Don't use nukes with cast times in pushback situations. This is what instants and the lovely arcane barrage is for.

Arcanists need to stop looking at arcane blast as the universal solution for all problems.

As I said to Celani: if you increase the debuf timer, all of a sudden AB ceases to be a proper nuke for regulating your mana and you are going to find yourself adding frostbolts to your repertoire in order to keep from going oom, along with a heavier talent investment in frost to support that nuke. The devs clearly intend AB for that mana regulation purpose and as a mana dump in addition to that. Once understood in this context, the debuf time reduction makes complete sense. I, for one, have zero desire to start messing around with frostbolts.

AB is not meant to be spammed ad infinitum in a brave new world with limited pots and greater care in mana management. The old AB spam philosophy is dead, and let it stay dead. The new arcane, which calls for subtle balancing among AB, AM, and barrage, is more interesting anyways.

I've been sitting here trying to create the best specs i could think out for raiding, and kinda hit a wall almost every way i go. What is the best bet on a raid spec right now?

My first thought was fire, but i can't seem to find anything making fire better then it was before.. But i even loose 5% dmg from scorch, instead of gaining new talents. Burnout looked fun for a few seconds until i realised that i can get an even bigger crit bonus on fully talented fireballs by going 33/38/0 and get the 50% crit bonus from spell power, and som mana and int to boot.. but i'm unsure if this would work well in reality.

Arcane kinda needs it's bread and butter nuke, and perhaps it will be better when they are finished with AB, but right now i'm unsure about a pure arcane build too.. Arcane/frost could be a contender i know many cant see the viability of putting 47 in arcane and then spam a talented big crit frostbolt.. but i have seen wwi reports where people using the 40/0/21 variant could come really close to a equally geared firemage (for people who don't have full 2xt5 or full t6).

Elemtist specs were all the rage before the new talents showed up, but since the removal of WG i'm unsure about how well FFB spamming is holding up compared to pure arcane.

Anyone with +1000 spreadsheet skills who can conjure up some enlightenment for me?

I'd like to know which way the jury is leaning towards on raid specs as well, particularly these 5 specs:

57/3/11 AB/ABar+MBar - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
32/39/0 Spellpowered Fireballs - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
14/0/57 Deep Frost - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

And also these 2 FFb specs, ideally i'd imagine 1 of each mage in a raid, the first keeping up scorch while the second keeps up WC.

0/50/21 Frostfire Bolt Deep Fire - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
0/34/37 Frostfire Bolt WC+FoF - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Hope someone can shed some light on which of these specs will come out ahead.

Blizzard has posted more video captures of the WWI panels. I don't know if it includes the Q&A parts. But I know some people wanted to track down exactly what was said, and not someone's transcript. So here you are:

2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational

I think that you're a little to pessimistic about Fire. It's obvious arcane is getting a buff, but my view on this is that with 80 gear, in raids, both Fire AND Arcane will be viable, and help each other. Arcane Mage keeps up Focus Magic, while the Fire Mage keeps up scorch. Both will do excellent AoE, and more than likely be competitive for top single target DPS with rogues/warlocks/hunters just as it is now.

I, personally, am going to stay Fire until it either becomes painfully obvious that Arcane is better DPS by a LOT. But, at this point, I really see the two specs working together.

My fire raid spec for the current talent build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

There are going to be 10 classes. With what mages bring i really don't see there being more than 2 per raid. I really don't see anything wrong with this either. It kinda seems like it will be 3ish spots for hybrids and 2 spots for pure dps classes.

From the theorycraft done in this thread so far arcane is on top right now. Arcane could also potentially provide imp scorch for itself without really missing anything in a 53/18/0 build. You really don't need more than one mage and you technically don't need any rogues but hopefully our dps will be enough to justify 2 spots.

Honestly right now mages are not top dps along with rogues hunters and locks. It's something like Hunters->rogues->warlocks->fury warriors->mages for the pecking order. In WotLK deep fire isn't really viable at all in the current beta build and arcane is a bit ahead of both hybrid arcane fire(33/38) and the elementalist FFB build. Of course there are raiders right now that raid as frost when both arcane and fire are clearly superior so that's not to say that you can't spec fire and do alright, but why shoot yourself in the foot if you don't have to?

Personally Icy Veins will always be important to a raid build. From the stand point of the fast casting, in addition to the haste we are going to get. My one complaint about the Arcane/Fire (32/39/0) build is no Elemental Precision for the fire side of the spec.

And what do you think about this build : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

A 51/20 with which you cycle Abar/AB (and MBAM on procs but they wont be lots of procs) and you spam AB as soon as your mana allows you.
The pro is that you can have 2 points in Master of element, which seems to be a very good talent to spam AB.

However, master of elements is based on base mana cost, so I don't know if this talent is very usefull when we spam AB. Somebody could do some maths on this please?

Really depends on the fight. If mobility is important in the fight, then Icy Veins gives no real benefit to an Arcane spec, due to Barrage weaving. Unfortunately because Barrage is an instant, it sees no benefit from haste, so Arcane specs (using Barrage) might not want haste on their gear and rather more spellpower to compensate. Granted, this depends largely on what spells are being weaved into the interim, but since Missile Barrage no longer really "fits" due to GCD, it's hard to say what exactly will fill that hole. The current builds seem to want to put Arcane Blast into that spot though--casting time is too long though due to GCD... so not sure how that will work out.

If only someone could put all the useful specs with a DPS potential/scaling estimate into one post and maybe put a link to them into their signature *cough*

Spamming Rate-my-Spec without having read the last few pages doesn't really offer any contribution.



[Edit]: Spamming (ABar-ABla) with 3-stacked Blasts and >33% total haste may or may not work.
Its value is given in case it works, because that would be the highest possible Arcane burn DPS.

If it turns out impossible due to the way debuffs/cooldowns apply, then Blast spam is the highest burn DPS in that situation.


[Edit ii]: Barrage cycles with AB/FrB/FB/FFB and MBAM on procs all do comparable DPS, within ~150 DPS.
In the given scenario (15% haste on gear, ~38% with buffs/talents), the cycles with the slower fillers (FB/FFB) come slightly ahead because the fast fillers AB/FrB are haste-capped.
With less haste, the faster filler come out slightly on top. You can use the same DPS as ballpark value.


[Edit iii]: Frostfire Bolt
It currently double-dips from CoE/Scorch. Marked with "*" as being likely not intended. Values are given with single and double benefit.
Deep Arcane (33+, 43+) variants are bad, even if they can leech Scorch/Chill. Akston explained it quite well.

I think you might have misunderstood me, i myself do only expect ~2 raid spots for mages in an optimised raid, when i meant 1 of each i was referring to the 2 FFb specs, not all 5.

But yes, seeing as how practically every spec of every hybrid is becoming raid viable (and some even almost mandatory), mages might only get a single raid spot. In that case our choices are probably narrowed down to either:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
or
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Both can provide Imp Scorch, and the FFb spec provides Winter's Chill (which would only be worthwhile if you ran a Frost DK tank i guess), but i'd really like to see the numbers, though i don't know if its worth it for Arcane to keep up focused magic or not.

7154 - ABar-ABla (3 stacks) in burn-mode

How would you maintain this? The debuff timer on Arcane Blast is 3 seconds. Assuming haste or?

By your numbers 0/34/37 Frostfire Bolt is top, outdoing even arcane in burn mode (with the haste to keep 3 stack AB?).

Do you have the numbers for the ABar/ABla(0) rotation?

requires 33% haste to pull it off.

On another note it would be interesting to see how warlocks dps compares to what we can do.

If you look FFB is only on top with the current double dipping it gets from Improved Scorch and CoE. We don't know if this is a bug or working as intended, but it is most likely a bug and probably will get patched soon.

edit: I just averaged his ABar and ABlast dps and got 5960.5 dps if that helps.

Oh wow, I hadn't even thought of this. 2 mages, one specced 0/34/37 and the other specced this (stacking crit) could work. Might try this spec in beta, although you lose Netherwind Presence due to the level cap. Doesn't stop the massive crits though...

Pretty sure an 0/50/21 spec would do more dps leaching WC than a spec with 43 points in arcane using FFB. Sure the crit modifier is bigger but you lose a LOT of base damage from the skipped fire talents.

Thanks for the dps number. Personally i think that FFb double dipping IScorch and CoE isn't a bug.. that's the whole point of FFb isn't it? Inferior to Fireball and Frostbolt when Fire focused or Frost focused, but superior when taking into account the benefits of both.

Why would you ever put 34 points into into fire and not pick up MF? Depending on the fight duration and cooldown stacking...this can be as much as a 7% damage increase....more than you'll ever see from the 3% crit. I'm mentioning this because I see talent builds going around of 0/34/37 with 0 points in MF.

I did originally pick up 2/2 Molten Fury and dropped Pyromaniac to 1/3 when i looked at the specs myself. But like you said it depends on fight duration and such. Its not a really obvious difference to me so i'd have to see what the math whizs decide is better.

WFR: People are stupid.

Would be nice but i sort of doubt it. Arcane in full burn mode should really be doing more damage than FFB can sustain normally.

You lose a little more than 10% damage. 2% damage from PwF, 6% crit from critical mass, 10% from fire power, molten fury, combustion, MoE (2 points), 10% threat reduc and pushback protection from burning soul, cold snap, hot streak, burnout and a point in pyromaniac.

You gain 3% crit/damage from arc instability, 15% intellect, 10% spirit, 30% regen while casting, presence of mind, arcane power, 6% haste mind mastery, and arcane flows.

The arcane variant might perform better at lower gear levels but it definitely seems like 0/50/21 would outscale it.

There is also the issue of the viability of stacking crit. It is already one of the more expensive stats to stack at 70 and i can't imagine it's budget cost going anywhere but up in WotLK. It just isn't worth it to gem/gear for crit over spell damage.

Any word if Focus Magic is going to be effected by Magic Attunement?

The spec would actually be a lot more viable as 51/10/10 the more I think about it. FFB still gains the 325% crits, but you lose IV and 6% Frost (FFB) damage... but gain the 15% chance for 2.5 sec AM, maxed out AB/AM damage and ABar on top of it all. The spec would have to use AB as the mana-dump DPS burn, AM when Missile Barrage procs, ABar for movement and added DPS, and FFB as a more efficient filler nuke with huge crit potential.

The problem that arises is gear; FFB with such a spec heavily favors crit, while ABar, AB and AM are not spells you want to stack crit with. The burst capability of the spec is much more controllable though, so depending on TC DPS potential it could have some slight utility in that department.