Seeing as Improved Blink is a PvP talent, I feel it should just reduce the cooldown of Blink by some amount of time. I've always proposed 4 seconds for two points, as the talent is deep enough in the tree that the investment seems about right. Would be nice to have other effects, but that's all I really feel it needs.

Also, Lhivera, I read a while back that the mobile DPS of Barrage was reduced by about 18% (from 60% to 42% according to what you posted a while back) due to the co-efficient nerf, and I was wondering how much this could potentially hurt the DPS of a mobile vs. non-mobile fight. Also, where did you get the 18% change from?

In addition, I would be interested if anyone has any insight into the nerf? Seems rather strange that a tree that is supposed to be built around mobility has a bunch of abilities that force you to stand still, particularly Missile Barrage procs (which I also don't understand why they nerfed).

Well, it looks like Hunters got their pet hit % question answered. Let's hope Koraa stops in to tell mages about whether this change affects the WE, too

linky

Here is a tidbit I found very very interesting:

source: WoW Forums -> Chimera Shot - Discussion

These 2 new abilities, along with the existing 2 that hunters have (Bear trap, Kill shot), will bring the total new hunter abilities to 4.
Assuming these new abilities are within the 70-80 range (and not some retroactive stuff like what pallys got with Righteous defense in BC), will make hunters the first class to get 4 abilities within the 71-80 range. The next closest is the Paladin and Deathknight, with 3 a piece.

This leads me to believe that it would be strange for some classes to get 4 abilities, some 3 and some 2. With BC, we saw that to some extent there was a similarity between how many new core spells a class got (most got either 4 or 5).
Thinking along these lines gets me excited since one of the disappointments I had was thinking that mages would get at most 2 abilities only in WoTLk. Hopefully, the trend will carry over to mages and we will get 2-3 solid dps abilites and 1-2 'cool' abilities (*cough* Telekinesis *cough*). Either way, I could just be over analyzing ;P


Though one thing that irks me now is why does it seem that the class designers are very chatty chatty with everyone else, except mages?

Hmm....

Oh look...mages got a blue post. Unfortunately, it doesn't really have that much substance

source: WoW Forums -> Where are we headed with the Fire tree?

Not exactly the insight I was hoping for. We already knew blizzard is trying to shove "AoE kings" down mages throats. Unfortunately (and maybe I don't speak for every mage) I don't really care THAT much for being an AoE king. (after all, I don't think if you went up to rogues and said "You guys are the lock picking kings! and we will make high end raiding encounters *cough* suppression room *cough* just so you can show off your elite lockpicking skills" that the rogues would really take it well).

Either way, a disappointing response with little substance.

Less scripted PR answers more real insight please.

Edit:
As a side note, there is a slight problem with blizzard's logic in this regard.
Say we assume that they achieve what they want from the fire tree and that by some magical means, fire mages become the hands down kings of AoE. Lets then assume that there exists some raid encounter in WoTLk that calls for some heavy AoE.
Blizzard now has 2 options

1. Design the encounter in such a way that it requires the raid to have fire mages present.
2. Design the encounter so that it can be accomplished even without a fire mage.

1 is not possible, since blizzard has already made it clear that they do not want to make a specific spec required for a raid.
2 is possible (and the more probable), but at the end of the day, if the encounter could be done without a fire mage anyway, whats the point of having a fire mage there in the first place? Especially if his normal single target dps may/may not be up to scratch.

Some people may argue that there is a 3rd option, that the presence of the fire mage makes the encounter easier. But that is far too grey a term, and it is a concept that is probably harder to balance than anything else since the last thing they want is that the encounter becomes trivial just cause you have a fire mage. If that was the case, given the min/max nature of raiders, this hypothetical 3rd option will just reduce to option 1.

The key thing here is that blizzard is attempting to elevate mages to be the "kings of aoe" through a spec, whereas warlocks are currently kings of aoe through the use of a core ability (which funnily enough has almost no talents that enhance or improve it in any way).

Either way, I think blizzard is working itself into a hole. The first critical issue is that AoE just isn't that important in almost all other aspects of play (solo, grp, pve, pvp, arenas), and only really becomes an issue in very high end raiding. Constructing a class' specs with the idea of having that spec work in such a way that it is pretty much useless in 95% of the game and only really useful when time and effort is put into making an encounter just so that spec can even exist, is, imho, very bad design.

But, as the blue in that post said. There is, apparently, a new iteration of the mage talent trees that are meant to hit a talent calculator near you. I guess, we just have to wait. The show ain't over yet by a long shot it seems.

I kind of get the feeling that Blizzard is running headlong into another case of diametrically opposed talents being ineffective (or plain stupid). I don't know how many of you can remember back this far, but if you can recall some of the original Druid Feral talent trees you'll know what i'm thinking of. Cat talents and Bear talents were mostly mutually exclusive, and as a result the entire tree was subpar for quite a while. The magical fix was, of course, to glue Bear and Cat stuff together because if you're in one form you can't benefit from other forms talents. In the same sort of way, Mages can really only cast one type of spell at a time (DD or AoE) and so I think the ultimate solution to all this "Kings of AoE!!!" business is to look at welding DD and AoE specific talents into more appealing abilities. It's the only way to maintain an existing role while ushering in a new one.


PS: I see now that Koraa has replied in that thread with an interesting comment...
Indeed. Indeed.

Being the "king of AoE" as a main class feature is doomed to failure -- that much is just about self-evident. But if you do strong single-target boss DPS, being "king of AoE" could be a desirable extra feature, kind of like raid utility. If there's enough interesting AoE work that is best handled by a mage, that's another good reason to bring one along to your party/raid over another DPSer. If fire mage DPS is up to scratch and having him around makes some AoE encounters easier, especially if they are boss encounters, he becomes an interesting addition.

But the key prerequsitie here is up-to-scratch DPS. It's vital that the king of AoE has to be supplemental to strong boss DPS, the class's viability can't just hinge on it. That's never going to work.

EDIT: And Koraa's supplemental post is encouraging in that regard.

Improved Blink should be on the 45+ tier of arcane and remove movement impairing effects when you use it. Also nerf AP-PoM-Pyro into the dirt to compensate, and because macro gibbing is fucking retarded.

There I said it.

It'll more than likely remain a single charge and work the same way shatter combos work now. Frostbolt's travel time allows you to get the ice lance in before frostbolt breaks the frost nova/frostbite. With FoF, similarly, frostbolt's travel time will allow you to get an ice lance in before frostbolt consumes the debuff. In both instances, the two spells both get the shatter crit bonus because a spell's damage is calculated upon completion of spell cast, not when it hits the target.

That will really only work if the buff is consumed on hit and not on cast. I don't exactly know how the buff is supposed to work and i know it isn't working right now but from the wording i would assume it works more like PoM than shatter or combustion. You cant get two spells off with presence of mind and i doubt you will be able to get two off with FoF although i could be wrong.

Strangely, I noticed that my Pitbull mod actually knew the amount I was being healed for when I started a spell cast, which was odd, but kinda cool. I do wonder how it finds that data out though.
It's already pretty weak in its current form. The five second cast certainly isn't going to make it any stronger.

That is quite strange indeed? Does it work for other people in your group as well? Can you constantly start/stop a cast until you notice a crit coming? Seems like a terrible idea imo! If this works offensively you can do the same until you're sure that pyro will crit.

I wish I knew, but as a Paladin, I couldn't really test any attacking abilities. However, on my Mage, I didn't notice any -health indicator (the +health indicator comes up as a green bar on either yourself or your target for how much the heal will do, and yes, you can stop your heals until you're sure of a crit). Again, I'm not really sure why this is. Much less how Pitbull's finding out.

I'm currently using a modified version of Syphix UI now though, so I can't really do more tests (though you can download Pitbull and try it out for yourself to see what I mean).

The sad thing is that there would be very few things as bad for the game as for such an AoE-obsessed spec as the current Beta Fire tree to actually be any good. For that to be true, Blizzard would have to stick gobs of adds into every damned fight, almost at the level of Everquest's adds-swamping except mercilessly pushing AoE instead of Crowd-Control.

Blizzard needs to understand that any ability which isn't useful in every single boss fight - crowd control, interrupts, AoE, kiting ability, conjuring taystysnax on demand - is a utility, and that abilities like that cannot be given some sort of single-target "DPS" value. Rogues' Kick can't be given a DPS value, Mages' Polymorphs can't be given a DPS value, Warlocks' Seed of Corruption can't be given a DPS value, and Feral Druids' ability to respec Resto can't be given a DPS value. That's not an effective way of balancing the game. Because of this, you can't even offer someone the option to spend talent points on improving AoE, because almost any reasonable value of AoE DPS isn't worth any single-target DPS in a halfway balanced game.

Sorry if this post was kind of incomplete and left in some holes in my explanations. I'm pressed for time.

Just an idea, but in light of the recent Hunter changes, why not give Fire a similar "kill shot" ability in the form of instantly consuming Ignite ticks for damage (or maybe, if a new Ignite procs, have all the ticks that would have done damage do damage instantly)? Would be nice I think, particularly if they allowed Ignites to roll up to say, maybe 5 times or so. PvP and PvE viability I should think. More than that, if they really wanted, they could even plop a talent that makes the ability that consumes the Ignite have an AoE effect.

Does living bomb trigger the gcd? If not I was thinking if it could be used as a mana dump on bosses by keeping it up while doing single target dps, for example in MF range. The numbers atm don't look very impressive but If you have enough mana for it at the end of the fight it might still be worth it.

I don't know of an offensive ability that deals damage that doesn't trigger the GCD. So my guess is that it would trigger the GCD. Also, I don't think it's possible to mana dump the ability since you can't speed the spell's process up at all.

Hrm, that post about Fire is disappointing. If they're intending it to be the strongest AoE tree, then either a) it does mediocre single-target DPS and is therefore a dead tree, or b) it does very strong single-target DPS and Frost/Arcane are relegated to second-class status in most situations. As has been mentioned, if you need more AoE, you don't have casters respec, you bring more casters. Strong AoE is not a compelling reason to spec Fire, thusly I can't imagine a situation where I'd say "ok we need great AoE DPS but poor single-target DPS is ok, so I think I'll spec Fire."

It just shows your regular heal for the spell you're casting, like drdamage calculates your spells. it does not know if you spells crits or anything.


And would people please stop posting silly spell suggestions here, like mass teleport and other shit.... do we really need more gimmick spells? BS like this does NOT fix the mage class. And somehow it reminds me of the offical wow forums

The arcane potency+pom change seem to keep AE spam pretty good when AoEing less than 10 mobs. Also the fact that you can move and AoE with AE gives it several advantages to e.g. Blizzard too as well as the fact it can't get interrupted. That hard to use skills like Blizzard and Rain on Fire currently is so bad compared to easier to use AoE spells is pretty wrong in my eyes.

Testing a few small things:
Living bomb does not incur the GCD.

Hot Streak + Blizzard:
Blizzard does not consume the hot streak buff, but still benefits from the 100% crit. If the buff expires part way through the blizzard, it loses the 100% crit for the remaining ticks.
Blizzard can not proc hot streak or Master of Elements.

Arcane Barrage:
I've seen some conflicting reports so I thought i'd test this. I got a damage range of 1685-1822 (no buffs, debuffs etc, 1426 spellpower), which suggests that around 0.62 is correct

Netherwind Presence:
Adds 6% haste rather than 6% worth of haste rating.
194 passive haste rating - 2.23 second AB cast.
With an additional 94.2 haste rating expected cast time is 2.11.
With NWP the cast time is 2.10, which shows that NWP is multiplicative with haste rating like IV and heroism.
It is also multiplicative with Icy veins as you would expect.

Magic Attunement:
The increased range does not affect blink.

Missile Barrage:
Haste effects are applied to the reduced cast time. i.e. 20% haste from IV will be applied to the 2.5 second cast rather than the original 5 seconds.

Regarding interrups off the GCD Ive hear a lot of talk about kick and pummel being off the GCD in beta, could be that they will remove the damage component from kick. I havnt found patchnotes or blueposter for this change so I dont know the full extent of it.

The problem I fear with arcane potency granting 30% crit as long as you stick to instants and AM is that this prevents AM and AE to be balanved properly for anyone who doesnt have arcane potency. AM isnt much of a loss for more forey nad frosty mages I guess, but making AE worthless for anyone who doenst have arcane potency doesnt seem like a gain for the mage class. Cause lets face it, blizzard will not let us keep an AoE + talent combo that makes for completely OP AoE damage. Im sure that they will balance AE to be a good AoE spell dealing very good damage, but Id very much prefer if it was able to do this without some lame PoM combo. To not mess up PoM being consumed by instants they could perhaps give PoM a duration so you could use the combo for some burst AoE but only for a limited amount of time. That would fit very well with the arcane playstyle imo.

Why are we still talking about the PoM bug? It's obviously not intended.

I really really liked using Blizzard in Hyjal. Keeps the mobs in place (-65%/75% slow; up to -85% in WotLK) and makes for some very controlled killing.

The damage sucked, no doubt. Which is why I just went in and spammed AE most of the time when I felt that tanks/healers had everything under control.
The damage however only sucked because Blizzard couldn't crit and because it had a terribly low damage cap.

In Wrath, it'll only depend on the AoE caps: If Blizzard and AE have a similar cap (per cast time), Blizzard will be better than Arcane Explosion for generic sustained AoE DPS.
AE is better when you have to move - Felmyst, maybe Suppression Room/Fankriss. It is also better when threat is an issues and you're likely to get into melee range. Pushback on Blizzard should only hurt your mana, but not your DPS (correct me if I'm wrong there).

If they let 30% perma crit from PoM stay, you can use Blizzard as well to benefit from 30% perma crits. If you're arcane for PoM+ and picked Frost as sub-tree, it will be more DPS - unless the encounter favours spamming instants.

Blizzard is now fully competitive with Arcane Explosion spam, barring encounter design and AoE caps.


Thanks for the testing!
That does imply that Blizzard crits don't give you the Hot Streak buf, or did I misread that?

Even if it doesn't grant you Hot Streak, using a Flamestrike-Blizzard rotation should be extremely high ranged AoE DPS.


Hot Streak is exactly that though, and it's arguably the only situation where that talent is worth its points.