Continuation from this thread:
http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=6825

http://www.sigilguild.net/hamlet/Mage.xls

Don't have time for the full explanation right now. It basically works the same way as the old one.

To play with it, edit the shaded boxes on the first page, and it will output your theoretical damage in whatever lengths of combat you want. Computations for the two parallel setups are in pages 2 and 3. You can look at these pages to see which casting cycles are being counted as optimal for each setup.

Since last time:
Added Fire spells and talents. I don't know much about Fire Mage casting patterns in raids; I guessed at which possibilities I would have to cover.
Adjusted to account for the fact that Clearcasting does not proc on misses.

Limitations:
--Resists (except for the level-based hit roll) are not included in any fashion.
--Doesn't include any set bonuses
--Doesn't include any timers (PoM, AP, Combustion, or Trinkets)
--As a result of the above two, doesn't incorporate Pyroblast in any way (btw, what's the +damage coefficient for Pyro?)
--Stacking properties of Ignite are ignored; Fire crits do 2.1 damage (also, Fireball gets one tick of the mini-DoT).
--Imp. Scorch is not modeled in any serious way; it's a flat increase to Fire damage

In general, due to the complications of trying to condense information into one measure of DPS, it's much more informative to look at the back pages and get some intuition for where the differences between setups come from, rather than looking only at the final output.

intresting, fire for alliance is always dps dominant, as long as JoW/BoW/Kings is applied. For Horde, ice is more superior the longer the fight.

How depressing.

On a 3 minute fight, I'd do 15K more damage as an alliance mage compared to a horde mage. (20% more damage).

On a 6 minute fight, I'd do 30K more damage as an alliance mage compared to a horde mage. (21.5% more damage).

On a 10 minute fight, I'd do 51K more damage as an alliance mage compared to a horde mage. (24.5% more damage).

Of course, this is assuming that the mob has JoW on it, and that I don't have mana spring totem (which I generally dont). Even so - can anyone honestly think these numbers are approaching sense?

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Anywho - spreadsheet is really helpful, thanks very much Arawethian. Pretty much compares my belief that Fire's higher DPS only comes on trash mobs where you can fireball - for my level of gear, it seems that scorch / AM has almost identical damage output on a fight lasting 3 minutes or longer to frostbolt. And frost comes with a whole whost of better utensils for raiding compared to fire - Ice Barrier, Ice Block, Improved Blizzard etc.

Seem's Fire doesn't have much place in the game if you go raiding, unless you like burning up the damage meters on trash mobs. Outside of Huruhan, where exactly do you need an extra 6K damage over 60 seconds? (And after doing that, your DPs drops through the floor once the fight lasts longer than 60 seconds).

Also interesting to note that if you are frost specced, it is never worth using a Clearcasting proc on Arcane Missiles. You always deal more damage over any length of fight by just casting another frostbolt as far as I can see.

The number of fights where Paladins can realistically keep JoW up for the entire duration of the encounter is steadily decreasing. So don't QQ too much. Sure it helped in BWL where bosses pretty much sat in one spot and let themselves be killed, but is that really relevant now? Sacrificing one Paladin to melee any given boss in AQ40 would be silly.

Skeram - wipes debuffs on port
Family - maybe Vem, largely irrelevant
Sartura - go ahead and have that Paladin in melee with her soaking healing
Fankriss - Paladins too busy healing AoE'ers
Huhu - Paladins not in melee
Twins - Vek'nilash immune to magic, 10yd on Vek'lor dangerous but doable
C'Thun - maybe
Ouro - Paladins too busy healing
Viscidus - Paladins too busy casting Cleanse

So there you have the danger of putting too much stock into completely analytical discussions like this; often times they don't take the practical application of many variables into account.

I saw that too.

Looking at Fire spec, it seems better to cast Fireball rather than AM as well.

Requitas, theres talents in the main Paladin tree that extends JoW length to 40 seconds. Given that Judgement is on a 10 second cooldown with a 20 yard range, there's no reason why you can't have it up on almost any fight. JoW is not just a melee ability. (And yes, that obviously costs more mana. However, Paladins running out of mana is a concept I think we're all familiar with, along with flying pigs... :) ).

And I'm aware that it's not feasable to have it up on all mobs all the time. But, where it is (and you can put it on most mobs with one Paladin specced that way), adding it on greatly improves the DPs of your entire raid significantly. You would be foolish *not* to have someone doing it on any fight where the length is 3 minutes or longer.

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Re. the maths - yes, I think a colum is needed for the detailed breakdown of what happens when you scorch continously on a boss, and when yo scorch / CC proc Fireball. I think they are better estimates of what firemages actually use on fights nowadays. (Although I'm clueless myself - Iceblock forever!).

What it also says to me is that an Elementalist Build just isn't worth it. CC seems so integral to both builds for fights of any length, going without it for PvE is madness.

Whatever Brilliance. The point is that it's not up 100% of the time like a spreadsheet would have you believe.

Thanks for taking the time to refute my post point by point and actually miss the overall theme of it. Can't get anything by you.

Well, I am trying to prove you wrong. You say you dont, I am pointing our on how we have wisdom up 100% of the time on the bosses. (Visc being an execption, but thats a diffrent fight)

Fucking Paladins.

Interesting spreadsheet. You wouldn't straight fireball as a Fire mage, since you need to mix in Scorches in order to keep it active (not to mention: mana) which would lower DPS; but then, Combustion and rolling ignites would pick it up a bit more. It probably averages out to be about the same.

Is there any way you could incorporate Major Mana Potion use to it as well? I think it's pretty much what you need for a Horde fire mage. I know I go through them at a quick rate.

Yes, that would be a *brilliant* addition - mana pots might make fire a lot more viable as a Horde mage. Cause atm, it doesn't look like being a great deal from frost...

Re. the Paladin thing - Requitas, Brilliance's point is that JoW is easily placeable on almost any fight. Again - its a 20 yard range ability, with a 40 seconds duration, to a class that has more mana to play with than almost any other. Logically, keeping it on a mob can;t be *that* difficult, and every piece of maths done on the issue seems to say it gives your hunters, mages and warlocks a substantial increase in damage. If you *can* put it on most mobs, then there really is no defense for it being around in such a broken form.

I thought the range of a judmement was 10yd. Am I forgetting a talent or something?

you can judge light on the melee emp, hmm news to me.

More importantly - mana potions would be a fantastic addition to this spreadsheetm as would constant scorch spamming routines, and scorch / fireball routines.

I'd ask for non CC'ing numbers as well, but I think thats too much to ask! :)

Used to be 1 (i.e., gets 100% of your +fire damage gear). IIRC, Blizzard changed this to 6 / 3.5, but I'm not 100% sure.

Youy get 100% of your damage bonus on the initial blast, and then a further 70% of your damage bonus added to the DoT as well - it get's a BIG boost from + to damage gear.

Or so I though thats what our Pally's were doing. We had them toss a fresh Judge each port. Maybe I was not paying attention well enough to the melee one (since I shoot the caster :P) but all I know is I had wisdom for the entire fight.

I haven't done twins in a while (no time to raid), but I'm pretty sure that Vek'nilash was bugged and could be judged, at least at one point.

Heh. I just realized it's my twins that are keeping me from doing the twins. Exhausted parent humor :)

Ok, added in a Sc7/FrB12 pattern. It does seem a better initial cycle (before you hit 0 mana) than Sc7/AM8.

In general, I need to find a better way to pick out the optimal cycle automatically. Right now I'm just listing what I think are all the reasonable options (both for zero-mana and for starting) and taking the maximum, and there are probably cases where I've missed one. For example, my thinking is very JoW-centric. Will look into that.

Nah, it's pretty true that JoW doesn't come into play all that often as Requitas argued. How many bosses do you go all out dps on the entire time, only stopping to evocate or regen mana?

On Skeram I don't even need to Evocate, really. Renewing JoW on him and all of his adds after every split is largely a waste of effort and makes little-to-no difference in my dps. Sartura and the Bug Trio are two fights where it definitely helps, and Fankriss as well. On Huhuran I don't see how it would be possible to go all out until 30% without pulling aggro from the tanks, so mana isn't the limiting factor. If your guild is anything like mine, mages are on bug duty during the Twemps, and mana isn't much of a problem there either.

No one is disputing that the Paladin buffs give alliance mages an edge when it comes to mana-efficiency and thus dps, but the figures that Maledict posted are without a doubt exaggerated with regards to the vast majority of boss fights out there.

EDIT: Never mind, I get it.

Very Intresting data collected from this.

Not very good with excel so I hope these questions/suggestions aren't redundant.

Some things I would like to see if possible.

A graph of damage over time with multiple builds on them. Would be cool to see the crossover point is for fire, ice and arcane.

An option to allow trinkets such as ToEP, ZHC, Mind Quicking Gem, etc.

Add AP as an option and POM. Would be really nice to know for short short turn dps although i dont think you're aiming for that in the spreadsheet.

Some Questions

What is "Short" on your DPS scale there?

Did you take into consideration stacking Ignites and fireball dots (lol)

Is there a way for me to take scorch as my main spell for the entire fight? Im thinking you took fireball for dmg calculations whenever you had the scorch debuff up.



You asked how firemages played.

Goes like this.

Wait for enough Aggro
Fireball Spam or scorch spam depending on spec
Use Timers
Fireball Spam or scorch spam depending on spec

Or for the Super nonefficent pew pew pew fire mage and of course throw timers as always in there.
Fireball
fireblast
fireball
fireball
fireblast
fireball
fireball
fireblast

or change it with scorch with

fireblast
scorch
scorch
scorch
scorch
fireblast
scorch
scorch
scorch
scorch
fireblast
scorch
scorch
scorch
scorch

I think that Fire mages will play a little differently after the patch. Main thing being that Imp. Scorch is now cheaper to get a 100% proc, so assuming Imp. Scorch gets its priority fixed, you could conceivably cast as follows (given 3/8 NW):

1. After the tank gets one or two hits in, spam Rank 1 Scorch to get 5/5 Imp. Scorch debuffs or until sufficient aggro is established, whichever takes longer.

2. Cast 9 Fireballs.
3. Cast Scorch
4. Repeat from 2.

Of course, the way priority is now, Imp. Scorch ranks with Deep Wounds and Fireball in terms of priority, so without a full-time Scorch spammer, it doesn't stay up. Grrr.

Depending on your gear/spec you might want to change things up for efficiency's sake or maximizing trinkets. This goes especially for Ignite chaining and using Combustion/Fireblast. Usually you'll use Scorches and Fireblast to try and prolong those uber Ignite strings since Scorch, Scorch, Fireblast is 3 spells in 3 seconds... decent odds of adding at least one more Ignite to the stack, which buys you 4 more seconds of burning.