Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 2

Aamoo · 11/15/11, 6:07 PM

I hope they'll make Ring of frost trainable seeing I can't come up with any scenario where frostjaw or cone of cold wouldn't be a better option.

Tier 2 and 3 seem good, but I'd like if Cold Snap would allow Icy Veins again, or possibly give Icy Veins a shorter cd' seeing the game has moved away from the use of haste.

Ice barrier and Mana shield seem to close to each other. Personally I'd like mana shield having an activation on the same button, to enable you to blow up the shield and knock people back intentionally.

Ice Barrier could be the better shield, and Mana shield the option with the higher skill cap. Possibly you could make the mana shield a forced "don't attack me button" along the lines of "the more dmg you take, the futher you can knock people, for a certain duration. To affect melee and ranged equally it would have to slow casters, or just stop their cast like, wind shear style to affect melee + ranged equally. Hunters would go free here, may be an immobilize for them?

Personally, the notion of Double Polymorph intrigues me. I have always enjoyed our CC abilities, so allowing us to do 2 at once is appealing. Granted, not every trash pack will need that level of CC, but it's handy for when it does.

I'm curious if the UI will offer any support for juggling polymorphs like this. Right now it's easy enough to juggle one by making it your Focus. Will it be possible to designate a secondary Focus? Would be handy to be able to readily distinguish the full poly from the half poly. Might also be handy to be able to always cast the different polymorphs on the two targets, e.g. sheep is always full and pig is always half.

Agreed.

As someone metioned earlier, the last tier is dissapointing.

Malon · 11/23/11, 1:57 PM

So with the new talent calculators released, we can see our level 87 spell: Alter Time. In case people haven't seen it:

Alter Time
Instant Cast, 3 minute cooldown

Alters the fabric of time, causing the caster to return to their current location, health, mana, and conditions after 4 seconds. Effect negated if the caster dies within the 4 seconds before the effect occurs.

I can see many uses for this, from avoiding a particularly nasty debuff, to (another) "Oh s**t" button, to increasing our DPS with another four seconds of cooldowns (could be a great advantage on burn-phase fights). On top of this, it's just a really interesting mechanic.

Hinalover · 11/24/11, 12:09 AM

I posted a list of changes from live and MoP calc. Most of the damage abilities do provide a damage boost. However I'm not sure if these are level 85, 87, or 90 damage numbers. Keep in mind that there could be missing or mistaken abilities not in the correct place (ie: Deep Freeze, Shatter, Arcane Brilliance).

Frostbolt's base damage is up 23.8% (822 -> 1018), cast time reduced by .5 seconds (2.0 -> 1.5) and now has a 50% slowing speed, up from 40%
Frost Orb (aka Frostfire Orb) is up by 16.15% (260 -> 302)
Arcane Explosion is up by 16.8% (344 -> 402)
Frost Nova (397 -> 461)
Frostfire Bolt (878 -> 1089)
Ice Lance (399 -> 489)
Living Bomb (1600 -> 1888) with explosion (465 -> 574)
Blizzard (4064 -> 4648) and base mana cost reduced from 74% to 30%
Invisibility now has a 5 minute cooldown, up from 3.
Fire Blast (1043 -> 1202)
Fireball (1190 -> 1251) [4.3 base amount]; cast time reduced (2.5 seconds -> 1.5 seconds)
Pyroblast (1488 -> 1774); dot (648 ->1016)
Cone of Cold (787 -> 896)
Combustion initial damage (1043 -> 1202)
Flame Orb (260 -> 302)
Arcane Blast damage (1756 -> 1230); damage multiplier (10% -> 20%); haste buff is removed; no mention of the Arcane Explosion part
Arcane Barrage (1310 -> 923)
Arcane Missiles (404 -> 308); Cast time increased (2 seconds -> 2.5 seconds); removal of the 40% chance to proc
Arcane Power cooldown reduced (2 minutes -> 1.5 minutes)

Deep Frreeze now available to all mages
Shatter available to all mages
Living Bomb available to all mages
Arcane Brilliance is MiA.
Removal of Hot Streak
Removal of Fingers of Frost
Removal of Arcane Missle Proc.

Arcane sounds like the it could change a bit more so in our conserve phase. We would stack up to 4 AB then rotate between AM and AB to refresh the stack. We cannot do two rounds of AM since that would put us at 5 seconds and we need 50% haste to fit in an AB after 2 AM. If AM was brought back to 2 second channel, then yes we can fit in 2 AM easily during conserve phase.

Nathyiel · 11/24/11, 1:31 AM

Actually, we don't know about spell power's coefficient. We can see some proc where missing and we don't know about water elem (freeze, water bolt damage, new skin, etc).

It's two early to play with the number, 4.3 isn't on live and we don't have correct BiS for each spec, etc.

But if you look closely to the Armor's spell and th e whole things in general, you can see that there is no buff nor PVE stuff. All the mage's talent and spec seems to have been made with PVP in mind (like if MoP was a wolrd PVP fight).

Wait and see.

Kyrilon · 11/28/11, 10:47 AM

I think the biggest qualm I have here is the lack of Fingers of Frost, or a similar mechanic for Frost. Going over the Frost "spec", we have Frostbolt, Brain Freeze and...what? The tooltip for Deep Freeze does not include a damage component for unfreezable creatures, and without Fingers of Frost the Freeze ability on the WE is bunk. So it looks like the MoP Frost mage is going to be casting a lot of Frostbolts with Brain Freeze peppered in, but nothing else. I weep.

Fire and Arcane appear to be mostly the same, though AB stacks now only appear to be clearable using ABarr. That, combined with a lack of a passive ability to proc AM, leaves AM up in the air completely. I look forward to a little more polish and clarity on these trees.

Zalbo · 12/07/11, 10:01 PM

Interesting new changes. No more blastwave?

Arcane bomb seems odd, basically a dot that jumps randomly, but theres still only the one? Sounds kind of annoying almost. Also it's not a bomb in any sort of explosion sense? Would probably drive enemy dispellers nuts in PvP though.

Frost bomb, I suppose it's pve use (over living bomb) will depend on the damage being worth the GCD, only 5 seconds means you'll be recasting it fairly often.

The change to ignite is interesting, this means the only additional benefit fire has from critical strikes is a chance at instant pyroblast (that may also have been a change). I wonder if they are trying to a) fix ignite munching and b) lower fires RNG. They'll probably succeed at the second one I suspect, although you'll still need crits for the good combustions.
The removal of scorch from causing ignite means fires moving dps will go down rather a lot, and which talent to choose (PoM, Scorch or arcane flows) just became a lot harder/fight dependant.

Edit: Fingers of frost is back by the way.

Zeldyrr · 12/09/11, 4:19 PM

Fingers of Frost is indeed back, but it is greatly changed, at least if I am reading the new text correctly:

Your Freezing effects that fail due to target immunity instead grant you the Fingers of Frost effect. Fingers of Frost causes your next Ice Lance or Deep Freeze spell to act as if your target were frozen and increases Ice Lance damage by 25%. Fingers of Frost can accumulate up to 2 charges and lasts 15 sec.

Changes:

FoF only procs when freezing effect fail due target immunity. So that would be bosses, uber trash, and (maybe) PvP targets with DR active? In any event, it greatly reduces usefulness in PvP.
FFB is no longer included in the next spell list, so there is no reason to save BF procs for FoF procs.
(And I think this is the most important one) There is no more chance to proc--the text implies it now happens every time a freezing effect fails. If you don't have to save a proc for BF anymore and it procs 100% of the time, it makes for an "interesting" rotation: FB, IL, FB, IL.

Morthoul · 12/09/11, 6:16 PM

I read "freeze" as roots or stronger CC involving frost. Snares I expect to be called "slowed". This gets very different results from the talent.

The new FoF would only proc if we drop a nova or hit a boss with one of the level-45 talents (Ring of Frost, etc.). The PvP motive is clear; it makes Deep Freeze require more setup. The PvE design is still missing something, since it all but removes Ice Lance from the rotation. Our pet freeze would give us 1 FoF proc and we'd spend it on Deep Freeze. We could Ice Lance if the nova hit 2 mobs and we had a spare charge, but that's it.

Kyrilon · 02/16/12, 11:06 AM

New Talent Calculator Updates:

Talent Calculator - Game Guide - World of Warcraft!

The changes to the bombs will make for some compelling theorycrafting, I think, as each is now functionally different. The new Tier 6 talents are very interesting, though Incanter's Shield sounds too situational to be raid-build worthy. And in case no one noticed, Cauterize as stated will no longer kill you if you are not healed.

And finally the crap poly talents are gone! Huzzah!

♦ nathanbp · 02/16/12, 12:09 PM

I guess Blizzard's way of making Arcane more interesting to to make it so that we'll cast Arcane Missiles whenever they proc. The removal of the mana regen from Mage Armor seems likely to make a mana neutral dps rotation impossible. This would mean Arcane is likely forced into taking Invocation. The rotation would then be: Spam AB, cast AM when it procs, and cast Evocation at 40% mana (or maybe after the damage buff falls off, depending on how long it takes to get to 40% mana spamming AB). To me this seems like an even more boring rotation than current Arcane, where you at least have to think a little during the mana neutral rotation part.

Doroteasenjk · 02/16/12, 1:43 PM

When I read the original talent calculator and the current one, I noticed that Arcane Missiles is not a proc. This may be an error on Blizzard's part, but that means they committed the error twice. Such oversight is possible.

Edit: I'm wrong: February 15 Update to Mists Talent Calculator - Forums - World of Warcraft
Arcane Missiles is still a proc and nathanbp is correct. There is no mana neutral rotation.

Kavan · 02/16/12, 3:40 PM

If you look at the 90 talents you'll see they talk about base regen. Currently we don't have any base regen so I'd say it's safe to assume that we'll be getting some regen to compensate for the loss of mage armor. I wouldn't worry about mana neutral rotations not being possible. Depending on the fight I think the Incanter's Shield will be the most potent of the level 90 talents for arcane (at the possible increase in playstyle complexity compared to the other two).

♦ nathanbp · 02/16/12, 4:30 PM

Originally Posted by Kavan

If you look at the 90 talents you'll see they talk about base regen. Currently we don't have any base regen so I'd say it's safe to assume that we'll be getting some regen to compensate for the loss of mage armor. I wouldn't worry about mana neutral rotations not being possible. Depending on the fight I think the Incanter's Shield will be the most potent of the level 90 talents for arcane (at the possible increase in playstyle complexity compared to the other two).

We do have base regen today, it's just very small compared to Replenishment, Mage Armor, and Blessing of Might. It seems like all 3 of those are going away as a source of mana regen, although they've said they haven't really done buffs yet. Note that Kaivax says here:

you won’t passively regenerate any [mana] with Invocation.

The Frost and Fire rotations are roughly mana neutral if base mana equals max mana and mana regen is 1% max mana per second (as stated at the link above), so presumably Frost and Fire will only care about the extra damage portions of the level 90 talents. On that basis it seems like you'd pick Invocation if there's downtime to use it in, Rune of Power if you can stand in one place for a while, and Incanter's Shield if there's lots of incidental raid damage. Note that you have to stand in the Rune of Power for 10 seconds just to make up for the damage lost by casting it.

Kavan · 02/16/12, 6:25 PM

You're right, we currently have 1% base mana regen and it looks like they're changing that to 1% max mana regen. I guess it'll depend what relationship there will be between base mana and max mana now that int will no longer affect it.

rh8452 · 02/16/12, 6:49 PM

From what I can guess, it sounds like rune of power allows you to have two runes up at a time, so you would precast them before a pull on fights where you know where you're going to move to, such as Chimaeron (one at range where you normally DPS, one on the stack point)

So on such fights there'd be no DPS loss of note from the talent.

Incanter's shield seems a lot stronger than the other two (we'd just dip into fire to proc it if necessary).