Dual Spell Schools Explained – Season of Discovery

Season of Discovery has brought with it a feature that may be new to many Classic veterans — the multi-school spell. The first example of this most players will run into is Living Flame.

Summons a spellfire flame that moves toward the target, leaving a trail of spellfire. This trail deals Spellfire damage every second to nearby enemies. Lasts 20 sec.

While the spell itself is fairly self explanatory, Spellfire damage might not be. Spellfire damage is a combination of Arcane and Fire damage, allowing it to effectively scale from both schools of magic.

Resistances

Dual school spells will utilize the targets lowest Resistance when calculating damage. In the case of Spellfire, this means if a target has 40 Arcane Resistance but 20 Fire Resistance, the spell will base itself on the targets Fire Resistance. This also goes for Immunities, a Fire immune target can still be hit by Spellfire damage, meaning Living Flame wouldn’t be unusable in Molten Core.

Spell Power

Dual school spells scale from Spell Power of either of the relevant schools. In the case of Spellfire damage, that means that either your Arcane damage or Fire damage will be used, but never both. The highest of the two will be used, meaning if you have 100 Fire damage and 90 Arcane damage it will be treated as if you have 100 generic Spell Power for the spell.

Talents & Hit

As dual school spells are treated as both schools simultaneously, this also allows talents that improve one school of magic to functionally improve both. This means that in the case of something like Living Flame, Arcane Focus will reduce the targets chance to resist it, while Fire Power will boost its damage.

Interrupts

One component for these spells is that if you are interrupted while casting them, you are locked out of the full school. This means that interrupting a Frostfire spell will lock the target out of both Frost and Fire spells. On the other hand, if you are locked out of Frost, but not Fire, you would be able to freely cast a Frostfire spell.

Physical Element Combinations

The combination of two schools of Magic has been decently common since Cataclysm, but the addition of a school of Magic combined with Physical damage is fairly recent and not commonly used, even in later expansions. When comparing against Resistance or Armor, combinations such as Stormstrike seem to favor whichever will lead to the highest damage, meaning it will check against Armor for squishy cloth wearers, and against Resistances for bulky plate wearers.

Duo Elements Available in Season of Discovery

All of these elements are found on items or spells in Season of Discovery, although not all of them are currently accessible to players.

Duo Elements Currently Unavailable in Season of Discovery

These combinations are currently not found on items or spells, but may be added in the future.