Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsArcane Brilliance: Mage changes on the patch 3.2.2 PTR
by Christian Belt 
Aug 16th 2009 at 12:00PM
Welcome to the latest edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly Mage column that unites Mages everywhere in brotherhood, friendship, and a mutual desire to set Warlocks on fire.
So, I was all set to write a lengthy diatribe this week on the woes of the Arcane tree. I was going to compare their plight to the aliens in the District 9 trailer, which I totally plan on watching this weekend. Both are oppressed groups, both possess powerful weapons nobody can use properly anymore, and both have spaceships that ran out of gas above South Africa. I was going to bemoan such things as Arcane's inadequate DPS, PvP survivability, and overall mana inefficiency. It was going to be overly-dramatic and incredibly whiny. Warlocks were going to drink from the well of my tears, and find them delicious.
Then this happened.
In case links frighten you, or you can't be bothered to read past the notes for other classes, or just get distracted every time you read about the revamped Onyxia raid we're getting (like me), I'll helpfully re-post the Mage notes below.
Mages
- Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 130% instead of 200%.
- Talents
- Arcane
- Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it.
- Arcane
Take a moment. Digest that. Consider the implications. Then follow me past the break.
Oh my.
Holy crap.
Let's look at the first change first. Yes, I came up with that order on my own.
Arcane Blast
Arcane Blast is stackable up to 4 now, instead of 3. The damage increase per stack remains the same, at 15%. Only the mana cost has changed, and it has actually gone down. Instead of doubling with every stack, it has gone back to something closer to the pre-Wrath era--130%. This means that the mana cost per stack now looks like this:
1st cast: 229 mana
1 stack: 297 mana
2 stacks: 387 mana
3 stacks: 503 mana
4 stacks and beyond: 653 mana
Currently, a fully stacked Arcane Blast costs you 1830 mana. This is an absolutely massive mana reduction for our major nuke. Feel free to correct my math, which was performed by me, a person for whom numbers with more than one digit are confusing and scary.
So once the patch hits, our main nuke won't eat up nearly the amount of mana it does now, and the difference in our mana efficiency should be pretty astonishing. Our staying power will increase dramatically in long fights, and we should find that we can pick and choose when to use Evocation, instead of the current situation, where you absolutely must use it every two minutes without fail, and if you happen to get interrupted during an Evocation, you're reduced to alternating wanding and crying like a little girl until your mana gem cooldown pops.
And it only gets better.
Missile Barrage
This is the game-changer, right here. My first fear, upon reading this change, was that they'd be taking away the gatling-gun speedy missle effect this talent currently grants. I've since tested it out on the PTR, though, and I can confirm that this is not the case.
Here's the deal: On the PTR, Missile Barrage works exactly the same way that it does on the live server, only with two key differences. The first is that it completely removes the mana cost for the next Arcane Missiles you cast. Yes. I totally just typed that. Your next Arcane Missiles is free. Still fast, still powerful, still fully buffed from the Arcane Blast buff (4 times instead of 3), only also free. I only wish there were a way to italicize that even more than the font we use here at WoW.com allows. I would italicize it to the ground, baby.
The second key difference is that your chances of proccing Missile Barrage go up significantly when you cast Arcane Blast. Instead of the standard 20% chance you get from casting the other applicable spells, Arcane Blast will give you a 40% chance. That's twice the chance, according to my math, or to be more scientific, 200% more awesome. Casting other spells will still grant you the 20% proc chance. Which of course begs the question: why would you cast anything else? You wouldn't, that's the answer. Also, why would you ever, ever cast a non-Missile Barraged Arcane Missiles? Let's weigh the options here:
Option one: Costs a bunch of mana, takes 5 seconds to cast.
Option two: Costs zero mana, takes 2.5 seconds to cast. Also, gives you a back massage and makes you breakfast.
I know which option I'm picking.
So here are the implications for Arcane Mages should these changes make it through the testing process and then not get nerfed 36 hours after the patch drops. Cough.
Arcane 3.2.2
1. There will be one acceptable spell rotation in PvE: Arcane Blast x 4>Arcane Missiles (if Missile Barrage has procced). If Missile Barrage fails to proc after four consecutive 40% chances for it to do so (and we all know this will happen frequently, thank you random number generation), you will keep casting fully stacked Arcane Blasts until it does, since the mana cost isn't prohibitive to do so.
2. Arcane Barrage will have no further use in PvE, except as a way to continue to DPS on the move. This saddens me, since it's a 51 point talent, and it's an awesome spell, and I love it dearly. I pray they can find a way to make it PvE viable again, but doing so without upsetting the PvP applecart is probably going to be difficult.
3. As mentioned before, mana efficiency will go way, way up, meaning Arcane Mages will have far more leeway in how and when they choose to use Evocation and their mana gems. Long fights will no longer be the chore they currently are, and DPS will increase because we no longer have to reign in our mana usage quite as much.
4. DPS will increase overall. Significantly. I anticipate this change putting Arcane on par with deep Fire, and possibly even surpassing it. The increase from that fourth stack of Arcane Blast alone is huge.
5. In situations where a quick burn is called for, as when a boss is near death, we can now spam Arcane Blast and not run out of mana three seconds later. It'll be sweet. A little boring, but sweet.
6. Warlocks will re-roll en mass, finally discovering that felhunters are ugly and difficult to housebreak, and having them totally doesn't make up for the sad fact that Warlocks aren't Mages. Also, this will only happen in my imagination, where Warlocks do things like this all the time. Other things that happen in my imagination? Frost becomes PvE viable. Everything in the videos on this page. Also, Duckie gets the girl. Every time. My imagination probably needs to be medicated, people.
And holy crap, guys, I'm not even taking into account Glyph of Arcane Blast here. 18% damage increase per stack? Times 4? Multiplied by the power of awesome? That equals yay. Yes, indeed.
Every week Arcane Brilliance teleports you inside the wonderful world of Mages and then hurls a Fireball in your face. Check out our recent three-part guide to PvP for each Mage spec, or our look at what hit rating means to Mages. Until next week, keep the Mage-train a-rollin'.Filed under: Mage, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Features, Classes, Talents, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 6)
Ignignokt Aug 16th 2009 7:06PM
It's hard to explain why I'm wrong because I'm not. By your logic, increasing something by 30% and increasing it by 130% are the same thing. You can try to dodge around it all you want but increasing something x% is not the same as modifying it to x% of the original value.
Honestly, I can't believe I've been sucked into this argument.
Babaloo Aug 16th 2009 8:04PM
You've misunderstood, what I'm saying is, adding 30% onto x is the same as multiplying x by 130%. I understand the difference between adding 30% and 130%, and I never said that adding 30% of x is the same as adding 130% of x. One is a multiplication, and one is an addition, which mean the same thing, but are worded differently.
MusedMoose Aug 16th 2009 1:34PM
I have waded past all the math arguments simply to say that, as the player of an Arcane-specced mage, I wholly and completely approve, both of the patch changes and of this column.
Not that I don't always approve of this column. It's consistently hilarious. But this one was particularly filled with awesome.
placebo Aug 16th 2009 1:42PM
Yeah, I had bad logic there - my apologies.
Later on I rewrote it as: A 30% increase is the same as increasing something by 130%. (Which is the same as multiplying by 1.3)
therefore: 30% increase on 10 would be increasing it by 130% which is multiplying by 1.3 = 13
And a 10% increase on 10 would be increasing it by 110% which is multiplying it by 1.1 = 11
mathbasics Aug 16th 2009 2:58PM
It is fascinating to watch placebo make such a fool of himself with such fervor and persistence.
But seriously, could you just STOP spreading your disinfomation, when you clearly haven't taken a proper math class for ages.
"And a 10% increase on 10 would be increasing it by 110% which is multiplying it by 1.1 = 11"
This is STILL not true. Increasing it by 130% is the same as multiplying it by 2.3. Just stop it placebo, you got it wrong from the start, you've been posting the same error over and over and and repeating your errors only confuses people even more.
As evident from the data already mentioned, applying one stack increases the mana cost by 130%, ie by a factor 2.3:
215 * 2.3 = 494, exactly as found on the PTR.
The full formula for the stacked is clearly:
215 * (1 + 1.3*[NumberOfStacks])
What concerns me the most is all the people uprating placebos posts and downrating perfectly correct posts. Is the general ignorance really that widespread? Seriously, this is middle school maths!
ttvp Aug 16th 2009 4:23PM
Thanks mathbasics, we really need more posters like you (there are other correct ones out there but I'm not replying to all of them lol).
If it helps to visualize Placebo, think of mounted speeds.
Basic land mounts increase your run speed BY 60%
Epic land mounts increase your run speed BY 100%
That means you move 60% faster and 100% faster. Run speed (we'll call that 100% before mounts) multiplied by 60% by itself would actually REDUCE your speed TO 60% of the max run speed. Leaving epic mounts to give you a whopping... 100% speed, no faster than running.
That's why when the game lists an increase BY %, you need to add an extra 100% to the calculation, to calculate with the original value. A basic ground land mount increases your speed to 160% of run speed (which is 100%), epic mounts increasing your speed to 200% of run speed (remember, 100% * 100% = 100%, 100% * 200% = 200%)
Going back to the original spell description for Arcane Blast, it increases the mana cost BY 200%. Visualize back to the mounted speeds. If you increase something BY 100%, you are doubling it. An increase BY 200% would be tripling it. Obviously in this case through experimentation we can see that that tooltip is not actually misleading so much as people are completely misinterpreting what it means. So with the new percentages, we can see that an increase BY 130% would increase the cost TO 230% (or 2.3, for easy multiplication purposes). So starting with a base mana cost of 215, we multiply by 2.3 to get 494.5, which is exactly what it's supposed to be from there. After that, we keep adding 279.5 to the cost for each stack (279.5 is the 130% of the original value), rounding down it seems.
I know I'm not the best at explaining things, but I hope you understand where we are coming from. If you still can't understand what we mean by now it would not be the wisest decision to continue to stay and convince us otherwise.
Kadamon Aug 16th 2009 4:28PM
The best way to put it is as follows:
You're mixing up two very important words in your math.
'By' and 'to'.
Increasing the number 100 to 200 is increasing it by 100%.
Increasing the number 100 to 130 is increasing it to 130%
Because you've got those backwards, you're completely screwing up your mathmatics.
Ohtarello Aug 16th 2009 1:45PM
"Warlocks were going to drink from the well of my tears, and find them delicious."
Yes, we were. Now we will be forced to get our 4-5 daily servings of tears (as recommended by the warlock food guide pyramid) by punching kittens and squeezing the ensuing tears out. Well done, Mr. Belt, you now have the weight of a thousand punched kittens on your shoulders.
Veliaf Aug 16th 2009 2:03PM
Well said. I was just going to write OM NOM NOM.
xnn Aug 16th 2009 1:46PM
Yay! I'm so happy. I love arcane's rotation curently.. .but as the fights got longer, it became more of a problem... and my dps would go down significantly. I would blow all of my mana gems and use evo at least 2x depending on the fight.
If this goes live I'm going to switch back to arcane.
Infernal Aug 16th 2009 1:48PM
I still reckon Arcane Barrage will be more DPS by using it if after 4x Arcane Blast you don't have a missle barrage procc. Don't spose anyone has already done the maths on this yet? (if they even need to).
Veliaf Aug 16th 2009 2:22PM
Using my level 78 Mage's current values (obviously not the same as 80 but the proportions ought to be near enough the same):
Barrage: 880 base damage average
Missiles: 1625 base damage average
Blast: 1212 base damage average
Clearly here Missiles is far superior in damage with a proc.
Without one, you're looking at 1625 * 1.6 (the 60% buff) = 2600 in 5 seconds approx. for the Missiles, or 880 * 1.6 = 1408 but only costing one GCD for the ABarrage. If you follow with another Blast after the ABarrage, you have 1212 + 1408 = 2620, which is essentially the same as following the fourth original blast with a Missiles.
If you just follow the four stacks with another blast, it's 1212 * 1.6 = 1939 damage.
In conclusion, after you get the fourth buff stack, if you have a proc, use the Missiles, if not, a Blast and an ABarrage do the same damage as using the normal-length Missiles. Using Blast by itself is less damage than doing one of the above, but casting it twice would be a fair deal more, so it probably depends on your haste as to whether you can fit two into the same amount of time as a Missiles / Blast+ABarrage or not.
Not sure if I proved anything there, and the maths was rushed and probably really inaccurate, but yeah.
Vel.
thebitterfig Aug 16th 2009 2:54PM
The major problem with using Arcane Barrage is the time it will take to rebuild the Arcane Blast stack. It will be 8 seconds at least until you are back to the 76% bonus damage, and that will really hurt your dps. That said, it will greatly improve your mana efficiency. There might be some few circumstances where you would want to build up some portion of an AB stack and clear it with ABarr, but those will be rare circumstances.
Nizari Aug 16th 2009 7:52PM
"I still reckon Arcane Barrage will be more DPS by using it if after 4x Arcane Blast you don't have a missle barrage procc. Don't spose anyone has already done the maths on this yet? (if they even need to)."
Well, here's the thing. If my math on this is right [1-(2/5^4)], the probability that you will get a missile barrage proc within 4 arc blast casts, is 97.44%.
So unless you bizarrely happen to hit that 2 and change percent chance of not proc'ing, no, you're never going to see another arc barrage in a standard rotation.
Nizari Aug 16th 2009 7:58PM
Actually, scratch that, got the fraction wrong. Should be 1-(3/5^4), so 87.04% chance for a missile barrage proc after 4 blast casts. Not as big as I originally figured, but still a pretty large chance.
Dabura Aug 16th 2009 8:21PM
Heya all you 3 people,
I was worried I'd get downvoted to hell, so thanks for not doing so. A big thanks to Veliaf who I hope did the maths correctly to show that the damage would be roughly the same. thebitterfig also makes a good point that restacking your Arcane Blast buffs would hurt your dps. So what I would now say is if you get a proc then of course do use AMissile, but if you some how don't then I reckon using ABarr would be more dmg then casting ABlast until you do get a proc, but that might all down to how many ABlasts you have to cast until you get a proc.
Alja Aug 16th 2009 2:19PM
awww thank you for a lil' "Pretty in Pink/Duckie" love - although why the clip you linked was partially in Spanish was a little confusing - but still awesomeness
ben Aug 16th 2009 2:22PM
I wanna roll an arcane mage now. Belt would be good for racial resist+ .5 resist per level talent is pretty awesome if u ask me.
MzStilletto Aug 16th 2009 2:33PM
Full points from me for just being awesome, and extra points for the Pretty in Pink reference!
You rock my mageriffic world!
WoWie Zowie Aug 16th 2009 2:51PM
yes, my jaw dropped too when i read that in the patch notes.
we will FINALLY be able to compete with other pure dps classes for more consistent damage output (i'm looking at you, rogues!).
the free cost to missiles might also have been implemented due to the huge mana sap when the tier 8 set bonus procs over and over.
add heroism/bloodlust in the mix and you have an arcane mage that is absolutely ferocious for 15 seconds, and then kinda crap for the next 2 min.
free missile barrages = yes please!
i'm not upset with these changes, i think they actually kinda put us back to where we shoulda been in ulduar.