On the other hand, since our best base cycle may be "ArcBarrage - Frostbolt", you may have Icy Veins, and you'll want to stack it with AP, and if possible trinkets.

You can actually setup these 5:20-6:00 fights with 2:00 trinket/potions, 2:30 AP and 3:00 IV as well:
0:00 Stack 2m + 2:30m + 3m
2:30 Stack 2m + 2:30m
5:00 Stack 2m + 2:30m + 3m
I was afraid that the -30sec cooldown was worthless, but it works out well in this scenario at least.


Also, regarding haste, an ABar-Frostbolt cycle has 4.0s cast time base.

Wrath of Air Totem is 10%, Ret Aura is 3%, Netherwind Presence is 6%. That's 20.1% haste, bringing 4.0s to 3.33s.
If you get another 11% from gear/buffs/elsewhere, you're already at the 3.0s cycle cap.

Any kind of haste buff (Imp. Moonkin Aura, Heroism, Icy Veins) will bring you below the cycle cap.

A cycle with Fireball/Frostfire Bolt will give you more leeway for haste procs, it has 4.5s base cast time.
With the above 3 static buffs, you're at 3.75s cast time. You need another 25% to get to the cap.


I'm thinking about some 51+/0/X spec that uses FrB rotations normally, and FFB when above the ABar-FrB haste cap.
I'm well aware that the DPS is terrible and FFB may only barely be a better filler than FrB.
If you spend a lot under haste buffs or have high base haste, it might be better to try stitching a 51/10/10 spec together to buff FFB (Ignite with Spell Power and Ice Shards) at the expense of FrB.

And there we thought Arcane Theorycraft in BC was complicated ...


Edit:
It's fine, when you get 1200 back from JoW then spamming AM is a mana gain already ...

About AB's future - with this new tree I actually see a purpose for all arcane spells.
- Standard rotation something like ABr+frostbolt with AM on procs.
- Whenever AP is up use it with trinkets, IV and so on and spam AB instead of frostbolts - AB gains 30% more damage while the extra mana cost only increase from 225% to 255% (13,3% increase) not counting 2xtier5 bonus. I still just would like more damage for more mana cost pr default on AB though - if a firemage or even frostmage got plenty of mana below 20% I think AB spam should be the preferred weapon of choice - execute for mages.

I like the fact that AM seem to have a purpose at least - still seem a bit underwhelming for 8/13 talent points though. (imp AM seems pretty bad with the new Missile Barrage - making it include AB too and possibly reducing it to 70% seems like a better talent.)

Student of the mind should replace Wand spec and arcane potency having clearcast as prerequisite again. Or maybe put arcane meditation in wand specs position (and Student of the mind in arcane meditation's position) if they truly want frost and fire to have use of the Spirit stat too.

This of cause assuming Winter's Grasp is getting a nerf, and that FFB spam isn't the only viable PvE spec. Otherwise arcane only seem to be a viable build for 5-10 man content.

A lot of the WOTLK changes seem to be towards "breaking" a cast rotation monotony and make players react dynamically to procs and cooldowns.

(Prot) Warriors can proc refreshes on their Shield Slam cooldowns, along with the loss of guaranteed Shield Blocks making Revenge less regular. There's also Sudden Death and Bloodsurge for out-of-rotation Executes and Slams.

Without going into too much detail, this goes on for most other classes.

When I look at a Mage, and specifically the new Arcane changes, two things stand out in this regard:
1. Winter's Grasp - you have to break your rotation and react with a Shatter combo
2. Missile Barrage - you have to break your rotation and react with an AM cast

Jarlyn, do you feel that these 2 points are not enough to significantly change the pace at which a Mage plays his DPS?

I like the general concept of Arcane Blast because the idea of tailoring your cast rotation and mana consumption to end at 0 mana the same time the boss reaches 0 HP is really quite exciting from the outside looking in. If anything, Fire needs a "rotation breaking" effect, since WG and Missile Barrage are quite deep into their respective trees.

This is a direct quote from what i just posted on the Mage forum on the WoW site.

Any thoughts, input and telling me if i'm wrong or right (lol) would be greatly appreciated.

Also, thanks rowryn for the insight into JoW. that's incredible

For Winter's Grasp, is adding in an Ice Lance every few Frostbolts substantially game-changing? It's dynamic in the sense that you don't do it at set intervals (ie. Scorch), but I don't see that as revolutionizing in terms of changing how a mage raids.

Arcane has always had a ton of possibility to be most "interesting" spec to play, but to this point they've never gotten it right. Looking at the whole of BC raiding here, Arcane Missiles has never for a single second been viable DPS purely on it's own merits. It worked in 2.2 through a combination of moderately overpowered mechanics that worked together to make a sub-par spell viable. And Arcane Blast has generally only been viable DPS when used in conjunction with 2pc T5 - it never really worked on it's own (ignoring unusual situations where you got chain innervates and whatnot). Both spells have more or less required external help to "work."

To this point in the beta, Fire and Frost (at least, before their revisions) feel very conventional to me, just teaching an old dog a couple new tricks. Arcane is by far the most exploratory of the three trees, and that's fantastic - if they pull it off. All the possible complexity and variety of Arcane is moot if it's not good DPS, and based on what we're seeing here, Blizzard is going to have a hell of time balancing it. As Roywyn mentioned a couple posts ago, the TC here is extremely complicated, but with the lack of an Empowered talent and a substantial percentage-based damage increase (Fire Power), there's a lot of ground to be made up.

I'm going to stop posting here until we see the Fire and Frost changes though, I don't want to have an argument about this when we know there's a lot more changes on the horizon.

Looking at the new arcane tree, made me think about revamping the by now classic 40/0/21 to a nifty 47/0/24'ish build.. basicly it's 6% haste, crit from spirit, 2x IV and 40% wintersgrasp.. ought to be real competetive for people raiding without the top notch endgame gear..

Looks like we will get a buch of different ways to spec i WOTLK, and i can't wait to see if anything happens to fire and frost too!

Winter's Grasp reads as follows...

"Gives your Frost damage spells a 5% chance to apply the Winter's Grasp effect, which increases the chance all attacks will hit the target by 2% and the target is considered Frozen for 5 sec."

i dont get how ice lance matters when spam frostbolt would be more damage conductive and even ice lance spam would only proc the debuff 10% more...

Winter's grasp hasnt really caught my eye as anything particularly special... not to mention i'm hard pressed to believe this will actually effect raid bosses, further proving (to me anyway) that frost is the major pvp spec and that's about it.

that is however, my opinion.

Right, i'm not the greatest at TC, just some basics from what i could toss together. I really just hoped to inspire people with more skill to help out and then work together as a community to figure this out. Give me a few, i'll try and add in AP, PoM, IV, NWP and Bloodlust...

this could take a while...


EDIT -- question. from what i'm reading it seems as though the MB proc is pretty much set in stone as far as it's casting time and pulse rate (1 pulse/.3 sec)... any idea if that would be reduced by haste? or if it's going to be 1.5 seconds no matter what.

I'm putting my money on the second option because of how it's written, but i'm unsure...

Now I feel like a jerk. D:

Well, didn't Lhivera have an idea about using Incanter's Absorption to take advantage of AoE damage by shielding to get the spell damage increases? Mana Shield is a lot more costly than Power Word: Shield, but when that shield goes down after an AoE while you still have Weakened Soul, keeping Mana Shield up seems like an idea. 2 talent points for the Imp Mana Shield might make the difference between Mana Shield not being worth it for Incanter's Absorption and being a decent use of talent points.

Edit:

To the WG doubter, WoW Forums -> Winters Grasp and ImageShack - Hosting :: sgrasponboomjx1.jpg.

Compare that to how much mana arcane use at Brutallus. With an innervate the numbers you post here is pretty close to what I burn in a fight like that. You have to include stuff like evocations, innervates, mana tides, mana spring, JoW, BoW, shadowpriest, potions, gems, spirit regen.


Only looking at WG when having 1-3 mages in the raid the talent seems strong but not overpowered - a needed PvE boost for frost. The problem with the talent is when you start stacking mages beyond that. The raid boss thing I'm still not 100% convinced at either yet, however the 2% hit part of the debuff seems really pointless if it doesn't work on raid bosses.

right. i mentioned just below there all those things in my post :P

and while the fellow above you did post that WG was working, it's not going to be up all the time unless there are like 3 mages in the raid who are all deep enough into the frost tree to grab that talent... i.e. i dont feel it's worth it either... people can get 2% hit elsewhere, it really shouldn't be that difficult.

I like most of the changes of the Arcane tree, but anyone else is feeling like we simply have to spend too many points on it? For a 51-XX-XX spec at least. And there is no clear difference between PvP and PvE ones, so you have to drop key talents, resulting in the loss of either survivabilty, controlled crit (CC+potency), mana efficiency, haste and so on, not to mention Incanter's Absorption, which requires an enormous sacrifice, despite it's a key talent of PvE and PvP.
This is even emplified by the fact that this tree (unlike frost of fire) is crippled without 20 points spent on the other two.
Could be fixed by fusing talents and/or making 2/3 pointers out of 5-pointers.

It does say "is considered Frozen", and not "Freezes"...so it may be safe to assume that this is a special way of saying "we know bosses can't be frozen, this will just pretend they are for the sake of Ice Lance, Shatter and Deep Freeze" It's just a flag debuff.

Deathknights also have this same "considered frozen" in their Hungering Cold ability, the targets aren't specifically "frozen" (as with Frost Strike), although this effect will obviously not trap a boss, making them inactive:
"Unleashes all available runic power to suddenly purge the earth around the Death Knight of all heat. Enemies within 10 yards are trapped in ice, preventing them from performing any action for 1 sec per 5 runic power. Enemies are considered Frozen, but any damage will break the ice."

I think that basically means the deathknight sort of Frost Novas, but instead of just rooting, the mobs are like "Frost Trap"ed (no actions allowed), with one hit breaking it, but that one hit will count as if the mob is frozen for sake of Shatter, Ice Lance, Deep Freeze...this would be a good setup for their Howling Blast that does triple dmg against "frozen" targets. As you can see, Frost Mages and Frost Deathknights are going to synergize well (just check out Frost Rune Weapon)...they both like to freeze and abuse frozen targets.

this is the spec i've come up with, basing it solely around PvE

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

there's obviously a clear difference between the PvE and the PvP talents. Incanter's Absorption (to me) is very much a PvP talent, unless it work with PW:S and you have a lot of bosses throwing magic damage at you all the time... Prismatic Cloak is a PvP talent. Imp CS is a PvP talent. Imp AM really isnt necessary for either spec it seems, you shouldnt be spamming AM...

By the way i only put 1 point in each of the +3yd range talents so that i could have a static 33yd range work instead of having to go 30 yds because i couldnt do a proper rotation with arcane moves at 36 yds and frost only being at 30, and vice versa.

those range talents were the only thing i crippled. the deeper frost talents should be evened out by the great deep arcane talents. (minus the crit from WC/empFB)

so you're saying that when the target is "considered frozen", shatter applies? as well as the ice lance 3x damage? i was merely thinking of it as +hit mechanic, that didnt even cross my mind lol.

THAT may prove useful. giving mages an extra 50% crit every so often. that's a whole different ball game.

For some reason theese links show me the outdated talents trees with broken builds.

This arcane flows looks like a nice idea, but like stated it runs into some problems with messing the sync of others CDs. If it instead would simply make haste affect cooldowns it would make everything match everything else, would remove the problem with ABr and haste, and it would be a unique talent making arcane more desireable.

@ Brebbia

press F5. i think that fixed it for some people.

Why they cut Potent Spirit by the way? I know they also removed Kindling Soul of the WL, but they already have Fel Armor to convert spirit into damage.

Something I was hoping someone could check would be if higher ranks of the ramped up arcane blast use the same mana multiplier as the current one.

Has it been established whether permafrost works with winter's grasp?

Permafrost isn't a spell

Is the winter's grasp effect not a chill effect?

I'd like to know the duration of the missile barrage buff once it goes onto beta - if it lasts long enough it may be worth holding on to untill clearcasting procs and you can unload a barrage for free with +30% crit chance. With a JoW up that combo will generate a lot of mana.