Are there any numbers about the mana usage for a whole let's say 6 minute fight for such cycles out already? Otherwise I'll do the math myself.

is arcane using frostbolts in the rotations even now after the changes?

Can anyone check if the new Winters Chill gives 20% crit to Frostfire Bolt?

Don't think anyone mentioned it but Fiery Payback now reduces all damage taken by 20% instead of physical and fire.

No arcane is still best as scorch.

Re: frostfire, I just forgot to turn off Arctic Winds and fucked up my calculations. After some painstaking re-evaluation it looks like 0/30/41 and 0/50/21 are dead even, with the obvious advantage of the ice build having winter's chill for itself. I think I need some rest.

Recent changes pissed me off. They fixed WC and Emp. FrB by reducing them to 2/3 pointer, but also made Frost even more point-heavy. Where do I get 5 points to reduce the cooldown of every important spell? I easily spend 61 points on the must-have PvP talents. Why is it so hard to add a second charge to FoF? Frozen Core...

Fiery Payback 5 sec cooldown added. Uncalled PvP nerf. Now even if a <35% HP mage is left alone, he cannot do serious damage. Whole concept ruined. Still no instant Pyro proc on Firestarter. Living Bomb.

Arcane Impact screwed. It was a core support talent of arcane-deep fire and arcane-deep frost.
Mind Mastery nerfed to 15%. Looks like they don't want to give deep arcane mages 250 spellpower for 5 points. Too bad locks get over 500 for a T3 3-pointer. Where's common sense?

Hmmmmm

Winter's chill becoming a companion buff to scorch is good. Having 3 raid-support talents is also good. Though it'd prefer them not being reachable in a single spec :/

Cooldown reductions are nice, but i wonder why they put IV and WE cooldown reductions on different talents. That being said, i'd rather have the option to spec in them than not

The only thing i am worried about in this change is that ANOTHER 10% crit in raid environment will make cirt from gear an even poorer itemisation choice than it is now.

Blast spam looks pretty close to sustainable, since the cast time => damage change.

With Clearcasting/Meditation, Blast spam costs you ~2.2k mp5, more with more haste gear.
JoW 500, SPriest 250, BoW/Totems 200, Mana Gems/1 Pot 200.

So you're about 1k mp5 short.
1k intellect and 700 spirit (before BoK / talents) give you 650 mp5 while casting (60% mage/medidation), and the initial mana pool and evocation give you about 40k mana. 40k mana over 6 minutes is abou 550 mp5.


I'm well aware that 1k int / 700 spi looks pretty high, and blues are not going to cut that.
But I think it's not impossible to reach on raid gear.
Lots of stuff there is approximation as well. Maybe 800mp5 from pool/regen is enough, that would be quie easy to reach.
Maybe we need 1.3k mp5, which we won't get.

But all in all, Blast spam looks like it can be sustained for a major portion of a fight.


You know, it did get off its lazy ass and moved from the left side to the right side of the frost tree ...



On Hot Streak

I already calculated with a Fireball/FireBlast combo on your 100% crit buff, and it still sucks.
And if double-crit Ignite bugs still occur, you're eating up a significant part of your damage gains again.
At 50% crit, double-critting changes Hot Streak from a 3.8% to a 5.6% crit talent on average. Not that bad, but sill not good.
At 40% crit, you improve for 2.6% to 3.6% crit gained.

If you calculate the whole cycle, you gain 1.5-2% overall average DPS if you double-crit Hot Streaks (and get 2 charges for you next streak, needing only 1 more) instead of spamming Fireball.

Well, it does look like they want arcane specs to actively use both arcane blast and arcane barrage in rotations now since missile barrage is back to applying to only arcane barrage.

Shame you can't make a good build on an 11/18/28 template, taking all 3 raid buff tallents to buff moonkin, DK and destro lock by large amounts.

such a build would make the mage the primary debuff class and leave the destro lock as primary DPS. Complete role reversal from vanilla WoW :P

In fact, this build is basically what vanilla warlocks were meant to be. Powerfu debuffer + a pet. I just find that an amusing observation.

Maybe they realized that AB spam is better than AB rotations with ABar and MBAM's. If AB is only useful when spammed, and MBAM's break the spam, then it makes sense for MBAM's to not proc off AB. And if single AB's are worse damage than frostbolts or fireballs, there's no reason to include them in the MBAM proc for rotations.

It makes a bit of sense.

The "Official Talent Calculator" is chock full of old talents(Frost Warding/Molten Shields), old talents w/half of the new talent's text(Missile Barrage, likely missed the change from ABar to AB from previous build), soon to be nuked talents(Please Arcane Fortitude), missing ranks of new talents(prev Arcane Flows), and lots of other little mistakes.

So I would hold off on any conclusions based on it. It does allow us to look at what they are planning for the future though. It seems that every talent is being assessed, changes are made, they review them, and they continue to make changes. This to me is a very exciting thing to watch.

I just wish I was in Beta to make suggestions, as it seems they are totally rethinking our talent trees. I think the mage class is receiving possibly the biggest overhaul, yet.

I think Frozen Core should hit the gym. Maybe that way it might be able to pull it's own weight. Also Frozen Core might want to get a few exercise tips from Elemental Warding.

Are those changes live on Beta server or just on the buggy WoW beta talent calculator which I wouldn't trust ?
Are there any news to the replacment for Shattershield?

This was a mainly a bugfix build, the talent/spell changes must have been reverted at the last moment. Most of the changes from the "Officially Bugged Talent Calculator" are listed in the patch notes, but didn't make the build.

Only news on the replacement for Shattershield is soon.

Arcane Barrage coefficient is still about ~60%?

Relax, you can rest assured that when anything happens to the ABar coef this will be one of the very first forums it will be reported on. Those who do provide facts here wouldnt go "ya, I forgot to mention that was changed last week" more likely you will know a couple of hours after the cange is revealed anywhere if you keep watch in here.

Anyway the change of MBar procing on ABar again makes me wonder if arcane empowerment is one of those talents worth dropping on the arcane side. Offcourse that depends a lot on what role they finally decide AB to have and how frequently used that role is. My over all impression of the arcane tree is that I cant quite make out what kind of casting rotations its supposed to play with. AB+ABar rotation feels so unsexy having no pushback resistance what so ever but also for having much lower chanse to proc MBar.

Hurm. Are there really only four points on tier 8 Frost after these changes? (In the notes, mind you, not on the actual calculator.)

Yes, I recreated the talent calculator from the notes here. I made a few assumptions, basically err'ing on the side of talents as implemented vs what "The Officially Mostly Wrong Talent Calculator" said.

Edit: My Assumptions -

As has been reported, the talent does not work at all so there is no way anyone could answer this.

One thing I kinda hope they might look at is the improved cone of cold talent.

If blizzard can crit in wotlk. Then it will become the default AOE spell for frost pve. Even if mobs get near, I would rather nova them, get to range and recast blizzard again. And frost mages still can use AE in a pinch if they must do instant area damage around them. This makes cone of cold a much more suitable spell for pvp purposes.

Last time, before ice lance was introduced, cone of cold was one of the few ways frost could still do point blank damage while getting away and it comboed well with frost nova. But now, ice lance has clearly supplanted that role. So, Cone of cold is used mainly for its snare.

If they are really trying to improve mage pvp. Maybe they can look at the spell cone of cold and its improved talent. Make it more pvpish. Like do away with the increased damage and possibly add knockback or greater snare or something?

For myself, I wish these buffing talents were pushed way way higher in the trees precisely in order to preclude such a revolting build. Which I anticipate some raid leader somewhere inflicting on some poor mage who doesn't know better.

Focus magic by itself in its present incarnation is a full time job keeping up. Scorch has always been a pita and won't change. Only winter's chill is a painlessly applied debuff.

With the way Focus Magic eats charges right now on beta I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it's a raid dps loss having the Mage waste so many gcds, not even mentioning the mana cost. Right now, pretty much anything that counts as a dot seems to take a charge, even if they have a terrible coefficient. It's a bit like the old Frostfire 8 piece bonus when people would complain about Arcane shot, but worse.

As for Scorch, it has never been a big deal. One GCD every 30 seconds? Meh.