A way to blame the crowd control breaking on someone else...

I'm hoping that the various talents (the AE talents in fire for example) pick up some of the redundant debuffing that Blizzard wants to include. Firestarter could include a crappy Curse of Elements -- bad enough that you'd still want the second Warlock to use a Malediction-ed CoE or a DK to use Unholy Plague, but good enough that it's useful in a 10-man environment.

Frost also has no passive spell pushback which in my view is worth a dps increase in and of itself.


As it stands now fire provides just about as much utility as frost does in terms of damage with the imp scorch vs WC. Imp water elemental is nice extra mana utility, but fire has superior burst AoE utility.


In short, the net offensive power of fire is superior when taking single target and AoE into account. I think frost should be about on par with fire for single target as the no pushback on frost is a massive raiding disadvantage on many fights.

Well, point is, fire has 8 talents related to aoe alone. Nobody sane would use

3/3 world in flames
1/1 blastwave (+pyroblast pre-req)
1/1 dragon's breath
2/2 firestarter
1/1 living bomb

thats a 9 points investment total counting pyroblast. Every point put in those talents are points not put on single target dps, which indirectly help aoe. Heres the list of talents you can realistically consider cutting off for aoe talents:

-Playing with Fire
-Master of Elements
-Flame Throwing
-Burning Soul

Out of those, you're unlikely to ever cut flame throwing. Burning soul helps your aoe. Master of Elements helps a lot your aoe. That leaves almost only playing with fire as possible contender. Problem is, PWF helps your aoe too. And single target. Thats about the only possible talent you could cut to grab those extra talents, but I don't really see it happening anytime soon. Maybe you could cut MOE alltogether and rely only on frost channeling.

Well the general problem with AoE enhancing only talents is that if the encounter truely needs them, you simply spec into them.

Without changing the way the whole talent tree works, this will always be the case. (Going 35 points into fire gives you a passive 6% chance to crit on blastwave, flamestrike, dragonsbreath kind of change.)

Your situation is similar to my own. We optimize as best we can as well.

I think my point was misunderstood.

I was NOT saying that if your guild does not have any shadow priests you simply recruit more mages.

What I was saying is that if your second shadow priest doesn't show, do you cancel your raid? No, you simply replace him with another ranged dps. Aside from progression/gimmick fights this works more often than not.

Would you think that any of those situational cases could not have been just as easily dealt with had the mage not been specced into it? Because asking the Mage to sacrifice potential damage to other targets just for the trash and situational bosses doesn't seem reasonable otherwise.

Living Bomb seems to be good for single-target DPS, so I think you need to break that one out. What we have is:

Fire: WiF + Pyro + Blast Wave + DB + Firestarter = 8 points dedicated to AOE
Frost: Permafrost + Imp. Blizzard = 6 points dedicated to snare

Fire: Living Bomb = 1 point dedicated to 5% single-target DPS increase + AOE
Frost: CttB = 5 points dedicated to 5% single-target DPS increase + snare

Fire total: 8.5 points dedicated to AOE, 0.5 points dedicated to 5% single-target DPS
Frost total: 8.5 points dedicated to snare, 2.5 points dedicated to 5% single-target DPS

Is that really so different, then? Basically, Fire's being given AOE as its "flavor" strength, just as snare is Frost's "flavor" strength, and in both cases, 8.5 points are dedicated to flavor.

Mana Shield is useless unless it saves your life, and then it's not. Alive with no mana is better than dead, and alive with more mana than you would have had prior to this change is an improvement. It remains, as it's always been, an emergency measure only, but now it's not quite as expensive an emergency measure.

Except you countered the Imp WE mana with Fire's AoE too. If there is no difference in damage done then you can't call the utility balanced, especially when mana is always helpful whereas extra AoE is not.

In some cases maybe, but in many others they are essentially the same thing (or worse if you are expending healer's mana/time healing you when you are useless)

OK, I'll trade you then. Make living bomb a single target DOT that regens mana to the raid as long as it is ticking on a target. In return, the improved WE grants a new skill that is AOE damage.

Deal? I'd take it in a second...

I think mana shield would work best as it does in DotA:

Half of damage taken is absorbed by your mana at a 1:1 ratio. So, if I hit you for 1k, 500 would be absorbed by mana, 500 taken.

In DotA, it is a toggle-able ability (like SL), which I think is fairly balanced, as you would run out of mana extremely fast if left on, but could be used for those times when you need HP more than MP.

Ratio change aside, taking 50% yourself, and 50% to your mana without a limit would prevent you from mana shielding to avoid death if 50% of the attack damage is higher than your hp (i.e. shielding with ample mana but only 500 hp, and then being hit by a 1100 damage aoe. you die in the new version, but not the old).

You'd still oom incredibly fast using shield, as your proposed change doesn't fix the issue it has.

DotA has incredibly high mana regen increase potential with minimal cost increase, so to avoid an near invincible character by stacking mana regen, the 50% damage done straight to health was implemented. But that's neither here nor there.

This isn't really the same topic. Manly here is talking about a large number of points in the tree that are 'wasted' on non-DPS talents; I'm asking whether that's really unusual and a problem. There is a balance problem between the trees (and I updated my point of view on this in a later post). But this question of talent points expended on non-DPS functions isn't really one of them.

Edit to clarify: In other words, yes, there is an imbalance between the trees, we all agree on this, however, the number of talent points spent on AOE is not the cause of this imbalance. If 8.5 AOE points were enough to wreck Fire's single-target viability, wouldn't 8.5 Snare points be enough to wreck Frost's single-target viability? No, the problem lies elsewhere. Now, the problem could still be fixed by repurposing some of those AOE points, just as a plumbing problem can be fixed by bypassing a bad pipe rather than replacing it. But the fact that it can be fixed in this manner doesn't mean that the AOE point expenditure is by its very nature poor design.

With so much active regen in the raid now, it won't be long before you're dealing damage again.

I was thinking of something exactly along those lines; while mana shield is active 10% of all damage is absorbed by mana equal to the damage absorbed. Giving Arcane and Fire a little more of survivability option, although it would still be available to Frost (which could warrant a reduction in that Ice Barrier amount, because as it stands now I can't see any spec being nearly as viable without Ice Barrier's survivability).

I won't deny its similarity to SL. Currently, warlocks essentially trade pets HP for their own. Mages should be somewhat similar, but mana for hp, and not at the ridiculous rates currently.

Basically, you would have to be a bit more intelligent about using it rather than spam mana shield when low on HP and plenty of mana. Also, you couldn't use it from the start, otherwise you would go oom really fast.


And yeah, DotA mana regen mechanics are very very different than WoWs, but mages can still regen mana very quickly when need be (gem + pot + evocate).

Mana Shield needs something to convince me to use it in lieu of Ice Block as an emergency measure.

Stream-of-consciousness thoughts here...

As an absorption shield, Mana Shield compares mostly with Ice Barrier. Theoretically, Mana Shield has the advantadge over Ice Barrier that it costs less mana if it turns out you don't need the protection. Of course, since the difference in base cost between Mana Shield and Ice Barrier is so small and the difference in maximum is so great, not to mention how little damage you need to take for the two mana costs to stack, that advantadge is completely submerged by Mana Shield's disadvantadge (extreme mana cost).

As for Incanter's Absorption ... IA reduces the "effective mana cost" of using Mana Shield to protect yourself by turning 15% of mana spent in Mana Shield into +dmg. That's an interesting mechanic and I still need to look at what the math looks like, but even when you factor in IA's increase to damage I doubt it compares to Ice Barrier in situations where you need the survivability.

Although... Another way to look at it though is that now 1 mana = 1 health for Arcane Mages who spec into Shielding (more or less). This may be seen as encouragement to replace stacking +Stamina for health by stacking +Intellect and use a bigger mana pool to supplement the health pool with Mana Shield... and with all the plusses stacked onto Intellect for mages I'm starting to wonder if it might not begin to be worth it.

Each +Stamina gives +10 health, and each +Intellect gives +15 Mana, so with a 1:1 ratio from Mana Shield, you get actually more "health" out of the same points of Intellect than Stamina even factoring in Mana Shield's base cost... and then since you're Arcane you have Arcane Mind, so each +1 to Intellect is actually worth +1.15. Untalented the 1:1.5 ratio is actually the same as +Stamina to +Intellect which may not be a coincidence.

Stacking +Intellect increases spell crit and has the added benefit that the extra mana can be used for spellcasting instead if you don't need the survivability (likely to be most of the time). Plus as an Arcane Mage, your mana regenerates during a fight and your health does not -- and a bigger mana pool means faster mana regeneration, too, which the Spirit bonus talent then enhances.

Call it an attempt to turn mana into health to mirror the Warlock's ability to turn health into mana. And then you can boost it up with Incanter's absorption and turn incoming damage into outgoing damage. Maybe that's where they're going with this? This isn't free, of course, as Mana Shield requires that you spend GCDs to keep it up. But if I can stack +Intellect in lieu of +Stamina in all situations, it may be worth it.

I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here...

I was referring more to PvP circumstances where running around absorbing healer mana & GCDs while being OOM can be a detriment compared to simply dying.

I know Blizzard has posted that their intent isn't to make existing nukes obsolete, but at least in the case of Fireball, it definately seems like Frostfire bolt is well on track to making it a thing of the past for deep fire specs.

I can see perhaps sticking with a Fireball spec in a 10 man or till I have gear to break 4 piece T6, but when it comes to level 80 25 mans and newer gear, I can't think of a single good reason to use it.

Ffb has about the same range, better scaling and better mana efficiency to boot.

Why not put the talents into something even situationally useful ?
I see putting talents into the Fireball improving talents as a waste when I'm in a where I won't have to use it as my primary nuke.

Also, I don't know if you have played around with Firestarter, but I've been doing a number of Halls of Stone runs, and Firestarter makes a huge difference for AOEing, in fact I've been missing it on live.

I wouldn't really consider letting someone die an option in PvP like it is in PvE, meaning healers don't make those sorts of judgements in PvP; they try to keep everyone alive at all costs. There are countless times where I've told my healer to let me die before he goes OOM too. They really aren't comparable and it is a main reason why mana shield will remain relatively useless for PvP until Mages have a viable PvP regen ability like Paladins' passive healing->mana conversion.

FFB scales better than fireball only depending on which multiplier you assume on. The core contingency is the DK 10% frost damage buff. If that buff is gone, simply put, fireball spam beats FFB dps. DPM is mostly inconsequential. Well, at least, it used to be inconsequential. Now with living bomb it might be different. But the thing is, I don't know how much better living bomb dps is. As far as I'm concerned, you're better off with fireball spam. But then again, maybe having slightly lower dps with FFB spam but better DPM could allow in return more living bomb dps.

In any case, don't assume double dipping. Dont assume 10% frost buff. And then once you assume that, FFB isn't looking all that good anymore.

I think that entirely hinges on the intentions of FFB with respect to double dipping CoE, imp scorch and WC. If that is unintended then Fireball still remains better DPS than a FFB spec, although Mage DPS potential goes down. Otherwise Fireball only retains its usefulness solo and in groups without all the debuffs.

Heh the way you word it makes it sound very interesting. There's still some problems, for example if you're being attacked then you'd have to use a GCD for mana shield quite regularly in place of casting other spells, not to mention that you'd be extremely vulnerable to burst damage.

Doing something with mana shield similar to what they're doing with iceward and fireward would be interesting - a chance to reflect damage, or absorb damage and convert it into mana. An off/on switch would also be nice to see - and have it not only off the GCD, but also completely independant of other spell casts (so you could turn it on or off in the middle of casting a fireball for example without interrupting the cast). Also having no base mana cost would be aces.

Putting these improvements further down in the arcane tree (so it can not be taken with frost barrier and others) would make it something very unique for arcane mages and also very "magey" which is always what I thought the arcane tree should be. Hiding behind a wall of mana comes across as exactly what an arcane mage should do. Frost slows you down and snares you, fire knocks you around and blows you up and arcane confuses you (with invisibility and blink) and channels the power of mana to protect and destroy. Basically I want arcane to have control over mana and use illusionary and alteration magic as it's defenses (teleportation, invisibility, mirror images, silence, slow, telekenesis and magic barriers)

Still, though, the problem there is not that Mana Shield saved your life. The problem is that your healer made a bad choice. Is it perhaps difficult for him to make a good choice? Maybe so, but that's not a flaw in Mana Shield.