Originally posted by: TGS
Originally posted by: Glavinsolo
Arcane is ok but frost/fire have too much to offer and spending points in arcane besides clearcast and imp AM is a waste. The double trinket AP mage is a thing of the past. Arcane power takes precedence over trinkets and the trinkets were nerfed on their damage.
My topic spec took into account of doing massive AoE in a short period of time.
5 People guarding flag room. Flamestrike from tier 2, frost nova, CoC, blast wave, cold snap, frost nova, CoC, Instant AE until you are almost dead and pop ice block, get a heal from your healing buddy, rinse and repeat.
Stunning the flag carrier with a fire blast is nice, so are 1sec rank 1 frostbolts that can freeze the flag carrier for 5secs. now add in that "All spells have 50% chance to crit while the target is frozen" And you have an amazing increase in DPS.
Arcane/Frost would be nice but you are just making your mage more durable. While taking a huge decrease in what your dps could be.
So you would be willing to spend 5 points in fire just to have a 2 second stun 10% of the time? I would rather have those points in arcane for resistance modifiers so you can easily sheep.
You can still go 17/34 for a exteremly solid shatter build with ICS. I was never disappointed with a frost nova, CoC, cold snap, frost nova CoC into IAE(which is now standard, but you can get 6% crit on the new "IAE"). Iceblock is great in group pvp, 1vs1 it is lacking as nothing but a reactive measure. Ice barrier is nice, but only for hold back interrupts. They've retooled it to be more of an every fight measure, and it goes well with cold snap in emergency situations. I may have to go back and try the new ice barrier as for me being able to use once in a 2 minute span, then be forced to cold snap it back was a bit drastic for a few hundred more hp. Hell I think I would trade +crit or +damage for the ability to put my ability to resist interrupts for a spell tree at 100% with talents further down. Not being able to stand and fire off spells, you are always reduced to using talents, or instants which are on cooldowns and very mana inefficient.
Also correct me if I'm wrong but targets inflicted with frostbite, only have a +50% chance to crit on frost spells.
edit:
(no looking at the notes it is all spells) Which actually changes my mind about a elemental build. Heavy crit talents in fire, and a solid build for shatter may not be too bad after all...
I would also like to agree about the 1 second frostbolts. I've been able to snare a running druid between increased range frostbolts and frostbite enough to catch up to them. Blink mana cost withstanding, it's a great maneuver to get up to a runner.
edit: Damnit, now I'll be up to 30-40g even with the free respec to try heavy elemental crit lol.