World of Warcraft

[The_Rev]

Ive been looking at Wrath stuff for the last hour or so. As ever, Elitist Jerks remains the best WoW fansite forum out there. The Mage page is very well done.

Elitist Jerks"]

Last updated:

09/07/08 Updated new info for Build 8905, clarified Arcane Blast, Pyroblast, Living Bomb, added Mirror Image, AoE cap info

08/30/08 Updated link to Mana Cost

08/27/08 Frost nova info, level 80 mage stats, mage armour, elemental precision, hit caps updated

08/20/08 Build 8788, fixed and added some random things

WotLK Mage Mechanics Changes

This post first covers general changes in spellcasting mechanics.

It will then explain ambiguous talents and changes in mechanics of existing spells.

I am not going to mention every talent that has been changed, because nearly everything has changed.

35 talents are unchanged - actually some of those have been moved around a bit - while 51 talents are new or have been changed.

Several of the new talents are bugged or not implemented yet, most have been mentioned.

Raid Synergies and Changes - Patch 3.0.2 - On Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

Raid buffs and debuff have been unified and categorised into non-stacking types.

This list is and augmented list of an official post on what stacks and what not.

Lhivera's Mage Reference - Man Out of Time - Lhivera's Mage Reference (WotLK Edition)

Another good reference about mage mechanics in WotLK from what is known so far.

Vontre's Magegraf - http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...cee907499dcda7

A mage/warlock casting simulator updated for the current level 80 talents and abilities.

Mage Spec Comparison - [Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion

Mirror Image Discussion - [Mage] WotLK Talent Discussion (Part Two)

Discussion of Mirror Image can be found above and below that post with hard data.

Mage Level 80 Stats and Base Damage - [Mage] WotLK Talent Discussion (Part Two)

This post and the following list base stats and base damage for level 80 mage spells.

Mana Cost as percentage of base mana - [Mage] WotLK Talent Discussion (Part Two)

Any level 80 mage has 3268 Base Mana, mana cost is given as percentage and absolute.

Generic Mechanics

Level 80 Statistics

A level 80 undead mage has the following statistics:

35 Str, 41 Agi, 60 Sta, 179 Int, 179 Spit

4884 HP, 5673 Mana, 1.98% spell crit

This means the Base Mana of any level 80 mage is 3268.

A Water Elemental pet with the stats of the above mage has the following stats:

3171 HP, 2934 Mana

Waterbolt - 163 Mana, 601-673 base damage, Freeze - 817 Mana.

Breaking Frost Nova

Frost Nova, Frostbite, Entangling Roots, Fear and other effects that had a chance on breaking on damage now break after a certain amount of health lost during the effect.

The amount of damage depends on the target's health pool. The amount of damage is different in PvP and PvE.

It might also be different for elite mobs, since it could make effects hardly ever break on them.

Currently, this cap seems to be 40% of the mob's health for all of the mentioned effects.

Effect/Issue: This gives (Frost) Mages a spell damage threshold when fighting mobs of a narrow level range.

Below that threshold, Frostbolt crits will never break Frost Nova/Frostbite, so you can shatter 3 spells on them (2 Frostbolts and 1 Ice Lance).

If you get above the threshold, you'll sometimes/often/always break Frost Nova/Frostbite after one crit.

This of course depends on youre level, your spell rank and the mob levels (for the mob's health).

More info on [Mage] WotLK Talent Discussion (Part Two) and [Mage] WotLK Talent Discussion (Part Two).

Wanding

Wanding now causes only 1 global cooldown when you start wanding. The GCD is a 1.5s physical GCD which is not affected by haste/heroism/etc.

After that, you continue wanding but you'll not be put on another GCD.

So, while wanding, you can cast a new spell at any time now and react immediately.

Spell Pushback

Any spell you cast can get pushed back only twice now.

Pushback is 0.5s on each hit that causes pushback, up to 2 times total. Channeled spells lose 25% per pushback.

Pushback resistance is now less effective when you get hit very often while casting. If you resist the pushback of your first two hits you take, you can still take 0.5s pushback from 2 subsequent attacks.

Pushback talents are said to be reworked to reducing the amount of cast time you lose instead.

Mana Reduction Talents

All talents and effects that reduce mana costs are multiplicative unless listed as special case.

The only exception is Arcane Blast, which has the Arcane Power +30% cost, the Tirisfal Regalia +20% cost and the Arcane Blast debuff +75% cost (up to 3 times) are added together to form one multiplier which is then multiplied with the remaining talent multipliers.

So, everything behaves like on live.

Mana Cost

All spell mana costs are being changed to a percentage of base mana.

Downranking now costs the same mana or more than the maximum rank.

Downranking Penalties

Around 5-7 levels after learning a spell, it will start taking a 5% penalty from your spell power for every level after that certain level.

That means that after 20 levels, it only gets its base damage.

This is mostly irrelevant since downranking doesn't reduce a spell's mana cost any more.

Partial Resists

Every spell with a damage component can now be partially resisted.

Level-based partial resists are still in the game, but do not follow the strict 25%/50%/75% pattern any more.

It seems to be 10%/20%/30% for mobs slightly above you, and scales up to 60%/70%/75% for mobs far above you.

Spell penetration was tested to still have no impact.

Full Resists

It is now possible to fully cap spell hit. The 99% hit cap has been removed.

Full resists appear as misses in the combat log.

The miss rates for spells have not been changed, this has been verified with several thousand casts.

They are still 4%/5%/6%/17% for mobs 0/1/2/3 levels above you.

Elemental Precision seems to be fixed to grant 3% hit to all spells it affects, including Frostfire Bolt.

Area of Effect Damage Caps

Area of Effect spells will continue to to have total damage caps like in the Burning Crusade.

All new spell lines do not have an AoE cap yet. All new ranks in old spell lines use the cap of the highest BC-rank.

The exception is Arcane Explosion, where rank 1-8 use the +50% increased cap while the new rank 9 and 10 use the old, smaller cap of rank 8.

So, for maximum AoE damage right now, downrank to rank 8 Arcane Explosion and weave max rank Living Bombs.

It basically hasn't been touched by developers yet.

Arcane Abilities

Mirror Image

This is the new level 80 Mage Spell. It summons 3 mirror images of the mage who cast Frostbolts and Fire Blasts at hostile targets for 30 seconds.

The Mirror Images inherit the mage's threat lists. The mage also gain a 90M threat reduction debuff like fade.

The mage and their images swap position occasionally.

Bug/Issues: Copies current break crowd control effects. Swapping the mage with their copies interrupts casting.

The damage the copies inflict does not scale with gear or stats.

Arcane Blast

The Arcane Blast debuff was changed to +75% mana cost, +25% damage, stacking additive 3 times.

The debuff duration was changed to 3.0 seconds, making it very easy to lose the debuff.

The Mana Cost increases from the Arcane Blast debuff, Arcane Power and 2/5 Tirisfal Regalia are additive, not multiplicative.

They form a single coefficient for the spell's mana cost which is then multiplied with all other mana cost talents.

Issue: Arcane Blast spam currently produces extremely high sustainable DPS and 2T5 is essential for maximising DPS.

Mana Shield

The Damage-Mana ratio has been reduced to 1:1.5 and can be reduced to 1:1 with talents now.

Mage Armour

Mage Armour only reduces the duration of magic-type dispellable debuffs.

If a magic DoT ticks 5 times over 15 seconds, it will now tick 2 times over 7.5 seconds. The fractional tick is lost.

Channeled DoTs like Mind Flay or Drain Life are unaffected.

Torment of the Weak

Bug: Ability is not funtional, so we cannot test what it affects and how.

Actually, it used to act as passive +6% magic damage done against any target.

It's back to doing nothing at all right now.

Whenever a mob is somehow hit by a slow effect, a "Snared!" message comes up.

This message even appears on mobs that are immune to slowing, like every boss out there.

Prismatic Cloak

Taking all three points of this talent makes Invisibility instant.

Bug: It also makes Invisibility non-funtional right now.

Incanter's Absorption

The buff memorises its absorption timers.

If you absorb two hits for 1k each at 0s and at 5s, you will get +150 damage from 0-5s, 10s-15s and +300 dmg from 5s-10s.

There doesn't seem to be a way to make it a rolling effect like the old Ignite or prolong the effects in any other way.

Missile Barrage

Procs off Arcane Blast, not off Arcane Barrage. The 2.5s cast time is affected normally by all other haste effects.

The volley of Arcane Missiles has a 2.5s channeling time, affected normally by any other spell haste effects you have.

Netherwind Presence

This haste effect is multiplicative with all other haste effects.

Arcane Barrage

It is an instant spell that scales like a 3s cast time spell, it gains 85.7% scaling with your spell power.

It had 3/4 of that value during one push which is 64.3%, but that was reverted back to the old value in the subsequent push.

Fire Abilities

Ignite

Ignite ticks can still get lost when landing simultaneous critical strikes.

This problem is mainly during Hot Streak, if an instant Pyroblast crit follow a Fireball crit.

Pyroblast

Even though the cast time has been reduced to 5 second, the coefficients are unchanged.

It's is still 115% on the direct hit and 5% on each of the 4 DoT ticks.

Master of Elements

Channeled Wave spells are currently not affected, that means Blizzard and Arcane Missiles.

Also, the final detonation of Living Bomb is currently not affected either.

Hot Streak

This talent works like a counter that counts how many critical strikes with the listed spells you have just had in a row.

When it reaches 2, the counter resets and you gain the Hot Streak buff for one instant Pyroblast.

It seems that the counter continues to count anew even if you haven't cast your Pyroblast yet.

It might be that it only happens in certain lag/delay cases.

Living Bomb

The DoT ticks every 3 seconds and gains 20% of your spell power on each tick. The final explosion gains 40% of your spell power.

The DoT only ticks on the single target, while the final explosion is an AoE effect.

This spell is extremely valuable for single target DPS in its current state.

Frostfire Bolt

It is affected by almost every ability that affects fire spells or frost spells.

The only exceptions are range talents which do not apply. Its range is fixed at 40 yards.

Improved/Empowered Talents for Fireball/Frostbolt do not affect it either, which is expected.

The direct damage part scales as expected with 85.7%. The DoT ticks 3 times every 3s for 9s total, each DoT ticks gains 5% of your spell power.

Permafrost affects the length of the Frostfire Bolt debuff. If you spec at least 2/3 Permafrost, you will get a 4th tick of the DoT.

The whole spell deals Frostfire damage all the time.

This spell does not have very strong basic scaling, but it can compensate by its extremely powerful scaling via critical strikes.

If Frostfire Bolt gets counterspelled, it locks out both, Fire and Frost spells.

Also, locking out either school will also lock out Frostfire Bolt.

Bug: It still gains 6% cost reduction from Elemental Precision, but only 3% hit.

Rank 1 does have 5% spell damage DoT scaling, rank 2 does not.

Frost Abilities

Blizzard

The individual hits in the individual waves are now capable of critical strikes.

Elemental Precision

Elemental Precision grants 6% cost reduction to Frostfire Bolt.

However, no spell seems to get more than 3% hit from it any more.

Shattered Barrier

The Freeze effect does not cause damage or break crowd control.

Bug: It currently counts as a root, but not a frozen effect for effects like Shatter.

Deep Freeze

The spell requires your target to be frozen at the beginning and the end of Deep Freeze's cast time. The second part is now moot since it has been made instant.

Deep Freeze scales like a 1.5s cast time spell with 42.9% of your spell power.

For the 5 second duration of the Deep Freeze debuff debuff, your target is considered frozen and stunned.

Bug: Impact stuns currently overwrite and remove Deep Freeze, even if Impact procs from the same cast.

Unconfirmed: Diminuishing returns with respect to freezing and stunning have been reported.

It is not tested whether it shares diminuishing returns with cheap shot or kidney shot.

Obviously a lot of it is Mage specific, especially the bottom half of the quote but there is quite a bit of general mechanic stuff that effects casters in general. The wanding change is loooong overdue.

[Luke]

Yo Nayson, I'm carrying on with the Human Priest. I don't do PvP anyway.

[Phumfeinz]

**** mages should not get Mirror Image. That's a warrior talent.

[The_Randy_Villan]

2/3 of the way to 69 and I really can't be bothered to level. Can't wait to get to 70, just so I don't have to level for a while.

I have 4700g in the bank, need another 1.3k to get my epic fly, should have it in time for 70.

Rev, is it worth getting all the gear now, or not bother because it will be outdated soon when the expansion comes out...? Think I'm going to get my rep up so I can get a Netherdrake mount.

[Luke]

2/3 of the way to 69 and I really can't be bothered to level. Can't wait to get to 70, just so I don't have to level for a while.

I have 4700g in the bank, need another 1.3k to get my epic fly, should have it in time for 70.

Rev, is it worth getting all the gear now, or not bother because it will be outdated soon when the expansion comes out...? Think I'm going to get my rep up so I can get a Netherdrake mount.

What race/class are you?

[The_Randy_Villan]

Blood Elf Mage.

[Designer1]

Blood Elf Mage.

I have a lvl 70 of one of those fellas.

Wish I would have rolled UD again tbh. Particularly because of the racials and the embarassing mount.

[The_Rev]

Ive seen the Wrath racials. Undead are getting nerfed, Blood Elves are getting buffed to high heaven.

[The_Randy_Villan]

Ding 70.

[Phumfeinz]

Release date is 13/11.

[Phumfeinz]

If there was one thing I could change about WoW it would be the people who play it.

In EotS:

'we dont ned the flag to win noob'

Meanwhile the Alliance are steadily capping the flag and trounce us.

**** I hate people.

[Risso]

Someone needs to bring out a decent new alternative to WoW. I don't miss the game itself, as it had got pretty stale towards the end, but I do miss the days of all the VT boys playing together.

We had the early days of Nays, Si, Me, Dan, Tarj, Bicks and Sie all levelling relatively close to each other, when getting from L40 to L50 was a pretty big achievement and half the map was still waiting to be discovered.

Then we had the later days with Limpid, Juju, Sam and Jay when we all got pretty good, and half the Dashers seemed to be made up of the VT contingent.

The night me, Dan and Tarj were levelling in Ashenvale, and we attacked the allied gryphon master still ranks as one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

[Sie]

You pretty much sum up my thoughts on the game too there Risso.

When I returned for the third time in February, I didn't even last a month before chucking it. The magic was gone and I knew the game could never reach the peaks it did when we were all still discovering it. It felt like I was playing it out of a sense of duty rather than because I was having fun. A phenomenal experience but one that I think should remain in my gaming past now...like yourself, I just don't miss it.

The next MMO I'm looking forward to is Aion but I can't see that appearing until 2009. In the meantime though, I've just start playing Guild Wars alongside Si and another friend and enjoying it a massive amount.

[Risso]

I remember the fist night I logged on to Wow and Si gave me a tour of the early places, I was absolutely knocked out by the sheer scale of the game. Then just finding new areas was an absolute blast, I remember being L40ish and falling of a ledge from Tanaris and coming face to face with that huge sodding T Rex. Once you lose that excitement, like you say Sie, it almost becomes a sense of duty rather than fun.

[Designer1]

I remember the fist night I logged on to Wow and Si gave me a tour of the early places, I was absolutely knocked out by the sheer scale of the game. Then just finding new areas was an absolute blast, I remember being L40ish and falling of a ledge from Tanaris and coming face to face with that huge sodding T Rex. Once you lose that excitement, like you say Sie, it almost becomes a sense of duty rather than fun.

Come and join me and Sie on GW Riss.

Everything floats down here...

[Sie]

They aaaaaaaalllllll float....

Edit: and even more off topic, I just read they're remaking this miniseries. I don't know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

[The_Randy_Villan]

What's the best way to get honor?

[villa89]

Someone needs to bring out a decent new alternative to WoW.

They have and its called WarHammer.

What's the best way to get honor?

Grind Alterac Valley over and over and over again.

[The_Randy_Villan]

Horde never win AV though.

[The_Rev]

Yes they do.