I'd much rather have a fiery payback spec and another which is my main spec.

According to worldofraids, our talents have changed a bit again, and if it's not a typo or confusion about ranks there are several small adjustments (read:nerfs)..

EDIT: Removed the list of changes i posted, since it was old news and partly wrong. but i left the post so the comments later on makes a bit of sense..

If you for some reason want to see the info i thought was news, check out: World of Raids | World of Warcraft News Guides Guilds & Raid Progression

I really really hope they change that 3 sec AB debuff crap. It doesnt even make sense for pure AB spamming since even a single pushback hit from anything swipes the stack you built up mening that if it is balanced to allow mages a big burst of DPS for their last mana it will nearly every fight get ruined by some random AoE hit. Especially if you´re using a cycle with 3xAB+ABar every single hit of damage you take during the fight can reset your stack. Reducing the debuff to 3 sec would make a lot more sense if it still decreased the cast time of the spell.

If they only intend to let one spell per tree (+FFB) proc MB then the arcane spell should be ABar. The old alternative to weave fire and ABar looked a lot more apealing with 15% proc chanse every three sec and half your cycle having 70% pushback protection half of it being instant. Not even getting a silly amount of haste saves Ab+ABar since the 3 sec CD on ABar means you haveto wait for it if your AB cast becomes really fast. Wich also means you haveto shift AB to something else on heroism I guess.

But since theres still an entierly new mage spell to be designed I bet there will be more changes to the trees as well.

Fiery Payback's purpose is to allow you cast fast pyros when on low health. So when they want a 1,5 sec pyro with that talent, why not just do exactly that? Why do they make a talent which reduces cast time only to 2,5 sec and then say: oh we wanted 1,5 sec, don't change the talent whos purpose is to grant quick pyros, let's reduce the base spell cast time?
That's like coding Missle Barrage to reduce AM to 3,5 sec. and then changing AM channel time to 4 sec. so that at the end Missle Barrage produces 2,5 sec.

You don't cast it for dps, not the 6 sec. version, nor the 5 sec version. Only in conjunction with POM or Fiery Payback and in both cases you looe dmg with the change. In the cases wher you are not dpsing (pull) the cast time doesn't matter (well the dmg not too)

However it was a broken spell before and it will still be in WotLK.

Was this really necessary?

Except there's the -threat talent 8 points deep in the blood tree, which you'll want, leaving 52 points for your unholy tree. That may or may not result in hard decisions. It'd be nice to be able to expect FRW to be up, but it may be a good idea to plan for it to not be up. I'd rather gear for a spec that isn't going to be 1% above with a rare debuff to 9% below without it. Not that it matters much either way, since we may just end up being FM bots. And I suppose if you bring an unholy DK just for Ebon Plague, getting the extra 10% frost damage would be in the same mindset.

Your list seems a bit strange, most things aren't new at all, you list rank 1 of Focus Magic.

Elemental precision now only 1 rank instead of 3 or what? Same with Master of Elements.

Spell Impact changed from crit% to dmg% is ugly if it doesn't increase AE cap which I'll doubt.

All the places where you say reduced base dmg, you probably just see the rank1 spell now instead of max rank versions.

Oh and you got pyro wrong, at the top of your post.

Just a lot of confusing stuff...

I got the info from the frontpage of World of Raids | World of Warcraft News Guides Guilds & Raid Progression and it was updated Jul 29, 2008 06:00 AM according to them.. so i really though that blizzard had changed the info i know we were discussing yesterday.

And yes.. i pyroblast i got totally wrong.. guess i need more coffee this morning :S

I'll delete the post with the changes again in a few minutes. SORRY!

I agree the 5 sec casttime alone cannot fix the spell. Fiery Payback is a very good mechanic PvP-wise, but I think they should add an instant Pyro proc on Firestarter or somewhere else (Hot Streak?).

I just found out why i got so confused about the info at worldofraids.. I compared their info with the talent calculator on mmo-champion, and it turns out it is different from the one at wowhead.. which one is right ?

at http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?mage Focused Magic is still at 150 spelldmg, 50 charges but if you look at Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft they have it at 10 spelldmg, 50 charges..

I just saw the numbers were different and thought there had been an update.

that is because one list max rank (lvl80) and the other lists the first rank (lvl20)

So here we are again having some of these changes making little sense, at least with arcane blast and the arcane tree.

For instance, giving AB 6% crit from talents (on top of the like ~30% you'll have anyways + 30% from a clearcast), 9% extra spell damage from Empowered Arcane, 6% from spell impact (weird change btw)and the ability to proc the nerfed version of Missile Barrage BUT managing to screw up the spell and how it would fit into a rotation all at the same time. I dont think this is what we had in mind when we said "Hey blizz, we'd like to use arcane as a whole rotation and not have to use other schools for our main nuke..." Sigh.

How i see it now is that arcane blast is going to be a weak spell until the duration of the debuff goes up. Until then having the debuffs there is going to make it only for spamming purposes, not to mention that the debuff falls off if you use an AM proc or the PoM/pyro at the end of the AP. This just doesnt make sense blizzard.

However, if/when the duration of the debuff is moved up (i'd like to see at least 5-6 seconds)and it ends up fitting into a rotation, the DPM just seems entirely too low to be worth it to me... Granted i'm still personally unsure of how much regen we'll get during a raid but i have a feeling that the mana incrase per debuff goes down before launch... 1100 mana every 2.5 sec for what appears to be terrible dps/dpm is a little ridiculous to me.

Edit -- Noticing that the +225% mana cost increase is the same thing we have in BC for the 3stack of debuffs made me realize that it's probably not going to be too rough on the mana (considering SP, Mana stream, evocate, talents, spirit etc), but it's still relying on the debuff increase before this becomes the best it can be.

This is my opinion on the matter, but it seems with the regen everything might work out.

Any thought on speccing into MoE and letting the other mages keep up imp scorch? that's 30% refunded from every crit, which AB should be doing quite often, not to mention when AM crits.

Either way, we'd have to wait until the debuff is changed. Until then it seems like Arc/fire will be a good choice for speccing, if not Arc/frost still. Only time will tell.

Other than AB being a little goofed, i like the majority of the rest of what they did. It shows they care at least a little bit, so i hope to see more good ideas/changes. Seriously though, AP/PoM every time your trinkets are up? Wowza! Also the 1st tier of the fire tree looks real nice for getting to pyroblast. Very very nice


EDIT -- I'm glad they did what they did to WG, getting rid of the sort of "all mages just might have to stack WG and ice lance spam while its up" nonsense.

The deep freeze change is certainly nice. Depending on the actual damage of it, it may prove to be a good dps rotation spell.

Imp WE looks great for 2s lol.

Brain Freeze is interesting to say the least, leaving lots of room for speculatin as to whether or not an instant Fireball will be worth the GCD without talents (but i hate frost so i'm not gonna do it lol).

And finally, shatter shield is right where it belongs. It would've been great for arcane and fire for pvp but a little overpowered. Melee classes are going to have significant trouble moving in arena vs a frost mage with all these freezes and slows.

EDIT #2 - The frost tree is really fat now. Hopefully they'll tone it down a bit, seems like you miss too many goodies trying to get Imp CS for pvp.

I think it is a fair observation. Pyro is, at present, only used off of PoM or the rare situation where you "charge it" based on CC or very, very situational PvE.

Perhaps I have missed some content but the times where you can actually target something, want to wait on threat (it is worse dps if you can cast otherwise) and so on are zero to none now. In WoTLK things may change but generically the only reason to cast Pyro remains either PoM or under the new sub 35% thing. In which case they could have left it 6s and taken an extra second off the talent presuming the desired state was 1.5s castings when nearly dead/just fine but faking it.

Meh, it's a small co-efficient quibble anyhow and spamming pyro over a fully talented Fball isn't really that big of a deal anyhow. It seems to me that it is thought of as a PvP talent that translates poorly. I wonder a bit though when such "new" stuff comes in relatively late in a build.

Are there any news that we are getting a replacement for Shatterhield by the way?

Some of you are complaining about the Pyro change. Did it cross your mind that they changed it fearing that the burst capabilities with AP + MBAr and afterwards PoM with Arcane Potency and Pyroblast were a bit over the top maybe?
Doesn't change the fact that Pyro needs a serious rework but I think that was the main reason changed the cast time so it scales less.

Oh and can someone give me a short summary as to how they have changed Arcane Blast in WotLK? I am a bit confused reading through these maths and reading about a 3 second debuff on it.

Someone asked me a video of arcane barrage's new skin:
Arcane Barrage on Vimeo


here is Incanter's absorption mechanic:
Incanter's Absorption on Vimeo

The 10 sec buff is reset each time you absorb damage....so, you can "easily", in an arranged duel, ask your friend to hit your mana shield for 3min long. Then comes ap+pom pyro crit with +5k dmg

the 'ramped' debuff only lasts 3 seconds. It no longer affects cast time but instead gives 15/30/45% increased damage. Since you get a flat +damage rather than a modded cast time, its actually a lot easier on your mana.

I'm hoping for a glyph for mages that increases the debuff duration, myself. 33% haste might be tricky to reach in 10-man raids.

As a last comment (and yes, I know I swore I'd be gone longer than this anyhow) Inscription does indeed seems to be potent. It isn't just +x damage based on what we have seen from preliminary Druid stuff and even a small Major Glyph that changed *any* of the mechanics with ABar, ArBlst or AM would be a huge change to the T/Cing. Gaming minutia in such an environment is somewhat silly.

So, and I'll try to stick to it this time without a ban, I'll see you all closer to launch. At no other time have I seen such energy likely wasted on what will never come to pass. Should someone (*cough*) come up with a late beta pass then my mind might change.

I know it is fun speculating though, just not terribly productive

I can live with unproductive TC on unfinished talents, but repeating over and over the same things that has already been said pages ago I don't enjoy much.

Also, as I said before, I don't care about anyone proposing any fixes or changes on talents. I don't even want to hear my own suggested fixes. We don't even know the full picture. Proposing a fix is very naive in my opinion. Plus its wasting everyones time.

Only issues I have:

1. Imp WE will probably not be gotten in PvP frost trees. I will have to try it out when it goes live, but I think some other talents give higher survivability (especially considering my WE gets 2-shot over 50% of the time).

2. DR, DR, DR. Will shatter shield put normal frost nova on DR? Or frostbite on DR? Will it do damage and break CC?

3. Slowing, freezes, and stuns are all good, but will be worthless when 90% of classes can get out of it w/o using a trinket. (Cleanse, devour, purge FoF, shaman's beast w/in, hunter big red, warrior immune to all CC, etc etc).

I have a feeling playing a frost mage in pvp will be more difficult in the xpac than people are assuming.

edit: nm, didn't read all the way through. deleeetemeee

As far as talents go - Arcane Blast gets 6% damage (former Arcane Impact) and 6% crit (Incineration) from talents now, as well as +9% spell power (former Empowered Arcane Missiles).
That's a ~13% buff to live, better with more spell power.

The debuff was changed from "-0.33s cast time / +75% base mana for 8 seconds" to "+0.15% damage / +75% base for 3 seconds".
You go from +66% haste to +45% damage when spamming. With the other 2 new talents, you end up with a very slight buff (~1%) if you have at least 1.2k spell power or so.

This means a lot of things in detail:
1) Mana efficiency
3-stacked Blast is 66% more mana efficient than it's now. Since you go from 66% haste to ~66% damage.
That is huge for mana efficency. Huge as is HUGE.

It's not even a mana dump anymore due to it's low base mana cost.
Doing some quick check on DPM - no spirit, JoW - just on cost with low gear:
Barrage - 10.3, Missiles - 10.5; Fireball (52Arc) - 11.3; Blast (0 stacks) - 19.5, Blast (3 stacks) - 8.5;
Blast (3 stacks) before the change - 5.2

It went from "50% worse" to only "20% worse" and barring changes might look even sustainable.
It's like having 66% more mana at your disposal when spamming Blast.


2) No more ramp-up bugs
The debuff affects damage instead of cast time now.
That means we won't have to worry about the ramp-up-bug any more where the second cast gets the cost penalty but not the speed bonus.
That also means we can't overlap the debuff any more. If the debuff expired mid-cast, you had a 1.5s fast cast at the base mana cost. No one did that post 2.4 anyway, but the possibility was there.

Now, if the debuff is there at the end of the cast, you pay the cost and get the damage. If not - then you don't.


3) The debuff timer
The debuff only lasts 3 seconds. That means until you reach 33% haste, any spell you cast will drop your debuffs.
The good: You can use Blast as primary nuke now without being in burn mode. You can alternage Blast/Barrage as an efficient, effecive, competitive and purely arcane cycle with Missiles on procs.
Arcane works for the first time without non-arcane damage spells, like the other 3 mage trees. (Except for the Scorch debuff.)
The bad: You can't do anything else in burn-mode. Casting Barrage or Missiles on procs will be a net damage loss due to having to ramp up Blasts again.
You have to decide to either spam or cycle. You can't have that cake and eat it too.
The ugly: One second of pushback causes you to drop your debuffs. Okay, with WoA/Ret/NWP you have 20% haste. Getting 4% on gear (gems) seems easy and is enough to continue burning through 1 pushback. You'll also lose your debuff when running out of fires.

Reaching certain haste levels heavily impact the debuff timing.

I'll go on a limb and say that I like that design decision.
Blast with a long debuff cannot stand on its own. If you cycle Barrage/Blast then you need a 3rd spell to let the Blast debuff fade.
Tying its debuff to the Barrage cooldown ensures that Barrage/Blast will always be a mana conserving cycle, while dropping Barrage to purely spam Blast will be your burn mode. It's a system that works lest you decide to focus on haste gear.
Going into Blast burn mode requires you to do exactly that and spam Blasts. It also requires you to be free and not in a situation where you're forced to move or take pushback a lot.

It's quite a big change. It gave the spell a decent new role where it was mostly useless before.
Going into burn mode now is less a mana restriction and more a restriction on your environment.
It requires the caster to decide whether he can burn properly in this situation or not.

I thought of a small addition to the WE abilities that could change a lot of things and even make the improved WE useful :

A small ice block.

This could last for a maximum of 10-15 seconds, during this time the WE is insensible and the HoT of the improved WE will be running to heal the raid from Aoe wich the WE have been saved.
It should be useful in every aspect of the game : aggro trading while soloing, survivability in raid, solo and pvp situation.

It's also totally in line the frost tree and the elemental nature of the WE.