You are almost certainly not going to be hardcasting Pyroblast as Hot Streak still exists, so all you'd have to do is cast Flamestrike at some point, and honestly it is unlikely that the addition of a flamestrike DOT to Combustion will be worth the cast time outside of AOE situations where you would be casting flamestrike anyway.

Also you can cast it when ignite is present and ignite no longer procs exclusively from crits but from every fire spell you cast excluding Scorch so it's not like you actually have to do either, you'll just do more damage if you have Pyroblast up too.

With that in mind, Combustion has actually barely changed at all. The only difference is that Living Bomb is not affected and Impact does not require a proc (it seems pretty unlikely that you will be spamming Inferno Blast on cooldown).
In a situation where you would want the tiny extra damage provided by Flamestrike to multiply it by spreading it to adds, you would already have Flamestrike down to AOE said adds, it is pretty much the same spell we are casting now.


The mana change... shouldn't really affect you at all? It's more a healing thing and all it means is that Arcane doesn't have the silly double-benefit from Intellect that it has at the moment.
Blizzard are going to balance you so that you don't have to worry about Mana anyway, hell there's even a talent that means Evocation has no cooldown at all.

I do agree with some of these points. I think putting each bomb back into each spec would allow for more synergy (for example, using it with Combustion again). I know I've posted this a few times before, here and in the official forums, but I think, if Arcane still works in MoP the way it does now, I think it would be interesting to give Arcane Bomb some mana regen with each tick, and with the final blast. Putting that into the arcane tree would give them not only a spell to apply DoTs but also one that works well with their mastery. Living Bomb, leaving it alone, having it work with Combustion and Impact, and making if fire only, would be just fine with me. Frost bomb is probably fine.

It looks like they're going in the right direction though, from the first set of talents/spells that they rolled out for MoP. I hope they do allow us to retain the uniqueness of our specs. Right now (in Cata), I think they work really well and many of the mages I talk to are anywhere from pretty happy to ecstatic about their current specs. (Mind you, many of them are not serious raiders though). I wouldn't mind not having them too drastically changed - just adding some new interesting spells would be great.

I just know that betw. Wrath and Cata, something happened to my Warlock and it's just not that fun to play. In Wrath, I was having a great time with Demo. I tried affliction as well in Cata, though I'm back to demo. (Not all that interested in Destruction - I have a proper fire mage already. :) ) But just saying that whatever tweaks they made, it just made me not want to play that toon all that much. I actually get TIRED when I play my lock for too long. (Though she IS a fantastic herbalist!! Poor Felguard looks bored to death most of the time . . . ) So, I'm hoping that they don't make tweaks that will make me lose interest in my mage.

The talents in general is getting more interesting and I'm glad they made many of the former MoP talents baseeline for class or specs. I'm not terribly interested in having Shatter (will we be expected to use some freezing spell even if we are not frost, just to get the extra crit?) and wouldn't mind if it went back to frost only.

One idea I've been posting about is being able to glyph in a spell (devs could choose 2 or 3 . . or even 1) from each tree, and you could choose to add one of those. If you are not interested in doing that, that same slot could be used to put in an extra major or prime glyph instead. Not sure how this would work for other classes but it might make Elementalist mages happy, while allowing more spells to be spec bound, allowing for better synergy within each spec. Flexibility without giving up synergy. I can see how this might be pretty difficult to balance around but it could be a fun mechanic. (This might also allow them to give each spec its own bomb but allow everyone to be able to switch it out with a glyph if they don't like what they got).

"You are almost certainly not going to be hardcasting Pyroblast"

Since the invention of hot streak, pyroblast has never been intended to be hard cast. However, there were certain encounters and certain times where, in cataclysm, fire mages had been hard-casting pyroblast. Sinestra maybe? I can't remember the specific encounter, but there were a couple where top dps'ers were fire mages who were hard-casting pyroblast.

Point being, encounter dynamics can dictate a different dps rotation, so I can see where a case of hardcasting pyroblast at least once at the beginning of an encounter might actually be a legit strategy.

That's a bit pedantic Pyromelter!

Hardcasting Pyroblast at the start of every encounter (if you start casting before the tank has pulled) is actually a DPS increase in every encounter in the current tier, and it's also sometimes a good idea to do it in Yor's black phase, and start casting it on Hagara seconds before her shield breaks.

BUT we weren't talking about these rare, specific situations!
He was implying that somehow it would be difficult to cast one /instant cast/ spell in the four second window of ignite (which was a silly thing to say anyway as Pyroblast is now ALWAYS going to apply ignite and refresh the duration)
That was why I brought up the fact that you aren't going to be hardcasting Pyroblast