Ok, this is really bugging me. Do people really think that Arcane is doing literally 1/4 less damage than other specs? That's bullshit. Arcane does not equal fire damage, but the difference is more like 5%, not 25%. Take a look at this spreadsheet I created that shows the relative damage output of the various specs. Due to a mistake in calculation some of the values are wrong. But the bolded items (which include all of the T6/Sunwell gear comparisons) should be pretty accurate.

Given the best gear in the game, the difference on a 5 minute fight between the best spec (2/48/11 @ 2447dps) and the worst spec covered (48/0/13 @ 2206dps) is barely 10%. The best arcane spec (40/0/21 @ 2319) is barely over 5% below. The difference is slim, there is no need to give a giant 25% buff to arcane when it's trailing by such a tiny margin.

You're forgetting that Arcane does not scale as well as Fire with +damage... but it scales better than fire with Int and Spirit. That doesn't quite keep up, but it's very close... and even if there were no talent changes at all in WotLK, Arcane would probably be beating fire by level 80, due to greater Int & Spirit on the new gear. Or maybe not... it's hard to say.

Point is, the difference between Arcane and Fire is small... a mere 5% with the best gear currently available to us.

Apparently there was a problem with the talent granting unlimited crits once you got three in a row, so it seems like it must be, not necessarily an internal cooldown, but at least a counter reset after you get the proc. The remaining question is whether it resets before or after you use the guaranteed crit.

So new patch note information has been leaking out from wikidot. It looks like the rumors about +healing getting axed are true. Everything will be "spellpower" now. This is exactly the same as the spell damage on items. Healing spells are being adjusted to get a bigger coefficient to compensate for these changes. This should make itemization a lot more interesting in WotLK. Also hit, crit, and haste rating are now work on both spells and melee. That'll probably go a long way towards fixing some problems that paladins and other classes had.

According to the forums the elemental shaman talents are done, but I haven't seen anything posted yet. Probably doesn't affect us directly, but a lot of people use elemental shamans in a mage or warlock group so it'll be interesting to see how they stack up next to the vastly improved balance druid.

Edit: Another interesting tidbit that will be greatly appreciated:

"- Combat Log Changes:
The combat log now differentiates between a spell failure due to
resistance and spell failure due to missing the target. Where once
both events reported as a resist; a spell missing the target is now
reported as a miss."

Doesn't say that any of the classes already in the alpha are getting new spells but maybe there will be some. Brilliance aura would be nice because we would always get oomkins and elemental shamans.

Brilliant aura would be nice but it would potentially lead to mages being in groups where they don't get any useful buffs from other classes that add group synergy. Imagine if the aura gave everyone in your party an extra 10% mana regeneration while casting. Unless it stacked, we'd probably be split up to make the most use out of it.

One mage would get the nice group for sure, but the other is just as likely to get stuffed in with the healers or some other group. I suppose that isn't the end of the world, but we generally get support given to use either because we need it (shadow priest for mana) or it helps our DPS (shaman for totems, sub-20% BL) by a lot.

Ouch, yeah, I didn't think about he one mage per group thing.

This might be a new arcane spell- 51609 Arcane Lightning Strikes an enemy with a lightning bolt that arcs to another nearby enemy. The spell affects up to $x1 targets, inflicting greater Arcane damage to each successive target. Silences an enemy, preventing them from casting spells for $d.

Isn't that already in Sethekk?

No idea, wikidot says its new. Also found this in there 51475 Summon Air Elemental Summons an Air Elemental to accompany the caster until dismissed. Might make shamans a little interesting.

Damaging spells must have ranks. If it doesn't, it's probably a mob spell. Summons are a bit different: shaman summons previously required totems, although this could change and there's no reason they can't have a permament one as a 51-point talent.

Only mage specific change I saw so far was cold snap resetting shatter shield. Looks like the elemental shaman patch. (And the Diablo2 fan in me is miffed at seeing spirit wolves going to shammies. That's a drood spell!)

Except that WoW inherits its lore not from Diablo, but from the Warcraft series, where it has previously been established as a Shaman spell (i.e. one of Thrall's abilities in Warcraft 3). /end OT

According to the patch notes, hit rating, critical strike rating, and haste rating now modify both melee attacks and spells.

It is commonly accepted that AM scales extremely poorly as a spell. And the only reason why arcane is competitive right now is because of the huge bonus that T5 set adds to arcane blast, plus the spamming of a spell (arcane blast) which I am not even sure was originally intended to be spammed for an entire raid boss fight duration.

Arcane blast needs to be hasted from 2.5 seconds to 1.5 seconds and literally spammed in order for arcane to be competitive at top levels. AM is totally not used as a regular spell in top tier raiding. All this points to poor arcane scaling.

Yes, but (for those people that assume otherwise), there's no reason to assume that this means that the conversion from rating -> actual value is the same for each type.

For example on live it takes less +spell hit rating to get 1% of spell hit than +hit rating -> +hit%

"Lava Burst Rank 1 You hurl molten lava at the target, dealing $s1 Fire damage. If Flame Shock is on the target, Lava Burst will consume the Flame Shock, causing Lava Burst to critically hit."

"Lava flow 3/3 Increases the amount of spell damage gained while having Flametongue Weapon equipped by 15%, and increases the damage done by your Flame Shock and Lava Burst by 10%."

Depending on how these additions to Elem-Shaman and further changes to Fire-Locks, does this give us the "added" raid synergy some of us have been looking for? Imp Scorch isn't new, but at least now others will desire the buff. Something to rival Winter's Grasp in the Frost tree. (kinda)

How awesome are those? AoE pushback may be an absolute Godsend for us. Immagine AoE, stuff goes pear-shaped, the Enh shaman in the middle pops one of these momas and gives you enough breathing space to nova/invis/blink/not-die. And about time Spirit Wolves made a show, to be honest.

Spirit Link I don't get; the amount is simply pathetic. The only thing I can think of is an anti-polymorph mechanic in 3v3, but even so it's mostly polymorph-specific. Unless 2200 is the base amount, per player. Or something.

This quite clearly indicates Flametongue to be modified to include a +spell buff component. I was about to wonder if it'd extend to Flametongue Totem, but then I realized (1) we have WoA already (2) Oils are probably better. Shame, looked like a nice opportunity.

A good thing with the extra fire damage on shamans though. More use for CoE with the new deathknight and shaman changes. Who knows - it might actually be more important than CoR in WotLK. Then again spirit wolves is probably just more physical damage.

More important than CoS, probably. More important than CoR? Extremely, massively unlikely. We have yet to see the Rogue changes and if the Enh Shaman changes are anything to go by, melee will maintain a very high output position. And so they rightfully should; going into the thick of it is a lot more taxing than parking at 36y and chain-spamming.

Oh my ... to druid/rogue/enh shamans talents/changes.

I start to believe we can shut down any theorycrafts with such things around where maybe 1/10 of the alpha will go through to beta.

But anyway, rogue especially assasination talents are terrifying me. I have yet to see enh shamans tree but from what i heard they are getting along with druids something like Beast Within and another root/snare droping abilities.

If it goes live, we either need some serious changes to mage kiting mechanics and or totally rework mages around pvp.

Can't post any links atm to the talent trees as every new link is getting shut down due to traffic.

The new rank of Curse of Elements also affects Shadow and Arcane resists & damage in the alpha apparently, so there's that issue gone.

Don't think that is likely with both shadowpriests, warlocks, moonkins and even arcane mages benefiting from that curse. Also i'm pretty sure that both enh-shamans and non-frost-deathknights will be more common in raids than their CoE specs.
That is big news. Got a source on that?