Deep Frost as THE raid specc??

[Enthorn]

I dont know about the rest of you mages out there that know how to play ur class, but im tired of re re's out there who dont. If people would learn how to play this class they would know how to maximize their dps with a spec that makes sense.

For Arc/Frost Mages this spec is gonna maximize your dps to the fullest. At 80 with all the badge gear that my mage has i will have a 45% chance to crit once winter's chill is put on the raid boss. I will not be out dps'ed by any fire mages...mainly cause i dont now...

God that is an absolutely terrible build. Please stop acting like you have any clue about talent builds when you are posting builds like that. You've negated every beneficial talent and given up on all synergy. There is absolutely no reason to raid as arcane/frost hybrid with 45% crit rating. The only reason the frost build will (currently) work is because of Winter's Grasp, and it depends on the number of frost mages in the raid with WG. The more frost mages, the more WG uptime, the more baseline crit across the board. But one frost mage with no WG is not going anywhere. Think about it, most of your talents in that build revolve around mana. What are you going to do? Spam arcane blast still?

Arcane/frost just doesn't work, and the only reason people put any points in frost as arcane currently is to get icy veins. There is simply no synergy.

Apparently you have read nothing about Arcane Barrage rotations either, because you passed up on that talent. Please, for the sake of your own 'knowledge,' read up on things before you preach them:

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t25976-m...ew_discussion/

And for the record, the highest DPS achievable as a mage currently is 2.48.11. You spam fireballs, you maintain scorch, and you use icy veins and stack your cooldowns. It's as simple as that. If you are under the impression that any other build surpasses that, then you are raiding with some crappy players, specifically bad mages.

---------

For the record, elemental (fire/frost) builds are being theorized as high DPS because of Frostfire bolt. Essentially, frostfire bolt uses -every- talent possible and applies it. It also seems to be bugged right now in that it applies some of them twice. It gives you double return on MoE (one return for the fire crit and one for the frost), and it gives 6% for elemental precision (3% for fire and 3% for frost). You gain all the talents that fire and frost would give you.

I am speculating though that in the end, a pure arcane rotation build will be top DPS, where as deep fire will be AoE king (more so than any other class, and blizzard has stated this as well). And frost of course will be great for snaring (85% slow for blizzard spell, for instance) and PvP ;-)

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

That is a possible PvE build. The rotation is simple. You have 3 second cool-down on Arcane Barrage, and it's an instant cast. If you get enough haste to bring the global cool-down to 1 second, then you have a 2 second window to cast frostbolt. Frostbolt is 2.5 seconds, but you already have 6% off the bat from Netherwind Presence. Getting it down to 2 seconds isn't going to be that difficult. The rotation would be then to do Arcane Barrage, followed by Frostbolt, and then another Arcane Barrage. You use these two because both of them proc Missile Barrage, at which point you would cast Arcane Missiles (which becomes a 1.5 second cast).

As far as Fire spec goes:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

Flamestrike is getting an immense boost to its base damage. The way Hot Streak currently works, you can maintain 100% crit rates with Flamestrike. And of course, you have all the main single target DPS talents as well.

[Rambobarbq]

WG is to amge what improved shadowbolt is for warlock, so you dont have much to think about how powerful it is

[remos]

just so you know winters grasp lasts for the full 5 seconds

[Pyrostemplar]

It will hinge entirely upon the consumption of the debuff on a crit. If it stays the entire 5% regardless of what hits, then we're golden. If it "breaks" early based on what hits it (like a standard Frozen debuff) then we're screwed.

And since raids now, if they're trying to min/max, will bring as many Warlocks as possible to maximize ISB uptime, I fail to see how multiple frost Mages synergizing will be any different. If you're min/maxing at the expense of everyone in the guild, then you will want to stack the class with the best synergistic effects in as many slots as possible.

So far - and AFAIK - WG is up for the full duration. And FFB benefits from both tree talents but range (and time reduction? not sure) - incuding double dips - at least for the time being.

Powerful? Sure

Great? No.

It is a stacking mechanism without limit - Pre TBC ignite was OP, fun and dangerous. ISB lock TBC stacking was not as powerful but equally broken if not more so due to the other class issues. DS put locks as a shadow mage and throurougly screwed mages in raiding while also actually screwing locks as a playstyle.

Frost as the best raiding spec damagewise through an infinite stacking mechanism is also broken mechanic even if it "favours" mages.

[Pyrostemplar]

I am speculating though that in the end, a pure arcane rotation build will be top DPS, where as deep fire will be AoE king (more so than any other class, and blizzard has stated this as well). And frost of course will be great for snaring (85% slow for blizzard spell, for instance) and PvP ;-)

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

That is a possible PvE build. The rotation is simple. You have 3 second cool-down on Arcane Barrage, and it's an instant cast. If you get enough haste to bring the global cool-down to 1 second, then you have a 2 second window to cast frostbolt. Frostbolt is 2.5 seconds, but you already have 6% off the bat from Netherwind Presence. Getting it down to 2 seconds isn't going to be that difficult. The rotation would be then to do Arcane Barrage, followed by Frostbolt, and then another Arcane Barrage. You use these two because both of them proc Missile Barrage, at which point you would cast Arcane Missiles (which becomes a 1.5 second cast).

As far as Fire spec goes:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

Flamestrike is getting an immense boost to its base damage. The way Hot Streak currently works, you can maintain 100% crit rates with Flamestrike. And of course, you have all the main single target DPS talents as well.

mmmh - how much haste is needed to get the GCD down to 1s???

Best AOE... I still think that arcane will be the best due to AOE. Flamestrike sucks due to the low radius and BW, while sweet, has a long CD. With DB fire sure has more flexibility.

All in all, as things are, fire is dead, Frost a bit boring but with a possible OP mechanism (making everyone go elementalist) while if arcane gets a couple more touchs it could become a really sweet and complex tree and playstyle (FFS Bliz, improve AM to the highest base DPS of any nuke! it has the lowest Crit bonus anyway...)

[Inoue]

If/when we get firedestrolocks, mages won't be allowed to have a specc without imp scorch anyway

Edit: Fixed typo :P

[Pyrostemplar]

If/when we get firedestrolocks, mages won't be allowed to have a specc with imp scorch anyway

With or without?

[Rambobarbq]

If/when we get firedestrolocks, mages won't be allowed to have a specc without imp scorch anyway

Edit: Fixed typo :P

tell that to the warlock after they whine when we ask for curse of element beofre they merged it

[Inoue]

tell that to the warlock after they whine when we ask for curse of element beofre they merged it

Get new locks O_o

[Rambobarbq]

Get new locks O_o

lock can continue to pewpew shadow with SP, while mage gonna have is own synergie with each other + frost DK.

[ant1pathy]

So far - and AFAIK - WG is up for the full duration. And FFB benefits from both tree talents but range (and time reduction? not sure) - incuding double dips - at least for the time being.

Powerful? Sure

Great? No.

It is a stacking mechanism without limit - Pre TBC ignite was OP, fun and dangerous. ISB lock TBC stacking was not as powerful but equally broken if not more so due to the other class issues. DS put locks as a shadow mage and throurougly screwed mages in raiding while also actually screwing locks as a playstyle.

Frost as the best raiding spec damagewise through an infinite stacking mechanism is also broken mechanic even if it "favours" mages.

I'm highly underenthused about FFB. I expect it will be nerfed to hell, and never be any good aside from purely situational uses (resistant mobs, which are retarded in the first place). And I'd like some brokenly OP love right now, as I'm in the content where locks and melee are starting to pull away while my dps is sloooooowly crawling up.

[Enthorn]

mmmh - how much haste is needed to get the GCD down to 1s???

Best AOE... I still think that arcane will be the best due to AOE. Flamestrike sucks due to the low radius and BW, while sweet, has a long CD. With DB fire sure has more flexibility.

All in all, as things are, fire is dead, Frost a bit boring but with a possible OP mechanism (making everyone go elementalist) while if arcane gets a couple more touchs it could become a really sweet and complex tree and playstyle (FFS Bliz, improve AM to the highest base DPS of any nuke! it has the lowest Crit bonus anyway...)

Consider the following list:

http://elitistjerks.com/764821-post678.html

Flamestrike is receiving an 82.96% increase to its base damage. Arcane Explosion is receiving 42.86%. The mana cost increase comparitively ends up with Flamestrike having a higher damage:mana ratio than Arcane Explosion.

Couple that with the fact that numerous beta-testers have confirmed that you can have a near endless amount of crits with Flamestrike because of Hot Streak, and you have nearly 100% MoE. That makes the damage:mana even better. On top of that, if every Flamestrike is a crit (that is, you're hitting enough targets so that Hot Streak always has enough targets to proc off), then Burnout becomes even better. Sure, you'll be losing 1% total mana with every Flamestrike, but if you have 13k mana, another 130 mana per cast is hardly a damper, considering the huge mana return increase to JoW.

I'm not sure how Living Bomb will come into play here, since there is no global cooldown on it -- theoretically, you would always cast living bomb and then spam something else. I'm thinking this means you could do a living bomb -> blast wave -> dragon's breath -> arcane explosion rotation. And just for kicks, throw flamestrike in there to let the DoT tick. But it might turn out that just spamming flamestrike alone could be enough.

[coldethyl]

I for one am pinning all my hopes on the elementalist spec with the "fingers and toes crossed I hope it all works the way it reads" frostfire bolt (all talents from frost and fire that dont specifically name a spell by name will affect frostfire bolt as long as the target isnt immune to fire frost or both.)

The reason is simple.The mage class is so broken right now that anything less overpowered will not help enough.

The changes and additions in arcane and frost are really good when compared to each other,but when compared to the changes the other classes have coming down the pike they lack severly.the other classes are getting new spells and talents built on functional preexisting talent structures for the most part.The changes made to individual mage talent trees are being added to a broken foundation.

There is so much wrong with the mage since the releace of the burning crusade that allowing 2 trees to affect one spell is the only way to let us catch up without taking away all the cool new toys the other classes have recieved.We have intentionally been slighted as all the other classes are fixed one by one,they just ran out of time before the expansion to fix us as well ,so they decided to cut and paste 2 trees into one to give us a tempoary fix.Mages wont be fixed until they make a deathknight style archmage or battle mage heroic class or they turn the lights off here after building WoW2.

The conspiracy theorist part of my brain is starting to believe the crazy talk about tigole hateing the concept of the mage class from his tanking days in everquest.ruemor has it he really hated the way a huge group of mages could ping pong stuff and didnt need any tanks to do it.Considering how we are always the last class considered when any changes are made ,and this method of developer action appeared right after he took over its getting harder to ignore,especially when the new expansions talents and spells are looked at.

It reminds me of that old tale about the gods giving the animals there abilitys,they had so much fun on all the other animals that all the good stuff was gone when they got to the human.finally one of the gods underlings took pity on man and gave us what was left over: fire and the intelligence to use it.I think frostfire bolt is our only hope.(I seem to remember this underling getting its own personalized hell for helping us. something about chained to a rock and having buzzards eat it alive everyday forever so when the expansion is up and running whichever developer tigole sends down the the customer service department is our benefactor)

[coldethyl]

I just noticed something about the new half baked arcane tree.

Arcane Potency now requires 1 Point in Presence of Mind instead of 5 points in Arcane Concentration

So you can put points into increasing your crit chance while clearcasting without haveing the ability to clearcast in the first place.

While looking at the arcane tree I was also wondering if some of the changes are intended to make deep arcane pvp viable.I think the new mage armor is 30or 40 increase to all resistances so at 80 an arcane mage would have 110 or 120 resistance to all schools of magic and a 50% reduction on dots and debuff effects with a damage increase on resists and 5% mana refund on a full resist(this should severely cut down on the ammount of incoming spell damage).There was talk of slows cost being reduced to affordable levels.arcane impact works on most of the instants so basically all the common pvp spells besides frostbolt get a buff.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...00000000000000

[Anobix]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

what do you guys think? tried to cover the important parts of both trees, if you have enough mages (3 minimum) specced this way WG should be up a decent amount of the time.

got rid of frostbite + ice barrier and picked up full ice floes + a few pts in artic winds:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000

Could also move points from there into winter's chill as well for the extra crit chance (or a mage can be the WC bitch if you will and spec into that for 5/5).

Also, could move points from artic reach if that does not affect FFB into a different tree if wanted/necessary.

[esserius]

The current danger that will probably make the Frost spec much less... well, "preferred" is that too much burst tends to lead to aggro. Aggro tends to wipe the raid.

/insert Yoda reference.

[Pyrostemplar]

Consider the following list:

http://elitistjerks.com/764821-post678.html

Flamestrike is receiving an 82.96% increase to its base damage. Arcane Explosion is receiving 42.86%. The mana cost increase comparitively ends up with Flamestrike having a higher damage:mana ratio than Arcane Explosion.

Couple that with the fact that numerous beta-testers have confirmed that you can have a near endless amount of crits with Flamestrike because of Hot Streak, and you have nearly 100% MoE. That makes the damage:mana even better. On top of that, if every Flamestrike is a crit (that is, you're hitting enough targets so that Hot Streak always has enough targets to proc off), then Burnout becomes even better. Sure, you'll be losing 1% total mana with every Flamestrike, but if you have 13k mana, another 130 mana per cast is hardly a damper, considering the huge mana return increase to JoW.

I'm not sure how Living Bomb will come into play here, since there is no global cooldown on it -- theoretically, you would always cast living bomb and then spam something else. I'm thinking this means you could do a living bomb -> blast wave -> dragon's breath -> arcane explosion rotation. And just for kicks, throw flamestrike in there to let the DoT tick. But it might turn out that just spamming flamestrike alone could be enough.

Also of consideration are the details on how Hot Streak and BO are supposed to work (is it bugged? is it WAI?) - imagine the opposite - each crit removes 1% of your mana (so a combustion based flamestrike agains 5 targets could cost you 5% of total mana) and HS only recognizes the 1st target. The talents descriptions could work both ways, and Blizzard loves mages.

Also of consideration is the retarded AOE dmg cap and threat issues. If the mobs are being tanked in one spot then FS could become more interesting, although the achiles point still remains... the low radius.

In the end it may very well come to on how the encounters are designed - are they melee units or do they do magic dmg?

[Anobix]

The current danger that will probably make the Frost spec much less... well, "preferred" is that too much burst tends to lead to aggro. Aggro tends to wipe the raid.

/insert Yoda reference.

That is an issue, but picking up the -threat sections from both trees should help that I believe.

@ Pyro, as far as I know the Burnout talent w/ AoE only removes it from the spell cast not necessarily from critting on 2-10 mobs at once.

[esserius]

That is an issue, but picking up the -threat sections from both trees should help that I believe.

@ Pyro, as far as I know the Burnout talent w/ AoE only removes it from the spell cast not necessarily from critting on 2-10 mobs at once.

Is FFB actually affected by the threat reduction talents?

[siempel]

Here's a clip of a 77 mage (on beta of course) testing out frostfire bolts on dr. boom with scorches weaved in to keep imp. scorch debuff up.

It is currently affected by winter's grasp, winter's chill, and imp. scorch simultaneously. I'm not sure about any of the threat-reducing talents, but I do know that its range is not increased by flame throwing.

Basically... the dps is freaking ridiculous.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HN3nr4-AY1w

Edit: Also, ice shards and ignite do stack. And the mage is wearing sunwell level gear.