I don't think it's really fair to assume that your raid will have an unholy death knight for ebon plague. Depending on what happens when DK talents are finalized it's entirely possible that the overall tree isn't as desirable as the other two for tanking or dps (i.e. it becomes the "pvp" tree). So it's far too early to claim that you only need one warlock to optimize a raid.

You guys are calling for nerfs too soon. They said they weren't done deciding what stacks from what doesn't. I fully expect at this point scorch/wc to not stack, or to go back to single school versions. If the game had scorch/wc affect the 3 schools when the talents were released, im pretty sure they would have made them not stack.

That's why I would tend to put CoE above Winter's Chill, not below it; because it affects 5 schools rather than 3.

Yeah, the original permanent version had a +Spirit aura, IIRC. It's definitely in keeping with the flavor of the Water Elemental.

I don't think Winter's Chill can be tuned down that far without serious problems. Maybe, however, it could be tuned down a bit, just by making it 1% per stack/stacks to 10 rather than 2% per stack/stacks to 5. I still think the real solution is in the Fire tree: move Improved Scorch enough deeper that you really want a Deep Fire Mage to bring it -- it's roughly equal to WC at that point, stronger or weaker based on raid composition. Then you just need to balance deep Fire vs. the WE's regen, and that could be done via personal DPS. (Remember that in a 25-man raid in particular, the mana from Imp. WE may be completely superfluous due to regen from various other sources, so its value isn't necessarily very high.)

One of the things to remember here is that Improved Scorch is actually a stronger debuff for a Frost Mage than Winter's Chill is, and Winter's Chill is actually a stronger debuff for a Fire Mage than Improved Scorch is. Making Winter's Chill affect Frost only or cutting the crit bonus significantly would result in a loss of Fire Mage personal DPS that would be very difficult to compensate for.

Perhaps it would be best to do as you suggest and revert to the old versions, though. The balancing issues did seem much simpler then.


Ebon Plague stacks to 12%, so Affliction CoE is going to overwrite Ebon Plague. So DK's could just as well be complaining that their utility is limited because if you have an Affliction Warlock, their utility is reduced.

Well, I don't want to get into this in a big official-forums way, but no. If I had it my way, a Destruction Warlock who provides a curse and Blood Pact would do less damage than an Arcane Mage who provides only a very weak debuff, and less damage than a Fire Mage who provides only Improved Scorch, but more damage than a Frost Mage who provides Winter's Chill and Improved Water Elemental, and more damage than an Elementalist Mage who provides both Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill.

But you can't really ignore utility that may become superfluous in certain raid configurations. Yeah, maybe that Destruction Warlock's curse is useless because there's no Affliction 'lock, there is an Unholy DK, and another 'lock is providing CoR. But he's still got the potential to bring that utility, so it has to be accounted for. Similarly, the Frost Mage's mana regen may be completely useless if there's a pally and a shadow priest, but you still need to reduce his DPS some because he's got the potential to bring that utility. (In fact, in this situation, the Destro 'lock is better off because at least he can compensate by using CoD to increase his personal DPS; the Frost Mage has no such option.)

Suffice to summarize it as such: Utility has value, even if a portion of that utility may sometimes not come into play. That value must be weighed against personal DPS. I, personally, feel that on average, even a Destruction Warlock brings more utility than a Fire or Arcane Mage. But it's really up to Blizzard to weigh the various utility functions against each other, determine how valuable they are and how often they will be valuable, and figure out how to balance the specs accordingly. And finally, there are many utility functions that have no practical raid value -- by which I mean, they may be useful, but not so useful that they will ever be considered more valuable than DPS when composing a raid. This includes all non-combat functionality and meagre functions like Arcane Brilliance, Fel Intelligence, amp/dampen magic, Banish, Poly, Fear, etc.

I don't want to get into the whole discussion about what buffs should and should not stack with which other buffs. But, when they do decide. There has to be a clear cut and logical definition of why the buffs stack or don't stack the way they do.

Oh, and please could someone suggest that Living Bomb's "knock up" be changed to a knock-down. There's no real penalty, at the moment, for a healer/caster dispelling it. They can still instant cast/heal/HoT/bubble themselves during the knock up. Also, I think you'd be a little stunned/knocked off your feet, if a bomb exploded next to you.

Based on the video I've seen, the knock-up effect isn't going to be a problem, if you're worried about knocking targets out of AOE range. They just pop up a yard or two, they'll still be in PBAOE range. It seems to function as an interrupt, and it also seems to interrupt movement.

Could actually be interesting if they did the same for frost mage. Lets say the mana regen from Imp WE was actually a spell it could cast (like an aura you could toggle on and off), lasting until it dies, but as long as the mana regen aura was active, it couldnt cast other spells.
Would give frost mages an option between personal dps and mana regen (and indirectly make the mana regen a bit weaker given the extra cost to use it).

And a question, for people comparing Ebon Plague with CoE. If there are as many partial resists as people say in Wotlk, wont CoE be insanely much better than Ebon Plague? :S (Or was it only lvl based resists?)

That would clearly mean frost gets taken only for regen. Welcome to shadow priest version 2. This is not desirable.

A majority of BC mage complaints were directly related to either dps or group synergy; this suggestion is a nerf on both accounts and accomplished nothing other than diminishing the usefulness of frost in raids.

I personally love the direction of all of the mage specs so far and I can see each one filling their own niche in a raid as well as bringing sufficient dps.

What if all four specs come out tied, within statistical variations and boss fight mechanics? And each had utility that was interesting and decent but not game breaking and absolutely required?

I think he was referring to a more PvP oriented situation where it seems designed to punish the player/team for dispeling the debuff, but the effect doesn't really affect players that can continue using instant casts while in mid air so there is no psychological or mechanical drawback to dispeling, it is just immediately dispelled and the player gets knocked up a few feet while casting instants.

Back when I was making up talent trees, I had a single-target DOT in the Fire 51-point slot that, when used, refreshed (but wouldn't stack) Improved Scorch. So you'd have to scorch five times at the start of the fight, but then as long as you used the DOT frequently enough without resists, you could keep Imp. Scorch up without recasting Scorch.

Well, two is the target number for any DPS class, really, given the requirement for healers.


Well, it's not like LB's on a cooldown. They dispel, take a couple K damage and burn their instants (some of which will be on cooldowns) and you can immediately reapply. Eventually, they'll have to stop dispelling it or kill themselves.

You are right, but given the issue that frost is by far the strongest raid spec as it looks now, because of said mana regen, diminishing is probably going to happen anyway.
Beside, it doesnt have to be a nerf on both accounts, they could buff frost dps, when not using the mana regen, since the frost mage suddenly would bring less raid utility (as it were with the lock and CoE).

Not that its going to happen, but I dont see why it would be so bad. I would prefer options over just having a mana battery where our output dps is obviously balanced against having the mana regen (whether or not the raid actual need extra mana).

Warlocks who aren't cursing can also use a dps curse, soooo....

The "selfish" lock spec (fire destro with limited utility talents) is supposed to be equal to the top mage spec. That's fine. Sort of. If the top end is balanced around the assumption that lock slots are limited and they are all assumed to be throwing a debuff curse (CoR/CoE), then stacked warlocks will easily out DPS the top mage spec by having the 2nd/3rd+ locks (depending on Ebon Plague) throw a CoD/A. If their top end is balanced around throwing that CoD/A, then locks in 10 mans, or 25 man raids with only 2, will be substantially behind other classes when throwing CoE/R. Whatever the result, many people will be unhappy on one side or the other. I will be pretty unhappy if warlocks continue to stack and mages do not.

The idea of LB and the change to blastwave seem to be focused on anti-melee rather than anti-caster. In arcane they've given help vs enemy casters (in terms of resistances and mage armour). Perhaps the water elemental's mana regen is their answer to mages running OOM vs druid and priest healers? Haha

At the risk of starting a terrible PvP discussion, I'll mention that the knockup can be used to catch someone who is pillar-humping. If a healer is doing that, and you/your teammates are attempting to kill him, that means his or her teammates would likely be in the area too, suffering the AoE damage. Healing through one explosion may be easy, but healing through 3x that simultaneously is most certainly nontrivial.

It can also be used to great effect in battlegrounds where players are often clustered close together.

Um, you people do realise that curses scales pretty badly?
Curse of Doom at 3k spell power is just a 3% DPS increase. Didn't actually check CoA but it won't be much better.

The loss of Demonic Sacrifice and shitty scaling make damage curse have a much smaller impact.

I assume we're talking about arenas here, in which case if the priest is spending very GCD dispelling and some, if not all of the enemy team is relegated to instant spells only, then you'll win long before either the mage or priest run OOM.

What exactly is DPS+utility? Kind of a hard one to pin down if that utility is mana regen versus dps boost as mana regen affects healers as well.

Just give mages 2 specs and be done with it. Make there be some non-monetary cost to switching so you can't spam it and we will all be happy. Like a secondary spec cd.

Hey magegraf says Doom is worth like 120 dps out of 5000 !

...well it's better than nothing.

Anyway I hiiiiighly doubt these numbers are going to stay how they are.

3% isn't really trivial in the context we're talking about though. I don't think anybody's talking about 20% DPS differences here. Your utility would have to be along the lines of not merely increasing raid DPS, but also solving the US mortgage crisis, to justify a 20% DPS difference. I'm assuming that we're talking small percentage differences here, and in that context, gaining 3% if your utility isn't needed is quite significant.

ETA: the big nightmare in all this is assigning a DPS value to a utility function, because nobody's going to agree on the value. The best we can really hope for is that Blizzard gets it close enough to right that it doesn't invalidate specs.

I am drooling with anticipation of Fire in BGs after WotLK. Between LB, knockback on Blast Wave, and Disorients on Dragon's breath, you can control a huge group of enemies in the chokes in AV, or by cliffs in WSG/EotS/AB. One mage could stop everyone from grabbing the Flag in EotS.

Unfortunately, in organized PvP like Arenas, huge AoE damage is not as effective, healers are more attentive, and you would waste all of your mana and just get yourself killed. But Frost and Arcane are looking great for arenas, providing plenty of mobility and good damage.

The only issues I have left are the prevalence of snare/stun immunities given willy-nilly to melee and the lack of any new kiting tools to counter everything that melee is getting for anti-kiting.