I wouldn't say just Living Bomb. On most single target dps fights if you add up the damage from damage over time, it will be around 30-40% of our damage, with a majority of it coming from ignite/living bomb. So for comparison sake, you would need to compare mastery effecting 30-40% of our damage to what others are receiving to make a valid argument.

This might be the wrong place for this question so feel free to move/delete if it doesnt belong here.

How good is Core of Ripeness Core of Ripeness - Item - World of Warcraft compared to other trinkets. I realize that spirit is a useless stat for us mages. but seeing as intellect seems to be so far and beyond any other stat is that trinket simply an option just because of the int it provides?

Hello all, I have been following the mages thread for a while now, and i have one question about some of our stats.

1. Is it ever ok to be slightly under hit cap in order to add more Crit, or just int? Currently, I am .47% under hit cap and have had to reforge most of of my gear to achieve this, and have a few hit gems.

2. Is there such a thing as a crit cap? I am sitting at 26% or so with Glyphed Molten Armor, and about 31% in raid, but I think I am missing a crit buff still with our 10 man comp. Just wondering if there is ever a point where crit loses in scale compared to other stats

3. Since mastery is slightly higher than haste, would we always want to reforge haste into mastery if we are at that 512 number? It would seem the next level of extra DOT tick is unattainable.


Thank you!

PS: This was my first post on the forums, and I think I followed all the rules but please let me know.

Has there been any solid theorycrafting on trinkets for the various specs?
I'm debated between heart of ignacious and theralion's mirror as affliction and considering that mastery ia quite a decent stat as affliction (around 1.4 coefficient if I recall correctly), i'm not so sure to give up my second trinket slot for ignacious (the first is pretty much reserved for the darkmoon card trinket, as soon as I manage to find the last cards)...

First thank you for the guide and the comments

I was mostly playing Combat, and decided to try Assasination spec shortly before Cata hit.

Haven't really finished with fine tuning or getting used to the spec, yet a lot of the suggestions here, have been intuitive and easy to understand, so thank you.

I have found it very hard to switch from Combat to Assasination. The main problem I encountered is that, you cant sync your attack keys as you did in Combat. So the following is mostly for people who likewise might be switching specs and problems they might encounter.

I had two main buttons macroed in combat spec

/cast [stealth, button:2] Garrote; [stealth] Cheap Shot; [button:2] Eviscerate;Sinister Strike
and
/cast [button:2] Slice and Dice; Rupture

The second i kept and changed the first to
/cast [stealth, button:2] Garrote; [stealth] Cheap Shot; [button:2] Envenom;Mutilate

Obviously i could switch Garrote and Cheap Shot and more, however i feel with the encounters in heroics especially, its sometimes difficult to assume you will be able to approach the boss from behind (if you can figure which way his back is, and depending on tank movement) as a default.

In any case Assasination spec is a lot healthier than Combat [less key spamming], yet the rotation seems very different. It seems the priority is to Envenom rather than Rupture.

As allready mentioned I too find it hard in encounters where there is a lot of adds to switch to, to keep up and gather enough to do significant damage.
Also on startup, i get 5 pts very quickly and still, instinctivly Rupture, which is ok but then it takes me a lot longer to start Slice and Dice (Mutilate costs more than SinisterStrike).

Keeping Slice and Dice up. Its not as long as it is in a Combat spec and is probably the reason we might prefer to Envenom than Rupture in Assasination spec, when in doubt or at 4 pts. I have also found it very demoralising coming from a Combat spec, the pitfall of the "assumption" that Slice and Dice will be refreshed with Envenom, to find my self 2 mins in the fight with no Slice and Dice active. It happens. More jingling with the macro/keys perhaps.

I have been looking a bit at Recount and my damage has been rather low regardless of spec so that makes the 1-2% extra that we can get through Assasination spec even more important. Its also understandable, because there have been a lot of changes in the talents too, so it will take a while.

Assasination is certainly not for a casual player. Overkill for example makes Stealth and Vanish more important, something worth using during a fight, which didnt feel that way before, apart from situations where u needed to get out of a snare or lose aggro if u made a mistake.

With the stretch healers are going through, their focus and priority has rightly returned on tanks and we need to be more aware of tactical situations during fights and use Cloak of Shadows, Feint and Combat Readiness. CoS we had before but Feint now reduces aoe damage received by 50% and likewise Combat Readiness another new ability which might help you stay alive if the boss switches on you.

We sure have our work cut out for us in this expansion and kudos to those that will manage and stay on top.

That's actually what I was interested in, I have heard that there is a haste cap for fire and was wondering if that was true.

Thanks Tyrian, that's what I was led to believe.

Another thought
I'm also curious about spirit, I understand that it's pretty useless for mages now but doesn't it still regen mana? If that's the case and you are over hit cap wouldn't it make more sense to use the blue gem for int and spirit rather than the blue gem for int and hit?

Everyone thinks everyone is overpowered right now, because the entire paper-rock-scissors balance has been turned around. If you take any class and look at their benefits while ignoring their vulnerabilities, they obviously look overpowered. Look at the logs from somewhere like World of Logs. You'll see plenty of fights where one class dominates it, but then if you move on to another fight its a different class dominating it. That said, I'd really like you to find one where feral cats are dominating it.


Usually the people in my guild I hear saying Feral's are OP are in Arena's or BG's, and there are a lot of things that Ferals can do to improve their survival rate. A lot of them keep beating on a feral when he switches to Bear and hits frenzied regeneration, instead of just CCing them in place.

Hey guys, I was out having a smoke and I started complaining to my roommate about all the haste on our tier gear. Then I got to thinking that even though haste is *probably* terrible now, if it might become better at a certain gear level.

So supposedly 1 mastery rating will give us a X% to proc an extra hit, and 1 haste rating will give us Y% shorter swing time to proc an extra hit. Now, assuming we have our base auto attack, and say a MS/4.5s, a OP/5s, and a CS every other one of those rotations, will 1 point in haste catch up to mastery rating in potency?

As in, before we hit 50 mastery and get 100% Strikes of Opportunity on every hit. I was just thinking that maybe once you proc the mastery MOST of the time, the extra swing you would accrue over such and such amount of time would be worth more than just getting one extra proc or something like that. I'm not talking about stacking ungodly amounts of haste- I'm saying that since haste itself get's better when our crit/mastery is higher, when does it reach(if ever) parity?

I imagine this takes like linear algebra which I have no patience for or, more likely now that I think about it, you just find how long it takes to get an extra swing out of such and such amount of haste rating and then plot it against a line for an equal amount of mastery... either way there's changing values at different amounts of mastery/haste and I haven't got a head for that.

If you've got an answer thanks! Otherwise, thanks for taking the time to read so long of a post haha!

PS. I posted in Warrior forums... and someone said to ask here- Thanks again!

I think you skim read, I'm asking about the import function.

Mark of Khardros - Item - World of Warcraft (Normal Mark of Khardros)

Might of the Ocean - Item - World of Warcraft (Heroic Might of the Ocean)

Would anyone agree that the normal version of the Mark of Khardros is still greater dps output overall than that of Heroic Might of the Ocean ?

The Mark gives a passive 252 strength, and a 1 min 30s cooldown of 1260 mastery, compared to the Might of the Ocean which is passive 285 hit rating, and a 1425 strength cooldown for the same amount of time and cooldown.

The Mark of Khardros increases frost damage by approximately 14% for the next 15 seconds, compared to a general damage increase for 15s of 1425 strength?

Would mastery be a greater benefit than a strength boost when it comes to direct damage?