If Living Bomb does outweight Icy Veins (even with Icy Veins on 2:24 CD) in DPS, then I don't see why you wouldn't combine an AoE/single-target talent build for the 3.0 patch:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

You can't take both Living Bomb and Icy Veins, and putting any points into the frost tree is a waste without it. I don't see it being viable to sacrifice 5 points just to get Elemental precision, since there is already an abundance of spell hit. That's 47 more spell hit, which is easy obtained. Whether or not that drops DPS is something I'd let Rawr figure out.

If you must take Icy Veins, then it's better to put a point into Incineration over Pyroblast (since you don't have Fiery Payback).

I recommend you go to wowhead and check loot from SWP and revisit your statement after that.

All Mage equipable items in SWP with spellhit

Bibdy that suggestion sounds like a good way to address mage mana issues directly, however it does seem to ignore the root problem: we don't have any consistent method of sacrifice that allows us to regenerate mana in the first place. Life tap may be wonky but it enables mana to be a real balance point for warlocks, especially in pve, because you have to give something up in order to see a return on mana. Mages don't really have anything like that, except for evocate, and as a primary dps class and primary spell caster, that's something we're sorely missing. In our current state we're balanced around 1 pool that pretty much never changes no matter what choices we make in combat, and so we're balanced around that pool always being sufficient enough for what we're doing. As a result, mana is a meaningless stat and a low priority concern, as no management really takes place at all. We spam our skills until the target dies and maybe sub in a different consumable if we think we can push that.

We need the option to activate powerful mana regen, at a cost, consistently and repeatably. Evocation would be a good example if it was missing its 8 minute cooldown. Other options are great. Evocating form that reduces our damage output or whatever, doesn't matter. But as long as that option is missing, mana is practically meaningless.

If you run Rawr to find the highest DPS build obtainable, you'll see that spell hit is quite obtainable with the gear selection. Now, I'm not in Sunwell. I'm in BT and Hyjal, and I am coming to a point where spell hit is in abundance. I'm waiting for Chronicle of Dark Secrets to drop before I grab Leggings of Channeled Elements and Slippers of the Seacaller, but just taking Chronicle and Leggings puts me far over 164. In fact, I would jump from 164 to 199 spell hit, yet both of those are DPS upgrades (replacing Fetish of the Primal Gods and Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons). I realize a lot of posters here are using 4-piece T6 and Sunwell items, but not everyone is at that level.

Nonetheless, my point is that even though those few items put me far over the spell hit cap, they are still DPS upgrades, comparitively. Now, that doesn't mean I couldn't also drop spell hit from other items (such as replacing Mana Attuned Band with Ring of Ancient Knowledge), but the DPS increase from those types of switches is minimal.

In the same way, I'm looking at Sunwell gear in Rawr and it reports 2738 DPS (with Elemental Precision, without Totem of Wrath and Inspiring Presence). Spell hit is at 166 - 13.6% + 3% from EP. If I sub out EP and make up for it in equipment and enchants (Spell Strike replacing Spellpower seems to be better than replacing Sunflare/Chronicle with Staff of Torrents) it drops to 2673 DPS. But this also frees up 8 points from frost tree which, as Manly pointed out, can be put into Arcane. If clearcasting allows for Living Bomb upkeep, than, as far as I've read, it's a far greater DPS gain to use Living Bomb than the DPS loss from EP.

Naturally, time will tell, and perhaps Icy Veins lower CD will give a solid boost to Fireball spam over Living Bomb. Maybe it will just cost too much mana. And I know Blizzard has more changes planned, as they've stated.

I didn't mean to imply that you can simply switch in spell hit equipment and not lose DPS. I merely meant to say that the DPS loss from doing this might be made up through Living Bomb.

Does anybody in Beta know if Fingers of Frost can proc of Frostfirebolt?

Using the LK Honor/Arena gear that's been available, an undead frost mage is going to have (note: with AI, crit is base crit, using staff because OH not available, no enchants/gems):

Health : 13,274
Mana : 15,393
Damage : 1,151
Crit % : 16.43
OOC MP5: 183
-Crit %: 6.84

While an Arc mage with the int talents will have:

Health : 13,274
Mana : 17,254
Damage : 1,294
Crit % : 17.18
OOC MP5: 197
-Crit %: 6.84

Now, unlike the gear at 70, we have the option of crit->spi at 80 by using the 'healing' gear. Making that swap, you get (paren numbers include student of the mind):

Crit % : 11.60
OOC MP5: 478 (535)
30% mp5: 143 (161)
60% mp5: 287 (321)
80% mp5: 382 (428)

So you've got a tradeoff between 5.6% crit for 299 OOC mp5 or, more likely, it'll be 10.6% crit (glyphed molten) vs ~400 mp5 (glyphed mage). Whether the tradeoff is worth it depends on how long fights last and how popular Slow/Spellsteal/Mana Shield spamming is, but unlike Vanilla/BC, I don't think that trading crit for regen is beyond the pale.

9/52/0 -- basic lvl 70 build.
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

Effectively a '10/51/0' build with 1 clearcasting -> 3/3 MOE. You kinda really want blastwave since it now pushes targets back. Its really sweet. Also, I could've sworn when I tried dragon's breath that it also does the same blastwave pushback in addition to disorient. In any case, you have a few option you can customize from that.

You might want:
-5/5 clearcasting
-2/2 fiery payback (this is crazy good if the fights allow for it)

What you can spare:
-1 pt imp scorch if you run the imp. scorch glyph (assumign that gets released too and is accessible)
-1 pt MOE
-1 pt PWF
-2 pt blastwave
-1 pt dragon's breath

On a side note, I don't think a deep fire build should ever spend points in firestarter. Living bomb / blastwave / dragon's breath packs quite a punch as it is. Particularly living bomb. I would honestly favor the good old 2 pt in arcane over them, because I do strongly believe the flexibility is more interesting than the situational aoe dps increase. Anyway, living bomb is ridiculously solid aoe spell, and I don't see why I would really want much more than that. I do note that blastwave/firestarter proc/flamestrike is impractical. Blastwave pushes back all the mobs, so you cant follow it with a flamestrike, lest you don't want it to hit anything.

While lvl 80 specs are interesting with the 0/51/20 variations, I am really disappointed from FFB as it is now in WOTLK. I'm not going to lie here. I have been thoroughly comparing 0/51/20 fireball spam (with 4pct6 to simulate the fireball glyph) to FFB spam, and repeatedly, test asfter test it just made me question whats the point of FFB - if any. Of sure, its got a really good DPM. And a really solid crit multiplier. But despise all of that, FFB crits for less than my fireball crits. Uh oh. Severely less too. If FFB crits for less than fireball, then theres no point switching to FFB on hot streak proc or during combustion. None. The core problem is the base damage of the spell -- its really absurdly low. I went back to dr boom and tested, and using the same gear, I was getting this: (using 0/51/20)
FFB hit: 2.1k
FFB crit: 4.9-5.1k
fireball hit: 2.8-3k
fireball crit: 5.1-5.5k

But anyway, all of this to get back to my point -- for lvl 80 specs, if you don't use FFB because even with the proper talents it was giving me piss-poor crits (vs fireball), then whats the point of the many frost talents ? Might as well go for 9/51/11 over 0/51/20. Hell, why not just go the full distance and instead go for 12/51/8 ? Or hell, even 20/51/0.

9/51/11 - 'new' 2/48/11 deep-fire build
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000
20/51/0 - mana regen based deep-fire build (no EP)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

Change Winters Chill to: Gives your frost spells a 100% chance per hit to increase a targets chance to be critically hit by 1%. Stacks 5 times.

Change Improved Scorch to: 100% Chance per application to increase a targets vulnerablility to magic by 2%. Stacks 5 times.

Move Focus Mind further down the tree and change it to: Focus your energy on a target, increasing all damage taken by that target by 10. Lasts 1 min. or until 200 charges are expended.

Hmmm, exactly how much extra damage for the extra mana spent does Living Bomb provide?

A fireball does 1000 base damage and 115% from +damage before multipliers. Crits for 245% of total damage after ignite. Costs 21% base mana.

2 living bombs (cast-time equivalent of 1 fireball) provide 4000 base damage, 200% extra +damage. Cost a total of 62% base mana.

The following answers are needed to proceed
What is the base mana at 70?
Can Livinb Bomb explosion crit? Can Living Bomb ticks crit?

Some rough conclusions can already be drawn, nevertheless.
We can tell that roughly every 2 clearcasted fireballs cover the mana difference between 1 fireball and 2 Living Bombs, with no dps time lost. Thus we basically get 2 free living bombs every 100 fireballs for every point in clearcasting. That is, 3000 base damage and 85% of +damage before other multipliers for every point in clearcasting for every 100 fireballs. That's a rough estimate of how clearcasting translates into dps for a firemage.

EDIT: edited out the questions about clearcasting and base mana at 80.

You might, alas we aren't sure how much miss we'll be facing vs. boss mobs if said patch does come about. And even if it remains a the same-old same-old 17% we have to gain one more percent to cover the new "no 99% spell hit cap".

Level 70 mage base mana is 2241.
Living Bomb's Explosion can crit, the 4 ticks cannot.
Living Bomb is said to benefit from Hot Streak/Combustion but not consume it. Like Molten Armour.
It doesn't proc MoE. Some of that may or may not be intended.
The Explosions are also bugged to be cast every 3s centered on you.

1 Fireball is 1020 fire damage, 115% scaling, 21% base mana. Plus glyphs/set bonuses/whatever.
2 Living Bombs are 2760 fire damage + 160% non-crittable plus 1380 + 80% crittable damage. Plus World in Flames.
That's ignoring all other multiplier that would equally apply to both spells.

Taking 245% crit damage, 50% crit rate, that makes it on average:
1 Fireball: 1760 base + 198% scaling plus glyphs/bonuses.
With MoE at 2k spell power, that would be ~5720 damage for ~19% base mana
2 Living Bombs: 5140 base + 298% scaling.
Without MoE (not working as far as I know) and 2k spell power, that's 11.110 damage for 62% base mana.

So LB has 3 times the base damage, but only 1.5 times the scaling.
At 0 spell power, they are actually near equal DPM.


Level 70 Napkin math

Assuming 3.0 brings the level 70 spells as well, and ~50% crit raid (de)buffed, no Precision/Clearcasting:
1 Fireball: 815 + 115%, 382 mana
2 Living Bombs: 2048 + 160% DoT, 1024 + 80% DD, 1348 mana.

Assuming 1.6k spell power, 40% average haste (BT/SP gear without Demo Lock/Focus Magic, but with WoA/Heroism/iMKA).
Also 50% crit rate for a 1+0.5*(2.45-1) = 1.725 muliplier for averaged crits. Also assuming 4T6, but no WiF or glyph.
The spell damage equivalents normalised to "Fireball Spell Power points" (not the same as damage in the first calculation):
Fireball: 709 + 100%; 891 mp5
2 Living Bombs: 2048/1.05/1.725/1.15+160%/1.05/1.725/1.15+1024/1.05/1.15+80%/1.05/1.15; 3145 mp5

That makes Fireball 2309 dmg, Living Bomb 4120 dmg.
So you gain 1811 +dmg at the cost of 2254 mp5, or a ratio of 1.24 mp5/dmg in the terms of my Mana Compendium.
(Of course you can't spam LB due to the 12s wait time, but that's not relevant when only looking at the ratio beween dmg gain and mp5 loss.)


Conclusion for Level 70

Not using Living Bomb would be a gain of roughly 1.24 mp5/dmg with the metrics of my mana guide.
The compendium is of course written for 2.4 and not 3.0. Potion sickness means that you have to take the value for "Destro Pot with all CDs vs. Mana Pot", Alchy trinkets are junk, and downranking is killed. The Crit-Haste-Pyrestone comparison is also off due to Burnout improving crit damage, not improving the LB DoT, cutting MoE to 25% and MoE not affecting MoE which is or more costly spell.

Other than that, I see no big differences.

* => That means that you should always use Living Bomb at 70. Use all your mana mechanisms if you have to.

No matter the cost. Use everything you have to keep your mana up.
Use mana gems, use Evocation, drink a Mana Pot (over Destro with stacked CDs), use Mage Armour, use Draenic / Fire Power Elixirs over a Flask.

Use Serpent-Coil braid unless you have Skull+Sliver (also gets you the 1% additional hit to cap).
Maybe spec Clearcasting if you can get more +hit easily.
If you still can't keep up, you're probably better off socketting Crit over Haste Pyrestones.

Just don't use Resto drums, Alchemy trinkets, ask for BoW (over BoK) or start wanding. Or other stupid things.
Everything else is fair game if you have to keep your mana up.


How is our mana consumption going to look anyway?

Burnout and Winter's Chill are about neutral (40% crit, 30% refund => 50% crit, 25% refund, that's ~10 mp5 gained).
Living Bomb adds 483 mana every 12 seconds, or -201 mp5.
Losing Icy Veins adds roughly +30 mp5. Losing Precision can cost about -30 mp5.
Speccing Clearcasting can add roughly +100 mp5. Potion Sickness is a -67 mp5 loss.

Actually using Evocation and Mage Armour would grant roughly +270 mp5.

New Vampiric Touch is roughly a -200 mp5 loss. New Judgement of Wisdom is roughly a +400 mp5 gain. Water Elemental adds +180 mp5 fully talented.
New Wrath of Air Totem and Moonkin Aura are roughly a -200 mp5 loss.

Half the talents are not yet in or broken or being retuned, but it looks rather sustainable manawise.
I probably forget a few new talents or changes as well.


Clearcasting 10/51/0 vs. Precision 2/51/8:
That's 7% mana cost vs. 3% hit in direct comparison.
7% mana cost reduction means +85 mp5 in the above setting. Getting 3% hit on gear costs you at most -48 dmg (if you gem for it with 4 Lionseyes instead of Spinels).
In Sunwell gear with 3% hit from Faerie Fire, it'll cost you around -36 dmg.
So, speccing for Clearcasting over Precision nets you at least 1.77 mp5/dmg (85/48), or realistically at least 2.36 mp5/dmg (85/36).

* Clearcasting is always worth using if you cannot sustain Living Bomb otherwise, even if you have to gem for +hit.
In Sunwell gear, it is a worse option than Evocation, but better than Mage Armour.
So, spec for Clearcasting if Evocation alone isn't enough to last you through the fight.


Conclusion:
Living Bomb is very costly, roughly a 20% increase in mana spent.
However, it is very worth casting every cooldown, even if you have to use less desirable mana recovery options.
This is all with the current balancing/scaling. If anything of it gets tuned down, it will be used less or not at all.

Has it been determined yet on beta if the Water Elemental is getting the same buff treatment that warlock pets are?

Is it getting a portion of our spell hit? Is it getting the survivability traits that the warlock pets are supposed to be getting?

Does the survivability of the Water Elemental effect any of the DPS modelling that has been done thus far or do they all simply assume that the pet has perfect uptime?

Can anyone give an update on how Impact has been changed in the WotLK beta versus how it is on live? The wording on the Blizzard talent calculator is now: "Gives your damaging spells a 4/7/10% chance to stun the target for 2sec." I therefore have two major questions: 1) Does it now proc on damaging frost spells? 2) Does it still proc on Molten Armor?

My apologies if this question has already been asked and answered, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

Well wouldn't my suggestion solve that root problem? Once you run OOM, you sacrifice DPS time to regenerate that mana, in the same way you sacrifice DPS time to Evocate right now. Certainly its not as on-demand as Lifetap is, but its useful in its own way. Its got to be better than running OOM and sitting with your thumb up your ass.

Part of the problem here is that LT doesn't really incur much of a penalty at all for its use. With raid wide healing what it is and Shamans CH scaling so well, Locks are never low on health for long after LTing. In addition, apart from fights like Brut (which are in the minority), the fight mechanics will usually involve some dps down-time you can't avoid (running away from something, etc.) when Locks can LT without incurring a dps penalty. To put in on an equal footing, Evo needs no CD and a negligible 'cost'. In its current state it is just massively broken. We don't notice it because we hardly ever use it!

The 'cost' needs to be real but small enough not to be massively inconvenient. And, like LT, we need to make good decisions about WHEN to use it, not have its use forced on us by CDs. Some type of passive regen we can use that reduces spell-power for it's duration and maybe a little time afterwards might work. So you have to make sure you use it in those down-times to maximize spell power uptime. If it was finely balanced, it would work. You can't just spam it as you are reducing your dmg and if you HAVE to get mana back, you incur a cost. But, if you manage it properly you can max mana and max spell power up time depending on fight mechanics.

1.) Sure, it can proc off every damaging spell
2.) Yes, why wouldn't it?

Felmyst's staff justifies skipping EP at 70. The numbers have been thrown around up-thread, and it appears dropping EP + IcyVeins in favor of Living Bomb + Re-gemming/FelmystStaff is recommended for DeepFire mages.

Question: Will 3.0.2 bring about the death of the unmitigatable 1% for spell hit? (i.e. will we be needing at least 1% more spell hit?)

Look at it in terms of rating points. You're effectively spending 8 talent points for 78.69 points of Hit Rating. Value is about 9.84 Rating per talent point.

By comparison, Pyromaniac is 3 talent points for 137.73 Crit Rating. Value is 45.91 Rating per talent point, more than 4.6 times the value of Elemental Precision.

Given its very low value, is it really worth giving up even some utility talents to pay for it?

Actually, isn't even more lopsided? It looks like you're giving EP credit for the ghost hit rating, which doesn't apply to a fireball-based build. When you're only counting EP as 3% hit, then it drops to a value of 4.92 rating per point.

Great write-up Roywyn. That seems to confirm what I feel will be the main inhibitor for Arcane/Fire Mage DPS in Wrath; mana. It certainly isn't a new issue, but it will be exacerbated for Fire if LB remains PvE viable and AoE becomes plentiful (less so for Arcane it appears).

My question then refers to group matrices and concerns mimicking the current state of being shackled to Shadow Priests for mana; who gets the Survival Hunter? (if Hunting Party remains a group-only buff)

From my slightly biased perspective, it seems like 2% mana is a lot more valuable than 10 energy or 4 rage, so it would best suit a caster group. The frustrating thing about Hunting Party however... is that it is a direct DPS increase for Rogues and Warriors.... while only a DPS increase if the mana users in the group would otherwise go OOM with their max DPS rotations.

Another question; would a SV Hunter benefit greatly from a Moonkin, having Explosive Shot doing Fire damage? Or is it another Hunter shot doing spell damage but based on melee crit %? I like the idea of finally having a Moonkin viable for group synergy ... but if including a SV Hunter, the benefit of the Moonkin drops if the crit is wasted.

Lastly, a petty question for beta testers regarding MoE + Burnout; is the MoE mana returned based on the base mana cost or the 105% cost? Only a minor difference of 1.5% mana refunded ... but every bit counts.

No, at level 80, 1% hit = 26.23 rating. 26.23 * 3 = 78.69, 78.69 / 8 = 9.83625.

While typically true, I wouldn't always consider the first 5 pts into Frost as wasted; Frost Warding could be a sizable mana source in PvE during fights involving Frost/Fire damage, especially with how sensitive Fire DPS can be with regards to mana supply & LB. Looking at most BT/SWP encounters, there are plenty which involve Fire/Frost damage and I would imagine that many will be included in an expansion based largely on Frost.

If you concede Frost Warding as a valuable PvE talent, the value changes slightly to 78.69/6 = 13.115