Arcane Mages have a new spell. The latest WoW: Forever beta build adds Arcane Wrath, a 3.5-second Arcane nuke on a 6-second cooldown, and it rebuilds Arcane Blast from the ground up. The same build reshuffles the Elemental Shaman talent tree and brings back Elemental Mastery, cuts Devouring Plague's cooldown from a minute to 24 seconds, halves Champion of the Light for Retribution Paladins and doubles Shadow Mastery for Warlocks.
We put these changes into the Forever Upgrades sim engine, worked Arcane Wrath and Elemental Mastery into the rotations, and re-simulated every spec on the new game files. Here's what changed, where Arcane Wrath fits, and what it all does to the numbers.
The short version
- Arcane Mage is the new top damage spec in our level 60 raid sims, up 21% to 695.5 DPS. The reworked Arcane Blast does most of that.
- Arcane Wrath is an Arcane talent. It does 19% of our Arcane Mage's damage at level 30 and 13% at level 60. Fire and Frost don't use it.
- Frost Mage drops 13.5% at 60, because Winter's Chill no longer adds crit and Ice Lance does less to frozen targets. At level 30 it gains 5%.
- Elemental Shaman gains 7.8%, mostly from Elemental Mastery. Shadow Priest and Affliction Warlock each gain about 2%, and Retribution Paladin loses 3.4%.
- Discipline Priest heals 14.5% less, mainly because Penance heals for less in the newest client files.
Where the changes come from
Blizzard took the beta realm down on October 15 for a new build. In the maintenance post, Community Manager Kaivax wrote:
This will be a maintenance period that includes deploying and testing a new build of the game, and that build has quite a few changes and fixes.— Kaivax, Blizzard Community Manager, October 15
The next day, ForeverDB compared the new client files with the previous build. It counted 639 changed spells and 70 new ones, 63 changed talents, and big reworks in the Mage Arcane and Fire trees, the Shaman Elemental tree and the Shadow and Discipline Priest talents. Their list is the starting point for this article.
We then checked each change against the newest client files we have, build 1.60.1.70450, and used those for the sims. Spell numbers - damage, coefficients, cooldowns and mana costs - come straight from those files. Talent values aren't stored there, so we entered those by hand from the new tooltips. A few talents have no exact number in the files, and we note them below.
Arcane Wrath: how it fits into the rotation
Arcane Wrath is a talent in the fourth row of the Arcane tree, and it needs Arcane Blast, according to talentsforever.com's data export. ForeverDB lists four ranks at the trainer from level 25; the talent teaches the spell, and the trainer sells the higher ranks. It's a 3.5-second cast with a 6-second cooldown. The client files give it the same spell power coefficient as Fireball, and it gains extra spell damage equal to 5% of your maximum mana. Because it's an Arcane talent, Fire and Frost Mages don't use it, and our Fire and Frost sims leave it out. Our level 60 Arcane sim uses a 48/3/0 build that takes it, along with Missile Barrage 2/2 and Incineration 3/3 from the Fire tree, which now also adds 6% crit to Arcane Blast.
In our Arcane sim, Arcane Wrath is always part of the rotation once you have it. The sim picks how many Arcane Blasts to build and whether to spend the window on Arcane Missiles or, when mana is short, Frostbolt - and casts Arcane Wrath whenever its cooldown is up.
While levelling, Arcane Wrath earns its place. At level 30, our Arcane Mage casts it about three times a minute, and it does 19% of the spec's damage. At that level you have little spell power, so Arcane Wrath's base damage and its bonus from your mana pool count for a lot. It's part of why Arcane gains 31% at level 30.
At level 60 in raid gear, it stays in. With four Arcane Blast stacks, Arcane Wrath does a little more damage per second of casting than Arcane Missiles, though each missile can trigger Missile Barrage for a free, faster set of Missiles. Our sim casts Arcane Wrath whenever its cooldown is up after the Blasts, with Missile Barrage procs going first. That's about two and a half casts a minute, and 13% of Arcane's damage.
The Sim DPS page shows Arcane Wrath in both the rotation list and the damage breakdown.
Arcane Blast is redesigned
Arcane Blast is now a 1.5-second cast instead of 2.5 seconds, and it deals much less damage on its own - 30 to 34 at rank 1 instead of 50 to 58. Each stack no longer adds 10% to your other spells. Instead, it turns 15% of your Intellect into spell damage for 15 seconds, up to four stacks. The cost still goes up with each stack.
In the sim, an Arcane Mage now opens a 15-second window with quick Blasts, then spends it on Arcane Missiles. At four stacks, that's 60% of your Intellect added as spell damage. Missile Barrage also moves to the first row of the tree and becomes a two-rank talent. Together, these changes lift Arcane from 575.6 to 695.5 DPS at level 60, which puts it first in our raid rankings, ahead of Shadow Priest (606.1).
Fire and Frost Mage
Fire barely moves at level 60 (+0.7%). Critical Mass now goes to five ranks for 10% more Fire crit, and Fire Power becomes a three-rank talent that adds damage for each Fire effect on the target, up to 12%. Improved Fire Blast replaces Wake of Fire, which no longer gives a crit proc.
Frost loses the most. Winter's Chill used to add crit chance to Frostbolt and Ice Lance; now it only raises Cone of Cold damage, so we've taken it out of the default build. Ice Lance now does 200% more damage to frozen targets instead of 300%. Together, those cost a level 60 Frost Mage 13.5% in our sims, and Frost drops from 7th to 10th in the raid rankings.
Elemental Shaman: Elemental Mastery is back
The Elemental tree is reshuffled. Lava Burst is now a 20-point talent, and the 31-point talent is Elemental Mastery: for 15 seconds, Lightning Bolt and Lava Burst cast 0.5 seconds faster and Chain Lightning has no cooldown, every 3 minutes. Call of Thunder is gone, Call of Flame now also makes Flame Shock last longer, and Chain Lightning costs less mana.
Our sim uses Elemental Mastery on cooldown. Even though Elemental loses Call of Thunder's crit, it gains 7.8% at level 60, to 366.5 DPS. Its best race in our sims also changes, from Skyborne to Orc. In our sims, Blood Fury and Elemental Mastery are both used at the pull, so their 15 seconds overlap.
Priest: shorter Shadow cooldowns, weaker Penance
Devouring Plague now has a 24-second cooldown instead of 1 minute, and Shadow Word: Death 18 seconds instead of 15. Improved Mind Flay now makes each tick of a channel hit harder than the last, and Improved Mind Blast takes Shadow Affinity's place in the tree. Shadow Priest gains 1.9% at level 60, to 606.1 DPS - second in our raid rankings.
Discipline is the big loser. Mental Strength now gives 2% Intellect per rank instead of 3%, and Divine Aegis has a cap. The larger cause, though, is that Penance heals for less in the 70450 client files we used. Discipline drops 14.5% in our level 60 raid sims, to 729.2 HPS.
Paladin and Warlock
Retribution Paladin loses 3.4%. Champion of the Light now turns 30% of your Intellect into spell damage at full rank instead of 60%, and Judgement of Righteousness uses a lower coefficient. Retribution stays 11th.
Affliction Warlock gains 2.4%. Shadow Mastery now adds 2% Shadow damage per rank instead of 1%. Malediction, which added damage to your periodic spells, becomes Grim Reach, which only adds range. We moved its five points into other Affliction talents. At level 30, before Affliction can take Shadow Mastery, it loses about 2%.
What we had to assume
Some new tooltips don't give an exact number, and a few talents changed position in their trees. For the Mage, talentsforever.com's export confirms every rank of Fire Power and Missile Barrage and the new talent positions. For the other classes, until we can check them in game, these are our best reading of the new tooltips:
- Dark Inspiration (Shadow): 3% Spirit per rank.
- Talent positions for the reshuffled Shaman, Priest and Warlock talents follow ForeverDB's description. The talent build links on our site may point to the wrong talent for these until talent calculators update.
Some changes don't show up in our sims at all. Frost Blast, the other new Mage spell, is weak in the client files and not part of any single-target rotation. Furor, Reckoning, Shield Specialization's mana return and Righteous Fury's threat don't change damage or our tank survivability number. Multi-Shot becoming instant changes nothing for us, because our Hunter rotations already treated it as instant.
Try it with your own character
Our numbers use our own Raid List gear and default talents. Paste your armory link or your addon export into Sim DPS to see what the changes do for your character, and, for Arcane, whether Arcane Wrath earns a place in your rotation. The class guides, rotations and stat priorities are updated too, and the spec rankings on our home page are re-simulated on the new build.