This is considered a bug, not the intended function of the spell.

Is it a known issue that some boss aoe effects (think slime pools on NRB) don't re-render after you fade back from invisibility?

Yes. Feel free to submit another bug report though. Perhaps if they get enough of them they will fix it.

Post deleted.

Why is Fetish of Volatile Power such a bad choice for mages?

Well, it is pretty much a bad choice for most people. Reason being that it takes quite a long time to stack up the effect of the trinket. The use effect only stacks up haste everytime you cast a harmful spell - even if you only cast instants (which you shouldn't), that would be 8 GCDs till you stack it up, basically half of the effects time.

Generally, it will take even longer. Mainnukes cast arround 2 seconds for most mages (maybe a bit less). Overall, the use effect is next to worthless.

Now, is it a terrible, even negative trinket? No. The passive crit is great for some speccs, and even the use-effect does give some DPS. But there is a large choice of easily accessible trinkets out there with better effects and comparable passive benefits, notably for emblems or in ToC5man normal. Check those out, they will most likely be better for you.

It stacks on spell cast, not on spell hit. You would get one stack for an MBarr.

At how many mobs is using blizzard better damage than single targeting each down, assuming all relevant buffs on all targets? Is the number different for FFB specs vs Arcane?

for arcane at current gear levels, pure blizzard dps on 3 targets is on practically on par with single target dps.
for ffb with it's crit bonus it's always better to aoe at 3 or more targets.

this is of course very gear dependent. from my observations in rawr, haste seems the best stat for blizzarding.

i didn't know where to place this, cause the question applies to all specs, our t10 will have no spirit at all. Now considering this any idea on what will happen with our molten armor glyphs? do you think we should replace it? and in that case wich glyphs would you pick?

After the change of the Scorch glyph in 3.3 , instead of providing 5% crit it's providing 20% increased scorch damage.


Is there any sort of theory crafts regarding this change ? will the 20% increased scorch damage make the scorch spell strong enough to compete with Fireball/Living Bomb / Pyroblast ?

You'd still not glyph scorch if you were responsible for keeping up the debuff; you'd be much better off going with a molten armor/living bomb/(fb/ffb) glyph setup.

Scorch will still have a horrible damage per execute time compared to other spells in the fire rotation, as can be seen here (simulationcraft - scroll down). The data uses T9 stats; however, due to scaling issues (scorch = 1.5 second cast), the gap is going to grow bigger with icecrown gear. A 20% buff is not going to change the fact that you'll be taking an instantaneous dps hit (somewhere close to ~50%) if you use scorch as your main filler spell.

It might be a bit early to tell any of this yet, but I was wondering what the ideal frost spec/rotation (edit: stat weighting) is going to be like post-3.3. The guild I currently raid with is a semi-casual guild full of RL friends with a more "hardcore" core. As such, we don't exactly enforce specs, although as an officer I'm free to offer suggestions as far as spec/rotation goes (I'm also curious because our late night (the more serious) crew sometimes has some esoteric make ups to work with, as tonite with 2 tanks, 2 casters, and a bunch of melee--I went pvp frost to kite blood beasts on Saurfang, but bringing both a 5% crit buff and replenishment might not be the worst thing in the world--no idea if math would support the dps loss from arcane as being worth it or not though).

Before I post the spec, what I've heard/inferred/discussed with other mages re: rotation. Based on Lhivera's math, even a glyphed ice lance isn't worth casting. So outside of spamming fb ad nauseum (i.e. on fingers of frost procs) you're either fb-deepfreezing or fb-brain freeze fireballing (and if you're latency is good enough, you do fb-fb-df or fb-fb-brain freeze fireball on the ghost charge). This led to a build of http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...2hcH,MQ6,10958. Most of the core talents are obvious. One point in imp blizzard for FoF procs making for some mean aoe, 3 in brain freeze to shatter on FoF, 1 in enduring winter because unless its an extremely movement heavy fight that should cover replenishment.

In the arcane tree I'd personally most likely drop 2 in arcane concentration for MA since frost is already pretty mana efficient and the dmg reduction is impressive. TTW and focus magic are obvious, and student of the mind because spell impact will only benefit the fireballs used on ghost charged FoF procs. CD usage is about the same as the other specs. Open with MI and icy veins/trinket, but save cold snap for after the first deep freeze to snap another back right away.

Does this sound/look about right? Would love some feedback as I'm far from certain that brain freeze is the best use of fof procs, especially if you can't consistently get ghost charges. Also curious how cold as ice would rate, although it seems like its useless unless its a very long fight.

Hi, I'm playing in a fun night guild so I'm speccing Cold as Ice because sometimes our fights are indeed very long. Though it highly depends on the length of the fight and you never know the length of fight until the boss is down and every boss is different.

Also I am currently using 2xT9 and 2xT8 set pieces and I don't think it is worth to spec Brain Freeze until 2xT10, but I'll check on Rawr (can't find rotation with Deep Freeze there at the moment)

I also think it is such a small dps increase to spec Student of Mind (30 dps as far as I remember my last numbers) that I rather spec Magic Attunement for improved Amplify Magic for being more supportive and Magic Absorption to get noticable less magic dmg. Though I'm reconsidering the points in Student of Mind.
I don't spec Spell Impact at all since I am using nor Fireball nor Ice Lance.
I have 3 points in Enduring Winter - some fights and especially some hard modes are extremely movement heavy and I try to be supportive as much as possible.

In 3.2 I called myself Frostbolt Mage Now I've added just DF.

What seems to be a problem with frost mage in 3.3 is aggro. I've noticed very big threat increase after each DF which is nothing unexpected. Sometimes, especially at the beginning of the fight, it is difficult to wait for tank to get some threat jump when I see an early FoF proc. It would take some time to learn to use DF properly. Casting MI before DF-CS-DF part seems to help a lot. I'm going to cast MI and CS part under BL anyway.

I am really happy with the patch because I'm in stat reports back again as I was pre-Ulduar. By the way with permanent pet now it is great to use FM on it while going anywhere solo. Hopefully they will fix those small bugs with disappearing and it's not hiding when mounted, etc.

That's how I'm playing and I prefer to play frost at the moment. To reply your question it might sound/look right. It seems to me ok. It depends on your raid setup, equip, fight. I don't argue about Brain Freeze it is most probably a dps increase for some fights even if you don't have 2xT10 and you save some of your mana, though there is no need for it, but I like my rotation to be simple.

Torment the Weak. I know this ability is active when mobs and bosses are tanked by warriors who keep up Thunder Clap, but what about the other 3 principle tanks? Do paladins, feral druids, and death knights all have "slow" abilities that also trigger Torment the Weak for a mage? Also, are there any other melee classes that routinely put up a "slow" debuff on bosses?

Paladins have Judgements of the Just
Druids have Infected Wounds
Death Knights have Icy Touch

Hunter - Frost Trap, Concussive Shot, Wing Clip
Mage - Frost Bolt, Cone of Cold, Improved Blizzard, Slow
Priest- Mind Flay
Rogue- Crippling Poision, Deadly Throw
Shaman - Frost Shock, Earthbind Totem
Warlock- Curse of Exhaustion
Warrior- Hamstring, Piercing Howl

Remember, it can just slow attack speed to proc TtW

Have you tried pressing counterspell on a low level mob and looking at your threat value in Omen? Or if you don't have Omen try the following macro:

It seems to give 180 threat. Not exactly "high".

The tooltip is as old as the game. Guess it falls into the "Don't fix it if it isn't broken"-category.

For frost leveling and heroic grinding, is it generally accepted to not have talents that reduce pushback for frost spells? Besides Icy veins of course(on a lengthy CD). Or am I missing something obvious?

Most if not all caster classes have the ability to talent into reduced spell pushback.

Edit:
Never mind found the answer, with glyphs or Ice barrier pushback is no longer as big an issue

With the new changes to Black Magic, how does this work in comparison to 63 Spell Power? I ran some SimulationCraft with my current gear set & with a Black Magic enchanted weapon, however, only received a +5 "DPS increase."

While this is still a DPS increase, I would presume that the DPS increase would be more dependent on how when Black Magic, proc's. If the Black Magic proc'ed during Heroism + Icy Veins + Potion of Speed, then it would be fairly useless to me, in my current gear set, being that I would be over the hard cap.

I'm currently running 3k Unbuffed Spell Power, 885 Haste, 500 crit (23.80%) & am well over the hit cap.

Therefore, would this enchant be worth switching to?

~885 haste is only soft capped, you still gain from having haste past 800. I'm over the haste soft cap myself, but instead of stacking Hero + IV + Potion of Speed, I use my speed pot separately, so I'm usually at 1.0s - 1.4s AB cast time, the former when Black Magic procs. It feels like I'm getting two Hero/BL in the same fight, too.