Haste is applied after the talent's reduction.

They should make FM so it doesn't just add the magic debuffs, but also do pretty heavy damage when you apply it. 2.5 second cast, high mana cost (so high you can't spam it) and and very high base damage would be a welcome buff. This way arcane mages would use it as a damage spell whenever the charges were consumed.

Well like I said, it seems to me that the intention of the spell was to default do Fire damage, unless it is more vulnerable to Frost, then do Frost damage.
The fact that Arctic Winds does not increase it's damage is because it increases Frost damage, but not Frost SPELL damage (nor Frostfire damage). Piercing Ice does state to increase Frost spell damage, so it SHOULD work for Frostfire. As an other example, technicly Water Elemental could receive a buff from Piercing Ice (as it is your Frost spell and does damage), but not from Arctic Winds (as it is not YOUR damage), although it is more likely that WE is considered a summoning spell rather then a damage spell.

It was my understanding that Blizzard meant to create 1 spell, which would work for both Fire and Frost mages against mobs immune to either school. A spell that would allow Mages to raid regardless of spec (Hi there Al'ar!!), thus also receives benefits from both talent trees.
I'm aware of the dubious tooltip, stating that you do Frostfire damage, but if the target is more vulnerable to Frost, do Frost instead of Fire. But from my own experience with the guards in MgT that do Fel Lightnings (Nature+Shadow damage), they always did Shadow damage to my Tauren Shaman, while my (Orc) Warrior always seemed to receive Nature damage. That's as far as SCT reported though.
I simply thought that the idea was for the spell to do Fire as default, and penetrate any Fire resistances by switching to Frost damage (or taking advantage of extra weaknesses on the mob, more vulnerable technicly includes less resistant as well). As extra for Frost mages, it would also take effect from Frost talents, so they can add frost immune mobs as well, fixing 2 possible problems with 1 spell. That is why I believe they also changed Scorch debuff. After all, a mob with 5 Fire resistance would make FFB do Frost damage, even though Scorch debuff largely out-weights this resistance (even with Frozen Runeweapon debuff on).

There are simple ways to test it though:
What happens when you duel a Paladin with Fire Res aura? Does he see a lot of resists or not? What is the tested resist rate and how can it put into relation with the expected values?
Or; fight another Mage who uses Fire Ward. Does he absorb any damage, and fully or only partial?
Expectations from my PoV would be that he will receive Frost damage, as he is more vulnerable to that, so Fire Ward will not absorb anything.
Another test would be Ice Armor, does it increase resistance against Frostfire Bolts? And what if you combine it with Fire Ward? Do you resist or absorb? Or both?

I always thought that the double dipping was a result of first checking weakness by relating Fire dmg possibility against Frost, apply the resulting winning school and then (accidently) add multipliers to it again. In other words, mix-up in coding, which occasionally happens when a lot of coders work on a project with no real precedent (and there is no time left to double-check the code).

I'm also very interested in seeing what happens if you do those test with a target that has the Frost Runeweapon debuff, but unless you can do a 2v1 duel or set up a cross-faction test, it's rather hard to get accurate data.

Has anyone managed to clock in some dps on 0/18/53?

Wow you're coming late to the game. FFb deals Frost+Fire damage, not one or the other, Ignites + FFb's DoT tick for Frost+Fire dmg on fire immune mobs, and the chill effect is applied even to Frost immune mobs. Any type of +fire or +frost dmg talent boost the dmg that FFb will do. If you are interupted, both frost and fire schools are locked out.

No more testing is needed, it was all done in the previous 137 pages

Like five posts ago, Nurru posted some basic tests that suggest the exact opposite is actually true.

Frost Nova and Blastwave on the beta server both had issues with simply not doing anything occasionally, so I suspect there's a general AOE bug right now.

As for WarTotem, there isn't anything for me to reply to in your posts because you're working under false assumptions that have been researched many pages ago since the beginning of beta. I suggest you leave the calculations to people who know how things actually work.

I edited my prior post to include numbers on Fire Power + Arctic Winds + Piercing Ice just to ensure no one could try to argue "But it was doing Frost Frostfire damage!!!"

I have waited for the new mage talents and the bruhaha they cause to settle down. Now that the dust is settling, I wanted to weigh in with my thoughts on these changes. Here they are, the good, the meh, and the bad on the more recent changes to the mage in my opinion. Just some general thoughts.

The Good

Arcane subt: The addition of dispel protection is a fantastic change. True, it has little use in raids, but the talent already gives a great benefit to the raider. I see this as a big boost to all mages in pvp. Finally, Slow will be that little bit more reliable.

Focus Mind: While the theorycraft for this talent is still pushing people back and forth, I think this is a fantastic 11 pt talent for arcane. The small dmg buff as well as the extra buffer for things like slow is a whole lot of posetive. Yes, the mana cost can be looked at again, but I think blizzard has definately gone in the right direction here.

Insta-invis: the ability for the arcane mage to go insta invis is a great change. While I have for a long time considered it a no brainer (esp for the arcane mage), its good to see this making it through

Incanters Absorption mechanic: As proved by our friendly local beta mage, IA stacks, though does not refresh the buff on each stack. While it may not be ideal (the best scenario is where it stacks and refreshes, though, that would naturally be rather OP/exploitable), it makes a good, somewhat reliable addition to the arcane mage lineup

The reduction of 'fat' in arcane (and other trees to a lesser extent): The reduction of some good arcane talents from 5/5 points to 3/3 or 2/2 is definately a good change. Arcane was always a point heavy tree. Having some fat reduced in some areas allows us a little more freedom to spec. Furthermore, some talents have gained additional ranks but have additional levels as well. All round a good change, more fat reduction if possible please :P

Addition of survivability: Magic abs, magic attunement, arcane shielding, imp blink, prism cloak, all stack to give the arcane mage some very juicy caster survivability. It seems Kalgan is making good on his word for mages to have a better shot against casters, at least arcane mages.

Burning determination: Most people are looking at this talent with too much tunnel vision. Yes, it may produce only a slight increase for the mage in terms of 1v1, but it is fantastic in a 1vmany situation. Furthermore, let us not forget that some classes (read: Deathknights) actually have 2 interrupts (1 silence and 1 interrupt) on separate cooldowns. This talent will help against DKs no doubt. The fact that it is so easily accessible to all specs makes it very good indeed.

Shattered barrier and the nuking of Shatter shield: This is a good change imo, since shatter shield was only really useful to a frost mage who could take full advantage of the nova. As I stated before, the mechanic would be more at home in the frost tree rather than a base spell since it has been my long standing belief that core spells should be something that all specs should be able to use at somewhat the same level of return. Furthermore, the fact that SS was nuked, means that mages can expect something else as a core spell, a good move imo.

Concerted effort: Perhaps even more important than the theorycraft, the latest iteration of the mage talents show that there has been a concerted, no nonsense, effort put in by the class devs into the mage class. From the look of the talents, it seems they are in fact reading and hearing the feedback and are at least honestly attempting to help the class. I mention this here since i believe that in current times mages are feeling rather in disillusioned and worried. These changes, though not perfect, do show movement for the class. I like where the class is moving to. This is something that should perhaps be communicated to the greater mage community.


The 'Meh' (aka the "what?" category)

Fire: Fire is still looking rather lackluster as a whole. I can see what they are trying to do, but I do not think they have accomplished it yet. Living bomb is, well, we all know what living bomb is. The whole 'aoe' thing that deep fire is trying to pull off is not really coming together imo. More work needs to be done here

Brain Freeze: More of a "what?" when I first read it. Perhaps for an elementalist who has decided that after buffing his FfB he still wants to go around casting frostbolts? Yea, I'm not sure on this one.

Improved Water Ele: Another meh. So the elemental lasts a bit longer, good game. But, it still suffers pretty badly in that it does not scale well. Unless they make it get the mage's +hit as well as scale it's mana with the increased duration, I'm not too sure I'm sold on this yet. As far as the healing thing goes, it just 'feels' wrong. There was something unique about being the only caster without any kind of healing mechanic. And even if the ele heals, the only place it will really be used is when I'm in pvp and sitting in iceblock with the ele out, which, while makes for an ok strat in certain situations, is not something I would be too inclined to spend talents on to improve.

Deep freeze: Some mages swear by it. Personally, I'm not there yet. The addition of damage is ok i guess (all damage is good) but I feel the only real thing holding this back is the fact that it does the "is target frozen" check both at the start and the end of the cast. To it's defense, I will say that it will perhaps make for a little more interesting play for a frost raider, since you will have the opportunity to change up a bit of your rotation by blowing DF on a FoF proc. The stun has always been interesting, but let us see what happens with this talent. Even though I have placed it in the 'meh' catagory here, it is perhaps closer to 'the good' than most of the other things in this category.


The Bad

Arcane blast mechanic change: This one started off in 'meh' but is slowly slipping to 'the bad' in my mind. The positive, is that the change retains the 'feel' of a DMP/DPS throttle. The negative, is that the *new* arcane blast has pretty much gutted the 'fun' of the spell by making it far too one dimensional. The reduction of the debuff time to just 3 seconds really has removed our ability to 'play' with the spell and use it to weave things with. Furthermore, the removal of the cast time reduction dimension is really not something that is a good change. While I can see that they are trying to move this spell a little more to the center of arcane as being a bread and butter nuke, I feel they can accomplish the same effect with its old mechanics. While I understand the problems that a fully ramped AB all hasted up to 1 sec brings to the table in dps balancing (esp when stacked grps come into play), I think that there needs to be a little more thought put into the solution to the problems rather than gutting the spell somewhat and leaving it balanced, but one dimentional

Arcane barrage coeff nerf: Reports from beta mages show that ABr's coeff is nerfed somewhat to the 0.65ish range. While at face value this is not the 'oh my the sky is falling' change, it does question me to think whether or not the spell justifies its 51 pt talent status.

The absence of 'juicy bits': The mage talents on the whole are coming together. Though I am sure that like myself, most other mages are still looking for something a little more 'juicy' for the mage class in WoTLk. Perhaps as a core ability. Now by 'juicy' I don't mean another spell that does damage, but I mean something with a juicy and 'fun' mechanic. Spell steal, for all its problems, was still a juicy spell which brought something interesting to the mage table. Essentially, we want something cool that will make the class interesting and if nothing else, embolden us again.
A single target, medium ish mana cost, short cooldown (i.e 15ish secs), insta cast, 20ish yard cast range, low/no damage, knockback spell (have it knockback range inversely proportional to how far you were when you casted it) from the arcane tree would just about do it imo
Maybe let it have a few cool secondary effects as well (opens locked chests, lets us loot from range). I mean come on...we are the masters of magic! And on top of that, the sorcs Telekenises spell was just soo cool!

That's my list so far. I know that it is a bit skewed towards arcane changes, but truly, arcane changed the most this last round. Let us see what is in store for the other trees. If I think of anything else, I will update. Feel free to chime in. Oh and one more thing, I know that most of the existing discussion in this thread is very squarely based around raiding. I just thought to bring in some other aspects of the mage just to get a more holistic picture and to remind us that not every single talent on the sheet has to be something that 'buffs our raid potential'

Unfortunately, a lot of the "juicy" talents in Arcane kinda ate it in the latest build. Prismatic Cloak only gives 3% reduction, Invisibility is no longer able to be made instant, Mind Mastery was reduced to 15%...

WotLK Beta Patch Notes & Talent Update

Also, Fiery Payback puts Pyroblast on a cooldown.

The hit to prismatic cloak will probably hurt the most, perhaps all that stacking survivability just ended up being too much? Or perhaps blizzard has a buff planned for mana shield and/or another spell that helps all mage specs with survivability? Lets wait and see. I'm not quite sure exactly how much int a mage will have at 80 thus making it hard to judge whether the mind mastery change is true 'nerf' or just a 'lets bring the damage in line since we are going to inflate int a little'. The non-instaness of invisibility is also, imo, not too bad. In some ways, one can argue that having a true 'vanish' may have been a little too much and have detracted from the "plan to use" aspect of the spell.
Imp CS is interesting, making the spell be a 100% silence but switching on the duration of the silence. Net result for a 2/2 is the same.

The fiery payback change is not a shocker. Chain casting fiery payback pyros while just hovering below the hp req is slightly on the exploitative side. With this change, Fiery payback should not be exploited too much in raiding situations but still give the pvp mage an option to get out a quick pyro here and there. Would place the new talent in the 'meh' catagory, leaning towards 'good'. The only main gripe I have with fiery payback is that the talent does nothing else. It is a talent that buffs another talent, quite directly. Now true, its almost unheard of for a deep fire mage NOT to have pyro, but still, it seems kinda off center.

Either way, these even more new changes are a little hard to call. Too many unknowns right now. Seems like blizz is still churning the mage and we may have to wait a little longer for things to settle down.

Now, about that Telekinesis

Someone in the beta forum said "Just give us the living bomb Baron Geddon has" - Living Bomb - Thottbot: World of Warcraft
I say give us something similar to Geddon's second ability: Ignite Mana - Thottbot: World of Warcraft
Some sort of instant cast dot that burns mana and maybe does additional damage if you crit the target when the dot is on, could work wonders. I'm just not very excited about the addition of yet another aoe talent in deep fire, especially one that has to be used in melee range. They should at the very least let us cast living bomb on enemy targets OR target oneself, but with a cooldown. Basically a seed of corruption with a twist.

On a completly separate note, here's a deep frost pvp build I'd be very interested to try in the arena:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator
At the risk of sounding pessimistic I just have to say that the addition of dispel resistance was the single best pvp talent change so far, it boosts all specs by alot in the arena.

About fiery payback, sadly it does need a cooldown because it could result in some absurd gameplay in the few encounters that actually let you abuse it... But I still like this talent. I like the thought of being able to dish out pretty sick numbers during special conditions, it brings some variance to the table.

Awaiting the inevitable dps buffs to deep fire.

Right because there has definitely been significant arena testing in appropriate gear! Blizzard really needs to stop making random arbitrary changes to pvp talents without testing, it's pretty much a waste of time.

If you're a fire mage and you're at 35% in arena you don't cast Pyro. You Ice Block and pray that there's no priest(honestly you need to ice block BEFORE 35%), or you start running for your life if you're not already.

Nevermind that if you're this low, someone is probably meleeing you which means your absurd pyro cast is going to take pushback... The whole talent concept is absurd and completely unusable. You can't play offensive at 35% hp, unless you want to instadie.

I believe that's for Rank 1.

The resistance on magic absorption is as strong as the master demonologist for fel hunter USED to be, for 2 points instead of 5, and isn't tied to a pet. Also very easy for any mage spec to get. At the same time warlocks are losing their resistance from master demonologist. This will make a mage/warlock matchup a LOT harder for the warlock. It looks like matchups in general in WotLK are getting flipped around a lot, which is odd.


One mage, maybe not that great on its own but....healing stacks, no? So you get a 5 frost mage team. 15% hp healed every 5 seconds. Combined with the burst damage of 5 frost mages. A magic burn team that heals without actually having a healer. Obnoxious.

Please don't go there with this thread.

I don't think Fiery Payback will stay as is, the concept is good but the implementation is poorly conceived. I think it's taking the idea of "fire does great dps but at a cost!" too far, encouraging you to play dangerously to the point of potentially hurting your raid. But speaking about it's current form, I don't think the cooldown on Pyro was needed.

Brutallus is the obvious example of where FP might be broken, but it's also a large exception in terms of normal fight design. You take 100% predictable spikes of damage that healers will willingly let go unhealed (relying on VE) for long periods of time. There aren't many other fights where if you dropped below 35% hp, you'd stay that way for more than 1-2 seconds before you had incoming heals. For PvP... aside from inciting laughter from other players, I don't see much point to taking the time when you're below 35% hp to stand still and wind up a long cast.

The problem is, in a pvp situation as a mage if you are at 35% and playing offensively you are going to die even with a 20% dmg taken reduction. Therefore the fiery payback talent will not have any offensive use in pvp situations where there is a significant danger of being burst killed or focused on (aka arena pvp). The only offensive use I could see for it in a pvp situation would be perhaps battleground farming.

In pve, it could be abused on certain fights with auras of low predictable dmg so the mage could survive under 35% health and abuse the mechanic. I do not see it ramaining as is.

Fiery Payback is already pretty good for the 20% damage reduction. The pyro thing is just a side bonus if you can manage to use it.

Honestly, I don't care how small the dps increase is from fiery payback. Its pretty damn simple; if I can increase my dps, I'm gonna do it. Even if its a 10 or 20s cooldown I'm still gonna make sure start the fights at less than 35% hp if the fight allows for it.

Sorry, been a while since I checked in on this, but, I would personally go for something like War Tools :: Talent tree Wotlk Beta Build 8719 Expected Talents

No ice barrier, no pyro, no blastwave. With its current pushback, blastwave isn't something you would use in a pve aoe enviroment, ice barrier is nice, but again, not needed in pve, and pyro is basically useless most of the time anyway. You get 3 points in playing with fire as a reward, although you could go for Pyromaniac too, I might try this out tonight actually, I've been testing frost out mostly

Doh!
*smacks himself over the head*

I completely forgot about the damage reduction.
Would definately make it a good talent.

I still don't think this makes imp ele a good talent. Investing 3 points in something only due to such an extreme scenario (5 mage teams are cute, but not very real imo. No matter what the situation, 15% every 5 secs while sounds nice, will not really have the impact you think it will) does not really do much for me.

No one interested in Telekinesis?
Thought we could build some momentum on it

Re: Asahina

Blastwave certainly comes down to preference (and the design of encounters), but with Ice Barrier now absorbing over 3000 damage it's hard to imagine passing that up. Just thinking about all the constant aoe and pushback in T6 and Sunwell makes it a powerful talent with that degree of absorption if Blizzard continues this trend of difficulty via raid damage spam. Especially if our stamina is as bad as it was for the first two iterations of the game in respect to other classes.