Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has certainly been busy providing us with changes coming to numerous classes. He outlined a nerf to hunter PvE damage yesterday and listed upcoming Death Knight changes today. Well, that's not all! Mages are getting some changes, too.

The buffs here are designed primarily to make Arcane more competitive with Fire / Frostfire builds in PvE. Because they could end up buffing Arcane in PvP, we are prepared to adjust the damage of say Arcane Barrage if needed, but we want to see these in action on the PTR first.

Ghostcrawler also said today they don't want mages taking a drastic lead in in PvE damage with the hunter nerfs. Read the full list of mage changes here or below.

The buffs here are designed primarily to make Arcane more competitive with Fire / Frostfire builds in PvE. Because they could end up buffing Arcane in PvP, we are prepared to adjust the damage of say Arcane Barrage if needed, but we want to see these in action on the PTR first.

Mage PvE damage in general is something we are keeping a close eye on. With the recent hunter changes, many of which were nerfs to PvE damage, we want to make sure mages now don’t break away from the pack of damage-dealing specs.

1) Evocation – cooldown reduced to 4 min.
2) Arcane Flows – now also reduces the cooldown of Evocation by an additional 1 / 2 min.
3) Arcane Blast – overhauled. Will now increase the damage of your next Arcane spell by 15%. However using Arcane Blast itself does not consume the charge, but instead increases the mana of your next Arcane Blast, up to a maximum of 3 stacks (and a 45% buff). You can alternate Blast and Barrage to keep buffing Barrage, or you can build Blast up higher for a heavy mana cost.
4) Torment the Weak – now works with Arcane Blast and does bonus damage to targets afflicted by any kind of slowing effect (e.g. Thunder Clap).
5) Elemental Precision – renamed Precision and now works on all spells.
6) Improved Blizzard – snaring effect reduced to 20/40/50%.

EDIT: We recently made the Arcane Blast stack 15/30/45% to your next Arcane spell.