Aphyrax

I did some back of the envelope calculations about DPS with max rank of all spells and what I assume level 70 gear will look like (1000 spell damage, 15% crit, 500 INT). The DPS leader is clearly deep arcane with arcane blast spam, coming in at around 1200 dps. Second is deep fire, about 200 DPS behind. Last is deep frost, 150-200 DPS behind fire. This did not factor in water elemental, AP, combustion or any other abilities like that. In short, the DPS gap is substantial.

What was more interesting, however, was that the new arcane blast is not actually that mana inefficient any more. Arcane has now almost 2/3 the efficiency of frost. Combine that with much better threat reduction and you have a very viable build for fights that are not about endurance.

I can post the actual numbers a little later if anyone is interested. I don't have access to my spreadsheet right now.

 

BeeLz

O heard from many that mages are currently by far the weakest pvp class ( prolly because of cs nerf ) anyways, end tier arcane talents seem kinda nice but tbh I will prolly never spec that far into arcane and I guess a lot of mages wouldn't. I guess It could stack nice with Ignite but you'll miss firepower and imo firepower is still the best fire talent together with ignite

 

Falcon24

Perhaps, but for a Frost Mage looking for pure Frostbolt dps, those deep Arcane talents are pure sweetness. They'll outperform deep Frost on a pure numbers scale, although you'll be sacrificing Ice Barrier and about 12% crit for Frost spells (along with various bonuses to Frost cooldowns and the Water Elemental~). On the other hand, you'll be gaining a bunch of versatility since deep Arcane applies to all spell lines, and you'll have a deeper mana pool, PoM, Arcane Power, huge frontload damage from Frostbolt crits, all that jazz. I've already got a rough idea for a 40/21 Arcane/Frost build in mind, the only debate is whether to keep it 40/21 or go 41/20 (sacrificing Ice Block for Slow, though I'll have to see if it's worth it firsthand).

But yeah, deep Arcane for the Mage accustomed to Fire isn't going to be very enticing. For a Mage that absolutely loves spamming his Frostbolt key, though, they're incredible.

(Keep in mind I make these statements from the standpoint of someone who is concerned only with PvE and doesn't want to go Fire. I hardly ever PvP, so I don't consider those scenarios).

 

• RK

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

49/11/1 might be interesting for burst, utility, and once per three minutes the biggest baddest pyroblast ever.


Arcane/fire doesn't look as if it should work from a DPS view, since to get the crit boost and double up spell power/ignite you don't get empowered AM for the clearcasts and for your fire spells you're either using fireball without all the power talents in deep fire or you're using scorch which wrecks the point of getting spell power/ignite anyway.

arcane/frost looks like it will have very very scary crits, though, and the late frost stuff you miss out on is more utility than damage (as long as someone else has winter's chill!). Be interested to see some numbers as to whether arcane instability, arcane power and spell power > empowered frostbolt and water elemental for straight DPS.

 

Raiste

arcane looks very appealing for a pure pve spec now. It has 40% threat reduction and 10% to hit as compared to only -10% threat and 6% hit for fire/frost. Additionally it provides a spell for all the possible mage dps roles:

1. sustained dps: AM with JoW up is pretty amazing for this, and with the new 143% base +dmg multiplier for AM and 45% on top of that from empowered AM it's a very respectable damage nuke. Throw in an arcane blast at the end and you stay out of the 5 sec rule and get a full tick of regen which is huge. With the arcane blast effect staying for 8 secs this could be a pretty nice rotation. Additonally you can throw in a fireblast if your are specced in that direction. Haven't ran thru any solid numbers because it's late but seems like it'd be very very respectable DPS/DPM.

2. medium burst: obviously arcane blast spam is very perfect for this, say about 60 secs of heavy burst damage.

3. super burst (i.e. huhuran): Arcane power/ Arcane blast...that would be some insane dps for the 15 sec duration...

4. AoE: well for AoE spec generally isn't a huge issue but good old AE and Blizzard should still function well here.

The only big issue i'd have with primary arcane spec would be it's limited range. Otherwise it seems like the premiere PvE spec if agro is at all a limitation in TBC.

 

Lhivera

Here's what I got comparing a 10/0/45 + 6 deep frost build with a 43/0/18 Arcane/Frost build. Assumptions were 500 intellect and 700 spell power before Arcane talents, 200ms latency, 15% crit before talents, 4% hit before talents, level 73 target fully raid-debuffed.

DPS Rankings
1333.93: Arcane Blast (arcane spec, fully stacked, w/Arcane Power, 15 sec/3min burst)
1051.88: Arcane Blast + Waterbolt (frost spec, 45sec/3min burst)
1026.10: Arcane Blast (arcane spec, fully stacked)
949.24: Arcane Missiles (arcane spec, w/Arcane Power, 15sec/3min burst)
923.13: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (frost spec, burst, 45sec/3min or 90sec/3:45 burst)
780.35: Arcane Blast (frost spec, fully stacked)
769.61: Frostbolt (arcane spec)
731.71: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (frost spec, sustained w/Cold Snap every cooldown)
730.18: Arcane Missiles (arcane spec)
651.61: Frostbolt (frost spec)
467.71: Arcane Missiles (frost spec)

DPM Rankings
10.25: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (frost spec, burst)
8.76: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (frost spec, sustained w/Cold Snap)
8.17: Arcane Missiles (arcane spec)
8.07: Frostbolt (frost spec)
7.85: Frostbolt (arcane spec)
7.51: Arcane Missiles (arcane spec, w/Arcane Power)
5.59: Arcane Missiles (frost spec)
4.90: Arcane Blast + Waterbolt (frost spec, burst)
4.33: Arcane Blast (arcane spec, fully stacked)
4.24: Arcane Blast (arcane spec, fully stacked, w/Arcane Power)
3.28: Arcane Blast (frost spec, fully stacked)

Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror. -Ming the Merciless

 

Lhivera

Do we have real confirmation of this? I used this number in my calculations for the chart above, but I'd love to hear for sure that it's true from someone in beta already.

Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror. -Ming the Merciless

 

Copernicus

Lhivera, are you using level 62 spells (the AQ20 books) or the thottbot versionsof the 66-70 spells?

To get into my main problem with the mage...

Balance Druid - 47/0/14 spec.
Level 66 Starfire- 370 mana, 588 avg damage, 3.5 second cast
-0.5 cast time, +10% damage, +120% empowered, 4% hit, 217%? dmg from crits, +9% crit, Moonkin aura to others, +25% dmg from int

Fire Mage- 17/41/3 spec, not taking Playing with Fire-
Level 66 Fireball- 425 mana, 719 avg damage, 3.5 second cast
-0.5 cast time, +10% damage, +120% empowered, 6% hit, 210% dmg from crits, +9% crit, Molten Fury/Fire Vulnerability (I'll add those in later).


Both classes have comparable mana regeneration/costs, with the mage being slightly better with clearcasting through the five-second rule.
........

Comparing the two spells directly, we end up with the fire mage having +133 base damage, 2% hit, two buffs/debuffs (Molten Fury and Fire Vulnerability) vs a Moonkin druid's Moonkin aura for other party members and +25% dmg from Intellect. I'm not really feeling the seperation between the two classes right now, and that bothers me. A Shadow Priest is also close to that, while the Elemental Shamans are slightly behind but able to heal while DPSing. They haven't gotten a big manaregen talent yet though, so still run OOM.

Like I said earlier, encounters are going to need to be Naxx-level in terms of enrage/berserk/burst requirements, as threat-sensitive as BWL without Taunt, or as crowd-control intensive as Gothik to make Mages a signifigant option. When I'm making a raid or a party and looking for a final DPS slot, a Balance Druid should not be so comparable to a Fire Mage.

 

Joink

For pve dps I agree that a spell power build would not be optimal with fire, but rather better suited with a shatter build. For pvp I'd strongly disagree. Scorch is the main pvp spell for fire mages, and going with a spell power build over a deep fire build would be more beneficial for scorch spamming. All the fire tree talents that scorch benefits from are on the top half of the tree along with other good pvp talents like blastwave, imp fireblast etc. Going with a spell power build also gives you access to pom/AP/imp counter spell which imo are the best pvp talents for any mage especially in an arena where the cooldown spells are all ready to go. For pvp, I expect to see spell power/scorch builds become more popular than elementalists assuming no more major changes happen.

 

Azhdeen

Eh, this is a pretty lame bug:
http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/thre...d=291836&sid=1

In a nutshell, Molten Armor seems to cause an action in order to reflect the damage. Thus, if you're casting a spell, Molten Armor fails to proc because another action is in progress. Also, it seems to be screwing with Arcane Missiles, probably because of the same reason. Even if you've improved them, if you are hit with physical damage while casting them, Molten Armor will cancel them in order to deal its damage.

I can only imagine that this is indeed a bug... and hopefully one that is able to be fixed more reliably than blink.

 

Lhivera

I'm using the thottbot data on the 66-70 spells.

Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror. -Ming the Merciless

 

Holyman

In beta, does AM scale ~1.428 or 1.43?

 

arch

I'm 99.9% sure that they are multiplicative and that they do stack. Ignite doesn't even touch the base critbonus (50%), instead its counted of the actual crit meaning that if you bump your critbonus from default 50% to 75%, ignite will reflect this.

The placement and the wording used also tells me that it does stack with the other bonuses.

I think I'm still going deep fire for pvp though, I like the added utility from dragon's breath, blazing speed and molten fury.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=RZxgMzf0IRgszbAr0o0x

Like Joink said, Spell Power could be quite good for Scorch builds, this could be "the new 28/23" scorch pvp build:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000


EDIT: They updated the calculators once more, but unfortunately no mage changes. I'm still hoping that they will make Spellsteal a bit better.

 

Krux

I see this thread is primarily focused around Spell Power but I have a different question. I used the search but couldn't find any info so I'm posting.

From beta reports, PoM and Combustion are sharing a cooldown. Can anyone confirm this yet as a bug or as an intended cross-cooldown?

 

Jaizha

I hope it's a bug. However, it reminded me of something weird I noticed on one of my alts (a shaman, don't know if that had anything to do with it) a few months ago. I was grinding those satyrs in Ashenvale that can put a curse on you, that will periodically trigger an incapacitating effect. However if I was casting a spell that effect would not trigger, but I would get an error message that "an action is already in progress". From the sound of the Molten Armor problem, they may be related.

 

arch

It's about mages in TBC, no specific subject.

PoM and Combustion sharing cooldown is most likely a bug, I see no reason why two spells that you spent alot of points to reach should share cooldown like that. That would be outrageous and it would upset alot of people.

 

Holyman

Do you by any chance remember wether it is exactly 1.43 or ca 1.43?

Thanks in advance :)

 

Dendory

Talking about mages in PvP, I found this pretty good video on the WoW forums showcasing a fire mage in duels and world PvP against most other classes, showing many new TBC abilities.

http://files.filefront.com/TBCwmv/;6...nfo.html&sid=1

 

Kasonic

Isn't a point in Arcane Potency basically +1% crit? That sounds so-so but people were making it out to be much worse. Which is it?

 

Holyman

Before they introduced the crit bonus % talent in arcane each 1% crit was only 0.5% * (1 - crit % before arcane potency) as a damage increase on arcane spells each point. Making it less than 1.5% dmg increase 3/3 =(

Now its 0.75% * (1 - crit % before arcane potency) though on arcane spells. I still don't think its good enough for an arcane damage build though. Should really get buffed.

 

Kailhasa

Pretty much. 10% of 10% is 1% per point.

Where arcane potency will shine the most is AoE. Imagine getting a clearcast off your frost nova and blasting a bunch of people with a CoC that has +80% crit. Throw in your crit from int and gear, and thats nearly bringing back the ol' Combustion+Blastwave trick.

 

Draele

AMAZING synergy here!

1) Spam Arcane Blast. Not too expensive spell, that once you start chaincasting it casts quickly.
2) Clearcasting procs often since you're casting this baby quickly.
3) On a Clearcast, cast Arcane Missles. Since it's free the high cost of the spell (Now even higher due to Empowered Missles) is negated.
4) Since it's on a Clearcast it has a 30% higher chance to crit due to Arcane Potency. This likely applies to all ticks. 5 seconds worth of damage at a +30% crit? Yum
5) Spell Power increases the damage done by said missle crits.
6) Go back to chaincasting Arcane Blast, having not lost the chaincasting bonus while channeling AM for 5 seconds (Arcane Blast speed increase lasts 8 seconds)

Hot. Just hot. Amazing sustained damage here AND mana efficiency if you only cast AM on clearcasts.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

Vhad

Ehm, did they change arcane blast? What I remember about it is it coster MORE mana at a faster rate ultimately giving you a better DPS but a much lower DPM.

What!?

 

Draele

It does, but i believe the speed of the casts giving you Clearcasting for Arcane Missles will make up for it.

Rantings of the Afflicted, a Warlock blog: http://draele.blogspot.com/

 

V