◊ Vontre

I'll repost my theorycraft analysis of the new stuffs here.

MAGES

Ho ho ho, it's Christmas time motherfuckers! Look just what blew in from the frozen north!

ARCANE

If you're looking to raid dps, don't even bother. This tree got a few minor buffs but it's YEARS behind fire and frost now. Interestingly enough it's looking like a completely baller pvp tree, what with an instant cast base nuke and damage procs. So yeah.

FIRE
Exponential scalars off the port bow, captain! Yaaar! Have you tried getting to 40% crit raid buffed? Because this is the point where Hot Streak quickly becomes an out of control talent and crit rating starts to outscale spell damage. Yes, crit outscaling spell damage. Combined with burnout and we're looking at high, streaky damage, heavily crit dependent, and some mana issues to boot. Interesting. Also major aoe buffs here, and if you don't want to living bomb people in battlegrounds at least once, you're not human.

FROST
Frost, your day has come. You can finally, finally, FINALLY apply freeze effects to non-freezable targets! HOLY FUCKING SHIT ON A CHRIST CRACKER. I mean that's what the words said! You can shatter raid bosses now. Not based on the usual procs, but with a new debuff with 20% proc rate on any frost spell. Winter's Grasp is THE clutch talent for ice mages, and it's a big one. I modeled a new scenario which involves busting an ice lance after the frostbolt after the proc, shattering both these is a serious dps boost. We also got a straight 5% buff to both those abilities further down, and a better, longer water elemental. Oh and did I mention Winter's Grasp has a raid debuff as well? 4% +hit to all attacks. It's big. I'm gonna call it WRG now, if that's cool.

Raid dps ahoy: fire does outscale ice at high levels of crit rating, and quickly becomes so absurd it has to be a mistake. 3000 dps in Manly's gear by stacking moonkin, totem of wrath and judgement of the crusader. I don't think it's intended to work quite like that. Ice is looking extremely solid though, with a new raid debuff, better synergy and much better damage, as well as some reactive playstyle mechanics, ice is looking like a ton of fun.

P.S. I hadn't considered Manly's proposal that arcane missiles may proc Netherwind on a per missile basis. I'll investigate this.

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Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." -Ghostcrawler, 2009

 

◊ manly

One thing to note here, as Vontre hinted in IRC; Burnout means you need to be careful with scorch proccing burnout. This means trash will be significantly more annoying. Also, possibly have to recheck and consider the option to have just 1 mage refresh scorch in a raid -- so as to avoid mages losing mana on scorch. I don't normally advocate having just 1 scorcher, but this could become quite annoying.

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

What are the changes to mage armor? I didn't see that in the list anywhere

I'm seriously considering moonkin in the expansion, so much synergy. It may depend on the mage arcane tree viability though

 

Pintofbrew

Did anyone notice Arctic Winds does not include the "increases frost damage you deal by 5%" any more? Is this author's error? makes more sense to be so, the talent is ridiculously underpowered without it.

That, and barring Netherwind proccing per-pulse, arcane seems decidedly dead. The drop from 10% to hit from talents to 3% will be a severe kick-to-the-balls, but now means swapping spec to-and-fro at least has consistent hit requirements from all spec. And the 3% cheaper spells is a welcome addition.

I was fully expecting a talent to improve AB by 20%, ala T5, or the spell just to be tweaked to that level, because as it stands I don't think there's anyone who doesn't agree it's utterly useless in any possible scenario/incarnation.

And that's before going into how paltry the returns are from both Potent Spirit and Student of Mind. Like, come on... Granted, one is a flat 9% increase to mp5 (which we don't know what will be like given it doesn't seem AB spam is what arcane is destined to) but 15%spi->critrate? That's what? Three talent points for approx 2% crit, raidbuffed T6?

Lastly, has anyone figured out why the 3sec CD on Barrage? First thing I thought was "so it fits in a AB-AB-Barrage cycle" but clearly that's a fallacy as any haste at all will mar it. It would be infinitely wiser for a 2.5sec CD on it. Unless there's some timing issue I'm just not picking up.

 

Soul

Notes on the Frost Tree:

0. General notes - More or less a PvP tree, but could be a viable PvE tree with some small changes.

1. Improved Water Elemental - strictly a PvE talent unless they alter the way the Water Elemental scales. Currently, without support your water elemental goes OOM in about 35 seconds... a 30% increase in WE mana doesn't quite cover the increase in duration (which is 66%).

2. Brain Freeze - this talent would make more sense if it applied to frozen targets instead of just those debuffed with Frostbite and Frost Nova. This would allow it to synergize with Winter's Grasp and, with a somewhat iffy 2+% damage reduction from melee attacks basically give enough raid synergy to make a Deep Frost spec raid viable.

3. Deep Freeze - At level 70, this spell would cost 450 mana or so for a 4 second stun on a frozen target. Unless it worked on raid bosses, I'm thinking that this talent is underpowered on the same scale that Slow was.

Other comments

Burnout - I suspect this talent is about as underpowered as the old Playing with Fire or Pyromaniac used to be.

Hot Streak - I predict that this talent will be a nightmare to debug because it will suffer from the same type of effects that currently plague Ignite. As mentioned above, how will it interact with AoE?

Raid synergy - Where is the raid synergy provided by mages?

Cross-tree synergy - Is anyone else surprised they don't have more elemental cross-tree synergy? Something along the lines of "Steam - when a fire spell hits a frozen target, the frozen debuff is removed and the target is surrounded by a swirling mist that lowers its chance to hit by x% for y seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every z seconds" or "Quench - Removes all fire-based DoTs on a target. For each fire-based DoT thus removed, target's attack speed is slowed by x% for y seconds (z minute cooldown)". It strikes me as odd that TBC did some work to try and introduce elemental synergies, but they have more or less abandoned the idea of elemental synergies in WotLK.

 

Frah

Looks ok but I am some what concerned over what is meant to be a big sell point for mages being our AoE. It seems moonkin and priests now have some AoE, Deathknights gets some too and warlocks are getting AoE corruption. All of these AoEs (excluding Deathknight which does not mater due to being a tank) are ranged aoes where mages new one is proximity. Some what disappointed by this since I am sure most of you experienced the results of damage auras in Mechinar. 110% aoe threat = dead mage.

Although it doesnt end there I am very concerned classes are loosing their focus. I was checking out the healers and druids now have an AoE heal. Will reserve proper judgment until things become more official but as it is now I am rather concerned over what the state of raiding will be.


umm according to this War Tools :: Talent tree Mage WotLK Leaked Talents max burnout is 10% of your mana... bit harsh is it not?

 

Deninkle

I wouldn't get too caught up with the lack of arcane blast talent. It may be that the lvl 70+ versions are, as you said, just bumped up in damage/mana cost.

I think doing some sort of AB-Barrage cycle would be quite interesting to see. But I already foresee problems with Netherwind presence and spell selection if AB spam is in. It kind of defeats the purpose of having stacked AB debuffs. On the other hand... AM spam with fireballs on procs? That could be good fun.



As a side note, our shadowy brothers appear to have a new lol-pom-pyro spec themselves!

I guess it's not really the same... but "ignoring all immunity mechanics"? No Ice block/Cloak of shadows/Spell reflection protection?

I've got a funny feeling this won't last into WotLK.



I'm quite looking forward to the tantalising leeks in the next few months.



EDIT: 15% base mana cost for a 5s stun on frozen targets? I don't think deep freeze will work it's way into many talent builds.

 

Pintofbrew

Soul: The increase in WE is not 66%, the WE lasts for 45sec (not 30sec) and increasing that by 20 is a 44% increase. WEs do not go OOM if you (a) have any kind of mana source in your group, either SP or Manaspring is plenty fine and (b) don't use Freeze. I'm sure they're OOM before 30sec are over in PvP but for PvE terms they're far from it.

"applied to frozen targets instead of just debuffed with FrBite and Nova". I think you worded this wrong, but then you confuse me with what you say afterwards. I'd like it to work with Freeze as well as those two effects, but I don't see how it's at all relevant to WG... All I see in the talent is "When AoEing, Nova doesn't necessarily get everyone in range of mobs dead anymore".

You underestimate a 4sec Stun in a class that's often about kiting. It's phenomenally long in duration, though conditional. The cost, it's true, is quite prohibitive. I agree that it's use in PvE is next to none, unless there's some Winter's Grasp silliness. Even so, a stun "if and only if" another snare is active is very conditional and lacks usefulness as a tool. I expected much more from 51.

I expect Hot Streak to be altered in mechanics terms to something along the lines of "each crit causes one stack of buff (like TLC) when 3 stacks, next spell gains +%" where the % will not be 100% as stated, more likely +30%, which is still phenomenally huge.

Cross-tree synergy, I'll have to say, will have to wait till we know what Frostfire Bolt is. Arcane-anything synergy looks decidedly bleak, however, barring the obvious 13arcane for improved AoE capabilities and clear-casting.

As for Raid Synergy? When did mages ever provide that? If I wanted to give Raid Synergy, I'd roll any of the support classes/specs in the game. Of the pure damage-dealers, Mages have the least to offer their raids along with Hunters and Rogues. I don't want to gain any synergy or utility because I simply insist that my class focuses on (a) AoE performance (b) Output. I fully expect Locks to either lose a lot of their Curse utility (possibly by integrating CoS and CoE) or not be up-there as they were in BC anymore.


Frah: You are unduly worrying about AoE. We by far have more AoE tools than any other class, including AE which is dramatically-low TPS-per-DPS due to arcane -40% even at melee range. I don't see what damage auras in Mechanaar have to do with anything, if you're worried about threat you can open with AE and then when close to Molten Fury go for Living Bomb->BW and stave any agro off with DB.

Isn't it a little premature to be worrying over talents which will change, in a game we haven't seen, at encounters we don't know?

 

Frah

Well its more the close ranged AoEs I have never really liked. Ranged AoE such as flamestrike, Blizzard and seed of corruption are way more controlled as if/when you pull agro you can react and do something like cube/invis/be ready to nova.

It is more a side concern I have over talents as opposed to the diluting of raid roles. Seems many ability's that some classes stand out at are being spread out to many other classes.

 

Soul

3/3 Imp. WE increases duration by 30 secs, which is 2/3 of 45 seconds, so it's a 66% increase in duration. And yes, that is why I stated that Imp. Water Elemental is strictly a PvE talent... it's nearly useless in PvP because the WE will be OOM in 40 seconds as opposed to 30.

Yes, the point of having Brain Freeze apply to Frozen targets would be so that on bosses, you could randomly proc a -15% to hit buff on them if you had Winter's Grasp. It may seem excessive, but it's kind of streaky... overall, the net result is between -2.5% and 3% to hit on a boss, but hey, every little bit helps. And yes, the omission of Freeze is very odd as well.

Yes, a 4 second stun on a frozen target is situationally useful So is Slow. But in terms of bang for buck it's really quite poor, just like Slow. If it could apply to chilled targets, then it would be (much) better, but it's only for frozen targets.

 

Maglors

still forcing 3 locks in a raid for their curses still leaves us lacking as a class no matter how good/fun these talents are.
I really hope someone at blizzcon actually puts this issue forward in a coherant manner at one of the panels.

 

Alvira

Arcane barrage looks like the arcane version of fireblast. An instant cast, high damage spell that won't scale that well because its instant cast.

 

Etherealz

Ab - AB - barage even with 50% haste would work.

0: barrage
1: AB
2: AB
3:barrage
4:AB
etc

 

Alvira

One thing they are still not addressing is arcane scaling for raiding. Arcane seems to be competitive at certain gear levels. Then as gear gets higher and higher. The talents that give percentage advantages start to benefit fire more and more.

Like Firepower gives fixed percentage increases that just gets more and more power with better gear. While mind mastery gives a bigger boost at initial levels, then falls behind subsequently.

And fire crits as a percentage are higher than pure arcane based crits. Spellpower is an inferior talent to something like ignite. They should really either make spellpower affect just arcane, and boost it to 100% (like frost), or add an additional tier of talents for arcane that further increases arcane crits by 50%. So, that arcane crits will be for 100% (spellpower plus this new arcane talent) and that will be equal to frost and just slightly inferior to fire. Otherwise, they will always have an issue with arcane scaling. Why is AM scaling so bad? Its because of this issue. AB is viable and competitive in damage scaling only because the T5 set bonus raises its damage base, and the hasted +dmg scaling makes up for the inferior crit damage scaling.

I am glad they are at laest addressing the range issues of arcane by allowing magic attunement to increase arcane spell range by 6 yards. This was a much needed change.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

I don't get the point of Arcane Barrage. I'm not sure why Arcane needs a lower cooldown fire blast.

Maybe if it applied a debuff that made the target take more damage from arcane missiles for a while or something. It just seems flavorless as it. No buff, no debuff, no synergy, no knockbacks. Just odd.

 

grayrest

I believe that Blizz is trying to give mages another option at a pvp tree. It's not really a pve spell at all. All it needs is to be efficient enough to be worth casting instead of allowing the regen to happen in order to have a spot in pve.

 

Anedris

One huge question for me (which we likely won't know the answers to for a bit yet) is the behaviour and characteristics of frostfire bolt (as Manly mentioned earlier). Specifically:

- Does it count as a fire spell? A frost spell? Both? One or the other depending on what type of damage it deals (so a fire spell by default)? Does it benefit from ignite and burnout? Does it benefit from any of the various frost procs or crit modifiers? Can it proc winter's grasp or frostbite?

- Is it even remotely comparable to fireball or frostbolt as a nuke? Presumably it won't be as powerful as a deep fire fireball or a deep frost frostbolt, but a lot rests on whether it can, by leeching synergies from both fire and frost, claw its way up to par with those spells. (Related key question: does it scale well? Probably not, since it presumably won't have a cast time reduction talent or an "empowered" talent.)

In other words, is it just a gimmick spell to use on those mobs that are immune to or vulnerable to the "wrong" element for one's spec, or can its elementalist character be leveraged for anything interesting in its own right?

 

Kanin

My honest thoughts on all this...is that its all crap. Why are we even worried about the expantion talents yet? How does anyone know that these talents are even true? Instead of us all takin craks at what nurfs and buffs mages are "getting" in WotlK. Let us worry about the here and now with the game.

 

RpgWizard

Ok then, what do you want to talk about? Seriously, every bit of theorycrafting has been worn out and there are no more surprises. The expansion is the only thing worth talking about now in a theorycrafting way, even if it is for naught; it's still something new and exciting to talk about.

Edit:

To add something to the discussion, with the new emphasis on crit, I almost wish that they would put the 50% less threat generated on crits talent back in that was going to be released with the mage overhaul pre-BC until the huge QQing over it. It just seems threat is going to be a very limiting factor in how we stack crit.

 

djm_mage

Winter's Grasp is the one that is catching my eye right now. If it's true that we will be able to put a freeze de-buff on bosses I would like to see the synergy between two frost mages keeping the freeze up as much as they can with a deep fire mage specced in to shatter. There are enough talent points to get all the important single target talents in the fire tree with enough left over for 5 points in shatter. Couple that with hot streak and it could be rather amazing.

 

◊ manly

I sincerely hope that this scenario will never occur, simply because the potential is far too powerful to deem this any kind of balanced.

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Agrimat

Everyone involved would be made honorary members of the...

 

Alvira

The crit rate for fire mages would be ridiculously high. But fire mages would be aggro magnets without parellel. On the other hand, if they take burnout for even more crit damage. This kind of synergized high crit rate is going to run them out of mana very very fast!

I am not sure where poor arcane would place in all this though. Because right now, all three trees are viable for raiding. If fire is going to be obviously that much better damage wise in WOTLK, while frost still has a niche in pvp, then arcane will end up nowhere. The is all conjucture at this point also because we haven't seen the new ranks of arcane blast, which may scale up arcane significantly. But Arcane Missiles seems to remain subpar. No new talent making it scale better. No new talents increasing its damage either. (You can't use netherwind presence on AM).

Netherwind presence seems to be a better talent that actually benefits fire or frost spells rather than arcane, because the longest casting arcane blast, is often being cast at 1.5 seconds, so making it instant cast is not very useful. And it can be used on AM. Plus its % proc is too low.

 

kervi

It seems to be unchanged.

Spell 31678 (that's rank5)
Name: Arctic Winds
Description: Increases all Frost damage you cause by 5% and reduces the chance melee and ranged attacks will hit you by -5%.

 

Alvira

One thing that strikes me is that there doesn't seem to be anything new for mages in general. Outside of living bomb. We just get lots of new bolts spells doing different kinds of damage. Other classes are all getting AOE as well, and they can already single target dps well enough. So, we are really getting less and less unique and distinct.

Fireball sounds like a flamestriket that is target specific instead of area specific, that's all. And arcane barrage, frostfire bolt are all just different bolt spells. Where is the distinct spells that screams "I am a mage!" ?? Everyone is casting different colored bolt spells now. Its just not distinctive to mage anymore. And as more classes get AOE spells, even AOE won't be very distinct to mage either.

Why can't they give mages something like mirror image, or clone. That would be cool. Or some phase spell that allows us to avoid all damage for x seconds, but while in phase, we can't deal any damage either, but we can still move around.