As far as i know mana shield "absorbs" damage and so would be effected by incantors absorbtion. Given that you can get a full absorb at basically anytime of your choice during a boss fight and you can CD stack overall arcane dps can change noticably at the casters discretion depending on mana requirements

At level 80 1330 x .15 = 200 damage bonus for 10 seconds from IA after taking a full absorb

I'd suspect the rotation as well as Arcane Power. Also, look at it with the Tirisfal bonus... goes up almost 300 DPS. Kinda crazy how good that set bonus is. Also, even these numbers don't really put Arcane much ahead. If the idea was to balance the trees, why balance them in a downward direction? Really doesn't make sense that they'd be worried about Mages doing too much damage with the current math available.

Does this include another mage keeping up fingers of frost?

Fingers of Frost is a self-buff.

Unless there is some mindblowing change to mana regen mechanics to make mana essentially infinite, I can't foresee Incanter's Absorption ever being viably used with Mana Shield for PvE damage. Losing 2000+ mana for a short duration damage buff is not a valuable use of mana, especially when that mana can be spent on AB spam. I dislike the entire concept of the talent as a whole, but the last use I expect to see from it is PvE damage from Mana Shield.

Wait a minute... are you assuming level 70 or 80 in those specs? The difference between 0/33/28 and 0/34/37 is pretty huge for FFB.

And even with Fingers of Frost being an incredibly nerfed version of WG, I still feel that 0/34/37 will be a better spec.

The other issue is that wards use up a GCD. So the added damage over the the 10 seconds has to make up for (and exceed) the DPS lost during the GCD which can be 2000+ damage. I don't see even a 300 spell damage buff for 10 seconds amounting to over a 2000 damage boost. Of course there are encounters where you will use the wards for survivability and the damage buff will be a bonus, but proactively using them for DPS doesn't really seem like much of a benefit, if at all.

It is more of a PvP talent to my eyes.

When I first saw this talent, I instantly thought, wow, this would be great if it worked in conjunction with magic absorption. This would then be a passive ability that could theoretically increase our DPS significantly in a magic heavy fight. I think this would be an interesting way to go with this talent.

I agree Q

The only time i can see there being no drawback at all would be drinking a protection potion prior to engage.

Scince most boss fights involve at least some movement it should be relatively easy to get some benefit every fight, which could mean that absorbtion can be a legit DPS tool if you plan on using it.

Incanter's Absorption seems to be a PvP talent with an added PvE frill in that a priest can spot you a power word shield for an extra damage boost periodically (warding yourself is as others have mentioned a loss of a GCD and arcane can already dps on the move fairly effectively with ABar/Fireblast/ABar). However, with the apparent demise of shatter shield, the talent seems to have lost some of its luster in both pvp and pve.

I dont think they are finished with Incanter's Absorption just yet. I have a feeling it was intended to be used with Shatter Shield, which was removed as an ability. This leaves the arcane mage w/ only Mana Shield to use as a sponge, which is still one of the worst pve talents in the game.

Scatter would have required us to take a melee hit. That makes it useless for any boss fight, which are really the only PvE encounters that would need such min/max.

OK, so, first, my numbers for Frost continue to be considerably better than what I'm hearing from other people (at 3000 spell power and 30% crit before talents, I put it almost exactly 5% above Arcane w/FRW, 5% below w/o FRW). So there's some disparity there, but whatever, we'll figure it out.

More importantly, I'm looking at this 15-20% gap between Fire and both Arcane and Frost. Now, Fire now buffs every Mage and Destro 'lock by 10%, and boomkins and elemental shaman by some amount less than that. That's a hefty chunk of raid DPS; frankly, someone who's bringing that kind of debuff shouldn't be matching the individual DPS of specs that are not bringing a debuff like that. The problem is, there are specs (elementalist and arc/fire) that can bring that debuff and do deliver excellent individual DPS.

Perhaps the solution is to shove Improved Scorch much deeper into the tree?

Mind you, even with that debuff, a 15% gap seems unacceptable to me.

Or maybe Incanter's Absorption was, by design, primarily a PVP talent that might have fringe benefits in PVE - but that wasn't the primary design principle.

Surely frostbite doesn't have (many) PVE raid applications, but neither do blazing speed, arcane fortitude, imp counterspell, slow, frost warding, molten shields, shattered shield, frozen core (lol, okay, it's not good for anything...)

I'm sure it's probably situationally good for stacking with cooldowns when you'd be warding anyway as a means of boosting survivability, or as a periodic buff (care of a helpful priest) and has some nonzero PVE value because of that - but the core design of the talent screams "PVP!" at me.

Which isn't to say it CAN'T be used in PVE or that it's fruitless to even look at it for pve dps, but I think it's a mistake to assume it was designed primarily with PVE in mind... especially since there's been consideration shown to breaking the stranglehold frost has on PVP specs.

I'd wait to see if that Imp Scorch change goes live. The latest talent calculator reverted the change, which could be an error but could also be intentional for those same reasons; fire needs help and nerfing fire damage while buffing Frost/Arcane isn't a way to solve it, especially with a talent so low in the tree like you mentioned.

51/20 was not for Elementalist. He used a 34/37 Elementalist spec I believe, similar to Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft but with the point from Arctic Winds in Pyromaniac if I recall correctly. You can give up Blastwave for a point in Playing With Fire for more single target dps, but giving up the present Blastwave is iffy (it's excellent on beta in my experience).

I don't really see how Incanter's Absorption could be a useful PvP talent either. It's really a pretty bad talent all around. It seems alright at first glance, but if you think about its placement, it's basically far too deep in the tree to see any serious use by any spec. For PvP and PvE, it's too much of a mana drain due to Mana Shield being our only option that deep in the tree.

Ok, what was the 51/20 then? All of the other mage specs specifically state the build that was used, other than Elemental and Arc/Fire (which I assume is 33/38, since that's the only relevant Arc/Fire build).

I don't know. I just know I asked him about what Elementalist build he used.

See this always bothered me about WoW's talent tree design. To me, what makes the most sense is for type-specific buffs to be low in the tree, generic debuffs to be low in the tree, generic buffs to be high up in the tree, and conditional and specific abilities to be at the top of the tree. What I mean by this is that a talent like Fire Power or Winter's Chill should be in the first couple tiers of the fire tree, a powerful but generic debuff like Imp Scorch should be within the last few tiers of the tree, and abilities like Blast Wave should be an 11 point talent.

Were it designed that way, an elementalist build would be wholly viable without Frostfire Bolt. If you're getting generic dps increases from your deep fire or frost talents and specific dps increases from the low talents of the off-spec, you'll be good with either, just a little better with one.


Honestly though Lhiv, the way the talent system is in WoW, a debuff like Imp Scorch should be widely available... even lower than it is right now, and the deeper end fire talents need to be buffed for fire's personal dps to be better. Honestly I think that type of structure which is used with all talent trees in WoW is the real cause of why hybrid classes are in such a strange position. Utility is wholly undervalued, and so with the sole exception of Shamans who bring an absolutely INSANE amount of specified utiltiy, hybrid classes don't bring enough to justify their low personal dps.



EDIT:

Or if each tree's deeper focus was specific like fire critted a lot, frost hit for consistent good dps, and arcane was all burst-oriented, you could design a deep arcane build that specifically used frost spells for consistent dps with a lot of burst capability...

using 16%+ spell hit, 0 spell penetration

mob level +0

Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1592 Arcane.(Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1592 Arcane.(Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1592 Arcane.(Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1592 Arcane.(Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1592 Arcane.(Critical)
Manly has slain Forgotten Rifleman!
Manly's Arcane Barrage hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1758 Arcane.
Manly gains Clearcasting.

mob level +1

Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1273 Arcane.(175 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1273 Arcane.(175 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 613 Arcane.(263 Resisted)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1433 Arcane.(88 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1433 Arcane.(88 Resisted) (Critical)
Clearcasting fades from Manly.
Manly's Arcane Barrage hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1420 Arcane.(355 Resisted)
Manly's Fire Blast hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1271 Fire.(141 Resisted)
Manly has slain Forgotten Rifleman!
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Forgotten Rifleman for 1592 Arcane.(Critical)

mob level +2

Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 1118 Arcane.(264 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 1279 Arcane.(176 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 1278 Arcane.(176 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 1439 Arcane.(88 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 1118 Arcane.(264 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 1439 Arcane.(88 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 792 Arcane.(88 Resisted)
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 1279 Arcane.(176 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly has slain Bloodfeast!
Manly's Arcane Missiles hits Bloodfeast for 792 Arcane.(88 Resisted)