Mage Change for Next PatchFollow

So, I'm bored at work and trolling around when I see this on WowInsider:

"Ghostcrawler announces Mage changes for next patch"

I've posted Ghost Crawlers Forum Posts below. The summary is "I can now probably go back to arcane"

The arcane blast buffing Arcane Barrage is SWEET.

The evocation change in conjunction with the glyph

Elemental Precison now affects Arcane as well

Arcane Blast now get the benefit of TTW



Here is the text of Ghost Crawlers Forum Post:

The buffs here are designed primarily to make Arcane more competitive with Fire / Frostfire builds in PvE. Because they could end up buffing Arcane in PvP, we are prepared to adjust the damage of say Arcane Barrage if needed, but we want to see these in action on the PTR first.

Mage PvE damage in general is something we are keeping a close eye on. With the recent hunter changes, many of which were nerfs to PvE damage, we want to make sure mages now don’t break away from the pack of damage-dealing specs.

1) Evocation – cooldown reduced to 4 min.
2) Arcane Flows – now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by an additional 1 / 2 min.
3) Arcane Blast – overhauled. Will now increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15%. However using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge, but instead increases the mana of your next Arcane Blast, up to a maximum of 3 stacks (and a 45% buff). You can alternate Blast and Barrage to keep buffing Barrage, or you can build Blast up higher for a heavy mana cost.
4) Torment the Weak – now works with Arcane Blast and does bonus damage to targets afflicted by any kind of slowing effect (e.g. Thunder Clap).
5) Elemental Precision – renamed Precision and now works on all spells.
6) Improved Blizzard – snaring effect reduced to 20/40/50%.

EDIT: We recently made the Arcane Blast stack 15/30/45% to your next Arcane spell.
[ Post edited by Ghostcrawler ]



I'll try to explain this better. It sounds more confusing than it is. Here is the tooltip:

Blasts the target with energy, dealing X Arcane damage. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the damage of all Arcane spells is increased by 15% and mana cost of Arcane Blast is increased by 200%. Effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 sec or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast.

Consider a few scenarios:

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Barrage
Next Arcane Barrage is 15% more damage.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles
Each missile in the next volley is 15% more damage.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
The second Blast does 15% more damage, but costs 3x normal cost.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
The third Blast does 30% more damage, but costs 5x normal cost.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
The fourth Blast does 45% more damage, but costs 7x normal cost.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
Any Blast beyond the fourth is still at 45% more damage, and still costs 7x. I wouldn't do this. :)

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Barrage
The Barrage is 45% more damage, but at the normal cost and consumes the charge so you are back to normal damage after that.

The more I think about this the better I thing it could be. I'm thinking of casting 2 AB's then hopefully get a missle barrage proc. What would the potential damage of that Missle Barrage be? I will still probably spec into frost enough for the precision talent and 1 point in Imp Blizzard.

I read through that discussion. I didn't see any talk about an Arcane Spec being viable. It was all about fire or ffb. It would seem to me that the change where arcane blast will increase your next Arcane spell dmg by 15% should cause a spell rotation built around Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage, and Missle Barrage when it procs would be competitive or is ignite to much to overcome?

I'm thinking of something like:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0qfz0IzxGuGtxdcZhhcoz

why dont they want us to break away with damage dealing. we need it since our armor sucks. and I also have a death knight and I can level it twice as fast as I can level my mage since I am always drinking water.

currently level 55 with 5,500 mana. fire build with most fights against 55-58 and often I have fight 2-3 at at time in pve. This uses mana quickly and I have to drink a lot. If I fight only two I rarly take damage but the drinking slows me down a lot. the deathnight takes some damage but I can seem to fight almost nonstop

I am going to change my build to mirror yours anobix and see if that improves my performance. I think my mana is ok for my lever but am not sure. that mana level is with the intellect potion that i make so it is not purely due to armor. I wonder if I need better equipment but I am saving gold for when I hit sixty so I can get my new mount. health is currenly 2700 and I dont know if this is good either. I looks like when I hit 58 that the specs on the armor are better also

I'm not ready to go back to the old Fireballin' ways. I still love my FFB.

I just hope when they find fireball builds to be too powerful that they don't nerf us in a way that hurts those of us still specced Frostfire.

After reading the EJ post, and I must admit I can't say I understand everything, my impression is that changing from FFB to FB would net you a 1% dps increase (because FFB was ahead of FB, and now FB picked up 12-14% dps, thus making them comparable). The other side to that is that FB is perhaps less mana efficient than FFB.

If this is the case, I may have to agree with Pold on this one. I don't know if I want to give up mana efficiency for only 1% dps. Let's be honest here, I'm not in the top tier of raiding anyway.

Current compiled list of changes:

Skills
Arcane

* Slow Fall can now be cast on other players.
* Arcane Blast now increases the damage of all Arcane spells by 15% and lasts 10 seconds instead of 3.


Talents
Fire

* Pyromaniac now Increases chance to critically hit by 1/2/3% and allows 10/20/30% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting..
* Hot Streak now also affects Living Bomb.


Frost

* Frostbite now also reduces the cast time of your Frostfire Bolt spell by 0.17/0.34/0.5 sec. ((Source)
* Elemental Precision has been renamed to "Precision" and now affects all spells.
* Improved Blizzard now lowers the target's movement speed by 25/40/50%. (Down from 30/50/65%)


Arcane

* Torment the Weak now affects Arcane Blast as well and does bonus damage to targets afflicted by any kind of slowing effect (e.g. Thunder Clap).
* Arcane Flows now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by 1/2 minutes.

Looks like decreased FFB cast time at least was a mistake and will not be on the PTR or in the patch. Source.

frost is now absolutely and irreversibly useless in pve.

It's stuff that MMO-Champion has posted. Likely datamined, meaning the changes may or may not go through, but are at least being tested.

To be fair, frost has been pretty effective in 5 man PvE since WotLK came out. What's really killing it isn't the pyromaniac change but instead the arcane changes. Arcane should be a much more effective tool in those short lived fights than frost ever was.