PoM every two minutes, you mean... Arcane Flows is amazing. I, for one, am thrilled with changes after a cursory look. I rather like the emphasis on Arcane Blast over Barrage in this new build. With the exception of Burnout, it seems like Blizz is starting to get it. Improved Scorch is an interesting locus of synergy now, as it extends to include DK's. The Winter's Grasp nerf seemed inevitable, but even as a self-only target debuff its rather effective.

Pure conjecture, but I imagine that DoTs and channelled spells will all use up only one charge, and the effect will last for the duration of the spell. Stagger focus magic among several mages in a raid and it can only make us more wanted.

I'm LOVING the new fire tree. But am also a little worried, as I'm going to have to leave quite a lot out to get either focus magic or icy veins.

That's very true. I had processed it in the back of my mind, but I was thinking primarily of the 'nerf' to our synergy with DK's.

I am wondering if one could forget about the 6% crit to AE and instead only take 3 in fire, focusing the rest on damage mitigation (imp mana shield, arcane fortitude, prismatic cloak) and go suicide Incanter's Absorption AE style.

(Mana Shield + Shatter Shield + PW: S) + AP/PoM Flamestrike followed by AE spam should generate alot of threat which will subsequently turn into rather large amounts of spell damage.

Maybe I'm just being nitpicky but you really should say 53/3/0/+15. There's no point in putting 8 points in the fire tree because imp fireball is pretty useless without ignite.

Also, I completely agree with you about fire mages and only needing 1 fire or elementalist mage who can provide imp scorch, but I feel like 53/3/14 will be a better build for the remaining deep arcane mages.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...40323122500351

Under that spec, arcane blast should be better dps than fireball, and fits better with ABar and the cooldown to minimize clipping. Because of that, what you'd want isn't an offspec nuke that hits hard, but rather one that's very efficient and can be used in place of AB, for which frostbolt fits perfectly.

Hang on a sec. The new Arc Potency is +30% crit while clearcasting OR PoM is active... doesn't that mean you could just sit on PoM and spam missiles forever?

Well, the point behind 11-point talents is that they CAN be used by all mages. I think it's deliberately placed to act as an alternative to icy veins for fire/frost mages.

I was thinking of this kind of thing for a raiding fire mage.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

I think burnout's mana inefficiency promotes clearcasting and focus magic over icy veins. But I'm not at all sure.
I also left out incineration and world in flames, because they just don't affect spells I'll be using regularly in a raid environment. But again, I'll leave it to the more hardcore TCers to figure out whether either/both of these is better than firestarter.

Start without PW: Fortitude and have someone cast it on you and/or Blessing of Kings.

My big question right now is does Focus Magic have more trainable ranks or is that the level 80 version? 150 extra spellpower seems about right for level 70, a little low for 80 (if your raid can eat all those charges before it's up), and rather overpowered for level 20 (when you can first get the talent).

Edit: Also, the first thing that came to mind on seeing Brain Freeze (15% chance for frost damage spells to make the next Fireball instant and free), was a spec based around that plus Frostfire Bolt (since frostfire bolt & fireball will benefit from the same fire talents). Something like 0/28/43. No clue if it's more or less viable than the other FFB specs that have been tossed around tho.

Also, Deep Freeze seems to have been changed so the target is no longer considered frozen while stunned. Or am I misremembering how it worked at one point?

The changes to Frost are a bit disappointing for PvE.

Fingers of Frost now essentially gives a flat +5% crit if you have the 7 points in imp nova and shatter. While this is still a respectable dps increase per talent, it's still a significant nerf quite apart from the stacking issue, in that only the next spell will be affected, rather than the next 2 - 3.

Brain Freeze (15% chance for instant free fireball) is probably placed too deeply in the tree as it's a very marginal dps gain for deep frost specs. At 2k spell power, 20% base crit, (so 40% for Frostbolt with WC stacked, 25% for Fireball - and that's generous as you'd be a fool to waste a Fingers proc on a fireball), with only self-buffs, napkin math suggests Brain Freeze is worth about 16dps per point (whoopee). Obviously these numbers improve if you can afford 10 points in Fire for ignite, but this requires that you sacrifice many of the Frost utility talents, and if you do so it would almost definitely to better to go a complete elementalist spec.

But then, for elementalists, taking Brain Freeze will preclude taking the full five points in Fire Power (let alone Molten Fury), which should be stronger choices (especially with cooldown stacking).

Having the Water Elemental return health to the party is baffling. Even more baffling is the removal of its extra health and mana. The health return is really pretty trifling (assuming 15k hp on average for end game raiding, it's 450 hp5) and in most cases where it is useful (lots of raid splash damage) the elemental itself is most at risk. Even in terms of PvP this seems a weak effect.

Overall I'd say Frost will now lag so far behind elementalist or arcane specs as to be pretty much only viable for PvP, although I'm sure Roywyn will be able to describe the situation more accurately once he updates his sims.

It also sounds like a very big buff to Fire's solo capabilities.


The new talent, Focus Magic seems like a pretty big change. Deep Fire doesn't look like it will be competitive with deep Frost spamming FfB or Arcane.


And after taking the changes in, how does this build look like for FfB spam? http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

7 points leftover for Critical Mass, Brain Freeze and Chilled to the Bone.



Also, Shattered Barrier strikes me as being potentially overpowered against melee if, and only if Shatter Shield is still making it into the game. Having access to 4 on-demand freezing effects and Deep Freeze is looking quite scary.