The current Incanter's Absorbtion is a broken mechanic. It inflates a mage's DPS to ridiculous levels on fight with raid damage where a priest has a chance to keep a shield up on them. For Blizzard, this makes balancing encounters a real nightmare. For mages, it throws their DPS is a roller coaster between fights, hitting ridiculous highs on fights where it can be used, and much more modest DPS on fights without raid damage.

The change will even the field. At the same time, it make it a lot easier to work and balance arcane mages, since they won't have to look at inflated numbers that can't be trusted. It might sound like a nerf for now, but in the long run it'll allow for a more reasonable buff somewhere else.



Torment the Weak is probably next on the list of silly mage mechanics that need to change.

Why change TotW?

Torment the Weak is not like Incanter's Absorption at all. TtW is essentially a static 12% damage buff, as a tank will always provide a slowing effect on the boss somehow. (The boss doesn't have to be actually snared, an attack speed reduction like with Improved Icy Touch from DKs will do.) This doesn't change how anyone plays, and no one has to adapt to it as it's static. IA is not a static buff, as it required help from mechanics of the fight like Twin Valk's, or a Disc priest, to make it worth it. Not to mention that it encouraged a mage to dip into things that should kill them for power. Like jumping into Coldflames on Marrowgar.

While it doesn't affect the way one plays, it DOES affect the way one specs. Because of it's ridiculous DPS increase, every single spec aside from Frostfire Bolt is forced to go 18 points into arcane. For 3 points, non-arcane mages (Fire and Frost) have to spend 15 points in talents along the way. Aside from Focus Magic and maybe spell impact, one can argue that the other points are a serious waste. I believe that is what the poster meant by this, and as a mage, I am one to agree.

One serious point about this though is that they have removed the 5% cap on the spellpower increase.

Let's assume currently that a mage has 20k health. That amounts to 1000 spellpower max assuming that the mage took that much damage and it was mitigated. For that to peak out the mage would have to take 6666 damage, or a third of their total hit points and all of it would have to be absorbed by a PW:Shield or other shield.

Now, my mage last I checked throws out a 2kish Mana Shield. Probably costs closer to 4-5k mana to get all of 300 Spellpower Increase for all of 10 seconds. Might get 3k out of an elemental shield (fire or ice), but all in all, no mage is going to pay that much in mana for 300 spellpower. In fact, they might as well remove incanter's absorption from the Arcane Tree at that point. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the synergy that a mage would have with shielding classes, not their own self damage absorption capabilties.

TL;DR: If they go through with this, they might as well remove Incanter's Absorption.

James, you are a bit mistaken my friend, regarding warding. With improved warding and the minor glyphs, simply warding elemental damage can easily spike your SP by > 1k. If you don't believe me, spam fire ward on Koralon (or at least time it right before he does his spinny fire thing). Not to mention that there have been documented instances where people have frost warded entire frostbolts by deathwhisper and have regained 19k mana (talent gives a 30% chance to ward all damage and return that warded damage as mana). Incanter's absorption will still be the number 1 talent to take due to potential SP increase, with the only other viable places to put those points in pushback resistance, which is basically unnecessary.

And Dawn... we love you disco priests too! this is sad day for that synergy ending.

(p.s. Let's hoping blizz opens their eyes and buffs fire in some way or gives some kind of other static buff... TotW would be a great place, how about increase the effect from 12->15%?)