How mana link would operate in conjunction with mana shield is highly speculative though. The wording suggests only spell casts will drain mana, I highly doubt the damage absorption from mana shield is counting as a spell cast. As for the AB spam, if your opponent actually let's you do it he isn't oom, he's dead.

As far as PvP goes I can't see it as OP unless my mana shield assumption is false, as for PvE though...

Regarding Fireball (Frostfire Bolt) / Scorch / Fireblast rotations to take advantage of Hot Streak chains...

From Radikal's video on his site (Radikal Noise) ignite looks as buggy as ever... is it really worth the inclusion of Fireblast when it nukes your ignite and activates the gcd?

How about this test, simply find a rogue and a third player, go to a PvP zone, have the rogue cheapshot, vanish, cheapshot, restealth, cheapshot, etc, until the 3rd player is stun immune.

Now try to deep freeze him.

As far as I know, there are only 3 DR's for stuns: random procs (impact, mace spec stun), Controlled (cheapshot, concussion blow) and Kidney shot (By itself).

SO deep freeze and Cheapshot SHOULD share the same DR and the target should be stun immune when Deep Freeze hits.

If nothing else, at least you'll be able to confirm what Deep Freeze shares a DR with . . .

I agree with the Mana Shield not being effected by Mana Link. A Warrior or Rogue hitting you at level 70 will chew through a mana shield in about 1/2 a sec if you stand there and take it.

Perhaps the best use of the spell would be to use your instant AoEs. They deal decent damage, can't be spell locked and they use a lot of mana. With Icy Veins you could drain almost 5k mana with just Arcane Explosion is about 8 seconds. Casting and canceling Blizzard could drain 15k mana in the amount of same time.

I wonder how it would interact with Clearcasting. ^_^

Now that's the way to abuse it, although it could be altered in ways to stop such abuse.

As for the torment of the weak confusion, isn't all effects reducing the movement speed of the target labelled as snares?
In which case the wording would suggest it only applies specifically to slow, which seems odd unless they forgot to swap slow and focus magic's places.

Is this business about Mana Link and Mirror Images based on anything other than random speculation based on spell tooltips or what?

Would be nice if something like Mirror Image were the Arcane 41 pointer.

Couple posters elsewhere have given living bomb damage which suggests a lower coefficient than was posted above:

Rank 2 base DOT: 1024
Rank 2 base Explosion: 563.5

Tester 1 (1220 Spell Power)
DOT: 2060 / 1.1 (Fire Power) / 1.03 (PWF) = 1818 - 1024 = 794 / 1220 = 0.6508
Explosion: 1133 / 1.1 (Fire Power) / 1.03 (PWF) = 1000 - 563.5 = 436.5 / 1220 = 0.3578

Tester 2 (1135 Spell Power)
DOT: 1990 / 1.1 (Fire Power) / 1.03 (PWF) = 1756 - 1024 = 732 / 1135 = 0.6449
Explosion 1: 1137 / 1.1 (Fire Power) / 1.03 (PWF) = 1004 - 563.5 = 440.5 / 1135 = 0.3881 (not sure what he did here)
Explosion 2: 1095 / 1.1 (Fire Power) / 1.03 (PWF) = 966 - 563.5 = 402.5 / 1135 = 0.3546

That first explosion is obviously an anomaly, maybe he got a spell power proc from a piece of gear on that one. Regardless, it looks like the DOT gets 65%, the detonation gets 35%. By contrast, Seed of Corruption gets 120% on the DOT, 22% on the detonation. As it happens, Living Bomb's total coefficient is 25% higher than would be expected from a 12-second DOT, while Seed of Corruption's is 20% higher than would be expected from an 18-second DOT.

Still, this seems to be more than high enough to make it worth the GCD for single-target DPS (at gear levels similar to what Ronwyn is using, DPCT is about 18% higher than Fireball). The question is whether it's worth the mana.

As long as it does enough damage to justify the global then at the very least it gives something to dump mana on, particularly during Molten Fury range if we find ourselves with an abundance. Though the duration limits its use in that manner, so it would likely need to be used more proactively early if we predicted a glut of mana.

Here's a really dumb question but I'm not in the beta...

Does Incanter's Absorption proc off of Magic Absorption by any chance? Or is it just on Mana Shield fire/frost ward spells?

As far as I can tell on beta it needs to be an actual buff on yourself for it to count for Incanter's Absorption.

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but mana shield has been changed to drain 1.5 mana per point of damage, so with 2/2 MA, you're looking at a 1:1.05 ratio of damage prevented to mana drained.

Also, Fingers of Frost is still completely broken.

When Mana Link is introduced, we can start celebrating. Until then you just kinda sigh at the ability and wonder what they're thinking.

They didn't change anything. The Arcane tree has been terrible for 4 years, your first 25 points are 4 DPS and 21 fillers points.
Which is why Arcane Missiles are a waste of time and mana. Which is why Arcane Barrage is terrible compared to Fire/Frost even with a 50% higher coeefficient than any other instant. Which is why basic unstacked Arcane Barrage does no significant damage.

The problem is that it still costs a truckload of mana. It does 50% more damage than other other arcane stuff, but also costs nearly 50% more.

Even with Frost channeling, it still burns about 2.2k mana in 5 seconds.
Spirit grants you about 650mp5, JoW ~500 mp5, BoWtotem ~200 mp5, Pot/Gems ~200 mp5, Mana Pool/Evocation about ~550 mp5.
That's just rough estimate and assumes high gear, being pretty generous with spirit/intellect. You won't make that in blues.

Frost Channeling is about 250 mp5 in there. Master of Elements is about 140 mp5 and you lose Icy Veins.
You can probably get by without 18 Frost at some point. It's like always being a few steps behind in terms of mana.

On another note - the change to pushback makes you not lose your Blast debuff now if you get pushed back only once.
And it's pretty awesome in general.

This was by Sbo who is level 77 right. If they were sloppy on coding, you could have a 1-4 level downranking penalty by that level.
Would be great to get a level 70 test without direct damage talents.
Arcane Missiles 10/11 get penalties right after the level you learn them *cough*

Ran some tests on living bomb without Playing with Fire, Fire Power and Molten Fury at lvl 70.

1302 spelldmg: dot 516-517 explosion 1033
1302 spelldmg + imp scorch: dot 568 explosion 1136

993 spellpower: dot 454-455 explosion 909-910

Thanks! That makes it 20% per tick and 40% on the explosion.

Just that I got that right - the explosion is an AoE, but the DoT is single target?

It has a much lower base damage than DB/BW, but scales twice as good.

At 1.8k spell power it's 10% behind DB (or 6% behind BW). At 3k spell power it's 5% above DB (or 8% above BW).
That's without the DoT, which does about the same damage as hitting 2 additional targets would do.

Of course everything depends on what AoE caps will be at 80.

[Edit]:
Oh, also, that spell makes a very interesting DoT for Fire Mages.
80% dmg DoT over 12s and 40% dmg that can crit for an instant. Yummy!

At 3k spell power, even if it cannot proc MoE it has a similar DPM to FireBlast, but has a 40% higher DPCT.


DPS figures at 3k spell power without considering Hot Streak (no idea how it works with LB and if combos still would work):

5408 - Fireball Spam
(5459 - FB*3/FiBl cycles; if you have above 25% haste)
5480 - FB*2/FiBl cycles, work up to 25% haste
6027 - FB*5/LB cycles, work up to 37.5% haste
6090 - FB*2/FiBl/FB*2/FiBl/LB, work up to 25% haste

The cycles that work up to 25% total haste are limited by the FireBlast cooldown.


That looks rather impressive. Chaining Fireballs, weaving Bombs and tossing FireBlasts on top of Hot Streaks will look really good.
Chaining Frosfire Bolts will be looking even better, actually.
And you can get one 5%-powered FFB DoT tick when you cast LB!


[Edit]:
Zinaida's numbers with FP+PWF look odd. Feels like FP only affecting the base damage or so. But you're out testing and editing already
Thanks a lot!

As of right now, Torment of the Weak only affects targets which have Slow on them - various snares won't work.

With fire power and PWF:
724 spellpower
413-414 dot
853 explosion

1079 spellpower
486-487 dot
1011 explosion

1284 spellpower
528-529 dot
1098 explosion

edit: rechecked these results, molten fury confused me -_-

Living bomb now consumes a GCD. The explosion seems to be unreliable, it seems to happen randomly at any time during the dot, and not necessarily at the end. It can also occur more than once during a single application. I would guess that the proc rate is something like 15-20%, but that's purely anecdotal. The knockup effect is very small, but does momentarily halt the mob.

Impact seems to proc from just about everything, including blizzard and arcane missiles.

Brain freeze is still not working.
Fingers of frost doesn't seem to work either. The buff reads "Your next 0 spells treat the target as if it were frozen". There are two charges and they are consumed by your casts, but do not seem to benefit. Ice lance still does normal damage and deep freeze is not castable.

Torment of the weak:
Normal AM damage: 941-942
AM damage with slow on target: 941-942
AM damage with frostbolt on target: 941-942

Seems to be completely broken.

edit:
What did you do to test this? I can't seem to get any effect out of it whatsoever.

Does this new Winter Chill stack with Scorch debuff ? It is the same debuff now, isn't it ?

*snip*

Wait, what, they removed the crit? Maybe that's a method to tone down the FFB build with both buffs.. but seriously a shame.

The wording looks like that on the newest leatherworked armour patches; if you assume that "Embroidery" is the name of the item, which will have a level requirement to use, this is simply the method used to prevent level 70+ enchants being used on level 19 twinks.