At #897 - Magic absorption is only 2 points now. check http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...50323102505321

At #896 - I agree reduced magic dot duration will usually not reduce the dot damage in raids, since it will be dispeled anyway, but in some cases it can maybe still prevent damage. Examples:
* undispelable but still magic (not sure if there is such a thing, maybe soul-charge from Archimonde, flame dot from Illidan or Brutallus's burn).
* Too many people get the dot and can't mass dispel/dispel all.
* Maybe the dot is short, say 4 seconds 2k dmg per second and healers won't dispel it fast enough.

On a slightly different topic, Incanter's Absorption could have some serious potential with a PWS and maybe even an improved mana shield. The extra spell damage just before you pop all CDs might well be worth the mana lost from mana shield. In many fights there is predictable or constant aoe damage that you can count on absorbing in the near future and thus delay your CD activation to just after you get hit and absorb.
Heavy disc priests will also have divine agis which is another way to absorb damage, even though i am not sure if you will see such priests in raids, maybe only in pvp.

well if arcane turns out to be a competetive raidspec I for one will definetley be slipping my fellow raid priests bribes and setting up a couple of whisper macros to reap as much spelldamage I can from that talent. *grins* Well... if I can find the points for it that is. Theres such a lot of nice stuff to go grab. Anyway its impossible to tell quite yet but it would be kinda cool if disc priests master the healing style of preventing damage from happening at all and arcane mages turn out to have some worthwile synergy with this.

I really hope 18 points in fire isn't set in stone. Casting scorch is bad enough for a fire mage, now you'd have to do it as arcane? Where as deep fire or deep frost probably won't spec for FM since it will be mostly redundant/inferior in a raid setting, even if they did they wouldn't have to spend nearly as many points or be required to cast untalented spells every 30 sec. Also not looking forward to wasting a glyph slot on scorch if I do go arcane.

Quick question for those in beta. Can someone do a realy quick test? The wording on the Glyph of Improved Scorch seems to indicate that it will cause the talent to always trigger, in addition to making it auto-apply the 5-stack. I'd like for someone to test the glyph with Imp. Scorch at 0 points and 1 point, just to see if it'll do that or if it's just too vaguely worded.

I really really dont think this will be a problem. In any raid that brings a fire OR a frostmage you will have the buff and alltho arcane seems to be a viable spec I dont think it will outmarket good ol fire and frost. Remember that blizzard is trying to balance stuff so that we wont see raids with 4-5 locks and a single mage in wrath and considering how they are treating raid buffs/debuffs I think they have a good chanse of pulling that off.

Also regarding scorch the only reasonable mechanic is that the glyph multiplies any debuff proc you score by 5. If you dont have the talent the glyph does nothing, if you have 1/3 you get a 33% chanse to stack the debuff x5 on each scorch cast. Anything else would eliminate the point of the talent having three points or the talent existing all together (also making WC pointless since you could simply glyph the debuff and get other talents.) There simply is no other logical way for this glyph to work.

The other logical way for it to work, as I have pointed out, is that you cannot get the Glyph unless you spec the talent 3/3.

Sorry for the derail, but is the dummys always at 1%? This will make it quite hard to test abilities out of molten fury range for example.

Also are they instanced? It will be pretty hard to test if there is a bunch of melee that is hitting it, I might even hit them by mistake, via Living bomb .

There is no chance to test it at the moment, because the glyphe currently doesn't work at all.

No they have 1/1 HP (100%) and they are not instanced (there are two).

Further, the dummies are in Dalaran which is a sanctuary zone just like Shattrah. Thus it is impossible to hit opposing faction players.

I don't think we'll see that glyph released, simply due to pvp reason. Applying 5 magical debuff with 30% dispell resistance in 1.5 sec doesn't seem very balanced. The concept behind this glyph is to allow us to get full benefit from scorch debuff even on trash mobs. It could be changed to something like:

-Your improved Scorch and Winter Chill (or whatever the new debuff name is) now increase spell critical chance by 10% but doesn't stack anymore.

So the first Scorch or the first Frosbolt would apply the full debuff, without making it unbalanced for pvp.

I just tested it. If you start with 2 winter's chill, no scorch debuff is applied until the wc completely runs of. Also if you start with 3x scorch, no wc debuff until sorch drops. So the stronger debuff is always active and there is no hidden second debuff.

That strikes me as a silly restriction, why would they design it like that? Not that Im a programmer but I cant possibly imagine that technical obstacles would prevent the glyph from simply amplifying all aplications of the scorch debuff X5.

Pyros coefficient already doesn't match its cast time. 1.15 frontend 0.2 backend, vs the 1.7143 it should have total. It will be worth it to confirm its coefficient at some point though, definitely, but a reduction to 5 seconds doesn't justify a reduction based on the known equations.

( research on Pyro coefficient: WoW Forums -> Pyroblast Coefficient )

Go back a few pages to 34
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t30655-m...34/#post874992

As I already posted here on the beta forum WoW-Europe.com Forums -> AoE knockback in PvE I really don't like the knockback effect on living bomb and blastwave for PvE purposes. The whole mechanic is making it practically impossible as a tank to out aggro you when the knock back party begin. Even with a prot pala (who have been tanking pretty much all our 25 man AoE pulls in TBC the last 1½ year) it became practically impossible for the tank to do more threat, since the mobs got blown out of consecration, melee range and hardly hitted him. This was just with 1 mage and the best AoE tank class+spec - now imagine a raid with 3 mages and/or another class tank.

Since the knockback effect is decent for PvP I would suggest making a glyph that adds knockback to these skills for those who want this effect. As it is now (even if the "Living Bomb procing explosions pr tick if you are near it"-bug is fixed) I would ignore fire spec for PvE AoE - both frost and arcane got talents actually making the AoE more damaging and safer - the firetree adds 3 new instant AoE spells (4 if counting instant flamestrikes procs) and although it is extra damage it destroys the AoE damage for others and makes tanking it a pain.

Living Bomb has no knockback, it is more like a jump (the only thing it really does is interrupting casts). Apart from the fact, that living bomb is currently totaly bugged (or if it is not, it is way too strong).

They can just make raid trash immune to the knockback mechanic, PvP already has numerous glyphs to chose from, thanks.

This really doesn't make sense to me if it is intended. I don't see any use for a 'knock-up' effect if it doesn't CC the targets for a considerably longer period of time (like ~2 seconds). It can't be considered much of a spell interrupt if it has a 12 second delay timer, and can't be considered much of a CC if it remains only a little 'hiccup' of a knock-up.

It's an inconvenience and adds a bit of flavor to the spell. From what I've seen, the knock-up interrupts both movement and casting. And it means you can safely use the spell in PvE trash groups without knocking them away from the tank or out of range of point-blank AOE's.

You can still use Deep Freeze on fingers procs.

I haven't seen this come up here very much but is improved blizzard + permafrost + chilled to the bone indeed a 95% movement speed reduction?

85%.

3/3 Imp. Blizzard = 65%
Permaforst = 10%
CttB = 10%
65% + 10% + 10% = 85%.

It's only 85% (65% +10% +10%), but it's strong enough ,for the same distance it would take twice the time it would with crippling poison.