Even if this is true, it looks overpowered for PvP but remember that down ranking has essentially been removed so the mana cost of blizzard will make it very situational in pvp (rather than spamming rank 1).

Would be nice to get something to compensate for the loss of low mana short snares like R1 frostbolt and R1 blizzard. With blizzard mana is really the only inhibitor but we dont have anything to replace the short cast, low cost snare from FrB rank 1.

Having cheap, quick snares was not intended. It's one of the basic reasons the major change was made. And unlike healers, who -Need- a cheaper, less effective heal to fill in gaps, we do not need quick snares. So no compensation for us.

I fail to see how your improvement is actually any different. By your wording, you want a glyph to apply the full 10% spell critical, but not have it stack? First off, stack with what? Each other? They don't. Itself? Why would it stack with itself if the first application of it applies the full 10%? And if that's the case, how is that any different than the current glyph?

The current glyph makes it so that 1 cast of scorch applies 5 casts of Improved Scorch. Instead of needing 5 scorches to reach 10%, with each scorch applying 2%, you're only needing 1 scorch to reach 10%. I also don't see how this is unbalanced for PvP, or how your idea (which seems to be the exact same thing as the current glyph, just worded differently), would 'balance' it for PvP.

You seem to be misinterpreting what he said.

From a PvP perspective, allowing a stack of 5 debuffs with 30% dispel resistance is a rather large pain. He's merely suggesting the glyph consolidate the buff into 1 stack increasing crit by 10%, and not 5 stacks of 2% each. It changes nothing about the PvE functionality of the glyph, it only prevents a potential PvP imbalance.

Since Blizzard has said they plan to change PvP dispel mechanics, with a specific eye toward junk buffs and RNG effects on the mechanic, there's probably little point in worrying about whether a given talent/spell/effect is overpowered due to its effects on the current dispel mechanics.

The point is that it hides other debuffs you'd much rather dispel.

Whether or not it was intended, it has been balanced around and with it's removal we are at a definite disadvantage compared to tbc, in that regard. It's like using crutches to walk for a long time, sure it isn't how humans are intended to walk but after a while you get used to them and then when they are taken away it is incredibly hard to walk at first.

It may turn out to be a non-issue after balancing is done but as of right now mages would be in a rather bad position if no compensation was given for a broken mechanic that the game was balanced around.

sorry to be digging up a (fairly) old post, but I feel the issue of 18 in fire being essential is rather a bad choice on the current talent design.

Considering AB as a main nuke, lets see what you lose from maintaining that scorch:

AB debuff at least every 30seconds (personal DPS loss, >10% in stand and nuke situations)
Important arcane talents (all-round nerf to personal performance, no matter how you spec it)
Potentially a glyph slot for the scorch glyph

The only way you can justify the huge personal sacrifice to spec this way is if you're the only mage in a 25-man raid; and then you're back to the old problem of being the 1 mage debuff b*tch. For those few people who ARE the only mage in 25-mans, this is a huge design flaw. Hopefully, for most folk there will be 2+ mages and at least one will bring this debuff without having a screwed up spec for it.

This is the likely scenario.

As a priest, I can imagine dispelling a stack of "junk" debuffs and a second debuff with 1 cast of Dispel Magic. I'd also expect to see a Winter's Chill glyph sometime in the near future that functions somewhat like the Scorch glyph, but makes WC proc only off Frostbolt or something like that (because one doesn't need to cast a separate spell to get WC up).

Further evidence in this is that they're reducing Wound Poison to a single debuff of -50% healing taken, rather than 5 stacks of -10%. WoW Forums -> Rogue Update

At the risk of missing a recent change to the DPS numbers and looking foolish (frost is still competitive right?), isn't this concern rendered somewhat moot by the fact that winter's chill is a perfect substitute for improved scorch? If you have a frost mage in the raid, the arcane mage can go 71/0/0 or whatever he wants.

If you're the only mage in the raid and you still want to go arcane, you can do your primary job (keeping the spell crit debuff up) by sacrificing only a few talent points... That, or tell your raid leader to recruit a frost mage, because their DPS is just as good and their presence in the raid makes imp scorch unnecessary. You are right in pointing out that it's just a few people who fall into this category, but I think "screwed up spec" is a little strong.

I've been working on the spreadsheet, no worries.

There were quite a few things that needed some testing to confirm proper behaviour, there were some numbers that didn't make sense concerning Fingers of Frost, and there was Manly's report on unexpectedly bad Frostfire Bolt crits that I wanted to check and find out what was going on.

First things first.


0) Frostfire Bolt seems to work with resistance/vulnerabilities.
It dealt full damage against frost resistant targets (liches in the Vrykul fort in NW Howling Fjord).
It dealt more damage against fire vulnerable targets (tar lurkers in Un'goro).
That only tested the fire side. If someone wants to test the other side (frost vulnerable/fire resistant), they are free to do so.


1) Pyroblast at 5s cast time retained its old scaling. It's still 115% on the DD and 4*5% on the DoT.
Tested as 0/11/0 with 1285 dmg. 1210-1531 + 4 * 113 tooltip, 2695-3005 + 4 * 177 actual damage.


2) AoE spell damage caps are not touched yet. This means a few things.
1) For almost all AoE spells, the WotLK ranks have the same cap as the old maximum ranks from BC.
AoE Spell Cap Mechanics has a list of the current caps.
2) This means that Frost Nova with a cap of 1600 currently caps at 2 targets right now. Just a fun note to throw around.
4) Living Bombs currently has no cap on either DoT or detonation. Mind you that it still explodes every 3 seconds centered on you, the spell may have a lo of issues to fix.
5) The Water Elemental's Freeze seems to have no cap, but only scales with ~4% of its or ~1% of your damage anyway.
It won't ever hit for more than 100 anyway.

6) Arcane Explosion right now should be downranked to rank 8 for proper AoE.
When spells got their caps, the new ranks AE got the old pre-buff cap of ~6730, while the old ranks retained their post-buff caps.
So AE9 = AE10 = 6.7k < AE7 < AE8 = 10.1k, downranked AE is the highest spammable AoE DPS right now.

Someone should make a post on US Beta as a reminder to not forget updating those new ranks.

(Note: I specifically checked the last 4 ranks of Arcane Explosion to make sure it affected all new ranks.)


3) More odd stuff about Frostfire Bolt. Tested in a 0/51/20 build, with full Fire Power / PWF / Pyromaniac / Precision / Frost Channeling / Ice Shards.
1) Rank 2 has no DoT scaling. The DoT does tick for its base value plus talents, ticked for 37 for me, base damage is 30 (it should have been a final damage of 36 though; not sure what's going on there).
2) Rank 1 still has it's normal 5% scaling, the DoT was ticking for 101/102.
The ticks show that there is no or only a little downranking penalty at level 80. I haven't checked the direct damage.
I'll probably have a look at that when the EU servers stop crashing every 15 minutes.
3) Mana reduction talents seem to apply twice to Frostfire Bolt.
With the spec above, I was getting 608 Pyro, 221 Scorch, 581 Fireball, 376 (!) FFB.
FFB costs 522 (or 16% of 3268) mana, it should be 442 with talents, but not 376.


4) On Fireball vs. Frostfire Bolt scaling
I thought a lot about the "FB crits harder than FFB" test by Manly as it seemed to contradict my results.

1) My sheet assumed Elemental Oath, which wasn't used in the test. Not sure if it ever actually worked, it's gone now anyway (unless you'll skill smithing and they actually implement a 2nd meta gem).
2) I didn't have the Fireball glyph back then, which was "used" in the test (by picking 4T6 to emulate it).
3) Also, my sheet was Spaghetti Nightmare.

I did some clean up and only compared the +damage scaling on a separate sheet.
I used the initial +dmg coefficient (86%/115%), the gains from PWF/FPow/PIce talents (PIce is the only difference anyway) and the crit multiplier with a CSD meta to get the following scaling with +dmg of hits, crits, DoT:

Frostfire Bolt: 103% hits, 243% crit, 18% DoT (if R2 gets scaling as well).
Fireball: 130% hits, 237% crits, 0% DoT unglyphed. 137% hits, 249% crits, 0% DoT with a 5% glyph.
(Those values are beforee Ignite.)

The above values are rounded so there are some +/-1% errors when adding up and comparing.
The safe results for comparing boths spells are as follows when regarding scaling (both scale similar relatively with +dmg, so the base damage difference makes a very little difference; see previous post and ask Muphrid):

*) Glyphed FB crits slightly harder, unglyphed FB crits slightly weaker than FFB. FFB is pretty much exactly in the middle.
*) FB always hits significantly harder than FFB.
*) If the DoT scaling will be added to rank 2 as well, then FFB may be able to compete as a DoT filler to add damage and reduce mana spent.

Without the DoT scaling, it looks as follows:
* => FFB outscales unglyphed FB only at very high crit values, it needs 68% crit or more.
* => FFB will never outscale glyphed FB. It will always crit slightly lower and hit a lot lower.

With the DoT scaling, using FFB every 9 seconds:
(Living Bomb builds can't get Permafrost unless they sacrifice Precision):
* => FFB is more damage than an unglyphed Fireball when you have at least 41% crit.
* => FFB is only more damage than glyphed FB at extremely high crit values, it needs 78% crit or more.


Frostfire Bolt and Fireball both produce similar damage within a few percent.
Fireball is generally ahead in raw DPS, but costs signicicantly more mana.
Frostfire Bolt can be used as a DoT and scales better with high crit percentages.
Glyhed Fireball is almost always more DPS unless mana is a dire issue.

It remains to be seen whether using FFB to save mana to cast more Living Bombs is actually helpful or harmful.


5) Frostfire Bolt in frost spec.
A frost spec that picks up Ignite to maximise its DPS might actually use FFB on Finger of Frost procs.
As in: Frostbolt - FoF proc! - Frosbolt (already) - Frostfire Bolt - Deep Freeze (3rd charge) - Frostbolt - ...
On a guaranteed crit (FoF is nearly that), FFB crits a lot harder than FrB, but it's longer cast time also prolongs the cycles which makes it less an advantage.

Fire spec doesn't have that issue since FB and FFB have the same cast time.
But in Frost specs, this produces some odd results that I need an explanation for first, or find possible errors.


At the Arcane + Scorch discussion right above:

- In the current design, mages are supposed to bring WC/ISc to the raid.
Many other people want to say "I don't want to spec for X, let someone else do it" which can be a huge headache.
Headache to those who complain, those who have to deal with them, and those who acually want to minmax a raid.
* => I'm honestly happy that we have our little domain that we have to bring, and don't have to argue with others.

- WC/ISc is on deep frost and middle fire.
It does force a single arcane mage into 50/18/0+3. If you have multiple mages and all are arcane for a certain fight, it forces one mage into that spec.
On the other hand, arcane brings focus magic, which may (no EleSham/DemoLock) or may not be useful.
Fire/IV and Frost/Ignite builds won't have it, they could take it but lose 9+ points elsewhere.

- Arcane Blast spam and renewing Scorch/Focus Magic.
If it causes you to lose your AB debuff, you lose a lot of damage to ramp it up again. How much exactly depends, I'll have a look.
With sufficient haste (33%+), you'll not lose your debuff though. Two haste-clicky trinkets and a haste pot can cover 3 ramp ups in 2 minutes for example. I'm trying to figure out of PoM can be used for it, but it doesn't look like it.
So, without sufficient haste, you have to go at lengths to maintain your debuff if it is possible at all.

But the other question is - is Arcane Blast supposed to be spammable? Or, what is it supposed to accomplish anyway?
I don't really like TCing Arcane Blast because it always feels like it's used for something it's not intended to do.
It always leaves some sour taste, also because there isn't a lot else that the spell or even he spec is good for.

Sure you can use PoM to sustain the stack. You use the PoM on the AB following the scorch offcourse. No travel time, instant cast. If we consider all possible pushback and lagg effects as threats to loose the stack every AB you cast the PoMed AB following scorch is actually one of your "safest" AB refreshing casts during any fight.

This does not work. You will keep the stack on the POM'ed blast, but then you will drop it on the next one (after paying for the GCD on the instant and the cast time on the next one).

after a PoMed Arcane Blast you enter a globalc cooldown, and need to cast another arcane blast after if you don't want to lose the debuff.
Which meanas the next AB after a PoMed one won't land for 4 seconds until after the previous one landed. So you get the same problem as with scorch, only in place of scorch you have a GCD.

Arcane mage is not suited to maintaining Scorch debuff

Has anybody tested what happens to the mana and dmg of an AB you cast when mid-cast the stack wears off?

I can't think of any function for it outside of a 'main nuke'. It appears to be balanced around the idea that its more powerful than other spells but that the power is far more delicate. There is evidence that it is considered a main nuke for arcane throughout the arcane tree; It has a co-efficient buff in talents (pretty much every main nuke for every caster has this), its listed alongside fireball and frostbolt as one of the spells that can proc MBAM, the only other potential nuke of the arcane tree is vastly sub-par for most situations, and it gets an early rank at 80 (as with other main nukes).

This isn't really a problem in 25s but rather in 10s. For a caster stacked 10, you'll want the crit bonus but still aren't likely to have another mage. While the majority of people here probably don't care about 10s, my guild is unable to consistently run 25s due to its casual nature and non-recruitment policy, so the 15 of us who are interested in raiding plan on running two 10s. I suspect that my situation is fairly common, hence the full set of 10s in LK, and it'd be nice to have an arc build that fits.

As for scorch dropping AB and severely cutting into dps, I'm holding out for Blizz making ABr rotations the foundation for arc dps like the new talents (and the earlier theorycrafting) suggest and pushing AB to being a mana dump. The relatively tight control over mana return in this expansion should make the tuning simpler/better than the attempt at the same goal with AB in BC.

Edit:
There's a difference between 'main nuke' and 'spammable'. Unlike BC, where it was designed purely as a mana dump that the players forced into raid viability, the LK talents do support your classification as a main nuke. It's just designed to be combined with ABr as a rotation. We saw this fairly clearly with AB replacing ABr on Missile Barrage while simultaneously dropping to a 3 second buff duration to match ABr's cooldown. Edit2: This was a direct response to people on the official boards complaining about having to cycle fireballs/frosbolts in the ABr rotations instead of being able to use AB.

If it is indeed meant to be weaved with ABar and used as a mana dump when needed, then the mana cost right now (9%) is far too low, even when ramped. given that interrupts would likely be forced on you at regular intervals in many encounters, its even less of a mana restriction (you would regenerate mana on the first 2 casts if JoW is up).

If we end up with a 2-cycle system of dump and regen with AB and ABar, then with current design we'll be spending far more time dumping than regen'ing.

I'd agree. I'm expecting an increase in debuff cost once they figure out how much mana they're expecting us to have since they were planning the whole buff stacking thing during our final few tweaks.

Unrelated, but there was discussion on this thread of the frost nova glyph making nova/freeze/frostbite useful in raids. This blue comment is relevant (emphasis mine):
I believe we've currently been assuming it's target HP instead of caster HP.

Edit: In respose to the next post, source and clarification.

That's intensely easy to test (assuming this test hasn't been done already).

Calculate maximum crit damage of your ice lance (or just eyeball it), find a target that can survive that value of damage, but will take a majority of its hitpoint pool from one hit. Freeze and ice lance it. This should, theoretically, break the freeze if it is based on targets health pool.

Then find a target that can live through many many ice lances, freeze and lance it a few times until you achieve a hit similar to the one that broke the nova on the smaller target.

Repeat the test with a drastically different caster HP pool (naked).


I would be surprised if it had anything to do with the mages hitpoints. I would expect the system to either be a flat percentage of the targets HP (after X% nova will break), or a percentage with an absolute number cap (after X% or Y total damage). All of which is easily testable with some data from a mobhealth style addon and some longer term data collection.

As with everything, especially the seemingly obvious, it's worth documenting. Lhivera threw out a number of 40% of target health earlier ( http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t30655-m...36/#post875851 ), is there a source for that that I've missed in this thread somewhere? (if so, I'll dig around for it)

Oh right, how stupid of me. I really shouldnt be writing late night posts. But then again Im still kinda waiting for some pushback protection or debuff glyph or something to turn up before any arcane spec relying on stacked AB starts feeling comfortable. If the stack is so easily dropped it feels like AB wont be able to compete with fireball as a main nuke. Even if they deal about the same damage in a calm "Dr.Boom" enviorment fireballing would start vastly outperforming AB for anything but very boring tank and spank fights.

*sigh* The mage class is shaping upp really interestingly but whenever it comes to arcane I cant help feeling I would so like some sort of directors comment added to the changes. AB spam wasnt inteded and they want to rework the spell a bit to bring it more in line with the function it was originally intended for, thats perfectly fine and I see the logic here. what I cant figure out is what kind of rotation does blizzard have in mind if it isnt spammed AB? Unless Im completely off track the spreadsheets posted so far hasnt shown very promising numbers for nonstacked AB+ABar rotations. So, is it the big AM overhaul Im waiting for? I dont get those talent points either. For hardcasting it seems like there isnt enoughe talent support for this spell, also MBar starts feeling kinda expensive if you plan on hardcasting AM since thats a lot of time you definetley will not be procing MBar, but if AM is used as a cast on procs only spell a lot of other talent points starts me wondering isntead.

Could possibly the fact that ABar being the only arcane spell that can proc MBar be a sign that we should be glancing at frost, fire or frostfire bolts to weave in? Its like a rubics cube to me really, Im fully convinced that you can twist so all the colors match making mages a fun well balanced class with at least three competetive raidspecs. Every question I can come up with just trigger other questions. Slide one collor here and you mess up those three blue ones you got centred so nicely on this side. Tho the biggest one I keep returning to is the AB question. Is the stack supposed to be cmaintained or not and if not then wich spells will deep arcane mages be using? Gah, bloody rubics cubes! I cant ever seem to solve em but I cant put them down either.