Hoo boy, big news of patch 3.1 dropping all over the place.
Yesterday saw stuff for Rogues, Priests and Shamans, and today saw stuff on Warlocks, Druids and Warriors.
Tomorrow should see all the mage stuff and… I dunno, whatever the other classes are, announced. Man, what an akward sentence. Oh well.
This is basically pure speculation.
This change for Warlocks is interesting:
Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff.
It’s hard to tell what exactly they mean by this. A buff? They say it works similar to Imp. Scorch, but Imp. Scorch is a debuff, not a buff.
Presumably it was meant to be a debuff; I mean, GC has admitted they type fast enough to completely miss things from time to time, and it is ridiculous to demand their typing be absolutely perfect.
So this raises a few interesting questions. It’s an additional effect to the current Shadowbolt debuff, and judging from the wording would affect the crit chance of all spells.
We already know that Blizz is planning on spreading the Replenishment love (it is, after all, considered mandatory, even for 10-man content) with Warlocks being able to provide the mana regeneration love come 3.1.
It really isn’t surprising that the crit chance debuff would be spread around, too.
Blizz has also made a big deal about making sure all these different buffs and debuffs are equitable. See the kerfuffle about the spellpower from Divine Spirit not being as strong as those it shares a buff slot with, and Blizz stating they want to repair that.
Hence, we can safely assume that Warlocks would not receive an inferior Improved Scorch, but rather the full effect.
Meaning that Imp. Scorch and Winter’s Chill are likely heading for a nerf and a little buff.
Buff? What buff? Well, consider. The Shadowbolt talent will provide the 5% in one go. Winter’s Chill currently takes five shots, and Imp. Scorch two shots. Expect both of those to drop to one.
This also means that those two won’t stack anymore. There’ll just be the one Winter’s Chill debuff and that’ll be it. Take that, polymorph protection.
Maybe.
Anyway, I wonder if mages will get Replenishment too?
Wouldn’t that be wacky? A mage, able to provide mana restoration for the entire raid?
Hrm, that sort of sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
WINK. WINK. NUDGE. NUDGE.
Oh, wouldja look at that? What a surprise!
Well, they obviously ended up getting Replenishment. In the form of Water Elemental no less! I was right all along! Buah hahahahaha! BOW TO YOUR FROSTY LORD (not named ahune)!!
I LIKE YOUR LITTLE HINT THERE :O
Hey,
Frost mage at heart, arc mage in reality here. I’m in the unusual position of max dps in 25mans right now. I’ve heard legends of this being possible for the mage back in the original wow, but I didn’t come into BC. I’m worried that blizz is gonna come in and beat our class with a nerf bat the same way a redneck beats his wife with a wooden one.
Holy shit! We got replenishment!
!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love how they’re trying to figure out how to give frost mages shatter combos in PvE. If they manage that, I *might* have to respec back to frost….
Nah.
Simple fix. Take Ice lance off the GCD and give it its very own 3 second CD. You will be able to fire off ice lance every other frostbolt if you wanted to. Increase the mana cost. It would be a dps boost and a mana dump. Without fingers of frost procs, its a minor dps boost at best, and it shouldn’t impact PvP too terribly, especially if its balanced out by increasing the mana cost.
In other news, I hope they substitute something for the 15 seconds of Squirtle time that is going away with the IWE talent.
I strongly suspect that Imp Scorch, Imp Shadow Bolt, and Winter’s Chill will still stack 5 times, and that Imp Shadow Bolt will apply one stack per cast the same as Winter’s Chill or improved but unglyphed Scorch. I think “similar to Improved Scorch” implies that the mechanic will be the same.
Take this the following with a grain of salt, it’s been over a month since I’ve raided with a 2nd mage in the raid.
When I went to apply Imp Scorch, but a frost mage had already applied at least one stack of Winter’s Chill, the target did not gain any Imp Scorch debuff. When I hit a boss with Imp Scorch before the frost mage applied a single stack of WC, then the Scorch debuff stacked and no WC debuff appeared. It would make sense that Imp Shadow Bolt will work the exact same way.
As a point of laziness, I tended to take Scorch out of my rotation versus bosses when a frost mage was along; it took several seconds longer for him to stack WC to 5 than it took me to stack IS to 5, but what the heck, I’ll take up to -10% crit chance on my first few FFBs if it means that I don’t have to watch that IS debuff timer for the duration of the fight.
Umm, efficiency, I mean, not laziness.
Kinda immaterial any more; with Imp Shadow Bolt coming down the pipe, I can spec 60/3/8 guilt-free.
I would be so glad if they spread the crit buff around to other classes. That way people don’t want me to roll Frostfire for 10 mans.
Arcane 24/7 ….
And did you hear, they formally announced they are trying to make spirit useful for us? MMO-CHAMPION has the link to the post. I can’t wait to see what it is, perhaps it will be an arcane tree ability… perhaps through some sort of ingenious, or for a better choice of word -brilliant-… idea will be implemented.