Nastrodamus

Why didn't you take the reduction of knockback Arc Stability? Arcane does feel very bloated wonder would combining Arc Stability and Empowerment into 1 - 5 point talent help some of that bloating?

 

CHeeSY-CrAfT

No, he is not immune to arcane damage.

 

dralarn

- I'd love to see Arcane Stability as a 3 point talent - to match up with other pushback resistant talents.
- Missile Barrage really feels like a 3 points talent as well. This would help out a lot with the deeper talents. I generally take all talents but Incanter's Absorption once I hit the 25 point tier which requires 56 points, or 54 if you lose prismatic cloak. This doesn't leave much to play with.
- It would be nice to also have Arcane Mind as a 3 point talent, but that seems unlikely to happen.

The worst part about having 80 points in this tree is that I would actually love to take them all.

 

Aaleandra

There are a couple of reasons I didn't take it. 1) Playing as arcane through TBC I had no pushback protection so I'm used to not having it and 2) Since it was the PTR, I'm missing the 10 points I will have at 80, and I was just casting on the dummy, I was trying to get as many DPS talents as I could just to test them.

 

Kyriani

considering the nerf, mind mastery could really stand to be a 3 point talent as well

currently arcane has 81 talent points

fire has 73

frost has 74

we really can stand to trim some fat

 

Nastrodamus

yeah I keep forgetting about that nerf....yes that would help cut some of the fat along with changes mentioned by Dralarn. I doubt they got 3 points in missile barrage though because it just got a bump up to 20%.

 

threep*

To be honest, I think TotW was primarily designed as a PVP talent; the "Blizzard-Way" to force the use of Slow in a PvP scenario. It's somehow like "Firestarter" and Flamestrike. Kinda lame, but that's how it is.

 

Thegoodman

Arcane Fortitude is one of the weakest talents in the Arcane tree right now. Even with the inflated amounts of intellect we will have in WotLK, it still is not very good.

Arcane Fortitude and Magic Absorption smashed together, still named Arcane Fortitude and a 3pt talent (-2)
Mind Mastery - 3pts (-2)
Arcane Mind - 3pts (-2)

New Arcane Fortitude:
Increase your armor by 25% of your Intellect, increase all resistances by 0.3 per level and cause you to return 1% of resisted magic into mana.

This makes partial resists all that much more attractive and gives mana starved mages some extra incentive to get this talent and use Mage Armor.

 

clairecakes

Torment of the Weak does currently work and was tested on the Boss dummy on Beta. It provides a 6% increase. I tested it with Slow but was surprised that a rogue with crippling poison was also giving me the 6% increase (when Slow fell off).

But everything I've seen of ToW and the tendency for bosses to be immune to snares leads me to believe ToW is intended to be a PVP talent and not a PVE talent. I mean a frost nova-Abar-Ice Lance-Abar combo would be pretty nasty.

 

Dekkar

Yes, Mind Flay's debuff shows up on mobs that are immune to slows/snares.

I can't tell you about the glyph unfortunately because one hasn't been avaialble to me yet. Even if it still did proc Torment, you're correct in that Mind Flay uptime is sporadic; it can never be counted on. In fact, with spellhaste, I could be done Mind Flaying before your Fireball (including travel time) finishes casting and hits the target (if we had equivalent spellhastes).

There's also another issue where buffs procced by Mind Flay don't show up until the first damage tick. Misery is one of those. While it's a 3-second channel, the damage ticks don't fall exactly on the second, nor are they exactly a second apart, especially between ticks 1 and 2. At least that's what I've noticed playing a shadow priest since 2005. I don't have any hard data to back up that allegation though, just anecdotal 'evidence'. It also appears that the damage distribution time is the same with the new, crittable version as it was with the old.

 

◊ manly

Torment of the weak in PVE at 12% and assuming it could be applied by other classes would have the same effect that demonic sacrifice had on all warlock builds. You would have no alternative build -- every build must have the talent for PVE.

I think blizzard is misguided in their attempt to fix the tree issues. At this point, I'm not sure what Living Bomb is meant to do. I'll try and ignore for a second that its one living bomb per target. It seemed originally meant to help for pvp, hence the knock-up effect, but now that they removed it, it seemed neither good for PVE or PVP. I mean its good for PVE, but severely limited as far as AOE goes, and for single target the current restriction precludes it. If they want to make Living Bomb help fire mage PVP, I think they should add a snare to it. Hell, they could make Living Bomb a stackable dot to help fire mage mana issues (of course it would require every mage to have its own stack).

I'm not sure what to think about Torment of the weak. Its obvious they don't want it to work on bosses, or, if it does work on bosses they want it severely limited. Truth is, conditional talents tend to either overdo it, or suck. Its like what I said before. You have balance the talent based on the assumption the condition isn't always met; yet, players will do everything to work around the condition, basically throwing off the balance. The only way you can mitigate the design impact would be to have the talent have a small benefit gained from working around the conditional (ie: scale back to 6%, 12% is really overboard -- read: demonic sacrifice).

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Lhivera

If Torment of the Weak were in fact to work on bosses, it would pretty much have to be 12%, because the Mage applying Slow is going to lose 10% of his casting time keeping Slow up. It might work if it only works with Mage snares -- slow, frostbolt, ffb, blast wave, blizzard. That would mean to use it on bosses, you have to have an Arcane Mage applying Slow, and that may not be a practical thing to keep up 100% of the time.

But it sure does seem simpler just to make it not work on bosses.

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.

 

Celani

I don't want mage DPS balanced around a talent that every mage has to take. A mage without TotW would be running at 12% less than mages benefitting from it, and 2% less than an arcane mage applying it. Adding this effect to bosses only complicates mage raid DPS balancing.

Going back to an earlier question, arcane torrent is off the GCD and easily used. For Blood Elves no one ever mentions [], either, and this stacks with all other consumables. It's 10 spell power. Not much, but we picked enchanting for the 24 spell power.

And on that note, I was on the PTR with my paladin, who after enchanting rings dropped enchanting for mining for the expansion. The ring enchants were red (disabled) and not functional (+12 spellpower on tank rings, 40 healing, +4 all stats). Looks like they cut out the "get the best rings in the game and drop enchanting" loophole. I desperately want more profession data because I'm not sure if enchanting/tailoring will be the way to go and I'd like to get a head start.

 

grayrest

The boss dummy is snareable so it really doesn't perfectly represent a boss mob.

While the ABr->nova->lance->ABr->lance->lance combo does work, the nova doesn't provide the TtW bonus since it's a root. The nasty arcane combo is MB proc->AP+PoM->AM->Pyro->ABr->Fireblast. The AM and Pyro both get the 30% crit bonus from PoM.

For the other Torment suggestions, frostbolt doesn't leave a debuff on an unsnareable mob, nor does frost shock, JoJ is a speed limiter and not a snare (or druids could shift out of it).

It technically wouldn't have to. Only one mage is losing 10% casting time while all the other mages are benefiting from the slow. It encourages mage stacking, so I don't think it'll work on bosses, but it's theoretically workable even at 6%.

 

◊ manly

Well, we will have to do solid testing, because even 6% inconditional dps boost is rather huge on an offtree. I'd seriously consider even 21/50/0 (no POM). What affects and what doesn't affects Torment of the Weak will pretty much distort all build decisions.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Xentropy

It also just functions as a mini version of the old Winter's Grasp, giving raids an excuse to stack mages. One arcane bitch to keep slow up, and ten fire mages with Torment. If dps is balanced with Torment, then mages are all behind by 12% without stacking; if dps is balanced without Torment, going all-mage after raid buffs are supplied gives you ~10% more rdps.

Not balancable, so I expect the talent to be set up to do nothing against bosses, ever, or to be changed entirely. If it's not changed by release, it'll get nerfed in a future patch when it becomes apparent this kind of stacking can happen. For now I'm pretending the talent doesn't exist for the purposes of coming up with and testing raid builds. I expect it to be a PvP/trash talent.

 

Thegoodman

A bit of a dramatic solution, but how about they completely swap the tree location of Slow and TotW and change TotW slightly.

Torment of the Weak (3/3)
Your arcane spells cause 5/10/15% additional damage to a target effected by Slow.

 

◊ manly

I dont know, this is Blizzard we're talking about. Took a long time to realize demonic sacrifice distorted every warlock builds, and they let it go for all of tbc. Fiery Payback is still unchanged, even though conceptually its beyond laughable.

The problem with that talent is simple. Its a design problem.

http://elitistjerks.com/910119-post2110.html
This means, if you make a talent like Shatter, for example (because its an obvious example). 50% more crit on a frozen target is a huge dps boost, but you need the target to be frozen, so that 'balances out' the talent. 50% more crit is 'balanced' around the assumption that targets will never be 100% of the time frozen. However, if you open the door like they did originally with fingers of frost that allowed frost mage stacking heading towards 100% frozen state, you break the balance.

A powerful talent with conditionals on it has no choice but to have its dps (ie: strength) be balanced around the assumption that the conditional will stay conditional. However, players will do everything to bypass the conditional. If you can play the game in a way that shatter is 100% of the time active, then yes shatter is OP.

This is why that sort of talent tends to be bad. Its either OP or lackluster. Unsurprisingly, this is exactly how I view Torment of the Weak. You have to balance the strength of the talent around near 100% uptime (read: 5-6% dps boost on average out of 6%). If you take the same example, but change 6% into 12%, then you see the problem. 12% dps boost is flat out way too strong for a 3 pointer talent. Even for a 5 pointer it would be terrific. You have no choice but to assume near 100% uptime on your conditional to make any kind of balancing sense. If you assume near 100% uptime on the conditional, then 12% is too strong of a boost for a 3 pointer.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Pasture

It would certainly help bring arcane mages up in line with fire mages. Slow would really need a longer PvE duration however if this was to be truly effective. Applying Slow every 15 seconds is going to get old fast. It should have at least a 30 second PvE duration.

 

Søndag

Actually with Torment as it is right now Fire mages are appox equal to locks, Frost and frostfire gain a nice bonus, bur are still behind locks and the arcanemage applying the slow gains a little improvement since last patch, but that could also come from missile barrage procs which now should be more often.

Torment/slow is strong, but it's actually not overpowered compared to locks.. but it kinda ruins the "fun" builds we were begining to see and puts us back to a debuff to keep up and spam, so i Agree 100% with Manly who explains this so much better :P

 

◊ manly

Wait, in fact, I just realize my previous thread could be expanded upon mana regen mechanic. The one mechanic everyone hates.

DPS from casters assume you never go oom for the most part. DPS is mostly balanced around that fact. This is also the same reason many mages complain that evocation should have no cooldown, because mana is such thats your dps is either balanced, or total garbage. It really doesn't makes much sense. So to put the previous post in perspective; if mage dps assumes you never go oom, but in practice mages do go OOM, then the dps is out of balance.

Conditionals are a bitch to balance. You have to make sure they are reached near 100% of the time to avoid player abuse. Coincidentally, this is why you want to make sure mages never go OOM.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

◊ manly

Being equal to warlock should be unrelated. Its a nice relative goal, but not the goal in itself. (edit: you can't balance based on warlock damage: it would assume their damage is balanced too)

The talent at 12% (which I know you use dedmon simulation to come off to that conclusion) is flat out stupid. Its demonic sacrifice. Every build has no choice but to have that talent. If you don't have it, you're not even in the realm of competing on damage meters. Every single build needs it. This is why its bad.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Roywyn

Quoting this to emphasise that we're running out of methods to actually trigger Torment on bosses.

The remaining abilities that might work are:
Blade Turning - Rogue, Combat (unlikely as it's just a daze, but Daze often acts special)
Mind Flay - Priest, Shadow
Icy Touch - Death Knight (unlikely, but it affects ranged and melee casting speed like Slow)

The following might work, but are situational or come at an unjustifiably high cost:
Curse of Tounges - Warlock
Mind-Numbing Poison - Rogue
Waylay - Rogue, Subtlety
Hurricane - Druid

Slow - Mage, Arcane - was tested to trigger Torment on Dr. Boom, and one raid boss is fully immune to it. If someone runs Naxxramas as full Arcane to test other bosses, it would be helpful.
Infected Wounds - Druid, Feral - was tested to not trigger Torment on Sirana Iceshriek (the debuff went up).


Missile Barrage
Does it proc on spell cast or spell hit?
With Arcane Barrage being instant, you could react on procs if they proc right on cast. On hit, it's trickier.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Thegoodman

Weren't Evocation and Instant Arcane Explosion once talents? Blizzard wants to avoid situations like this.

 

Søndag

I agree 100%

I liked the way things were looking before we got the torment buff, but since it's not an official change it could just be a bug. I still fell mages should have a bit more of a punch thou, since i don't exactly feel like a glass cannon when my dps is not really close to the top. I don't think we neccesarily have to to the dmg meters, as long as we are strong enough to get into raids, and have fun builds that are not just spamming.