I think you're underestimating how good NP procs will be in PvP -- there won't be any burst in the game like AP- NP fireball-PoM Pyro, and unless there's a further distortion of the relative values of stamina and spelldamage I would imagine that it'd be rather hard to live through.

It's obviously far too early to make sensible decisions about PvP balance, but on the face of it a 3/3.5 coefficient on a nearly spammable instant that occasionally procs (about every minute) an absolutely huge burst sequence does seem a little much.

On the other hand, you can't get arcane barrage and blazing speed, so if melee is as strong as it is in the current game people might still avoid the bottom of the arcane tree; as always in PvP, what builds are best depends as much on other classes' talents as mage talents.

are you an idiot???

Did you not just notice Lhivera posting that a rotation of ABr + Frostbolt with Fireballs on NP procs produced over 2400dps?

Seems pretty friggin viable to me with those dps numbers.

36 yards on AM does make that spell a lot more viable in PvP so that might be what they are intending for it to be used for. Be nice to watch the first volley take out the grounding totem while the other 4 volleys rip up the shaman before he can get into range to Earth Shock and since LoS does not apply, watch him try to pillar hump those volleys. Also nice to have 100% pushback resistance against the hunters pets and other annoyances as well.

Rogue beating on you, shattershield up and let the missiles track him no matter how much he wants to dance around you. Then when he breaks through the shield he gets rooted and you can strafe away and hit him with a nice Arcane Barrage before popping Invis and shifting direction. If he can't vanish then he can't stealth (5 seconds to break combat versus the talented 1 second fade on Invis) before you can unload into him again from a new location. Certainly would add an exciting new twists on the rogue/mage 1v1 matchup. Sure Cloak of Skill will work against that but at least it is somewhat viable, which is a lot different then the current Deep Arcane vs Rogue matchup.

As you seem to have a good source of info, any word on:

- Hot Streak -- forced crit count as first of new triplet, or no?
- Deep Freeze -- break on damage, or no? (I presume the answer to this is "yes," but -- usable on targets affected by Grasp?)

You can get better pve dps with other builds, Rounced. I'll grant you that arcane looks good for pvp.

That said, encounter design may favor arcane in certain circumstances.

Perhaps I'm letting my disappointment over AM get the best of me here, as well as my aesthetic preferences. But I just see so much more raid synergy going on with fire, frost, and possibly even elemental builds depending on how ffb plays out. It's telling that a deep arcane build functions best using only one arcane spell and otherwise is heavily borrowing nukes from other schools.

Yes, the dps isn't awful, but I can't help feeling a bit let down.

Well, it's true that Arcane uses spells from other schools, but that seems very fitting for the nature of the tree, since the tree buffs every school.

Now consider for a moment the impact of a hypothetical fight where you have to spend half your time moving.

Fire: Your DPS is cut to 0% during movement phases, resulting in 50% DPS for the whole fight.
Frost: Your DPS is cut to about 45% during movement phases (ice lance spam), resulting in about 72.5% DPS for the whole fight.
Arcane: Your DPS is cut to about 69% during movement phases (barrage spam + fireball on NP proc), resulting in about 84.5% DPS for the whole fight.

If we go with the numbers I posted above, on such a fight we'd see:

2423.78 * 0.845 = 2048.09 (Arcane)
2357.50 * 0.725 = 1709.19 (Frost)
2480.67 * 0.5 = 1240.335 (Fire)

You see what a huge difference can happen when we introduce movement? Now think of the huge range of fights between "no movement at all" and "lots of movement" and you'll see there's a whole range of results for the three trees as well -- and that's only one of the major variables.

Deep Freeze does not break on anything. It's a stun.

Hot Streak I have no idea.

[e] Deep Freeze: it's also a freeze, like those mobs in Wester Plaguelands do. A stun freeze. In a block of ice. Yes, you can ice lance it.

In truth, the arcane mage is perhaps better off than even that in movement situations, since he can insert instant casts like fireblast and icelance into his rotation and get by reasonably well without frostbolt.

My main concern is that the arcane mage with decent but not outsanding dps is going to be muscled out of raid compositions by fire and frost and possibly elemental mages who bring along debuffs that benefit all mages (including the arcanist) as well as other classes. (Firelocks, deathknights.)

But I'll stop my grumbling here and admit I overreacted.

Synergy's a risk, but if movement in fights -- even only about 10% movement time -- is more or less the norm, Arcane mages should generally put up higher personal numbers than Fire or Frost mages, thus making the better synergy of Fire and Frost mandatory to justify their presence.

There is a big wild card in here for Frost, and that's the effect of the Frozen Rune Weapon debuff. But that is only in play if you have a Frost-spec DK in the raid, of course.

So, Arcane Barrage won't trigger Fireblast's cd (and vice versa)?

Aye, and a Fire mage could also use Ice Lance and maybe even hit some Winter's Grasp procs with it, but it illustrates the concept. DPS rankings of the three trees shift as you introduce movement, with Arcane coping best, then Frost, and Fire bringing up the rear, thus making up one of the elements that give the three trees unique advantages and disadvantages in different types of fights.