Dendory

I've seen a few thread about melee DPS scaling, but what about caster? I'm 65 now as a mage, and I was mostly in ZG/blue/MC gear. I replaced 3 items: chest, cloak, neck. My +dmg went up by 30. So my frostbolts are pretty much the same as they were at 60. I know a full tier 2 mage would not upgrade a single item by 65, based on everything I've seen drop. Does it get better by 67?

 

diospadre

no there is no caster loot in the expansion, wait until the northrend expansion in 2008

 

chase

New ranks of spells and gear and talents affect your damage output. Enpowered frostbolts should mean you are doing more than (81.4% of 30) damage alone. I think level 62 and 68 is where you learn your next frostbolt ranks. So you should have an upgrade by now.

Plus there is icelance and such. At end game all of our additional damage comes from gear, seeing as you (nor anyone else) are not level 70 and deep in the raids I think it is a bit early critique caster DPS scaling.

 

zepi

Well, the first mob that I killed in outlands dropped better lvl59 req green shoulders than my Netherwind ones... So I wouldn't count on that. +10sta, +3 int, -3dmg -4mp5... ok, better for pvp atleast.

In general I agree, most items I've seen don't seem to be worth upgrading to that easily, but some slots just have so shitty itemisation on live, that any green rag in beta seems much better for that particular slot. (I'm running with full T2 and few AQ40 drops+misc dmg items)

 

Hematite

I was geared in BWL/AQ40 and I've replaced a good portion of my gear going to 65. In Hellfire there's an elite quest which is easy to solo as a caster that rewards shoulders better than the Mantle of the Blackwing Cabal. I use the Kris of Unspoken Names and, while not the best weapon in the game, was a little sad to see something better than it in every single regard as a reward from Nessingways camp... that was green.

And don't forget damage isn't everything, you will need to phase out some of your damage gear for stamina gear. That word was need. I had a Hunter do 8k damage to me, through a tree (though, that goes without saying) without using his pet, and kill me in about 6 seconds. It seems to me the increase in stamina doesn't even comphensate for the increase in damage via talents/abilities, so be prepared to drop stuff for it.

 

Revenj

As a Priest I've already replaced most of my former shadow dmg gear with gear from quests. Ofcourse, keep in mind that the upgrades are marginal, and I only had overflow dmg gear from MC/BWL/AQ to begin with.

From wowwiki: ItemValue — the total value of the stats on an item.

I think whats happening right now is that the items we are seeing have a smaller ItemValue "pool". From this small pool, Blizzard is allocating most of the StatPoints to Stamina instead of +Damage.
However in lvl 70 instances, items will be given a bigger "ItemValue" pool, thus allowing other stats (like +Damage) to be included on the Item.

 

Mosh

I've replaced 8 out of 16 items at 66, and gained a total of about 3 +damage, and sacrificed a lot of crit (I play Affliction, don't need the crit), but in turn I'm now running with 8.5k hp with only Blood Pact. Our damage isn't increasing massively, but our HPs sure are.

 

radikal

I had naxx gear/FM gear going into the beta, pretty much shelved about half of it. Lost about 100 dmg and 5 crit, but now have about 6500 unbuffed hp at 67, and I can see how you could give up the FM bonuses, and maybe another 1-2 crit to gain another 1-1.5k hp easy.

One thing that has happened is that damage output for a lot of classes come from talents (or talent changes) and not so much from their gear.

If you're going to be PvP focused, as a mage, I would wager that even at 70 with balanced dmg/stam gear, you're not going to have more +dmg than a fully geared naxx mage currently. (720ish, 25-30crit etc) You will gain some dmg from talents if you go heavy fire and you gain nice upgrades in fireblast damage for sure -- it's too early to say but my instincts tell me the raiding fire mage of wow 1.0 (with huge dps, decent dpm because of MoE and high crit rate) is likely a thing of the past.

radikalnoise.com :: Dicks, Strats, Drama, eFame, and More Dicks
FH - LF 1 Baller PvE Mage
All noncrit DoTs (not Ignite) generate Combustion charges (Bug?)

 

Korhallen

The aim of the Blizzard team is to curtail the mudflation their current loot system was heading down. I doubt very much that you'll be anywhere near as powerful relative to the jump from t1->t3 as you go from t3->t4/5.

They're trying to slow the game down a bit, not speed it up even further.

 

Dinadass

Casters overall tend to be keeping roughly the same amount of +damage, even losing some, along with crit/hit, while picking up alot of hp. Meanwhile, melee are both gaining HP *and* more agi/str/AP/etc. This has me a little worried. I know casters get new ranks of spells and better talents... but so do melee. There's just no way that casters are gaining DPS as fast as melee are. Sure, battles will be more drawn out now in PVP, but that doesn't change the fact that it's just a longer loss for a caster rather than a shorter one.

 

Dendory

See that's what I don't agree with. If it's really Blizzard's intention to force us to lose +dmg so we upgrade to higher sta it wont work. Any mage that does mainly PvE won't change a dmg piece for a sta one.

I would never lose 100 dmg, even if I could gain 4k hp from it. Right now I'm at 3400 unbuffed, which is barely 100 more than at 60, and I don't have too much trouble killing mobs. For PvP, right now our dmg is the same as it was at 60, yet some classes like locks and hunters have increased by a huge amount. So in the little pvp I've done I've been less than impressed, but if it means I have to sacrifice my PvE role just to get higher sta and survive in PvP, then I just won't pvp with my mage.

 

• Chicken

That's really dependant on the encounter design. If we take Anub'Rekhan as example, but increase his Impale damage so it easily hits for 6000 or so, you'll need the higher stamina to be able to deal more damage. It's hard to judge whether stamina will be important in PvE before we know what to expect from the encounters, but it's not unlikely that if player health is expected to increase, that incidental damage will increase as well.

Of course, there'll also be encounters in which incidental damage is trivial to none, but I think even some of the current 5-man expansion content makes having a fair amount of stamina important; even if you're not the tank.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Cagalli

What shoulder are you using? Because I'm pretty sure I've seen 2 61-62 shoulders that are better than anything from ZG/MC. Their is also a +80dmg, 30stam/int lvl 61 (or 62) green staff which is also once again better than anything from zg/mc.

Also you should be able to get this very soon http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=756

You're 100% right.

http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=853
http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=3805

http://ctprofiles.net/37645

 

• Maestroquark

Can we get some actual substantial DPS reports back from TBC? Because I find this hard to believe, given that weapon ilvl to dps equation was toned down, glancing blow changes, and general higher % gains from talents on caster's parts.

So far the only advantage I've read about that you could give to meleers is that itemization is no longer shackled, you can now get Agi/AP.

What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?

 

Dendory

My gear is pretty low, let's see:

The Hexxer's Cover: +41 dmg.. So far I've seen nothing even close

Zandalar Illusionist's Mantle: +12 dmg

Zandalar Illusionist's Wraps: +12 dmg. While it's true both of those are pretty gimp, the set bonus gives +12. So far I'm still wearing both. I do expect to replace them by 70.

For chest I upgraded to that very nice +41 dmg one from the hellfire quest.

Flarecore leggings is +41 dmg, nothing better in BC so far except perhaps when you count in gems. Haven't counted that in yet.

Ringo's Blizzard Boots. +40 dmg.. again, nothing close.

Sandworm Skin Gloves: +27 dmg.. and that's a blue item from an easy quest, yet I'm still wearing it.

I had Sapphiron Drape which is quite bad so I upgraded that. But if I get Hakkar's cloak, that's gonna be hard to replace.

Mana Igniting Cord.. +25 dmg.. again still wearing that.

Again if I had to compare with Naxx stuff, it would blow the BC items out of the water. The main reason I can see upgrading those high +dmg items is for more crit and hit, since they changed the way it works to make sure 60 gear becomes obsolete. But I don't consider a +30 sta an incentive for me.

 

Hematite

It seems Blizzards intention is to get everyone to ditch their legacy gear and grab their new stuff which, in theory, is designed better. They could've just made it so players over level 60 gained 15 points of health from stamina or made this new stamina change retroactive, but purposely decided not to.


Good luck.

 

Dendory

Tell me what gaining even 2k hp would get me against such shots. I'm at 3400 hp so that would be 5400 hp, but I'd lose a large amount of +dmg. Surviving for 1 more multi-shot yet being about to frostbolt the hunter for 1200 dmg once more, doesn't seem like it would change the course of that fight.

 

zepi

First mob that I killed TBC beta was lvl61 Helboar. It dropped me green shoulders with lvlreq 59 with following stats compared to my Netherwind Shoulders:

green vs NW
23sta vs. 16sta
15int vs. 13int
18dmg vs. 21dmg
0mp5 vs. 4mp5


For PVP, I'd choose the Green Rags of "something" easily over my shiny Netherwinds.

Also, there was a quest available that would have given me shoulders with 19dmg, a bit over 1% of spellcrit at lvl60 and better stats than NW shoulders.

 

duostrike

I believe that caster +damage scaling is taken into account by the new spell ranks we get as we level. Once we hit 70 we'll most likely see +damage going up again. Seems fairly logical to me.

Now I don't know if they did the math properly to make the dps gains on the melee weapons match the new spell ranks but that seems to be the most likely explanation. I've never been overly confident in blizzards ability in this regard but we can't do much more than wait and see.

 

Mendoza

Blizz have already said that they allocate stats differently depending on whether the gear is designed for levelling or for raiding, and that the items people are getting at the moment shouldn't be taken as indicative of T4 for example. For that reason if nothing else this discussion seems a little silly until we actually see any end game loot.

That said, on a PvP server at least, the choice between 100 damage and 3-4k hp is a no brainer. Anyone hanging around in their old epics and losing loads of sta for the sake of a bit more damage is going to be a free HK. As for PvE, I'd be surprised if the mobs didn't hard enough to justify you wanting that extra hp, although admittedly I have no experience to back this up.

 

Dendory

Well I was looking at some Nagrand quest rewards. Here's stuff from the same lvl 65 quest:

http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=86
59 DPS gun

http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=757
+14 dmg wand

This is a downgrade from what I currently have from ZG. I never played a hunter so what is that hunter gun comparable to?

Obviously we'll get a much clearer picture when we start getting tier 4 from raids but I'm just commenting on the lack of useful stuff in the 60-70 range.

 

Boevis

Except you just ignored the 12 Crit rating and 113 DPS on that wand, make it closer in equivalence to something from Patchwerk http://www.thottbot.com/?i=53865 but yours is a bit better. You may not think the DPS on your wand matters, but from experience dueling, it will matter that you can do 113 DPS with Shadow damage even when OOM(increased by +% Shadow damage debuffs) Wands have always had terrible stats on them because of the dramatic increase to DPS it allows you to do when OOM, much like Catform when you're a resto druid and OOM :p

If you can't see how this wand is significantly better than anything from ZG, I think you might want to have some gear discussions with some more experienced Mages

That Gun is equivalent to http://www.thottbot.com/beta?i=2124 but also a bit better (All guns have recieved DPS increases in response to the AP/Crit changes to Hunters)

So iLevel 105 Blues are barely better than iLevel 81 Epics... That sounds about right, 65 Is about when Raiders will start upgrading their gear.
So you're entire PvP philosophy relies on not being surprised or dying? In PvP I would always rather have 100 more health than +18 damage 1% Hit (Hat enchants) The same extends to the grand scale where I'd give up 720 damage (approximating the value of 1% hit) for 2000 health

 

Dendory

Yes I ignored the dps, because really does a mage use a wand that often in PvP? I sure don't.. So having 85 instead of 113 dps on a wand is not the main issue.

As a mage, yes I rely on killing as fast as I can. That's why most PvP mages take PoM, because mages are easy kill, any class can kill a mage very fast, so we have to kill them first. When you turn that into a long lasting fight, then we have real problems. Even if we add sta, we still don't have the armor etc to be like a melee and take hits.

 

Deathstorm

Simply because that item doesn't fit your exact preferences doesn't detract from the value of that item, it's a quest reward you get while leveling and it's a pretty sexy one at that.

And survivability doesn't translate into more kills for you? A good mage can actually survive pretty well, if you wish to be a glass cannon there's copious amounts of +damage cloth at your dispol right now but you'd ultimately be no better off than a green Fiery/Frozen wrath mage in live no?

 

Copernicus

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/en/75297770.htm