Raven: Do I read this correctly in that Arcane Power is not being taken with 51/10/0? That seems... quite counterintuitive.

Also, how important is the point in Student of the Mind?

And you picked up 3/3 TtW but no Slow?

Ulthwithian: well its a point needed to get byond that tier and your other choises are basicly some magic resistance or range. But Im guessing the spec opted for spirit since the other provide effects that arent really modeled into this program.

But just out of curiosity, 3/3 TtW and 0/1 slow... what classes are you counting on to keep up the ensnared debuff?

Edit: darn, beaten to it.

Student if mind is a floating point that you can put anywhere in the top three tiers, really.

There's a slow "slave" in there right now.

I'm going to play with some more specs and keep adding them to that post.

Oh, sorry I must have missed that poor sod. But just to clarify, your modeling does not count on any other class than mages to provide an ensnared debuff at this moment right?

Hasn't it become pretty clear at this point that TTW won't work on bosses when finished?

There's a bug with Molten Fury and Torment the Weak, that is causing Slow to be the only snare effect to work with TtW. You can see this pretty easily by speccing into TtW and 30 points into fire. Go to a target dummy, and cast FFb a few times at it. You'll notice that the FFb is gaining a 12% bonus via the FFb DoT. Now spec even 1 point into MF, and the bonus goes away.

Also the bug with MF and Ice Lance ranks 2-3 still exists, and is likely related.

Edit: I posted a Consolidated list of bugs and inconsistencies over on the beta forums, but so far it hasn't gotten any responses.

Indeed. I'd rather people modelled an arcane spec like: 52/9/0 @70 or anything that includes Arcane Flows rather than Torment the Weak.

Also for arcane mana management, has anyone modelled the new BElf racial when theorycrafting downtime for arcane specs?

Edit: I'm level 71 apparently.

My personal testing has not included TtW on the assumption that it would not work on bosses. I'm still putting my money on a 53/18 spec of some form (at least until they trim arcane a little).

On DPS balance: If all 3 specs are somewhere within 1-2% of each other after all the numbers passes are done; who in their right mind would take fire? It has no other functionality beyond DPS. Its suffers more damage from effects and environments, is generally considered the weakest PvP spec and operates badly under stress. Frost has added snares and survival, even on a raid spec. Arcane can comfortably use 1 or 2 early float points to grab extra resistance, and operates wonderfully under high-stress raid situations. Also, if threat is tuned to the point where its actually a concern to DPSers, then arcane gets another edge.

Right now fire desperately needs something unique and less DPS oriented in order to pull the game back for it, and whatever that is, it needs baking into a DPS talent in order to make it into raid specs.

Well that's not strictly true, especially in WOLK.

It has an AOE disorient, it has an AOE knockback effect that I think is unique among classes and specs, it has picked up quite a bit of DPS in mobile situations with the narrowing of the scorch/fireblast/pyroblast rotation gap vs straight fireball spam, it brings the 10% crit buff up faster (with glyph) and it's got a fairly powerful nuke that snares with frostfirebolt in situations where snares are useful. With impact working on all spells, not just fire, it's gained some PVP utility as well and has gained some survivability talents (fiery payback, blast wave).

All of that stacks up pretty well against instant invisibilities, counterspell-silence and slow (arcane) or an extra ice block, frost nova, ice barrier, DPS and some mana regen that is held hostage to pet wrangling, and more effective snares in single target and AOE(frost).

Quite honestly, the only thing in arcane I'd dearly love to have is instant invis and the silence effect. The only thing in frost that I would really want that isn't a DPS talent is one point in improved blizzard (I think that spell should just start with a chill effect, with talents maing it better, not establishing it). This is why I like fire, because I actually like dragon breath, the new blast wave, the living bomb DOT and a stun effect rather than a root effect when I'm engaging in PVP.

That knockback is a bloody nuisance. Knocks them out of other caster's channeled AOE's and your flamestrike effect if it's on the ground. It separates them so you can't get a good dragon's breath right after, let alone a flamestrike or frost nova. Honestly I'd rather they remove the knockback. Deep-frost blizzard is currently far superior to what fire has to offer.

It might have its uses for pvp, I just wish there was a minor glyph to remove the knockback, don't even need a beneficial tradeoff (and not worth using a major glyph slot).

Elemental shaman are also in need of mana boost so rumor is they are upping it to 8%. Hope they also up there damage output.

Damage won't be upped unless circumstances change drastically. Blizz has stated that they don't want elemental shamans to be running up within 12 yard of bosses to DPS using it.

Anyway, on topic for a sec, have we seen any resistances (other than level-based ones) or immunities out of any bosses so far? I've heard that Sapphiron and KT are frost-resistant, but beyond that I don't know.

If by rumor you mean blue post:
MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Upcoming Shaman Changes
The damage is *not* getting increased on thunderstorm because it's not meant to be part of a DPS rotation. Nonetheless it's still better than Blastwave because of the mana restore and larger knockback. One would hope that shamans' 51-point talent is better than your 21-point talent.

And why is that? One could argue that talent X is superior or inferior to talent Y, but none of it matters. Overall strength is what matters, and elemental shamans are in dire need of help. Of all things, I think esham Thunderstorm is one of the last thing in need of buffs because it really doesn't help make better any of the problems eshams currently have. Let's avoid talent nitpicking.

Oh and to echo Lhivera, why are we still assuming that TTW will be in pve builds? I'm very curious to see how mages end up in the 25man simcrafts now that arcane and fire builds aren't getting that 12% and refreshing snares to muddle the numbers.

Mik's is ok for tracking procs, but they are still quite easy to miss. Power Auras is much better for tracking procs and is very handy with all the procs flying around especially if you are frost.

Power Auras Classic (WotLK) : WoWInterface Downloads : Plug-Ins & Patches

According to MMO-C the new patch is tiny and contains very little of substance. Only mage changes listed are nerfs to Amp/Dampen Magic, which isn't unexpected, really. The previous gave a *lot* of spellpower.

You're miss-interpreting; they didn't get nerfed, they got fixed to be in-line with the "no more +healing" rule.

But even Blue Posters refer to "adjustments" as "nerfs" because the people call it that way (yea this is nonsense).

It seems Amplify/Dampen now only work with spellpower, means if the mob/player has none it won't really matter... Test it with the current Amp/Dampen and a Fire Brazier in Shat, it gives only +10 per Tick (means the Brazier has no Spell Power and the extra spell power it gains is splitted over 10 or 12 Ticks or so).
So I guess we can use Amplify in almost every raid encounter since bosses tend to have no spell power at all. But still no group buff :/

Yes, power auras is a great tool in this sense. I am looking for a scorchio like addon to keep track of the scorch debuff, Scorchio doesn't work with beta. Also, in a similar fashion, a mod that will keep track of living bomb. I am sick and tired of looking at the zillions of debuffs the boss has to see whether or not its time to refresh living bomb. Any help with this?

Um, amplify magic has always worked with some things, but not everything.
And something were changed over time to not scale (Alterac Valley kobold fire shields).
Elemental melee attacks are still affects (or were last night)

I'd guess it's like usual now.

On another note: I think JoW is fixed again. I think I even had it double proc when we had 2 JoW on one target.
[Edit]: Apparently, it's bugging out in other ways now, the personal cooldown does not always trigger properly.

Regarding Torment the Weak:

I'm going to put out a new SimulationCraft build in a couple hours. Should I just take out the functionality that makes Torment the Weak work on bosses? So far I've left it in so that people have the option of playing with it if they so choose.

But......... While flexibility is nice, aiding in the proliferation of misinformation is most certainly not nice.

If you have an opinion post it here or send me a PM.... whatever you think appropriate.