Doesn't FFB get the pushback resistance from Burning Soul? If so it wouldn't be a huge deal to have Ice Barrier, with just Conc you would be past 100%. Survivability is an entirely different issue though that could tip things back in favor of IB.

Well, that 15% every 5 would be like a bit of backup, instead of being completely unable to heal like most pure dps teams. It's along the lines of a crazy idea that just might be possible, kinda like how there was a 5 elemental shaman team that did well for a bit. And maybe one mage could be exchanged for something else.

I am unclear on some mage abilities, though. Does the frost nova root have diminishing returns or not?

Something interesting from the blizzard class designer, ghostcrawler:

source: WoW Forums -> New talents up

I thought that was an interesting post, especially the bit about mana batteries, what each spec brings, and how they are trying to make it so that no one spec is mandatory. If nothing else this post should alleviate some of the Focus Magic concerns. I think we can safely say that the more major raid changes are still to come.

That also had absolutely nothing to do with Mages unless you feel dps being replaceable is something new.

On the contrary, that has a whole lot to do with mages.

Firstly, an increase in the number of classes that can work as mana batteries alleviates a great amount of problems the average raiding mage has. The need to be in a shadow priests group will (hopefully) no longer be a concern. Specs that are sometimes looked at as "high maintenance" could be more prolific, and the general feel that the mage class is too much of a high maintenance dps class will be almost gone, if all works out.

Furthermore, the spreading out of the same debuffs is something we are seeing already (look at the new imp scorch). Now the lack of misery debuff or a CoE debuff will not cause issue since there will be a more readily available replacement. A few of the issues with mage dps are born from the fact that melee just have more buffs in raids, meaning that melee classes end up performing better in raids (as seen in the ridiculousness of some fury warrior numbers). With more easily available raid buffs available for mages, the delta between the dps will even out.

And lastly, the fact that they are consciously trying to make one spec not have a 'must have for raiding' talent goes a long way to discount the people who believe that is the intent of Focus Magic. People, in this very thread, are misinterpreting Focus magic to be the very thing blizzard is saying they don't want to have, that being, a must have talent for raids. Since that is what they think it is, they believe it is a lackluster talent since they feel it runs out too quickly on boss fights, and hence has to be maintained.

There is a lot we can glean from what the blues write. Just because the text I quoted didn't have the letters M-A-G-E in it does not mean that it has nothing to do with mages, or that it has no use to mages. If the only way you glean information about changes to the game is by looking for the specific letters then all I can say is that you miss out on some extremely important information. It is easy to say "oh that didn't have the word 'mage' in it so I will just shut my eyes and put my hands over my ears and keep barking on about how mages will always suck". No one will bring you information on a silver platter for your consumption, you have to dig deeper to find the juicy bits.

Now if your intent was just to whine about how you feel mages will still be 'replaceable dps', then will you let me direct you to the mage forums?

You're mistaking my post as a complaint rather than nod towards the direction of general Wrath threads. It nothing to do with our talent specs, viability or role in raids (and to a lesser extent, pvp) and thus shouldn't be in this thread. Really, the post is more about how to handle the various hybrid raid and specs debuffs, and as you mentioned mana batteries. We don't particularly count as either of those types and as a class we don't particular care who is in the raid as long as those requirements are fulfilled anyway. This thread gets derailed enough by people asking how Frostfire bolt works every 2-3 pages, it would be nice to not have large posts made that are of questionable value to the current topic at hand. If you take offense at the "replaceable dps" comment then you must be outright looking for something to take offense to. As it stands going into Wrath nearly every 'pure' dps is replaceable by another 'pure' dps. This is a side effect of balancing / homogenizing classes around 10 man content with 30+ class/spec combinations and isn't necessarily a bad thing. Don't be so quick to call something out as a troll and be snarky with the WoW forums comments.

Really, the point was more related to the tone of the blue post you quoted. DPS classes in the past were designed around general dps concepts (primary single target, secondary single target and aoe, different degrees of maintenance, etc). However, with the changes in Wrath we've moved more towards a design where nearly every 'pure' dps class can essentially provide the same thing as every other one, with some lesser differences in overall raid benefit. The blue post quoted to me feels more to be addressing the issue of the other classes: the hybrids, the tanks, the healers and less the pure dps like Mages, Rogues, Hunters and to a lesser extent Warlocks (In theory they're a debuff class, but that never has really happened in practice). Yes, I'll agree that the post could be applied to the recent Focus Magic discussion, but the way the talent is designed presently isn't going to define Mages as a raid slot and I don't feel it has anything to do with what that blue post was trying to convey. Its goal seemed more oriented around the discussion of "Do we need a Blood DK and an Unholy DK and a Shadow Priest with a Moonkin for every raid?" and not so much for "Do we bring the Blood DK or the Focus Magic / Imp Scorch / Winter's Chill Mage?". What I'm trying to say, and likely failing at judging by your tone, is simply that we aren't in a position to need to worry about what I felt like that post was addressing and that it would have been better suited to a more general WotLK thread.

That being said, I could have just made this post instead of that one in the first place to avoid the problem in its entirety, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that. My apologies in that regard.

More painless ideas please, like removing the frost damage boost from imp scorch and putting it in the frost tree, and doing the same with the arcane damage boost.

While perusing the new talents, I came across an interesting change in wording. The fire talent Master of elements now states that it refunds 30% base spell cost. There is no mention of this being speciffic to a particular school any longer. As such, has anyone thought that if this is in fact the case (and not a misworded description as I imagine is probable) AB spam might be even more sustainable than it previously was? During clearcasts, since your ab is free, and far more apt to crit, you may well see positive net returns. Again, this hinges upon the spell working exactly as stated in the tooltip, AND is predicated on it factoring actual spell base cost, and not mana expended during casting. An interesting thought though.

I want a telekinesis spell a great deal. Playing mass effect and seeing force like jedi powers on steroids just made the desire even stronger. I want the ability to target another player, and with the flick of my hand, knock him back with a blast of pure force, will get melee off, will interupt casts, etc etc. Those are the functional aspects, but most of all, I want to feel a sense of power, and being able to flick some other character like an insect and send them flying, would be a treat for any mage (wizard duel in lotr anyone?)

The change for Master of Elements was noted earlier in the thread.,, the problem with AB spam is that it refunds 30% of the base mana cost for the spell, which for AB spam means 0-stacked -- ie. not very much at all. Likewise MoE will be unaffected by Arcane Power.

Still, MoE would be a good mana conservation mechanism for an Arcane spec. Especially if the bonus crit from PoM that lasts forever with a Barrage->Missile rotation is left as is (I don't expect it to, though). But for pure DPS Improved Scorch will be better.

Comparing your two tests:

With Spell Pen:
6 casts at 20% resist
3 casts at 10% resist
3 casts at 0% resist

Without Spell Pen:
1 cast at 30% resist
3 casts at 20% resist
3 casts at 10% resist
1 cast at 0% resist

I think we're going to need some better way to test. Maybe find a healer on the other faction and go spam AM on some PvP flagged mobs? Maybe you can grab a warlock and see if CoE helps any. It may be that Spell Pen is helping, but the values for resistances may have jumped a ton. Or possible, they changed over to a spell pen rating that completely fucked over your use of spell pen until they actually change gear to it? I believe they did that with armor pen today. My friend had armor pen on his gear, but the stat block on his character sheet said he had no armor pen because it wasn't armor pen rating. Although it seems like spell pen is still a flat stat, now that he got home to check for me.

I thought level based mob resistances couldn't be overcome with spell penetration? Or testing to make sure they still can't be overcome with penetration?

Also, WTH would the point of changing armor penetration and spell penetration to a rating system be? Armor and resistances ALREADY scale on level. 350 is max resist for 70, 400 max resist for 80, and armor scales up on level similarly.

Maybe they're trying to avoid certain old raid items from being the best in slot in a hamfisted sort of way..... (like how there were a few pre bc trinkets that were still REALLY good for a while)

The test was to check if the newly introduced, seemingly-excessive resists can be countered by SPen and therefore force some on gear or not.

Armour Penetration - it was the only that that had increasing relative scaling.
Going from 20% to 30% is say an 8% increase while 50% to 60% is a 6% increase.
However 0 to 500 APen is a 3% gain, while 2000 to 2500 APen can be a 5% gain.
[Completely fictional numbers, they illusrate the effect only.]

Also, APen and SPen scale down with level, yes. But APen for example scales with how the armour:mitigation scales.

Currently, it looks like at 80, you need ~40% more armour for the same effect as on 70.
That means for getting the same effect from stats, at 80 you need 40% more APen but 107% more for every other stat.


They could have just changed armour formulae, maybe they are not final yet either.
But it seems they want to change it to rating, and probably change the over-linear scaling nature.

Same for Spell Penetration.
At 70, you need 350 SPen to reduce 75% resist to 0%, while you need 400 at 80.
Thats only a 14% increase, while all other stats need 107% more.

Well its just that this seems like clearly much above the previous ~6% unmitigeable resists at +3 in TBC. So now the cap is 100% instead of 99%, but in revenge partial resists are far worse than they used to be... its nothing to be rejoicing over (I mean, the fact we can finally get rid of misses). And my results were with a lot of spell penetration, which jsut shows the impact is negligible at best.

Am i correct in thinking that the new partial mechanic is comparable to current meelee glancing blows mechanic?

If so, i don't see much of a problem with it.

EDIT: the quickest way to test partial mechanic right now is to find a below-70 caster in beta, and have him run dr.boom tests. Dunno how hard/easy is to find one on beta realms tho.

My thoughts exactly, it always resisting 75 or 75*2 makes it seem that it is a mob ability and not any resistance mechanic, normally the amount resisted would have something to do with your damage and not just be a flat amount.

Arcane Missiles doesn't have a damage range so all missiles hit for the same value, in this case 751. 10% gives 75 resisted and 20% gives 150 resisted which is expected. Resistance on crits are still bugged in the combatlog as mentioned previously in this thread. The really strange thing is having an average resistance of around 15% which shouldn't be explainable by the level difference unless Blizzard has hugely changed the mechanics.

I really hope the mob in this case has 200 resistance (or something like that) that is lowered to by the spell penetration to give around 15% resistance.

Ok well, a few notes as I level along. Lots of it is rehash of what has been said already, but its weird to find those again as I move along.

1- ice lance isn't working. same damage frozen or not.
2- invis has 6 yards range talented. of course, this is just a display glitch, funny nonetheless.
3- invis has now 3 min base cd (3s time to invis). at that point, I don't even see why I would want to spec to reduce the cooldown further, or even cast time.
4- ffb ticks every 3 seconds. wtf.
5- ffb is quite awesome. it also has a totally horrid ramp up time. at least for solo grinding, not stacking scorch is acceptable, however in raids, not sure how thats gonna work out.
6- ffb now tops at 40 yards even talented.
7- ffb on school immune mobs still applies all multipliers. however ignite/wc are school specific debuffs as expected and wont be put up on the mob.
8- moe on ffb has been fixed. note here that it returns mana based on the base mana cost of ffb, not the reduced costs from talents. this is as expected, and just further shows what to expect from arcane blast if I were to make a guess.
9- almost everything known to man eats focus magic charges. I did one 5-man with a DK/ret pally/mage/warrior/resto shaman, and it was up for 20 seconds at most at any given time. granted, I was am specced, but even so, other classes were eating the charges tremendously fast.
10- flametongue totem now gives spell damage. the amount given is somewhat inconsistent and not matching the tooltip.
11-

3x mob level +1, 107 spell penetration (ignite + pointless stuff removed from logs. keep in mind this is 3 separate mobs, and that theres different trinkets on them, so don't try to establish an average)

Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 3245 Frostfire.(696 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly gains 90 Mana from Manly's Master of Elements.
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 2144 Frostfire.(238 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 4339 Frostfire.(241 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1841 Frostfire.(205 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 3701 Frostfire.(206 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1643 Frostfire.(411 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 3336 Frostfire.(417 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1861 Frostfire.(207 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1662 Frostfire.(416 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1825 Frostfire.(203 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 2796 Frostfire.(599 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 4127 Frostfire.(Critical)

mob level +1, 20 spell penetration

Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 5441 Frostfire.(Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 2260 Frostfire.(251 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 4813 Frostfire.(245 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 4265 Frostfire.(217 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1943 Frostfire.(216 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1913 Frostfire.(212 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 2316 Frostfire.(257 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 1987 Frostfire.(497 Resisted)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 2415 Frostfire.
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 4816 Frostfire.(245 Resisted) (Critical)
Manly's Frostfire Bolt hits Disturbed Soul for 2671 Frostfire.(297 Resisted)

Try using rank 1, that was a bug in alpha, the rank 2 wouldn't work, but rank 1 did.

I've noticed weird partial resists(as in different than the usual 25 50 75 full resists) on my DK as well, when using frost presence(which gives 1resist per level). Pretty much if I turn it up, I'll get partial resists on every single spell hitting me, for rather fluctuating values. They might have made the resist table more complex than just the old table(more values for better scalability). Not sure how it'll go for casters though, that looks like a pretty penalizing change if all mobs have more base resist that's not affected by spell pen/CoE.

I hope what we are seeing is a bug from the revamp of the Spell Hit/Miss/Resist formula. From when they made the changes from 16% hit @ +3 lvls to 9% hit, and the removal of the 1% base miss chance. The level based resistance values might have been adversely affected. But, it could be an incomplete attempt to make +Spell Penetration useful. I'll hold my criticism till we are nearer release.

I have a feeling that the +Spell Penetration component of Curse of Elements is going away in favor of +Spell Pen. talents/gear. Due to the rebalancing of Debuffs.