Improved Scorch is now being turned into a debuff providing +10% crit chance for all magical damage. This means that fire mages will lose 15% of their overall damage compared to other magic dps classes.

Random caster A on live => X amount of overall damage done
Mage caster B on live => Y amount of overall damage done with 5/5 scorch debuff

Damage ratios => Y/X = K

Random caster A on beta => 1.1X amount of overall damage done
Mage caster B on beta => Y/1.15*1.1 amount of overall damage done

Damage ratios => Y/X/1.15 = K / 1.15

Mage is now doing 1/1.15 times less damage compared to the random caster.

The difference is so big, I have no idea how they are going to compensate for that.

I don't agree with making improved scorch the same as winterchill; but it is pretty obvious that they expect only mages to provide the raid with a sizeable crit increase.

Fire will simply gets it buffs elsewhere as hinted by the same blue posts to make up for the lost effectiveness. I am expecting to see changes being made to the fire tree and destruction tree (For example, they can make firepower gives a higher %). There are other creative ways that can be done to make up for the loss as well.

Actually I see what you mean now. Thats entirely my mistake, I somehow totally forgot about frost channeling giving the same 10% reduction than clearcasting (of course its not exact, but gets the idea across). I went too far in my thoughts about specs and somehow that escaped me. I'd have to drastically re-evaluate what i proposed as a result.

----------------------

In any case I don't know why everyone is jumping the gun over the changes. This is what everybody has been asking for. No, its not a fire mage nerf. If your frame of reference is TBC, then fire mages went from 15% fire to 10% crit, which I guess is 'fair enough'. Frost didn't change. Arcane gained a free 10% crit, not to mention countless revamps on the tree. I'd much rather have scorch = winter's chill, as I specifically asked many times in the beta threads.

Frost gains the advantage of being able to keep scorch/WC up for free without dps loss, whereas firemages have the advantage of no ramp-up time (the dreaded rampup time!).

If they made many blue posts positively 'not mentioning' imp WE mana regen, its probably because they work on the assumption that it doesn't, in fact, regens mana. At least that would be my guess. They probably work with their internal revisions.

The real question is now, will imp scorch last 15 or 30 seconds ? Or I guess you just stack both WC/scorch on the mob, but they don't stack, so it stays 30s scorch adn 15s WC.

15% fire damage > 10% fire, frost, and arcane damage > 10% spell crit for all casters is fair enough? Fair enough for who? Certainly not a fire mage that is going to still have to ramp up 10% crit for the raid. At the very least make it like Winter's Chill and all fire spells provide the debuff instead of bull crap scorch spam.

Manly, you were asking for scorch to = winters chill? You were asking for a 15% damage nerf to fire mages so that we could now get the same debuff frost has without penalty at all? The only thing in my mind that ever made sense as to why scorch needed to be the only way to debuff that was that it was adding 15% damage and that's a crap ton more damage than 10% crit adds and it kinda made sense that there was a ramp up time to that.

This is a nerf to fire, 10% crit will never be close to 15% damage or even 10% damage. Unless they are increasing the base damage of fire ball to ungodly proportions and raising our self only threat reduction back to 30% this is just asinine.

The change to Focus Magic is welcome though, especially if each raid member gets 50 charges

Focus Magic: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters.

Yet they took the hunters mark away from the melee. Wonder what hunters mark is even supposed to do now with what they posted lol

It's not a nerf since it's not a change on the live servers. Pretty strong language for something that's currently only implemented on Blizzard's Mysterious Internal Servers. :V

If the personal DPS of Fire becomes a concern, then they'll just tweak the numbers somewhere. They haven't even done a DPS pass yet, though getting these stacking things set is the first step in doing so.

And consider that mages now have some kind of benefit to others in the group aside from Arcane Brilliance, water, and portal roulette. While you might be "losing" personal DPS, how much DPS is the *raid* gaining from 10% more spell crit? That's more uptime for Elemental Oath/Focus, more Improved Shadowbolt, more Demonic Pact, more Improved Spirit Tap, more Nature's Grace and Imp Moonkin and god knows what else at this point in development.

As well, note that it's something that *only* Mages bring to a raid. There's replacements for Malediction or Totem of Wrath or Replenishments, but the only Spell Crit Debuffs are from Mages.

Just gonna copy/paste the Blue post coming from Zarhym for easy reference within the thread:

"...There are thirty or so different categories into which buffs and debuffs fit. Here you will find a comprehensive list of the changes made broken down by category and which spells/talents are in that category.

# Armor Debuff (Major): Acid Spit (exotic Hunter pet), Expose Armor, Sunder Armor
# Armor Debuff (Minor): Faerie Fire, Sting (Hunter pet), Curse of Recklessness
# Physical Vulnerability Debuff: Blood Frenzy, (2nd Talent Spec TBA)
# Melee Haste Buff: Improved Icy Talons, Windfury Totem
# Melee Critical Strike Chance Buff: Leader of the Pack, Rampage
# Attack Power Buff (Flat Add): Battle Shout, Blessing of Might
# Attack Power Buff (Multiplier): Abomination's Might, Trueshot Aura, Unleashed Rage
# Ranged Attack Power Buff: Hunter's Mark (only Hunters benefit, so no need to exclude against other class abilities)
# Bleed Damage Increase Debuff: Mangle, Trauma
# Spell Haste Buff: Wrath of Air Totem
# Spell Critical Strike Chance Buff: Moonkin Aura, Elemental Oath
# Spell Critical Strike Chance Debuff: Improved Scorch, Winter's Chill
# Increased Spell Damage Taken Debuff: Ebon Plaguebringer, Earth and Moon, Curse of the Elements
# Increased Spell Power Buff: Focus Magic, Improved Divine Spirit, Flametongue Totem, Totem of Wrath, Demonic Pact
# Increased Spell Hit Chance Taken Debuff: Improved Faerie Fire, Misery
# Percentage Haste Increase (All Types): Improved Moonkin Aura, Swift Retribution
# Percentage Damage Increase: Ferocious Inspiration, Sanctified Retribution
# Critical Strike Chance Taken Debuff (All types): Heart of the Crusader, Totem of Wrath
# Melee Attack Speed Slow Debuff: Icy Touch, Infected Wounds, Judgements of the Just, Thunderclap
# Melee Hit Chance Reduction Debuff: Insect Swarm, Scorpid Sting
# Healing Debuff: Wound Poison, Aimed Shot, Mortal Strike, Furious Attacks
# Attack Power Debuff: Demoralizing Roar, Curse of Weakness, Demoralizing Shout
# Stat Multiplier Buff: Blessing of Kings
# Stat Add Buff: Mark of the Wild
# Agility and Strength Buff: Strength of Earth Totem, Horn of Winter
# Stamina Buff: Power Word: Fortitude
# Health Buff: Commanding Shout, Blood Pact
# Intellect Buff: Arcane Intellect, Fel Intelligence
# Spirit Buff: Divine Spirit, Fel Intelligence
# Damage Reduction Percentage Buff: Grace, Blessing of Sanctuary
# Percentage Increase Healing Received Buff: Tree of Life, Improved Devotion Aura
# Armor Increase Percentage Buff: Inspiration, Ancestral Healing
# Cast Speed Slow: Curse of Tongues, Slow, Mind-numbing Poison.

*In each category, you can only benefit from the most powerful spell granting that effect. For example, Fel Intelligence grants spirit and intellect, both weaker than Arcane Intellect and Divine Spirit. If a player has Fel Intelligence and receives a stronger Arcane Intellect buff, he will gain the intellect value from Arcane Intellect and the spirit value from Fel Intelligence.

In most cases, fully-talented players will have exactly equal power on the strength of these buffs and debuffs. Fel Intelligence is an example of where one ability is weaker than others. The buffs in the "Increased Spell Power Buff" category are also not all the same potency, as they scale and grow in radically different ways. In virtually every other case, however, the buffs are equal. This means, for example, that fully-talented Battle Shout and Blessing of Might now grant the exact same amount of attack power.

In addition to this change, we also needed to address the "mana battery" roles in a raid. The mana regeneration effect they grant is no longer limited to their own party, and it no longer depends on the amount of damage they deal. Each time they trigger the mana regeneration effect, 10 people in their raid group will receive a buff which causes them to regenerate 0.5% of their maximum mana each second. This buff, Replenishment, will be given preferentially to raid members with the lowest mana, but will re-evaluate which raid members receive it each time it is fired. Replenishment is provided by Shadow Priests, Survival Hunters, and Retribution Paladins.

Finally, we have modified Heroism and Bloodlust to affect the entire raid. However, all affected raid members will be unable to cast or benefit from Bloodlust/Heroism for 5 minutes...

# Improved Scorch: Increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
# Winter's Chill: Also increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
# Focus Magic: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters."

Imp. Scorch/Winter's Chill are now identical. Looks like they still stack with Elemental Oath though. Focus Magic has received a HUGE buff a far as keeping it up on the raid costs. Only one raid-wide Heroism per every 5 minutes. And Surv Hunters and Spriests will give mana back to the whole raid. Pretty crazy stuff here.

Edit: Other changes of note:

# Improved Moonkin Aura: Grants 3% haste of all types.
# Earth and Moon: Increases spell damage taken from all schools by 13% on the target.
# Misery: Causes spells cast at the target to have +3% spell hit.
# Shadow Weaving: Buffs only self.
# Improved Shadow Bolt: Buffs only self.
# Expose Weakness: Buffs only self.
# Shadow Embrace: Buffs only self.
# Improved Hunter's Mark: No longer grants melee attack power.
# Blood Pact: Grants health instead of Stamina.
# Fel Intelligence: Has replacement ranks that grant flat values of Intellect and Spirit.
# Frost Aura: Excludes properly against all other resistance buffs.
# Grace: Reduces damage taken by target by 3%.
# Rampage: Increases melee and ranged critical strike chance by 5% for the raid.
# Improved Faerie Fire: No longer benefits melee and ranged hit chance, only spell hit.
# Hunter's Mark: No longer increases attack power bonus from attacks against the target.
# Improved Hunter's Mark: No longer grants melee attack power.
# Sting (Hunter pet): Now acts as a minor armor debuff.
# Waylay: Attack speed reduction changed to 20%.
# Icy Touch: Only slows melee attack speed (not ranged or spell).
# Tree of Life: No longer grants healing based on spirit, grants 3% increased healing received to raid.
# Demonic Pact: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters.
# Totem of Wrath: Now grants a flat amount of spell damage, and all enemies in its radius have an increased chance of being struck by criticals.
# Heroism: Cannot be recast while caster has Exhausted debuff, and those with Exhausted debuff cannot be affected by it.
# Bloodlust: Cannot be recast while caster has Sated debuff, and those with Sated debuff cannot be affected by it.
# Vampiric Touch: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on dealing damage.
# Hunting Party: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on specified shots.
# Judgements of the Wise: Grants Replenishment mana regeneration buff to up to 10 raid members on Judging.

Surv. Hunter as a melee buffer = clobbered with the nerfbat

Shadow Weaving is a 15% nerf to Affliction. Imp. ISB change nerfs shadow priests in return. And it looks like Moonkins are just one more alternative to Malediction and Ebon Plaguebringer.

The biggest impression I get here is that I can really see how 10 mans will be shaping up to have nearly every raid buff/debuff you could want.

Obviously we can't know for certain, but I suspect the answer is yes. The 2.0 pre-TBC patch included all mechanics changes, so I suspect the 3.0 pre-WotLK patch will as well. This will mean binary spell partial resists and 17% full to cap will likely be included.

The "ramp" is pretty short with the inscription putting 5 debuffs on in one cast. In fact, as Manly said, fire will ramp the debuff FASTER than frost. It will require weaving one scorch per 30 seconds in to maintain, but that should be a minimal factor, and with the 1% chance to miss completely eliminated, you don't have to add buffer time for possible scorch resist. In fact, with 5 stacks per cast, you could let scorch drop for a split second just before being reapplied and have minimal effect on the raid.

Winter's chill is probably remaining a 15 second debuff, while imp scorch is 30 seconds. In fights that include dps-off phases and/or a lot of movement, scorch will be easier to keep up on the boss than chill.

You're taking one change in a vacuum and thinking fire mages have been nerfed to hell. Consider frost mages who are receiving "no penalty at all" from this change, but are receiving a 6% nerf due to frostbolt partial resists they didn't have before, plus a 3% nerf to elemental precision (since this patch should fix the Ghost Hit bug once and for all). Fire losing 5% is actually a smaller "nerf" than frost for this patch. Then you're completely ignoring living bomb, burnout, and other strong increases to fire's arsenal coming with 3.0.

This part makes even less sense. 10% crit > 10% damage for fire, due to >200% crits (245% with burnout, in fact) and that crit procs MoE, scales Hot Streak, etc. The sky is NOT falling, and your posts are really over the top.

I'm a little disappointed that my guaranteed raid slot as a frost mage is going away, but I hope they balance frost's damage better than was done in TBC such that in fights I can keep my elemental alive, I can match (or even beat, in burst fights) fire's damage output, thereby avoiding the "go respec fire or else" that plagues mages today.

I'm interested in seeing how much damage ToW gets, since it will be competing with Focus Magic in this regard, and how much critical chance it adds, since that part only competes with Heart of the Crusader.

Well, the instinctive response is to run around in circles, flailing one's arms and screaming, but all told this is in theory a great design change that will massively improve the ability of people to raid with the spec they want, and the people they want. You'll win or lose based on the skill of your raid members, not based on your ability to stack the perfect raid group.

In practice, I really hope that the designers have laid in a good stock of liquor, because they're going to need it before they're done making this work. Just a couple examples:

- Fire Mages, as noted, are losing 15% DPS relative to every other caster (more, in some cases). That's going to take a lot of improvement to rebalance the spec. By the time they're done, people are going to be looking at Fire Mage talents and wondering why some of them are twice as strong as their counterparts in other trees, because they'll have to be to compensate for the change.

- Survival Hunters are losing a ton of utility now that Expose Weakness affects only the hunter himself. That's going to require a significant boost to their personal DPS as well.

The first couple months on the PTR are going to be a laugh riot in terms of balance.

I think one of the biggest concerns around this change comes from looking at Warlocks on Live and their damage modifiers like the +15% Shadow damage Succubus buff which are responsible for their amazing damage output in fully-buffed raid situations. When I first saw this change I thought "Damn, that's the kind of thing Warlocks have and Mages are having it taken away!" but, as you said, Fire Mages already benefit tremendously from critical strikes and will only benefit even more from crit in the expansion.

It's also very important to realize that these changes are affecting all classes. Check out the Druid forum and you'll see some concerns about Feral raid viability compared to Warriors.

I read it as working more like the new heroism will. One cast, all 25 are affected for X charges for Y minutes. Something you cast just before (so you can drink up mana for the first cast) or during the pull, one time.

Your post makes me think of amp/dampen magic, though, and makes me wonder if and how those are going to be affected by these changes. People ignore those buffs a lot since they're so annoying to cast on a full raid group and of sometimes-questionable utility, but they do functionally remain a buff type that only mages bring, and amp magic can in some cases be very useful--even more so with the changes to healing spell scaling to make up for less overall +heal, while the spell description still affects healing separately, for more than spellpower.

What is it you don't understand ? Let me give you a few extrapolations so you understand better the problem.

Imagine that in wotlk they went a slightly different route and made ret pallies increase all magical dps by 5%. Then they made moonkins give a +10% crit raid buff. Then they made arms warriors, for some reason, increase 5% magical dps. Then they made hunters increase 5% magic damage. Now all of that is on top of +10% scorch and 10% coe and 5% misery. And 10% from winter's chill.

Now because all of those buffs are a massive dps boost, you can't dps without any one of them. You have no choice but to have every single one of them, because cutting anyone of them will hurt badly your dps. Your dps is, in fact, balanced around the fact that all of them are available and up. Now because blizzard doesn't exactly wants mages critting some 15k fireballs pre-ignite, they end up having no choice but to either lower the fireball coefficient, or decrease its base damage because with all those buffs it becomes insane. In the end, you still end up with the same dps you would have had if your dps was balanced around less buffs. However, having a bunch of buffs you depends on has severe repercussions, namely:

- In every single raid you go into, you need very specific player specs and classes so that YOU can deal normal damage you were balanced for.
- This in turn means that you cut off raid slots. (ie: make other specs/classes unviable because you had no choice but to invite moonkin/ret pally/shadow priest/elemental shaman/survival hunter/frost mage/arms warrior/fire mage/warlock. All of those slots end up eating other player slots because those slots are 'locked down'. This inadvertantly ends up making other specs unviable (such as for making a pure demonstrative example, prot pally)).
- If that were not enough, that means you have strict raid requirements. You have no moonkin ? cancel the raid. Or don't invite mages. The more dependancies you add, the more likely one will be missed which ends up screwing YOU over.
- Not to mention, having multiple different buffs means your solo dps is total garbage. It also means you're fucked doing any 5 mans or 10-mans, because your dps was lowered so that PVE can function.

Let me repeat that.

The more buffs you depend on, the more your base dps has to get lowered. The flip side is also true;
The less buffs you depend on, the more your base dps has to be increased.

The only logical way to fix this is to remove intra-spec/class dependancies. This can be attained through redundancy, which is the route they went with. By making buffs not stack, you effectively make buffs redundant. This means you need now either, for example, a fire mage or a frost mage for +10% crit. You don't have to be screwed anymore by the fact that you're the only fire mage online, and that the frost mage is on vacation. You can also remove intra-spec/class dependancies by removing buffs/debuffs. This isn't a nerf as most people believe because it means if they remove COE one day, you can be pretty sure they'll also increase your dps by 10% to make up for it.

Then if all of that were not enough, you managed to also mention the salvation changes. I long argued that blessing of salvation was an abomination and that it should have been removed. I am quite glad they did. It means I can now do 5 or 10 mans without requiring a paladin. If they remove salvation, that means they increase the threat for tanks by 30%. But th major difference here, is that you do not need salvation to get that buff. Its always active. It also means that blessing of salvation being removed makes all your threat reduction talents more effective. Did you even stop to realize that ?

I made a thread about the scorch/WC issue, which touches directly the scorch/WC stacking.
WoW Forums -> Current issue with the latest talent trees.
Scorch / WC not stacking is a good thing. Although I had expected them to make it a +10% damage rather than +10% crit. This change single-handedly removes the previously required group makeup starting with 'frost mage then (arcane or fire)'. It was also a big problem because any spec could spend 18 points in fire in their off-tree and get all the benefits from the fire tree they needed (read, either arcane or frost spec). But fire doesn't have that option because WC is deeper than 20 points in the frost tree. Why is this important ? This is important because in order for fire spec to dps, it needed WC, which it could not get as part of his spec, but frost could get imp scorch. This was a problem. This fix allows all 3 mage specs to be self-sustenable without any external help. Arcane can go 53/18/0 and get scorch if need be, frost and fire will get either scorch or WC as part of their spec so they won't be screwed. Without that change, it means arcane was unable to 'sustain' is own dps by missing both WC and scorch (no way you can spec arcane with enough points to get imp scorch and WC). Frost could get scorch without trouble. And fire was screwed because it wouldn't afford WC.

And then you even mentioned fire mage nerfs. Well, let me show you how ridicule your argument is. Lets make another hyperbole. Were in the parallel universe where wotlk is also being worked upon, but being designed differently. One day, they decide that hey, why don't we make cold snap reset cold snap ? Of course, it makes no sense. But thats not the point. Now using your logic, the day they wake up and realize this change is utterly absurd, you start and throw a fit and make an infinite billion threads about the ultimate mage nerf of all times. From that point on, when comparing any changes you gladly use the frame of reference when things were overpowered and point out that WE GOT NERFED SEE? Well, yeah, I guess. But thats pointless. The only logical frame of reference, or comparison point is the live TBC servers. If you want to compare anything, compare it to what we have in TBC, not from change to change in beta servers. With this said, this also applies to arcane mages.

If not, then I guess I will agree to disagree with you.

It isn't just fire. A lot of buffs/debuffs that benefitted a lot of classes just got removed. If these changes went live tomorrow, I don't think Brutallus would be killable.

I get the feeling all the changes we saw to the trees up to now were window dressing...now the real work begins. There will be massive overhauls. They should have made these determinations from the start, and designed from there.

Below:
I picture it as like popping heroism. What's weird is all these do NOT stack, but are implemented different ways

Focus Magic -- Currently charges, static (does not scale), and a cooldown? Might be the second weakest of the bunch, or weakest if cooldown hampered, but will most likely be changed

Improved Divine Spirit -- ever-present (for one hour), scales with better gear, but at 5% probably the weakest of the bunch

Flametongue Totem, Totem of Wrath -- ever-present, static, potential to start as the strongest

Demonic Pact -- intermittent (on demon crit) and potentially totally lost on demon death, scales with the warlock's gear, potentially could become larger than Totem of Wrath

Considering the way they said Focus Magic "buffs the raid" I would think it effects everyone in one cast. Single targetting everyone with a mana bar would waste like 15-20 seconds of just GCDs.

Edit: One major thing I'm concerned about is the Replenishment buff. Some questions that we should be asking soon:

Can the same person receive multiple instances of the buff from multiple sources (i.e. one from a spriest, one from a ret pally), similar to the way Ferocious Inspiration works? If not, will .5% per second be enough alone to sustain LB in Fire builds, or AB spam? Will we be seeing people artificially eat through mana just to keep the buff and therefore be able to continue to use the most mana?

If nothing else, Replenishment gives us some perspective on the value of the Water Elemental regen: it's a flat .5% better than any other mana regen effect over 5 seconds time. Since, the effect is .6% per second instead of .5%, hopefully WE will stack with Replenishment as well.

I'd expect the mechanics of focus magic to be changed entirely. It could be a standard cast buff like arcane intellect, it could be a proc, it could be an aura. It now in the buff category and not the debuff category, that's really all we have to work with

So much unnecessary panic. Manly is 100% right here. Saying that fire is "nerfed" now is the same as saying that rolling ignites should never have been taken away and mages have been nerfed ever since. Rolling ignites was an unintentional mechanic that Blizzard eventually decided they didn't like people abusing. The same thing can be said now of stacking 6 shamans in a raid and rotating for heroism.

I, for one, as a raid leader say good riddance. Telling 3-4 people they had to sit every raid because we needed that 5th shaman was tiresome.

Besides, so much more has changed. Frost mages lost 3% ghost hit and 5% damage from "no resistance of binary spells" and nobody blinked an eye. Fire goes from 15% damage to 10% crit. These are just two data points to a much larger equation.

Theorycrafting is sorta on hold until we see the changes to the individual trees to account for raid stacking buff changes. But overall I think it is a fantastic (and ambitious) solution.

As I read it, especially in conjunction with the earlier blue messages saying a maximum of 1 mana restoration effect would be useful in 10-man and 2 in 20-man, only one Replenishment buff would be able to be present on any given person at a time, but two Replenishment buffs would be "intelligently applied" such that 20 people with mana bars would functionally all be permanently under the buff with two Replenishment buffers in the raid.

The entire raid stacking minigame got out of hand in Sunwell, which tested the TBC model to destruction. Blizz has taken a look at the results, and evidently doesn't like them, and is changing things up.

They have to, especially if they are serious about making a real parallel 10 man progression game. And the popularity of raiding and long term viability of it from a business standpoint may well depend on the success of this 10 man progression game, the 25 man raiding scene is becoming more and more exclusive with time. That's not a good trend.

And finally. mages in particular should shed no tears over the changes in raid stacking. Raid stacking in Sunwell didn't necessarily work out to our advantage. Three cheers for Blizzard. And I'm especially pleased about the change to focus magic.

All this does is encourage a different type of stacking. The stacking now is simply "I want to fit as many of these raid buffs in as few raid spots as possible so I can fill every other slot with whatever class brings the most DPS". It's the same problem that has been plaguing the Mage class (among others) of "once I have this utility (we'll say AI in this case) why would I bring another mage when a Warlock does 10% more DPS?". The difference is that now other classes can also bring your unique buffs (for example if they gave Boomkins AI and mages bring nothing unique) so if your class isn't up to snuff DPS wise you could see a raid with 0 of one class and 9 of another.

In most effects stacking is going to get worse unless they balance DPS outputs between all 10 classes to within a hair of eachother, which no one is capable of doing.

E: Yes I realize that Winter's Chill/Improved Scorch are the only spell crit debuffs so there will always be one mage in a raid. It was just an example.

If every class brings buffs and every class does about the same DPS (within 10% of each other, say, with massive disparities due to player skill), stacking will be a non-factor for all but the hardcore of the hardcore. You won't be able to fit your buffers into the fewest possible spots because there will be no non-buffers to fill the remaining spots with. Most guilds will select based on player skill or friendships. The SK-Gamings of the world will figure out that an arcane mage does 1.3% more DPS than an assassination rogue and will run a raid with 10 arcane mages.

Obviously Blizzard can bork up the numbers (especially with regards to scaling), but it seems a fine ambition.

Edit: had quoted Manly's post but it was huge so this is in reference to manlys post about how this is a good thing.

Just to use what you said in a frame of reference that you can understand where I am coming from.

This changes nothing about the idea of frost mage first. Now frost mages can just spec everything under the sun they want in frost, then spec 11 in arcane. What can fire bring to the table now? At least when it was damage you could have moved it further up the fire tree and at least bring 2 differently speced mages. This changed nothing about not picking a frost mage first.

What I remembered reading was you wanted scorch moved up in the tree which was fine by me as it would have at least remained a fire thing. Now you can competently by pass fire all together as it adds nothing that a frost mage cant provide and the frost mage provides it better by having the WE for mana which they didn't even mention in the post and every goodie that they can imagine in their tree and then the 11 in arcane tree. Or am I again reading that wrong?

Perhaps make it like tranquility?