My suggestion for a solution would be to remove the improved scorch talent entirely and just make baseline scorch apply the crit debuff. Make the debuff be the same for winters chill, so they stacked, and make chill a 1 point talent, freeing up 2 talent points in frost (possibly make it apply to all spells, not just frost).

Arcane would still be scorching every 30 secs or so, but would no longer be forced to spec 18 in fire, to be a scorch bitch.
Fire/frostfire gets slimmed down by 3 points, meaning you get to spend it better AoE, or some of the fun fire talents, which you usually have to miss out on.
Frost saves 2 talent points, and gets "space" in the frost tree for a new talent.

You could add the new winter's chill to the improved blizzard talent, of course... 30/66/100% chance to apply? AOE problem solved.

Good ideas, Lhivera. I think you're missing a component though. Non-frozen Ice Lance needs to be desirable to cast (similar to Scorch). Right now there's no way spamming Ice Lance is counterbalanced by the +10% crit. On the other hand, it hurts the raid to wait for a FoF proc to efficiently stack the debuff. Hence, only play Fire or Arcane for reliable debuff stacking.

Assuming those changes, you could, you know, put the scorch glyph on and cast scorch as frost and get the full benefit rather than cast ice lance (as a way to stack the buff)... Ice lance would be used to maintain the buff as you do your shatter combos.

For initial stacking, this is really only an issue at all if you're the only Mage present. But the point is well-taken; rather than 1 application on unfrozen targets and 3 on frozen targets, it's probably preferable to just make it two consistently, so that you're looking at an absolute max of 7.5 secs stacking time with zero haste. (Edit: I've made this change.)

For refreshing, odds are good that you'll get an FoF proc often enough that you can almost always rely upon those to maintain the buff, but if there is an Arcane Mage present, he'll probably be top priority for refreshes since he'll be casting Missiles pretty regularly. On the other hand, the Frost Mage's disadvantage by having the most situational spell for stacking/refreshing is somewhat balanced out by having the only one that can be used in a mobility situation; in a fight like Heigan, if you haven't got a Frost Mage, you're restacking the debuff from scratch after each dance.

And of course, if needed, this sort of thing can be tuned by adjusting the buff duration.


I hadn't really thought of that, but it does open up some possible alternatives for glyphing, yeah. Alternate, PvE-oriented glyphs could be offered, as well. Wouldn't suck to get away from the "these are the three glyphs you use for this spec" situation a bit.


How important do people feel the debuff is on AOE mobs? If important, is it reasonable to limit it to Improved Blizzard, or should it be baseline on Blizzard, or perhaps work something into both Improved Blizzard and World in Flames? My main cause of reluctance here is that it starts to make the solution more complicated than the current situation, rather than simpler, but if people feel strongly that AOE trash needs the spell crit debuff, we can bounce ideas around.


Edit again: Added a section on the initial stacking time for each spell (including glyphed Scorch). Possible that Arcane Missiles should just be permitted to stack it in one cast, 5 seconds? Immobility and expense may make up for shorter time than Ice Lance and unglyphed Scorch?

There are 50 billion things that work on "every spell except Blizzard because we fudged something up".

Ashtongue, Lightweave, Sundial (I think not sure), Spell Power (bugfixed now), Burnout (bugged backwards) and many more things.
When you get a new proc trinket/thingy, try it in Theramore dummies to see if it works on Blizzard.

Some of the listed trinkets might actually work now, but there is some strange spell design issue that most things a priori don't apply to Blizzard casts.

The debuff should be unified into one debuff, with every tree getting a talent to apply it.
So that a Frostbolt can refresh the Scorch stack and vice versa.
An Arcane refresh could be tacked onto Arcane Blast and added to an otherwise mediocre talent like Arcane Mind.

I'm a bit torn on this, but at least half of me wants the crit debuff to be shared with a second class while gaining access to another debuff in return.

This however might open another can of worms.
Right now, mages have the freedom to spec what they want, what gives the best performance/DPS on your progression fights.
Mages can only provide the crit debuff, and any* spec can provide this debuff, so there is very little to consider.
(Arcane having to pick Scorch is bad design and being talked about, but still possible.)

But if there was a debuff that only a Frost Mage or Arms Warrior (or another not-so-PvE-DPS spec) could bring, it would be bad that the spec you have to play is dictated by the debuff your raid needs.
A Hybrid will spec depending on what role he wants to play, the DPS and raid buffs come by default then.
A Pure Class will spec depending on what tree provides the best DPS and raid buffs that are needed.

Now, arguably, the primary problem is Frost/Arms DPS and some broken design (Demonic Pact warlock buff slaves in 1-2 raid tiers).
But I'm still a bit skeptical whether spreading out raid buff across trees of different non-hybrid classes will work.

BTW, mage armor now reduces the duration of magic effects by making them tick twice as fast...you still take full damage. I went the azure dragonshrine and engaged a focus wizard. They cast frostfire bolts with a dot.

With ice armor:

:11 -> hit
:14 -> dot (308)
:17 -> dot (308)
:20 -> dot (308)
:20 -> dissipates

Mage armor:

:30 -> hit
:32 -> dot (246+64)
:33 -> dot (256+64)
:35 -> dot (277+32)
:35 -> dissipates

It's bugged and in a very bad way. I hope this can be hotfixed.

I think Manly said it above, and I know that Ghostcrawler's said it, too: adjusting DPS is an easy problem. There are dozens of ways to do it, and the specifics don't really worry me. Take it as read, though, that when I say that the changes would eliminate the lack of crit debuff as a balancing problem for Arcane, the implication is that the changes should be accompanied by a DPS balance review. Certainly dealing with arcane shatter would be one option; whether it's the right one, or is sufficient, is really up to them. If it were me, I'd look hard at that as part of any necessary adjustments.

I do have some suggestions regarding TTW, which I believe I've mentioned upthread, but are definitely on the page I linked (which includes a number of suggestions besides this new one). Short version is that I'd reduce it's value (6% for 2 points maybe? Not necessarily the right value, but that idea), and rebalance the trees on deeper tiers. Max DPS builds still include TTW, but they face a more interesting tradeoff of 6% damage for an extra 6 talent points past Focus Magic rather than 12% damage for an extra 7 points, which isn't really a choice at all.


Controversial for sure, but it would not surprise me if this is intentional. Though if they really don't think halving DOT damage is reasonable, it might make more sense just to make DOTs not affected by the duration reduction. Of course, that'd require separating the FFB snare/DOT into two debuffs.

To avoid the school-specific balance nightmare, you could simply do what they did with shadow weaving and turn it into a self buff rather than a debuff. I don't think mages really need the extra raid-wide dps boosting if the personal DPS is kept top-notch. Other classes will need their damage tuned up a bit to compensate, but since it's just a straight damage boost it shouldn't be that hard to do. Of course giving arcane its own version of scorch would be fine too, however in that case it doesn't solve the issue that mages are the only class that can provide the 10% spell crit buff, while practically all other buffs seem to have a non-stacking buff of same benefit from another class.

Current buffs that are only providable by 1 class:
-Blessing of wisdom
-Blessing of kings
-Blessing of sanctuary
-Improved scorch / winter's chill
-Mark of the wild (always talented)
-Power word: fortitude (always talented)
-Arcane intellect (no talent)
-bloodlust (no talent)
-mana spring/tide (also problematic for being party only)

Basically the only classes that have useful buffs that aren't always talented and no other class can bring are paladins and mages. Of course paladins/resto shamans kinda needing a fix in this area is another issue.

You can't be serious... it's a bug and already been mentioned by Ghostcrawler:

"Warlocks revenge!
No, seriously, this is a known bug that we will be fixing soon. The irony is we think it was caused by trying to get Strangulate to obey silence-reducing effects. "

Source

I was, but I wasn't thinking clearly. Seriously need to catch up on my sleep...

Maybe to steer this a bit back on topic, GC made a post in the forums this morning in response to some mage concerns. Not a whole lot of info, but it lets us know what they're aware of and working on at least.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Request for a Status Report on Mages

I'm rather puzzled yet enthusiastic about that discussion. Points of interest for me included

"Arcane starting to feel viable alternative" does this imply there's more tuning in the positive direction to come? At least it's not tuning in the "Arcane is too much PvE output" direction. I really couldn't care less if they nerfed it's mobility a little or even a lot. Put it this way: Even if Arcane was less mobility than FB spec, wouldn't you call it a useful PvE spec currently?

"scorch too snowflake" Amen. But does it mean Scorch/WC debuff will be lowered to some smaller tier of debuff, like make it identical to the 5% Moonkin Aura crit buff? Or does it mean some other class will gain the ability to apply it?

Recognition that Frost needs work on Fun and Effectiveness is also refreshing.

All in all, good news (probably) all round.

What bothers me is that, if they give arcane the possibility to apply IS/WC or change the mechanic completely, they should buff
Fire somewhat, otherwise we would be back to pre 3.0.8, only with FFB as the cookie cutter build replaced by arcane.
I'd rather see all mage builds viable for raiding and not just sth like "now its 3 month arcane and than we revert it to 4 month fire"
or sth. similarly stupid

I really wouldn't say that. Blizzard has done a great job making 3 out of 4 specs perfectly raidviable, we never had that situation before. Giving Arcane some sort of critbuff (or another class/spec) is even better for flexibility as you don't need some scorching mage for raid benefits. Especially with the actual content it really doesn't matter much whether you are arcane or fire or frostfire, it's nice to spec what "flavor" you like the best. Ulduar is coming and I really don't think it will matter unless they implement some crazy Patchwork/Brutallus style encounter where 100dps decide the kill. The only spec that really needs some love is deep frost but as we already heard they will address it somewhere in the future.

Yeah, agreed. Naturally I'd love to be able to bribe him with $20 for early details, but just confirmation of what's on their radar is good to have.

Regarding the debuff, my money is on both a nerf of the debuff's potency and the addition to at least one other class of the ability to bring the debuff. Indulging for a moment my pathological need to speculate on possible solutions, something that might work is:

- Build the debuff into 2-3 spells, as I proposed before, but reduce the maximum stack to 5%
- Change Improved Scorch and Winter's Chill to increase the stack size to 7-8%, and provide a "selfish" benefit as well
- Build the debuff into another class's spell as well (at 5%), or into an existing talent that's currently considered weak (at 7-8%)
- Shift Focus Magic a bit deeper into Arcane

Result is that providing a 5% crit benefit is easy for pretty much any raid group. Providing an extra 3% is available to the appropriate spec; Arcane can't bring a general 3% increase, but is the only spec that can bring an extra 3% for two members that stacks with everything else. Doesn't flatten the difference in utility, but reduces the slope a great deal.

Shifting FM deeper into the tree also has the effect of reducing the benefit of 18 points in Arcane from around 15% damage to around 12%, which is not a good return on investment. In combination with a bit of improvement to the deep trees, Fire and Frost Mages would have a more reasonable choice between a 53/18 build for absolutely max DPS, or a deeper build in the primary tree for higher utility. Granted, some people will never view the sacrifice of even 1% damage in favor of utility as reasonable, but many of us will; the current tradeoff is simply not balanced.

It's easy to lose track of, but Blizzard has done a highly commendable job with regards to mage design for WOTLK. Towards the end of TBC, whilst in our usual Sunwell deep fire specs, many mages had two big concerns going into WOTLK:

- We wanted more options than fire for competitive dps, each with an interesting playstyle, and with all being viable (without relying on silly gimmicks like Arcane had, with the meta)
- We wanted to 'be more fun'

Most of this has been addressed quite thoroughly. The main concerns still left are:

- Frost's playstyle just isn't fun enough in PVE
- Frost DPS just isnt competitive enough
- The Scorch debuff issues
- Ongoing concerns about mana mechanics and associated abilities (evocation, gems)
- Spirit

Cross scorch debuff off the list come 3.1 (hopefully) and - although we are left with some valid, serious issues - it really does pale in comparison to the concerns many had in late TBC before this expansion was released. It's clear that overall frost needs the biggest brainstorming session to get the same level of satisfaction from PVE players that fire/arcane currently enjoy.

Using a less-than-max-DPS ability to apply a raid debuff is hardly a new concept or something that would be unique to mages. If you are right, then warlocks should tell you to go to hell whenever you as for curse of elements.

And what is the response to the ornery warlock? "CoE may not be your personal max DPS, but it is the max DPS for the raid, so cast it. Jerk." Adding the debuff to other spells would be a pure buff. If you like how things are already, just keep casting scorch. Or, bring along a mage who will put up the debuff; or convince your raid leader that your spot is better filled by you maximizing personal DPS over someone else maximizing raid DPS.

Bloodthirst does not apply sunder armor and demoralizing shout. Anesthetizing poison and expose armor are not ways for a rogue to crank the meters. Hunters do not get phat crits on scorpid sting. And even fire mages are just casting scorch for the debuff.

Even on a personal DPS basis, if you think that having lower DPS on 5 GCDs at the start of a long fight (and being able to dig in the second the tank makes contact as well), and on one more every 30 seconds, is not worth 10% crit... you are a lunatic. Yeah it would be nice if your top nukes applied all relevant debuffs, but it wouldnt make any more sense then having anyone I target instantly affected by two diseases and a silence.

I completely agree with you here. Blizz has done a very good job on that indeed. However,
in the end the balancing right now goes somewhat along the lines
"arcane is top dps, while FFB/FB brings scorch but is penalized for that by a ~5% dps penalty compared to arcane"
My only point was that if they change scorch (in whatever way), or give an equivalent buff to arcane,
they should somewhat compensate FB/FFB or that balancing would be lost again.

I do agree totally, that the differences are way smaller than they used to be in TBC.
Nevertheless, wouldn't most of us choose the spec that gives top-dps while having
no downside?
Granted FFB has the advantage of having no mana issue at all,
but I don't see an equivalent for FB, which in my perception is as mana-hungry as arcane

Is your entire post supposed to be sarcastic? That's exactly the way it is. The warlock example is moot; warlocks rarely need to put CoE up now, specifically because there are two specs that have the same effect applied by their 'top nukes'. As you say, using an ability which will lower your personal DPS to benefit the raid as a whole isn't not a new concept, but it certainly is an outdated one. The vast majority of raid buffs/debuffs implemented in the WOTLK overhaul do not have to specifically be applied, you can almost call them passive in that regard. Blizzard has made it clear that you shouldn't have to sacrifice your personal DPS for the raid's, and if scorch gets nerfed (which seems inevitable) the mechanics should change in a way that doesn't require a DPS loss.

Three talent points for Winters Chill / Improved Scorch, with no selfish benefits is an outdated design and has got to go. Talents that basically say, "Invest 3-5 points in me and i'll either fill a genuinely needed niche, or be a waste of talent points (literally) because someone else already filled it instead" are silly. I believe Unleashed Rage for Shamans is the best example of this outdated design.

Not sure if it's intended, or just something that was never updated for WOTLK. I was under the impression most raid-buff talents will be remade into the Earth and Moon type design, which offer compelling reasons to take them irrespective of how many other people in the raid may also be capable of delivering it.

Optimistically, lets hope our lack of selfish benefits from raid-buff talents will also be ironed out, along with the other changes in 3.1.

Yes your view is correct. The new move is towards earth and moon and ebon plaguebringer. They are talents that you would take normally for single-dps purpose, but they also give free raid utility. This is the proper design. I guess they made scorch apply to every spell and held off at that point to see how it goes, and now months later they realize it was a mistake (it probably was fine originally, but with all the new crit buffs it became too much).