Upcoming Mage changes

[Hazzardous]

[list][list]

Upcoming Mage changes

• Improved Blizzard – snaring effect reduced to 20/40/50%

I was thinking a complete overhaul of improved blizzard and change it to:

Upcoming Mage changes

• Improved Blizzard – Blizzard will reduce down time and lag by 20/40/50%

[miles413]

These are some great changes to arcane, but I really don't understand anymore. In beta, the arcane blast buff was 25%-50%-75%, then nerfed to 15%-30%-45%, and will now be changed to 30%-60%-90%? I love arcane but this really seems too good to be true. Or maybe I've just lost faith in arcane . Hopefully these changes will stay around.

[Randomguy]

Mages will break away from the pack now that Hunters got nerfed in PvE.

[mrlyric]

Elemental Precision – renamed Precision and now works on all spells.

So does that mean Arcane Focus gives you an additional 3% to bring your chance to hit with arcane to 6%?

[Pyrostemplar]

Elemental Precision – renamed Precision and now works on all spells.

So does that mean Arcane Focus gives you an additional 3% to bring your chance to hit with arcane to 6%?

probably will. But more than a buff to arcane I see it as a buff for non arcane specs, where EP is more common and the lack of hit in arcane can cause some resistances.

[raystinger]

Check this thread out:
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/1339...e-changes.html

These are some great changes to arcane, but I really don't understand anymore. In beta, the arcane blast buff was 25%-50%-75%, then nerfed to 15%-30%-45%, and will now be changed to 30%-60%-90%? I love arcane but this really seems too good to be true. Or maybe I've just lost faith in arcane . Hopefully these changes will stay around.

EDIT: We recently made the Arcane Blast stack 15/30/45% to your next Arcane spell.

Elemental Precision – renamed Precision and now works on all spells.

So does that mean Arcane Focus gives you an additional 3% to bring your chance to hit with arcane to 6%?

It actually does affect raiding mages and benefits competitive warlocks more than they realize. There was a bug where a Frostfire mage was actually double-dipping by getting 3% hit from frost AND fire or 6% total. With the change, it is always 3%.

Arcane will technically be able to get 6% but they need it.

[miekkagoon]

Finaly lowering the CD of evocation to more useful

Evocation – cooldown reduced to 4 min.
Arcane Flows – now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by an additional 1 / 2 min.

If glyphed nice 60% heal every 2 min ;D

[Vintresius]

"Evocation – cooldown reduced to 4 min." &
"Arcane Flows – now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by an additional 1 / 2 min."

5 min cooldown on Evo was fine imo. Would it not be of more use to reduce the channel duration to say 5/6 seconds either as a buff to the spell as is, or through the talent? Would make it more useful to reduce downtime in PVE bossfights where mana regen is required (increase in DPS), and more usuable mid-fight in PVP.

"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)."

Does anyone know if 'any kind of slowing effect' includes daze?

"Improved Blizzard – snaring effect reduced to 20/40/50%"

Why not make this this a 2 point talent straight away ? Is the 3rd talent point for 10% increase in slow worth it?

[Melanie]

keep those buffs coming

The days of fireball spam is slowly returning

[Pumps]

You already got reduced cost to most of your spells.

Which was useless.

[Gediablo]

An arcane mage casting Arcane Blast in PvP is as good as dead when their tree is locked. In PvE arcane currently is less damage and doesn't even provide the 10% spell crit debuff that frost and fire does. It sucks for PvE currently. For non-solo pvp it isn't that good either - focus fire on an arcane mage = dead mage. I'll still prefer frost for PvP and anything but arcane for PvE after these changes, and hence they would have pretty much no influence on my damage at all.

[Blikje]

Yeah I don't see much point in the 4 min Evoc, except for people grinding.. You shouldn't need to Evoc more than once in any boss fight oO

Errrrm, we can do more damage at a way higher mana cost now with arcane blast. So if you get the hang of it you can manage to do allot more damage and just use evocation more often, as I see it it's the best way to do top dps as arcane mage right now.

[stupid11]

These are interesting changes which make a lot of sense. Not too much here that's surprising actually, considering they dropped a lot of hints.

I think the biggest surprise here is there is no corresponding nerf to Arcane Barrage. I suppose this is because they expect Arcane's burst to be greatly diminished when PvP gear starts to scale survivability much higher, but still, the ability to cast AB one to three times on a Slowed target then rock them with a +15-45% damage Arcane Barrage and follow it up with a PoM pyro...could be a bit OP *grin*. The side effect is of course opening up the mage to being locked out on his key Arcane defenses (mana shield, CS, blink, invis). This is an important point because a (large) part of the OPness of Arcane spec in PvP was the high mobility this spec allowed while not opening itself up to lockout minus a 2.5s missile barrage of doom.

This really makes me want to try out Arcane again for PvE (I stayed Arcane from 3.0.2 in TBC until level 75). Its a really fun spec and requires a lot more skill (now) to maximize the potential PvE damage than FFB or Frost does.

This also fixes the Arcane haste scaling problems (arcane was haste soft-capped at 33%), though not the crit ones. Not sure how much spirit is going to boost the damage of this spec though. Its going to depend a lot on how desirable stacking an extra AB buff is going to be vs. releasing the lower damage ABar early to save mana.

Another important point: Precision change to nerf FFB (presuming the bugged extra 3% hit is gone with this change) + the change to Torment of the Weak brings Fire and Frost spec back into the mix of things for max PvE damage specs. Looks like its going to be: Fire: More consistent damage, higher mana consumption; Frostfire, slightly lower or higher damage (depending on your crit%) and spikier damage, lower mana consumption. Let the player decide the route.

In terms of overall damage, this is definitely a buff to the lesser used specs (Deep Arcane, Fire/Arc, and Frost/Arc). It slightly nerfs Frostfire until mages regear accordingly. (need 367 rather than 289 hit rating to cap out FFB)

Mage damage is a tad high at the higher gear levels according to parses I've seen but is largely dependent on the RNG. I don't know if this justifies it as high, or if Warlocks and Rogues (non-bugged) are just low. And please don't quote that 6500 dps mage parse...its rife with inconsistencies. :P

Perfect post. I agree with everything except not nerfing Arcane Barrage in PVP. :/

It would be real interesting to try out a 3 stack AB spam + 2 minute evocate build, imo.

[PvE_Mage]

heh, I'm not overly excited... gonna wait for EJ to examine the math.

1) Elemental precision change was OVERDUE. They should move it back to Tier 1 too.... Arcane Tree Tier 1

2) Evocation should be passive, not channeled, like an innovate because they nerfed Icy Veins to NEVER protect from interruption (which was probably a nerf on PvE due to PvP)

3) I HAAAATE Hot Streak proc on a killing blow - it happens ALL THE TIME F*CK (so I hope these changes are good for EJ to pass on some good news)

[Torrian]

3) I HAAAATE Hot Streak proc on a killing blow - it happens ALL THE TIME F*CK (so I hope these changes are good for EJ to pass on some good news)

I also hate this. But, did I miss something? Where in the announced mage changes does it say something that would affect this? Or is this just part of an "i hate FFB spec b/c of this and want to spec back to arcane" rant.

[Torix]

In terms of maximum DPS, frostfire just jumped back ahead. Before it was roughly 1% below 18/53/0, now there is no question, imho.


Frostbite now also reduces the cast time of your Frostfire Bolt spell by 0.17/0.34/0.5 sec.

max dps = simple choice. mobility and pvp is another debate.

[Spiderkeg]

In terms of maximum DPS, frostfire just jumped back ahead. Before it was roughly 1% below 18/53/0, now there is no question, imho.


Frostbite now also reduces the cast time of your Frostfire Bolt spell by 0.17/0.34/0.5 sec.

max dps = simple choice. mobility and pvp is another debate.

This was actually a mistake. This change will not be happening.

[Torix]

It saddens me, lol. But in all reality that would have been broken as all getout. Understandable.

[Spiderkeg]

It saddens me, lol. But in all reality that would have been broken as all getout. Understandable.

I would have greatly loved having such a change affect both frostbolt AND frostfire.