Beta request for a level 70 (!) mage

Could a level 70 mage shoot a volley of rank 10 and 11 Arcane Missiles, and write down how much they hit for and how much (arcane) spell power they have?
Preferably a 0/0/0 specced mage, but any other specs work as well. I'd just need the tooltip damage as well then.


The reason is that Quantum's downranking tests only make sense if Arcane Missiles received a 20% scaling nerf, or downranking is even more confusing than we thought so far.

I have a friend who got a betakey yesterday. Ill chek up on him as soon as he´s downloaded the beta client and ask him to test that.

I don't remember ever seeing the answer to this question: How did Burnout work with AoE spells? If it crit e.g. 2 mobs do you loose 2% of total mana or still just 1%.

Also do master of elements returns 30 or 60% of the mana cost of a critting FFB? And what about Frozen Core - does that talent work double too on FFB?

Barring bugs, it can only refund mana once per spell. According to Quanum's videos, it refunded 135, which is 30% of its base mana cost 450.

Also, because people tend to bring it up time and again:
There is no such thing as "enough Winter's Grasp uptime".

When you have 2 mages and the first one specs WG, uptime goes from 0% to 19%.
When you have 5 mages with 4 having WG, and the 5th specs into it as well, uptime goes from 57% to 65%.

So, one is 19% and the other is only 8% more uptime.
Here's the "but": 8% for 5 mages is more DPS gain than 19% for two mages.

If you take "total WG uptime" as measurement, meaning TWG = WGuptime*#mages (assuming all mages have shatter when you consider WG, which they should), then TWG is a direct measure of the raid DPS gained by WG. Not counting the 2% hit because we can't quantify that, just taking the shatter benefit.


In our example, the 1st of 2 mages speccing WG is a 2*19% = 38% TWG increase
The 5th of 5 mages speccing WG is a 5*8% = 40% TWG increase. That's the same raid DPS increase as a 20% crit talent.
If you already have shatter in a build like 0/50/20+1 or similar, and considering how much an increase crit is for FFB specs, I can't see how Fire/Shatter is more RDPS than an FFB+WG spec.


Some preliminary numbers on total WG uptime added:
The 1s mage of 2 mages who specs shatter increases TWG by 38%. The 2nd mage of 2 mages increases TWG by 31%.
When you have 3 to 7 mages, the last mage speccing shatter increases TWG by 37%-41%. The mages before him obviously add even more TWG uptime.
(The first adds most, the 2nd 2nd most, etc.)

Even the 10th mage out of 10 mages adds as much TWG as the 2nd mage of 2 mages (~30% TWG added).


So, the bottom line for Winter's Grace currently is:
If it's beneficial in a 2 mage scenraio to have 1 mage spec WG, then you want all mages to spec WG in scenarios of up to 7 mages.
If it's beneficial for the single mage to spec WG, it's beneficial for the 14th mage in a 14 mage scenario to spec WG.


Oh, and we already had a glimpse of "Winter's Grasp" in raids. Ragnaros.
He was freezable for some odd reason, not that he'd run away ...
Shatter/Frostbite was funky on him, especially if stacked to, say 33 frost mages *cough* YouTube - Ragnaros speed kill BEFORE TBC
But no one called for nerfs back then, so let's see how this one turns out

Off-topic, but any info on Arcane Intellect/Brilliance? I find it rather weak compared to new MotW/GotW which is +52 all stat, +75 all res and 1050 armor. At least 5 times better in stats + the res it gives. AB still looks like the weakest raid utility spell.

You are correct, I just installed VLC at work so I could watch that video.

On a sidenote - anyone looked the tooltip recently?
If the target is more vulnerable to Frost damage, this spell will cause Frost instead of Fire damage.
I wonder if the tooltip was written before they decided to add dual-school damage to the game. Did anyone test what the combat log say regarding the damage type when shooting at vulnerable mobs like the Tar Lords in Un'Goro crater - does it change to fire only or is it still frostfire according to the combat log? And what if shooting e.g. at a player with fire resist gear on? According to the tooltip it should do firedamage per default, and frostdamage if that gives more damage - based on the reports here that does not seem to be the case.

this is more of a PVP question but if your casting FFB and it gets counterspelled, which tree does it lock?

Seeing that FFB has its own damage type (Frost+Fire) but benefits from talents wich benefit either there are 3 possible outcomes when being counterspelled.

1: the "FrostFire" school gets locked (aka only FFB)
2: the school in wich the bolt would have done damage gets locked (unlikely as this mechanic is most likely outdated as the spell received its own damage type)
3: both schools get locked down (unlikely again as it would cripple mages using the spell more then mages using either a frost or a fire spell when beeing counterspelled)

As i am not invited to beta i cant test this myself, but option 1 seems the most logical to me.

It locks all your other frostfire spells :P narh.. what page is it under in the spellbook? i'd say it locks that tree.

Spell book page is irrelevant. There is are no Destro/Disc/Resto spell schools.

Counterspell is based on spell school. Frostfire Bolt - Spell - World of Warcraft lists it as "School: Fire".
Seeing that BC Searing Totem Searing Totem - Spell - World of Warcraft is "Fire" and WotLK Searing Totem Searing Totem - Spell - World of Warcraft is "Nature" and that causes the whole silenced/counterspelled/etc. issue, it's pretty safe to say that Frostfire Bolt spell lock is tied to the Fire School.

My guess is that we'll see a small amount of school-specific Spell Power, just as we did in TBC (really, the amount in TBC was pathetically small unless you counted "Of _____ Wrath" greens), but it will come exclusively from craftables. The gear streamlining is really intended to greatly reduce the amount of gear that is sharded. That's not an issue with gear you choose to make. I expect (hope) that we'll continue to see a little specialized tailored gear, school-specific enchants, and perhaps the new Enchanting wands will also have some school-specific spell power.


I really don't think the elementalist spec is intended to crush all current traditional specs. It's intended to be competitive with them, and FFB will likely be tuned until it is. As discussed above, double benefit from CoE and Elemental Precision really cannot be intended; don't expect them to stick around. I think we'll probably wind up with a result such as the one Vontre got with some experimental coding on Magegraf a couple weeks back, where an FFB spec might run 5-10% higher than Frost and Arcane in a stationary fight. However, I expect that FFB spec's mobility will fall below Frost's (and above Fire's).

Having one spec prove significantly superior to all others for raiding (or for PvP) is not a buff. It's a design failure. The target for FFB spec must be competitive DPS output with Frost, Fire, and Arcane specs, not superiority. Obviously, every one of these specs will have advantages in some situations and disadvantages in others. But for Blizzard to deliberately drive every PvE spec mage into Elementalist spec would run completely contrary to their stated intentions, and would be pretty bizarre in light of the efforts they've been making to break the 0/21/40 stranglehold on Warlock PvE builds.


That's OK, as long as our damage output is high enough to justify bringing us along to perform our primary role, which is DPS, not buffing. Which remains to be seen (which is not an invitation to be pessimistic about it!)

I have read, though this is by no means confirmed, that the amount of Intellect required per % of spell crit is only increasing from 80 to ~90, which means that the value of Intellect for crit is increasing considerably relative to Crit Rating (being something like half as valuable at level 80, vs. a bit more than 1/4th as valuable at 70).


ETA: I see that the wand recipes have been discovered, and do not include any school-specific equipment. How sad.

Why would Winter's Grasp have diminishing returns? It does not impair the target in any way.

It was brought up in the Blizzard forums. Personally, I think it would be very silly and would gimp the 2 talents in pvp. And as you said, Frostbite is a snare. Just thought I'd pose the question here, because I remember when Frost Nova and Frostbite shared DR on a PTR.

Oh and hello Lhivera!

I can't imagine that happening. Improved Scorch isn't on DR. Winter's Chill isn't on DR. Curse of Elements isn't on DR. Winter's Grasp is essentially identical to these talents: a debuff that increases your damage dealt to the target. DR is reserved exclusively for effects that limit your target's ability to act: Impact, Frost Nova, Frostbite, and Deep Freeze would all be expected to have DR, but there's no reason to expect it of Winter's Grasp. Rest easy, I say!

Has there been any change to the downranking mechanic of polymorph? With the change to mana shield downranking I would like to know if they have changed how downranking works for all spells, or simply for mana shield.

Well since polymorph is getting its manacost changed to a percentage of your base mana the only effect you would get from downranking is shorter duration.

Hmmm. Looks like they are trying to salvage AM with missile barrage.

Can this be confirmed to be what we're working with by someone in beta?

If so, the new questions become:

Missile Barrage - When is haste applied (1.5 seconds off the top, or off the bottom), what is the duration of the buff, can it be spellstolen/dispelled? And on a more qualitative note, will it make AM worth casting on procs?
Netherwind Presence - Increase haste, or increase haste effect from gear (not likely, but worth noting)

Deleted.

The talent reduces AM to 1.5 second total cast time. It does not reduce it by 1.5 seconds.

I find it very interesting that arcane blast is missing from the list of spells that can proc missile barrage. I take that as further confirmation that Bliz really does not want AB used as a primary nuke.

Its a damn sight better than the old netherwind presence, but I notice this one can't proc off ABlast. Also, its only going to be worth casting if you have empowered AM, and you'll still only use AM when this procs - essentially making it an 8point tallent (which is making the arcane tree very bloated for my likes).

Its all moot if the rumoured co-efficient on AM is true.

None of this is live on beta yet unfortunately.