Has this been confirmed? I don't see why some classes would get three and others two. Or why we would get four in TBC and two in WotLK. I will be greatly disappointed if these two spells are the only trainable spells we're getting, especially since both of them have very limited use.

moonkin crit % and totem of wrath is to spells only. Demo lock pet is melee - just like hunter's pet. They use doomguard - a 41st talent point pet that's the only one that can hope to survive raid environment.

1-2% from int? Wth? That's included in the base 5% pet's get.... there is no "int" for pets. It's called attack power, and no it doesn't increase crit chance.

Only thing that can affect them is 3% pally crit and 5% feral party buff, but odds of feral druids placed in caster group are slim to none. it would hurt more his dps than helped the pet.

I know we haven't seen much info on the frostfire bolt yet, the only things i've seen is on this forum and a snippet from alfa or beta with the supposed spell description from the button

"Launches a bolt of frostfire at the enemy, causing 629 to 731 Fire damage, slowing movement speed by 40% and causing an additional 60 fire damage over 9 sec. If the target is more vulnerable to Frost damage this spell will cause Frost instead of Fire damage."

Would bliz give us the possiblity to create an arcane build like the 40/0/21 using FFB's which are gaining effects from both fire and frost tread? I'm thinking about something like Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft40/12/19 where the FFB will gain from Ignite and Burning Soul and also Pircing Ice, Ice shards and Frost channeling.

That would in theory allow to just spam an FFB with a quite high amout of crit chance and crit dmg bonus, and still have mana a plenty for long fights.. OR is this just flawed or whishfull thinking on my part ?

You are right, I don't know why but I assumed the imp as a pet.
Using felguard I don't think that the situation reverse. The crit chanche is low (10/15?) but the attack speed increase in raid situation.
Felguard has a base 2 sec white attack speed plus cleave but demonic Empathy is an always up 30% speed increase. Add the new haste windfury totem and the retribution aura.

1 crit every 12 sec is not so difficult to obtain.

P.s: How many sec demonic empowerment lasts?

Demonic empathy makes no sense as a PvE talent whatsoever. It won't be up in raid situation period.

Think about it:

Description says for 3/3 talent:

"When you or your pet is critically hit, the other has 100% chance to have their casting or attack speed increased by 30% for 8 sec".

How many times are you critically hit in raid environment that does not instantly kill you? A small buff to your pet is last thing on your mind when you just got crit in a raid.

The situation for them looks like 10% crit for pet + 3% from ret judgements.... that's it to maintain a party buff.
Compared to 15% crit + hunter's agi scaling to pet's crit. Warlocks have no agility.. so no scaling here.

True about the windfury totem change though - 20% haste aura will help - making their pet similar to what the hunter's cat is right now.

Of course if they'd make imp viable, it all could change.. but right now imp is one shotted by most random aoe's in raids.

Depends on what they decide the final damage coefficient and talent benefits FFB gets. If it's relatively low, with that build you're probably better off just spamming AB. It would have to have a pretty high benefit from spell damage to be worthwhile, unless you had an obscene amount of crit. It is pretty much entirely crit reliant to do significant DPS, but maybe stacking spell crit would remedy this?

Right now I'm predicting that if it's the same damage coefficient as fireball untalented, it's not gonna be good enough to overtake straight AB spam.

I think once we understand what the spell benefits from at specific times, what "vulnerability" means, and when it deals what kind of damage, we will be able to draw some real conclusions about this spell. I know there's alot of confusion in the mage community right now as to how the spell works, so I think most theorycrafting has swayed away from fooling with the spell yet.

I may have missed a spec about this somewhere, but has anyone looked into a 51/10/10 Arcane build designed to use Frostfire Bolt? Basically, dip into Fire for Impact and Ignite (IIRC, Frostfire Bolt has a long enough range to not really need Flamethrowing), and Frost to get Elemental Precision and Ice Shards?

On a more general note, it seems that I can get 51 points in Arcane one of three ways. The 5 talent points under dispute are between Magic Absorption vs. two Spirit Talents vs. Netherwind Presence. Are there any suggestions as to which to take? I'm personally tempted to skip Netherwind Presence, as my reflexes aren't too good, but any mathematical approaches to answering the question would be most welcome.

Why would it when arcane power doesn't - I at least didn't expect it to nor does it appear to do according to the beta feedback? In an ideal world they should have capped AoE spells on the number of targets, rather than a fixed max non-crit-damage independent of gear, but I guess it was easier to implement the current version.

What I'm confused about with World in Flames is how it affects crits when you AoE.

Lets just say Blast Wave has a 1000 damage cap.

You hit 3 mobs with a Blast Wave, two get regular hit and one is critically hit.

You hit Mob1 for 333 damage.
You hit Mob2 for 333 damage.
You hit Mob3 for ??? damage.

Would the ??? be the normal 500 you would expect, or would it be 574 with 15% added from World in Flames?

The number of debuff slots available is going to take a serious hit with all the new debuff effects being added. Destro will hopefully not be getting switched back to 0/21/50; DS is getting switched back to something like its current effect, but they're making some kind of change that will presumably be aimed at making it less attractive. They've also explicitly stated that they're addressing the pet survivability/endurance issue; indeed, Imp. Soul Leech should make it a piece of cake to keep the Imp casting full-time for Destro, and Imp. Felhunter should do the same for Affliction (although not if it's also being Dark Pacted -- but Shadow Bite can always be disabled until it regens). I'm betting that pets will either simply be immune to a lot more boss effects, or will have some degree of built-in damage reduction on AOE such as the Hunter pet talent Avoidance currently provides. (And of course Squirt, my Water Elemental, will be quite happy about this.)


That's a very interesting point! It could make a big difference in the viability of Fire AOE for Warlocks.

I got some more info from the tester on this (I want to credit him, but he hasn't told me yet if I can use his name; if he does, I will). He sent me a few screenshots with some interesting numbers and results:

- Blizzard crits do indeed (and of course) happen on a tick by tick basis. His ticks were hitting for 496-497; they were critting for 1037-1038. He's level 70. Even with a CSD, the crit damage shouldn't be that high; it should be more like 1006. Not sure what's up with that.

- Blizzard cannot apply Winter's Grasp. Shouldn't be surprised, I guess. Even so, with a 30% crit chance, and a 15% chance per tick (assuming chain casting, the first tick of the first cast is of course left out) that a target has +50% crit chance, this is roughly a 37.5% increase to blizzard DPS. Should put it close to, but below, Arcane Explosion DPS, as long as it's not capped.

- It looks like Incanter's Absorption stacks in a single buff, but internally it seems to remember how much time is remaining on the damage bonus from each individual absorption. Basically when he got a new absorb, the buff duration refreshed, but the damage bonus on his character sheet would decrease incrementally as the buff ticked down, rather than expiring all at once.


The uptime issue was addressed in the previous post; I believe it'll be much better than you're expecting. But even if it isn't, I suspect that the +Damage bonus is going to be worth considerably more than +3% damage when it's up.

I'd be tempted to say that you are wrong, but i don't have the math to prove it.. but going 40 point into arcane like i suggested would give you full mana from arcane meditation , crit from arcane potency dmg from arcane instability, even more crit dmg from spell power a boost from Arcane power and potent spirit for crit and mind mastery for mana and crit.. I cant see how i can get as much value from using them in the middle of the fire and frost tree.

The low-mid level frost and fire talents, assuming they all work with FFB, would do much more than those arcane talents. Increased damage from crits, higher damage percentage, higher crit rates, reduced mana, etc. That is clearly much more beneficial. Those trees are stacked at the lower levels.

0/34/37, for example, would give you molten fury, ignite, fire power, frost channeling, ice shards, shatter... that's huge

Dammit, I know that (I even put it in a FAQ) and I still keep screwing it up when I do it off the cuff :/

Middle of the frost tree includes such things as shatter, Sondag.

The only big multiplier in the arcane tree is spellpower, and that's a 32 point investment. No reason to go past that. 33 if you want grab POM along with it.

That said, a tri spec like 33/17/21 might be interesting. Bigger crits for ffb, but I'd guess lower damage on regular hits.

frostfire does get more from fire/frost than it does from arcane; the only viable FFb/arcane build I can think up is a 51/10/10 build the weaves ABar with FFb for highest possible crit ratio... but even then, you can happily move the points out of fire and get far better investments in ABar/frostbolt cycles.

Which of these specs ends up being viable is quite dependant on what they do to deep fire to 'polish' it (damned imigrants). And how FFb interacts with with tallents.

Considering what Lhiv's beta friend has said about Incanter's abs, it strikes me as a very potent PvP tallent - combined with shatter shield and 20points in frost it gives you a huge buff to spell damage EXACTLY when you need it. A simple mod to tell you when your SS is going to break and you soon end up in a situation where some big bad titan's grip fury warrior breaks through your manashield+shattershield, gives you ~600 spell damage buff and gets himself frozen. If you're quick on the draw you can get at least 1 icelance on him before he trinkets that, then you throw down a frost nova and easilly lob off another 2 icelances before the nova breaks. Thats an extra 1800+ damage in burst provided by IA alone, before crits.

The functionality in PvE is still situational. If you have a disc priest with you I'm sure they won't mind shielding you (it gives them mana) - we know there are plenty of situations where we can predict large and/or steady incoming damage. Assuming they continue such a trend in WotLK, it can end up with quite a reliable uptime. Personally, i'd look into something like http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...50330125231301
for PvE arcane/frost build taking advantage of incanter's abs. Imp. mana shield can save you a lot of mana if you plan on using it, but if you can't spare the mana then you can throw them into arcane impact or NWP.

Excellent information Lhivera...

Could you, uh, pass a request along to them from me? I would, and I'm sure the mage community at large would, greatly greatly greatly appreciate posts about this in the Beta forum, it makes it all much more legitimate and makes for the potential for Blizz to see it and react.

Quoting a healer friend:
"Spells you learned 15/20 levels ago get nearly no bonus from spell power." (No exact info known.)

You could make a note "How is the new downranking penalty?" into the WotLK questionnaire.
How to test:
* Spec 0/0/0, note your current arcane spell power. Make sure to not have any procs.
* Fly to Dr. Boom, shoot one volley of AM of each rank, note the tooltip damage and the actual damage.
( Tooltip damage is needed because databases like wowhead only display the damage when learned. )

The rest is calculator work.


[Edit]: At Lhivera - is your friend level 70? Just to make sure.

[Edit ii]: Okay, absorbing nothing at all sounds bugged.

He tells me he's reading this thread, so you can consider him asked .

I've been playing around with what he sent, and am coming up with some surprising stuff. I haven't seen his exact damage bonus when specced Frost, but in one screenshot he's specced Arcane and has 1176 damage with 519, so I estimate his damage bonus in Frost to be 1046. Edit: Correction, he has informed me that his Frost spell power was about 1200. Revising numbers below. Also, his name is Rancid.

His Blizzard is ticking (non-crits) for 496 and 497 (I have a combat log screenshot). Damage bonus required for 496.5 damage per tick with Blizzard: (496.5 * 8 / 1.05 / 1.06 - 1476) / 1.1429 ~= 1831

He doesn't have 1831. He has somewhere around 1200. Coefficient required to get ticks that size with 1200 damage:

(496.5 * 8 / 1.05 / 1.06 - 1476) / 1200 = 1.7439

His Frost Nova crits for 1038, which would be a hit of 1038 / 2.09 ~-497

Coefficient required to get 497 damage out of Frost Nova (assuming a max hit) with 1200 damage:

(497 / 1.05 / 1.06 - 113) / 1200 = 0.27795

Could this be what Blizzard's doing to restore our AOE power? Massive coefficient increases? Need testing on more AOE spells, but a very rough estimate would be a 50% increase to the coefficient on both Blizzard and Frost Nova.

In Arcane spec, with 1165 Spell Power, his Arcane Barrage damage range was 1436 - 1494. Naked, reducing his spell power to 42, his damage range was 451 - 545. Going by max hits to weed out 10% resists or things that may be happening (not sure if the log is showing them yet), the damage increased by 949 / 1.03 ~= 921 with the addition of 1123 spell power.

921 / 1123 = 0.8201

Awfully close to 85.71%; it could be taking a small penalty for being instant cast, or it could just be a case of not enough data points to see the true max damage at both Spell Power values.


Aye, but he's telling me ranks 1 and 2 are absorbing literally 0 damage -- not just missing the spell power bonus, they're not even absorbing the base amount, and rank 3 is absorbing considerably less than its base amount. In other words, this could be a case of the downranking penalty being extended beyond the coefficient and to the base functionality of the spell itself.

If we take it as 'X levels below max = -(Y) spell damage', then you certainly can extrapolate that to give NEGATIVE values of spells damage for extremely low rank spells - and hence 0 absorbed on low rank mana shield.

Whether or not you can call that bug... I guess thats up to blizzard.

List of current spell values at 70
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t18441-m...ad/#post553923

List of current spell values when learned
Mage - Skills - World of Warcraft

List of WotLK spell values when learned
Mage - Skills - World of Warcraft


Currently, you learn Blizzard at 68 for 1472 damage and it doesn't scale up at 70. (Odd, potential mistake.)
In Wrath, you learn Blizzard at 68 for 2184 damage.
Add 5% and 6% damage from talents => 2431 damage.

(496.5*8-2431)/1.05/1.06 = 1384 bonus damage. Current scaling 0.5 for AoE, or 8s/3.5*0.5 = 114%.
1384/114% = 1214 frost power needed with the old mechanics. Looks about right.
AoE coefficient from 0.5 seems unchanged.

For frost nova:
(497/1.05/1.06-260) = 186, (497/1.05/1.06-230) = 216 bonus damage. An instant AoE with 1214 frost power would get 1214*1.5/3.5*0.5 = 260 bonus damage. Maybe a 75% scaling, up from the 20% scaling we have right now.
[E] Frost Nova has ~75-100% scaling of other instant AoE effects, increased from the neglible 20%.
The additional numbers suggest a ~90% scaling if you drop the low value. (Possible resist? Still suspicious.)

For Arcane Barrage:
It has a damage range of 150, your geared hits have a range of 60, your naked hits a range of 90.
3% error is ~30 damage, fits with the 3s/3.5s scaling. We have an even higher error margin (~60 to 90), but I don't think it's worth testing right now.


[Edit]:
Blizzard, Rain of Fire had their base damage increase by ~50%. Frost Nova more than doubled.
Arcane Explosion, Dragon's Breath, Blastwave, Hellfire, Seed fo Corruption seem unchanged.

Hm, in that case, getting naked should cause it to start absorbing again. That should be tested.


Hm, in that case, getting naked should cause it to start absorbing again. That should be tested.

I missed the changes to the base damage of existing ranks (obviously). OK, so Blizzard coefficient looks unchanged. That's OK, the change to allow it to crit is really all it needed.

OK, looking closer at his log, I've found three Frost Novas (with crit damage removed): 497, 526, 544. I have to assume that the 497 suffered a partial resist, as it lies well outside the 30 point damage range. So 526 should be somewhere near the low end of the range, and 544 somewhere near the high end.
(526 / 1.05 / 1.06 - 230) / 1200 = 0.2022
(544 / 1.05 / 1.06 - 260) / 1200 = 0.1906