◊ Kyth

That will very much depend on the level you're playing at.

I will spam a single spell if it gets me 300 dps more: that's a huge difference compared to things I do now for DPS, like regemming with all epic gems or hitting a Kreeg's before every fight.


It doesn't make it good design in the least though. I don't care about what color fire I have coming out of my hands -- I don't have my identity as a player wrapped up in what tree I spec into, I don't personally care if I show up at raids as spec A or B. I'm saying that this is bad design, lazy design, and will result in a very boring 3.2+ unless set bonuses push fire ahead again or they make a far better design for arcane. Because throwing away a free 300 dps and foolproof "rotation" (ahahahaha) just because you find it boring is pretty silly.

I don't care if you're a "suffering" arcane mage. You'll clearly do anything, including being 10% behind on DPS, or accepting a boring rotation, to keep a particular flavor. That's good for you, I have nothing wrong with how you play since it suits you and your guild. That doesn't change the fact that this isn't a good design for arcane because it's not balanced to neglect mana, all of its complexity is around mana management (details in my other post) nor does it mean that any objections are unfounded because others should just accept a 3% dps loss (since after all, you chose to accept a 10% dps loss.)

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Gleeful

I happen to think flavor is important, as this is a game afterall. And not everything revolves around the leading progression guilds. I do agree, however, that there is little point in fixing arcane if it's just going to end up a subdued playstyle. Playstyle is the bulk of what makes "flavor." What would be the point of buffing frost if you just ended up spamming frostbolts? Arcane is about managing mana, that is its playstyle. It doesn't make any sense to go back on that, especially when you consider why AB was changed during wotlk beta in the first place.

Blizzard is capable of making more intuitive changes than flat band-aid dps increases.

No, arcane doesn't need a dps lead to compensate for its missing raid utility. Arcane should just be given raid utility. Every other spec in the game other than Subtlety has raid utility. So this is not homogenizing, it's balance.

 

gaerthe

Keep in mind that it's 3% average dps.

Until/unless Blizzard fixes Combustion, fire has no burst potential at all. Between PoM and Arcane Power, arcane can certainly burst harder/better/on demand when compared to fire. For things like XT hard mode, I would love to be able to actually help kill the Heart, the only part of the fight that really matters. On demand 20% more dps will undoubtably be useful in future fights as well.

I was an arcane mage pre-2.4, and I do miss the flexibility of the spec compared to fire now. While these changes certainly don't bring back the "glory" days, they make arcane viable so that other factors in a fight determine whether to run arcane or fire.

From a theorycrafting perspective, if arcane is top mage spec and destro is top warlock spec, which class should have someone respec to scorch #$!@#? This would include the intangibles such as a single mage probably needs to run the scorch glyph vs a lock stacking to 5 immmediately, loss of dps for an afflic lock by shadowbolting during drain-soul execute phase, gain of raid SP by using a demo lock vs ToW, etc.

 

Pasture

I agree. Arcane should have raid utility and I want raid utility for it. However it doesn't have utility and a 3% personal dps lead is fair enough when the downside is not gifting the raid 5% crit. But in an ideal world Fire and Arcane dps should be equal dps and provide similar levels of raid utility, yes. Not sure how you read otherwise from my post.

And to Kyth the reason I don't play Fire is because I don't enjoy the playstyle. Sort of like how you don't enjoy this new Arcane playstyle. The difference is you're prepared to play a spec that makes you unhappy. I play this game for enjoyment. Playing a spec I don't enjoy defeats that purpose. Whether I continue to enjoy Arcane in 3.2.2 remains to be seen.

 

Duravi

In that case you might as well switch classes altogether. The balance of power in what mage tree has been the most powerful (and usually by a good margin) has swung so many times since raiding began almost 5 years ago that to make a statement limiting your raid spec because of "playstyle reasons" you might as well just switch your class since its better to just be something else rather than an inept mage 2/3 of the time. That may sound a bit harsh, but like I said this is the way things have been going for years now, if you can't stomach playing specs or trees you don't like for periods of time, you picked the wrong class.

 

Bulgarth

*delete for redundancy*

 

Pasture

I can't speak for Rogues but both Hunters and Warlocks have had their top dps spec switch almost as frequently, and Arcane has never been abysmally out of touch in the same way Frost is. That said it had started to fall behind enough for me to tip the balance. Arcane was fun, slipping further and further behind on dps was not. However I'm not the type of person who will switch spec for 1-3% dps increase. The difference is small enough, I think, to allow for enjoyment to be a factor. The growing gap, pre-Arcane buffs, was beginning to override any question of enjoyment for myself, and I'm sure other mages who play the spec they enjoy most.

The point I was initially making was that with an average disadvantage of 3% dps, Fire is still a very competitive spec and for the most part I can't imagine many mages will be crippling their raid by staying Fire because they enjoy it. Particularly when it has its own perks, notably raid utility, better AoE potential for fights with multiple targets and more resilience to interupts and silence effects than Arcane due to the dots it throws around. With these factors taken into account I'm sure there will still be many occasions were a Fire mage is more beneficial to a raid than an Arcane mage.

All said and done though, this is a theorycrafting forum and the majority here will say to hell with enjoying the character I play, this one does 1% more dps. That's Arcane now so I guess we'll be seeing lots of Arcane mages.

 

Jollyroger86

Fire will still have it's uses on many fights simply because of LB being able to spread to multiple targets I would think. The thing is, even if they made Arcane and Fire equal to one another in potential single target dps, I'm pretty sure that I would always choose Arcane over Fire simply because Arcane will be much more consistent in damage since I'm not relying on a terrible form of RNG for my damage.

As far as being "fun" goes, I think that will hinge on whether or not they decide to do something with ABar or not. I'd certainly love to see Arcane make it through the ptr, not because I'm an Arcane fanboy but mostly because I'm getting tired of how inconsistent Fire can be.

 

darkstrike01

I agree, come 3.2.2 i plan on Duel speccing my mage Fire/ttw and Arcane, because for most fight it's easier to go with arcane simply for the consistency (very little RNG now that MB is almost always up) and its more controled burst. and on fights like Freya and Mimiron Fire is far superior because of LB on multiple targets. the only problem i see is putting together 2 sets of gear, where arcane will heavily favor haste Fire will be after more SP crit and will need more hit.

 

Jollyroger86

I'll probably be dual spec into FFB rather than FB simply because of the superior AOE, and because of the fact that FFB is much more similar in terms of hit requirements. I won't have to carry a completely separate hit set around with me for my offspec. With arcane only requiring 7-8% hit depending on faction, it seems almost impossible not to go over hit cap anyways, FFB and arcane sets would be almost interchangeable I would think.

 

semata

Well, to me Arcane's primary flavour has always been its consistency and the ability to control your damage output. I'm quite glad to see RNG further subdued in MB. But I agree that reducing Arcane playstyle to "spam 1 until MB then 2" is a sad thing. I hope Blizzard is aware of what they are doing to the spec and look into making alternative cycles mroe viable. Something as simple as increasing the effect of the AB debuff on Arcane Blast could make AB spamming an acceptable burn cycle; I doubt that stacking it 4 times is a concern in PVP anyway.

 

Ring0

Not wanting to carry around extra gear to compensate for different specs really shouldn't be a factor in choosing which spec to play.

It also remains to be seen how needed the hit talents are from their 1/2/3% mana cost reduction perspective. Bearing in mind if you're a fire mage switching to Arcane you won't need them and essentially they are 'half-wasted points' on the hit aspect. Given the ridiculous talent bloat already existing in the Arcane tree my initial reaction is to steer away from the hit talents assuming you are hit-capped from your gear, raid composition and faction when respeccing from Fire.

I agree with Kyth that, at a high level of progression, there's no question that mages will be going Arcane if the current changes remain unchanged - everyone's free to spec the way they want but it is a disservice to your raid if you're not setting yourself up for success from the beginning. Even if what they are doing is essentially dumbing what used to be a very interesting playstyle that rewarded player skill into a Cast X, follow it with Y, occasionally make an effort to look at the part of your screen that displays your character standing in fire, the current changes feel like a welcome band-aid fix to make Arcane attractive again from a damage perspective, although it does raise the complication of how each raid is going to manage Scorch for the casters. I for one look on this positively as Blizzard is finally backing up their Class Q&A talks instead of another patch going by without mage changes; there's still a lot to be addressed but it's a step in the right direction.

 

Lhivera

Short-term, the point would be that you could play Frost if you wanted to, which is not really an option now.

They can't do everything at once. A lot of the improvements we ask for, in all of our trees, require changes to the structure of the trees. If they can tweak numbers and come up with something that works for now, that's a positive change; we just need to remind them, and state very strongly when they ask for feedback before they make the next talent tree pass, that we want more substantial changes when that happens.

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.

 

Aurek

As Sanctus mentioned earlier, the new Arcane changes are a buff for Arcane PvP burst. If Blizzard moves more towards making Arcane Blast spam hit even harder, or allowed the debuff to stack higher it would create an even higher burst potential. In both 3s and 5s, when I am left alone to free cast, I spam AB going for a kill. I am very often at 3 stacks of the Arcane Blast debuff and I suspect I will stack it to 4 if the new changes hit live. In my experience, The upside of spaming AB to get a kill often outweighs the downside of draining your mana bar, because in the current Arena enviroment the team to get the first kill is ussally the victor. If they increase AB damage even more to get an acceptable burn cycle I suspect it might be too much burst for Arcane in PvP.

A way to get around this PvP problem would simply be to have Arcane scale off stats that are not on PvP gear in great numbers, ideally Spirit.

 

Pasture

I played 2s and would rarely be left alone to free cast. That said I would imagine double the chance to get a Missile Barrage proc from Arcane Blast casts will be particularly potent in PvP. I did initially switch to Frost once they gave it the healing debuff but I'm considering switching back now.

 

Magictricks

Being able to free cast and kill something is not what blizzard are trying to avoid, infact they's said before if a caster is left to free cast for 10+ seconds then something SHOULD die, and if it doesn't that then caster class is underpowered.

It's not called burst when you cast for 4 stacks of ab (8-9 seconds depending on haste).

The burst they are talking about is unloading 20k+ in to 1 target in 2 GCDs, which i dont think will happen even with 4 stack of AB because of the resil changes and that arcane just doesn't hit that hard.
Currently warlocks take around 4 seconds to unload their 15k+ shatter combo which blizzard find acceptable, so a mage taking 8 or 6 seconds would hardly be game breaking.

 

Telvin

I do not think arcane will be dominating pvp with the changes tested on PTR, at least i hope that to be so.
Comparing the situation and "balance" between arcane and deep fire builds one has to admit that also if its not going to be perfect with 3.2.2, the situation will have improved.
I agree with Lhivera that a raiding specc has to be somewhere near competitive in dps to the current cookie cutter build and that frost is not close to that point.
Fire still is very close to arcane, so the "torture and pain" for those sticking to fire should be not as much of a drama as it is now for not playing the max-dps build.
While arcane will have the upper hand on terms of burst and overall damage, fire will still be the better choice on encounters that include an enrage situation where the real fight starts at around 30% bosslife.
Aside from that i have to add that the changes on living bomb with the last patch may as well be a reason to choose deep fire for some bosses.
Maybe we should first have a look what the hardmodes really look like and how fire and arcane compete there.

 

Selun

As I see it, if arcane gets the changes from PTR then it'll finally be a choice of viability depending on fight conditions in comparison to how it was in TBC when at a point arcane or fire was just a flavor choice.
So fireball will be a spec used for add fights and usually AOE while arcane will be favored for fights that have a requirement on controlled burst burst damage and usually single target conditions.

Only problem I see is in pvp where with MB proccing like mad and Arcane Missile being a channeled spell, you can start channeling your target right before it goes out of line of sight and you still do the damage that normally should've been avoided. That thing will probably weigh quite alot and I hope that it won't be the same case with LB proccing HS.

 

justacityboy

Have there been any numbers from testing on the PTR showing arcane higher damage single target than fire?

 

pargnost

I don't know, if it's reliable:
SampleOutputPTR - simulationcraft - Project Hosting on Google Code

 

dedmonwakeen

And to clarify: The patch=3.2.2 code in SimulationCraft assumes that the fourth stack of the AB buff only affecting Arcane Blast is a bug...... so real testing on the PTR should still show Fire to be superior.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

testthewest

Is this 3% gap with fire having to glyphe for scorch? Because without glyphe, you can't play scorch-debuffer IMHO.

 

Noshei

I was the scorch guy in my guild and did just fine without the glyph. The minor loss of dps in stacking scorch 5 times is small compared to the loss of dps from not having LB glyph or FB glyph. Frankly expecting to stack it with only 1 spell is just lazy imo and not worth the major glyph.

 

• Reignman

I'd agree with you when it comes to single target encounters, or situations where you have several fire mages. However, if there are multiple adds, incapacitate type situations and/or you're the only mage I'd disagree considerably. There are too many different situations to say doing "X" is the only way to do it all the time.

Priest Alt

 

Søndag

I've been testing a bit on ptr - no numbers or napkin math though, and i find that arcane seems to be getting a nice boost, and some needed mana efficiency.. But many things can change a lot before we go live..

Right now the prt i find that MB procs so insanely often, that i almost never more then 2 AB's off before MB becomes ready, so judgeing from Kavans post with numbers from Rawr i guess that we will go with 4AM-Mbar rotation with an Abar thrown in the few times Mbar does not proc and ending fights with a pure AB spam.. Or are we back to the BC days and where for spirit and int and perhaps "stealing" some healing gear will put us right back to simply spamming AB's ?

Paper is fine, nerf rock - Sincerely, scissors!