Would WG still be crazily overpowered if it was reduced from 10% chance to apply to, say, 5%? Or reduce the duration slightly? That seems like the simplest solution that isn't just removing it.

Obviously stacking WG mages will be powerfull but in order to do so you are losing a lot of utility from other classes. It is possible that they may design encounters to need a balanced raid somehow, which would make mage stacking a non-issue because, regardless of the dps benefits, it just wouldn't be worth it because of the requirements of the encounter.

Even were it not for FFB, a 33/10/21+7 build would do the exact same thing: exploit exponential returns. ALL mechanics that give exponential returns are bad, and it's why ISB has contributed to warlock/spriest and shadow damage supremacy.

Any debuff that gives exponential returns inspires class stacking... so even if WG only affected frostbolt and ice lance it would still be bad because either you balance frost's damage around WG (in other words, nerf the hell out of frost but give it a broken mechanic to rely on) or you balance frost's damage normally and let it insanely outclass all other class and specs dps by giving it an easily exploitable mechanic.

Imagine if every warrior in a raid could stack sunder amor on their own debuff slot. What would you get? Every raid would bring enough warriors to reduce the boss's armor to zero, and then you'd stack the buhjeezus out of melee dps... which means rogues and more warriors, and classes that are there purely to enhance your rogues and fury warriors. Or you can simplify the example by saying that every rogue could use their own expose armor... it'd be the same thing.

Any ability to gain exponential returns is impossible to balance. Either you can turn your cheek to it like they did with ISB throughout TBC, which is now conveniently being nerfed, or you have to remove the mechanic like what happened with rolling ignites.



The best fix I can think of for WG is to make it a self buff with a high proc rate. WG at 10/20% effectively boils down to 10% crit for 9 talent points along with some other benefits... which isn't bad at all (not too good or too bad) and isn't exploitable either.


EDIT (for clarification):

I should specify that what I meant for WG to have a 10/20% proc rate would be to only affect the next spell cast... or to last 3 seconds or less so that you couldn't gain a lot from the high proc rate. Though in all honesty 20% chance (as a self-buff) to treat all targets as frozen for 5 seconds probably wouldn't be too overpowered either... so... yeah.

Isn't there a way they could handicap WG so as to discourage extreme frost mage stacking, while leaving it functionally the same for an appropriate number of mages? For example, have WG procs carry a number of charges like ISB, and a short reapplication cooldown like 10s counting down from when the debuff was first applied. 6 charges to a proc, and a single mage would only consume all the charges by spamming IL save for extremely hasted frostbolts, and two mages with 3s cast frostfire would not consume all the charges unless frostfire can be talented down or with a certain amount of haste. More than two mages and WG would fall off before the cooldown was up again in a normal raid encounter, and though bringing more WG mages would increase the total number of WGs, their damage wouldn't scale so extremely as it does now.

I think the short cooldown is necessary as distinct from ISB due to the scaling nature of frostfire bolt; if all the talents that effect it now carry through to live, the power of WG stacking mages will, as many have have already said, most likely result in a hasty and heavy handed crippling of the spell and mage viability.

EDIT: k so the numbers here won't work, for some reason I was thinking WG was a 10s debuff not the 5 it really is :p I want to say the same concept still applies, but due to the nebulous nature of WoW's casting mechanics (think being able to work a frostbolt -> IL -> IL shatter combo without breaking freeze), such a method of managing WG scaling might be more complicated than expected.

There are many ways to tweak WG. None of the ones often suggested keep the fun aspect of it. People have to remember that if you take away WG, frost raiding comes back to pounding FB for 10 min + summoning an elemental. I _love_ that WG makes you react, at least somewhat, and throw an IL in here and there. And also IL on the move.

In this case I'm willing to wait to see what Blizzard does. (Do we have a choice?) 'Cause they were pretty inventive in the arcane tree and came up with solutions I had not read about anywhere else that most people seem pretty happy with. Let's hope they do the same with fire and frost.

The aim of my suggestion was to have it so there was no effective change for a single frost mage and rarely with two, and mainly attempt to curb the effects of stacking more than 2-3 mages in a raid. So it'd have little effect on PvP mages from its current implementation, and would still allow for adaptive rotations for raiding elementalists.

I'm not sure how to work the numbers with a 5s duration charged WG (compared to the numbers I mistakenly made up for a 10s WG) without making a longer reapplication cooldown than the length of the debuff, since even with a limited number of charges, given the short time frame you could have as many mages as you want land a shatter at relatively the same time due to current casting mechanics regardless of the number of charges WG could carry. So without the longer cooldown, implementing charges wouldn't curb stacking as much as probably needs to be done, and a longer cooldown would be too negative of a change I think.

Would reworking WG to a 10s duration (and 10s cooldown from beginning of the debuff) and making it a charged effect (with 5-6 charges) not be a better idea? It leaves enough time inbetween WG debuffs to limit excessive uptime from stacking, and even with stacking shortens the duration to probably 3-4s, yet doesn't penalize a healthy number of mages in a raid setting vs. its current implementation.

EDIT: so 10s WG would probably be too OP for PvP/Arena, although simply making WG disspellable might do the trick.

Just to give a picture of how good FFB can be...

This spec 34/23/14, with 2000 spell damage, a FFB will hit for 2610 damage and Crit for 8222 (after ignite).

I did a quick search, but none of the beta testers have reported on this. Does Magic Attunement increase the radius of Arcane Explosion to 16 yards?

Until you consider that FFB mages stacked in a raid for maximizing WG will have 70% crit easily before gear.

And the math I did a while back actually showed that 0/33/38 and 0/50/21 scale better than any deep arcane FFB spec, and that was when I was doing the math assuming WG would never make it to live because it shouldn't...

Plus, remember that bigger numbers doesn't necessarily mean higher dps. The higher consistent damage of a 0/33/38-ish build quickly overtakes the flashier crits of a 33/10/whatever type build.



As for our proposed changes to WG not "keep[ing] the fun aspect" of it... a self-buff version of WG would function very similar and keep that fun aspect of WG alive... the thing that we all intend to change is the exponential returns of it, which is really not possible to do if WG remains a debuff that increases in power level as you stack more WG mages.

That's sorta another problem with things that give exponential returns, and why ISB is going to be so terrible with the changes to it. Debuffs like that change sooo much in power level with the slightest changes, a change to WG that makes it a 4.5 second debuff instead of a 5 second debuff would greatly impact the power level of WG because of the fact that it's affecting and affected by multiple players. So not only are exponential return mechanics dangerous because they're so easily exploitable, but they're bad design because they're so hard to balance that it's basically impossible for it to not be overpowered and exploitable or just crappy and not worth taking. Not to mention the flaw I mentioned earlier where if you give a dangerous mechanic like WG to a tree like mage frost, how do you balance the tree? Do you balance it to be completely dependent on stacking WG mages in a raid to be competitive, or do you balance it without WG and let guilds who push the edge of content take 10+ FFB/WG mages to each raid and exploit the mechanic?

was referring to the weird 33/20/10ish build or whatever it was that was linked in the post before mine. FFB specs are best as 0/33/38 or 0/30/41. Do arcane talents even effect it? I know they didn't used to but i don't know if that has changed recently. Basically my point was that going 33 in arcane and making it so you can't get the good talents from fire and pick up WG is really rather stupid. A spec with WG is pretty much always going to be better than a leach spec, especially when the leach spec isn't actually a leach spec because it doesn't even take shatter.


Basically.. I was pointing out exactly what you go on to say in your post about elementalist specs being better than FFB specs with heavy arcane investments.

Edit: Anyway it really wouldn't surprise me if WG made it to live and even lasted a patch or two before blizzard caught on. It really doesn't have an insanely OP pvp benefit, which seems to be all that devs really care about anymore. It will probably get nerfed eventually but I suspect we will get to be top tier dps for a while before that happens.

Wouldn't an elementalist spec using FFB still be our best bet for dps even with only 2 mages with WG in the raid or if WG was moved to a self buff or a charged debuff like ISB? Really it seems to me like WG is just icing on the cake for FFB specs.

Hello, I dont usually write here, I have a couple of thoughts on the subject:

WG is indeed very powerful. But nerfing it into a Single Player Buff will take out Alot of what its good for.

In my opinion one of the major problems Mages had in TBC was a lack of synergy with other classess. No other class used either Fire or Frost and we only buffed other Mages with the same spec and even that was minor minor for Frost (Winter's Chill is always up as is when you spam your frostbolt, so only the first few Ice Lance spam was downed from 7.5 sec into 3 sec)

One of the thing Im looking forward in WotLK is that Synergy, Blizzard seem to want Destro Locks to use Fire and finally we have a class that Use Frost abilities and wants to attack Frozen targets as much as we do, and who knows maybe even the Elemental Shamies will cast fireballs as well as Lightning in the Expension.

WG adds Synergy, and its better then any other talent solely because of this - you want a Mage in the Raid cause he does good dmg <hopefully> AND buff other classes DMG as well, its still too little considering Hunter/Warlock added values (not to mention Hybreeds) but its a start

Im not saying WG shouldnt be nerfed (though it might be fun if it will happen after it goes live and we can enjoy it just a little).
I just dont think making it a "Only The Caster treat this target as frozen" will be a good solution, yes it will make us a little reactive, but from what I understand you will spam FFB and not Ice Lance even when the Mob is frozen so it wont make FFb builds reactive (maybe just in the sense of poping trinkets/CDs)

they can Simply remove FFB from Procing WG will be enough, FFb can still get Shatter effects and if another Mage put WG on the Target then the FFb mage will be enjoying his 70% crit chance for 5 sec but the FFB mage wont proc WG himself. Since Frostbolt and Ice Lance spamming even with 7 Frost mages is not "off the charts" (atleast according to this forum) I think this will make it a good option.

this way mages who pick the "better" dps spec of FFB will want a Frost Mage to Proc WG for them with Frostbolts...
but stacking 6 Mages with WG just for the last Mage with FFB wont be that much offscale...

yes it will still be open to exploits but I think it wont be as bad as it is now.

thats my thoughts atleast