The Debuff only lasts 3 seconds, and unlike the previous debuff you don't gain the benefit if it fades mid-cast. So AB rotations are not currently possible without massive amounts of passive haste.

From a gameplay point of view, a possible raid scenario could see us casting a AB-Barrage rotation, taking care to keep AB ramped up, casting AM on Missile Barrage procs, also keeping up the scorch debuff and Focus Magic, with the opportunity to react to clearcasting procs (for mana efficiency and taking advantage of Arcane Potency). With PoM/AP cooldowns to keep track of in between. It sounds more interesting than just spamming fireballs and keeping up fire vulnerabilty, with combustion as cooldown, doesn't it? My impression at the moment is that arcane looks effective and interesting as it is now, for raiding, barring the unknowns (such as the exact functionality of Focus Magic). (Of course it would only take small changes to ruin everything, such as a change in Arcane Barrage coefficient). Trash damage and the like would be not so awesome, because of the ramp-up time.

Apparently the way mana and energy regen has been changed. Mana/energy is now ticked in 1/10 sec increments.

video - regenmech.avi - FileFront.com

Well we get the first 6% from the build.. and i'd say it would be fair to assume that itemisation will bring haste too..

I have not considered the new spirit bonus.. how many int gems could you swap for haste with the improved regen from spirit (and gear seems to have more spirit too).

Yes I see how it could be possible, but my hope is they aren't done tweaking AB just yet.

Another matter for consideration is this: Potion Sickness - "Unable to consume potions until you rest out of combat for a short duration.".

As of right now it's bugged, and is triggering off of any potion(not just mana/health) from what I hear.

update - apparently mana gems don't trigger potion sickness.

I can confirm, at least from the EU beta, that mana gems do not trigger Potion Sickness.

Aha, I stand corrected. A mana gem doesn't trigger potion sickness, but it is affected by it. Hopefully the bug is that it's affected by it, rather than the fact that it doesn't trigger it >.<

The reason they haven't fixed Molten Armor is because there is nothing to fix. You are relying on wowhead. Wowhead says one thing, but the actual mechanics of Molten Armor are quite different, and if you tested it yourself in game, you would see that Molten Armor does indeed reduce crit chance against you, just like resilience, by 5% vs spells, physical ranged, and melee.

You can easily test this. Get a friend to remove all equipment and hit you with fists. Now you'll want them to put on enough equipment to get as close to 5% crit as possible, but not over. Now put Molten Armor on and have them hit you, over and over. I've tested this over several hundred hits and have not once been critted. When the warrior adds just 1% crit (to 6%) I suddenly see the ever so rare crit. Similarly, if they're at 4% crit and you have Molten Armor on and they can't crit you after hitting you several hundred times, and then you remove Molten Armor (giving them a 4% crit rate now) and they crit you after a while, it's pretty easy to conclude that Molten Armor does what it's intended to.

First post here, thank you all for the interesting discussion thus far.


Deep Freeze - This talent adds so much depth to frost. Mages finally have great combo starter and might be able to fight against Los far more effectively than at lvl 70.

EX. Frostbite proc -> DF > IV/Trinket Double shatter combo > pet freeze > shatter combo > instant fireball or fireblast. That is some pretty substantial burst damage.


Fiery Payback - This talent is poorly conceived. I mean its awesome and all, but it is incredibly susceptible to exploitation. I don't think an unrestricted 1.5 pyro spam will make it live but it will be interesting to see how the nerf this.


Living Bomb - Weak and uninteresting. I was hoping blizzard would rethink this talent but it looks like the mana burn is the fix and they are hoping all the other changes can stop the crying about this talent.


Focus Magic - Obviously alot isn't known about how substantial a dps increase this will be but raid synergy is one thing mages have needed for a long time. Hopefully they are able to balance this well enough to make it needed yet not pigeonhole raiding mages into it.


Arcane Subtlety - some very needed dispell resistence. Nice to see blizzard listened.


Many great changes overall. Fire seems like it is going to be a very fun spec to go into BGs with. 5sec on DB and the knockback on BW open up many possibilities in kiting in pvp. Arcane/Frost is going to be fantastic for pve especially if you have a elementalist mage keeping up imp.scorch and WC. Deep frost has some added raid synergy as well with the imp. WE talent. It appears mages will have a very viable spec for every different aspect of the game.

I really hope they tune pot sickness a bit.. perhaps i can see why mages are not supposed to chuck destro pots through a fight.. but if we cant use managems and mana pots, we could become sitting ducks at the end of bossfights.. Unless itemisation gives us so much mana that pots and gems is just for "accidents"..

Whether MA is working or not, I also think Molten and Mage armor is weak compared to new lock armors. Fel Armor is simply off the scale with it's insane +damage value AND huge regen bonus. We lost our spirit synergy when Potent Spirit was cut. Mage Armor, as THE PvE armor offers zero + damage, while it has a clearly PvP-only -50% harmful magic uptime effect. Molten Armor is the same: -5% crit and damage on hit is PvP-only and a neutral +3% crit, which doesn't scale at all.

Depending on how Focus Magic works out, it could have some very nice synergy with arcane missiles. While AM may well eat 5 charges of it, each charge would be +150 damage, effectively giving AM +750 base damage. Of course, this will need some testing.

It may sound horrible to have to re-cast this every 5 seconds in a 25man raid, but the DPM and DPCT that it could potentially gain for the raid might, unfortunately, make it better than raw nuking.

Also, does the debuff count as a magic effect? if so, putting a 50charge debuff on a target in PvP with 30% dispell resistance could make your target effectively immune to dispells. Powerful, but probably too powerful.

Upthread someone said that Arcane missiles was eating charges on a per bolt basis, and then someone else said each bolt was gaining 30 dmg before any modifiers. So it's likely bugged, and will be one way or the other, not both.

I do agree with you for the most part, but 3% crit does actually scale and +130 Spell Damage does not. That being said, +130 spell damage is still far better at this point, but may not be in the future. Especially with spells like FFB that play so strongly off of crit.

Does FFB still double dip out of MoE? I am not convince this is an error, but rather a way to offer mage sustainability. FFB could very well be our most mana efficient spell. With an elemental build, 45% chance to crit with a spell that returns 60% mana on a crit is essentially a flat 27% mana reduction.

Also, is there a chance that FFB also double dips from the new Imp. Scorch? I doubt this, but wouldn't be surprised if it is something that was overlooked.

I highly doubt it works that way, but I hope.

+150 damage on Fireball DoT, Ignite, Molten Armor, Pyro DoT, AM would be very strong, however, I don't think it would become OP (dispell, high manacost). In a raid situation, the 50 charges would deplete in 5-10 seconds.

But I think it simply works as passive spellpower with coeff.

I'm don't play a mage, but the Focus Magic debuff is very interesting to me as a support caster. It seems extremely powerful, but it brings so many questions. Particularly since it's only 11 points into the Arcane tree.

Does it stack when multiple mages cast it? If it doesn't stack, would charges be removed from both applications, or just choose the lower/higher one? How does it interact with dots (Similar to the way ISB/Stormstrike do?)?

One concern is simply the number of charges: is it too few for a 25-man raid? Consider poisons, shocks, prot pally and ret pally holy damage and all the various caster sources that will consume charges. Even on a cooldown, will mages be having to cast it every cooldown for a significant mana cost? Just some non-mage thoughts/questions on that particular talent.

I think by scaling he is referring to the new ranks of Fel Armor (which give more spell damage than previous ranks), when compared to Molten Armor, which is always 3% crit (only scaling with higher ranks is damage dealt when struck).

In any case, it's kind of sad that Fel Armor has basically become what Mage Armor should have been. Having school-based rather than role-based armors has long been a pet peeve of mine.

I don't see why this would be treated any differently than other charged spells such as Inner Fire or Earthshield, which are dispelled in entirety, not on a per-charge basis.

That + the 30% of total Spirit part + the talent that improves it. Theese together could easily result in +400 spellpower. Now compare that to 3% crit.

Tradeable mana gems would not improve anything for mages.. only "force" us to mage gems i huge numbers to support raids..

Well, the new talent trees seem messy as all get out. Fingers of Frost is basically a hard nerf to Winter's Grasp, so I guess stacking Mages in current end game content may not be happening. At least not for the new effect. Deep Freeze now does damage, a rather uncreative change but I guess gives it PvP viability. Brain Freeze will probably become the new raid talent of choice for Deep Frost, though I have a hard time understanding why it makes Fireball instant cast. Seems a bit silly.

I suspect a change like that would be accompanied by a "Magewell" of some sort.

An interesting idea would be for molten armor:

Causes 170 Damage when hit.
Increases Crit Chance by 3%
Reduces chance to be crit by 5%
Increases Crit Rating by X% of your Intellect.


I am seeing it as a PvP armor, that and Ice Armor.

Mage Armor, while I like the 50% duration of magic effects, needs to have some better PvE Scaling, especially in comparison to Fel Armor.

Seeing as how Arcane seems to be the "Spellpower" tree, it would make sense if Mage Armor received spell damage, but I'm not honestly sure what they intend. Despite making Magic Absorption two points, it seems like a nerf due to the 2% of mana that's returned. Hard to say if it's an overall buff though. They really do need to clean up a lot of the talents though so that the trees are cleaner.

Also, the change to Arcane Fortitude is completely random and really hard to understand.

Big nerf to Missile Barrage, no longer procs off of Arcane Barrage and has a longer cast time, Arcane Empowerment increases damage of Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles but the change is rather small for three points, other than not losing extra mana for taking the talent.

Then of course there's Fire... oh fire.

I dunno how to comment on Fire. It's just confusing to look at. Talents are all over the place and none of them have a lot of synergy with each other aside from the old talents. Very messy. Burning Determination may or may not be a good PvP skill.

Improved Scorch seems like a good group buff for raiding, but it really needs to stay at 15% to make it worthwhile, and other spells should probably refresh the stack.