Improved Water Elemental - Just hit meFollow

Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing. I just hope this doesn't pigeonhole us into a single spec for raids.

I doubt it. Given that shallow fire (deeper than deep Frost can go, though) gives destro locks and boomkins 10% more damage, there'll be plenty of room for both a frost and a fire mage. And Arcane has Arcane Focus, of course, so they'll get an invite too. If there's a 25 man raid, there should be 2-3 spots for every class, reasonably speaking, so there should be room for non-frost specs. Sure, raids may want to try and double stack frost for 100% WE uptime, but that still potentially leaves another slot for a fire or arcane mage.

I thought about the damage problem, but apparently they didn't get rid of potion sickness in the beta. I'm wondering if this is one of the way Blizzard is trying to balance the game so the healers and other mana users aren't chugging pots. If the potion sickness stays, then this will be an even bigger deal, and as you say we would still want to get at least some damage from the WE. Maybe its a case of blizzard making us figure out the mechanics of when and where in a fight to use and place the WE for maximum efficiency. I hope so, figuring that out would be a more fun challenge than figuring out the best way to keep the mana pots on CD.

I'm happy that my guild is very open on specs and as a long term frosty I can't say I'm dissapointed at frost being a perceivably (is that even a word) valid raid spec. If I'd tried applying to any other guild on my server of an equivelant progress level I'm sure I'd have needed to respec fire or be laughed off their forums.

And personally I'll want a fire mage on the run to keep up the scorch debuff, there's no way that I want to have to do that.

Blizz seem to be very set in having one spec best at one thing (despite what they say) or maybe it's just us players trying to maximise everything to the tiniest percentage. For MC it was frost, for Naxx it was fire (I believe), BC saw the supremacy of fire for raiding with some argument available for a mixed arcane spec depending on various gear bonuses to make it viable.

I'm hoping all specs will be desired for various things they bring. Personally I think it depends on what happens with other classes. From what I've read over at Elitist Jerks fire out-dpses frost by a good margin, but of course that's where the WE makes frost more appealing in raids as a utility spec.

The issue of a forced frost spec only becomes one if fire mages dps isn't good enough on it;'s own for mages to be brought to a raid for that reason alone. The main gripe I've had with BC is that warlocks bring more utility to a raid (particularly more stacking utility) and also do noticeably more dps than mages on the whole.

If mages aren't competitive enough with other classes dps then we'll end up being demoted to SP status and all made to be frost (in the min-max guilds I mean), people will look at our mediocre dps/damage and think 'but that's ok because look at all the mana we got from them'.

I think alot depends on how things play out with wrath though, regarding 'aoe kings' a lot of trash in instances/boss fights is easier if you have a paladin (MH and morogrim spring to mind) which provided a niche for prot paladins to fill in raids. Certainly they are doable without them, but it is noticably harder. But I don't think the aoe aspect should gimp fire mages so much that they aren't wanted for anything else (paladin tanks can still tank most other encounters afterall).

With regards to mana regen a lot of effects will now be raid wide and also there are other changes in different classes to mana regen abilities (ret palys JoW and disc priests get some too I think). Which could go two ways, either they are trying to reduce the need for consumables in raids, so they boost the mana regen to a point where whilst the WE will be a nice addition it won't be vital for success. Or they make fights so mana intensive that you need all the regen you can get (great for frosties, not so good for other mages). At this stage it's hard to tell though.

As for the WE itself and survivability it depends again on how the fights are set-up. Some encounters he is immune to any aoe damage (yes it's a he), Naj'entus it's not surprising because the damags is frost, but he's also immune to the fire on Supremus, making those nice drop and forget fights. Other fights are a real pain to keep him alive for example Kaz'rogal, last time I think I managed to keep him alive for max 5 secs before he got an infernal (my bad) or swarm on him (stupid bloody boss). Generally they are not too hard to keep alive as you can usually time use with various boss abilities or phases, I have more difficulty keeping him useful for the duration that he's up, but that won't effect the mana regen ability.

So you would be willing to sacrifice Arcane Intellect, the ability to conjure food and water, and the ability to teleport for pure, unadulterated damage? Because that's what you'd have to do. The more utility you have, the less damage you get. Them's the breaks.

Rogues quite honestly SHOULD be the best damage dealers, end of story. They wear leather armor in melee range and have Sap, which works on humanoids. That's it. That's all the utility that they bring. Sure they have expose armor, but they never actually get to USE it. To be honest, they got jobbed in BC, and I hope they get their rightful place back in LK.

Warlocks don't provide near the raid utility that a mage does. They don't have raid-wide buffs. They provide only a group stam buff with their imp and 10 healthstones every five minutes (25/5 in xpac). Otherwise they get bupkis. And yet they still get to compete with us for damage. We should feel pretty happy about that.

Oh yeah, and we have sheep, possibly the best CC in the game.



Won't happen. That's just silly talk.

Ice Lance applies Winter's Chill as well.



Using the talent builder, I have to disagree with you on that. As it stands in beta, there are very few raid viable talents in Frost that can justify putting the 28 required points for Winter's Chill, just so you can have both that and Improved Scorch. Applying both would be an insane waste for a mage; you'd lose out on some major DPS if you spend the fight doing both. It'd be much more effective to have two different mages applying both; this way they can quickly get the debuffs up and go to town on them.

You only need to invest 18 points to get the full Improved Scorch, and unlike Frost, you get talents that help fire much more. A raid would be much better off, as I said above, having two mages, one for both talents, in order to get the maximum effect from both.

I'm not even sure of that, Pol. I don't know if FFB has been released on Beta yet, I've been too busy leveling the DK.

When it comes out, I'll test both.

I wonder if Frostfire Bolt will also be subject to the "Ghost Hit"; WoWWiki says it will slow the target down.

I have all sorts of questions regarding it....will it ignite, what talents affect it.....

It profits from all talents that improve frost or fire spells. Ignite, Shatter, Piercing Ice, Imp Scorch, Winter's Chill, the works. It even double-dips from CoE/Scorch/WC, which is probably not intended. So at the moment, it is the highest DPS by quite a margin. Even without double-dipping, it does simliar DPS with a 0/50/21 ele spec as casting Fireball.

Scorch/WC 0/18/53 (with full mana regen on the WE) is significantly lower DPS with Frostbolt or FFB than fire is with Fireball or FFB.

Okay, hyperbole crept in there, so I'll beg forgiveness for that. It was late in the work day and my brain was starting to melt. Yes, warlocks have curses, but remember that up until a patch ago they had to choose between helping themselves and shadow priests or mages. Now that CoE works on all four schools, I would posit that that makes them *less* appealing to bring in large groups, other than 1-2, maybe 3. So we come back to the standard raid distribution for classes. Curse of Tongues I can reasonably say we can counter with Counterspell.

All that said, I truly believe that raids are not going to bring one sub-optimally specced mage. They would rather have two to three well-specced mages that give you the best of all worlds, and can produce high-end (maybe not TOP, but HIGH, think 1-5) than one gimped mage that's going to be dredging the bottom of the DPS list. Of course I don't raid in a top-end guild, and we don't force specs on people, so I have the luxury of doing as I please. That said, I'm still going to do what is in the best interest of progression, and tri-speccing is not on that list, IMO.

If they're trying to make the WE raid viable, I hope they take it into account when making encounters. For example, in tBC, using trhe WE on Kazzak can wipe your raid (if he gets the mana bomb). Hopefully theer'll be less aoe, too, as WEs can't survive it.

Rogues should be the best DPS class? O.o

Wait, just to clarify that:
Probably THE most popular PvP-class with better armor than mages, and an insane abilities to not even get hit (***** "leather armor in melee range, poor rogue"-sh*t), thats does completely uninterruptable damage, that doesn't have to stand still for dps should be doing more DPS, than a mage, who is specced for raids as a very vulnerable free kill, if it comes to that?

What are you smoking? O.o Remember, comabat was THE PvP-specc before the ShS buff, and they should just pull past us in nearly every aspect of the game?

They have blind and sap as CC, they can stunlock stuff, evade a lot of damage, cripple targets and deal much damage... wow, a truly gimped class. Their DPS, not being limited by a minimum attack speed sure is gimped too, imagine rogues would attack with less than .5sec attack speed, that would be so gimped... While all imba casters can even have 1 second attack speed xD thats sooo much better.

*edit* BTW, the argument with the melee range and the raid-utility sucks balls hard... Then shamans would be the very worst DPSers in game... Group-wide totem-buffs, mail armor and shield, toss in Bloodlust, and they should be doing -40% of the raids damage, following that argumentation. Also what has been said above about bosses not cleaving behind is true, as well as most of the AoE being raid-wide anyways. And when getting aggro, the chance for mage or rogue to survive are pretty even, don't you think? Vanish or Iceblock...

Edited, Aug 19th 2008 4:16am by Groarr

Hmm.... Welcome to the world of the shadowpriest ?