Blast Wave is entirely situational, and anytime you're AoEing, it's more likely that you'd want to keep mobs in the same spot. You probably won't be the person tanking the mobs (think hyjal), and your tanks won't appreciate it when your blast wave knocks every mob outside of consecration (and all other raid AoE, save for Blizzard). In fact, that makes it even worse, if you have a frost mage using Blizzard. Your Blast wave would knock the mobs out of consecration, and then blizzard would slow them down from reentering. It's a hypothetical situation, but it's just one of the downsides of blast wave. Dragon's Breath seems superior in every way.
Thats not even half the problem. If the mobs leave melee range of your tank then all your ranged classes lose the 30% threat window they previously enjoyed - after the blastwave, you're going on hope alone that the mobs will even attempt to run back to the tank and not a healer or warlock.
Looks like Inscription is going to be a must for casters, given that they can now create new shoulder inscriptions that trump the other inscriptions in game:
Well, it's pretty simple. New and Improved Blast Wave (now with knockback) is no longer for AOEing tanked mobs. With living bomb and improved flamestrike, we don't really need it for that role. It becomes a much more situational talent whether its pushing loose mobs off yourself or a healer, or maybe significantly more of a PvP talent.
So don't run into a group of already tanked mobs and blastwave. Why are we talking about this again?
Looks like Inscription is going to be a must for casters, given that they can now create new shoulder inscriptions that trump the other inscriptions in game:
Makes the profession much more compelling that it already was.
less than 40 extra spell power? hardly justification to say that inscription is a must for every caster. Enchanting, jewelcrafting and tailoring are all competative with this, if not better.
If they want to make AB awesome with 1 click and less awesome with 2 clicks, they need to reverse the debuff order. Give it an outrageously high base damage, then reduce its damage AND increase its mana cost with each cast. This would making waiting for the debuff to wear off the ideal scenario.
What they are saying is not matching up with what they are implementing. Right now, it isn't awesome once and it less awesome twice. We are still waiting for awesome #1.
Pheroz, i understand the gimmick mechanics, how often a person got to utilize it is up for debate. It appears that Blizzard does not want AB to be a primary nuke. My question was why? Fireball and Frostbolt are not on the chopping block. As far as i could tell everyone who used AB liked it, and not because of inconsistencies.
They are taking it away to prevent raid stacking. The former AB "cheated" the system of normalized class DPS by allowing arcane to pass everyone else if mana conditions are met. If everyone else has top end DPS limited by cast times and cooldowns (and mana is only really a factor when it's gone; more mana does not increase DPS significantly), and arcane DPS has a ramped increase if high mana needs can be sustained, then arcane mages would be stacked to get the highest raid DPS. Raids would find a way to sustain it as much as possible. Imagine two arcane mages grouped with 3 priests (Divine hymn mana) and 4 druids chain innervating them. That mana converts to DPS, arcane blows everyone's doors off, and 29 other specs are pretty pissed off with the way those min/maxed WWS reports look.
However, if this crazy stacking was accounted for and tuned to produce only normal DPS (like everyone else), there'd be no reason to stack for it and since it wouldn't get stacked for it, arcane's damage output would be subpar in most every reasonable raid configuration.
They're going to have to find another way to make arcane compete if they want to keep the raid model they're advertising.
I got the impression that the shoulder inscriptions were actually meant for enchanters.
From MMO-Champion on 09/06:
New Enchantments
These enchants are most likely the upgraded version of shoulder enchants dropping from Sapphiron in Naxxramas.
Quote from Blizzard staff
* Inscription of High Discipline - Permanently adds 30 spell power and 15 critical strike rating to a shoulder slot item. Can only enchant your own items and doing so causes them to become soulbound.
* Inscription of the Frostblade - Permanently adds 45 spell power and 15 critical strike rating to a shoulder slot item. Can only enchant your own items and doing so causes them to become soulbound.
* Inscription of Kings - Permanently adds 20 defense rating and 15 dodge rating to a shoulder slot item. Can only enchant your own items and doing so causes them to become soulbound.
Also, inscriptions are the name of shoulder enchants already in the game before they ever envisioned the inscription profession.
Pheroz, i understand the gimmick mechanics, how often a person got to utilize it is up for debate. It appears that Blizzard does not want AB to be a primary nuke. My question was why? Fireball and Frostbolt are not on the chopping block. As far as i could tell everyone who used AB liked it, and not because of inconsistencies.
Spam Fireball/Frostbolt is on the chopping block. A deep fire or deep frost mage in WotLK will be watching their procs to maximize their damage. If the frost or fire spec becomes "Spam one spell over and over" then it needs to be changed.
The goal with deep arcane is to have different spells be used. Spam Arcane Missiles with Arcane Barrage every cooldown would also be a bad situation. Spam Arcane Blast is also bad. A mixture of the two would be good, although a fixed rotation could also be annoying.
Tested and confirmed: Focus magic stacks with moonkin aura and elemental oath (in case that was ever unclear).
Living Bomb: still bugged, explosion occurs around the caster rather than the target. Also, the knockup effect seems more severe now ,yes I know I also said that last build :P
Tested and confirmed: Focus magic stacks with moonkin aura and elemental oath (in case that was ever unclear).
Is it possible to cast Focus Magic on yourself, so that when you crit, you gain an extra 3% chance to crit temporarily? This may or not be selfish in a raid, but could be very good in solo play and 5-mans.
Nope, you can't cast it on yourself. However, there is a rank 2 in the spellbok which casts the 10 second version on yourself, but I doubt that is intende as the tooltip is completly fucked up, it costs no mana and it pretty much bypasses the design of the talent. Probably a leftover from the days when it gave spellpower: ImageShack - Hosting :: asdtk1.jpg = rank2.
Also, you can only have one 30 minute buff up at a time, so it's not a buff you cast on everyone in a raid.
EDIT: Inspiring presence was removed, all draenei now have Heroic presence which increases hit by 1% for ALL attacks.
If I were arcane, I would seriously hate pressing 1-2-1-2-1-2 OH WAIT 3....1-2-1-2-1-2....(alternating abar/AB would be mind numbing). At least with fire I can press 1 a lot, a 5 here and there, 2 to refresh, and a 3 on proc. I've played fire on the PTR and I like the playstyle a lot more than it plays on live. It's a little more involved without being as monotonous as arcane still looks to be.
Arcane needs such a major overhaul I can see why Blizzard is having a hard time with it. Two suggestions for more involved arcane play:
•Make AM better DPS and DPM. Also, make each tick have a chance to refresh your Abar cooldown or give you extra Abar casts over a limited period of time. This would give you a reason to cast AM outside of procs. Put MBar back on Abar and remove it from AB.
•Make AB the spell arcane spams while in cooldown mode (AP/Trinkets/Bloodlust). Keep the damage increase but modify the mana cost so that it's no longer the limiting factor in DPS (i.e. more won't help as substantially as the former model). Instead, add an arcane exhaustion effect to the blast debuff, where after 20 seconds or so of ramped time it loses out on something (increased cost, cast time, or a forced temporary cooldown of the spell). This makes AB the "molten fury" spell for arcane mages. Add an exhaustion timer after the first debuff so that it can be weaved normally if desired. When you spam it, you want it spammed, but there's a time limit, not a mana limit.
Both of these changes would be relatively easy to balance for top end arcane DPS, both require more involved play, and neither relegates arcane back to TBC gimmick status.
So essentially caps are now meaningless for all realistic situations.
If they keep these numbers yes. But keep in mind that the caps according to the press weren't supposed to be for realistic situations. They were just for some oddball exploits, but scaling and content caught up to the caps, and they weren't set in any consistent way. (why does blast wave do less damage than arcane explosion vs 16 targets? Well...it doesn't unless you are level 70 and have half decent gear. At 60 and most vanilla gear levels the current caps were also meaningless for realistic situations)
I would suggest dropping both Dragon's Breath and Blastwave to pick up talents that will actually help your damage when fighting a single target.
Some people go without dragon breath and blast wave today too (and pyroblast) but most do not.
Dragon breath is a utility spell that just got better. If a monster gets loose from the tank, you disorient it for a few sec till he gets control back. (it's also excellent in solo and PVP)
Blast wave is used more in PVP today, because the daze effect isn't something you can cancel with things like escape artist, blessing of freedom, blah blah. But the slowdown also works on pretty much any mob, even those normally immune to slowing effects. So it has some raid utility too.
WOLK takes those two traits and amplifies them. If they're useful now, they're probably still going to be useful in future. Dragon breath disorients long enough to wait out a GCD and fireball when solo, or gives the tank another two tics to get control back. Blast wave is obviously very useful in solo and PVP situations, but even on a raid, knocking something back 10' that is loose from the tank is going to be handy sometimes. You can knock stuff back into the consecrate, or knock something AWAY from the consecrate and sheep it far enough that it won't wander back in.
Blast wave is going to be a double-edged tool, just as frost nova is today. I can't see going deep fire though without working it in. Even if I have to give up 1% of my single target DPS.
Incinerate is a lot easier to give up. I cast one scorch every 30 seconds. My scorch crits are smallish. At level 70 gear losing 2% to my scorch crit reduces my damage to .999315 of its current value (less than 1 absolute DPS, less than 1 tenth of one percent of my total DPS). The only reason I bother with the talent in BC is that nothing else I can spend the points on gives any DPS increase in raid spec and it does a bit better on trash, where scorching is more common for time reasons. In fire-PVP spec, most of my single target damage is scorch+fire blast so it's a nearly 2%/point talent.
I don't expect to take it in WOLK for a raid spec. I probably would for a PVP spec. It's all about what % of your rotation is scorch. Low when raiding, high in mobile/interrupt situations.
Ok, this is currently borked. If you check your spellbook, you will notice you have 2 spells. One has the 30 minute duration on it, and the other is... the other is the PROC! Heh heh - whoever was responsible for scripting the spellbook didnt understand what the developer did with the spell, and added the proc to the spellbook.
It is my guess that the 30 minute version is what should be CAST on everyone (including yourself) and the 10s version that you currently cast on yourself is supposed to PROC when your target gets hit by a crit. It is supposed to stack on the 30 minute version, giving an overall 6% crit buff (3% base + 3% for 10s after your target gets hit by a crit).
Arcane Blast:
What can I say. I can only hope that 300% was also broken, and that it was supposed to be a damage and mana cost redution, not a damage reduction and a mana cost increase. People who change 2 variables in an experiment on purpose are not practitioners of good science. I hope that MMO champion is right, and it should be a 30% ramp up!
Blast wave is used more in PVP today, because the daze effect isn't something you can cancel with things like escape artist, blessing of freedom, blah blah. But the slowdown also works on pretty much any mob, even those normally immune to slowing effects. So it has some raid utility too.
The last time I tested it, Blast Wave's daze effect was removed by Blessing of Freedom and Escape Artist, and Cloak of Shadows, and pretty much anything else that removes movement slowing effects/magic debuffs. It's not the same daze effect that mobs use.
Also, an interesting blue post, unrelated to blast wave, but it holds its own weight:
Originally Posted by Koraa
We're taking Chaotic Mind off of Chaos Bolt, was just something we were trying out. The ability now does pretty juicy damage after the changes (some might not even be in your build), so it really doesn't warrant the need for the tacked on buff (that is somewhat RNGish as you point out).
It simply shows how fast things can change. This is a change that was just implemented this build:
Chaos Bolt (Tier 11) damage increased and mana cost reduced. Now causes the effect Chaotic Mind when used.
Chaotic Mind - Damage done by your Immolate has a 8% chance to cause your next Soul Fire spell to be instant cast, cost no mana and consume no soul shard. Lasts 8 sec.
And it's already receiving a second pass. Similarly, as others have noted, Blizzard devs seem to be reassuring that they are simply trying things out with Arcane Blast. Not every spec and class can be changed each build -- days and weeks go by and bring new builds and new changes. It's to be expected.
What can I say. I can only hope that 300% was also broken, and that it was supposed to be a damage and mana cost redution, not a damage reduction and a mana cost increase. People who change 2 variables in an experiment on purpose are not practitioners of good science. I hope that MMO champion is right, and it should be a 30% ramp up!
Ghostcrawler's comments on the Beta forum seem to indicate otherwise. It wasn't really the damage that needed decreasing but the mana cost that needed increasing. Regardless I think they're just playing around with it and this unusable version will not be the final incarnation. If it is, then we'll have our dps balanced such that we don't need it fully stacked, and we'll be just fine in the long run.
I wouldn't be surprised if they are making AB un-usable for a short while to get some data points for other types of rotations. If your playing as Arcane right now, you are just spamming A, and calling it a day. They want people to try other ideas, and the only way to do that was to make AB completely terrible, or at laest seem that way.
I did some testing on Blizzard with some training dummies I found in Theramore. I had no gear equiped, 0/0/0 spec, and used rank 7 (i'm only 72 on beta), and here's what I found:
Blizzard Tooltip Damage: 2192 total damage
Blizzard Actual Damage: 273-274 * 7 ticks = 1911-1918 total damage
2192 - 1918 = 274
It seems that Blizzard is bugged and assuming an initial tick in it's total damage, but it doesn't actually go off.
I wouldn't be surprised if they are making AB un-usable for a short while to get some data points for other types of rotations. If your playing as Arcane right now, you are just spamming A, and calling it a day. They want people to try other ideas, and the only way to do that was to make AB completely terrible, or at laest seem that way.
Yeah, I think that's exactly what they're doing. They need good data on people using the intended rotation, or they won't be able to balance it properly.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Humans are not apt to change...if your spamming AB now, you'll try it everywhere. When I logged into the PTR, I set up as a fire mage, because thats what I know. This may be the whole purpose of this recent patch, I have Druid friends screaming that the sky is falling, the sky is falling, nerfs everywhere.
Maybe they figured out how to make the new Naxx hard...set everyone back to WoW 1.0!
So don't run into a group of already tanked mobs and blastwave. Why are we talking about this again?
Originally Posted by Jonny_Monroe
Thats not even half the problem. If the mobs leave melee range of your tank then all your ranged classes lose the 30% threat window they previously enjoyed - after the blastwave, you're going on hope alone that the mobs will even attempt to run back to the tank and not a healer or warlock.
You're assuming that aoe classes are going to b pushing threat cap in aoe situations. Is there some evidence to support this from beta that I'm not aware of? All the testimonials I've seen so far pointing to tanks having such a large lead in threat thanks to buffs that it's a non-issue, and I don't see why this wouldn't extend to AoE.
Fingers of Frost (Tier 8 ) now gives your Chill effects a 7/15% chance to grant you the Fingers of Frost effect. (Previously 5/10% chance on frost spells)
So.. now FoF is not working on bosses anymore? And FoF is useless with Frostbolt Glyph?
So.. now FoF is not working on bosses anymore? And FoF is useless with Frostbolt Glyph?
OK, this keeps coming up in every forum.
No, neither of these things is true. Let me paste what I posted to the beta forum.
It won't work because bosses are immune to chill effects, right?
Wrong. Ever notice that "Immune" message that floats up on the screen once in a while while frostbolting a boss? That's caused by Frostbite proccing against the boss. The boss is immune to being snared, yes. He's immune to being rooted. But the chill effect still procs Frostbite -- the debuff simply isn't applied.
Same thing will happen with Fingers of Frost...except when it procs, you get buffed, the boss doesn't get debuffed. No immunity issues brought to bear.
It won't work because Glyph of Frostbolt removes the chill effect, right?
Wrong. The glyph does not remove the chill effect. It removes the slowing effect. Seems like semantic trickery, I know, but it matters. Testing (Xentropy and others) indicates that glyphed Frostbolt still procs Frostbite.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Arcane potency shows as a buff now, though it's weird, it only applies to the first spell when you have PoM up. After that the arcane potency buff disappears and won't come back until you use up PoM and activate it again. Probably to prevent the silly barrage with 50% crit spam. Not sure if this is new for this build or not as I pretty much never touch that spec.
09/18/08, 2:22 PM
