I don't find scorching fun personally, but its an academic point when talking about personal preference. What still annoys me is that arcane can't provide this 'mage-only' raid buff, which is actually 'some mages only'.

After getting a mage-only debuff, one which is arguably in fact, quite useful, and one which is "gettable" by either of the two base specs which can provide it without spending more points than before (in fact, with two less points in frost's case), I think it's a little short-sighted to whine that Arcane (at least, less than 18-fire arcane) can't apply it.

I'm thankful it works as well as it does now, and no I don't think it's reasonable we get a third-source applicator of the same buff in arcane. That's a means to an end. "We put this new talent in arcane, so it can do the same thing fire and frost can too, which incidentally it could anyway with 18 fire".

The point of talents is not to give you everything you like, it's to give you a choice. Along the same train of thought, perhaps we should make mutilate leave a hemorhage debuff on the target, only we'll call it Mutilage, and we should put a copy of Malediction into the Destro tree too, because they can't get it.

Neither malediction nor Hemorrhage are comparable in strength to Improved Scorch. Nor is malediction unique to 1 class.

But the point of my argument is that it is difficult to justify an arcane build that provides precisely 0 major raid buffs. Clearly talents should provide choice, but there is choice and there is 'clear and obvious winner'. Maybe a more elegant solution would be to move improved scorch up a tier.

It's not quite the same thing. Fire mages cast Scorch, a fire spell, to apply the debuff. Frost mages cast frost spells to cast the debuff. Expecting arcane mages to sacrifice their own dps by putting 18 points in fire and to cast a spell that their talent spec is not designed to cast is a completely different story.

I'm not suggesting arcane gets a comparable talent. There will likely always be a fire/frostfire/frost mage around anyway. Let's not forget both fire and frost can take the benefit of the arcane crit buff (which is applied outside of combat) as well as their respective 10% crit buffs, without affecting their own dps.

On another note I'm glad to see Ghostcrawler's comments on arcane. Simply put they have got the balance wrong and I'm happy to see this is now being recognised. Most arcane mages are already using the rotation she talks about despite it's lacklustre dps so it will be nice to see Blast buffed. Frost and Fire bring more utility than arcane in the 10% crit debuff. Arcane should at the very least be on par with them given its lesser utility.

I'm not sure how "fair" that would be when you consider mages still have a relatively easy PvE damage 'rotation.' Yes, shadow priests have a talent that allow them to have shadow word: pain refreshed; however, they were also given another DoT to juggle (class-wide Devouring Plague) never mind the fact they had the most 'involved' rotation pre 3.0. Warlocks, particularly affliction, have a similarly laborious cast sequence.

The overall push in WotLK was to give players slightly more complex rotations and to eschew the one or two button wonder approach. Recently balance druids had their Starfire glyph nerfed such that it can no longer stack three seconds onto Moonfire ad infinity. This requires them to monitor it like another DoT in addition to Insect Swarm and possibly IFF, too, in the absence of a shadow priest.

Although I have not extensively theory crafted with a mage on Beta; having spent significant amounts of time trying out every ranged damage class (and 'sub' classes), mage still strikes me as one of (if not THE) easiest in terms of button pressing. You could argue that frost mages don't have to actively refresh the debuff but, on the other hand, they do have to manage a pet cool down.

Magic Attunement. Frost and Fire could get that too, but they usually don't. Granted, it's probably not as good as 10% crit on enemies, but improved amplify and dampen are still solid buffs that nobody else brings. Either way, as long as there's a frost or fire mage in the raid, the other mage can choose a spec relatively freely, which I think is nice. The only thing that would still stand against it is the general damage > flavor mentality, so if Arcane lags behind a lot on top of doing less overall damage than ice or fire, most people probably won't choose arcane.

If you are the only mage in a raid, then you are probably right...

And you would have to rebuff at least every 10 seconds when the charges were consumed. A serious dps loss, if you ask me.

Saying that magic attunement and Imp scorch/winters chill are on par with each other as good utility spell for raids is quite laughable. When was the last time you used Amp magic or Dampen magic in your PvE raids? Bloodboil/Gruul maybe? Even these days if you are semi appropriately geared for the encounter it is a non issue if you don't have any mages to buff it because healing is doing just fine. The days of asking for amp magic in raids are long gone of which when you got to bloodboil the RL would ask for everyone to put on a certain amount of Resilience gear on as well which I am betting helped alot more in damage mitigation then Amp magic helped with incoming raid damage for the healers.

The point is Arcane doesn't have a raid buff that is on par with the other trees.

Slow can only be put on one target at once...

Doesn't Slow only affect only 1 target at a time?

I used raid-wide Amplify Magic on every fight in SWP except M'uru. I'd be a lot happier if the buff was given to another class as well - it's on my list of overpowered buffs that only a single class can provide.

I failed to make my point, which was.

Scorch (the spell) is useless in PVE unless you have Improved Scorch (the talent)
Improved Scorch is useless in PVE when you have a frost mage in the raid, even if you have the scorch glyph

While "useless" is a strong word, and probably overstates the reality, it does seem clear that the spell could use some love. In my opinion, it would be preferable to have Scorch (the spell) be useful situationally in raids even without Improved Scorch. That would make Scorch a better spell, and simultaneously make Improved Scorch a more reasonable talent.

Speaking of Slow, i remember that it used to hit Raid Bosses (it didn't really worked but if i remember correctly, the boss used to get the debuff, probably because the boss was vulnerable to one of it's effects), so:

with the new patch does it still hit the bosses?
if yes, is torment the weak affected by it? or it it only if the target is effectively snared?

As for a scorch fix, i think that Scorch and Winter's Chill should deliver the same debuff on the target, so it could be debuffed by differently specced mages helping eachother.

The only thing unique about Amplify Magic and SWP is that the fights were hard enough to make it worthwhile to spend the time to buff the raid with Amplify Magic.


Oh, and I forgot that Amplify Magic was bad on Kalecgos. Very strong on Brutallus, Felmyst, Twins, and Kil'Jaeden. Pre-SWP/BT/MH, it was useful to raid-buff on Gruul, most of HKM, Magtheridon, Lurker, Tidewalker, Leo, and Void Reaver.

The problem with comparing Scorch to Winter's Chill is that the orginal design of the talents was to have two completely different debuffs applied under different mechanics. One was refreshed by any frost spell, providing 10% crit (I never paid attention to the tooltip, so I don't know if it was crit for frost only or otherwise). The other was a 15% damage bonus to fire.

Arguably, 15% damage scaled incredibly better than 10% crit. Under those circumstances, it made sense that every frost spell refreshed Winter's Chill, but only Scorch refreshed Scorch.

Now that they've been made exactly the same, the application of them seems inconsistent. Scorch is simply a rotational DPS loss. Winter's Chill is completely passive. The two can't be compared, yet they provide the same bonus.

This could easy be addressed by creating a glyph that refreshed scorch when hot streak procs. I would take such a glyph over Glyph of Scorch (which, as mentioned, saves you 3 casts of scorch at the very beginning of the fight). Think of it this way, in a 6 minute fight, with Glyph of Scorch, you're casting 12 scorches. Without glyph, you're casting 15 scorches.

If there was a means to refresh scorch, you'd apply 5 scorches and be done with it. Blizzard was right -- Glyph of Scorch is great for trash pulls (although I never use it currently because trash dies in seconds). But it's mechanic is flawed in light of its mirroring of Winter's Chill. Blizzard stripped away Scorch's functionality but retained its mechanism (rotation).

And while 10% crit is actually quite nice (due to Burnout, Hot Streak and debuffs not stacking), it still has glaring problems.

I kindda agree, altho saying that scorch is gimped atm is arguable because, when glyphed, you can ramp it up waaay faster than Winter's Chill, which is a considerable advantage not only on trash.

Exactly. Since Blizzard is going to give me two specs I can swap between, I will use one spec for those cases where I need to apply the spell vulnerability debuff (10% crit). Unless Blizzard fails to make frostbolt DPS reasonable, I'll use frostbolt for this purpose. If Blizzard does fail at frost, then I'll use Frostfire bolt for this purpose. Only if Blizzard fails miserably at balancing Fire, Frost and Frostfire damage specs would I even consider using scorch for this purpose. I hope Blizzard does not fail miserably as they design our class for level 80.

My 2nd spec (well my first spec, since this will be my "primary", or at least my favorite) will assume that some other mage is applying spell vulnerability (10% crit). Assuming I want a spec based upon maximal "blow stuff up" potential, that spec will be based on fireball damage, living bomb and pyros on hot streaks. I won't waste talent points on improved scorch, since those points are useless under the premise of this build. Instead, I'll spend those three points on talents that are useful situationally for AOE, or impact (for the time I spend outside of raids), or fiery payback, or whatever. Definitely not improved scorch. I can't even justify improved scorch for 5-man instances, although I wouldn't argue with someone who felt it was occasionally useful in 5-mans.

In neither of my two specs does it make sense for me to opt for improved scorch, and in no situations (outside of PVP), can I see a reason to cast scorch. I can't, for the life of me (outside of PVP), identify a reason to opt for the scorch glyph either. Unless scorch (the spell) is made useful, there's no reason for me to even consider improved scorch (the talent), because there will always be a better way to apply that debuff.

Scorch really should have some positive interaction with subsequent fireball spells, such that (Scorch+Fireball)x2 is roughly on par with (Fireball)x3 -- and that's with untalented scorch. Then, the spell might make sense, sometimes, and therefore the talent might make sense, sometimes, and the glyph might make sense, sometimes.

Barring that, scorch DPS would have to be significantly buffed, which causes many problems including PVP balance problems, and the risk that we accidentally make scorch spam the dominant fire rotation (again?).

(One terrible thought... scorch could be made useful if the duration of living bomb, and all relevant spell damage (scorch, LB, and fireball) were tuned such that fireballx3+scorch+living bomb were higher DPCT than fireballx4+living bomb -- you'd cast scorch if you failed to get a hot streak since your last application of LB).

Cast ice lance.

That's just plain bull. I have in the past specc'd into the increase bonus.

The buff is amazing in BT. I've used it raidwaide on Najentus and Bloodboil (although not on the melee in bloodboil unless they got fel raged), and on the Mt in pretty much every encounter. So much of the incoming damage is uneffected by the 'downside' and except in the case of resistance type fights, it provides a monumentally huge boon compared to the downside.

Calling it 'highly situational' is just garbage. Basically, anytime a player is going to receive as many or more heals then magic hits that are increased by it (many magic abilities arent increased by amp magic - Ie, burn, metoer slash, gas nova, Naj's shield explosion) it's a phenomenal buff to your healers.

As for scorch, I can't see a valid justification ofr taking it out of the rotation. The 'ramp up' is problematic, and I'm a little unsure why blizzard nerfed the glyph down to 3 instead of 5 charges, but thats the main issue. Realistically, if we didn't have to maintain it, what would be the point of having the spell in the first place? There's nothing fun about having spells that you never cast.

Winter's chill is superior to improved scorch on Aoe pulls as well. Which smoothly brings me into my question:

For a deep arcane build, I'm feeling on the beta right now that arcane explosion is lacking. Its great for those rare, rare times I need to AoE on the move. Am I better off on tanked AoE however to rotate flamestrike/blizzard or just spam blizzard? I know flamestrike gets some really nice scaling if the DoT is allowed its full duration, and the cycle seems to enjoy lucrative haste returns (as long as you don't go over 37% - getting the cycle down to a point of overlapping FS). Just playing with that cycle in the nexus; it certainly seems to be swinging much better DPS.

So can anyone confirm or deny whether TtW is working on bosses now? On beta I just tried rotating FfB with FB while specced into molten fury and TtW and I was getting the increase on the test dummies. Does this also work on bosses now. I seem to remember hearing that it was finally fixed a patch ago but no one really said anything about it so I was just looking for some confirmation.

What I was trying to say in a nutshell is that I think if Blizzard doesn't want you spamming AB then they should put some kind of definition on what spam is for this spell. I think a debuff after a certain amount of consecutive AB cast should then and only then "force" you into another spell use. By force I mean if you don't already rotate then this is the stopgap to make you rotate which is what they want us to do.

The debuff while forcing you to use another spell should also give you a voice in your head saying, "You feeling lucky punk!?" and this gives you a reason to push the AB button again. This will only mean that you start getting taxed crazy amounts of mana but you also have a huge gain. You lose a crazy amount of mana but that spell will hit like a mack truck going down the side of a mountain which allows the "mana dump" portion of the spell. Basically take the spell back to pre 3.0 functionality, then define spam of the spell, then tax the mage once that spam limit is met but reward the mage for being crazy enough to use it at the taxed level as a mana dump. I can guarantee you with the way MBAR procs you should rarely hit that number and even if you do you can break that up by casting a rotation spell or go deep into the mage psyche and hit AB another 2 times and pay the price and make the MoB on the other end pay the price also. Maybe they should call the debuff "Pay the Price" *shrug*