AoE and Frost the king of ? Kiting?

 

Deedre

The arcane tree, at long last, is a standalone tree. Every one of its nukes is a functional nuke now. And it got a nice raid debuff.

So far as I'm concerned, it's done and I couldn't be happier with it.

 

• Dreadsinger

I doubt they're worried of a raid bringing more than 3 mages just for that talent, let alone 20. It's only good as the number of mages increases. The only time it might be even thought to be used is a 40 mage AV, with ~40% hp/5 all the time. But then, the other team has far more to worry about than that. (One Freeze + 5 Ice Lances to everyone frozen = Lawl + repeat).

The talent needs to be buffed slightly, or it's more or less crap. x% mana/y rage/z energy/w runic power back would be a good alternative.

That made my day. Easily beats the new talents. I hope they give us a lot more of those. I still want my damn giraffe.

 

Copernicus

It was there in the build before this.

I'm pretty sure an elementalist build is still viable. But people will have to crunch the numbers. I do think Deep Frost (especially Improved Water Elemental and Brain Freeze) need a buff.

 

◊ manly

No ? The new AB changes make it so that its only usable while spammed, or for extreme dpm/low dps. The only way to avoid that is to have extreme amount of spell haste, enough to fit a filler spell in between AB refreshes. That means
3 > 2.5 / (1 + x) + 1.5 / (1 + x)
x = 0.33
> 33% haste in order to be able to fit one extra instant cast within a AB rotation (ie: keep the AB debuff up). I mean its doable if I could do it right now, but it seems like somewhat a stretch.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Quality

No heel this is not the call. I dont know why you would think this.


The Debuff is really underwhelming, 1000 mana for 7500dmg, You're going to be refreshing this every 12-15 seconds pending on the rotation the other classes are on. It's going to run you OOM so fast and the gain is going to be so insignificant noone will notice(except your low damage that is)

 

JonIrenicus

Its true that fingers of frost is far less potent as a flat 5% crit, but they also gave frost/arcane a flat 10% damage increase with the imp scorch change, so it lost but it gained as well. As for how it compares, that remains to be seen.

Frost did definitely lose out relative to arcane though, 5% crit vs galactic revamp.

 

Alvira

Woot thanks all for putting up the talent changes. I love them. I am getting excited about playing mage again come WOTLK. Perhaps I will level up my mage to lv 80 before trying out Deathknight now. Yay. Arcane is actually looking pretty interesting for pvp. Will have 30% dispel resist on its shields, will have a very nice blink, will have a high resist to magic, will have instant cast invis, plus invis, AP and POM all on 2 min timer! A skillful mage should be able to make deep arcane shine in pvp now!

 

Bisbus

My thoughts on what an optimal arcane spec would be for raiding.

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

 

Hidden

What most people seem to be forgetting: If the debuff works like any other debuff currently ingame, it will be effected by coefficients and crits, so those 7500 damage would be more like 10,000-15,000 damage depending on your raid setup.

Edit: By the way, has anyone calculated the DPS and DPM of an Arcane Blast/Arcane Barrage /w Missiles rotation in comparison to an Arcane Blast only /w Missiles rotation?

Edit#2: To the above poster: You're missing Master of Elements which affects all spells now, if there's another mage in the raid stacking Imp. Scorch you'll want to take that.

 

Prod

53/18/0 looks like the optimal raiding build to me based on absolutely no numbers and a gut instinct.
In click form

 

Alvira

You will benefit from the buff only on cast? or once you start casting. If its once you start casting, then its still ok. AB, arcane barrage, and you will get the buff once you start casting the next AB. But if you get the buff only if you successfully cast the spell during the time it is up, then yeah, it won't be possible to do a AB, arcane barrage unless you are going for high DPM, and low DPS.

This is still ok because of one crucial change, missile barrage now can be proc by AB.

So, you can trottle AB. Mix in arcane barrage or AM if you are going for low DPS, high DPM. Then switch to AB spam when you have excess mana and depending on your mana management. And while you are doing all that, you still get to cast a 2.5 sec AM everytime missile barrage procs.

And when you are in a high movement fight, you can cast arcane barrage.

It makes arcane spell casting very dynamic, and also dependent on mana management, which makes it more interesting too. And, it doesn't require some complex ABx3,xx,xx rotation to work either.

 

Joink

Quick check of the mage trainers and shatter shield is gone. Nothing replaced it.

Pretty sure the best change is the knockback on blastwave.

 

Finkum

While this is good in that it encourages bringing multiple mages to the raid (1 elementalist for imp scorch, 1 arcane for the focus magic skill), it does remove the nice self-contained aspect that Frost possessed that, firstly, made it ideal for 10-mans (where more than one mage is unlikely) and secondly, justified the rather excessive talent bloat.

Moreover, the change to Winter's Grasp basically means Frost mages now have no synergy to offer other mages, which is a bit disappointing (and a big contrast to the two other trees, which now synergise nicely).

Without that synergy, and with Arcane or elementalist builds already theorycrafted as higher DPS, I think Frost will once again be seen as only PvP-viable.

This is a really good idea. Obviously the intent of the talent is to make spell choice for frost mages dynamic, but untalented fireball is just so abysmal.

 

Septus

Well it went from a very nice raid-oriented buff, for other Mages and Death Knights and was a justification for deep frost, to a self-only buff that will now be adding far less raid damage and will force frost mages to find some other justification.

 

MetallicaRulez0

The arcane changes are nice for sure, specifically Imp. Scorch affecting Arcane. I'm still not convinced it's going to perform better than a FFB build, such as 0/33/38.

I'm really not sure why they would change Brain Freeze like that. What have we said or done that would make them think untalented Fireballs are good for Frost? I'd really rather cast another Frostbolt to be honest. The addition of FFB to Chilled to the Bone is also rather puzzling. If you're that deep in Frost, you're very unlikely to cast FFB unless the mob is immune to Frost.

When did they decide the Fire tree was 'THE' AoE tree? It seems that's the direction they've taken, which again, is puzzling. Fire has always been the single-target DPS tree.

Edit: Linked wrong build, Fixed.

 

Jarlyn

Interesting. I imagine we'll get some sort of defensive/utility spell to replace SS, but I'd hope for something universally useful, not heavily PvP-oriented like SS was.

 

Alvira

My feedback is that I think scorch should be brought down to a lower fire tier.

10% to arcane, frost and fire damage would probably be see as mandatory by raids for raiding. This would mean that 18 points in fire is standard for raiding. (Though we can argue that we only need one mage to keep this up). But nonetheless, it kinda forces a bit too many points into fire for raiding for my tastes. Especially if it ends up there is only one mage in raid.