Upcoming Mage changes

The buffs here are designed primarily to make Arcane more competitive with Fire / Frostfire builds in PvE. Because they could end up buffing Arcane in PvP, we are prepared to adjust the damage of say Arcane Barrage if needed, but we want to see these in action on the PTR first.

Mage PvE damage in general is something we are keeping a close eye on. With the recent hunter changes, many of which were nerfs to PvE damage, we want to make sure mages now don’t break away from the pack of damage-dealing specs.

1) Evocation – cooldown reduced to 4 min.
2) Arcane Flows – now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by an additional 1 / 2 min.
3) Arcane Blast – overhauled. Will now increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15%. However using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge, but instead increases the mana of your next Arcane Blast, up to a maximum of 3 stacks (and a 45% buff). You can alternate Blast and Barrage to keep buffing Barrage, or you can build Blast up higher for a heavy mana cost.
4) Torment the Weak – now works with Arcane Blast and does bonus damage to targets afflicted by any kind of slowing effect (e.g. Thunder Clap).
5) Elemental Precision – renamed Precision and now works on all spells.
6) Improved Blizzard – snaring effect reduced to 20/40/50%.

EDIT: We recently made the Arcane Blast stack 15/30/45% to your next Arcane spell.

Q u o t e:
Will arcane missiles consume the stack on the first hit or will it effect the entire spell?

The entire spell.

Q u o t e:
can we get a little clarity on arcane last. does this mean only the first blast causes dmg to up 30 percent, and so the next 2 casts only increase the mana cost, ie its only worth it to cast it the first time?

I'll try to explain this better. It sounds more confusing than it is. Here is the tooltip:

Blasts the target with energy, dealing X Arcane damage. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the damage of all Arcane spells is increased by 15% and mana cost of Arcane Blast is increased by 200%. Effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 sec or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast.

Consider a few scenarios:

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Barrage
Next Arcane Barrage is 15% more damage.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles
Each missile in the next volley is 15% more damage.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
The second Blast does 15% more damage, but costs 3x normal cost.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
The third Blast does 30% more damage, but costs 5x normal cost.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
The fourth Blast does 45% more damage, but costs 7x normal cost.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast
Any Blast beyond the fourth is still at 45% more damage, and still costs 7x. I wouldn't do this. :)

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Barrage
The Barrage is 45% more damage, but at the normal cost and consumes the charge so you are back to normal damage after that.

Q u o t e:
I was on vent with Venruki last week while he did arenas. He was critting arcane barrages for 7k+, and then POM-pyroing for over 10k. This will significantly increase arcane power's burst potential, which was already unhealable and could not be mitigated.

The change is good for PvE, but jesus christ adjust it so that Arcane Barrage does significantly lower base damage, and increase the 30% blast bonus to be much higher. We don't need a PTR to tell us that ABarr's damage is already too high.

Affix, as I mentioned we'll have to keep a close eye on Arcane Barrage. We didn't think Arcane's dps would be competitive with Frostfire if we nerfed Arcane Barrage. It may be challenging in PvP to get the stacks up high enough (the buff can be dispelled). The risk that IF the mage gets enough stacks, then there is a BIG BIG BIG Arcane Barrage coming. Totally valid concern.

Q u o t e:
GC you are turning into a right hypocrite. On one side your developmental team nerfs BM DPS without any decent compensation to either marksmen or survival. You wreck warlock's PVP viability. Instead your focus is on constantly increasing mages. Not bad enough their damn DPS is close to BM.... no signs of checking that "we are keeping a watch" , not bad enough that frost gives acute control over virtually all classes... Now you go give them further changes in arcane and even better mana regen.

Where does this hyprocisy and pandering to one class with an overinflated sense of entitlement stop? Where are the " Over-reaching PVP fixes for hunters". Where is your simplification of afflock DPS. Where are the promised PVP viability increases for warlocks? Where is the part where you fix the SE bug that afflocks are plagued with?

I don't want to turn this into a hunter thread. I also want to suggest that you don't need to dress up a legit question inside of so many accusations of conficts of interest or whatever. I generally don't like to reward questions or statements with this tone with a blue response. However, this is a concern I want to try to address so I'll make an exception.

Our (the class and item designers) primary concern is with the game design, not with public relations. We don't approach the classes as a parent might approch their children, making sure that everyone gets the same number of gifts under the tree or whatever. Instead we have a list of concerns that we work our way down. One concern was "Man, hunter dps seems really high in PvE." Another was "Arcane just isn't viable in PvE." We bump things up and down on the list for various reasons, and a lot of it has to do with what other tasks or projects we are working on at the moment. Some are trivial changes and some are quite complicated and require code. You learn very quickly working on WoW that you can't fix everything at once. It's a gigantic game. The best you can do is triage, or just slowly start working your way through the list. We are our own biggest critics and we always think there are things we can improve.

You should not interpet the order in which changes come out to mean all that much. We do try to address "pressing" or "critical" problems faster, but which issues those are varies wildly depending on which class you ask.

Q u o t e:
Woah!

3 talent points to cover ALL three trees?

Whereas we have to spend DOUBLE the points, and STILL not even cover all the trees?

Can we have a similar change please?
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This has no effect on raiding mages, since they all have Elemental Precision and it already affects all the spells they use to begin with. It's basically a non-change.

It actually does affect raiding mages and benefits competitive warlocks more than they realize. There was a bug where a Frostfire mage was actually double-dipping by getting 3% hit from frost AND fire or 6% total. With the change, it is always 3%.

Arcane will technically be able to get 6% but they need it.