The Arcane thread - Page 235

Jollyroger86 · 02/19/10, 6:09 PM

Sadly, this makes IA worthless on many fights. Will it still be worth putting points into after the upcoming patch?

Sinless · 02/19/10, 6:31 PM

Originally Posted by Jollyroger86

Sadly, this makes IA worthless on many fights. Will it still be worth putting points into after the upcoming patch?

Yes, I cannot think of any fight that this can be useful other than Sindragosa. Haven't done Lich King yet.

Jollyroger86 · 02/19/10, 6:40 PM

Originally Posted by Sinless

Yes, I cannot think of any fight that this can be useful other than Sindragosa. Haven't done Lich King yet.

Lich king, sindragosa, lady deathwhisper, and marrowgar are the only fights that IA will have a use for via frost/fire ward unless I'm forgetting something?

kaytwo · 02/19/10, 7:00 PM

Originally Posted by Jollyroger86

Lich king, sindragosa, lady deathwhisper, and marrowgar are the only fights that IA will have a use for via frost/fire ward unless I'm forgetting something?

Unless perfectly executed, Dreamwalker adds perform raid wide fire and frost damage; there is fire based raid damage in the Blood Princes fight as well.

The thirty second cooldown on wards will probably keep the talent from being incredibly useful unless you happen to find yourself in the odd position of being able to sacrifice mana and GCDs via mana shield to stack the buff. With the ~80% coefficient on mana shield, this is a ~700 spellpower gain for 10 seconds at the cost of ~7000 mana and one GCD if you can plan your firestanding well enough. The back of the envelope on a fully removed fire/frost ward is in the same neighborhood (~700 sp if the shield is completely removed), available once every 30 seconds.

Annul · 02/19/10, 8:43 PM

Am I the only one who didn't miss the second clause in the IA change? 700 spellpower for 7000 mana lost assumes the 5% HP cap is still in place. Shouldn't you be getting 3500 spellpower from a 7000 mana loss? Furthermore, with the ward talent in the frost tree, frost wards on Marrowgar for example have a 30% chance to give you that 7000 or whatever it is spellpower directly from one negated coldflame hit...

Maybe I am missing something, but this appears to be a MASSIVE buff on relevant fights...

~Arioch~ · 02/19/10, 8:58 PM

Originally Posted by Annul

Am I the only one who didn't miss the second clause in the IA change? 700 spellpower for 7000 mana lost assumes the 5% HP cap is still in place. Shouldn't you be getting 3500 spellpower from a 7000 mana loss? Furthermore, with the ward talent in the frost tree, frost wards on Marrowgar for example have a 30% chance to give you that 7000 or whatever it is spellpower directly from one negated coldflame hit...

Maybe I am missing something, but this appears to be a MASSIVE buff on relevant fights...

Maybe I am completely misunderstanding how the IA talent works. From the tool tip it looks to say that you will gain 5/10/15% of the absorbed amount of damage as additional spellpower.

To be gaining 3500 spellpower, wouldn't you have to be absorbing something like 23k worth of damage at 15%?

Davkaus · 02/19/10, 9:03 PM

Originally Posted by Annul

Am I the only one who didn't miss the second clause in the IA change? 700 spellpower for 7000 mana lost assumes the 5% HP cap is still in place. Shouldn't you be getting 3500 spellpower from a 7000 mana loss? Furthermore, with the ward talent in the frost tree, frost wards on Marrowgar for example have a 30% chance to give yo

Mana Shield costs 1.5 mana per point of damage absorbed. Thus 7000 mana loss = 4667 damage absorbed.

The HP restriction is removed, but you still only receive 15% of the damage absorbed as SP (with 3 points), so if you absorb 4667 damage, you gain 700 sp, at the cost of 7,000 mana.

The HP restriction being removed is nice, but it's a bit like being given a free cake after you've been hit by a bus. Ultimately not worth the trade.

Fujisaw · 02/19/10, 10:23 PM

Even with SS and a Disc priest shielding me i don't think i've ever reached the health restriction with the health i have in ICC. Is this generally the consensus or are there mages losing IA's spellpower because of restriction.

LiquidHAL · 02/20/10, 12:50 AM

Originally Posted by Fujisaw

Even with SS and a Disc priest shielding me i don't think i've ever reached the health restriction with the health i have in ICC. Is this generally the consensus or are there mages losing IA's spellpower because of restriction.

5% of your health, assuming 23k hp, is a maximum of 1150 spell power. 1150 is 15% of 7666. Disc priest shields should be absorbing 8-9k, so just one should have been able to cap out IA.

Weimdog · 02/22/10, 2:53 AM

Originally Posted by Skylines

This is an arcane spec I’ve put together for tanking Prince Keleseth tonight. As far as I can tell from the fight my damage done won’t contribute, therefore I’ve spent as much as I can in damage mitigation to give my guild more focus on raid healing. I intend to use ice lance to aggro the dark nuclei, so I’ve avoided putting points in ice shards and piercing ice to prevent any more unnecessary damage done to them. I’ve chosen arcane over any other spec simply due the 3% raid buff.
(Disclaimer) I’m in no way saying this is a perfect spec for the encounter, or even close; more so one that in my mind seems appropriate. I would appreciate any feedback you have on the fight and any information on relevant mechanics I’ve misjudged or overlooked would be great. Thank you.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I don't know if anyone cares, but for tanking blood princes I chose this
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
-The arcane range seems unnecessary, seeing as how we can't talent ABarr. Magic Absorbtion does nothing against the shadowbolts (as mentioned earlier).
-A point in cold snap means I get (at least) one extra Icy veins, and one extra iceblock (not really the best move when tanking, but it can and will come up).
-I think TTW is way to good to pass, even if i have to apply the snare myself (hence my permafrost vs your frostbite)
-Glyph of evocation means if a healer gets knocked out of range or killed (possibly even during your Empowered phase), I can combine it with IV for a few more seconds of life.
-Improved blink is only 30%, and I'm not really sure about it, but I like the idea of being able to dodge incoming blasts if a party ball hits the floor.

Taking a couple points out of Clearcasting and Arcane Potency and putting them into Mind Mastery may be worth the switch, I'll check.

Same disclaimer. Maybe we dont do this as well as some other classes, but 12% spell damage reduction, 0 pushback and icelance are pretty good tools for the job.

Shaitans · 02/22/10, 1:15 PM

In contemplating a post 3.3.3 build, the only talent that I consider potentially worthwhile would be Magic Absorption. I tried a search for this topic, but I couldn't find anything. Assuming 2/2 absorption and a +140 elemental protection (such as shadow protection from a priest), what's the likelihood that you would completely resist an aura tick? And how many times might you expect to get a complete resist during a 5 minute fight? Let's use Blood queen for this hypothetical.

LiquidHAL · 02/22/10, 3:54 PM

Originally Posted by Shaitans

what's the likelihood that you would completely resist an aura tick? And how many times might you expect to get a complete resist during a 5 minute fight? Let's use Blood queen for this hypothetical.

1 if you're lucky. As a source of mana it's negligible. However, I resisted about 42% shadow damage compared to most others resisting about 26%. I took some points out of arcane meditation for it though which I'm regretting, but that shouldn't be necessary for a 3.3.3 build. It's a matter of preference really. It has almost no direct effect on your DPS, but helps survivability a fair amount on some of the harder fights.

Weather · 02/23/10, 6:58 AM

Originally Posted by Shaitans

In contemplating a post 3.3.3 build, the only talent that I consider potentially worthwhile would be Magic Absorption.

In my opinion speccing 3 points into Arcane Stability might also be a viable choise. Not all fights have push-back effects but those that have surely are annoying to say the least, and they do have a negative impact on your dps.

Mericet · 02/24/10, 4:33 PM

Even though its overall value is obviously nerfed, the improved interaction of incanter's absorption with mana shield is interesting. Without power word shield to cap out the spell power increase, mana shield is actually useful for it if you've got enough mana to make it work. So the question becomes how do you get enough mana to make it work?

In the more standard sense, you can once again gain a lot of value from innervate. It hasn't been as valuable since 2t10 made spamming AB lower DPS than consuming MB procs, but now you can use mana shield to make it good again. More subtly, it gives you the opportunity to experiment with some outside-the-box ideas on a few fights with the frost warding talent. For example, allowing yourself to be hit by one of Sindragosa's frost bombs with frost ward up in the hopes that it procs the talent and fills up your mana pool. Even if it doesn't proc, you shouldn't die to 1 frost bomb, and if it does proc it gives you the chance to burn through more mana on the next cycle using mana shield. I haven't done this on Sindragosa, but I did use it on Toravon by saving frost ward for the Whiteout instead of using it on the frost orbs. Getting lucky with 1 or 2 procs from whiteout fills your mana up all the way and allows you to use mana shield on the frost orbs. The same principle would apply to Sindragosa.

Of course it's still going to be a nerf, and in the end we may want to spec out of it anyway, but with creative thinking and some raid assistance you can still make good use of the talent in the right situation.

cbags · 02/25/10, 10:26 AM

If using mana shield to proc Incanters is a problem, why not invest points into Arcane Shielding? You can get a build that has 2/2 by dropping just one point from Arcane Meditation.