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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.