For one, you're using level 70 gear which has almost no spirit, but more importantly you do not have any mana regeneration options activated.

Keeping the crit buff up is assumed, but this is a good question. I don't see the need for scorch in arc rotations, since barrage is up after one arcane blast, frostbolt, fireball, or arcane missiles on a proc.

Also, the arc rotation is kind of weird at the start... it is interrupted, sure, but only by arc missiles. If interrupts happen that much, barrage should be in there. Doing tests on PTR I am getting better results using barrage assuming interrupts.

http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...e986c8a7c7f941

Scorch is a necessary filler some of the mana efficient rotations, such as AB -> Scorch -> ABr. It tested better than fireball, frostbolt, or another AB.

I just made a quick hotfix for Missile Barrage to not interrupt blast spam sessions, for better or for worse.

The trick is replenishment, by the way, it returns a huge amount of mana because it scales off your maximum mana value.

Edit: The mana solver is not perfect due to procs and such which are extremely difficult to accommodate, but the value is actually a lot closer than it looks because the actual amount of mana that is being worked with is upwards of 50,000 in almost all cases, due to regeneration.

1) Just some advice, Arcane specs when you're far off the hit-cap are very very painful.
You'll lose the buff so often, it's not even funny.

2) When you run with JoW and replenishment, you'll have serious trouble getting rid of your mana, even with Molten Armour and trying to spam Blast as much as possible.

3) You'll probably regret not having Arcane Barrage.
I ran 50/3/18 with Imp. Blizzard to help controlling adds (Anub's scarabs and other junk; I like having it if I don't know what is to come).
There were so many occasions where I really wished I had spent a point to get that talent.

Anub'rekan when Impaled. (On second thought, I should have remembered to just blink. Doh.)
Heigan in the dance phase. Gothik to one/two shot untanked non-elite adds, same for Cocoons on Maexxna.
And many other fights where you run in range, out of fire, or a combination of both.

You can use those forced breaks to rebuff Focus Magic though, we had only a Mage and an Affliction Warlock as casters, so no totems, no IDS (or 5 paladins liked it).

Those are also the fights you where you wreck your DPS by having the debuff drop often.

4) With JoW and replenishment and a 6 minute fight, you get:
100% of your mana pool as base, 60% from Evocation, 180% from Evocation and about 140% from JoW.
That's what makes intellect so incredibly strong when mana is a concern.

I think I saw Fire Vulnerability and Winter's Chill as buffs last time, so I wasn't sure whether that Frost Vulnerability was still in or not.
Just wanted to mention that it was down to 5% now.

As for the setup, I don't really make "encounters".
I can calculate spam DPS of 1 spell. I can calculate cycles like "1 Bomb, 5 Fireballs and 0.658 instant Pyroblasts with 3.375 DoT ticks each and Ignite always bugging on double crits" (LB-FB5 is the normal cycle and has on average 0.657 instant PB procs). But I can't do whole encounters.

The benefit of cooldowns is estimated right from Rawr. For example IV/CS is a 4% gain in Sunwell gear in Rawr, so I gave deep frost specs a final 1.04 multiplier.

As for the data itself for Magegraf:
1070 intellect, 600 spirit, 2200 spell damage, 294 hit rating (11.2%; capped with Talent + Misery/iFF), 500 haste rating (15.25% haste), 269 crit rating (5.86% crit; 13% crit total with intellect).
(There was my first mistake, I took the wrong base (8, not 14) for crit, so that's 4% crit less.)

No trinket bonus (thats partially in the stats, partiall in th cooldown modifier from stacking).
CSD meta, Gnome, Mage.
Mana Pot/Gem as only consumables (flask/food are in the base stats). 1 Heroism.
CoE, Misery, WoA, FI, WC, FV, MKA, JotC, Draenei Racial as raid buffs/debuffs.
For mana regen, I just clicked everything to simulated unlimited mana.
360s encounter, new target every 360s.

50ms lag, not sure if magegraph has that. Also used -3% crit depression on boss mobs, and -6% damage loss to partials.

Summary: http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...233068e6f0b382
Spell Detail: http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...6b30ed1a818d4d
Cast Sequence: http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...6b30ed1a818d4d
Effect Timing: http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...96b196e26f779a

Odd stuff:
- Fire 2/58/11 Doesn't seem to use IV/Combustion.
Compare the graph to Fire/Frostfire 0/51/20, compare the cast logs.
Both specs spam Fireball*5-LB (adjusted on haste cooldowns). Fire starts with a 1.2s GCD LBomb, Fire/Frostfire with a 1.0s GCD LBomb. Also, the Fire Graph is entirely even, while Fire/Frostfire graph has the typical "Icy Veins Humps".

Checking "effect timing", Combustion seems used, IV seems not used in 2/58/11 Fire builds.

- Every build seems to use Mage Armour and not Molten Armour, am I reading that correctly from the "spell details"?
Sounds odd, considereing they finish at above 100% mana I think.

- Waterbolt seems to have no scaling. Scaling should be 71% with the pet's spell power, pet gets 40% of the master's spell (frost) power plus totem/aura/mob debuffs, I think. Full debuff benefit, double totem benefit, reduced master's buff benefit.

- Frostfire Bolt has a 0.86 coefficient, not 0.81.

- Living Bomb has a 40% DD and 80% DoT coefficient. It seem currently listed as 8% and 52% in magegraph.

- Also, I can't see intellect scale up crit chance. Increasing Int from 1070 to 10700 changed nothing.
Formula is 1.98% crit at 176 int, then 1% for every further 166.66666666 int.

- Hot Streak seems not implemented? That coupled with some ~10% crit loss (Molten and Intellect conersion) would explain Fire DPS and the lack thereof.


Numbers that I have:

Arcane Blast 50/3/18
6068 hit, 11029 crit, 4655 DPS (incl. CDs)

Frostbolt 0/10/61 variant
3821 hit, 7985 crit, 2733 DPS without FoF, 2945 DPS with 20% FoF uptime (incorrect, but necessary for fair BF/FFB/DF/IL combo comparisons to put them on slightly incorrect, but more important equal footing).
3146 DPS as full cycle/rotation/whatever with BF and FFB/DF/(IL) on FoF.

Waterbolt is 1385 hit, 2077 crit, 588 DPS while up.
For a 6 minute fight, we get 3495 DPS with 66% pet uptime.

Fireball 0/51/20
4621 hit, 11759 crit, 3375 DPS
Living Bomb
1946 hit, 4952 crit, 973 DoT, 5853 DPS (or DPCT rather)
Pyroblast
4835 hit, 12303 crit, 276 DoT; 7158 DPS with average Ignite bugs
FB*5-LB cycle is 3604 DPS.
With Hot Streak the full rotation averages FB*5-LB-iPB*0.658 and does 3808 DPS.

The trick now is trying to model Arcane specs for situations where we aren't able to utilize pure AB spam.

How much time to we need to justify ramping up AB?
What is the best rotation for when we don't have that amount of time?

Arcane Stability: Replaces Improved Arcane Missiles. Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast by 20/40/60/80/100%.
100% pushback protection on Arcane Blast.

Focus Magic: Increases the target's chance to critically hit with all spells by 3%. When the target critically hits, the caster's chance to critically hit with spells is increased by 3% for 10 sec.
Confusing. No duration on what appears to be the passive 3% crit increase.

Ice Shards: Reduced to 3 points for 33/66/100% increase in crit damage.

Shatter: Reduced to 3 points for 17/34/50% increase in crit chance.

Frozen Core: Now reduces all spell damage taken by 2/4/6%.
Making it still significantly weaker than Prismatic Cloak, but not quite as terrible.

Fingers of Frost: Now a 7/15% chance to proc from your chill effects. Still 2 charges/15 secs.
5% increase in proc rate for PvE Mages. No longer procs from Ice Lance. Still fails to allow PvE Shatter Combos.

Deep Freeze: Damage restored to old value?


Four points freed up in any typical deep Frost build.

EDIT : Beaten to the gun by Lhivera.

I noticed that too, but then again that same skill list also lists invisibility as having a 0 second Fade Time -- despite the fact that the talent still reduces its fade time by 1 second per point -- is it going to have a -3 second fade time?

I'm thinking some numbers may be off, so let's wait and see.

I use PvE shatter combos with FoF all the time. I'm not exactly sure if it's a bug, but basically what happens is, your frostbolt procs FoF, your next frostbolt uses 1 charge, then on your 2nd frostbolt you can use a frostbolt+ice lance combo such that both your frostbolt and your icelance consume the charge at the same time. I have reproduced this countless times both while leveling and in Naxx.

Gotta have to wait for the beta to come back up to see if this is still like this in game.

New Glyphs:
* Glyph of Frostfire - Increases the initial damage dealt by Frostfire Bolt by 2% and its critical strike chance by 2%.

Interesting... Wish it was a cast time reduction though.

*edit*
# Glyph of Fireball - Increases the critical strike chance of Fireball by 5%, but removes the damage over time effect.

Changes from strait up damage. More crit, where crit likely isn't needed. We're all going to be rocking over 50% crit easily at this point, before this glyph was changed.

Looking at http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000 for Frost now, and I dearly wish I could find two spare points in Frost to finish out MoE (I want to keep the barrier, might be paranoid but I'm used to being warlock-sturdy). Frostbolt base with proc response and timer use with Fire Blast during forced movement seems like it could work, and Ignite can make those fireballs hurt. Shatter, FoF, and WC all happen to apply to Fireball, which is what got me thinking along these lines.

When we start talking about a 98% crit rate off a Shatter combo, I start to like the thought of going Frostbolt followed by Frostbolt into an Instant Fireball for the combo.

I have not yet tried to spec the other trees just yet, Frost is my favorite so I did it first

OK, the new Focus Magic is a 30-minute, single-target buff, which means, congrats Arcane Mages, you get to single-buff the raid again!
Focus Magic - Spell - World of Warcraft

So, passive 3% crit increase. This will of course be overwritten by Moonkin Aura or Elemental Oath at 5%. However, upon scoring a critical strike, that bonus increases to 6%, and Focus Magic becomes the strongest of the three crit buffs.

Just some thoughts on Arcane Blast:

What if, instead of simply having the debuff wear off after a short period of time, the debuff could only be removed by hitting something with Arcane Missiles or Arcane Barrage? For this to work, the debuff would also need to be able to go higher than 3 stacks - perhaps even to an unlimited stack? - and the damage might need to scale more slowly, I'm not sure of what good numbers might be. This could solve several problems:

1. Arcane mages can't just spam AB. It would be lierally impossible, since the only way to bring AB back from an unsustainable point is to do something else.

2. AB rotations would no longer use other school's spells. This allows arcane to have a more "pure" feel, as well as giving an actualy use for Arcane Missiles. I'm not sure how they can truly make a purpose for ABar, AB, and AM without making them interrelated. Missile Barrage is a step in this direction, but the current state of the AB debuff makes this awkward.

3. Movement matters, but in a less harsh way. Currently, a 3 second AB debuff means that moving around really screws with your dps. With a longer debuff timer, you do have to stop casting, but those little breaks wont reset your spell. Arcane mages will still have to think about moving, though, because having to stop an AM cast early means wasting some mana on the cast and maybe not getting the AB stack back to that optimal range.

4. It provides a really cool level of interactivity with Arcane rotations. Balancing Arcane Blasts and AM ticks in order to keep your Blasts in the optimum range of debuffs would provide a whole lot more interactivity than just hitting the same buton a bunch of times. Also, it would provide some interesting choices with the current arcane procs: Do you use your Missile Barrage proc now, or try and squeeze in another Arcane Blast so that you start back at a higher stack? Do you spend your clearcasts to push the AB stack one notch higher while ducking the increased cost, or do you take the more mana efficient route and AM yourself to a lower count? Plus, AB can still work as a form of mana dump later on in the fight because it still has the same saling effect.

I also think it has an interesting flavor. Think of it this way: Arcane Blast is a powerful spell, but it basically builds up a well of energy inside the mage that hinders his casting until its discharge through the Arcane Missiles. Maybe there could even be a talent or just a base effet that could increase Arcane Missiles damage when it removes the AB debuff? I don't have any idea how hard any of this would be to code, or if its even possible, but its something to think about.

Two more new Glyphs

# Glyph of Improved Scorch - The Improved Scorch talent now generates 3 applications of the Improved Scorch effect each time Scorch is cast. Down from 5.
# Glyph of Remove Curse - Your Remove Curse spell also makes the target immune to all Curses for 1 sec (4 sec?). Down from 6 sec.

Improved scorch annoys me. They didn't even test it on Beta yet before doing this. It's been broken since implementation. With how easy it is for Frost mages to keep Winters Chill up, I was really hoping scorch would be so lucky.

I do hope this is not going to be Blizzards only attempt at making spirit desirable to mages.

So if I'm reading the new FoF correctly, this means Ice Armor now procs FoF.

Frost looks to have received a decent amount of attention this patch.

Frozen core finally being addressed is nice, no doubt. It adds even more survivability to a tree that has it in spades already.

My question for the beta testers if whether Fire received any adjustments (barring the changes to the Fireball and Scorch glyphs)?

I believe they did this because it would seem more adventitious to let scorch fall off instead of interrupting your cast to reapply it. They just want you to maintain the debuff on the boss.

The changes to the newest build are very nice overall. The arcane blast change was necessary although 300% more mana cost per stack seems really excessive even for a mana dump. What I'm really curious about is if they reverted the deep freeze damage reduction or if it's a mistake on the calculator.

This is a very nice change for the fire tree as most of it's talents and abilities synergyze with crit. Not only will the glyph increase the damage with crit sentric talents like hot streak, but it will give extra mana back via Master of Elements. With the current levels of gear that have appeared in naxx and the new lvl 259 item level gear popping up, it seems that raiding with 50%+ crit is a fire mage will be quite common.

Not sure if this is a good change or not:

Glyph of Fireball - Increases the critical strike chance of Fireball by 5%, but removes the damage over time effect. (Old - Increases the initial damage dealt by Fireball by 5%, but removes the damage over time effect.)

EDIT: probable nerf at 40%+ crit rates. 145/140 = 3.5%. Are we able to get 1.5% more DPS out of the extra hotstreak procs afforded by 5% crit?

Wowhead's got the same numbers.

Also, Fireball glyph changed from 5% damage to 5% crit. Fireball crit rates are going to be scary.

If you were at 40% crit, this increases Fireball DPS by: (1 + 0.45 * 1.45) / (1 + 0.4 * 1.45) = 4.59%. Not quite as good as a 5% increase, but it also increases your chances at a Hot Streak proc by a bit, and increases mana efficiency a bit as well.

Oops, forgot the extra multipliers (ignite and burnout). Neutral change, though I do worry that we are losing a metric ton of damage multipliers and getting crit in their stead (misery changed, old imp scorch, spell power buffs not stacking). I'm worried about our scaling in this regard.

Well that about covers everything that there was to be said about arcane blast. High DPM or high DPS, no in-between.

On a sidenote, I find it interesting to note that a AB/barrage rotation has 100% pushback protection. I also believe the new focus magic is far more interesting than the old one -- at least its got the potential to be better than other existing buffs, unlike the old version.

------------------------------
Also, about the talent point reduction.

Arcane Stability - 100% pushback protection for all arcane spells. I think it does begs the question: Why is this still 5 points ? With the newest AB changes, what it means is that your poorest DPS spells for arcane spec are uninterruptible (since you can't really rely on AB spam anymore, unless you feel like spending 90% mana / cast). Don't get me wrong AB is still a very good DPM spell, although they wanted an extremely extremely short leash on AB spam. Probably too short to be fair. Alright so if its just meant to be cast once then that means loosely that they do want you to use missile barrage (since you won't be stacking ABs). I hate saying this since its a talent low in the tree but, this really ought to be lowered talent-point-wise. But anyway, I'll try and ignore my gut instinct and just say that the talent is bad as a whole as deserves much of a further boost. 2/2 or 3/3 being real possibilities. Yes, 2/2. The real problem is, even if it were 2/2 I don't think many players would take it. There is simply wayy too many competing talents far in the tree. Hell, you could bake the talent directly in the spells and that would work too.

3/3 Ice Shards & 3/3 Shatter - This is clearly a change meant only for deep frost. I tried hard to make any logic out of those changes for non deep frost specs, and it doesn't brings a whole lot. It won't do anything to help elementalist builds, but thats OK its not aimed at that. It opens up better the talents further along the tree.

Fingers of Frost - Changes to affect all spells. Again - no impact on elementalist builds. I'm not too sure if that gives much DPS increase to frost -- I really doubt frost will gain much from doing a hardcasted fireball. I guess its a wee bit interesting change for the Brain Freeze/Finger of Frost interaction, but nothing much else worthy of mention. I guess it was changed for consistency' sake more than anything else. Or maybe its really intended for fireblast ? (someone needs to run the numbers on this)