@ Kalgan

Q u o t e:
Yes thank you for the break in the silence.

Biggest Questions right now ?

1. Blink will it be fixed ?
2. Polymorph what happen'd to it ? Now turtling/piggy doesn't work either?
3. Does Slow also Slow cast time ?

(might have missed a couple but these the things that all my mage buddies and i constently talking about)

beside locks but that a whole 'nother can of worms

Thanks really Kalgan !!

1. Sadly, no promises. There are some limitations with our pathing system that cause the kinds of problems with blink you're talking about, and unfortunately this is no small problem to solve. This is still on our to-do list to solve, but unfortunately it isn't right around the corner. We haven't given up though, which is why we haven't put the word "Usually" at the beginning of the tooltip. :/

2. Recasting polymorph on a target is intended to succeed if and only if it will successfully extend the duration of the effect. In all other cases it shouldn't allow the recast (and shouldn't take your mana, this part is a bug). An expected failure case would be where you polymorph a player target and attempt to recast it on the target when (due to diminishing returns) the recast would actually cause the effect to lose duration (ie: it has 12 seconds to go, but recasting would cause the duration to drop to 6 seconds due to diminishing returns).

3. Yes, Slow also slows cast time.

Q u o t e:
Couple quick questions:

1. Will Arctic Reach affect range on Ice Lance?
2. Will Ice Flows affect cooldown on Water Elemental?
3. Can you have more than 1 stolen buff at a time with Spellsteal?

Thanks so much.

Yes, not atm (won't rule it out just yet), no.

Q u o t e:
Kalgan, are you guys planning to give arcane missles and the empowered talent another once over to perhaps increase arcane spells' dps output? Also are you guys more or less set that invisibility's current form is the way to go, or are you guys open to lessening or changing its restrictions, mainly im addressing the 8s fade time which has been the source of a lot of commotion on these forums for some time now.

1. We intend for Arc Missiles to have the highest dps of the nukes if you're spec'd with Empowered Arc Missiles, but at the cost of mana efficiency. In addition, it also has the potential for extremely low threat generation because of Arcane Subtlety. With the current values in BC, it seems to fit that bill pretty well.

2. Right now we're sticking with the 8sec fade time on invis, as the spell is intended to serve a few purposes.
a. Gives the mage a complete threat wipe once you finish fading (but the 8 sec fade is intended to make it come at the cost of 8 seconds worth of dps, since you're not intended to liberally go pew pew pew, poof, pew pew pew).
b. Gives the mage the potential to be untargetable by others at the start of a group pvp skirmish (assuming they don't have detect invis, which they definitely won't always have).
c. Gives the mage some potential for skipping content, but not without limit.

Q u o t e:
Few more if you don't mind:

1. Will the fire damage from Molten Armor impact and/or ignite?
2. Will Molten Armor proc damage from spells and/or ranged attacks? (like lightning shield does)
3. Will dots placed on a victim before 20% life deal more from Molten Fury after the victim falls below 20%?
4. Is Ice Lance really 1.5s cast time? (There are rumors of it being instant cast).

1. Yes.
2. Not atm (being considered, no promises).
3. No.
4. It's currently instant cast in testing, although it's proving to be somewhat problematic as instant cast with no cooldown.

Q u o t e:
*sneaks in real quickly* If these questions have been answered elsewhere and I've missed the answers, feel free to ignore them. :)

1. Does spellsteal remove the beneficial effect from the target (ie purge the buff), or simply copy it to the mage?

2. Does spellsteal grab a random buff or simply the most recent one cast? (Do we have control over which buff we take?)

3. Can spellsteal be used in every situation that dispell magic/purge can be? (I'm thinking of raid bosses that cast some pretty powerful magic self-buffs.)

4. We keep hearing rumors about changes to spells that aren't updated on the official blizzard BC spell page. Is there any way you could tell us about the current mechanics (example invisibility cast time, ice lance being instant, etc.)? Alternatively, when might the blizzard page be updated?

5. Just out of curiousity, do the current spell scales continue for spells beyond level 60? What I mean is fireball/frostbolt/blizzard, etc. all have a methodical progress of dmg and mana cost. Does that scale change for post level 60 ranks?

1. It removes it from the target too.
2. Yes, it grabs a random buff (among any that are steal-able).
3. Yes, although some buffs aren't steal-able (the rule of thumb is that they'd have to have to make sense as working on the mage when stolen).
4. Yes, things get tweaked and retested quite a bit.
5. The scaling from 60-70 is pretty consistent with the scaling that came before.

Q u o t e:
Absolutely phenomenal to see direct discussion with the community... and it's a total thrill to see some of the motivation behind not-so-obvious mechanics like you mentioned with shadowfury in the other thread. I have a few questions along similar lines, namely the change to threat in the fire/frost trees.

1.) Was the change to the talents made with the intention of Invisibility's aggro dump compensating?
2.) Are the changes to Burning Soul and Frost Channeling finalized?

I know on a personal note, pre-1.11 my largest irritation with the class was the increase of downtime that came with better gear. I felt that these talents were the best changes during our review, and I would argue that for the most part, aggro control is largely trivialized for most classes, excluding maybe Warlocks at this point in time. It makes me very nervous and excited to see several raw damage increasing talents, and to also see our aggro control becoming more difficult.

Two other quick ones, first from your comment earlier on Arcane:

3.) Are the developers pushing for Arcane to take a position in the primary raiding role of the mage? Is this what we should be reading from the superior threat management and potential dps straddled with the mana control talents offered in the tree?

And finally:

4.) Are we going to continue to see the trend of less aggro dependent fights like we see in late AQ40 and Naxx? :)

Thanks a ton!

1. We feel like we went a little too far with the aggro control in the mage talent review, so part of it is toning that down a bit and part of it is ensuring the aggro dump component of invis is meaningful.

2. Pretty much. We want aggro control to be a meaningful issue for high-output nukers, I definitely prefer that you feel both nervous and excited.

3. Arcane nuking should have a role for mages that talent that way (low threat, high damage, low efficiency), but I wouldn't necessarily say it's supposed to take over as the "primary position".

4. I think it's safe to assume there will be both aggro dependent and non aggro dependent fights.