Eh. Since mages are supposed to be the 'primary nuke class,' why shouldn't they have the game's highest DPM and highest DPS nuke? I can't think of anyone else who deserves it based on class role.

Fire offers a DPM and DPS advantage, Frost offers snares and survivability, and Arcane offers burst. I dont' see what would be wrong if the trees were set up like that.

The issue was that whilst Fireball should be the highest DPS nuke in the game, having it also be the highest DPM nuke in the game causes issues - it makes frostbolt toally redundant, and meant that scorch wasn't an option for when mana was tight. It reduced everything down to "fireball like crazy".

I'm all for buffs to fire, but having one nuke be best at everything isn't good for the game or the class. I like variety in my spells... :)

I doubt combustion combined with ignite (plus other mages doing the same) can be beaten in burst damage, which by your definition makes fire the best burst damage and DPM, im personally going to stay fire for leveling and probably the same for PvE

In a 40-man, sure. It might not be so easy to keep the ignite stack up with 3 mages in a raid, though.

The problem with combustion for levelling or PVP is that its burst is unpredictable, and might not happen when you really need it.

So, has anyone come up with an optimal "PvE Arcane Raid" build that uses AM or AB as the primary nukes?

Also, the range on AB is only 30 yards, correct? That concerns me a bit. If they really want Arcane to supercede fire they should give us a talent for at least 6 more yards...

Due to a heavy reliance on clearcasts (AP Emp AM takes HOW MUCH mana?) I don't think anyone has actually tried the build yet. That and a 30 yard range is painful. However, I don't think their goal is for AM/AB to replace our primary bolt spells.

And if you have a retribution paladin with Crusader Strike, will be easy (or at least, easier) to maintain a perma-JoW.

I actually think that for leveling, a pure (read: nothing but arcane) build might be appealing despite the lower DPM. The reason is that you get all the goods right away. A fire build needs at least 10 in arcane and 3 in frost for maximum efficiency, so at level 60 you flat out can't have it all. In arcane you can. According to the numbers posted here and my own calculations, AM is not that far behind in DPM any more so that an arcane grind build might be very viable for the first few levels after 60.

Has someone with a beta key tried that? I would really like to see if that works and how the leveling speed is compared to an incomplete deep fire build.

I think clearcasting is overrated for straight up grinding. You're going to have to drink sooner or later anyway and your mana refills so fast once you do so. I'll probably be going full fire to level up.

I've been playing with a few different specs during alpha/beta and i wanted to throw some things into the PVE math that I haven't seen yet:

1) I was deep frost for 60-62 and while trying to kite kill a few elites 2-3 levels above me I noticed that my water elemental was practically useless. The mobs (lvl 64 named Nagas in Zangamarsh) resisted almost all his water bolts and I was lucky to have one land so the naga would stop beating on my iceblock and give me more room. If the water elemental has a base %hit chance (ie it does not pickup anything from your gear/spec) then it's not going to help much on raid bosses.

2) I was mostly deep fire 62-66. Was getting hit more but in soloing and in instances, when a mob was down to a lowish percentage of health, fireblast+DB were godly... and maybe in a rare case followed by a fireball. I remember thinking at the time that this would be ever more amazing on high health mobs and that doing more damage to a wounded target is a better PVE fit now given the threat nerf.

3) I've been mostly deep arcane since 67, currently at 40/0/18 for instancing. this spec allows me to frost-kite some elites (best frost damage I can get is from spellpower + MM...and 36 yd frostbolts) and also do some damage to mobs 4-5 levels above me with arcane blast and missiles (Caverns of Time: Medivh, and a few hard mode instances). If all I was doing is mobs 4-5 levels above me I might throw even more points into arcane, but I'll burn that bridge when I get there. Right now arcane gives me a great mana pool (8700 with AI) and some ok mana regen, but being stuck with lvl 55 water still makes it very OOMish in a reasonably paced instance run (yeah, I buy lvl 65 water for instance runs but I'm not happy about it).

Speaking of, I hope there's a new water quest at level 68-70?

Given the recent changes to Elemental Precision, Fire actually is looking great for levelling without clearcasting - you're getting a 6% mana decrease on all your spells straight up, and the DPS is much higher than arcane.

Also, remember that the numbers earlier included Judgement of Wisdom on the mobs for Arcane Missiles efficiency - which you aren't getting soloing. Without JoW, Arcane Missiles is utterly and absolutely terrible as a spell.

Well, I have done my own math excluding outside factors and I get approximately 25% less mana efficiency for deep arcane AM spam compared to fireball spam. While that is noticeable I would not call it terrible, especially with arcane efficiency talents offsetting part of the loss. Opening with arcane blast (which is quite mana efficient before getting charged) also helps.

It is simply too hard to do pure theorycraft comparisons for leveling in unknown content. Factors like no spell interruption on AM can come in handy when fighting ranged mobs. If you fight a lot of spell caster mobs, getting mana back on a resist might also be useful. The often belittled magic attunement might also help reduce downtime, especially with the newly boosted HP pools - it is conceivable that a mage solo grinding will not be bound by how long it takes to regenerate mana but HP.

All these are things that fire does not have and that arcane can get out of the gate at level 60. So I would really like someone go out and try (or lend me their beta key so I can try /wink).

I would hope so too (and it is an issue I tried to raise a while ago) but currently I gather there is no planned new water or food until level 70. I find that to be terribly amusing in a rather horrifying way. I'm not presently in the beta though, this is just information from friends who are and the spelldat.

Is full fire really that good for levelling? I can't see how it could beat out a build including shatter, ice shards, frostbite, and frost channelling + AC/MoE for pure domination of non ranged mobs and awesome DPM with ice lance and the high crit rate.

Erm, 25% less mana efficiency is insanely important for levelling up. You're talking about a large downtime increase because of that.

Also, arcane builds generally don't have the Arcane missiles interruption ability - because it's pretty bad, and because you have other points to spend. From the experiance all my guild mates have had in the beta, there is absolutely no competition between fire & arcane for levelling up - fire is simply hands down the best spec out of the two. At the end of the day, it's DPS & DPM that wins you the race, and fire wins on both in a levelling setting.

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Re. numbers, I redid my maths from the earlier pages based on the latest talents, with the usual +1000 spell damage, +9% to crit, +4% to hit from gear, against a mob 3 levels higher than you, in a raid debuff setting.

Fireball : 1080 DPS, 9.10 DPM
Arcane Missiles (Clearcasted) : 911 DPS
Frostbolt (Arcane specced) : 848 DPS, 9.14 DPM
Scorch : 835 DPS, 9.75 DPM
Frostbolt (frost specced) : 797 DPS, 8.59 DPM
Arcane Missiles : 773 DPS, 6.28 DPM

Note that because of the change to elemental precision, fire & frost spells will gain more from fighting equal level mobs than arcane spells.

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Tseric has posted recently on the forums about Mage damage BTW. In particular, he states that on the whole, mages will bring more damage to a fight than most other classes, including warlocks. However, he also states that on certain fights, other classes will output more damage - which makes sense. So on average a mage is a higher DPS class than most, but on some fights other classes will perform better because of the nature of the fight. (i.e. multiple mobs to DoT, constantly moving mobs etc). It's nice that they are giving indications of where they see classes falling on the DPS lists.

I have +765 fire damage, so mobs are going to die in 2-3 fireballs no matter what. You don't need shatter if mobs are dying that quickly.

One thing I think a lot of people lose sight of, despite all their cries that Arcane is now superior DPS, is the playstyle involved. If you use Arcane Missiles as your main nuke, there's no way of getting around the fact that actually PLAYING that way is actually just...wrong.

I mean, you start a fight with a Missile volley, it takes 5 seconds, now the mob is <probably> right on top of you, so you...yes, you Frost Nova and strafe away (you better be strafing). Then you ... Arcane Missile again? If you do that, it could break on the first missile and you're SoL, or you could Arcane Blast, but that's going to break too.

To me, that playstyle just sucks, and I want no part of it. Give me my 41 yard range where I can do 2 fireballs before the mob is at me, and my damage is backloaded at the end of my cast times.

Channeled spells suck for leveling.

Improved Arcane Missiles 100% chance to not get interrupted while channeling the spell. I guess you forgot about that talent? In most cases you don't even have to frostnova, especially with talents AM is going to be a beast, 2 of those will probably kill everything but elites.

Would turning Molten Fury back into Cold Hearted make Frost more competitive? Just to keep beating that drum.

Say, if you got rid of Frozen Core (which is crap), put Arctic Winds in its place, and put Cold Hearted where Arctic Winds was.

I think the general concensus is that IAM is a trash talent - even for Arcane builds. Not even bringing up the fact that you're letting something beat on you while you channel.

http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com./thr...=1030284&sid=1

True? Intented?