Unless there's some hidden ranks of Focus Magic on the trainers (or NYI), the Rank 7 version listed on mmo-champion is max rank.

I'd have to retest everything, in case AM messes up the multipliers. I thought they would roughly do it like (normal dmg + 150) and that would be it, but so far I'm just not sure where the 150 fits in the whole formula. But crits definately give more than 150. Something close to 300.

As it stands, 1000 mana is still a massive amount to be rebuffing every twenty or so seconds. However its advantages may be seen more on trash mobs and 10 man bosses.

What? Its only good realistically if you eat up all 50 charges. I wouldn't do it unless a good percentage of the charges will be used.

Try max-rank Focus magic and downranked AM to see if the bonus suffers from downranking?

If it doesn't suffer from downranking, try rank 1 scorch and rank 1 fireball to see if all spells get the same +150, or if it's something like 150*spellpowercoefficient.

Might actually try rank 1 frost novas/blizzards because the lower AoE scaling gives clearer results.


Also, 1k mana for an instant (it is on the GCD, isn't it?) every 20 seconds isn't that much.
It's our most efficient spell for DPM, after the Scorch every 30s
12k mana, whoop-dee? Arcane mages burn around ~120k mana on these fights. Even fire mages burn more than ~50k.


Question:
Are there any major changes to Frostfire Bolt/damage mechanics?
Mainly "is it still Ignite + Ice Shards", "does imp. scorch still affect it" and maybe "does it double-dip from imp. scorch now"?

Yes, but all 50 charges will be eaten up in 20 to 30 seconds in a 25 man raid environment. The constant rebuffing will certainly take its toll on an already mana starved arcane mage. While 1000 mana for an ability that will do 10k to 15k worth of damage may seem great, when compared to other group synergy, it really sucks. To keep this buff up for an entire Brutallus encounter a mage would expend some 12 thousand mana. That is pretty unreasonable.

Removing the charges gimmick and make it a 1 minute debuff would relieve some of its problems.

I think 20-30s is an over-estimate on the amount of time it would take for Focus Magic to be completely consumed in a normal 25-man environment. Mages, locks, shamans, moonkins, paladins, death knights, shadow priests, and most particularly, rogues with double instant poison will all be consuming charges. I would say 15-20s, maybe a bit less.

Looking at some old combat logs I'd be surprised if it lasts 20 seconds in a 25 man raid.
If everything that's SPELL_DAMAGE eats charges it won't even last 5 seconds.

No, the charges part has to be changed somehow and it really does look like something they just added in there real quick. 1000 mana, 50 charges 1 minute.
Those numbers all look like someone just picked something temporary.

Very impressed with the changes. However as people noted elsewhere some points still stick:

- Fiery Payback is just open for exploit now. (Hello, let me eat Brutallus meteor slashes so I can get under 35% and spam pyro too!)
- Getting icey veins (great for all specs) requires a bunch of wasted talent points in frost that no arc/fire/arc+fire PVE raiding mage might really want at all. Improved frost ward? No. Improved frostbolt? No, will be casting FFB. 3 Points in precision is nice, then its a few wasted ones between that to get to tier 2 (where you can at least justify another 5 points in Ice Shards for your FFB) and finally get Icey Veins - I dont particularly like this design with regards to how talent points 4-5 must be spent, assuming your first three are precision. It might seem like 'only 2 points' but to me its a glaring annoyance.

They simply need to clean up tier 1 frost talents to having at least 5 points that are generic any-spec desirable for fire/arc mage types - only 3 of the 10 tier 1 talent points are acceptable in that regard. Maybe something similar to a 'Ancestral knowledge' equivilant, but with a mage theme. Buff improved frost ward and put it somewhere else in the tree instead to make room for it.

Do you think it is intended, that Firestarter always lasts 10 seconds, even if you cast a Flamestrike or is bugged? At the moment, you could cast 5+ instant Flamestrikes with Firestarter.

Focus Magic is also bugged, because if you unlearn all your talents and respecc to fire for example, you can still cast Focus Magic (of course, this is a bug).

I frapsed the new blastwave for those mages not in the BETA: blastewave.avi ... at uploaded.to - Free File Hosting, Free Image Hosting, Free Music Hosting, Free Video Hosting, ... (25mb). I'm not sure if the knockback is always useful.

From a PvP POV I like the fire changes very much, but I also have problems:
-the tree became very point-heavy, with 51-54 points spent many must-have features are skipped
-Impact as T3 became unaccessible for deep arcane/deep frost + fire builds; should be 3-pointer
-Burning Determination is a godlike anti-pet talent but very weak otherwise
-Imp. Scorch: we'll see how Focus Magic compensates this
-Blazing Speed still doesn't have a 2 sec snare immunity
-Fiery Payback: I miss the extra damage on MA; PvE abuse is mentioned, imo with the extreme amount of group/raid wide passive/AoE heals, maintaining under 35% health is nearly impossible. PvP-wise, the uninterruptable, 1.2-1.5 (haste) sec chaincasted chaincritting Pyro is finally a decent sustained burst tool in the hand of deep fire mages, whie it's still easy to counter and being very risky. Adding a cooldown on this makes it useless.
-Firestarter: it should also turn Pyro instant and Flamestrike should be massively buffed, otherwise, I like the idea.
-Knockback on BW and 5 sec disorient on DB: highly anticipated, needed features
-Burnout: the penalty is realistic now but the +crit damage is still low
-Living Bomb: untill it doesn't scale properly no amount of secondary effect can save it, let alone a weak manaburn

For the Beta testers, I'd be interested in hearing what MoE does with stacked ABs. Is it 30% of the base mana or 30% of the stacked mana?

Also, my calculations are showing AB spam as worse dps than ABr->AB/MBAM rotations at 2411 vs 2818 (1800 SP, 40%AB/34%other crit, 25% haste, 16.6% bonus from Scorch+Moonkin), but the dps for both is much lower than Roywyn's numbers on 103 and they should be higher due to scorch, so I must be missing something. Needless to say, having a mana dump that's worse than the normal rotation is not appealing.

Edit: Forgot CoS. With CoS, my dps numbers using the old AB formula match Roywyn's. Numbers above not updated. I guess AB only works as a mana dump when you're over 33% haste using the AB->ABr->AB->AB rotation I mentioned before. Taking advantage of MB during AB spam remains problematic, but you can handle one proc duing a bloodlusted AP using PoM.

Haven't we all agreed long ago this entire spell needs a drastic reworking? Not only to be more practical, but more useful - and more FUN. Anyone who played WC3x will remember what a badass spell Flamestrike was there, right down to its animation and spell sound - there was a reason you heard the bells and RAN. The WoW version we got is flimsy by comparison and laughable sometimes (especially with that radius), but situationally useful (hyjal trash!)- even though there are superior options are available. (Hi M'uru and hi SOC)

My impression of the recent talent changes for mages? They increase the one thing I desire the most: No, its not more dps - its to be playing a more fun, dynamic class. Good work, Blizzard.

This needs to be spreading to all aspects of the class, especially to currently un-acceptable spells - hopefully we can push it to Blizzard designers.

First of all, it doesn't hurt to have. But i actually think FFB offers more use in a frost-heavy build, esp. if you spec 12 pts. into fire for a build like this, sporting both Ignite and Burning Soul:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000,

1. FFB could be an option on a FoF-proc with its 280% crit dmg (from Ice Shards and Ignite), even if it means interrupting your current cast of FB. I neither tested nor calculated it, but it is at least worth finding out.

2. On interrupt-heavy fights, FFB should be the spell of choice for a deep-frost mage who has Burning Soul.

Also note, that the aforementioned build buffs Brain Freeze by letting those instant-Fireballs ignite. BF looks weird on first glance, b/c a deep-frost mage obviously doesn't actually want to cast Fireballs. However, i think 15% chance of an instant Fireball for 0 mana is still too good to pass, and then Ignite gives some extra punch. I guess it's especially nice when both FoF and BF proc, as you can then follow up your Frostbolt with the instant-Fireball that is supposed to crit too - well at least if FoF works in a way, that the target is still considered frozen for the 2nd spell.

It's however debatable, whether a mostly Frostbolt spamming Deep-Frost build would be competitive in the first place. Because looking at the talent changes, i can't really find a reason why it should.

I was really hoping they would address the armor disparities between mages and warlocks this build. What we have now is 3 different armor spells trying to be both PvE and PvP oriented. Instead of having different armors perfectly suited for different situations.

The scaling of Molten Armor vs Fel Armor also has me a bit steamed, and they still haven't fixed Molten Armor. It doesn't do what it actually says it's supposed to do. It applies a crit modifier to incoming spells, but not for incoming melee/ranged attacks. Check out the spell details, and see for yourself. I bug reported it a while back, but got no response.

So, deep fire lost 15% single target sustained dps by the "Improved Scorch" changes alone, relatively to arcane and frost, while gaining nothing. And deep fire was lagging behind quite some already. By now it seems like this can't be unintentional. With all the AE focused talents, that must be the intended role (in any case, it seems to be the only possible thing fire has to bring for pve at the moment). But would anyone in their right mind really specialize heavily for AE, if the price is 20% or more single target dps, apart from the possible exception of spec'ing for a single fight? Arcane is looking better and better, and at the moment it seems like we could happily more or less ignore the fire tree, but it seems like a bit of a shame that most of the fire tree is good for little at the moment.

Actually is brain freeze that bad?

You are essentially getting a 1.5 sec cast untalented fireball. That's 2.33 times the dps of a normal untalented fireball.

Can you think of an arc/fire talent spec which gives fireballs a 133% damage increase?

Honestly, I hope focus magic won't be super good even though I love all the changes to arcane. Simply because I do not want to have to be forced to keep it up in raids. It would make mages a debuffer class in raids which we aren't.

They should just make it a reverse amplify magic lasting 10 min if they want us to cast it in raids. I mean, imagine wotlk raids. We have to cast focus magic, then scorch a few times, then ramp up our AB? By the time we have AB ramped up, focus magic has probably all been used up already, and we are almost due to rescorch...

I posted some napkin-math upthread (like way upthread, given the number of posts this thread has received since the changes were revealed). It's fairly underwhelming at the gear level I chose (2k spellpower, 20% base crit, no external synergy), mostly because there are simply no talents in Frost that buff fireball; it's in the vicinity of 16 dps per point (when compared to just Frostbolting).

Also it's too deep in the tree for an elementalist spec unless you skip 2/5 Fire Power, and you won't have access to Molten Fury then either. 4% constant extra damage and 20% extra damage to stack with your cooldowns are much stronger choices.

As Jarlyn suggested, changing this to Frostfire bolt would fix it.

I don't see SHatter Shield in MMOChamp database. Tell me it didn't became the Shattered Barrier talent. That would destroy arcane and fire PvP.

I know we still are waiting to see what will happen to Arcane Blast, but i seems to me that a spinoff on the old 40/0/21 could be really really good for pve..

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

6% haste from netherwind presence
2 min cd on Arcane Power from arcane flows
9% spellpower bonus from Arcane empowerment
? from Focus Magic

6% Crit from Incineration

And still the high crits on Frostbolt fillers and dual IV's from frost..

It looks to me like it would be the wellknown playstyle with AB and FB's with a lot of new bonuses and a FFB as secondary filler if the target should be frost imune..

Or do you think an elementist build or pure arcane will surpass this spec?

This aura now contains buffs, mages would have to spend ~13 talent points into (the 30% of spirit is easily another 180 spell dmg).
Clearly the mage aura will be required in WotLK for raiding, because of the need of manareg. So an additional dmg component on mage armor is really needed.
As well as a general overhaul of the 3 mages armors and their talents. Frost warding for example should go much much deeper into the frost tree (and replaced by something useful all for mages who want Icy Veins) and should buff ice armor to give frost spells an interupt protection or something like that.
Molten Shield affecting ranged and spells isn't too bad in combination with impact, it just needs too much talent points, impact should be less talents. And the dmg component of molten armor really needs a buff, 3% crit is extremely underpowered.


Brain Freeze
It's just that simple that it hurts - not make fireball instant, but make frostfire bolt instant, thanks.


Since our trees are extremely points heavy, why not change the empowered talents to include the effect of the improved talents?
Think of it, if you don't go that deep into the trees you just put the points into improved talants.
If you go really deep into the trees, you skip the improved talents and get the effect of the improved talents when you spec into the empowered talents. (leaving the not specced improved talents with no function and not stacking)
This would free 5 talents for each tree, and you still have the flexibility to create hybrid speccs. Sure some tier1/2 talents would have to be shifted, but that wouldn't be the problem.


Another suggestion I want to hear your comments on:
Remove water and food from the game. (or make them mage only)
Really!
Just include the actual effect of Manna Biscuits into the /sit function (you can already bind a key on that) and change it that it only works if you are out of combat.
There would be no difference to now than just saving everybodys bag space, mages time and quite some server load.

• What happens to the food and water vendors selling? Nearly nobody buys water or food there (perhaps a bit for arenas), so nobody will miss it.
• What happens to the food and water mobs dropping? The same nobody will miss it.
• Holiday foods? They are %based so they were and still will be better than normal food (/sit) and so still worthwile.
• Food from cooking? Make that also %based or in another way more useful (faster regeneration, or just stacking with the /sit regeneration) than the normal regeneration. Oh and make the food buffs instant, they are only useable out of combat, there is no need to always wait these 10 seconds.
• Hunter Pet Food? Don't know but hunters will be happy when not having to feed their pets anymore.
• Mages food? Either remove it completely or make the food soulbound and stronger than /sit regeneration or stacking with it, similar to Cooking food.
  Oh and when mages food is soulbound, giving the mages some rare spell books, where mages can create their own buff food with +haste +crit or whatever.