This could merely be an alternate spell description provided a certain Glyph is attached to it. Just like the Managem tooltip changes to reflect wearing SCB, so perhaps does the spell tooltip if you're wearing the appropriate glyph.

Some people here have claimed Arcane Blast is intended for PvP. Since it is included in PvE set bonuses, claiming it to be mainly a PvP spell doesn't make sense to me. Saying it is the "utility" spec doesn't seem valid either as it provides no real extra utility either - if anything it is the spec demanding most utility from other classes.
Agree on all this. Also they long after TBC went live decided to boost arcane mages regen while leaving fire and frost unchanged - if AM was intended as the primary source of arcane damage such a change makes no sense. I do think, however, that AB has never been intended for anything as something you could spam the last 40 sec of a fight no matter what spec you had - a bit longer for arcane mages. It doesn't really fulfill that purpose though - the damage and mana cost needs to be much higher for that (which I guess they realized when they added 2xtier5 bonus, which I see as a poor fix).

This argument does match up with the talents like Spell Power, Arcane Instability and Arcane Power, which all gives bonuses to all 3 schools and not just arcane. Same with Netherwind Precense - it doesn't boost spamming either AB or AM nor does it boost the new ABr, hence I disagree with Lhivera that they have given up on making arcane the prismatic build. It currently is the only build that frequently use more than 1 spellschool for single target damage - I don't see arcane going pure arcane.

AB still have it's uses with ABr being introduced in my eyes - I expect an arcane mage to spam AB spiced with ABr on max CD in most trashfights and short bosses, which seems slightly more interesting than spamming just AB. In longer fights either the same mana efficient filler from frost or possibly higher damage nukes from fire combined with Netherwind presence both seems like valid options.

The real question is what the purpose of AM really is. An old obsolete spell only usable at low level? Plenty of those spells (like all Warlock AoE spell except SoC) - however, it doesn't even fit that, since it is a hopeless skill to use for lowlevel grinding and the empowered talent indicates something else too. If that spell is intended as the primary nuke it seems really odd how fast MSD got nerfed after finally making this spell useful after 3 years of being trash. My guess is that MSD didn't get nerfed due to AM though - if fact I doubt they ever noticed that mages actually started to use the spell that used to be mentioned more in patchnotes than being casted, but rather a fix to prevent superfast ressing in arenas. Replacing Netherwind Presence with a talent allowing spells (or just AM) to on hit proc 50% reduced cast on next spell/AM could give AM a purpose in WoW.

Arcane tree is the only mage tree that in PvE makes use of mage armor and not just molten armor. Arcane tree is the only tree that makes use of the spirit stat that has been forced on our gear for so long. In fact the arcane tree is the tree that best match the tier sets, since it has the fewest wasted stats. I don't see anything changing regarding this for WotLK so far - in fact I have noticed the opposite. Also since Molten Core Blizzard has always assumed that mages have 3 equal spell schools capable of doing significant damage and thus haven't hesitated to include several immunity fights targeted specifically at mages no matter how much whine it continues to spawn. They have also always considered mages to be the intended kings of AoE, have high controlable burst and the mage class is the only class having mana management as fundamental challenge. Seeing the current plans to WotLK I in fact dare to say that arcane mages on live today is the closest thing of what they want our class to be.

I apologize if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that Blizzard has given up on Arcane being able to be played that way. I meant that they've given in to the insistence of many mages to play it using primarily Arcane damage, and have thus provided a nuke to facilitate that kind of playstyle. indeed, even after the introduction of Arcane Barrage, a deep Arcane Mage will still be a prismatic caster -- Vontre's pretty confident that Barrage/Frostbolt will be the optimal rotation, and I'm pretty confident that Fireball (even without any talent points in Fire) will be the optimal spell to throw on a Netherwind Presence proc. But the tree will finally have a viable primary nuke.

Now, I could still be wrong -- my statement was based on the assumption that Blizzard shared our opinion on the uselessness of Arcane Missiles as a primary source of DPS. However, as was pointed out above, AM does have an empowered talent, which is the mark of a primary nuke, and as I discussed myself, it seems as if Blizzard has long held the (incorrect) opinion that versatility is a viable alternative to raw power. So maybe they did in fact intend for Arcane Missiles to be the primary source of DPS for an Arcane Mage. Either way, though, the result is the same: the contortions that Arcane Mages have gone through to use Arcane Blast has finally convinced Blizzard that Arcane Mages need a primary nuke that is both sustainable without a specific set bonus and a specific fuel-providing spec, and that allows for the spec to produce competitive DPS.

Again referring back to the earlier discussion that Blizzard doesn't design for min/maxing, it could be they expect it to be used as an Arcane Barrage filler. Barrage/Missile rotation for mana conservation mode, Barrage/Blast/Blast rotation for mana burn mode. Of course we know that won't produce anything near optimal performance, but that could be what they have in mind.

Recently I've been thinking about NW. At some point it was 15% chance to proc its self and currently it's 5%. How dreadfully unballancing would it be, after all, if it was 5% per AM Pulse? Chance to proc it from one AM would be 26.5% if the initial cast had a chance. You could even tweak it to be 22.6% if you somehow remove the chance to proc on the initial spell cast.

Given AM is so abysmal, would it really be so off-scale to consider a AM-Abarr rotation, with Fball on NW? I noticed AM got a healthy base damage buff between 70 and 80 and I also happily noted that an AM/Abarr rotation does away with the obvious problem of "if NW procs and you FBall, with any >0 haste you'll have to cast another Fball/Fbolt or wait for Abarr CD" which is rather silly.

I find it dumb that we'd be using an optimum Fball/Abarr or Fbolt/Abarr cycle with 0 haste, changing nothing on NW procs, but having to switch to a Fball/Fball/Abarr on proc. Which is in it's self a DPS loss. It leads to silliness like "for low haste ratings, you're better off waiting the cooldown if it's less than 0.12sec"

A simply AM inadverted buff would solve this, by making NW proc-per-second much more significant and thus pump AM without making it any better in its self.

Pint, change AM as you propose, and throw in some sort of raid debuff in the tree to give arcane raid synergy, and I'd be completely satisfied. As things stand, it's about 90% there.

The main objection to building in a per pulse proc for AM comes from pvp balance issues, I suspect. And that is a valid concern, given the ability of a netherwind proc to be a game winner once combined with other instant casts and cooldowns. This is no doubt also the reason why the proc chance got knocked down to 5%.

I have my doubts that it was ever anything other than 5%. Think about it: we know it started at 5%. If they bumped it up to 15%, it would be because they thought 5% was too weak. If they decided 15% was too strong, they'd have dropped it back to 10% and tested it there, not right back to 5%. So I suspect the 15% was just a misleak.

I'm working on organizing and expanding on Manly's list o' questions that we (or at least those in a position to do so) should be prepared to ask/test/answer once the next patch drops. I'll post it later today, but if anyone has any questions they'd want to add to the list Manly posted, let me know here or via PM and I'll get them into the compilation.

Expanding on Manly's list of questions and the unanswered items from my own Q&A post. Manly, in a few cases I've tried to clarify what I think you meant with your questions, please feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted.

I'm also taking Manly's assumption that we don't even really know what we think we know -- that the answers we've seen so far cannot be assumed to be working as intended. And of course many of these questions will get no answers from Blizzard, so it's more of a testing checklist. In some cases, of course, the intended functionality is obvious from the text, so the purpose of testing would be to discover improper functionality (or, alternatively, incorrect description text).

If you have anything to add, please say so!
- Update 1: new question from Manly re FFB DOT
- Update 2: new questions from Phren re several items
- Update 3: Zaldinar questions
- Update 4: Arazan questions
- Update 5: Xentropy question


Arcane Talents

Arcane Focus
- Does the -3% mana cost affect Arcane Blast's mana cost at all debuff increments, or only the base mana cost as with the two-piece T5 bonus?

Incanter's Absorption
- What happens if an absorption occurs while the damage buff is active?
- Works with every absorption shield?
- Stealable/Dispellable?

Netherwind Presence
- Does it proc on cast or on spell hit?
- If it procs on cast, will the proc be consumed on the next spell, or can latency delay proc usage?
- Can we or can we not safely compare its behavior to Clearcasting in these respects?

Arcane Barrage
- What is the Arcane Barrage coefficient?


Fire Talents

Burnout
- What is the mechanic of Burnout's crit damage increase?
- Do multiple crits on a Fire AOE spell result in multiple mana debits from Burnout?

Living Bomb
- How much damage can I expect from Living Bomb?
- What is the coefficient of the DOT portion?
- What is the coefficient of the detonation?
- Is Living Bomb on or off the global cooldown?
- Does Ice Block cancel Living Bomb?
- Stealable/Dispellable?

Hot Streak
- Is there any cooldown on the effect?
- Do multiple crits on an AOE spell result in multiple increments on the crit counter?
- Assuming the spellcast that consumes the proc crits, does it count as the beginning of a new series of three crits?
- Can non-damage spells kill the stack?
- Do resists/immunes kill the stack?
- Stealable/Dispellable?

World In Flames
- Does the extra 15% damage from World In Flames allow the spell's total damage to exceed the spell's AOE cap?


Frost Talents

Elemental Precision
- Has the +hit% increase on Frostbolt been corrected to 1/2/3%?
- If not, does Frostfire Bolt receive the correct 1/2/3%?

Winter's Grasp
- Are there any targets, apart from those immune to Frost spells, that are immune to the Winter's Grasp debuff?
- Does the debuff work for all mages attacking the target?
- Does the debuff work for the Death Knight
- Does the hit bonus work only for physical attacks, or does it also affect spells?
- Is the debuff applied on cast or spell hit?
- How long does the debuff last?

Brain Freeze
- Does the hit penalty work only for physical attacks, or does it also affect spells?

Summon Water Elemental
- Level 80 base damage/mana costs/stats?

Deep Freeze
- Does it count as a true Freeze for the purposes of effects that depend on frozen status?
- Can it be cast over itself?
- What happens if you try to cast on a target that isn't frozen? Does it fail at beginning or end of cast? Does it trigger cooldown if it fails?
- What happens if you try to cast on a target that is frozen, but the freeze breaks before the cast ends? Does it trigger cooldown if it fails?
- What can/can't break/remove the effect?
- Shares PvP DR with what other effects?


New/Changed Spells

Mage Armor
- When the duration is halved on a DOT with an odd duration, is an extra tick lost? For example, a five-tick fifteen-second DOT would presumably be reduced to 7.5 seconds, which leaves time for only two ticks (at 3 and 6 seconds).

Frostfire Bolt
- Which talents/debuffs affect it at all times?
- Which talents/debuffs affect it only when dealing Fire damage?
- Which talents/debuffs affect it only when dealing Frost damage?
- How exactly does it determine which type of damage it will deal?
- What is the size and interval of the DOT tick?
- Does the DOT overwrite the Fireball DOT and/or vice-versa?

Shatter Shield
- Scale with spell power at all? Frost? Highest?
- Does the freeze effect proc on expiration, cancellation or removal, or only on destruction by absorbing its full value?
- If multiple absorption shields are active, and you are dealt physical damage, does that damage go preferentially to Shatter Shield?
- Stealable/Dispellable?


General Mechanics

Ratings and Stats
- What are the level 80 rating conversions?
- How much Intellect per 1% crit at level 80?
- What is the level 80 mana regen coefficient?

Resistance
- Can any or all damage spells with binary resist mechanics now be partially resisted? (Frostbolt, Frost Nova, etc.)
- If so, how are their secondary effects handled on a partial damage resist?
- Have partial resist increments changed from 25%?
- If so, how does this affect the probability of full resists, and therefore effects that proc on full resists? (Magic Absorption, Fiery Payback, etc.)

AOE
- Any change to the way AOE caps function?
- What are the new caps for each AOE spell? (Not just Mage spells)

Absorption Shields
- Full priority list possible, including where school-specific absorption falls for the relevant damage type?
- Is priority in any way affected by cast order?
- On partial resist, resisted damage should be deducted before damage is applied to absorption; is this working properly?

Changes
- Are there any changes to base spellcasting mechanics such as GCD, casting queues, etc?


Other Classes

Death Knights
- Does the Frost damage from Frozen Rune Weapon benefit from Winter's chill?
- Does Frost Strike benefit from Winter's Chill?
- Does Howling Blast benefit from the Winter's Grasp debuff?

Druids
- What is the final percentage increase (per stack and fully stacked) of the Nature's Fury debuff?
- What is the cooldown on the Improved Moonkin haste effect?
- How much of a positive impact will Replenish have on Mage mana regen?

Priests
- How much of a negative impact will the VE nerf have on Mage mana regen?
- How much of a positive impact will Rapture have on Mage mana regen?

Shaman
- How much of a positive impact will raidwide totem effects have on Mage performance?
- Will multiple totems of the same type stack?
- Will differently-talented versions of the same totem stack?
- Is the Flametongue totem's effect affected by Lava Flow?

All Tanks
- How will tank threat generation scale compared with mage threat generation?


Gear and Professions

Enchanting
- What are the new available enchantments?
- What are the stats of the new wands?

Inscription
- What are the new available inscriptions?

Tailoring
- Do the tailoring specializations offer any new school-specific gear?

Existing Gear
- Is 2pcT5 nerfed?

4t4 reduces the cooldown on PoM and Ice Block, two talents that were quintessentially pvp oriented in pre-BC. By your logic the devs wanted us to be tossing out PoM ABs at BC launch and using multiple ice blocks in Karazhan encounters. My arguement specifically stated that it's perfectly reasonable to believe that they were still in the pre-BC mindset, where pve gear could be used in large scale pvp or even arenas, when they made t4 and t5 (unlike t6, which came with the BT patch and has bonuses that are actually pve-oriented). It would have furthered the old "glass cannon" design concept to have AB as it turned out: internal ramp-up, prohibitive mana cost, meshes with AP and 2t5 for more damage and more higher cost. If "you can use this but you will go oom" screams pve to you, then I don't know what to say.

I still believe the most important questions as far as arcane is concerned are:

What is planned for AB? Will it be abandoned like AM?

What do they plan to do to make mana a less over-under mechanic?

I doubt these will be as answerable as Manly's specific questions.

I dont know if this is or is not the right place to post this, but it seems to be the largest compilation of WotLK mage facts/theory here. I have spent a lot of time looking over the mage talent trees and trying to figure out if this is or is not a viable build. It essentially an elementalist build focusing on Frostfire Bolt with a heavy emphasis on deep frost talents (I see deep fire to be very lacking). In order to consider a build like this I had to make a few assumptions:

1. If a talent reads "Increases frost damage caused by you" (as in Arctic Winds) it will only increase FFB damage when FFB deals frost damage. [In my opinion, having it deal fire damage is a stronger option due to improved scorch.]

2. If a talent reads "Increases the damage done by your frost/fire spells" (like Piercing Ice or Fire Power) it will improve the damage of FFB reguardless of which type of damage is done. I only assume this because of the wording.

3. At all times and under all conditions FFB is considered both a frost and fire spell, so talents affect frost spells and fire spells will always affect FFB.

Here is the spec [0/27/44]
Yarr! Tools :: Mage 8472 ... 5100201300

Big bonuses to FFB:

-BIG CRITS: All crits do double damage and proc ignite. With a 3 second cast and travel time, you will get one or both ticks off before another FFB lands possibly refreshes the ignite if you stand at max range (unknown atm).
-MORE CRITS: Deep frost gives you Winter's Chill and Winter's Graps for shatter, while fire provides Critical Mass.
-EFFECIENCY: Master of the elements AND frost channeling! With the large crit rate and flat 15% mana cost reduction it looks to have a great amount of innate effeciency, allowing use of Molten Armor and more crit.
-LOW THREAT: Both Frost Channeling and Burning Soul reduce aggro by 10%. I cant say if they will stack or not, but it would be neat if they did.
-INNATE PUSHBACK : 70% from Burning Soul and 100% from Icy Veins. Very nice.
-LOTSA DAMAGE: Fire Power, Ice Shards, and Imp. Scorch all increase percentage damage.
-LOL CC: Both impact and frostbite make it silly for solo grinding ^-^

Now WHY deep frost over deep fire? Because deep fire has a boatload of crap talents! The best thing down there is burnout, but it probably wont stack additivly with ice shards (we know this from testing how Spell Power stacks with Ice Shards), and to get that deep you need to pick up a lot of crap talents and lose shatter tech on bosses, total suck!

Here is what you get from speccing deep frost: Water Elemental + Cold Snap

What makes elemental great: Its a huge amount of THREATLESS damage, and combined with cold snap, gives you two minutes of the best DPS (combined pet) there is [correct me if I am wrong]. Improving it is pretty mandatory for the 30% more life necessary to live through AoE situations (lets hope that it gets affected by AoE heals).

Whats the downside?

-No clearcasting
-No flashy 51 pointers
-Its gunna get nerfed
-When locks realize that shadow destro is dead and spec fire you'll buff their dps -_-

Thoughts or opinions?

You may want to add spirit to that list, i.e. what are the plans for spirit and what are the changes, if any, to its importance as a stat. Will there be some other mechanic linked to it? Will gearing be adequately adjusted for it? etc etc

Beat me to it by two hours, I started my own musing back on the WoW Mage forums here (WoW Forums -> Zaldinar's WotLK checklist)

Things to add:

Shatter Shield, Hot Streak, Incanter's Absorption, Living Bomb - Spell Steal / Dispellable?

Hot Streak - What qualifies as "Three Crits In a Row", do non-damage spells kill the stack, do resist / immunes kill the stack?

Living Bomb - Does IB cancel its effect?

I'm not necessarily just talking about additional mechanics, I'm talking about spirit in general, the 'additional mechanics' statement I made was just an example.
That said, I think there is great reason to believe something is going to happen to spirit. Taking a look at blizzard's own statements, as well as the fact that it is being peppered into caster talents all over the place means something must be happening with the stat. It is also very likely, given that we accept that caster gear will be more 'similar' stat wise, I'm pretty sure spirit will start doing something more than its doing now.

Now yes, the end result could be just a simple buff like increasing the amount of regen gained from spirit, but it could also be something much larger, more akin to linking it to a secondary effect. All in all, I am quite sure it is one of blizzard's focus' for WoTLk to make spirit a much, much more desired stat across all casters.

In my mind, there are still questions pending about spirit.

Another question to add regarding Deep Freeze- Does it share PvP DR with other generic stuns?



And a few questions regarding shamans-

Will multiple Mana Spring totems stack?

Will different strengths of manaspring/healingstream totems stack as affected differently by varying ranks of Restorative Totems (similar to how you can hold 3 warlock healthstones based on varying ranks of Imp HS)

Is shaman's flametongue totem's efffect affected by the elemental shaman talent Lava Flow?



And a question about warlocks:

Will the warlock demonology Demon Form have any group/raid utility that will affect or be affected by mages?




And a more specific question about druids:

If a druid's Rejuvination spell is affected by the talent Replenish, will it restore mana even if the mage is already at full health? Is there any hidden cooldown on the Replenish effect?




And a few generic questions about mage stuff-

Does Incanter's Absorption include any absorb affect (Fire Ward, raid/dungeon effects) or only generic absorbtion (Ice Barrier, Power Word: Shield)? Also, will Incanter's Absorption effects be additve, such as if you were to absorb 500 damage three times simultaneously with Fire Ward, would you get 225 spelldamage for 10 seconds, or would you get a 75 damage buff overwritten twice?

Does Arcane Barrage deal one damage amount, or several smaller damage amounts similar to Arcane Missiles? Can it be partially fully resisted (can one missile of ABar be fully resisted while the rest are not?)




EDIT:

One more regarding FFB:

Can FFB be partially resisted, or is it a binary resist spell?

Lhivera, could you please TC the possible dps of builds if the 51 point talents were released before wrath? It would be very interesting to see if mages could top the charts in current raids. I know its unlikely that they will release them early but they did it with BC so it could happen again.

I'm pretty sure they're more or less finished. As I recall, what they told us was that they were going to be revamping spirit, and that we probably wouldn't enjoy the full effects until WotLK. Well, the revamp has happened: that was the change in the regen formula, which made Spirit a massively more powerful stat for regeneration. I'm 99.9% sure that was the whole shebang as far as mechanical changes go.

The new talents are simply amplifications of that change. Spirit now gives you more regen: done. But if you're an Arcane Mage, it gives you crit, too and even more regen. If you're a demo 'lock, more regen. If you're a Destro 'lock, extra damage and more regen. On the opposite end, we're getting a reduction in external regen from Shadow Priests, which encourages us to make use of the Spirit regen we have available to us via Mage Armor. These changes are simply building on the mechanical change that's already happened -- they're not harbingers of an additional mechanical change that's yet to come. I would, once again, stake a beer on that.


Added to the list. I have not added the following:

IMO, the effects of Demon Form, Replenish, and Arcane Barrage are known well enough that these aren't really up for question unless something significant changes in the next patch (the answers being, respectively, no, yes, no, one damage amount). The Incanter's Absorption question is already covered in the list, and the FFB question is covered in the Resist Mechanics section (FFB would certainly match Frostbolt's resist mechanics, whatever they turn out to be).


As per Manly's earlier request, I'm going to hold off on doing anything like that until the next patch comes out and we have some new information. At that point, I expect Vontre's tool will probably be updated much more quickly than my own, but I'll be working on it, too.

Apologies if this has been answered before, but it strikes me as particularly odd that Arcane Impact has not been updated to affect Arcane Barrage. Any thoughts on why this might be?

I can't argue with your rationalization, man, however being that the way arcane is shaping up (1) half it's cycle is instant (2) only ~90.3% of the other half is pushback-able, and most likely it'll be Fireball anyway, which is resistant.

AM is pidgeonholing it's self into an 8-talent point Master of The Ancient Art of Sucking.

Arc Impact changing to include it and NW proccing on each pulse would bring it solidly in line and produce a perfectly viable 51+/10+/0 or 51+/0/11+ talent precipitate which would rotate AM/Abarr and Fbolt/Fball on NW.

30% regen, if you're using Mage Armor (and of course if you're using Fel Armor as Affliction -- remember, Dark Pact uses a GCD, just like Life Tap, so not having to use it as often means more DPS). And with reduced mana from external sources, I strongly suspect we'll all be trading the 2-3% DPS we can get from Molten Armor for the improved endurance of Mage Armor on a significant number of fights. As for the elemental shaman, honestly, I dunno.

Oh, I certainly wouldn't bet against anyone who's telling me that people will complain. People will always complain. However, I'm quite sure that as far as Blizzard is concerned, in-combat regen has intrinsic value for every caster that has access to it. In the case of an Arcane mage, as a vital part of his DPS. In the case of a Fire mage, as a way to provide the option of using Destro pots instead of Mana pots. Hell, I myself use Mage Armor exclusively while farming and grinding now, because with the new regen rates, it means I never, ever have to stop -- that's worth a lot more to me than 3% crit. That doesn't matter much to people focused exclusively on raiding, but Blizzard feels (and correctly, I think) that it has value to many players.

So, yes, you're right when you say that players, particularly raiding players, won't be happy if spirit doesn't gain some flashy new effect -- I just think you're wrong about that mattering to Blizzard, because our concerns are not the only concerns they're designing around.

Did anyone else notice how there's no 'Ritual of Refreshment Rank 2'? Definitely something to add to the 'WotLK WTF is going on' list.

There's still a level cap in place so there's really no reason for a second rank to exist yet until 80 goes live.

http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/

Lhivera I'd add something along the lines of: "is mana regen going to rise proportionately with spell costs?" Maybe that's a little too general a question, but a lot of folks are concerned about this (including many non mages.)