What I'm saying is that non-stacked Frost Mage DPS could be decreased 7% and it would still out-DPS Fire as things stand now, and even if Frost didn't, Arcane would. As things stand, there's zero incentive to spec fire, and simply removing the incentive to stack Frost mages to abuse Winter's Grasp will not rectify that situation.

Problem is, as the situation stands being the top, by a slight % or a higher gap, doesn't have such an importance on raid making-up as Blizzard wishes.
Problem is, what really matters in raiding set-up is boss fights, which hardly have an aoe situation. On top of that, fights with aoe components are rarely tuned so that you will need a maximized-for-aoe setup to get them to work.
Even MH, with his numerous trash waves, put mages in a marginally advanced situation. If they intend to characterize mages as kings of aoe, then they need to design boss encounters in order to have aoe phases and a quite limited time to get a hold of them.

This would be representative of the overly-pessimistic view I described, which assumes that they won't also be increasing our direct damage to be competitive with Warlocks. It looks to me as if they're aiming for:

DD: Mage ~= Warlock
AoE: Mage > Warlock (slightly, not greatly)
Utility: Warlock > Mage (slightly, not greatly)

Right now fire is in a rather dire situation. It sacrifices a lot to reach the DPS it has (PWF, Burnout), but the single target DPS it pulls-off is still sub-standard. Blizzard also seem to want it to be the primo AoE Spec (with 3 major active tallents contributing to AoE). The problem is that the tree seems poorly thought-out in this regards. Whilst some tallents are well suited to AoE (master of elements and possibly hot streak), others are poor at best. The only 'spamable' fire AoE is flamestrike, which has the smallest targetting window of all spells, is susceptible to pushback if used in melee range, and in mobile AoE is even harder to aim. All of the active tallents require melee range, making them more of a threat issue and harder to weave around flamestrikes. Whilst flamestrike DoT + LB DoT + impact may help keep things under controll, its another 5 point investment that most raiding mages don't make, and seriously risks a bloated tree. To top it all off, lots more classes in Wrath will have AoE strength, making the requirement for any 1 class to excel at AoE just that much less essential. Nobody is going to give a fire mage priority in a raid because he can pull 10-15% ahead of 18 other players on AoE encounters; its simply not significant when compared to the total AoE damage being dealt.


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Edit;

It would be interesting to see an AoE boss encounter. Not AoE DURING a boss encounter, but a boss that is actually 5+ targets that all have boss-level health and need long-sustained AoE in order to kill fast enough. That kind of fight would possbly merit the presence of a firemage with superior AoE damage.

I still find it odd the disconnect between what Blizzard says it wants and the changes we see popping up via alpha leaks. For example, from a WWI Q&A:

Source: WWI '08 Notes from the WoW Q&A Dev Panel - WOW Insider

So once again we have Blizzard saying thing like "no, it is not Frost = PvP, Fire/Arcane = PvE". They want you to be able to pick your spec (frost) and pick your content (raiding). But looking at the changes, how many people are convinced that the arena breakdown for mages will be even roughly close to 33%/33%/33%? Maybe ABr has people interested enough to boost arcane's percentages a little. But beyond that with all the new pvp-related frost goodies, how will we not see frost domination of pvp again?

And that annoys me not because I am bored with frost in pvp--I don't pvp at all. But once a spec achieves dominance in one aspect of the game, it is only natural for people to say that the other trees must be dominate in other aspects of the game. And I like to raid frost. While fire needs help in the alpha and we have the imbalance of WG looming, I don't want to have frost nerfed into PvE oblivion to balance PvP arena percentages.

Well, I agree with you completely, but I think the statement you quoted makes it clear that won't happen. Blizzard doesn't balance content types against each other. They don't say, "Spec A is stronger in Content X than Spec B, therefore we will make Spec B be stronger in Content Y than Spec A." Instead, they will simply keep trying to improve Fire for PvP. They may or may not ever actually succeed, but that's going to be the approach they take to trying to rectify the problem.

Zeldyrr we can expect arcane to chip away at frost's dominance the moment some enterprising mages grasp its potential and start nuking down annoying, pillar humping resto druids in 2v2s. Frosties just don't have this kind of damage potential. It probably won't be nearly as good for 5 mans, but in 3s and 2s, it's got a ton of potential.

All it takes is one NP proc and in a few seconds you've got the potential to gib a toon, particularly if you've been smart enough to hold back all your other cooldowns. Just keep pumping out the Barrages until you win the lottery. It's got a proc rate similar to a mace stun, and we all know how devastating those can be.

Skallewag, you mention 1s invisibility. An arcanist can actually spec for this.

Honestly, I'm a bit gobsmacked that so many mages aren't getting this.

Since I don't PvP and have no first hand knowledge, I can only hope you are correct. I do think my quote from the Q&A panel did nail one thing on the head. A spec does get popular and get chosen not because it is 1000% better but because it is slightly better and people want to mirror the 2200+ teams. I'm sure if a few arcane mages get themselves famous there will be a flood of followers.

But as much as arcane and fire have gotten some PvP goodies, I still worry about frost. I mean WG will proc and makes someone frozen and it won't be subject to DR or break on damage. Then, right at the end, Deep Freeze for 5 more seconds of frozen time AND a stun. Plus shatter shield popping and more shatters. This is on top of all the other tricks a frost mage has. (I won't dignify Brain Freeze, really, but I suppose a hunter caught in a frost nova will miss more LOL.) Oooh, and 85% snare.

I do hope Blizzard sticks by the spirit of that quote. I don't care if pvp arena percentages are 10% arcane, 90% frost. They should still shoot for viability in PvE for all 3 trees (+ elementalists)?

Pigvomit would be all over this stuff if he knew about it, and he can already do 2.4k in 2s on live with arc/fire. (He hates frost. To the point where he's decided to do arc/fire in all brackets.) So there are top mages out there willing to experiment.

Affix would also more than likely be willing to experiment with this, because he's just like that. Right now he's entertaining himself with spell haste goodies, and grumbling mightily over the lack of the new spallhaste dagger.

Really good arena mavens change up their game and their combos with some frequency, they are surprisingly flexible, and I suppose they have to be given the rapidity in game evolution in arena play. Every season is like a new expansion for them.

These guys post frequently on the official forums and people do take note of them. Although in all frankness they are playing at a level that very few could hope to match (I know I couldn't.)

Agreed. Ignore that one. The ability to self-rez and then group rez non-trivial but less than the buffs given. The rezes themselves are not going to decide a spot.

You're missing my point entirely. Setting aside assumptions we've been making about frost stacking (I don't think it's going to survive live for long), I was talking about ten man raid progression. Mages quickly become optional, or even detrimental, unless our personal single target damage goes up because we don't bring much group buffage. Int, food, and a scorch debuff that benefits a warlock if he's there or frost debuffs if there's a pair of them. Unlike a shaman or balance druid giving out big boosts. Our AoE will probably get boosted, and is already nice, but they've got to tune around us not being around so it can't be that big a deal in tens. Warlocks can cover it anyway, or all the other classes in concert can squeak it out. (Surprised volley's not gotten a boost yet in alpha, honestly. Completely useless right now. Ask a good hunter and they'll start laughing.)

Elementals already do. No idea on enhance.

The mage panel response says nothing about our single target dps. The exchange focussed on our AoE vs. 'locks' seed. "Raw unadulterated power" sounds nice, but they didn't actually say we're going to hit single targets harder compared to the current balance. I may be worried overmuch here--I'm pessimist to Lhivera's optimist--but there's no evidence currently of single target DPS boosts intended in deep specs.

Getting AoE boosts is fantastic. Yummy pizza in my tummy. But they can't go too far that down road and do ten man progression where they can't expect any mages. Been riding that ten man hobby-horse enough; I'll step off it. Keep it in back of your mind though.

yes I too would very much like to see the real video of Q & A, I keep looking for a replay but still havnt found one. But given the kind of people we have in this thread Im also pretty sure someone will find a link to it before the end of the week.

And about 2 sec invis I didnt mean decreasing the fade time of invis. I was talking about a separate skill/addition to some talent or some way to quite a lot more often than every 5 min become invisible just for a short moment. For example making imp blink turn you invisible for two sec. Only as means to disrupt a melee train on you and make casters lose focus. The basic idea is very temporary displacement as means of defense isntead of coating anything that moves in ice. I should perhaps also add that I dont mean the same kind of invisibility that invis is. Nothing that puts you out of combat or resets aggro. More of a temporal displacement. 2 secconds of movement that your enemies dont know wich direction its in.

Another Idea I had as a sort of treat to mages for not getting blink fixed is a spell I like to call fake blink. Its an instand thats off the GCD, costs like 10 mana and does nothing but create the flash of light and blink sound in the same manner that a failed blink looks like when you get stuck on some invisible feature in the terrain.
The basic idea of this one would be to trick people into thinking you just blew your blink CD but messed up. A simple mindgame taking advantage of a bug everyone knows about now. If programming issues prevent the fixing of this spell then at least let us use the existance of the bug against our enemies. Sneaky and very arcane.

A 10-man raid that has a Frost Deathknight and a Destruction(Fire) Warlock could benefit greatly from an elementalist FFB build. WC, WG, Imp Scorch, and even the ability to kite (possibly useful in 10 mans) could give the Mage class some solid synergy in 10 mans. Significant buffs to 2 classes combined with biscuits, ports, and AI should give mages a place in a raid.

Looks like you will be able to get to see the actual panel, eventually.

2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational

On that page is says, "Check back soon for more videos! We will be releasing captures of panels and tournaments soon."

While I agree parsing summaries is doomed to failure, I play a mage and therefore am used to being doomed. So, I'm not sure it is much better, but here is wowinsiders transcribed summary of the same panel comment (emphasis mine):

Source: WWI '08 Panel: Mage - WOW Insider

From reading this, I would tend to agree with Lhivera. Blizzard's intentions is to buff mage damage, both single target and AoE. This particular quote doesn't state that we will beat locks (even in AoE) but one could certainly argues that it implies that.

Awesome! Thanks for the link. *bookmarks it* Now its up to blizz when we get to hear their own words.
But regardless of what quotes are correct or not you cant mistake that they do intend to buff mage damage compared to what it is like today. If we will be No.1 remains to see. In fact I think that even if we did have an exact quote of Chilton saying we will be the kings of AoE and single target nuking that isnt a definite either. That will tell us blizzards intentions for our class. The part of balancing and making sure that actually happens across most levels of rading and gear without turing us OP is a trickier task. I think they will get very close to what they stated on the WWI panel but how soon after the release is less certain.

I guess there's a lot of ambiguity in the statements from WWI, but I think that our single target DPS will be at least competitive. Honestly, I'd be happy with mage and warlock DPS being equal assuming that warlocks are using a DPS curse. The heavier emphasis on warlock fire DPS and elemental shaman DPS as well as DK's potentially gaining synergy from frost mages gives us slightly more synergy than we're used to having.

If one class is as good as another, then it's just as good to bring a mix for the different abilities that we all bring to a raid. If 2 locks and 3 mages are as good as 2 mages and 3 locks, who really cares? For whatever mistakes Blizzard made in TBC, I'm quite sure they've learned from them and have made sure that they won't be repeated again in WotLK. Sure there might be new mistakes, but they'll fix those in the next expansion or patch them up as we go along.

With Naxx being the first instance and having plenty of time for returning it for 10 and 25 man raids, I think we'll see the best encounter and raid balance to date.

As far as FfB scaling goes it's fairly easy. They've already given ABa a coefficient that doesn't agree with its cast time. How hard is it to give FfB synergies from all talents and just look at the most abusive spec for it and scale the spell damage coefficient around that? Sure it doesn't mesh with the regular way of doing things, but the fact that it counts as a fire and a frost spell to begin with automatically makes it subject to any coefficient tax blizzard may want to impose on it. Binary spells used to get 5% for being binary. Who's to say dual-tree spells can't get something similar?

I doubt it will be allowed to benifit from either imp or empowered talents. Im not saying its an impossible way to design the spell, I just think blizz wont do that. Would be kinda cool tho. Having it be a 2.5 sec cast calculated as a 3.5 for coeff purposes would be very nice for scaling, as would the use of empowered talents. Perhaps thats what the spell needs to be really competetive.

According to Vontre's numbers, it doesn't need anything more to be competitive, it's already way over the top.

Think we shouldn't under estimate arcane tree for pvp come wotlk. Invis with a 5 second fade time wasn't worthy of much mention in arena. But invis with a 1 second fade time talented? That could bring a whole new dimension to arcane pvp. Essentially, we can stealth under pressure (do a blink and immediately invis, the window for them to prevent you from fading is very small).

And like the others have said, arcane barrage has a lot of arena potential.

Well... 1 sec invis definetley helps. But if youre gonna get barrage you cant get cold snap robbing you of iceblock nr.2. Basicly you trade an ice block for invis. But to do that you also haveto give up winters chill making poly and slow easier to dispell, water elemental x2, longer reach on frost nova and CoC, shorter cooldown on CoC, ice barrier, you can´t get the shatter talents unless you start giving upp stuff like frostbite and permafrost.

Im not saying it would be impossible to make arcane a pvp tree. But its a loooot of stuff you give up both in survivability and controll. If mages had much tougher dispell resistances I would agree the burst of arcane might weigh some of that up. But the 80 or 120 in magic resistances you can get wont help arcane power from being dispelled in most cases.

I would really really like for the arcane tree to be more competetive, but currently I think youre giving up way way to much for the stuff you get.

FWIW, having seen the live stream, and even being generally a pessimist, I still took the response to mean both DD and AoE were going to be increased in relative power compared to warlocks. The implication to me was as Lhiv is taking it, DD in-line and AoE above the line. Hopefully their videos of the panels get released soon; I'm anxious to relisten to a few things just to see if my initial reactions hold up to repeat viewings.

I think you guys see too far. We all agree on the intent of it. What we don't agree on is the intensity of it.

If I read blizzard say "we intend to increase mage dps because now every class has cc", it means just that. There is no mention of how much. There is no mention of how balance is meant to be. Just that the ultimate goal is to not let mage get sidelined because really we don't provide anything to the raid and don't either have the dps that goes with it.

Unlike most people here, my baseline assumption is that most of what blizzard does is roughly OK and in line with what they intended. If things were not as they intended them to be (with a certain error margin), then they would eventually try to fix it. I think the fireball/frostbolt coefficient removal was a sign of that, as well as making ice block baseline (not to mention icy veins). They had a goal, and we were below it at that point in time. If right now we werent up to what they wanted, they would fix it. Problem is, they decided to go against a 'quick fix' like most of us would ask because every 'quick fix' results in an infinite amount of customer support (by non mages obv.), which they aren't interested in increasing. They knew that a quick fix probably wouldn't have done it, so they went for a full scale 'fix' of the problem and delayed the mage dps fix for wotlk. They want to do a better, bigger fix if you prefer.

However, its not because they said words like 'king of AOE' 'dps=ZOMG' or 'raw-unadulterated damage' (edit: 'jaw dropping damage') that we should be blindsighted into believing it means a whole lot. I think the comment was wholly uninspiring in the sense that we already knew that. He provided an answer to a question, I don't think we should be thinking further than that. As always, I expect blizzard to know what theyre doing, and I was always confident a fix would be in eventually. In any case, it seems wholly unproductive to me to bitch about the situation given we don't really have a realistic way to affect teh results, and even if we could affect them, the truth is they probably know a lot more than any of us as to why things work that way. So yeah, I don't really see any good reason to get worked out over what might be in wotlk.

We'll see how mechanics works, and then make conclusions. Blizzard indicated the purpose and intent of frostfire bolt, and if theit intent is really what they said, then they'll soon see how broken shatter is, and also how the way trees are built up go in contrast with the design goal of frostfire bolt. The fire and frost tree have the dps increasing talents being mostly low in the tree, and the dps increasing talents high in the tree for arcane. This is a bit why historically arcane was a support tree, and that functionality modelled it well. If you make work an elementalist build, you get the best of both worlds. You get most of the dps increasing talents from fire/frost, and theres almost no fillers because those trees have fluff talents at the end of it, unlike arcane.

We'll see how that goes.

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Yarr! Tools :: Mage 8472
0/30/41 - gives a good idea of what I mean. Theres hardly any filler talents in there, its all dps increasers. Playstyle is like firemage. Stack scorch, then spam frostfirebolt. Its a frost spell so its stacks WC on its own.