Arcane Blast is no longer able to achieve a 1.5 second cast time through its debuff. Mirror Image, Ice Block, and Fade work effectively in the same fashion if the previously stated threat reduction aura effect of MI is to be interpreted as a temporary effect. You lose threat and/or aggro, then regain threat and/or aggro when the aura wears off. They are not true threat dumps like invis. If MI relegated the player to only using scorch, it isn't worth using since it would be a net dps loss.

Roywyn and several others have done and posted the calculations in this thread. Missile Barrage in ArBarr rotations with other spells is raid viable, but nowhere near as good as pure AB spam currently.

As of the newest patch it seems that you are no longer able to remove the switching aspect of the spell through removal of the debuff.

I tried it with Quartz and Pyroblast, it was showing either 0.1 or 0.2s (rounded obviously) and with two interrupts it was always 0.3s with Burning Soul talent.
Surely this avoids RNG luck/bad luck but I still have to get used to always having red numbers on my castbar.

The mage armor glyph wasn't working last patch. It isn't working this patch, nothing new there. I'm leveling arcane and have the glyph for when it does start working, so I'll be mentioning that when it happens.

With respect to threat, in the AOE scenarios and solo scenarios, the enemy is dead before the images are eaten. It doesn't matter that it wears off....unlike ice block you can still DPS through the mirror image. Running the gauntlet in ZA..or heck any difficult AOE pull, this capability would be a godsend.

With respect to scorch, it might be a net DPS loss, but probably not a huge one even if the images don't do any meaningful damage. Currently scorch spam is worse than a proper fireball/scorch rotation but it is still a high % of your baseline DPS. (the more spell damage, the worse scorch is, so the gap will be wider at level 80. But we'll be doing maybe 80% damage rather than 87% today or something). If it looks like threat is going to be an issue when the images are gone you can use the last 3 sec to go invisible, pretty much in total safety.

Compare to the alternative, ice blocking. You do zero DPS while ice blocked and your only threat mitigation from that is by not attacking for a time (or hoping it dies/is picked up by others in meantime). I would happily have my scorch spam damage+whatever the images can do while the bad guy beats on them, and the tank has time to notice and get aggro, and the healer has a chance to top me off. Not to mention it's two "oh crap" cooldowns instead of just one (or three vs two for ice mages)

Yeah, if you never ever pull aggro in any of your play, it isn't worth using unless it is also a DPS boost. But that doesn't mean it's useless, any more than blink, invisibility or ice block are useless. It's probably more generally useful than invisibility turned out to be, and is a far better ability than spellsteal.

And of course the inability to turn it off is a beta thing, as is its current damage. We don't know what the devs are shooting for here, so it might be better than current state. It is unlikely to be much worse. Scorch might be unsustainable, but ice lance/fire blast/arcane barrage and close range aoe spells would still offer some DPS potential while it's up...still better than ice block and better than wanding, although possibly only a fraction of usual DPS.

I went ahead and plugged in what spirit does to your mana - with 30% and with 80% regeneration.

The result is that while being quite nice regen, intellect is still better regeneration due to Pool/Evo/JoW/Rep scaling with it.
It also adds some spell damage and crit on top of it.

At the moment, even while giving 3 times more mana than mp5 per budget, spirit is dwarfed by intellect with outside scaling.


---------->8 Snip Snap 8<-------------

1) Arcane Spec, Blast spam without 2T5

100 dmg = +132 DPS
100 int = +51.37 DPS, +2.67 MPS from 30% spirit regen, +26.79 MPS from Pool/Evo/Replenish/JoW
100 crit = +60 DPS
100 haste = +123 DPS, -10.02 MPS
100 hit = +154 DPS
100 spi = +10 MPS with 30% Meditation, +24 MPS with 80% Meditation/Glyphed Mage Armour

Confirmed, you cannot anymore. It's very irritating.

Just tested this a few times on PTR...
- Didn't get ported while blocked
- Did get ported after block

Also
- Got teleported to a mirror image that was inside some geography and I got stuck. I was able to blink out though.
Bolding for interest
- I was not getting teleported while casting. I tested this by chain casting rank 1 pyro. I did not get interrupted/portaled at all.

WoW Forums -> Stormstrike not working.
With the Stormstrike debuff personalised, I'd expect the +10% frost damage debuff "Rune of Razorice" to meet the same fate sooner or later.
Grateful if anyone could check it from time to time.

What if Ignite were changed to be a player buff instead of target debuff?

Ignite (change to something like Backdraft): Your fire critical strikes increase the final damage (after resists are calculated) of your next fire spell that damages a target by 40% of the 'critical's' damage.

Examples based on a scorch that hits for 1000 (arbitrary #) ...

1. Scorch crits for 1500. Next fireball would hit for 3000. Hits for 3600 instead.
2. Scorch crits for 1500. Next scorch would hit for 1000. Hits for 1600 instead.
3. Scorch crits for 1500. Next blastwave (10 targets) would hit for 1000 per target. Hits for 1060/target instead (not subject to any sort of damage cap).

Doesn't change PVE a whole lot, though for trash it does allow you to "save" the buff from one mob to the next (give it a 15 second duration so it can't be kept forever) so you lose less ignite damage. Threat is slightly more frontloaded, but not a whole lot.

It does, however, give Fire a bit more burstability in PVP. Damage happens sooner, and can be transferred from one target another.

I believe it will fix ignite bugging because spell damage is calculated when it leaves your hands. If you crit with a fireball and a fireblast at the same time, you could have two buffs up which could then be used simultaneously on your next fire spell.

The biggest issue I can see with this is getting crits on AOE spells and then casting a single-target spell. Not sure how to get around that.

EDIT: You could divide the bonus by the number of targets.

Examples of Flamestrike (10 targets) that regularly hits for 1000 damage per target...

1. 3 crit. That's 1800 extra damage caused / 10 targets = next fire spell is +180
2. 10 crit. That's 6000 extra damage caused / 10 targets = next fire spell is +600

Note: I may have worded it poorly, and the fire spell's damage shouldn't be increased by that next amount - otherwise continuous crits are going to roll that bonus to the stratosphere. The bonus damage should be treated more as an automatic proc.

EDIT2: Bad math.

Interesting. What about invis/mirror image. Would the idea of using the last 3 sec of mirror image to go invis if threat was still a problem work? Or would the teleport interfere in a way similar to how blink cancels your invisibility fade today?

For arcane to be even considered, it has to be #1 personal DPS. Focus magic will almost never be used, and why bring a leech (arcane mage) when the debuffer (scorching fire mage) brings as much DPS? On the other hand, the crit debuff doesn't "stack more" with more mages. A 2nd fire mage (or the 1st if a frost mage is present) also brings nothing to rDPS. It's got to be close, but close in such a way that you're not stacking one kind or the other.

I was thinking that a non-scorching fire mage (say a frost mage is maintaining winters chill, or you take turns with glyphed scorch) should do equal damage to an arcane mage, but even that doesn't work; arcane can't suddenly decide to apply that debuff if something goes wrong and this makes fire the better choice. Arcane can't be too far in front or you have the one survival hunter plus X BM hunters we have now. But the way the raid synergies line up, arcane has to be in front, or given a better buff/debuff to justify its slot if it's not in front, lest it be left on the bench.

^^ and they can take the scorch glyph if they want to in order to reduce difficulty of keeping up scorch while arcane blasting.

Not if they want to do max DPS. If you have more than one mage, say one frost mage to stack the crit debuff, why would an arcane mage gimp his personal DPS by going 18 fire instead of 18 frost for better mana efficiency and icy veins?

Or calculate ignite on land instead of on cast ? Besides, theres a major flaw in what you propose. Crit chains.

Pop all cooldowns, combustion,
fireball crit (6000 + 2400 ignite)
fireball crit ((6000 + 1200) + 2880 ignite + 1200 ignite)
fireball crit ((6000 + 2040) + 3216 ignite + 2040 ignite)
fireball crit ((6000 + 2628) + 3451 ignite + 2628 ignite)

Basically, crit chains would allow you to keep your old ignite damage counted for your next ignite damage.

OK, I posted this in an edit above, but just to express further. I did about 15-20 tests of Mirror Image today and found that I was not getting ported while channeling a spell. I tested this by casting rank 1 Pyroblast as well as Arcane Missles. I was getting ported while out of combat running to mobs, so I'm wondering if that functionality is intended so we can run in PvP and survive being targeted. I WOULD get ported in between casts, but not interrupted. The downside was that I end up facing the way my image was facing, sometimes this meant I needed to turn to face the mob again. Luckily, I usually would be facing the mob because they were also attacking it.

Your logic makes no sense. Arcane brings both scorch and focus magic. It has more raid synergies than fire does. It should in fact do less damage.

Besides, you can feel free to check roywyns number showing that even if you stop casting every 12s your AB spam as arcane, you do the same dps as fire spec. In other words, even if you need to stop your dps to stack scorch, you still beat fire spec.

You're proceeding from the false assumption that focus magic would ever see use in a 25 man raid. I can't see a competent guild letting this happen as the two like buffs to focus magic are superior in every way. And even then, a deep fire mage can also pick up both focus magic and scorch. Now what? You're not taking FM as a fire mage because you'd be giving up personal DPS talents for a terrible buff that is easily overwritten. Why should an arcane mage do so, given the min/max context of the quote to which I was responding? As I said, arcane needs either top damage or a better debuff with the way the raid synergies stack up right now.

I'm not at all suggesting that these numbers should be the final numbers.

You do realize that MOE > frost channeling I hope (when you have 33%+ crit rate, which is a joke with all the raid buffs now) ?

Are you really trying to make an argument here that 51/2/18 (or 50/3/18 for you AB purists) has 'better mana efficiency' than 51/20/0 ? If anything, you gain 2% AB crit, which should give you, in fact, better efficiency for going fire rather than frost. The tradeoff is -icy veins +2% AB crit, in revenge you get better mana efficiency.

Right, and 20/51/0 should do less than 0/51/20 too ! We both agree there. In fact, it will do less DPS because you lose Elemental Precision.

Master of Elements is much better than Frost Channeling in a raid setting. You'd also gain pyroblast and ignite for pom-pyros which helps make up the loss of icy veins. My simulations indicated that 18 in fire was substantially better than 18 in frost.

Edit: unless MoE doesn't account for the stacked cost and frost channeling does somehow?

Ah yeah I somehow forgot about that.
Unless I'm wrong MOE gives the non-stacked mana cost, but frost chan gives the stacked mana cost.

Nope I double checked, my calculations only have master of elements using the base mana even on a fully stacked AB. The fire build is still better.