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Arcane Brilliance: Changes to the Fire tree
Each week Arcane Brilliance Blinks behind you and hurls a Fireball full of Mage content up your tailpipe. It stings, yes, but the burning sensation is only temporary. Just wait until you see what the Warlock gave you. It's nasty, and trust me when I say that it won't be going away anytime soon.I've been neglecting Fire Mages, I'll admit it. Before you wind up a Pyroblast and point it my way, hear me out. There's a reason. Since we Mages stepped our flimsy, cloth-clad feet onto the shores of Northrend those several months ago, we've gone through a decent amount of changes. Unfortunately, very few of those changes were to the Fire tree. The news-making specs have been everyone's favorite love-it/love-to-hate-it spec, Arcane, Frostfire, and to a lesser extent, Frost. With so much to report on regarding the other specs, Fire has sort of been put on the back burner (yes, you can expect more bad puns as we proceed--you have been warned). It still blows stuff up like it always has, but does so in as quiet and workmanlike a fashion as a spec that conjures enormous explosions can. Fire Mages are still out there, Fireballing away in relative obscurity while the next Mage over throws his flashy Arcane Barrages or Frostfire Bolts, but there aren't as many as there once was.I became a little excited when we were told that Patch 3.1 would bring "more survivability for Fire spec in PvP." Though it wasn't anything big or flashy, finally I might have something to report on regarding everybody's favorite fire-starters. Then the PTR patch notes came and went, bearing with them no real Fire-related change to speak of. I keep forgetting that the PTR notes change by the day.PTR build 9658 has finally put Fire Mages back in the news. The changes aren't anything huge on the surface, but they speak to a new direction in Blizzard's design philosophy for the spec, and with any luck will lead to more changes. After the break, you'll find the complete changes, along with a look at the current and future state of Fire Mages as a spec. You wear your flame-retardant gear, and so will I.
[UPDATED] Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Warlock changes
A new build went up on the PTRs today, and there's a little bit of good news for Warlocks. Some lingering questions are answered and some fears are put to rest. Most of the changes this patch were to Affliction, so expect more changes to the other trees in later builds. Let's have a look:AfflictionPandemic - Grants the periodic damage from your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells the ability to critically hit for 100% increased damage.The talent was simplified to enable Corruption and Unstable Affliction to crit, but could have been interpreted as a nerf because spells normally just crit for 50% more damage. The new build should quell those apprehensions. The spell is effectively the same for one point instead of three. That, my friends, is a buff.Malediction - Increases your spell damage by 1/2/3%, and increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Corruption and Unstable Affliction spells by 3/6/9%.With the bonus to Curse of the Elements made baseline, Malediction became a vanilla spell damage increase. The build 9658 version makes it a mandatory talent that will do crazy, sexy things to Affliction DPS. Send some donuts to Irvine. Let's make sure this makes it to the live realms.Eradication - When you deal damage with Corruption, you have 6% chance to increase your spell casting speed by 6/12/20% for 10 sec.This is a reversion and an effective nerf. An earlier build redesigned the talent to increase Shadow Bolt crits, but this change nerfs the talent by forcing players to invest three points (most builds currently put only one) to get the full effect but with a lower proc rate. Hold those donuts.UPDATE: I said before in my last post about the Warlock changes on the PTR that Blizzard seemed intent on removing Immolate from Affliction's rotation by removing all incentive to cast it. I was dead on. In fact, in the current build Immolate now shares the same debuff category as Unstable Affliction. Only one or the other can be up on one target from the same Warlock. Now Affliction Warlocks can't cast Immolate even if they wanted to. Well, they could, but why would they want to? This is a nerf. Unless the damage component of Immolate is compensated through other means, this looks like a DPS drop.
