Living Bomb is appearing to always "explode" twice per application. For instance

Dreadfang Lurker suffers 536 Fire damage from Aliaa's Living Bomb.
Aliaa's Living Bomb hits Dreadfang Lurker for 2146 Fire. (Critical)
Aliaa gains Electrical Charge (2).
Dreadfang Lurker suffers 429 Fire damage from Aliaa's Ignite.
Dreadfang Lurker suffers 537 Fire damage from Aliaa's Living Bomb.
Aliaa's Living Bomb hits Dreadfang Lurker for 1190 Fire.
Dreadfang Lurker suffers 430 Fire damage from Aliaa's Ignite.
Dreadfang Lurker suffers 537 Fire damage from Aliaa's Living Bomb.

So..DoT Explosion DoT Explosion DoT

very strange indeed.

1201 fire damage with this test, full fire.

edit: Also, doesn't require facing

If you push the scorch debuff deeper into the tree, an unfortunate consequence will be that you are more or less forcing the first two mages in a raid to be one deep fire mage and one frost mage (if you are forced that deep into the fire tree, only going the full way will make sense). Which to me seems worse than the situation Manly describes, because it forces the hand of two instead of one. Also, it will mean that in any group with only one mage, arcane will never be a feasible option. Since a deep arcane spec will be able to get neither scorch nor WC, not only will it make their personal dps uncompetitive, they also won't bring the same raid synergy. In fact, arcane will only be an option if there's both a fire and frost mage in the raid already. Arcane needs the option of getting the Improved Scorch in situations where they can't leech it off someone else.

If you turn the scorch and Winter's Chill effects into identical, non-stacking debuffs, then you lose the benefit of getting raid buffs from more than the first mage, and you lose an incentive for people to chose more than one cookie-cutter spec within a raid, which I think are some of the nicest things about the recent changes. And if that isn't what they want, why would they be making the changes regarding applying to more damage types in the first place? Also, having basically the same talent in two trees would be really boring design. Also, mages in a well stacked raid would lose a net 10% crit, the dps of which would have to come from somewhere else.

The thing is, the two debuffs are so good that as long as more than one or so person will be able to benefit from them, the raid will really want to have them. If it is a given the raid will want the debuffs, then putting them deep into the trees will only restrict peoples options od spec'ing. And I think they will want to avoid that. I think it would be better to accept that having both buffs will be the standard for a well built raid, and in consequence make at least one of them fairly obtainable in a multitude of specs, like scorch is now. In fact I think the current setup is a fair compromise. 18 points deep in fire is deep enough for it to be somewhat of a sacrifice to get it (if you aren't mostly a fire caster you're going to have to take some filler talents to get there), and it's inconvenient enough for someone to get both Winter's Chill and Improved Scorch, that it's beneficial to have one person take one, and another one take the other.

Doing some napkin math, but with that Arcane Barrage video it looks like Arcane Barrage is using a 80% co-efficient now (if that video is showing Rank 3...). A nice compromise if Arcane Barrage stays there.

Edit: Er... is that rank two Arcane Barrage? Because if that's rank two, it would seem like it's getting closer to a 100% co-efficient.

Thanks for the video by the way, it's much appreciated.

Edit edit: Nyo, I thought that the tests they did earlier indicated that Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill don't stack?

The Winter's Chill change from crit to damage was proven to be false. Repeat Winter's Chill has not changed from 10% crit chance

The word from Beta is Arcane Barrage coeff has been reverted to it's previous 82-86%(dunno which number is accurate) coeff.

Frostfire Bolt is double dipping from Winter's Chill (based on around 400 casts).

It's Rank 2, mage is only level 70.

Arcane Barrage based on the video seems to indicate 86%.
.86 x 1267 -> 1089 + 808-959 (883 avg) = 1972

My mistake about my previous statement, thank you for correcting me Nuru.

Anyone have a video and co-efficient for Deep Freeze?

Using rank 2 Arcane Barrage over 50 hits (ignored crits for now): 1956.28 average with 1249 +Arcane. I avoided all talents affecting its damage, so the listed damage range is 802 - 958.

So,
Base average: 880
My average: 1956.28
(1956.28 - 880) / 1249 = .8617. So it looks like it's getting (back to?) roughly the coefficient of a 3 second cast.

You're missing something about Deep Freeze, namely that DPCT is not the most important factor for FoF procs.

Imagine if you had a 7 second cast time frost spell that does slightly less DPCT than Frostbolt.
You of course wouldn't use it normally.
You would however cast it during FoF. Always. Because it hits so damn hard, and 50% crit on a hard hitting spell is better than 50% on a less hard hitting spell, even if the hard hitting spell has less DPCT and would normally not be used.

Your timeline basically looks like this with 0 haste:

A
0.00 - You finish casting Frostbolt 0, which will hit and proc FoF
0.00 - You start casting Frostbolt 1.
2.50 - You finish casting Frostbolt 1 that gets FoF
2.50 - You cast Deep Freeze 1 (or Ice Lance 1) that gets FoF
4.00 - GCD is over, you start casting Frostbolt 2.
5.00 - You're still casting Frostbolt 2, 40% done casting. FoF is only up if Deep Freeze procced it. I.e. 10%.

B
0.00 - You finish casting Frostbolt 0, which will hit and proc FoF
0.00 - You start casting Frostbolt 1.
2.50 - You finish casting Frostbolt 1 that gets FoF
2.50 - You start casting Frostbolt 2.
5.00 - You finish casting Frostbolt 2 that gets FoF

So, you don't have to compare DPCT of Deep Freeze and Frostbolt and Ice Lance.

You have to compare the total damage of "100% FoF Frostbolt" with "100% FoF Deep Freeze (or Ice Lance) + 40% of a Frostbolt with a 10% chance of having FoF up".

It takes above 5k spell damage for Frostbolt to beat Deep Freeze in DPCT.
It does however only take 3k spell damage for Frostbolt to beat Deep Freeze on FoF procs.

(On a sidenote - I had 5% too much damage on Deep Freeze, copied a Frostbolt and forgot to remove 5% Chilled-to-the-Bone.)


Will fix Arcane Barrage later tonight to account for the increased damage.
The spell is pretty hell to balance for gameplay.
Either it's damage is too high in PvP as near-spammable instant, or it's too low for use in PvE.

In most cases, it'd probably both *cough*


Help on Living Bomb
I would love if someone can confirm or correct the following behaviour:
1) It ticks 4 times as DoT. Then it explodes just a few milliseconds after doing its last tick.
2) Both, the DoT and Explosion hit nearby targets.
3) Explosion crits do not trigger mana returns from MoE.

Here's a deep freeze video. The crit is with ice shards, so it's double damage. All my other talents were rubbish. The coefficient on DF appears to be absolute shit.

Rank 2 (787 to 913 base damage)
I had 1080 +frost

YouTube - Deep Freeze

Now, in the video you'll notice that my second Ice Lance crits for a large amount, as if the target is frozen. You'll also notice that the nova seems to break before it goes off, which may imply that Deep Frozen targets are counted as frozen as well!

1) As I said upthread living bomb is functioning extremely strangely, where there are multiple explosions in with the DoTs. With more testing, I've found that sometimes I'm getting 4 ticks and no explotion, and other times I'm getting DoT -> Explosion, repeated 3 times, so six "events" total. This spell is not alright.
2) The DoT portion only affects the target, the explosion affects everyone in range. Impact can proc on this as well, which is quite nice.
3) Explosion crits do not trigger mana returns from MoE. Further the DoT portion, as you'd expect, does not crit.

Deep Freeze doesn't gain benefit from Ice Shards at the moment.

You're extremely simplifying the issue. And particularly not viewing it from all the angles. Let me break it down.

A group with only 1 mage has already arcane as non optimal as it is. The first mage, as things are now, is always going to be a deep frost mage because of the utility of the massive raid-wide MP5 as well as the ability to stack both scorch and WC without doing deeply sub-optimal rotation (read: without having to cast, for example, ice lance, frostbolt or FFB as deep arcane as a way to stack WC). Whether or not you move both scorch/WC to 18 points or to 28 points, you will still favor deep-frost. Thats because as things are, the dps difference between deep fire and deep frost is extremely small, to a point where I don't see why anyone in their right mind wouldn't go deep frost first for mp5 (being the first mage in a raid).

If you make scorch and WC a 18-point talent, then you enforce the fact that your first mage is a deep-frost raid in a raid. If you make both 28 point talents, then deep frost needs to lose 1/3 imp WE, 5/5 chilled to the bone and deep freeze to attain scorch (0/28/43). By comparison, deep fire still (0/43/28) needs to sacrifice burnout to get WC. Both deep fire and deep frost can get the other tree raid buff, at a cost high enough to allow it an option, but make them feel the sacrifice.

I don't think you get it. As things are now, your first mage will always be frost whether or not scorch/wc is 18 OR 28 pt talents. Imp WE is raid synergy. You always favor deep frost first regardless.

Give me 1 good reason that arcane should be allowed to stack only imp scorch and not WC.

No you don't. You just make the first mage a deep frost mage in that case. Imp WE is that good.

Mages, warlocks and druids lose 10% crit. So what. If you give 10% more damage to all the dps classes, you have done nothing. The balance has not changed, at all. Hell, I'd much rather have neither scorch or winter's chill exist, and have our damage based on them not being there (read: increase our base damage by the amount those would bring), but that would probably break PVP. having the same talent in both tree being a boring design; well, I don't know what to tell you other than 'have a deep look at spell power and burnout and come back to me when you're done.'

No, what YOU don't understand here is that currently theres no good reason to invite a fire mage over a frost mage. Deep frost has both the imp WE utility as well as WC. If things were to be moved to 28 pt, then at least deep fire utility would be 10% more damage. Its still worse than deep frost. But at least, now it becomes the utility, a reason to invite a fire mage. With what you propose, you're making fire mages extinct.

Not to mention, you give no justification, at all, as to why scorch should be given access to all specs but not WC.

Now, i realised its even possible to do Frostbolt + Deep Freeze + 3x icelance shatter combos. Didnt realise it earlier couse mobs usually died even after the first icelance, not mentioning surviving the second.
But tested it now without casting the frostbolt and i get off 3x tripple damage icelances after every deep Freeze.

Since people have been unsure in recent posts I've collected Deep Freeze numbers:
Base: 1018-1182 damage (No % increase talents taken)
1199 +Frost

Average on 10 hits: 1655.8 damage.
Average on 10 crits: 2450.5 damage
Coefficient = (1655.8 - 1100) / 1199 = .4635

So the coefficient seems to be slightly higher than the typical Instant cast (it might average out with a larger data set), and it definitely does not work with Ice Shards presently.

I've read what has been posted about the viability of an AB spam, and I also read what Manly posted about the reasons for the first mage brought to a raid to be frost. I'm curious what the effect of having a Frost mage with a Water Elemental, with the current mana return and uptime, would have on the viability of AB spam. I may have missed it, but I was under the impression that most TC on AB spam doesn't include this extra MP5 source.

I was also curious what the effect would be if the frost mage kept up Focus Magic debuff especially considering it's rather substantial mana cost which I believed wouldn't be a problem for a frost mage especially with its sustainability. Additionally I was curious what effect it would have on an AB spec mage to keep up the scorch debuff. Specifically what effect it would have on their dps versus sustainability especially since the same talent used in an AB spam to increase AB crit chance by 6% also increases Scorch's crit chance as well. This along with Scorch's considerably low mana cost and MOE would seem to help an AB spamming mage's sustainability, but it would, from my understanding, hurt their dps.

This would sadly leave out fire mages but I'm just asking for any opinions on the sustainability of AB spam under these conditions, and if it was worth the time for the Frost mage to keep up the Focus Magic debuff. Any opinions, suggestions, or corrections are appreciated.

Edit: Also I was considering these two builds if you had specific fights with excellent Water Elemental uptime. In addition this would also be just an option depending how Blizzard implements the ability to change between two talent specs. For some fights this might be sub-optimal which the ability to change specs(which I'm convinced personally Blizzard will change some parts of raids to be changed around this option) would allow these two specs to be fine with exactly two mages in a raid.

Are people retarded? Living bomb currently works like this:

It ticks 4 times, once every 3 seconds. On each tick, IF you, THE MAGE, are NEAR the mob that is ticking, when the tick occurs, an AoE explosion mini knock up occurs. This is what it does. You can proc the explosion 4 times per application by being near the mob.

This is broken and dumb and weird, k?

The problem with this is that all it does is add an artificial ramp-up time to that talent spec's dps.

Thank you for this, I have been waiting for this tiny bone of showing the new arcane barrage animation off ever since it was said they changed the graphic.

Now can we all agree that the original form looked infinitely better than this rainbow colored skittles blast?

WotLK Arcane Barrage on Vimeo

The above link has the original graphic shown clearly since that vid site is a haven for higher quality streaming video.

The chance of that Frostbolt having FoF up is actually better than 10%, because it could also have procced on the first FoF Frostbolt:

0.00 - You finish casting Frostbolt 0, which will hit and proc FoF
0.00 - You start casting Frostbolt 1.
2.50 - You finish casting Frostbolt 1 that gets FoF <--- This spell can proc FoF as well as consume it
2.50 - You cast Deep Freeze 1 (or Ice Lance 1) that gets FoF <--- This spell can also proc FoF as well as consume it
4.00 - GCD is over, you start casting Frostbolt 2.
5.00 - You're still casting Frostbolt 2, 40% done casting. <--- FoF is up if either of the previous two spells procced it (19%)

DF's proc chance actually comes before Frostbolt 1's proc chance, assuming that the proc happens on spell hit (even if it happens on cast, really, you'll already have hit the button), so you can't really change up this cast based on those extra procs if they happen.

However, yes, you're right, even with this higher chance that FoF is active, 3K spell power and 30% crit before WC/Emp Frostbolt is just about the breakeven point.

This already currently happens with most classes, including the Mage class. It's a shallow mechanic sure, but it's not a bad mechanic since they're designing around PvP and PvE with talents and since talents are really the only thing defining one spec from the other, it sort of makes sense that talents would be the equalizing factor. Maybe there's a better way to do it, but other than something such as an artificial ramp for PvE, it doesn't really fit with PvP.

The only sustainability numbers I've seen are Roywyn's. They do not take this source into account since it wasn't there at the time. If you have two frost mages, you can maintain WE uptime for the first 5 minutes...

ABr4 cost: 335 + (335 * .75 * 3) = 1089 mana
Discounts: 1089 * .9 (Frost Channeling) * .97 (Arc Focus) * .9 (Clearcast) = 855 mana -- Assuming stacks get the discount. They don't on live (e.g. 2t5 only affects the base, not the stack cost) but I seem to remember they do in the Beta.
Total Cost: (855 / (2.5/1.21)) * 5 = 2070 mp5 -- 21% haste
Ret JoW Proc: .09 * (3500 + 3500 * .3) = 409 mana -- 3500 AP is meant to be a conservative guess. My t5 pally raids at 2.8k
JoW mp5: (409 / 4.5) * 5 = 455 mp5 -- 100% proc, 4s cooldown, assuming procs every 4.5s
Imp BoW: 91 * 1.2 = 109 mp5
Mana Spring: (20 / 2) * 5 * 2.2 = 110 mp5 -- No WotLK ranks are available, so I'm using BoW scaling to guesstimate, hence the 2.2
Imp. WE: 18000 * .03 = 540 mp5 -- I think 18k is a reasonably conservative guess at an arcane mana pool. I'm 14k live.
Spriest: 250 mp5 -- Total Guess.
Spirit: 425 mp5 -- Again, conservative. I'm ~360 mp5 while casting live.

Total: 2070 - 540 - 455 - 109 - 110 - 250 - 425 = 154 mp5 or 8'15" for an 18k pool without evo/gems

I'm expecting JoW to get nerfed since it scales extremely well (5k AP is 650 mp5 and should be reachable). The WE is really strong as well; even with a 15k mana pool, it's 450 mp5. That's a lot for a raidwide buff. In any case, I don't expect AB spam to be sustainable, but that's what we said this expansion. I don't mind sustainable AB (I actually like this iteration of Arcane on live) but AB being so easily sustainable becomes mindlessly hitting one button. I'd strongly prefer the ABr rotations being the bread and butter of the spec.

As for the WC vs imp. Scorch debate, I'd prefer to see WC and Frost Channeling swap instead of Imp. Scorch and Pyromaniac. I say Pyromaniac because it seems the best fit for swapping. I don't see them just moving scorch and leaving the hole and all the other talents in the 20-35 range besides Playing with Fire are a bit too strong for the slot. WC at the 15 point tier gives pvpers a convenient debuff and reduces the likelihood of sustained AB being possible. It also allows more specs assuming Imp. WE is changed, because I don't see any reasonable amount of extra damage from Fire/Arcane making up for 400+ mp5 to the raid.

Could you perhaps provide the minimum and maximum damage you did with both normal hits and crits? Min and max is actually better for figuring out coefficients than averages. Thanks!


If you make both talents shallow, then you're left with the problem Manly keeps bringing up: your first Mage must be Deep Frost, because only that spec can bring Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill and Improved Water Elemental -- and Improved Water Elemental is a lot better utility than being really good at AOE.

As long as it is possible for a deep spec to bring both debuffs, it is essentially mandatory for a deep spec to bring both debuffs, unless your raid attendance is insanely consistent and you can count on always pairing two complementary Mages. (The other option being respeccing depending on the night's attendance, of course, which is possible but undesirable.)

I would move Playing With Fire to Tier 4, Blazing Speed to Tier 5 and Improved Scorch to Tier 6. If that isn't deep enough to solve the problem, you're now set up for an easy swap of Pyromaniac to Tier 6 and Improved Scorch to Tier 7.