I'd be surprised if it isn't. I can go pretty much all out on Broodlord w/ full NW and trinkets and I take around 3 Blastwaves a fight.

Blast Wave does have a deaggro component. It isn't large one, but it very much deaggros. I've seen aggro switches following a Blast Wave with no other explanation for them, though they are rare.

I was under the impression that Broodlord's deaggro is single target and called knock away or something ?

But then again, I always thought that all knockbacks has a deaggro, so I guess I already have my answer.

Yes, when people talk about Broodlord's deaggro, they mean the single-target Knock Away that roughly halves the current tank's aggro. Blast Wave has nothing resembling that magnitude of effect, but it is a deaggro. Every knockback in the game is.

the issue with mage agro seems to be a problem in older designed fights. excluding ouro.

instead of of giving mages a flat out deagro maybe its blizzards intention to keep making bosses like the first 6 in aq. which were much more enjoyable and a challenge then bwl.

for example cant mages pretty much just go all out vs sartura because she swaps agro so much people just need to keep a heads up when they are the target and start running like hell.

I think if mages don't get an active form of deaggro, perhaps not in tier 3 gear but in the next set of gear it will not be worth it to bring them for encounters at all.

Warrior hate is not going up a tremendous amount imo - their mitigation is getting better and the hate they get from damage is going up, but primarily their hate comes from special moves which have a fixed amount of threat, correct?

Rogues and Hunters (especially Hunters, though) are not terribly concerned with aggro due to having active moves to lower it. Rogues can only wipe theirs once per fight, but generally once is enough.

What is the breaking point for bringing mages to fights? When they do 1/2 the damage of your rogues/hunters? 25%? When the wipes are all because a mage pulled aggro? At some point, it simply won't be worth it to bring them aside from 1 or 2 for water and buffs.

Exactly...

And whilst AQ40 bosses can be taunted, and generally don't have de-aggro moves, it's still very easy for a mage to pull aggro with normal, non aggro damage, upon which your raid is wiped and dead. Meanwhile, the rogues still do more damage and don't pull aggro...

I also hate the fact that 3 piece NW will be worn by every mage until the end of time now. Wonder if it takes effect before or after the Arcane Subtlety talent.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

mages not being taken to raids is a pretty hefty stretch and you can use the same logic on other classes.

for example if the bosses dont frenzy and arnt agro sensitive is there any reason to bring a hunter? if hunters didnt have tranq shot how many would raids actualy need.

I think the real problem that bliz should get away from which wont be easy is stacking classes vs certain bosses. one of the most recent visci pictures I saw from an alliance guild was 8 druids and 7 mages around thats 15/40 raid spots to 2 classes.

Well, it's +611 to Fire (I think I'm around +540 to all when I go that route), not to +all damage, but yeah, I'm pretty sure you could get higher than this if you wanted to. I usually don't wear this set, though, because it's only optimal for LOL hueg numbers. It's not exactly the most efficient. Also, my numbers include enchants, obviously (although not the exalted ZG shoulder enchant ;_;). I was mostly just throwing out a number I knew was definitely achievable.

Keep in mind that with that set, I have only 3460 unbuffed HP. For my PvP set I sport more +crit (usually +8 from gear), around +500 spelldamage and 3750 or so unbuffed HP.

Even epicly geared warriors still take enough damage (and through use of weapons like maladath and edge of chaos, do enough damage) to maintain enough rage where the limiting factor to threat generation is basically the global cooldown.

I played in beta when mages had invisibility and it added a seriously cool element to the game, even though i didn't play a mage and got lol'd by a pyroblast from a target at range that I couldn't see untill the spell was well on its way. Allowing it back in the game now would take some design work, but I agree with Gurgthock that an active agro management system would allow DPS classes to take on a more challening role in raiding, on the level with main tanks and healers.

But the long arduous road to ballancing something like that is not in the cards with what blizzard has on its plate yet to develope. :-(

You guys have shitty tanks; I forget the exact number but Gurgthock can back me up here, I did about 2% total damage than anyone else in the raid to Huhuran one AQ clear a month ago or something. No tranquil air totem, full raid buffs and potions, used my trinkets twice, hell even got power infused and the whole fight she stayed on the MT. Granted most every melee DPS class was standing inside her in NR gear but that only accounts for where I placed on DM’s (1#), the point is I was doing ape shit DPS trying to pull agro for comedy sakes and couldn’t. Honestly when an EJ MT gets something on them it’s pretty much stuck there for a good long while, baring the pre-requisite agro sensitive fights.

All of that said I’m slightly entertained at all of this considering how the change from encounters went from BWL to AQ; with the emphasis moving away from aggro control and aggro capping (BWL) towards raid DPS, movement, and compete raid healing (AQ). From a mages prospective especially it’s extremely interesting to go from one zone to the next back to back and see my role change and thus how I have to react and interact with the different encounters. I guess my point is I’d personally be more up in arms about this if I was being asked to go Am full time or being told to stop DPSing on any boss inside of AQ or really even BWL these days.

The reality of flat non-scaling specials, minimal white damage bonuses towards threat generation, and bosses completely immune to taunt dose not paint a wonderful imagine of the future but I’d honestly like to think Blizzard pays people very well to think about and hand just such a problem.

Mages give 465 mana, and the 31 int does give a different amount of spell crit to each class.

Remember Rogues need to be healed since most bosses each some sort of environmental damage. Mages don't need much in the way of heals, so there is a lot of use in that. 3 Netherwind helps in aggro generation, but I believe it works better on lower rank spells.

Also making 1 mage make water and buff the whole raid is cruel.

Since aggro discussion is a part of this thread I won't feel like I'm derailing too badly by responding to this.

Yes, I can spec 30 points into Master Demonologist to get a 20% deaggro when I have my imp out. But here's what I would have to give up to do that:

1. +10% total damage from Shadow Mastery, the 26-30 talent in Affliction
2. Either instant-cast Corruption and Improved Life Tap (big efficiency loss there) OR Ruin (crit DPS loss)
3. If I have an imp out, that means I can't sacrifice a demon. I give up massive health regen, equally massive mana regen, or +15% shadow damage.
4. If I have an imp out, I can't have another pet out, which means I lose a heavy resistance buff (felhunter), +10% to all damage from succubus, or substantial physical mitigation (VW).

Basically, even ignoring efficiency downgrades, anything I do to spec into MD and get the 20% deaggro ability is going to equate to a 10% DPS nerf. I'd rather have the option of nuking harder when I can and learn (admittedly, sometimes pretty slowly) when to hold myself back a bit.

Would you spec Arcane if it had a 26-30 point talent that said, "Applies an aura to the caster. While active, this aura reduces the threat generated by the caster by 4/8/12/16/20%, while reducing the amount of damage done by their spells by 2/4/6/8/10%." That's basically what MD is for aggro management, and for a 30-point talent I find it very disappointing.

And as for Nemesis, it's nice. But at least 35% of my damage comes from Affliction spells in a normal short fight, and that can go up to 40% or even a little higher in longer ones. Either I stop using Corruption and Siphon (which, aside from lowering my damage, also makes me less efficient) or I build a fair bit of threat without modification. Neither of these options are particularly nice, but I don't see any way to change things without greatly altering game mechanics.

The current maximum fire damage you can achieve is 760, but that's pretty gimp with 3.3k hp and about 5k unbuffed mana :)

While warlocks can get 776 shadow damage with 4.1k health. Giav warlock stamina on our gear.

The burrower bracers are a perfect example of how crap our gear progression sometimes is.


Oh and regarding warlock threat reductions, bartolimu nailed it nicely. You won't find too many warlocks willing to go that far down the demonology tree, gimping their damage output, because of a aggro reduction that can be achieved anyway with a little caution.

How much mana does that 776 +damage warlock have? And how much +hit and +crit? At some point you're actually nerfing yourself taking more damage over crit, especially if you're Ruin build.

Its pretty stupid, hit is almost equal to crit for warlocks with ruin (almost due to effect of imp. sb) and is better for warlocks without ruin.

Those warlocks are dumb.

With Ruin, +1% crit will turn a 1k hit into a 2k crit. +1% hit will turn a zero-damage "resist" into a 1k hit. They both add the same amount of damage, roughly. If you don't have Ruin, then it's a complete no-brainer.

Everyone should want at least +4% hit so you don't get level-based resists against same-level foes, but most things that really matter are lv63, so you have a 17% resist rate, and anything that reduces that is good. The fact that is also makes stuff like Fear less likely to get resisted is a plus.

Completely ignoring hit as a warlock is a pretty stupid thing to do. I managed to pick up a neltharions tear just yesterday which will put me at 4 hit. I used to want raw damage to increase my dps but as i raid more and more, i find that my limiting factors (other than threat) are usually my mana pool (time lifetapping is time potentially spent shadow bolting) and full resists. Crit is nice but at the moment i dont have ruin so it isn't that big of a deal to me. Imp shadow bolt is nice however you can usually expect other warlocks to get it up there as well. You could count client/connection lag as a factor, though it's a problem solved through other means.

Speaking of +hit, is it true that during a crowd control (fear,polymorph) the game checks the crowd controlled targets resistance every second (every 2 seconds for fear, gg unreliable sheep) and if the target resists the effect breaks?

In the same context I read that +hit, spellpenetration, arcane focus and the suprssion talent etc helps this.

Any truth to this? Arcane focus sure seems to increase the polymorph duration.

Just quoting because thats like 90% of the reason mages pull agro (most of the time)

Now with the talent calculator up... I dont feel as bad about the changes.

From my frost PoV, the changes to frost... where not too bad. Lets me spec 31/20 instead of 33/18... but well, I look at the arcane tree, and I wonder why I spec more then 10 points into it.

The new mage armor talent, the new AE talent... A gaint waste. Although imp CS is nice to have (PvE and PvP) and full arcane med would help me PvE wise, I still wonder if I should just get Imp fireball (for the times I have to shoot fireball at the mobs) and Winters Chill are a better trade off.

Guess need to test it some more.

While %hit is a good stat, they're partially right. %hit is more valuable, relatively, to a Frostmage than to a Warlock. A talent that many people overlook in this dicussion is Improved Shadow Bolt. A crit for a Warlock adds four times 80% extra damage, or 80% extra damage on a crit, assuming every Warlock in the raid does roughly the same damage.

Imp. Shadow Bolt's design makes it an awesome talent, as it applies to dots but does not use up charges. Essentially, in one crit you could gain 20% on four different Warlock's Shadow Bolts, plus a few ticks of 20% extra Corruption damage. This actually brings Imp. Shadow Bolt's bonus higher than 20%. The only thing lowering it's power slightly is the fact that if one of the next four Bolts crit, you lose the remaining charges of the old debuff. With standard Warlock crit rates though, you're still looking at 70%ish extra damage on a crit, from a tier one talent. With Ruin on top of that, a crit is worth 270% of a regular hit, or 170% extra damage. In comparison, hit is worth slightly more than 100% extra damage (as you're improving your hitrate from 87 to 88, rather than from 100 to 101).

What I'm trying to address here, is that most equipment slots have some sort of choice between pure damage, hit and damage, and crit and damage. For instance, if you have Ruin and Imp. Shadow Bolt, Mish'undare actually offers more DPS than Doomcaller's Circlet (35 damage 2 crit vs 33 damage 1 crit 1 hit). Another example is that the BQ nuker staff is a better choice than SotSF for Mages, but not necessarily for Warlocks.

Hit isn't less valuable for Warlocks than Mages, but crit is more valuable.

Edit: Typo'd a number.