Qwayfe

Two questions here:

Firstly, there was mention in the arcane thread that the 20% Arcane Blast damage buff only applies to base damage and does not scale with bonus damage. Anyone confirm/deny this?

More importantly, I'm wondering about the mechanics of the 4 slot bonus.
Is there a latent cooldown on the bonus?
Does the bonus stack?

In working out the gear I want from the tier 5 instances, I'm looking at an option between taking the set for its bonuses or gaining 8 spell damage and 44 hit elsewhere. So, yeah, any help would be appreciated.

 

Xenitan

From everything I've heard, its 20% extra damage, not just base.

And the 4 piece procs every time there is a crit with no internal cooldown. The bonus does stack I believe.

Yeah, T5 is a very, very well done set.

 

ewat

Er..Can somebody please confirm the 4 set bonus ‘stacks’? As much as we all want it to, I really don’t think it would (thinking scorch build here where obtaining near 50% crit isn’t hard at all ..it would just stack up something ridiculous and blow up ...

Edit – I would think it just refreshes the proc so chain crits just hold the +70 dmg ‘aura’ (not too shabby anyway).

 

Qwayfe

Seems somewhat excessive to me too, but there are two dodgy looking posts on Thott stating it. Wondering if I can confirmation or denial from a few people.

 

• frmorrison

I find it hard to believe the 4/5 Tier 5 stacks, most likely it would refresh the buff timer, instead of stacking. However, no internal cooldown seems fine (since it should not stack).

 

Darkchani

That's correct

 

◊ manly

The bonus would make absolutely no sense if it was stacking indefinitely, since arcane missle spamming would give quite retarded results.

 

Tyrian

I just put a selection of gear on to show u the results. I wont list my gear since its irrelevant if we are just comparing percentages.

Without 2 piece bonus

ab hits for 1560-1630
ab crits for 2750 - 2850

With 2 piece bonus: (swapping out spellstrike pants for tier 5 pants only, which is only a small damage difference)

ab hits for 1884 - 1995
ab crits for roughly 3300-3400

Conclusion? Its a flat +20% more damage. Yes, its amazing. They could reword the bonus to say (applicable to my spec/gear) 'Increase the damage of your arcane blast hits by 300 and crits by 500'. No item/set bonus upgrade in the history of wow comes close to the significance of this 2-piece for a single spell.. someone correct me if im wrong?

I do have one nagging question I would love a mage with 4-piece tier 5 to answer. Does the 4 piece bonus proc (+70 dam on crits) off individual Arcane Missile crits? Or only spells like AB/frostbolt/scorch etc? I hope it does, but after hearing the eye of magtheridon *doesnt* proc off AM I was a little worried AM might not proc the 4-piece bonus too?

 

Mirai

Just asked our mage.

Yes it does indeed procc of Arcane Missiles. Making the whole set even better in my eyes.

 

Tyrian

Thanks for the quick response =) I got one other question.. when the 4 piece procs what sort of animation happens?

For example, sextant of unstable currents procs a amplify magic animation etc - I love all these passive proc animations.. makes for something fun and exciting to stare at during boring bosses!

 

Roywyn

A little note about the mana cost increase from the set bonus.
It increases the mana cost by 20% of the base mana, not 20% of the final mana cost. The same mechanics applied to Arcane Power last time I checked

So, in your 3*AB part of your cycle, your mana cost changes from
"100%, 175%, 250%" to => "120%, 195%, 270%", or with Arcane Power up to => "150%, 225%, 300%".

So, the set bonus is an ~11% increase of the actual mana cost, and activating arcane power is another ~15% mana cost increase on top of that.

 

Tyrian

Cool info, i never realised that - thanks

My only problem with the tier 5 set is, its almost too good. Arcane mages are going to have a very hard time breaking it up, because tier 6 is - despite being a nice set - not comparable when you take into account the bonuses of the tier 5 set, which make it superior, despite the small +dam and stat losses compared to tier 6.

 

◊ manly

I think in 2-3 weeks we will start to see threads about 4pc t6 compared to 2pc t5. And we will start seeing the effects of spellhaste. I think any conversation before we start to be able to see the full picture is kinda pointless. I personally believe that an arcane mage cannot make efficient use of spellhaste, but again, nobody seems to know for sure whether spellhaste is worth it for mages compared to other crit/hit drops.

And yes, in case that wasn't well said, I think once you start to see 4pc t6 you can definately imagine giving up 2pc t5.

"Did the last bastion of arcane hope give up to the FFB gods ?"

please fix rolling deep wounds.

 

Tyrian

Problem is, the mages who loves their 2pc t5 the most are probably Arcane mages - and arcane mages like arcane blast. The 4pc t6 is only for AM, which for most arc mages is just the filler-spell after a cycle of 2-3 ab's. Why would you want to buff your 'filler spell' by a small-ish amount, like 5%, and in the process lose a massive 20% of your primary arcane blast spell ?? AB is what accounts for the majority of the flexibility/power of arcane specs.

Arcane blast is what makes arcane mages strong - so any bonus that amplifies that (especially something as drastic as 20%) is always going to seem more attractive than a bonus such as tier 6 4pc, assuming you plan to stay the same spec.

Agree with your comment on spell haste and its affects - hopefully once people start getting the loot and gauging its effectiveness we can start to see some good first-hand discussion coming through here =)

 

Sancus

Personally, I think it's sad and nonsensical that it takes a blatantly overpowered(come on now, it really is) set bonus to make a spec viable -- Arcane Blast really shouldn't need a 20% increase from a set to make Arcane competitive with deep Fire, but it does.

I think it would be far better for the state of the class to nerf the heck out of T5 and improve Arcane Blast significantly.

it's clear that even with T5, Arcane is only arguably competitive, not dominating, so why the heck doesn't Arcane Blast do that much damage in the first place?

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Tyrian

IMO they are close enough in everything - that the only thing which really matters is what the player finds most fun - and thats for people to decide themselves, not have to listen to theorycrafters to give them an answer.

edit - clarity

 

• Erongg

Nerf the heck out of T5 and make the Arcane Blast improvements into a talent in the arcane tree, rather than buffing the spell itself. Then you get arcane mages vs fire mages, rather than everyone being fire mages with good Arcane Blasts.

Finite Simple Group of Order Two
Basshunter - Dota
Basshunter - Boten Anna
Richard Dawkins - The God Delusion

 

Therealblind

Not sure how that will go, but it seems like a viable thing to do to help stretch the boundry between arcane and fire mages.

They could take out a talent from the arcane tree (like Erongg quoted) and substitute it with a arcane blast talent that increases the damage by so and so % (2P T5).

 

◊ manly

I'm sorry, but i strongly disagree with whatever was said about arcane blast. The problem is not that the 2pc t5 is too good, or that arcane blast dps is very solid in a vacuum, the problem is that shadow priests are too good. If shadow priests didn't give 20k mana per fight then the arcane spec would tank, hard.

The only reason arcane spec beats fire spec is because fire spec is unable to provide more dps than its full-burn mode, which is fireball spam. Arcane spec is constantly juggling between maximizing its DPS/DPM, since its full-burn mode (arcane blast spam) is simply not sustenable (ie: very poor dpm).

Now imagine fire specs were somehow able to dump all their excess mana (hello spellhaste), then you would have an indisputable one-pve-spec-to-own-them-all.

"Did the last bastion of arcane hope give up to the FFB gods ?"

please fix rolling deep wounds.

 

Sancus

Um, if Shadow Priests were a lot worse, then Arcane Blast would need even bigger improvements than it does now. Arcane should not need a particular set bonus to be competitive(but different) with Fire, it just should be, period.

There shouldn't be one-pve-spec, there should be a whole wide array of viable pve specs with different characteristics, it is downright absurd and wrong for deep Fire to be the only one, and that's why people are trying so hard to make Arcane viable, because it's an interesting other option.

Personally I don't see why "spam Fireball" has to be the only option for a dps maximizing pve Mage, our class is one dimensional enough as it is.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Aldric

I don't understand why you think mages must have more than one best PvE tree. Warriors have one best dps tree (fury), warlocks have affliction, priests have shadow, druids have feral. Yes there are exceptions, but before we can say that all our trees have to be equally viable for PvE you have to consider the possibility that frost should be the PvP spec, fire should be PvE and arcane should be support for both. It just makes it so much easier for Blizzard to balance the class instead of royally messing them all up.

 

◊ manly

At the risk of sounding like a pure troll, I will say what I think.

You say that there shouldn't be one spec to rule them all. I disagree. Not because I like fire or anything, I even had plans to try arcane spec before 2.1 came out. I think every spec has strenght and weaknesses. That's pretty much it. Most fights will cater to one or another spec strenghts more than another spec, and that one spec will be considered the best spec.

It's pretty simple, arcane build will/should destroy anything sub 3 min fights. It will also trump absolutely everything out of the water on a fight requiring the most extreme of extreme DPM. I also believe that the cool part about arcane spec is that there isn't as much a need to do stopcasting because you can burn all that excess mana without trouble, whereas a fire spec is unable to dps more than its full-burn cycle. And since fire spec typically finish with sadly plenty of mana to spare, this means the only mean to burn through that mana is to actually cast faster; ie: do stopcasting.

While this is purely theorical talks here, I believe spellhaste offers realistically not much to an arcane spec, based on the fact that spellhaste or not you *can go oom if you wish to. And to the best of my knowledge, any amount of spellhaste that can be worn by a mage does not allow to fundamentally change the cast rotation of an arcane mage (unless someone has tried to make good use of the craptacular exalted ashtongue deathsworn trinket ?). Spellhaste *could fundamentally change the way an arcane mage is played, but given that it is hardly possible to get more than 13% spell haste, i don't see how that can happen.

With this said, I am looking forward to see the effects of a fire mage in 4pc t6 and spellhaste gear. At this point it is speculative whether it is better to use spellhaste over the alternative gears for more crit/hit, but I believe that it should be one of the best dps stat.

"Did the last bastion of arcane hope give up to the FFB gods ?"

please fix rolling deep wounds.

 

tetracycloide

Actually all warlock trees are raid viable and each excells in different circumstances. Affliction dominates movement based fights, destruction dominates tank and spank fights, and demonology dominates pet friendly fights. There are definitely classes where there is one PvE tree that always dominates the others with minor exceptions where other specs can almost be as good but warlocks are not one of them.

My vanity is justified.

Multiple classes using the same gear is an excellent idea. Just the other day I was thinking to myself 'Not enough toons look identical with arena and tier sets looking the same, we need more appearance homogenization.'

 

Sancus

Except there are so few such fights that that basically renders Arcane worthless.

I didn't say that all our specs should be equally PvE viable, btw, just that I don't think one is enough. As mentioned above, all three Warlocks specs are very viable.

I don't expect Frost to become competitive dps-wise with Arcane or Fire, though.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

gimmering

deep frost already is a viable raid-pve spec.