4.1 Mage Changes

So the arcane blast damage increase has been replaced with a .35 second decrease in casting time. Also the AE damage has been increased by 30%, not 13%. Nice.

The Ice Lance buff was still in red, although last update that was announced. The frostbolt buff was oddly colored black for some reason.


/Discuss
With the decreased cast time in Arcane Blast, I'm assuming that haste won't be as valuable to them anymore. Arcane Mages would probably go for a different stat, like crit or mastery.

Right/Wrong ?
Yeah, I'm not sure with the stat priorities now. Crit because of Arcane Potency won't really ever be that important. I think the % per mastery point needs to be increased with them. To like 1.75% or 2%. It just isn't worth it to prioritize that.

I still think haste will be a priority. But this change might lower the "soft cap" for Arcane mages
I have a major amount of extra Conquest points for the season (almost 9000 currently). When Patch 4.1 hits, I'm considering buying all Haste gear and trying out Arcane to see how the cast time changes work out. As far as PvE goes, Haste will definetly be less valuable, but it'll still be greatly valued in Arcane PvP as far as I can tell.
@Switch
I'm going to have to agree with the Mastery increase part. To me, I think that Arcane Mastery needs to be a little more viable to actually gem/enchant/reforge for.

The Crit one I'm confused on. Even with Arcane Potency, I don't feel that Arcane Blast crits often enough. I use Mage Armor all the time in Arcane (PTR, folks) so I could be doing it wrong, however.

Still deciding on what to do with Haste. I would much rather have AB hit harder then to go OOM faster.

@Artirius
I agree with you on the PvE part.

...and I also agree with you on the PvP part. While Arcane porbably won't be the top PvP spec for mages next patch, I feel that it will gain viability with faster casting time. That means you'll less likely get spell locked. In addition, Arcane Barrage is getting buffs slightly, so that helps.

With the Arcane changes, I might...

*looks around*

...try out Arcane PvP on the PTR and see what I think of it.