The difference is quantitative. It's not the first glyph to give up core utility for min-max raid numbers, it's just that the core functionality is a bigger deal on frostbolt than on, say, insect swarm or mindflay. I think there's some justification on that since the slow effect of frostbolt is not only spec-defining in more ways than mechanical but also neuters, rather than reduces, its non-raid relevance. But it's not really out of line from what a glyph could be expected to do; just out of line with what a player would be willing to use.

They could as well reduce the snare duration by 25% or 50% instead of reducing the snare speed %.

Huge? You struggle to find a 3rd glyph to slot in that fundamentally affects you, let alone a 4th. The Mana Gem glyph is currently slightly worse than useless. This makes arcane come down with a fabulous Two glyphs worthy of inscribing. Any spec with i-Sc will value the scorch glyph, though strictly, in a raid environment, on bosses, it'll be largely irrelevant. Clearly Fireball will be a no-brainer, for everything from solo, to 5mans to Arthas and Molten Armor will be a decent but not crucial increase too.

All in all, I'd quite liberally say that for Boss DPS terms only the Frostbolt/Fireball glyphs will fundamentally affect things. Possibly the Mage Armor glyph for arcane too. But call a 4th glyph "huge" is a little far-fetched.

Want to talk Huge? Get an extra Meta gem slot. That's Huge.

Maybe I'm forgetting something here, but when you spam fireballs, the dot ticks every 3 sec. (because a landing fireball resets the dot, right?). So with the glyph you only loose 1 dot tick - 23dmg per fireball.
And you gain 5% per fireball, so whenever 5% of fireball is more dmg than 1 tick, the glyph adds dmg.
And thats the case: Always!
It doesn't matter at all which rank of fireball you spam, from rank 1 to 16, if you have 0 spell dmg or 1000 or 2000, the glyph always adds dmg. There is no break even!


A question to the Frostbolt glyph: Does it remove the 5% coefficient penalty?
If yes, it coulb be worth it (you always have Frostfire for slowing).
If not, this glyph is not even worth 1 talent point.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't Mage mana gems exempt from the Potion Sickness debuff?

They should be, or else there isn't much point in mana gems having multiple charges.

His point, however, is that +10% regen from a mana gem is 333-350 mana per charge, maximum. At a 120 second cooldown, that's 13.9-14.6mp5. One point of any regen talent is generally much greater than this (even with a fairly modest--especially with LK spirit gear--300mp5 while not casting, each point of arcane meditation is 30mp5), so if this glyph is major and not minor, it is vastly underpowered compared to other major glyphs at half a talent point or less. It may be fairly in-line as a minor glyph, however.

They're not potions, why should they have anything to do with Pot Sickness? This does not change the fact that the mana return on the glyph is abysmal.

I'd consider getting this glyph provided (1) it wasn't major (2) it gave a 100% buff rather than a 10% one. Anything less than a 50% buff is borderline pointless.

I'd also be quite interested in seeing the glyph grant a SCB-style non-mana related buff; That'd be properly interesting and truly give a new dimension to CD stacking, particularly now we're losing Flamecaps.

edit: RDPS aside, is anyone else worried that AI gives almost less int than i-MotW and practically less int than an affli's felhound?

Note that existing alchemy trinkets give +40% to pots. I could live with a glyph that gave similar performance to mana gems, particularly since the inscription will be much more readily available. 100% mana is perhaps a bit much.

The SCB effect for a glyph, however, is a very interesting idea.

Vontre, grats on keeping your family jewels.

Edit: Pint, what I'd like to see happen to AI is to give it some sort of spirit related benefit. That is to say, in addition to the stat buff, it also allows some percentage of your spirit to be converted to spellpower. This also indirectly addresses our armor issues.

No new skills at the trainer last in last build at least. Don't think they touched mages this patch at all. Arcane Blast still cost insane mana, food and water spell stillonly conjures lvl 65 stuff, and I haven't noticed anything changed on the talent trees either yet.

With regards to invisability and potion sickness, as invisability takes you out of combat does this remove potion sickness enabling you to consume another potion? Has anyone tested this? i've searched the previous thread and unless i missed it I didn't see the answer there. Appologies if i missed it.

for my own curiosity earlier I did a ZA run and timed how often mid-combat I needed to stop casting for 0.5-1second. The reason being, I wanted to see what kind of up-time can be sustained for AB spam on an arcane mage. My results were disappointing, with the AB stack being dropped several times on most encounters (running into storms, AoE silence from the bear,taking adds on the hawk, the occasional lightning bolt on lynx, having to refresh poly on various packs and the hex lord). ZA might be a bad example but as far as I can see AB spam isn't sustainable. Not because of the mana cost, but because the debuff duration is too restrictive. That in itself however may be intended design. My question to the number crunching wizards here is; what kind of 3-stack uptime would you need for the spell to be worth even attempting to keep up over an ABar/offnuke rotation?

I think as of 2.3 patch on live they "solved" the problem with invisibility getting you out of combat during boss fights by making them have more "aggro pulses" or something like that, and I didn't see anywhere this stuff being mentioned as changed in any of the wotlk builds so far. So it's usable only for trash and/or maybe bgs (having in mind fire mages in MH on aoe when 1-2 aoers got killed they need to pot up more than once).

In regards to the glyph of invisibility, if it would give a 50% chance to avoid aoe effects, it would prove very useful in arena for the times when you do want to stay invisibile and hide over a pillar and drink, rather than giving you more time to run blindly around.

What strikes is the glyph of mage armor, and that is as arcane you get to 80%mp5 while casting, that is really high considering the stats on the gear present in the game. Maybe this can explain the attrocious cost on AB? And to go further down this way, how will mage specs dmg be balanced? With 80%? 60? or 30% mana regen while casting? This could prove really hard to nail down. But as the current things are a mage with 80% mana while casting and the glyph of arcane explosion should be able to spam AE indefinitely with a spriest, mana spring and raid buffed (wisdom, kings, AI, MotW) right?

The tooltip of potion sickness stated that it would be lost only after "resting for some time out of combat". It didn't go away immediately after dropping combat, and whatever the duration needed to take it off is ostensibly longer than the longest period a boss' combat pulse.

Not too sure I'd be interested in that. I'd be much more impressed with an AI change into "increases int by 10%" rather than "adds yet another layer of utility". That would also make an interesting int scaling for arcane. And before someone goes off on a "10% is waaay OP", may I point you in the direction of (1) BoK and (2) felhunter affli aura, which is a raid-wide 5% int and 5% spi buff. Arguably much more versatile and powerful than 10%int.

Also keep in mind that the list of mage glyphs is a lot smaller than the list of other classes, I would not be surprised to see additional glyphs popping up that may satisfy the arcanery types a bit more.

Good design :

Glyph of Frostbolt : Frostbolt damage increased by x% against targets immune to snares.

Glyph of Fireball : Your fireball spell consumes (or has y% chance to consume, depending on balance issues) your DoT effects on the target, causing them to instantly deal their damage. (So that we no longer have to leave ignite or fireball damage on the table)

Glyph of Summon Water : Automatically places a player on ignore if they ask you for water using the abbreviation "plz"

Bad design :

Glyph of Frostbolt : Remove the one advantage frostbolt has as a spell without actually bringing it up to par with other main nukes.

I agree with the above posters at the Frostbolt glyph leaves a lot to be desired. I'd rather the glyph give 50% pushback resistance, or whatever they are calling it now. They would then be free to remove the 5% "snare penalty" from Frostbolt, as it's apparent other spells aren't going to be paying for it. I also don't think that mages and warlocks should necessarily be equal, but I found this is a little troubling:

Glyph of Healthstone - You receive 30% more healing from using a healthstone.
Glyph of Mana Gem - Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 10%.

Also warlocks are getting a 2-point Tier 4 Affliction talent almost rolled directly into a glyph, and I'd like to see something like this for a mage:
Glyph of Corruption - You Corruption spell has a 4% chance to cause you to enter a Shadow Trance state after damaging the opponent. The Shadow Trance state reduces the casting time of your next Shadow Bolt spell by -100%.
Nightfall - Gives your Corruption and Drain Life spells a 4% chance to cause you to enter a Shadow Trance state after damaging the opponent. The Shadow Trance state reduces the casting time of your next Shadow Bolt spell by 100%.

Yeah I wouldn't get shocked if they made a weaker version of missile barrage available through glyphs, partially because it would be interesting and partially to increase the use frequency of arcane missiles.

I was looking through the new data, and I came across this gem of a NPC ability: Icy Winds - Spell - World of Warcraft

Now I thought this would be an interesting way to go for the Frosbolt glyph. A slower cast time would be an acceptable trade off for more damage, but not quite at severe as the npc ability. Though I forsee much fun in spellstealing this in the future.

Aiki: I haven't seen any reports on it, and I don't think it can be tested, but does anyone know if Nightfall and Glyph of Corruption stack?

Re: AI, it does seem rather 'old-fashioned' these days. I fully agree that a %-based bonus would bring it into line with other similar effects, though at that point I think that PWF and Mark also need to turn into %-based bonuses.

Something that would be interesting if they gave AI some other effect as a talent option. Since Frozen Core seems to be the talent that's lamest, and the Frost tree is the 'efficiency' tree...

Frozen Brilliance (or whatever you want to call it)
Characters under the effects of your Arcane Intellect and Arcane Brilliance gain 2/4/6% of their intellect as mana per 5.

It could obviously be an Arcane talent, though where to fit it in (besides replacing Arcane Fortitude) might be a bit problematic.

I was really hoping for a glyph that would increase the duration of the arcane blast debuff. It would be a must for all arcane mages who wanted to weave things into their arcane blast rotation, or otherwise just avoid losing the debuff through moving and spell pushback.

As far as I'm concerned we NEED something to this effect.

Excuse me Roywyn but I noticed you saying that Arcane Barrage is at 85.7% Coeff but is it not at around 65% Coeff currently? Or did they revert the change last patch? Couldn't play Beta much or anything last weeks so if any change happned I would

I wanted to excuse me interupting the current discussion. I just had to ask in this case if a change happned or if Roywyn made a mistake.