Unless I missed some major class changes (which I may have), Blizzard has yet to produce a compelling alternative to +15% to the school of your choice from 21 talent points (i.e. going x/21/y.) It doesn't help that early affliction is *very* weak for dps boosts, and unlike the mage trees, the warlock destruction tree is not exactly brimming with dps-increasing talents, there aren't even enough good talents to get the 50 you need to finish out the basic tree.

The demonic sac talent needs to just go away. (one option: split it into a utliity sac and a dps sac, moving the dps sac to deep demo and leave the utility sac at shallow demo, maybe even earlier.)

If warlock pets could actually survive in a raid environment, would that change the incentives at all? (For example: new rank of phase for imps that allows them to firebolt while phased or somesuch thing.) Warlocks are almost forced into DS due to pet squishiness, unless they want to keep a phased imp out for bloodpact.

Eh let's not derail the mage thread with lock discussions.

Briefly though: My opinion is pretty long and complex on that one, and starts with hunters actually being a pet class far moreso than warlocks. Our pets are pretty limited outside of pvp utility unless you spec into deep demo, and we don't really have the base design to support them (e.g. a non-channeled heal over time.) I think pets are the root of a lot of the warlock balancing issues though: with them not usable in raids, locks become a *very* one-dimensional raid class, but you can't actually do anything to fix that without giving the class way too much in solo/pvp settings.

If Blizzard does make pets in general more viable, that helps frost mages, locks, and hunters all. (Which would give locks a raiding tree: if mages aren't fire and if the whole "too few dps stats affect dot scaling" issue isn't fixed, warlocks will be very hurt for a raid tree if it's not demonology. I'm following the mage threads because, if I'm not able to switch to mage with WotLK, I'll end up having to stay a lock which means I care a lot what tree you guys use.)

Quite so. The warlocks intended purpose has been diluted heavily over time. Lock mechanics are lacking in variety, adaptability, interest. Mashing one button and pressing another when OOM is hardly much of a game-worth; all the interesting meta-game currently enjoyed by SPs and Afflis, revolving around when to cast/recast/delay a DoT application and manage a pet is all part of the fun locks are entitled to have. Just like mages and Rogues are entitled to CD management, and just like Hunters are entitled to pet management.

They just confirmed at the PvP panel (ironically) that Winter's Grasp will work on bosses, for those who still had slight doubt.

The exact verbiage was that frost mages would be have new abilities to use their freeze mechanics on boss type creatures.

The mage model works quite well actually, our "Demoic Sacrifice" is 33 Arcane for "Arcane Power (4%) + Spell Power (11%)". They actually add 15% in end-of-sunwell gear.
It makes 33Arc/28Fro(Fir) pretty strong, they are usually inferior to deep fire/frost builds due to powerful talents past 30 points in them.

For WotLK talents, if the talents past 40 aren't very good, 33Arc/38Fir(Fro) can beat them in most cases.
If the new talent Burnout turns out worst-case, Arc/Fir will beat Fire.
If Burnout turns out best-case and Hot Streak ends up remotely useful, Fire will probably beat it.
With the WWI PvP panel confirming Winter's Grace working on bosses, Arc/Fro might beat deep frost (not done the numbers).

Considering Arcane picks up a few damage talents and a lot of mana talents on the way (the extra mana has a rather minor impact in competitive PvE considering that 12 points are unavoidably spent on mana talents in arcane to get down the tree), Arcane/Spell Power work quite well in their tree position.


Would Demonic Sacrifice as 31 pointer work by comparison? I'm not sure.
The Demonolgy offers mostly pet utiliy before 30 point, only Demonic Aegis gives a DPS benefit. Some talents add stamina/HP/mana, but that's it already. So you get even less on your way to 31 than Arcane.
And the Sacrifice ifself seems largely useless to pet builds with 30+ points.

Ok so I'm a bit bored at work and really interested in the viability of the Elementalist Frostfire bolt spamming build. I haven't been Elementalist since BWL so it would be a nice change of pace.

I apologize in advance for the sloppiness of this napkin math, I'm killing spare time at work. Vontre or Lhivera or whoever feel free to do a better job.

Frostfire Bolt is:
3.0sec cast
722 to 838
with Snare

So it should have the same base coefficient as Frostbolt, 81.43% but with Fireball's cast time. We get it at level 75 so let's assume our base damage by that time is at about 1400, walking around unbuffed, 1140 damage would be added to Frostfire Bolt bringing the average to 1920.

With a 0/35/31 build (at 75) we would be able to have:

Firepower 5/5 +10%
Playing With Fire 3/3 +3%
Piercing Ice +6%
Total +19%

Bringing the average to 2285.

Note that this does not include Fire Vulnerability as I'm looking at whether this is worth it for soloing, if you are more concerned with optimizing 5-man DPS then you can include Fire Vulnerability.

Crits would be for 280% due to Ice Shards applying before Ignite, and we would have:

Critical Mass +6%
Pyromaniac +3%
Winter's Chill +10%
Frostbite + Shatter +7.5%
Total +26.5%

We don't know exactly how crit rating is going to scale down so I'm a bit hesitant to estimated total crit and thus give a figure for exactly how much all that is worth. But it's substantial. Even if we go with a conservative total of +40% crit that brings us to an average total Frostfire Bolt of 3930 including Ignite.

That's not that bad considering I have given a fairly conservative crit rate and have not yet counted in Haste. Of course, I am not certain that Winter's Chill nor Frostbite would work, either.


My main concern with this, though, is that it will be treated by Blizzard similarly to how AB was treated and relegated to gimmick status. Blizzard could have balanced AB (without 2pc T5) to be a viable alternative spec, but they chose instead to make it a gimmick that was only usable with a given set bonus. I hope that they balance Frostfire Bolt to be a viable alternative capable of solid DPS on its own.

The only problem with including WC in your calculations is that you only get 10% after hitting the mob with 5 spells. You should probably be able to kill the mob before then.

Also, the damage multipliers are multiplicative and not additive so it's 1.10 * 1.03 * 1.06 ~= 20.1% more damage. Doesn't throw your numbers off by much, but they are slightly better.

Even if it doesn't pan out for a soloing spell, I think it'll serve a highly useful purpose for anyone who levels fire. The added snare on the bolt will allow you to more easily kill the target before it reaches you while still getting all the regular benefit from your fire talents.

On that note, has there been much discussion about any spec being more ideal for leveling? I know we generally TC about raiding at 80, but I'm wondering if anyone has done any analysis to see if one spec is hands-down better for getting to 80.

Either 3x/2y/0 builds or 17/0/44 builds would be the starting blocks for me for leveling, depending on whether I was leveling with a healer. Assuming you're starting out in T6/Sunwell gear, killing power is guaranteed, so spec for what creates the least downtime for you. Points in Arcane go a long way in terms of efficiency, and a lot of the deep Fire/Frost talents aren't good when most mobs die in 10s or less.

For the sake of being able to link to a reference in my Q&A list, was this recorded anywhere? I'm not finding it in any of the panel summaries so far.

2/0/59 for me, making sure to grab deep freeze, WG, imp WE, and chilled to the bone. I'll add new points into arcane as I level up, all the way to clearcasting. So far as efficiency goes, I always level with mage armor on, regardless of spec. This spec should work nicely for 5 mans as well as solo questing.

If DK are allowed in game before the expac, I'll make buddies with one and get him powerleveled to 70 ASAP.

I'm levelling with a mage friend of mine and I'm pretty sure we're gonna both be FFB spec. We're going under the idea that we're going to kill things faster than respawn rates and therefor we're gonna have downtime forced on us anyway. 2x impact + 2x winter's grasp will probably be enough CC on a mob that we can nuke down any elite before it reaches us. If they're immune, WG procs will provide both DPS and mana efficiency.

failing that, i'll level as arcane alongside a prot warrior (on the hope that shockwave will hold agro). AoE grinding for the win.

If I could find a link to the video itself, that'd serve admirably, but all I'm finding is the "if you missed it while it was running, you're out of luck" live streams.

What is best elementalist build for FFb spamming (PVE 10/25 man)?

War Pirate :: Mage WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

should i get 2/2 molten fury or 2/3 Pyromaniac ?

Well luckily, the official WWI videos page here says they "will be releasing captures of panels and tournaments soon." So hopefully within the next day or two you'll have a video to link to and can supply an exact time in the video to listen for the confirmation.

I know I'm about 24 hours late for the last discussion on WG-balance methods, but reading the following gave me an idea that I haven't seen proposed:

I know having separate debuffs per mage was mentioned several times, but shot down as: 1) Not making much sense, and 2) contributing to debuff list overflow.

Perhaps instead they could make it charged, like ISB, losing a charge each time a shatter-buffed spell hits the target. The only issue I can think of would be whether or not they could viably implement such an idea. It might be impossible for the engine to determine whether the caster of a given spell had shatter by the time the bolt hits the target; the hit/crit roll obviously knows, but the bolt "object" may not contain that information to pass it as far as the target. However, given the addition of the debuff happens at the time the bolt hits, the removal of a charge should be able to do the same.

If it could be implemented reliably, giving it, say, 6 charges would allow two mages with shatter (the WG-applier and one leech or second WG-applier) to fully utilize each proc with two frostbolts and an ice lance, but simultaneously reduce the uptime of each proc for any mages added past the first two. This should help diminish the returns enough to eliminate any desire by minmaxing guilds to stack frost mages (or any more than two shatter mages, ultimately). If the debuff proc'd before expiration it would simply refresh to 6 charges and 5 seconds remaining again. To use some of the more ridiculous examples of stacking used in the thread, with more than 6 frost mages just one ice lance each would result in some mages not even getting triple damage lances. If you had them all chain ice lance, you might get a lot of procs, but they would quickly exhaust themselves.

One concern that could be considered a pro or a con of this idea depending on your point of view is that mages would need to adjust their play based on how many Shatter mages were in the raid. With one or two you could depend on the full uptime and use two frostbolts and an ice lance, but with more you might have to throw in the ice lance after just one frostbolt, or even forego lancing entirely since it'd be better for another mage to have their primary nuke crit than you to "waste" a charge on a lance.

Edit: Actually, thinking more about this, I need to research exactly how ISB works, because whether or not a bolt is going to crit is determined at the time it begins travel (that's how classic shatter combos work, after all), and thus whether or not the target is (or is "considered") frozen is checked at that time, but the removal of charges would occur at the time the bolt hits the target, would it not? How does ISB work in this regard? With 4 charges, 5 warlocks cast shadowbolts, all of which are in the air before the first hits the target. Do the charges drop at the time the bolts begin travel, or at the time of the hit, and if the latter how do they not all receive the benefits of the debuff? Is whether or not a bolt crits determined before travel but damage of the bolt determined after?

That's a big help, I'll watch that page, thanks. (It's too hot to think clearly in the Seattle area right now, I probably skimmed right over that.)

I imagine they could overcome the technical issue. The main problem I can think of is that frozen state is determined at cast time, not hit time, so you're going to see a more spells affected by the debuff than the charge count should permit.

It seems to me that the only sure ways to prevent ridiculous stacking benefits are a charges scheme, which is problematic for both the reasons you gave and the reason I gave, or a caster-specific debuff, which is similarly problematic due to debuff overflow. Which leaves simply trying to tone it down in ways that won't badly hurt the debuff's value to a single mage, but will more dramatically reduce the stacking benefits. Which probably means a few small changes rather than a single big one. Switching to pseudo-PPM rather than a flat 10% might help some -- make it 10% for Frostbolt/FFB, 5% for Ice Lance and CoC, 3.33% per Blizzard Tick, etc. Reduce proc duration to 3-4 seconds, as has been discussed a good deal upthread.

I'd probably go with 1/3 Pyro, Combustion, and 2/2 MF if going 34 fire. However it may be better to pick up the water elemental and just stop and fire power.

If the Arcane talents worked with FfB then something like this spec may be worthwhile: War Pirate :: Mage WotLK Alpha Talent Tree

Damage modifiers: ~ 25.5% total

6% Piercing Ice
3% Arcane Instability
15% Improved Scorch

Critical strike increases: 22% total

6% Critical Mass
3% Arcane Instability
10% Winter's Chill (leeched)
~3% Arcane Potency

Critical strike damage modifiers: 315% total (~3.24.5% with CSD)

40% DoT damage from Ignite
50% Critical strike bonus damage from Spell Power
100% Critical strike bonus damage from Ice Shards

The only thing it loses is the ability to make use of WG (which is a wildcard at this moment due to it's widely regarded as broken nature) the extra 10% damage modifier from fire power and mana cost reduction (perhaps made up due to arcane concentration and arcane meditation.) from not having frost channeling or pyromaniac. The threat is also potentially worse depending on whether the frost and fire threat reduction talents are both applied to FfB. There's also no MF or WE, which very in usefulness from fight to fight or raid composition.

It does get to stack AP and IV together, however, which can produce some excellent damage when combined with other trinkets, potions, or consumables.

Add a ret paladin, moonkin druid in your group, and an elemental shaman (wrath totem would be raid-wide) somewhere in the raid and you've got upwards of 34% critical strike chance before figuring in molten armor and any additional crit that you might get from intellect or gear. It's certainly possible to see something like 50% critical strike chance with an ideal raid composition. Considering the value of critical strikes given obscene damage dealt from them, gem selection may also increase this further.

Of course it's a leech build and is somewhat dependent on having certain other types of mages in the raid in order for it to completely work and does miss out on a few talents, it does work quite nicely in the end. This of course is all based on the assumption that arcane talents not affecting FfB is a bug and not intended. I can see why it may not be a bug considering how ridiculous the spec could be.

Yeah, WC may not have been fair to include. I realized I fucked up regarding the multipliers afterwards, result of doing it quickly between tasks at work.

Since we don't get it til 75 we'll have to at least choose another spec until then, and who knows if it will be worth switching at that point. But it was just something to think about while I had some time to kill.

My main goal with doing the napkin math was to see if it was anywhere in the ballpark of being competitive, or rather, to see how far off it was. I guess it's not that far off, though my math was sloppy enough that I'm not overly confident in it. If nobody else has tackled it by Tuesday I'll use some of my time off to go over it more thoroughly.

If you want to know all about doing something ill-advised, please ignore my previous warning.

Setting future talents aside for just a moment I found this line in generel WotLK wiki parch changes:

Mage

Arcane

Counterspell - Counters an enemy's spell, preventing the enemy from casting that spell again for $d. Generates a high amount of threat.

(Patch changes - Wotlkwiki)

"casting that spell again" kinda sounds like its bye bye to locking spell schools and we now haveto choose if its the drain or the fear that will hurt the most agains a warlock. Or regarding healers its no longer locking down all their heals anymore. Granted that since the duration isnt revealed it could be a long one to make CSing people a much more tactical choise (and a buff PvE wise since mobs that cast an annoying spell often dont have a huge variety of other annoying spells, I cant think of a single raid healing mob that has two different heals with cast time)

(Edited: Typos)

The original Counterspell with the wording we're all used to is still in the spell database. There's no particular reason to believe that this new Counterspell is replacing our old one, rather than being used for a mob.

Hmm... well I can only hope you are right Lhivera. It caught my eye because it was listed as a patch change to mages specifically, but even tho wikis predictions has been pretty accurate if we compare how well stuff revealed at the wwi checks out with it, all of wrath is still rather elusive.