Lhivera’s WotLK Mage Review

http://www.manoutoftime.org/staticpages/index.php/wotlk_mage

An ongoing review of the Mage changes slated for Wrath of the Lich King. Current review is
based on information available as of the 2008 WWI and the talent trees posted at Wowhead.

I am also maintaining a revised tree that includes any changes I have suggested below.

Note: I have made a couple of significant changes to my suggestions for Arcane and Fire. They
essentially involve rotating Hot Streak from Fire Tier 9 to Fire Tier 10, Burnout from Fire Tier 10
to Arcane Tier 10, and Netherwind Presence from Arcane Tier 10 to Fire Tier 9, with
modifications to the effects of the talents that I feel are appropriate for these new positions. See
below and/or the revised tree linked above for details.

Positive changes/additions are in green.

Negative changes and bad additions are in red.
Changes/additions that are on the right track, but need work, are in orange.
Neutral changes are in black.

At the bottom of the page, I try to debunk some common misconceptions about the new talents
based on reading I've been doing on the official and other forums.

General Problems to Solve

The class as a whole needed improvement in several significant areas:

DPS Scaling: We needed better scaling relative to other DPS classes. The class is indeed getting
improved scaling; however, whether it's enough to produce competitive DPS at high gear levels
remains to be seen, as we don't yet know how well the other DPS classes will scale. Thus, the
conclusions I reach in each tree are extremely tentative and subject to change.

Mobility: One of the most significant problems Mages had in both PvE and PvP was the inability
to deliver more than token amounts of damage in situations that required mobility, while both
arena combat and modern raid encounter design demands much more mobility than was ever
required before.

PvP Spec Flexibility: As per the panel discussion at WWI, every tree is intended to perform well
in every aspect of the game. However, Frost is generally considered the only viable PvP spec
option for Mages at present. Changes/additions to talents and spells should improve PvP viability
of Arcane and Fire specs.

Synergy: The Mage has generally been a "mooching" class, which benefits from other classes but
does not provide benefits to other classes. Without clearly superior raw power to justify this lack
of synergy, the class tends to drop into low priority "filler" slots when constructing a raid group.
Improved synergy is required.
School-Immune Targets: Blizzard has long contended that one of the Mage's strengths is being
able to deal DPS in three schools of magic, allowing for flexibility in dealing with targets that are
immune to one school or have cycling school immunities/vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, this
simply doesn't work out, because the division of talent trees by spell schools means that the
Mage only produces viable DPS in his primary school. This means, for example, that a Frost Mage
is still better off casting Frost spells at Mother Shahraz during Prismatic Aura: Frost, rather than
switching to Fire spells, because his DPS with Fire is less than half his DPS with Frost. It also
means that on a Frost-immune fight with a hard enrage timer, he will either sit out or respec,
because his DPS with Fire and Arcane is simply inadequate.

Summary of Chief Problems in Current WotLK Trees

Arcane 46-50 pointer: Why add a small chance to proc an instant cast at 46-50 points, and then
at 51 points, make that small chance almost completely irrelevant by adding a spammable high-
damage instant-cast spell with a high coefficient? Netherwind Presence's effect would actually
be much more useful and appreciated in the Fire tree.

Deep Fire single-target DPS: Essentially nonviable, overshadowed not only by a 33+ Arcane/Fire
hybrid, but by deep Frost, deep Arcane, and probably Elementalist builds.

Winter's Grasp scaling w/multiple mages: Discussed in more detail in the Frost section, but in
short, there's way too much scaling when you stack multiple Winter's Grasp Mages.

Worthless talents and spells: The following talents and spells remain or become essentially
worthless: Arcane Missiles (obsoleted by poor scaling and the addition of Arcane Barrage), Wand
Specialization, Frozen Core, Brain Freeze.

Arcane
Overview

What a pleasure to say this after so much time: the Arcane tree is nearly perfect. Very little
change is required.

DPS Scaling: Greatly increased efficiency and a very powerful new primary nuke will provide a
significant improvement to Arcane's DPS scaling.

Mobility: The combination of Arcane Barrage and Netherwind Presence will allow an Arcane
Mage to deal some 60-65% of his stationary DPS while on the move, better than any other
ranged DPS spec.

PvP Spec Flexibility: Greatly improved mobility, increased crit, greatly increased passive spell
resistance, and a decent chance at an additional escape with a 1-second Invisibility fade should
all combine to make Arcane a much more potent PvP spec.

Synergy: Arcane still provides no benefits to other classes. It gains a 6% DPS increase from
Balance-spec Druids. It seems likely that the significant DPS advantage Arcane Mages will enjoy
on fights that include mobility will make the spec desirable even without providing any
synergistic benefits to the raid.
School-Immune Targets: This has never really been an issue for Arcane Mages.

Talents

Arcane Focus: Some Arcane Mages are disappointed in the reduction of this talent from +10% hit
for 5 points to +3% hit/-3% mana cost for 3 points. I feel this is a good change. The Arcane tree is
designed for prismatic casting; it's intended to cast in all three schools. Making Arcane Focus
match Elemental Precision allows for capping the hit with all three schools at the same Hit
Rating, so you don't waste any of your gear stats; the efficiency increase is also welcome for a
school that tends to be very expensive.
Questions/Tests Required:
• Mana cost reduction affect Arcane Blast correctly at all stacks?

Magic Absorption: An increase from a flat +10 resistance to +1 resistance per level is huge. It
means wearing less resist gear (and thus more damage gear) in resistance fights, and it means a
passive 15% magic damage mitigation against level 80 casters — note that this also means 15%
dispel protection. And on tier 2, it's available to any spec.

Magic Attunement: Previously an occasionally useful filler talent, this is now essential to any
deep Arcane spec, allowing for range equal to Frost Mages and Warlocks.

Prismatic Cloak: With the base fade time of Invisibility reduced from 5 to 3 seconds, Prismatic
Cloak now provides you with a 1-second fade to Invisibility. Useful both for a PvP escape and
reduced downtime in PvE when using as a threat dump. Prismatic Cloak was already the second
strongest -damage% talent available; this makes it a very solid talent.

Potent Spirit: Deep Arcane Mages already find Spirit to be a very valuable stat; this is just the
icing on the cake. Should be worth more than 1%, as much as 2% crit per talent point.

Incanter's Absorption: This talent may be just fine. I'm marking it orange for two reasons. First,
we don't really know enough about its mechanics, in particular how it behaves when you get
additional absorptions before a previous buff expires. Second, because it simply seems like a
fairly clumsy mechanic to me, and I don't care for clumsy mechanics. We'll see how people like it
when they have a chance to test it.
Questions/Tests Required:
• What happens if damage is absorbed while buff already active?
• Works with every absorption shield? (Prediction: yes)
• Stealable/Dispellable? (Prediction: yes)

Student of the Mind: 10% more spirit is 10% more regen and more crit rating. Boring, but solid.

Netherwind Presence: Most Tier 10 talents seem to be shooting for around a 5% DPS increase,
give or take, or a combination of DPS and some other effect that could be considered
comparable. Netherwind Presence, as it stands, provides less than a 2% DPS increase. It provides
increased mobility, but Arcane Barrage dramatically reduces the value of that feature by itself
being the ultimate mobile DPS spell.
Suggestion: Remove; add modified version to Fire tree.
Questions/Tests Required:
• Proc on cast or spell hit? (Prediction: on cast)
• If proc on cast, consumed on next cast, or can latency delay effect? (Prediction: latency delay)
• Safe to compare its behavior to Clearcasting in these respects? (Prediction: no)

Suggestion: Arcane Upsurge: Replacement for Netherwind Presence. Increases the critical strike
damage bonus of all spells by 5/10/15/20/25%, and the damage of Arcane Missiles while
Clearcasting by 4/8/12/16/20%.
Explanation: About a 3.5% DPS increase at 35% crit. Arcane Missiles would be useful as a mana
bar extender, though DPCT would still be lower than Barrage or Blast even when clearcasting.

Arcane Barrage: Assuming the rumors of an 85.71% coefficient are true, this is a spectactularly
good talent that will revolutionize the Arcane playstyle. This spell singlehandedly eliminates the
need for stacking an Arcane mage into a heavy regen group, and makes the deep Arcane mage
the most mobile of all ranged DPS classes.
Questions/Tests Required:
• What is the Arcane Barrage coefficient?

Fire
Overview

The Fire tree has some significant problems. It will actually place behind Frost, Arcane, and
Elementalist builds for PvE DPS with low efficiency. PvP is a big question mark — how effective
will Living Bomb and Molten Armor with Impact be at fending off melee attackers? How good or
bad is Living Bomb? Some changes definitely required.

DPS Scaling: Fire scaling is very poor as the talents currently stand. The improvement rests
entirely on two talents: Hot Streak and Burnout, neither of which can shoulder the burden, as
explained below.

Mobility: Fire gains no mobility improvement. This would be OK if it had a solid DPS advantage in
stationary fights, but this is not the case. However, I'm marking it black rather than red because I
feel the improvement should be made to stationary DPS rather than mobility.

PvP Spec Flexibility: Fire PvP improvement rests on two talents: Fiery Payback and Living Bomb.
A lot depends on how Living Bomb works. Discussed in more detail below.

Synergy: Fire gains synergy not through its own talents, but rather through changes to
Destruction Warlocks that will encourage them to use Fire spells for most of their damage. This
greatly increases the utility of the Improved Scorch debuff.

School-Immune Targets: This is being addressed through the introduction of Frostfire Bolt.
Unfortunately, even with the most liberal interpretation of Blizzard's statements so far, it won't
really solve the problem. A deep Fire mage using Frostfire Bolt will do better DPS than if he had
to use Frostbolt, but it will still be dismally low; he will be required to either sit or respec on a
fight that involves a DPS race against a Fire-immune target.
Talents

Improved Flamestrike: This talent is generally considered very weak. And until now, it has been.
But assuming Hot Streak works with AOE spells the way Master of Elements does — and this
seems a reasonable assumption — Improved Flamestrike synergizes extremely well with it.

Blazing Speed: The problem with this talent is how quickly snares can be automatically reapplied
by classes that spam attacks with a snare component.
Suggestion: Add 1 second per talent point of immunity to the effects the proc breaks.

Fiery Payback: Rumor has it that the partial resist table is becoming significantly more granular in
WotLK. If true, this greatly reduces the value of effects that proc on a full resist, such as Magic
Absorption and this new Fiery Payback talent. Additionally, Fire needs more help against physical
attackers than magic users, further devaluing the talent.
Suggestion: Change talent to deal damage back vs. physical attackers rather than casters. Note,
however, that if Living Bomb includes a knockback effect, this could probably be left as-is.

World In Flames: This talent has the potential to make deep Fire the hands-down best AOE spec
in the game. I'm not coloring it green for two reasons: first, because that depends on whether
the 15% bonus is limited by the AOE damage cap; second, because it's important that Fire's
performance not be limited to AOE. AOE strength should be considered a minor utility function,
nothing more. It's not an excuse for the spec to deal poor single-target DPS.
Questions/Tests Required:
• Is the World In Flames bonus damage limited by AOE caps? (Prediction: no)

Hot Streak: At very high crit rates, in excess of 50%, this talent isn't bad. It's also very powerful
for AOE. However, nobody carries crit rates that high, or even very close to it, especially with the
advent of Haste gear, and AOE is pretty situational. This talent requires added value.
Suggestion: Move to Tier 10. Change to 20/40/60/80/100% chance to proc after 2 crits. Add 10-
second cooldown to beginning of new streak, starting after consumption of previous proc.
(Cooldown can be tuned to balance talent.)
Questions/Tests Required:
• Is there any cooldown on the effect? (Prediction: no)
• How does it behave with AOE spells? (Prediction: same as MOE)
• Does the guaranteed crit count as the beginning of a new hot streak? (Prediction: yes)
• Can non-damage spells kill the stack? (Prediction: no)
• Do resists/immunes kill the stack? (Prediction: yes)
• Stealable/Dispellable? (Prediction: yes)

Suggestion: Superheating: Replacement for Hot Streak's old slot, modified Netherwind Presence.
Gives your Scorch, Fire Blast, Fireball, Flamestrike and Frostfire Bolt spells a 2/4/6% chance to
cause the next Pyroblast, Fireball, Flamestrike or Frostfire Bolt to be instant.
Explanation: The opportunity for a hard-hitting mobile cast will be much more useful to deep Fire
than it is to a deep Arcane build with Arcane Barrage. This also gives deep Fire a reason to
occasionally use Pyroblast.
Burnout: Simply sucks. At 35% crit, offers a 4.4% DPS increase with a mana penalty. If this talent
is not improved, there will be no reason to spec beyond Empowered Fireball in any Fire build;
putting points into Arcane instead will result in both better DPS and higher efficiency.
Suggestion: Remove. Replace with modified Hot Streak, described above. Add modified version of
this talent to Arcane tree.
Questions/Tests Required:
• What is the mechanic of Burnout's crit damage increase? (Prediction: as per Spell Power)
• Multiple mana debits on multiple crits from an AOE cast? (Prediction: no)

Living Bomb: Big fat question mark, with a lot of rumors floating around about it. We know for
sure it will produce three AOE low-damage pulses, with the third pulse coinciding with a
moderate-damage explosion. It won't deal much damage, but in conjunction with Molten Armor,
assuming a melee attacker is dealing damage (and thus receiving Molten Armor damage) a bit
less than once per second, it should result in an Impact stun every 6-7 seconds. That's a pretty
potent defense. Furthermore, rumor has it that it may be off the global cooldown, and may
include a knockback effect on the explosion. If true, this could be a strong anti-melee defense
and an opportunity to gain range. We really need to see how this one playtests. It could be a
huge PvP buff for Fire mages with a bit of PvE utility; it could be crap.
Questions/Tests Required:
• How much damage can I expect from Living Bomb?
• What is the coefficient of the DOT portion? (Prediction: 9.66%)
• What is the coefficient of the detonation? (Prediction: 11.08%)
• Is Living Bomb on or off the global cooldown? (Prediction: off)
• Does Ice Block cancel Living Bomb? (Prediction: no)
• Stealable/Dispellable? (Prediction: yes)
• Knockback effect? (Prediction: no)

Frost
Overview

In general, the Frost tree looks good. It's very functional. It's only problem is really the existence
of a few talents that are essentially worthless — they can be avoided in any reasonable build, but
worthless talents means less spec diversity, so they should be addressed. There's also a great
danger that stacking Frost Mages with Winter's Grasp will produce synergistic benefits that drive
other DPS specs (of every class) out of raids. I hesitate to say that, as a Frost Mage myself, but it's
true.

DPS Scaling: Frost hits the jackpot, with new talents providing something on the order of a 15-
18% DPS increase and a Death Knight debuff that's likely to be pretty common providing another
10%. This is balanced out somewhat by the rumored change to Frostbolt's resist mechanics,
making it behave like other spell schools and reducing DPS by about 5%.

Mobility: Winter's Chill means Ice Lance spam can now produce about 40-45% of a Mage's
normal DPS, a significant upgrade from the current situation.

PvP Spec Flexibility: Frost is and will remain PvP-viable.

Synergy: Winter's Grasp provides synergistic benefits to Death Knights and other Frost and
Elementalist Mages. With Elementalist specs becoming viable (theoretically, at least), Winter's
Chill has added value as well. Winter's Grasp also offers a hit bonus to dual-wielding melee
classes and to pets.

School-Immune Targets: This is being addressed through the introduction of Frostfire Bolt.
Unfortunately, even with the most liberal interpretation of Blizzard's statements so far, it won't
really solve the problem; a deep Frost mage using Frostfire Bolt will do better DPS than if he had
to use Fireball, but it will still be dismally low; he will be required to either sit or respec on a fight
that involves a DPS race against a Frost-immune target.

Talents

Elemental Precision: This talent hasn't changed, but requires testing.

Questions/Tests Required:
• Has the +hit% increase on Frostbolt been corrected to 1/2/3%? (Prediction: yes)
• If not, does Frostfire Bolt receive the correct 1/2/3%?

Frozen Core: Point-for-point, this has always been the weakest -damage% talent. It was one of
the talents most frequently named as needing improvement in the official Mage feedback
thread. Yet no change, while Prismatic Cloak, one of the strongest talents of this type, gets a
significant improvement?
Suggestion: Add physical damage mitigation.

Winter's Grasp: This talent is revolutionary for the Frost Mage, as it makes Ice Lance a
worthwhile part of his DPS, thus making for more interesting play, and makes points in Shatter
worthwhile when raiding. But as much as it pains me to say it, it's overpowered. Between passive
haste and Icy Veins, a Frost Mage can reasonably be expected to deal Frost damage every 2.3
seconds, which would make for an average interval between procs of 23 seconds. That would
produce an uptime of nearly 21%, and with 5/5 Shatter, a crit rate increase of nearly 11%. The
problem arises when you start adding more Frost Mages: with four, you achieve nearly 87%
uptime for a crit rate increase of over 43%.
Suggestion: Limit the debuff to one application to any given target per 15 seconds. The same
mage would still gain 6-7% crit from the talent, which is excellent, but no matter how many
mages are stacked, the increase cannot exceed 16.67%. Change the 2% hit bonus to a 4% crit
bonus; crit benefits all melee and ranged attackers rather than just dual-wielders and pets. The
increased synergy value compensates for the reduced uptime.
Questions/Tests Required:
• What targets are immune to the Winter's Grasp debuff? (Prediction: only frost-immune
targets)
• Does the debuff work for all mages attacking the target? (Prediction: yes)
• Does the debuff work for the Death Knight spell Howling Blast? (Prediction: yes)
• Hit bonus work only for physical attacks, or also affect spells? (Prediction: physical only)
• Is the debuff applied on cast or spell hit? (Prediction: hit)
• How long does the debuff last? (Prediction: 5 sec)
Brain Freeze: This one's just dumb. If we freeze a target, we don't stick around to let it hit us —
freezes permit us to gain distance. However, one of Frost's lingering problems is poor AOE
damage relative to Fire and Arcane, so this provides us with an opportunity to address that.
Suggestion: Replace with a talent that moderately increases damage with Blizzard (to make it
more viable as a primary AOE DPS spell for Frost Mages) and greatly increases the damage of
Frost Nova (to give Frost Mages a reason to cast a higher rank than rank 1).
Questions/Tests Required:
• Hit penalty work only for physical attacks, or also spells? (Prediction: physical only)

Summon Water Elemental: This talent hasn't changed, but requires testing.
Questions/Tests Required:
• Level 80 base damage/mana costs/stats? (Prediction: 685 base waterbolt)

Improved Water Elemental: The problem with Water Elemental uptime is more frequently how
quickly it's killed, rather than how quickly it expires of natural causes. Therefore, we're more
likely to see an improvement in uptime with a cooldown reduction than with increased duration.
Extra mana and health is still useful, of course. Another major problem with the Water Elemental
is its poor hit rate against boss mobs.
Suggestion: The 15-second duration extension increases the duration:coolown ratio from 25% to
33%. Instead, achieve the same ratio with a 45 second cooldown reduction. Add +1% spell hit per
rank.

Chilled to the Bone: Boring, but good. A deep Frost Mage has the option to completely discard
Permafrost while maintaining his current snare strength and free up those talent points, or take
Permafrost as well and have incredibly powerful snares (50% on Ice Armor, 60% on
Frostbolt/Frostfire Bolt, 70% on Cone of Cold, up to 85% on Blizzard).

Deep Freeze: Better than most people realize, if the rumors are true. It's a Freeze that
incapacitates the target and doesn't break on damage. Winter's Grasp means it can be used even
on targets that can easily escape normal Freeze effects. 5 second duration gives you time, with a
little haste, to get off two Frostbolts and an Ice Lance, all with the full Shatter Crit bonus.
Questions/Tests Required:
• Target count as Frozen? (Prediction: yes)
• Can it be cast over itself? (Prediction: yes)
• What happens if you try to cast on a target that isn't frozen? (Prediction: prevented)
• If you try to cast on a target and freeze breaks mid-cast? (Prediction: fail at end of cast)
• What can/can't break/remove the effect? (Prediction: stun removal, magic dispels)
• Shares PvP DR with what other effects? (Prediction: all controlled stuns)
New/Changed Spells
Blizzard: Blizzard's ticks can now critically strike. Given the high probability of Frostbite and
Winter's Grasp procs during the course of an Improved Blizzard channel, combined with Shatter,
this means a very significant increase in AOE DPS for Frost Mages.

Mage Armor: The addition of a -50% magic debuff duration effect is a significant buff to Mages in
PvP vs. other casters.
Questions/Tests Required:
• What happens for DOTs with non-evenly divisible durations? (Prediction: lose extra tick)
• Uses the strict or liberal interpretation of "magic effect"? (Prediction: strict)

Frostfire Bolt: While it fails to solve the problem of dealing with school immunities for deep Frost
and Fire builds, it does appear very likely to allow for an Elementalist spec that produces
competitive DPS. Marked orange because we need further details on which talents affect it and
when, and how it determines which school of damage to deal.
Questions/Tests Required:
• Which talents/debuffs affect it at all times? • Which talents/debuffs affect it only when dealing
Fire damage? • Which talents/debuffs affect it only when dealing Frost damage? • How exactly
does it determine which type of damage it will deal? • What is the size and interval of the DOT
tick? • Does the DOT overwrite the Fireball DOT and/or vice-versa?

Shatter Shield: Yet another absorption shield. Likely to fall behind the much more powerful and
efficient Ice Barrier for Frost builds, but a welcome defensive improvement for Arcane and Fire
builds. Will synergize nicely with Incanter's Absorption.
Questions/Tests Required:
• Scale with spell power at all? Frost? Highest?
• Freeze effect proc on any removal, or only destruction?
• Take priority over other shields on physical damage?
• Stealable/Dispellable?

Clarifications and Corrections of Common Misconceptions

I can't afford X% base mana: why did they make (insert spell here) cost a percentage of my base
mana? That's huge!
Correction: Your base mana is the amount of mana you would have if you had zero Intellect.
Multiply your total Intellect by 15, subtract the result from your total mana, and that's your base
mana. A level 70 Human Mage has 1961 base mana, so a spell that costs 12% base mana costs
235 mana. You can live with that.

Hot Streak on AOE spells: You'll never get three crits in a row on an AOE spell! The chances are
miniscule that you'll crit every target!
Correction: Chances are Hot Streak will work with AOE spells the way Master of Elements does:
one crit per cast is all you need to trigger the effect, and each cast can only trigger the effect
once. The chances that you'll crit at least one target on an AOE cast are much higher than with a
DD spell. If you have a 35% chance to crit and you hit three targets, there's a 72.5% chance that
you'll crit at least one target. Where you'd only have a 4.3% chance to get three crits in any three
consecutive casts with a single-target spell, you have a 42.2% chance to do so with an AOE spell
hitting three targets. Hot Streak will therefore be much more powerful with AOE, not less.
Living Bomb's damage is weak: It does too little damage for a 51-point talent!
Correction: We don't know that this is true, because we don't know the coefficient. However,
even if it is weak, that's hardly the point. Assuming, as rumor has it, that it's off the global
cooldown and fairly cheap to cast, it's pure added DPS alongside any other AOE damage you're
dealing. Don't think about how much damage it does on its own, think about how much total
damage it permits you to deal when you're AOEing targets in melee range (and remember that
its damage is going to be balanced on the assumption that you'll pick up World In Flames). In
PvP, the point of the spell isn't its damage, it's the ability to proc stuns more frequently and
provide an escape. Additionally, you again cannot consider its damage in isolation; combined
with Molten Armor and other Fire talents, you should be dealing several hundred passive DPS to
melee attackers with Living Bomb up. That is by no means negligible. Consider also the possibility
of macroing Living Bomb to Ice Block, so that you deliver damage pulses and the rumored
knockback while invulnerable.

Deep Freeze should be instant cast: Just because!

Correction: If it were Instant Cast, you'd lose 1.5 seconds of its duration to the global cooldown.
It could be argued that it should be a 0.5 second cast with a custom 0.5 second GCD like
Shadowfury.

Netherwind Presence is completely useless in PvE: If I'm keeping Arcane Blast stacked up,
Netherwind Presence is useless because the cast time is already equal to the global cooldown!
Correction: Even completely untalented, Fireball deals higher damage per cast than Arcane Blast,
for a much lower mana cost. You will use Netherwind Presence procs to lob Fireballs. This will
result in a very small (around 1.8%, I believe) DPS increase.