Anyone try out 41 arcane yet? Seems like going deep arcane you lose a bit of the edge you have with either bolt, and not having arcane blast as the new nuke spell I'm curious to how well an arcane mage is doing. Seems like spending those extra 10 pts in Fire/Frost really doesn't get you much. Someone had mentioned that arcane missles are hot now, but I think your asking for trouble in pvp trying to rely on them to nuke people. Lost a lot of mana if you have to stop casting...

Since it seems that Empowered talents simply change your damage coefficient, they would affect buffs, consumables, and any other +damage bonuses.

It doesn't work whlie I cast and is called Frost Nova rather than Freeze (contrary to the patch notes), which I think is part of the underlying problem that was fixed in beta.

I forgot to mention that I noticed a couple times last night where if I summoned the Water Elemental in combat it just wouldn't do... anything.

It seems that they took the old (buggy) code from beta for the Water Elemental.

Right now, when I summon my Water Elemental, the bar doesn't appear until (and unless) combat is broken. Are other people getting this; is it something to do with Bongos?

This is tied to one of your installed mods. I had the same problem, the pet bar would be there sometimes but other it wouldnt show up at all. I fixed it by disabling CTRA, until its fixed I guess thats the only fix.

Is anyone noticing imp scorch resists? Maybe it's a long shot, but this could apply to imp scorch. I realize those notes aren't 100% accurate since we got the old PTR version, but maybe it can't be resisted in beta?

Anyone ? (I am of course refering to those in beta/live with 3/3 imp scorch)

This patch is such a mishmash that it's hard to tell what fixes and changes we got from PTR and Beta.

I know, but those notes should apply to the beta at the very least.

Arawethion's spreadsheet certainly likes a heavy arcane build quite a bit. You spend roughly 1/3 of your time wanding though on fights of 3 or more minutes. Wand specialization becomes a pretty good talent at that point. Time to drop some DKP on a high DPS wand. As a practical matter, you have to wonder about how effective it can be given the obvious limitations in any mobile encounter. Perhaps someone will actually try it out and post about their experiences.

A 33/0/18 build with AP and spell power looks solid for single target DPS if you can leech off another frost mage's winter's chill. The build has limited range though, much like any arcane missiles build.

I still think if you can put the elemental to any kind of use, some variation of the 10-0-41 is going to be the best sustained damage you can get (at least on the non-BoW/JoW side of the fence) barring gimmick fights that drastically alter your attributes (like giving you effectively 100% chance to crit).

If I had a pocket shaman or pally I could probably live without clearcasting. As it stands though I rarely get a shaman in my group so 10 points it shall be.

If you're Frost 99% of the time in raids you're Frostbolting. In that situation Clearcasting is simply a 10% boost to your mana pool. With Elemental Precision you gain 3%, so you're at a net loss of 7%. Raid buffed without Kings I have about 6500 mana. What's 455 mana worth to you? Though it partly depends on if you like Imp Arcane Missiles or some other Tier 1 talent I suppose.

Obviously they're not exactly the same, but in a straight bolting situation like Patchwerk where sustained DPS is the goal it really doesn't amount to much. For Fire I could understand since Clearcasting, Master of Elements and Scorch have a nice synergy.

I'm currently talking fire.

Mostly it's aoe situations where clearcasting is indispensable to me. On fights like Anub i can use scorch to get clearcasts and then drop a larger cost aoe spell. Straight bolting fights are easy enough to estimate mana needed without a whole bunch of streaks. After the mage patch i was elemental for a time and could actually judge my mana bar easier without clearcasting. You can play without it but I feel like I am a priest without taking meditiation for raids. :p

Many fights I would do the exact same damage with or without it but I am glad to know it's there for the few fights that it's really useful.

While it's a net loss of 7%, it's not 7% of 6500. It's more like 7% of mana you spend during the encounter. That includes mana you regen from spirit, potions, evocation, etc. It's likely much higher than 455 mana.

This is a good point that I overlooked, but it still doesn't change my experiences so far this week without CC. Your mileage may vary obviously, but I recommend people try not getting it sometime. You may be surprised how little you miss it (I'm sure we've all had those Patchwerk kills where they *swear* it never procced).

Two or three of our Mages went deep Arcane for AQ today, it seems they liked it, and the DPS they did was comparable to the other Mages (Two Frost and one Fire). I also heard some surprise at the fact that Slow apparently worked on Skeram, but didn't hear them (Or really paid attention to) other bosses in that regard. We stopped after Huhuran was dead however, so we didn't really experience 'long' encounters. I did notice they had some trouble at Sartura though, probably because having your primary nuke requiring you to stand in place for 5 seconds isn't much good there :p

I don't have any solid numbers though, wanted to take some screenshots and such to show off my still heavily modded UI, but as usual completely and utterly forgot.

An interesting note about the new deep Frost build is that the equivalence ratio between +dmg and +crit is very low. For my gear, it's between 10 and 11 damage per point of crit. Empowered Frostbolt, combined with the already high base crit rates that Naxx Mages are used to, simply gives outstanding returns from each point of +Frost damage.

Well Water Elemental is a complete waste of space right now, and Ice Barrier removes its self randomly as you reapply it. Other than that full frost aint too bad, I want to try arcane next, just wish they would reset the cost.

Anyone know a macro to cast your WE's nova? It has the same name as mine so I can't get it to work.

Err, what? The Elemental does excellent DPS for its mana cost in pve and is a nice boost in pvp. As for Ice Barrier, I've yet to see any bug remotely like that.

WE isn't working, he just sits there, doesn't attack ever

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