I hope you're right.

Note though that casting 5 Ice Lances wouldn't necessarily be required, unless you're the only Mage present. Instead of "Improved Scorch" and "Winter's Chill" perhaps we have:

- Spell Vulnerability: Increases the critical strike chance of all spells against the target by 1%; stacks up to 10 times; lasts 20 seconds.

- Scorch: Does X-Y Fire damage and applies two stacks of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
- Ice Lance: Does X-Y Frost damage, triple vs frozen targets, and applies two stacks of Spell Vulnerability to the target.
- Arcane Missiles: Fires five volleys of Arcane Missiles at the target, each dealing X-Y Arcane damage and applying one stack of Spell Vulnerability to the target.

Time to stack to 10%:

- Scorch: 5 casts, 7.5 seconds
- Ice Lance: 5 casts, 7.5 seconds
- Arcane Missiles: 2 casts, 10 seconds

A single cast of any of these spells refreshes the whole stack. If you had an Arcane Mage and a Frost Mage in the raid, one cast of Arcane Missiles and three casts of Ice Lance would produce a full stack. Shorter duration than Improved Scorch (since now, other Mages can help refresh it), longer duration than Winter's Chill (since now, you need to switch to a lower-DPS cast to refresh).

It seems like it should work...anyone see a reason why it shouldn't?

I love this idea... I'd dearly love blizz to implement something like this.

I would rather see all mage specs able to provide the debuff in their own unique way and all be similar dps.

The AOE issue is one I hadn't thought of. It'd give Frost Mages a bit more of an advantage on AOE, since FoF is a significantly higher contributer to their crit rate than WC. I think personally that the benefits would outweigh this cost.

As for WC being used as a trash debuff, hasn't Blizzard been talking about trash debuffs being a concern of theirs in PvP? Eliminating this one might be considered a plus from their point of view.

It'd be nice to have a sticky that is updated with the top bugs/concerns/questionable mechanics all in one place (Concern: Arcane mages can't get the +crit buff without severely gimping their spec, Bug/Oversight: Is AB 's debuff intended to be dispellable? Is the +15% Arcane Blast glyph intended to stack and be that powerful? Questionable Mechanics: Is the Arcane Shatter combo considered unintended by Blizzard and likely to be fixed? etc)

Something that - if you were a Blizz developer - you could look at and get an instant, thorough snapshot of all concerns relevant to mages. The crit debuff category concern VS arcanes inability to provide it (without silly gimping) would definetely be near the top of the list.

Kind of like Manly's signature, but fleshed out and in a sticky instead.

I know mages themselves might not care too much, but it would be really nice if the 10% spell crit debuff was given to another class as well. Having any buff be a class exclusive at this point is more of an annoyance than anything. (This applies to things like paladin blessings as well)

Lhivera, usually I like your suggestions but this time, I vehemently disagree with your suggestion on how to apply the vulnerability.

I see no logical reason mages should have to choose lower DPS spells. This debuff should work like winter's chill or shadow weaving. It's neither interesting or fun to scorch to apply a vulnerability, and it never has been. It doesn't demonstrate skill, it just demonstrates a willingness to put up with an annoying design.

Consider the recent lag in Naxxramas. Mages regularly lose scorch debuffs because lag delays the scorch spell for a few seconds. Even if that doesn't happen, it's possible to lose the stack because it appears there is now some finite short amount of time after the scorch lands before the debuff is applied/refreshes. You're really scorching earlier than you should have to for maximum DPS, and of course scorching early is always a DPS loss. There's no fun in having to deal with that kind of behavior.

Granted, hitting one spell over and over isn't particularly exciting. However, the developers have done a good job of mixing things up with procs in both the arcane and fire trees. Frost, I grant you, is an ongoing debacle right now and I would love to see it properly addressed, but you more than most are acutely aware of its shortcomings.

If you look at glyphs and talents for other classes, they are at least open to the idea of moving away from needing to maintain debuffs/etc at the cost of DPS output. Warlocks have such a talent in everlasting aflliction. Mages got a break with the improved scorch glyph. The developers seem to recognize that nobody wants to sit there scorching while the melee is pumping out 8K crits and simultaneously applying debuffs from the moment the fight starts. Take rogues as an example there; the mechanic is passive - apply poison, fight.

While I very much like the spell vulnerability effect and have been wishing since beta they were going to rework it that way, I see no reason it should not simply be applied and refreshed by casting spells from that tree. I can't think of any inherent value, interest, or enjoyment being brought to the mage class by limiting it only to a low-DPS spell, and given the way winter's chill works today, it is clearly not a technical limitation.

Lhivera was killing 2 birds with 1 stone. He wants to fix the monotonous deep-frost playstyle as well as fixing 'making 10% crit debuff applied by all specs (without requiring to invest talent points, although personally I'd probably change focus magic to do just that). You have to realize his intent isn't to tank further frost dps -- but rather to point out that fixing a spec dps issues has about a million possible solution, and that it is rather pointless to start enumerating them all. Properly nerfing a spec though is much more touchy and hard to do.

weird repost delete me plx

While the debuff duration would be shorter, the responsibility for maintaining it would be shared around. Rather than scorching five times, maybe you scorch once and the Frost Mage tosses two Ice Lances and the Arcane Mage tosses a missiles cast. If an Arcane Mage is present, he'll generally keep it up automatically as part of his rotation; in a highly mobile fight, a Frost Mage would probably take primary responsibility since his maintenance cast can be thrown on the move. One of the results is that Mages can demonstrate a little teamwork by adapting their strategy for maintaining the buff based on which specs are present and what kind of fight it is.

I'm not married to the 20 second duration, or anything, I just figured something in-between the current WC and IS durations would make sense.

True, but along the same lines, Lhivera's earned a high level of respect here and on other forums, and his suggestions do have a tendancy to carry some weight as a result. I'm simply very much against the idea of having to cast lower-DPS spells as some sort of means to apply a debuff in this case.

Let me put it this way. In my idealized view, mages should cast scorch because they want to cast scorch, not because they have to cast scorch. The former case is the time when you are finishing off a mob, getting a last spell out before you get picked up in Malygos's Vortex, etc. The latter case falls into the category of a chore, like taking out the garbage, and indeed, how many times is it that a specific mage is assigned to scorch on a given fight so the others can do higher DPS?

I'd rather see the debuff be something that is an effect on spells that people want to be casting for DPS rotations, not ones that would otherwise be rarely, if ever, used, because to me, that feel really kludgy. I might be in the minority here, and perhaps the majority of mages actually really like the "have to keep scorch up" mechanic and want to see it expanded to other schools.

I like Lhivera's idea but there are a few more things to be taken into consideration especially concerning PvP.

- PvP is currently very bursty and giving arcane mages another 10% crit would not help the situation a lot I guess.
- Also having another debuff (10 times stackable!) for mages makes defensive dispell even harder.


Allowing mages regardless of their spec to support their raids passively rather than making them adjusting their rotations would be nice, but even though many probably don't give damn about it, PvP still needs to be kept in mind as part of the game.