Well, I know for a fact a blue posted saying that they intentionally want [mages and a number of other classes] to have just 1 set of tiered gear. It could be in the latest blizzcast, although I am not sure where I read this. But I know for sure it was a blue post. Basically, this means there there will never exist a 'perfect' tiered set due to the simple reason that:
fire/frost wants
(lots of) hit rating
crit rating is OK
spirit is near 100% wasted
arcane wants
no hit rating
crit rating is really a bad stat to stack
spirit is good
As you can see, all builds need different itemisation, but blizzard publically admitted they do not want more than 1 tiered set, which means we'll always have a 'middle-of-the-road' gearset thats imperfect for all 3 specs.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
In response to posts asking about AP increasing DPM:
Arcane power greatly improves arcane blast DPM when you have 1 or more stacks. The additional mana cost is based on a 0 stack of arcane blast. So whether it's your first blast or you're spamming, it's always 59 extra mana per cast.
There is some oddness about the way Arcane Blast increases in mana cost. You'll note that the T5 set bonus increases AB by 20%, but it's 20% of the cost of the base blast, irrespective of which debuff stack you're on. The same goes with AP, it'll increase the spell by 30% of the base spell's cost not it's stacked non-AP cost *1.30. This is why I believe Galzohar suggested AP does in fact increase DPM of AB.
The following changes have been made for a future PTR update:
* Bloodlust/Heroism will, again, stack with Icy Veins.
* Bloodlust/Heroism will not stack with Power Infusion, however.
The new rule being used to govern these changes is “non-self % based haste spells will not stack with each other”.
This is some good news... it is bad enough getting Shamans to heroism properly currently, so making sure they didn't heroism when I IV'd next patch (and thus obviating my 3 minute cooldown) is a relief. Plus: Cooldown stacking!
Your fire mage is doing way too much scorch to do good dps.
On lurker he did 29 scorch compared to 55 fireball but for this fight is kinda normal since he has to stack scorch on lurker after every dive because he's the only fire mage.
On Leo he did 14 AB, 33 FB and 38 scorch which is definitly not the best ratio of spells for a deep fire mage but again this fight is not the best to use travelling spell such as fireball because there's a lot of aggro reset. He also had to kill his inner demon which is probably why he used AB and lost dps at the same time.
Same thing on karathress too many scorches for a deep fire build. 60 FB compared to 47 scorch.
On Morogrim the ration FB/scorch is better 71FB compared to 21scorch somehow he never used flamestrike/blastwave/dragon breath for aoe.. he used blizzard probably for imp blizzard to help control the murlock.
I personnaly dont think this WWS proves arcane is better than fire when the deep fire mage did not play is build correctly (because of skill, how the fight work or group setup). Deep fire build is all about spamming fireball not half fireball and half scorch.
Since he was the only fire mage in the raid (except morogrim) he probably never got CoE (which he shouldn't) but you had CoS (i hope) which is 10% less dps for him right there.
So what you're saying is even if Arcane is a better damage for most boss fights because it allows the caster to squeeze more damage out, fire is still better because for those select few boss fights where you can sit and spam a perfect fireball rotation it will do more damage. Sorry, but I'm not buying into it.
I gave you proof but you came back with idealistic scenario's that would allow a fire mage to outdps me.
BTW lol@ the person who reported my last post for trolling because of his distorted opinion of it being "pretentious." Is that what I can expect from most members on this forum for supporting a talent spec with proof simply because they don't agree with it?
Lurker, depending on setup, either favors arcane or frost. Leotheras 100% guaranteed favours frost a lot, arcane quite a bit and fire not at all. Morogrim is pointless comparing anything to arcane, as arcane will out-AE erverything on the face of the planet. Karathress is worse for fire than either arcane or frost because mob-switching ruins Sc/FBall ratio, causes multiple Ignites to burn out with mob-death, and doesn't help with cooldown-syncing (especially with MF).
No, what he should have been saying, is SSC is extremely unfriendly to fire. You're in SSC and are seeing the results of (a) a bad mage who scorches way too much (b) encounters that are counter-productive for scorch and (c) no CoE vs Mal CoS. When you move away from T5 content and into MH/BT you'll see that things aren't at all the same. My personal oppinion is frost will out-perform even arcane on non-aoe fights in SSC and that's purely due to karathress and leotheras both syncing perfectly with the timing of your (plentiful) cooldowns as frost.
It's simply silly to compare fire to anything on Leotheras. Ignite tics mean you HAVE to stop DPS 5sec before phase change, 1s for travel time and 4sec for the potential ignite, otherwise, phase changes, .1sec later ignite tic, .3sec later you're dead. Doesn't take a rocket-scientist to work out Leo isn't exactly Fire's Ballroom choice. Lurker has at least 9 scorch-up periods. Once per emergence and at least 3 times per adds. That's a bucket of lost DPS. Not to mention Molten Fury means absolutely nothing when the mobs have 15k HP. What about Karathress? When are you going to smoke CDs, and when will it make any difference other than when Karathress himself is the target? All of SSC is the worst case scenario for Fire, even Hydros is a bad deal with multiple mobs -and- transitions meaning you can't dps 4sec before them.
Under this context, given you're doing T5 content, yes, arcane has a relative edge and fire has a relative handicap, nobody denied this. Arcane is not OK however, by a long shot, in the end game. There has not been proof to disprove this yet.
And I assure you, if you did get an infraction for Trolling, it's because you Trolled. The moderators don't give a rat's arse what you're talking about and they look into reports to establish validity. You Troll, you get points. Perhaps your mood, attitude or wording was bad, I honestly can't be bothered to search your posts to pick-out specifics and I'm not interested in it either. Want to "lol@" people? Go to another forum to do it.
Kavan, have you been able to determine if the gnome or human racial is more optimal for an Arcane Mage in 2.4? I'm refering to the 5% intel vs. 10% spirit increase.
Kavan, have you been able to determine if the gnome or human racial is more optimal for an Arcane Mage in 2.4? I'm refering to the 5% intel vs. 10% spirit increase.
It's about the same. Using Rawr.Mage with the best known gear from Sunwell and Arcane/Frost spec gnome is about 0.5% ahead.
Given that tier 4 isn't exactly an ancient relic when one usually encounters Karathress, I would say it's fairly probably that a mage on that fight would be wearing two pieces of it, and the pushback would thus be a non-factor for frost.
Arguable Galz, I found Karathress synced well with CDs from frost. You'll IV and Elemental , Snap and re-both on hunter+pet, second IV will come up at 3rd target (the cow with the waterbolts). WE might not be up yet for it and you might have to WE at the start of karathress instead, but unless you're deep into your progression and your guild knows it's shit you will get another IV in, just at the end. That's a bucketload of cooldowns which dont need to be synced with any MF that fire suffers from. Granted, in exchange you will get some pushback, but still. I'd trade stacking up WC instead of Sc any day. Not to mention you can spank up 1-2 ranks of WC on the move into positions with Icelance ala-gnome-BG.
Back when there wasn't ice-block for all, I'd quite happily over-nuke the hunter at the start. If you get a crit-string, big deal. He moves like a pussy and it's no biggie. A feat you wouldn't do without IB. I understand overagroing on purpose is rather daft, but I'd rather take a chance for to fit one more cooldown in than think "i might crit again, better cool off". Note that this is something I'm happy to do -only- on Karathress, and -only- on the hunter.
At present however the Skull of Gul'dan isn't stacking with (HSH/Icon/et al), so our "uber" cooldown stacking will take a bit of a hit, albeit a very small one.
Pulling aggro knowing you have iceblock is like the best way to get your top DPSers killed right off the bat, due to the 130% rule (as they will be above 100% and when you pull aggro and block guess who's second on aggro?). And no, it's not their fault - they were actually taking good advantage of game mechanics and you made it go down the drain by pulling aggro and iceblocking it off to them. Not to mention as soon as you start attacking you get aggro again so you have to stop attacking anyway. Save yourself and everyone time and effort and just take the break at the start of the fight rather than get people killed and then take the exact same break anyway.
Particularly on Karathress, particularly on the Hunter, specifically for that fight, I'm very happy to Block out of agro. Rogues are on poison duty and as such are shiving their way to low threat in the first 8-10sec. Warlocks are busy applying curses (some not even on that mob), immolates and corruption, and I'm making a conscious choice to smoke a trinket and a mana stone with IV on my Frostbolt and WE. I'm fully aware that in most cases if I pull the next in line will get it and it won't most likely be the tank, however particularly with the Hunter the advent of his pet causes a prologued lapse in threat generation.
In my experience (and I've no misconception that it might be entirely down to my raid composition/tactic) Everyone's quite low on threat except me, so with everyone under 85% threat I'm very happy to endanger a 40% crit to cause me to block and wait 2sec or so, which is all the bear tank needs to add one more swipe. Rogues and Locks (the usual agro suspects) are both fine, only errant hunters are a worry, but if I see the only one inching past 100% is me, I'm perfectly happy to use the technique.
Clearly, it would be wrong to do anything of the sort if anyone was above Tank agro to start with, but being frost one is in the slightly unique position that nuking is a lot heavier from the get-go as stacking up WC is nothing like stacking up Scorch; the chances you pull at the start as frost are much much higher. Just like CD-stacking is the be-all and end-all of Fire, fitting in as many CDs as possible is the same for frost.
The drain is a sting, as such it can be dispelled by shamans and druids. Even if it isn't, frost spec won't have any trouble dealing with mana on Karathress even if you fireblast the totems given a SP.
Added Elixirs and compared to Flasks. Worse trade-off than Mage Armour and a respec.
Updated this one with cooldown stacking for Mana Gems/Potions.
Using a Destruction Potion and a Flame Cap paired with everything under 20% is very much worth it. It is even worth using Evocation to make up for the mana lost.
As far as I know the sting cannot be removed (as in, it's not "poison" nor any other "removeable" type effect, though iceblock and the likes probably do remove it).
As far as I know the sting cannot be removed (as in, it's not "poison" nor any other "removeable" type effect, though iceblock and the likes probably do remove it).
It is undispellable: Leeching Throw - Spells - World of Warcraft. It's been a long time but what I remember from this fight is that it can be long and taxing depending on the raid's performance, getting stung a few times and your shadow priest (should you have one) getting stung a few times is possible. It seems clear to me that there are possible situations where evo/pots/gems/mage armor still leaves periods of no mana with unlucky stings, so iceblocking for mana efficiency should be better than iceblocking for DPS in those situations, which may or may not occur but are catastrophic for performance on the fight.
(The fight was brought up in the context of a WWS parse and subsequent arguments that it's a bad fight for fire, as are many t5 encounters. Obviously playing risky with aggro is something you wouldn't do unless you were farming the fight. Obviously a case can be made that it should be avoided even then, despite potential DPS gains. Obviously getting warlocks killed is still so much fun that it might be worth it. Etc.)
Does anyone else notice that the first one has "Mod Attacker Spell Crit Chance" AND "Mod Attacker Melee Crit Chance" while Molten Armor has only the former?
Could it be we're gaining only the spell resilience and not the physical? I suspect this will be easy to prove; get a rogue to strip off gear and wear two white lvl 9 daggers, white attack for a few hours, compare crit rates with and without Molten Armor.
It's simply silly to compare fire to anything on Leotheras. Ignite tics mean you HAVE to stop DPS 5sec before phase change, 1s for travel time and 4sec for the potential ignite, otherwise, phase changes, .1sec later ignite tic, .3sec later you're dead. Doesn't take a rocket-scientist to work out Leo isn't exactly Fire's Ballroom choice.
Never stop dps as fire mage only because of ignite and aggro resets - switch to non-ignite spells. If there are 5 sec. left, thats enough for 2 arcane blasts (no travel time), frostbolts are also an alternative. Sure, you still loose quite some dmg, but better than nothing.
For Hydross Fire is of course better than frost.
Lurker, it depends on the setup, we have most ranged on one side, the spawning adds there die so fast (2 fireballs and add is dead), that there's no time and no need for ramp ups. Meeles clear the 2nd. plattform and 1 meele add. The adds on 3rd. plattform get dotted and die fast when the ranged arrive. 2 meele adds are sheeped all the time.
The timing with adds and dive is bad for Water Elemental.
Fire has to ramp up 4 times, but frost has the same problem. I havn't played arcane at Lurker, but I think Geyser and Spout can destroy rotations a lot.
Morowgrim -> arcane, but fire isn't bad too, the AE cooldowns fit very well with the murloc waves. WE dies from earthquake, so you have to time properly.
Karathress has quite some puch back for frost and arcane, WE also can die really fast. Perhaps depends on strategy too, we kill shaman first with hunter tanked next to him. CDs should be saved for this AE priest as much as possible, I use my double IV there.
Probably no winner here, but I don't see fire loosing against frost here.
Leo - no question favores frost over fire, the cds work well with deamon phases. But Fire has an advantage below 15%. At the end of the fight you may be behind of a frost mage but in the really important phase fire is not that much behind frost, if at all.
Vashj - elementals are frost immune, so frost can only be used against striders and nagas.
At the end you can say that SSC is fire unfriendly, but you also can say it's frost unfriendly, meele unfriendly, ...
I don't see fire loosing against frost, the only boss where fire has real disadvantages is Leo, but frost problems at Hydross are bigger.
Fire may loose against arcane with 2pT5, but I havn't played arcane there to judge that.
02/29/08, 6:37 PM
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