Further 1.10 Changes

[Skandranon]

I don't know.  Dual trinkets was pretty bad, and in a sense it's better to do it this way, since it only nerfs the richest .01% of mages who have the dual trinkets and leaves the rest of the mages untouched.  Taking a queue from Artega, they nerfed the items rather than the class, which in this case was a good thing.
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Given that the mage review is due for 1.11, this may be an acceptable stopgap measure. But all it's doing is delaying the problems with Arcane Power, not solving them.

Spinning up some numbers for reference, let's take a mage who hits with a max-rank Pyroblast for the top end of its range - about 900 damage. Let us further suppose he's wearing the best of the best gear currently available in the game for +700 spell damage.

Double trinkets and Arcane Power: 2774 hit, 4161 crit. 5826 total damage after Ignite.
Just double trinkets: 2055 hit, 3082 crit, totalling 4315 damage after Ignite.
ZHC + AP: 2538 hit, 3807 crit, 5330 damage after Ignite.
Just Arcane Power: 2160 hit, 3240 crit, totalling 4536 damage after Ignite.

Double trinket + AP is crazy, no one denies that. Screenshots like that of your guildmate Vendetta show just how stupid things can get. One-shotting is something that doesn't belong in the game, because it's not fun for the person being one-shot, and because it almost voids any possibility of balance when one class can use all its abilities and other class simply doesn't get the chance.

But look at the numbers. Once you take AP out of the equation, the double-trinket shot doesn't look so fearsome. Even in non-stamina gear, 3082 damage max isn't going to one-shot someone. They'll have time to dispel the Ignite DoT or pop a potion or receive a heal.

The ZHC + AP line shows what's going to happen after 1.10. Without double trinkets, most mages will discard the trinket that provides the least burst damage, the Talisman of Ephemeral Power, and go with the Zandalarian Hero Charm. Add Arcane Power on top and what do you get? Virtually no change. The max crit is 300 damage less: the max total damage changes by under 500 points. If you were getting one-shot before, chances are you're still getting one-shot now. It hasn't nerfed richly geared mages at all.

The last line is the kicker. Take a gander at what Arcane Power does without trinkets. It turns out its effect is greater than both trinkets activated together, and just like double trinkets without AP, it's not one-shotting anyone. Ask yourself - is this an acceptable amount of damage to you? If it is, then double trinkets without AP is by the numbers, also acceptable. If this isn't acceptable, then once again the problem is with Arcane Power.

Of course, this is taking only the most geared mages into account. But is this fix really better for relatively poorly geared mages? Saying that only 0.01% of level 60 mages have both trinkets is an exaggeration (the percentage on Stormrage is well in excess of that, if that's really the case on Tich). To get TOEP you just need to be able to kill Magmadar - hardly a difficult task. To get ZHC you need to be able to kill Hakkar - more challenging, given the 1.9 changes, but again hardly absurd. To get +700 spell damage, you have to be able to clear Blackwing Lair on a regular basis, up to and including Nefarian to obtain both his staff and the cloak he drops.

For less well-geared mages, double-trinketing is far more damage than a simple activation of Arcane Power, and is one of the few ways to compete with BWL epic-geared warriors and rogues. This option has now been taken away, acting to widen the gap, not shrink it.

Let me suggest a gear set. Thuzadin Sash, Bloodtinged Kilt, Betrayer's Boots, Zanzil's Seal, Band of the Unicorn, Sandworm Skin Gloves, Robe of the Archmage, Zandalar Illusionist's Mantle, Crimson Felt Hat, Zandalar Illusionist's Wraps, Pebble of Kajaro, Rod of the Ogre Magi, and a cloak and wand of Fiery Wrath. This set is +278 to spell damage and requires going no deeper in Zul'Gurub than High Priest Thekal, and doesn't require going into Molten Core at all. It has one epic and three level 40ish greens. By most standards, this qualifies as pretty casual (you can even remove the epic by swapping the gloves and boots with the Rank 7 PvP rewards for those slots, which aren't too hard to get solo).

Pyro is 1178 with this set, critting for 1767 and Ignite burning for 2474.
Should this character pick up both trinkets and be able to fire them both, it would raise the Pyro to 1633, critting for 2449, 3429 with Ignite. Should this character have no trinkets, just pressing Arcane Power would raise the Pyro to 1590, critting for 2385, 3340 with Ignite.

Guess what? Even for mages geared solely out of Zul'Gurub, Stratholme, Scholomance, and Blackrock Spire, Arcane Power produces an effect roughly equal to double trinkets. If double trinkets are bad, then so is Arcane Power. If Arcane Power is okay, then so are double trinkets.

What they should have done to fix this is simply to make Arcane Power and trinkets not stack, nerfing only the even tinier percentage of players that have both trinkets and also AP and lots of spell damage. After all, those players were the only ones that were regularly one-shotting people anyway. This is, of course, a prelude to what I would hope to be a complete removal of Arcane Power in 1.11.

In a broader structural sense, I dislike Arcane Power (and judging from a long thread on the mage forums, so do others) because it's a weight hanging around the neck of Blizzard's design. Arcane Power hampers our damage by its very existence, since Blizzard must balance mage burst damage around the assumption that the mage in question is Arcane Powered. And, regardless of what it looks like, that's precisely how things are now. Even the top end crit of an AP double trinket pyro from a rich mage, as I outlined above, is 4161 frontend damage, which won't kill anyone of equivalent gear level unless they're another mage. Yeah, there are going to be fireblasts and cones of cold following, but they're not impossible to heal through/counter - just difficult.

The result of this assumption is that mage damage when AP is down or when the mage lacks AP is weak in PvP. As I outlined in the thread where you posted the screenshot of the 6k pyro crit, mage damage when getting beat on is pathetic. Any mage will tell you this: non-mages only remember the times when they get crit for 4k+. They don't remember the times when they attack a mage, the mage scratches them for about 20% of their total health and dies. Mages remember all those times and the sickening feeling of helplessness as they realize that if their target is either moving or beating on the mage, it will take fifty or more seconds to kill their target - and that the target will take rather less than fifty seconds to kill the mage. Presence of Mind causes a similar structural issue, just less severe.

Anyone who doubts that mage burst damage, outside of blowable cooldowns, is terrible, should duel any well-geared mage of their choice. Have them agree not to use AP, PoM, or any trinkets - and then see how often they win.