Aye, but that's not a whole lot better.

There's always the possibility that we're overestimating Winter's Grasp -- that it, in fact, does not work on bosses. This would effectively give Frost and Fire close to the proper balance. However, it would leave deep Fire about 8% behind deep Arcane while stationary, and falling far behind it when movement is introduced. Frost would be in a similar position, without falling behind as much on movement fights.

If we have Winter's Grasp right, and I suspect we do, then there's nothing for it but for a significant revamp of the deep Fire talents.

Edit: Reworked my numbers to also use 5% proc rate for Netherwind Presence. This is what I come up with now (1800 dmg/2000 for arcane, 25% crit before talents, 99% hit, 7 minute fight for cooldown uptimes):

Rotation DPS
2475.68: 7x Frostbolt / 2x Frostbolt Shatter / 1x Lance Shatter / 50% WE Uptime (48.53% while moving)
2309.41: 1x Arcane Barrage, 1x Frostbolt, Fireball on NP Proc (63.28% while moving)
2280.99: 9x Fireball / 1x Scorch (21.12% while moving)

Rotation DPM
16.10: 7x Frostbolt / 2x Frostbolt Shatter / 1x Lance Shatter / 50% WE Uptime
13.49: 1x Arcane Barrage, 1x Frostbolt, Fireball on NP Proc
13.27: 9x Fireball / 1x Scorch

...and that's just plain stupid.

I am also just a bit doubtful they will make Frost the highest DPS raid spec. Not when it is already the acknowledged best pvp spec already.

I am also not sure if they meant for arcane specs to use only arcane barrage and not AB or AM at all. They could have so easily just introduced new talents that would make either AB or AM competitive, scaling or otherwise. Why introduce a spell that would make the other two totally redundant? If I am using Arcane barrage in raiding, and I am definitely using it in pvp, where does that leave AM and AB?

And the most mana-efficient, and providing the most utility. (PvP strength I consider irrelevant; I really don't think strength in different classes of content should be balanced against each other, nor do I think Blizzard intends to do so. Each tree should be balanced against each other in PvE, and again separately in PvP, and that seems to be what they're trying to do, albeit with limited success.) No, I'm certain these results are not intentional, but it'll take some fancy footwork to correct them.

What contribution does winter's grasp bring to frost DPS, Lhivera?

Somehow, I just can't see Blizzard packing so much power into just two talent points if they are going to boost Frost DPS by some unseeming percentage. At this junction, we are all assuming and hoping winter's grasp works on bosses the way we pray it will work. But until we actually know from actual testing that it really does work that way on raid bosses, I would say its a rather big if at this juncture.

It's worth a solid 10-11%, and that's just for the mage himself. Adding more mages specced for shatter results in a pretty hefty raid DPS increase. This is pretty silly, and needs some tuning. However, it pretty much has to work on bosses. There's no purpose to the talent if it doesn't. Furthermore, there's no logical reason for it not to work on bosses. It neither snares nor roots, which are the effects that can't be applied to bosses as they would trivialize encounters. Quite the opposite of a big if -- it would frankly be shocking if it didn't work on bosses.

If it were up to me to fix it, I'd reduce the duration to 3 seconds (1 shatter combo), and change the +2% hit to +3% crit.

This is the unfortunate part of the speculation, what why I'm so suspicious. It's very easy that with the change to +damage/heal v +damage moving to one stat, they could end up overloading all caster gear with absolutely ridiculous amounts of spirit (to the point where any caster who really cares about itemizing for spirit could end up having thousands of it...).

We simply cannot know the regen potential for the mage class, as we'll have no idea how cheaply itemized spirit will be on caster and mage-only gear. So, you can look at dpm and mana efficiency, or you can look at dps potential, both in a vacuum ignoring the other. It's a good gauge because it looks at the difference between fights like... maybe Nightbane (when kara was high progression) which heavily favored endurance and the ability for dps classes to go for long periods of time, and a fight like Brutallus which is purely based on dps potential.

However, another thing I want to point out is that when you talk about things like mobility and obtainable endurance stats, that's all and good, but the time spent regenning or in some form of mobility is time where other classes are rushing ahead in damage done.



Lhiv, I have a question for ya. Since we're looking at Winter's Grasp as though it WILL affect raid bosses (which makes sense with how it's worded), what's the analasis on where frostbolt outscales ice lance? Actually I'll not be lazy... and contribute here. Luckily, all talents that buff ice lance's damage also buff frostbolt's,

Ice Lance r3
Mean damage: 238 (714 vs frozen)

Frostbolt r16
Mean damage: 830

(NOTE: I'm considering the +5% crit from Empowered Frostbolt a 3% damage buff. I know that's not perfectly mathematically accurate, but it'll make a decent approximation... as we're assuming a frozen target with Shatter applying, we're going to be talking crit rates like 80% vs 75%... which gives frostbolt roughly a 3% boost in damage)

Frostbolt vs Ice Lance spellpower dps equivalency:

[ 830 + X * 0.9143 ] * 1.03 / 2.5 = [ 714 + X * 0.4287 ] / 1.5
X * ([0.9143*1.03/2.5] - [0.4287/1.5]) = (714/1.5) - (830*1.03/2.5)
X * 0.0908916 = 134.04
X = 1474.72

So, at 1475 +damage, frostbolt does higher dps, even against frozen targets. Realistically, at level 80 I'm guessing 1500 +dam won't be that amazing... so that basically means that frostbolt will generally be higher dps, even against frozen targets or targets treated as though they were frozen.

Dpm is a whole different story... and unfortunately trying to figure that out makes me head hurt. That and I have no way how you'd estimate Winter's Grasp uptime... as it's kinda like looking at ISB uptime you'd have to look at various uptimes and go from there.

I'm not sure it needs to be "fixed". As far as raid bosses are concerned anyway. The 10-11% DPS increase seems pretty fair for 9 talent points.

Also given the that it's highly un-likely having more than 3 Mages in a 25 man raid, the synergy of another mage picking up shatter for 7 talent points, or increasing grasp uptime for an additional 2 doesn't seem like it could get out of hand given it's current incarnation.

He's not talking about shatter, he's talking about winter's grasp. Basically, imagine if you had 10 deep frost mages in your raid. You can assume nearly 100% WG uptime, meaning that all of your mages will be getting a nearly permanent +50% crit buff. That's completely insane. It's very similar to ISB, except timed instead of charged, and giving +50% crit instead of +20% damage.

Also note that you could have your mages using a 34/0/37 type spec, so not only will they have a nearly permanent +50% crit, but they'll have the megacrits of arc/frost frostbolt.


Ah fair enough. Also it should be noted that Ice Lance will be better dpm up until some absolutely absurd level of spelldamage... so should it ever happen that you're oom'ing as frost, you can hit 3x ice lance when WG procs and save a little bit of mana.

I've got some math on this upthread somewhere. Where Ice Lance still comes in handy is at the end of the Grasp debuff -- assuming it remains five seconds, you should be able to get off two shatter Frostbolts and one shatter Ice Lance on a proc. While Shatter Frostbolt beats Shatter Ice Lance, Shatter Ice Lance beats non-Shatter Frostbolt, so you're better off spending that 1.5 second cooldown on a Lance rather than starting a new Frostbolt that won't beat the Grasp expiration.

Well, that's assuming that Shatter and Improved Frost Nova are worthless if you don't have Winter's Grasp, which, while the min-maxing Raider might feel that way, Blizzard assuredly doesn't, since they have applications on targets other than Raid Bosses.

Granted, but:

1) Frankly, that seems like a stretch to me -- they've already got Frostbite and Nova on separate DR, Shatter's already useful in PvP, they're giving us Deep Freeze which is also useful in PvP -- it simply seems to me that the chances are vanishingly small that Grasp is intended purely as a PvP talent. Especially when taken in context with so many of the other changes, to all trees, that are strengthening the areas those trees are weak in. Is it possible that they're thinking along these lines? I suppose it is. But it doesn't make much sense; it doesn't fit the direction they're moving in.

2) This argument doesn't account for the second thing I pointed out. I can't think of a single debuff that (a) does not impair the target, (b) increases DPS against the target, and (c) bosses are generally immune to. Bosses are only immune to Frostbite and Frost Nova not because they allow Shatters, but because they impair movement, and impairing movement would trivialize encounters. Winter's Grasp does not impair movement; there is no reason to believe that bosses will be immune to it.

I'm confident enough in this to put real money down on it, so: if it turns out that bosses are immune to Winter's Grasp, I will buy anyone in this thread one (1) pint of beer at the Big Time Brewery in Seattle.

(Sorry, old habits die hard, consolidating posts.)

(Same as above.)

It's not some amazing 20% dps increase to melee, but 2% hit is definitely nice for fury warriors, rogues, and enhancement shamans who need absolutely insane amounts of +hit to hitcap their white attacks.

To echo Lhivera's statements by example, the rogue trees are a mish-mash of PvE and PvP talents (see: deep combat). If Frost is widely known as "the pvp tree" today, as the combat tree is known as "the PvE tree" to rogues, it stands to reason that Frost will get significant pve buffs... and this seems like exactly it.
Winter's grasp is similar to Improved Faerie Fire from the moonkin balance tree, and that is undoubtedly a pve ability; this runs along the same lines. It says "considered frozen", which further suggests PvE since bosses are all immune to freeze effects and nothing in pvp is immune to freeze effects without a buff to provide that; if bosses were to be immune to winter's grasp, why not just freeze the target instead of creating this weird "frozen/not-frozen" state... unless if this was specifically designed with a pve utility in mind.

The synergy of two or three frost mages in a raid make this increasingly powerful, reminiscent of the old rolling-ignite of Naxxramas days. Rolling ignites got nerfed into oblivion. The duration and chance to proc will probably get tweaked a little if it turns out to be too powerful.

The ability, however, may be gimp by the same weakness current freeze effects have: every attack has a chance to break it. If a raid attacking a mob has a chance to remove the buff every hit, it won't last a single landed spell. I really doubt that will be the case though.

Considering that this ability already exists in non-instance pve, and first 70s on servers weren't automatically frost mages (on lothar-US, it was a fire mage closely followed by a shadow priest), I really doubt this ability is game-breakingly powerful; it seems right in line to bring back frost mages to raids... and if it is game-breakingly powerful, it'll be changed before release... or after release.

However, look at what's happened... Warlocks, Shadow priests, arcane mages lost half of their massive +hit... boomkin gained a 3% hit debuff... frostmage gained a period 2% hit debuff... all in all, it's going to make min-maxing gear a little more difficult.

You will frequently run into diminishing return issues in PvP.

Generally, for every class so far there really doesn't seem to be much in the way of big DPS upgrades in the new talents. There are obvious exceptions, like shadow priest and affliction lock talents getting balanced around a lack of ISB, and the upgrades to moonkin, but that's it. Frost is the only talent tree you can look at across the classes that's getting a sizable buff, if WG actually works on bosses. If every other talent tree that's been released is any indication of intent, WG is probably not going to be working on bosses, or if it does it will be in a much milder version.

Maybe its because stamina values aren't changing with this expansion, but compared to TBC we're definitely not seeing huge DPS upgrades across the board. This is all speculation of course /shrug.

Is Winter's Grasp really a frost buff on bosses, or fixing a design flaw that removed a fundamental part of frost DPS synergy on PvE raid bosses? I think it's in much the same situation as affliction and shadowpriests: making up for a damage loss from elsewhere, except your elsewhere is much more long-standing and ours comes in at the same time. Depending on how it works, WG's main PvP advantage compared to frostbite/frost nova may be that it doesn't break after the first monstrous Ice Lance crit. Especially if you think that the inability to fight back during an old-school frostbite-shatter burst combo is worse than the burst itself.

Some of the talents, across many trees, seem to be adding in utility where the tree was otherwise weak, ie PvE talents in frost and PvP ones in combat. While it's admirable that the trees are getting balanced out in that respect, the distribution of the talents doesn't serve the purpose very well. If there were off-role filler talents down the tree you would see people take them for cross-viability, but concentrating them deep in the tree means that the tree basically takes a left turn at 45 points, so most people would rather sub-spec somewhere else. I'm expecting to see a few new talents migrate up as older talents consolidate.

My fear is that if the talent had such obvious benefits to pve raiding, they really wouldn't even need to throw in the +hit in the talent. Wouldn't you take it even if it didn't have the +2% hit because of the already hefty DPS increase and the obvious synergy with other fost mages?

They would only throw it in if they felt that the talent by itself wasn't as interesting enough to warrant the pve mages taking it, and so they had to add some benefit on top of that.

PVP mages would take the talent regardless. It will improve ice lance DPS in a big way. Right now, you don't have time as a frost mage to run around casting 2.5 second frostbolts. Most of the time, all you have time for are instant cast fireblasts, frost novas, cone of cold and ice lance. This talent helps ice lance in a big way because ice lance does triple damage on frozen targets. I think we shouldn't under estimate the pvp applications of this talent. The way I see it, it was made precisely with pvp in mind.

Of course it is also possible that they have totally not considered potential impact of this talent in a raiding environment yet. But if that's the case, then its a good bet it will be changed somehow even if they allow the talent to go through and work on raid bosses. They are already in the process of normalising the stacking effects like drums. I can't imagine after going through all that, they would allow this kind of effect that would allow a 10 frost mages stacked raid to increase raid DPS significantly.

That is including a 10% buff from death knights when stacked 10 times? Without knowing much about the death knights I got the impression that frost was the survival tree for DKs - something that probably is going to be used as often on trash as warrior dps specs are used to tank today, and used as tanks on bosses in raids as often as warlocks are today. I really doubt that we can expect to see that debuff in more than a few special fights, or maybe it is only me thinking most raiding bloodknights usually are going to be Blood-specced and not provide the debuff in that role?

Another thing about it is that it takes time to stack it up - probably a lot longer than 5/5 fire vuln./winter's chill. On boss fights this probably isn't going to be a problem in most cases, but on both single target and AoE trash arcane continue to look like a very clear winner, while doing very good on bosses too all while having a higher mana regen. I'm not so sure about your suggested arcane rotation is going to be preferred though - hit gear, aggro and spec of other mages probably got something to say here. Also I really doubt that Blizzard is just going to let a skill (AB) obtained at level 64 just rot away for WotLK - that simply cannot be intended. Without checking the math I still think AB spam (possibly with added ABr) is better DPS than ABr+frostbolt as long as you have infinite mana.

Another thing. If Blizzard want to make AM more useful they could e.g. make it possible to use instant-cast buffs like PoM and Netherwind procs on AM or let it proc netherwind proc pr missile-wave if they want arcane to be a cross-tree spec.

Making AM proc-per-pulse (at the same %) would be so overpowering it'd negate any chance of any other rotation other than AM-Bar with Fireball on Proc. I wouldn't mind at all, however, if it was changed to check proc-per-pulse for (reduce value, eg 1/3 normal chance)% so that the average chance of Netherwind-proc-per-second of AM-Barr is so much more than FrB-Barr so as to cover the difference in DPS between them. Which would make for interesting situation-based comparissons, like we have now. Like "for prolongued casting, AM-Barr is superior, Frb-Barr prefers 0 haste, AM-Barr specs for int/spi" and other such, just like the current 2.4 Arcane vs Fire. Both are valid, just in quite different ways.

Ultimately, I'd like to see:

"NW benefits AM more, despite lower proc rate, and brings it (more, less, same) in line with FrB-Barr"

As a side-note, did anyone notice how Barrage and NW both work supremely with Arcane Potency double-dipping? Every time you proc a Clearcast on a Barr or NW-procced Ball/Bolt, your next normal cast of choice and Barrage both benefit from the +30% crit, just like classic Combustion Fire Blast double-dipping. This would increase the talent's value from a flat 3% crit to perhaps 4+%, as at least every third time it procs you gain twice it's value.

In regards to the mana regen we'll be seeing in wotlk, if you look closely to
Enchant Bracers - Major Spirit: "Permanently enchant bracers to increase Spirit by 18. Requires a level 60 or higher item."
and to
Enchant Bracers - Major Stamina: "Permanently enchant bracers to increase Stamina by 16. Requires a level 60 or higher item."
Enchant Bracers - Exceptional Intellect: "Permanently enchant bracers to add +16 intellect. Requires a level 60 or higher item."
seems to be like spirit will be the TBC stamina which has a lower itembudget to be spent on and stamina will be equal to those other stats like I think it should.

So we should expect to see gear packed with high amounts of spirit on it for sure.

Although there exits the:
# Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Intellect: "Permanently enchant a melee weapon to increase Intellect by 45. Requires a level 60 or higher item."
# Enchant Weapon - Exceptional Spirit: "Permanently enchant a melee weapon to increase Spirit by 45. Requires a level 60 or higher item."
it drops in line with the improve of the stats enchant on weapons from TBC (30 intellect) and the highest spirit increase on weapon (20 spirit), so this might actually be like that.

If bosses are immune to the freeze effect, they're also immune to the +hit effect, since they're both (currently) part of the same debuff.

Again -- there is nothing about this talent that would prevent it from working on a boss. It has no impairment effect whatsoever. Bosses being immune to Frostbite is like bosses being immune to Silence, Wing Clip and Hamstring. Bosses being immune to Winter's Grasp would be exactly the same as bosses being immune to Curse of Elements or Improved Scorch. Is there even a single example of a debuff that works on players and mobs but not on bosses because against bosses it would allow the player to deal too much damage?

It is, so if it's a rare debuff, that changes matters.

Frozen Rune Weapon is only 11 points deep in the Frost tree. From what I've been reading, most tank specs can be expected to go at least that deep in the tree. It's a ten-minute weapon imbue buff, so it does not consume runes during the fight.

ETA: screenshot supports 10 stacks for 10%. Duration perhaps 20 seconds? Proc rate still unknown; possibly PPM.

I'm basing that on Vontre's work, which says pretty clearly that Barrage/Frostbolt is the way to go for the main rotation.

The assumption is that you will not have infinite mana, with Spriest regen being cut in half or more. AB spam will be used as originally intended: a mana dump at the end of the fight should you have excess to burn.

double post

I guess we don't agree completely on this. I agree 100% that shadowpriest mana er getting a nerf - compared to other regen abilities it is simply too powerful. But other abilities like Judgement/Blessing of Wisdom got a buff. Spirit seems to be getting a lot cheaper in the item-budget, and most likely more common as well, since all clothies will get the stat. Maybe they decided to spread out the mana-regen stuff rather than making it more needed. Saw a discussion a few weeks ago where someone said that Blizzard wanted fewer "chuck mana pots on max CD fights" - don't know if that is the official direction though.
And by that you agree with me, that it is higher dps as long as mana isn't a problem, which I really doubt it will be most trash fights and short boss fights with pots, gems, evoc, innervates, mana tides and whatever new stuff we might see. If they want from AB what you describe (which is a fine idea that makes sense) both the damage need a big boost and the mana cost of the spell an even bigger boost in my eyes - possibly with the restriction that it could only be used below 20-30%.