Do you mean Power Word Shield?

Divine Shield is the paladin wipe recovery.

Also, I'm not sure if all of those will stack. I recall that some time ago PW:S and IB wouldn't stack and the PW:S would just overwrite the IB. I don't know if it still works that way but putting up both Shatter Shield and Ice Barrier at the same time would be 5600 mitigation against physical before spell damage. It'll probably end up around 6400 after spell damage and that's a fair chunk of damage.

Frankly, it's about time. Low base absorptions and anemic scaling made shield spells just next to worthless in any non-solo applications; forcing melee attackers to eat through a significant shield once they gain melee range will do a lot to balance the problem introduced in BC; namely, that it was so easy for melee to gain and keep melee distance, while Casters got nothing in the way of additional escape mechanisms or increased durability.

I stand corrected, then. I was fairly certain it went the other way, but the last time I stacked Resistance on my Mage was for Princess Huhuran and I don't think I've bothered to check or even examine Mage Armor and Resistance stacking since then; I've always done Mother on my Druid.

Why do they always insist on using brown in the color scheme?

The helm graphic isn't shown and that's where we generally get shafted. It could be recolored Arcanist graphic for all we know :P

The shoulders look a little awkward, but I've seen worse I guess.

Edit: Found a good video here: New Tier Gear on Vimeo

It shows off the sets from several angles. Apparently the mage helm isn't functional at the moment which explains why it's not there in the picture. After seeing the set from a few different angles and the lighting effects on I'll admit that it's a lot better than my original assessment.

I heard somewhere that T7 was going to re-use T3 graphics (as it dropped in naxx2)... Is it possible this is actually T8?

Also, I wasn't aware of IB and PW:S not stacking, since I havn't spec'd IB since level 60. Is that for real?

I just asked another mage who's frost all the time and he says that they stack but there was a time where PW:S would overwrite an IB.

I also heard the same thing about T7 so who knows...

Continuing this aside... from the video it seems that the male version of the supposed mage t7 isn't a robe. I think that's the first time out of all the mage tiers that the set differs that much from the female version (ie. chest/pants vs robe covering pants).

I'm not a fan of vests in general for casters; not out of any instinctive revulsion towards non-robed spellslingers, but mostly because pants in WoW look silly.

Its about time warlocks had a retarded looking Tier set. Feathers and chunks of wood? Very warlock-esque... : /

I like the mage one, I'd be interested in seeing the helm once its out. Thank god we get to skip the dress though.

What's really strange is that in the picture, we have a robe, but in the video we have a vest. Also, the video makes it appear as though there are boots the match the set as well. I wonder if they're changing the number of items in each set again.

More likely its a core 5-peice set with some random non-set items designed to match the set.

I still think this is going to be T8, as i'm quite sure its been stated T7 will re-use T3.

while we're discussing Sets, Is there a convention yet for naming differences between 10-man set peices and the equivelant 25man set peices? I can see it becoming a point of much confusion later on since there is going to be 2 sets for each class for each tier. maybe 10T8 and 25T8?

I strongly suspect we're going to see either a return of the ".5" nomenclature; 10-man sets are T8 while 25-man sets are T8.5.

If frostfire bolt benefits from both ignite and ice shards (i.e. gets the extra crit damage and dot damage regardless of which type of damage it ends up doing), then I think this would be a pretty high damage spec:

War Pirate :: Talent tree Mage (please excuse any filler talents that are crap I don't actually play a mage myself)

Spell Power+Ice Shards+IcyVeins+Ignite+NetherwindPresence+All the other nice arcane talents.

Basically just spam frostfire bolt.

We really don't know enough about Frostfire bolt at this point to be able to say, but from what few accounts i've seen it looks like it counts as a fire spell which is simply capable of dealing frost-based damage if the target is fire resistant/immune. That would imply to me that it goes under all fire tallents except improved scorch. And probably not winter's chill, for that matter (since WC specifically states 'frost spell', not 'frost damage')

Of course, thats as much speculation is your post. Grain of salt, and all that

I highly doubt that it will receive both. It will get the frost talent crit bonus if it ends up doing frost damge (for whatever) reason and the fire crit bonus if it does fire damage. The only reason I suspect that it can gain a benefit from talents like frostbite and permafrost is because it has a chill component. It probably won't stack WC (unless it does frost damage) or be affected by any other talent that reads "Your frost spells..." while it's doing fire damage.

I'm not even sure it will gain benefit from Frost talents even when it's doing Frost damage, because it will still be a "Fire Spell".

Do we know which school the spell even falls into at this point? I'm assuming it's fire, personally.

Also, how many times have tooltips been improperly worded or functioned differently than stated? We can't be 100% certain until we have someone actually test this. A good way to find out would be to use this spell against a warlock with nether protection. That should allow us to test whether it will switch to frost damage when he becomes fire immune and if that frost damage is capable of using frost talents for damage increases and critical strike bonus damage.

It appears to fall under the fire tab, although the screenshot I saw wasn't 100% clear.

The screen shot that I looked at had almost entirely fire spell on it and then on the far right listed the two ranks of Frostfire Bolt but also included the new rank of Cone of Cold. So it is somewhat ambiguous.

Here's the link if anyone else wants to weigh in: magespells2.jpg - Image - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

There's a second link I don't seem to be able to find that shows the Frostfire Bolt spell in the context of the Trainer's list; it's clearly *above* the Frost tab (i.e., in the Fire tab) in that screenshot, though.

If you look at the video I linked on the text underneath there's this text: "2. They are under the file names of (example) Helm_Robe_Priest_G (G=Tier, A=Prophecy, B=Trans, C=Faith, etc)"

This makes it appear as though this will be T7 and the old T3 may be used for something else entirely (perhaps the new dungeon set) or used later. Of course it's possible since old T3 is already designated by C the numbering/lettering system is off.

Either way Blizzard has said a lot of things and not all of them come to pass. Honestly I'd be generally happy with either being the new mage set, so a win regardless.

Let´s take a look into PVP specific Talents especially in the Frost -Tree (because it seems to me that 17/0/54 would continue). There are more kite effects through chilled to the bone who gives together with perma frost a 70% slow same as rogues now have. damage boost is also increased on this talent also winters grasp will do.
The 41 talent will do a good job if its an instant cause mages will get back to casting with this.

The Improvements in lower arcane are minor. Meaning that mage armor can still be cursed, dots by wl and shadows can refreshed through channeling. And i think 80 Spell Penetration wouldnt hard to get in wotlk.

What scarrys me is that every telent tree (beside mages) in apha involves a berserk from 5 to 20sec like beastmaster does now. The Question i was asking me if that Im the only one who´s confused about this. Say that this will more and more make mages vulnarable in arena fights. You can still ice Block but when it holds longer then ten seconds you can only run and die. Maybe the instant invisbly can get you out of this. But being in Ice Block or invisible didn´t feel good if they are going on your team mate. I wish ther would be more survivibility given to Mages therefore.

What do you think wotlk will bring in terms of pvp to mages, and how to counter berserk mode.