As far as Elementalist builds go you can get Winter's Chill + Improoved Scorch but with these changes there is no reason to anymore.

Also the fact that Imp Scorch + WC are the only ones that dont stack with one another makes the raidleader choice on what to bring between 2 mages and not 2 classes. Dont think thats the intended choice. The fact that a mage can have both talents fully specced into one build and only benefit from one is wrong imo.

The change was no doubt a loss damage wise but to be honest the less debuff dependent we are the more they will have to buff our damage to be on pair.

I doubt a raid leader will see it this way. When putting the raid together he will check that either scorch or WC is available, along with most other 'essential' buffs. after that he'll likely have 13+ raid slots to fill up with whatever classes are available. That includes the 2nd mage, the 2nd balance druid or the 10th fury warrior or whatever. Try not to see it as 'they only need 1 mage so they'll only bring 1 mage'; see it as 'They only need 1 mage but they still have to fill the raid'.

This is true, but think about the indirect concequences! It means fire (and frist) will be buffed in 5/10 mans and soloing, since it will rely on less buffs to do it's full dmg! It can basicly just provide it's own debuff and do the higher base dmg to compensate.

I think theese changes are awesome! It's what i allways hoped they would do, and I'm glad they finally made it so.

Also, manly is 100% right in his excellent post, read it 5 times if you're still whining:P

Btw, +10% crit also improves mana efficiency (3%), hot streak uptime and provides huge critbonuses with burnout etc, it's much better than +10% dmg.
Imagine if the 3% extra mana we suddenly get allows us to use LB every CD and it has even bigger indirect effects on dps.

But all this is moot, since as many have pointed out, dps hasnt been balanced yet.

I just want the people whining to understand that this change is excellent and will make life easier for us (and many others) and indirectly buff mages, especially outside of 25 mans.


edit: I'd rather get blizzards attention about spirit not being usefull for fire and frost (I think I'd rather use molten armor with glyph for 5% crit and more MOE procs for mana as well)
+15% crit with molten armor and scorch debuff is very interesting indeed.


edit again: ok, I had an interesting idea. How about imp water elemental giving 100% immunity to aoe attacks instead of mana regen. Wouldnt that make it very usefull in both pve and pvp without being overpowered? And make sure it stays up most of its duration? (remember that alot of classes get aoe in Wotlk)

With regards to balancing, sure the debuff changes are a good thing. It lets 10/25 man balance be closer, it drastically reduces the hassle of raid organization and making sure you construct the raid precisely with the right buffs and debuffs.

There are a few concerns I have about it tho. Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill are still taking up seperate debuff slots. I don't like the idea of having to tell a fire mage that they can't scorch under any circumstances becuase we'll have WC up and we're running into the debuff limit. Changing those 2 talent's to provide the same 'vulnerability' debuff would be a good thing. Otherwise, you still have the bookeeeping concern about # of debuffs on the boss and that is clearly not a fun part of gamplay.

The second is what does this do to the fire mage playstyle? Assuming Winter's Chill in the raid, I'll never have to scorch. But I'll probably never want to scorch either. Isn't that a bad thing? Shouldn't I want to use multiple spells in a raid setting? Obviously, Fiery Payback is a talent designd to attempt to work Pyroblast into DPS situations (probably ineffectively, but its a cool idea and a nice attempt). Before this change a deep fire mage would be casting fireballs, Living Bomb where mana allows, and maintaining scorch. Now it would just be fireball and Living Bomb, right?

Wouldn't it be better if you had more incentive to use the multiple spells they give us, and not just bind 1 spell to all your keys and roll your fac across the keyboard?

Why is everyone screaming "The sky if falling!"? As a raid leader, who would you rather invite, a Mage who does 1 damage and gives all casters a 10% chance to crit, or a Mage who does 1.15 damage and has no significant debuff? Personally, I'd trade 15% fire damage for 10% crit for all casters. Stop thinking about the damage meters and consider the raid as a whole. 10% spell crit is huge for Warlocks, Boomkin, Elemental Shaman, Enhancement Shaman, and Shadow Priests; where as 15% fire damage does next to nothing for any of them.

From a gear stat value perspective, this is a nice change since spell crit is so expensive on gear. According to some earlier numbers, 55% spell crit is optimal for combustion and hotstreak as a fire mage, with each buff like this we are getting close to that value.

Also, who realistically expected every raid to have a Frost and Fire Mage? Think of all changes as BC->WotLK changes, not as Beta Patch 3.00567->Beta patch 3.00568. Overall, we are still way ahead of our current position in BC.

Hmm, i've noticed that mana stream and mana tide totems are not mentioned in the "mana battery" thread either. It is possible that they have simple grouped classes who can recover mana from their dps, as mana batteries, to prevent scaling issues. This would still leave the current improved WE as is, since no matter what your gear is like, you still provide the same benefits.

Thank god, it's about time. Now we can get our damage upped to where it should be without stacking a stupid, boring debuff that takes forever of casting a terrible spell to get up. This will help Fire a lot in PvP and on Trash.

We should realistically be able to expect a frost and a fire mage (or an arcane mage).
If there isn't room for 2 mages in Wotlk raids we are pretty bad off.

So your spending 3 talent points and a glyph for a spell you going to cast once and only once per bossfight, with the sole benefit of that cast being increased critical strike chance for the first 10 seconds of the fight. That seems like a huge waste for minimal benefit. Sure, it'll help on trash, but again, minimal benefit and it's trash, minmaxing is much less of a big deal. Throw into the mix that even as huge a waste as those 3 talent points and glyph or on bossfights where someone is applying Winter's Chill, you'll pretty much be required to have them anyway for 5/10 mans or when you dont have a Frostbolt slinger around.

I like the interchangeability of the nonstacking debuffs, but there's still an issue here.

Also, as for fire playstyle, it makes it's sill a negative. Sure, not having to pay attention to the scorch debuff and renew it is "easier" and less of a hassle. But it removes thought from playing a mage. The further and further I get from mindless spamming my main nuke, the better.

I don't think anyone likes the current TBC destro warlock design of:
Step 1: Press Shadowbolt
Step 2: Repeat Step 1


Obviously, Living bomb puts some choice in the matter. But I have a spell book with different spells, it would be nice if I had a reason to use more then 1 or 2 of them.

Are you aware that crit effects our DPS? As a fire spec, 1% crit is actually MORE than 1% dps. So trading 15% base damage for 10% crit is actually a dps increase. Regardless of what previous version of the beta may have had for buffs, look at it compared to our current state in BC.

100 fireballs for 1000 damage at 0% crit = 100,000 damage.
100 fireballs for 1150 damage at 0% crit = 115,000 damage. (Old Imp. Scorch)
100 fireballs for 1000 damage at 10% crit = 114,500damage. (New Imp. Scorch)

So, with 245% crits, an additional 10% crit is comparable dps than 15% damage. Not to mention the additional benefits of Hot Streak and MoE.

EDIT: Math

Can we all please quit going on and on in circles about how we're losing 15%? It's bloody irrelevant. The end-game DPS ballance is not related to what we're "gaining" or "losing" at this stage.

It's like we're at a tailor's shop, getting a new dress, because the blue short dress we've been wearing up to now is out-dated. "Let's change to a red fabric" the tailor suggests "BUT AT THAT DRESS LENGTH IT'LL BE TERRIBLE!" you're all screaming... The Output Is Not Being Looked At Yet. What is so complex to understand?

Is it so impossible to think about the game without thinking of "what if that change happened immediately before my raid this evening?"?

What? Let me get this right. The firemage has a spell which up to today has been considered a "necessary evil" of the class, one which costs him in time terms half a fireball yet offers close to only 38% of what a Fireball's DPS is, induces Ignite bugs and mandates 5 yards less distance, and you don't like the idea of liberating the chain of having to scorch from said caster? Oh the horror, I'll have to only use my farthest, most DPM efficient, most DPS producing and least buggy spell all the time instead of 85% of the time!

This is only true for 0% base crit. For increasing crit it diminishes, obviously. Assume 40% base crit and we result in a 0.886% DPS increase for 1% crit. No net result on MoE or HS of course, but please don't turn up saying 1%crit>1%dmg, it's way off.

100 fireballs for 1000 damage at 10% crit => 90 don't crit (90,000) + 10 crit (24,500) = 114,500

The 15% damage buff that scorch gave could have been made self only, while another talent could have given fire spells in general an "Elemental" debuff that gave the 10% crit that frost also gives. They did not go with this presumably because they felt that some fire talents were too weak anyway or base fire damage was too weak. The whole argument over what constitutes a nerf at this point in time is moot.

What should be the focus here is drawing attention to the problems the mage class faces now and in the future. This includes too much damage and scaling (nobody wants to see the 10% tax back), issues with spirit and regeneration, raid utility and spots and general feel and playstyle of the class.

Questions that are currently on my mind include:

Why can't mages use two armours at the same time?
Why is the frost debuff only 15 seconds?
If two out of three trees provide the exact same functionality, why does it not become a core class feature?

With the change to Focus Magic, a 20/51/0 variant is looking very tasty indeed for level 80. More mana regen to fuel Living Bomb plus Focus Magic has a lot of potential.

Where your theory fails in considering that 10% crit > 15% dmg (read new Scorch > old Scorch), is that on the previous version you could stack it with WC making it 10% crit + 15% dmg while now you can only get 10% crit off both.

The change to scorch is great im no maths crafter but fire would most likely benefit more from 10% crit. Only bad thing is that you could get both and now you can only get one. But hey you couldnt stack WC + Scorch on TBC for fire dmg so why should you now?

The annoying part of this change is that I was looking forward to providing two raid wide buffs as an elementalist build. Now there is no point. Further, depending on raid composition (particularly for 10 mans, which I am most interested in) I will almost certainly be pigeonholed in to specing Focus Magic, which precludes an elementalist build as I had hoped.

Well, you can't completely discount the fact that if you changed it back and had WC stacking you rely on there being at least 2 mages in the grp and one of them frost. I'd much rather invest three points into a talent that gives me and my grp a dps boost than rely on the presence of another class.

Scorch application on boss fights was a chore. It took hardly any skill to apply and was one of two spells you cast. Making it less of a chore, giving the spec increased usefulness and adding in a powerful AoE/single target dot cast that you will probably have to manage carefully for mana issues is an INCREASE in difficulty for the fire spec over just hitting scorch every 30 secs, while I would argue increasing the fun at the same time.

This makes no sense at all. What choices do fire mages currently make that maximizes their dps compared to other equally geared fire mages? We all refresh scorch at 30secs - or have someone dedicated to it. You are way over complicating the use of scorch. It's mindless application of a debuff on a timer.

Basically, Improved Shadow Bolt is now a Demonology talent. Destruction Warlocks don't need it because they're going to almost pure Fire damage. Affliction Warlocks don't really want it; it was great when Destruction Warlocks were doing most of the work to keep it up for them, but without that help, Affliction Warlocks were looking at having to spend an extra 5 points in Destruction for a talent that wasn't going to be terribly effective for them if they were the only ones keeping it up -- but they'd have felt obligated, because the Spriests would want it. So they can breathe a sigh of relief and put those points into Demo or auxiliary Affliction talents instead. Demo 'locks are going to be the only ones spamming enough Shadow Bolts and having a high enough crit rate to make the talent worthwhile.

So with this in mind:

...you can really ignore the Sacrifice change, because the only spec that was sacrificing its demon is switching to Fire Damage and using its demon to DPS now.


I'm a little sad that the trees lost a bit of flavor, but it solves a lot of problems, and the DPS process of both trees is becoming considerably more different than it used to be, so overall, it's a win.


I wouldn't be too surprised to see Improved Water Elemental change to +5/10/15 second duration and -25/50/75% damage taken from AOE. In many encounters it'd be a less potent talent because the avoidance would be useless, but if they're not going to give the poor thing baseline avoidance like the Warlock pets are getting, it'd still be worthwhile for a raiding Frost Mage -- it'd help protect the investments in Ice Floes, Cold as Ice, and Glyph of Water Elemental.


Upthread a bit you'll find a post by...Manly, I think...explaining the Fire DPS process. It'll involve working Frostfire Bolt into the regular rotation and using it more heavily during certain procs/cooldowns. If Hot Streak continues to function as it currently does, and your mana can support it, there may also be some times when you want to try to milk it with Fire Blast. I don't think Fire DPS will get too dull.

Pheroz: I do not disagree with your statement that stratifying iSc into WC will create a more dull playstyle, however, there are three points:

1) If you consider FB spam boring, then I can not conceive how you feel 9*FB/1*Sc is somehow "entertaining". It's almost identically boring/lame. This is particularly true now we have the Scorch glyph mean we don't really care even if it drops off.

2) Possible Hot Streak-FFB and Fireblast double-dipping may well still be in our future. There's good likelihood the Ignite Overlapping bug is examined and removed. Thus inducing a lot of variety.

3) You can't seriously be opposing one of the most significant changes in the game's history on the grounds that onece per 10 casts, you want to do something which up to yesterday you hated doing?

Problem is, ofc, that mages do not have 0% crit as base. Set a base crit of 25% and see if it is better to have 15% dmg or 10% crit. At that 10% crit =~ 10.9% dmg or so. Question with crit is that it has diminishing returns - the higher is your crit, the less you get from additional crit. Also some talents - e.g. combustion - do lose relative value with higher crit (or, in another interpretation, make crit less valuable).

FFB based 330% crits may benefit the most though.

Anyway, as refered, it is quite moot to compare loss and gains individually form TBC to WotLK. Many things have changed, and the issue balance between mage specs is global, not between specific talents or spells (lets look at the forest, not at the trees ).

Saruk - your assuming there aren't mages out there who let scorch fall off or rescorch way too often. Scorch use certainly seperated good mages from the bad ones, although obviously didn't do much between good and great.

Lhivera- I hope your right, and that theres still alot of variation in cast choice for a deep firemage. I do worry that too much of that was dependant on FFB doubledipping COE and Benefiting from the old Imp scorch and Winters Chill, but hopefully it will still be worked in.

Obviously, Living bomb adds difficulty and choice to Fire mage playstyle over current situation. But that's totally independant of whether your using scorch or not, and doesn't really enter the discussion. Anything that get's us further from using 1 spell mindlessly is a good thing. And being required to use scorch, even if it's refresh once every 30 seconds but dont let it fall off, is a good thing in my book.

I just hate the fact that fire mages are required to spend talents on Improved Scorch, get the Improved Scorch glyph, and pray that there's a Frost Mage present so that they dont have to ever use them and that they are completely wasted. That sems like a horrible design decision, even though the interchangeable buffs/debuff seems like a great one on the whole.

You're being selfish and ungrateful. In the same line, after this fantastic change to game mechanics which will make raids oh-so-much easier to balance and thus eliminate idiotic multi-stacking, we should have:

Druids feeling cheated for having pet's Poison Spit over-write their i-FF
Enh Shamans feeling cheated for having a DK over-write their Rage
Afflis feeling cheated for having AI and i-DivSpi over-write their dog's aura
Priests feeling cheated for having a shaman totem over-writher their i-DivSpi
BM hunters feeling cheated for having their FI....

See what I did there?

I won't even bother going into how much fundamentally more powerful a 10%crit buff to all spells is than a 10%dmg to damage types which represent only (1)mages (2) Destrolocks (3) low percentages of DK (4) some of Moonkin output.

Feel cheated? Why? Because your version of the debuff requires 1.5sec to cast while WC takes at best 15sec and most likely 21+?

Honestly, I'm mystified how people can discover the best news, things that are clearly a step forward, and magically discover something which under a certain light, and under certain drugs, can be considered negative and then proceed to fixate on it.

Everyone within reason will be speccing to gain raid-buffs. Some will apply them, some will not. Don't be selfish, the game is moving towards a new era of raiding where instead of spending half their lives on forums recruiting and the other half online inviting Raid Leadership will now have a much simpler job to do rather than worrying "ok we need 1 mage, 1 DI priest, 2 SP, 3 Holdains, 2 destros, 1 affli, 2 rogues, 1 Survival [etc] or else forget Brut tries tonight".