Leialyn

Fireball Rank 13: 633 - 805 Damage, Avg Damage: (633+805)/2 = 719

100 Spelldamage is equal to 83.333 Critrating in itempoints (according to 12dmg and 10 critrating gems)
22.1 Spell Critrating grant 1% Crit (according to World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Basics -> Character Information)
That means 100 Spelldamage is equal to 3.77% Spell Critchance

Comparing
a) 1000 Spelldamage and 33.77% Crit (means 65,23% normal Hits and 1% Miss)
b) 1100 Spelldamage und 30% Crit (means 69% normal Hits and 1% Miss)

Assuming Hitcap, so Miss Chance is 1%, also improved Fireball and empowered Fireball

so for Patch 2.3 with CSD:
(719+1000*1.15) * 0.6523 + (719+1000*1.15) * 2.163 * 0.3377 = 2584.35 average Damage
(719+1100*1.15) * 0.69 + (719+1100*1.15) * 2.163 * 0.3 = 2656.38 average Damage

 

Pintofbrew

I agree with Fax concerning the frost AOE. We use the same tankless Nova-rotation as he describes on solarian and morogrim. In the flurry of TC you all make assumptions which are simply not true: We're not discussing 1xnova + 1xCoC, we're talking your nova, your shattered CoC (jeez these puns), then someone else's nova, and your shattered AE, repeated perhaps 4-5 times. And remember, while Icelance does pop nova a lot, AE and CoC is consistently kinder. It's also almost guaranteed that by the time the adds are down, you'll have CoC'd again.

There is also added utility other specs don't have: Assume the agro-pala gets watery graved while the murlocks are running; you can pull out the elemental and stick em in place for an emergency druid charge before they're out of range. Something you can't do in any other spec. Lets not get all cocky with "but your elemental should be DPSing", in fights like those, your DPS is (a) trivial (b) irrelevant.

As long as the boss is dying, then I believe the mage should save his tricks for the unexpected, the "oh shit" moment. I've seen all sorts of stupidity, from Tanks going disco immediately after Hydros transition, to blinking into a guy who was about to go off with solarian bomb, to karathress add being left at 1% because all the dps thought "someone else will finish it off" and I've been happy I had invisibility, iceblock and ap-pom-pyro in each of these corresponding occasions.

With such an insignifficant difference between fire and frost in 2.3, without taking arcane into account, I think at long last magery will truly have two viable specs to pick from. The differences are accademic and down to play-style as far as I can see.

 

Roywyn

Three issues:
1) Yellow/spell crits are most likely on a two-roll system, you assumed a one-roll. It doesn't really matter at 1% miss, it increases the importance of +hit before the cap.
Just so you know, for completions sake.
2) CSD+Ignite makes 216.3% crits, not 216%. Minor issue, just for completion.
3) The bolded number is "2654,592" in my calculations, you forgot to update the coeffienct from 1.05 to 1.15

Even with CSD, 1 crit rating ~ 0.7-0.8 dmg at most for fire, making red gems 50% better than yellow ones.

 

Leialyn

Whoops, yep you are right, I had wrong numbers in the cache of my calculator :< Corrected it.

And for the one roll/two roll, you have a link to some "proofs" or tests? Because I can't imagine why to use a two roll system if a one roll system does the job well with almost half the resource costs.

 

Muphrid

As Roywyn pointed out, two roll is very likely. For that matter, what you should come up with is...

Before CSD:
After CSD:
Not a very huge change, although I guess what you were looking at was the removal of the coefficient penalty? 1.035 would have been the correct coefficient.

 

Leialyn

Edit your quote please, I corrected it.
And can you explain a bit more what the numbers in your calculation mean? I've seen 1.035 at DrDamage as well but couln't get what it means.

 

Muphrid

Fixed!

1.035 appears because 1.035 = ((3.5/3.5)+.15)*.9. That is, the stacking of Imp. and Emp. Fireball in 2.2 was rather non-intuitive. Rather than being both additive or both multiplicative, the Imp. Fireball -10% penalty was multiplicative, and the Emp. Fireball bonus was additive, with the latter being added before the former was multiplied. Thus, you add the 15%, and then multiply the whole expression by .9.

 

Rouncer

I thought 2 roll was already proven for casters?

Didn't Zaldinar do some testing on the 2.2 PTR that proved that it couldn't possibly be a 1 roll system?

His testing involved a Rogue with Cloak of Shadows in place and a mage with enough crit rating to push normal hits off the table if it was a 1 roll system.

Found the thread, looks like its a 2 roll system to me.

WoW Forums -> Second round of One/Two roll research

 

ebbv

I was talking about Kael Weapons Phase and Hyjal Trash originally. Apparently you weren't paying attention? Obviously for "quickie" AOE packs like Solarian's and Morogrim's you want to use Dragon's Breath, Blastwave and Shattered Cone of Cold because none of those packs should be up for more than 3-4 seconds.

Wait, wait, wait. If your job is no longer DPS, what is it? Do you hand out water during fights? No, it's still DPS. You're just one of those DPSers who says "OK it's on farm now, I can slack off." That's fine if your guild is fine with it, but personally I don't subscribe to that theory. Once it's on farm my goal is to do it faster and better, not just say "Hey it's farm, I don't have to respec from my PvP spec anymore!"

DPS always makes a difference. Faster DPS, shorter fight, less time for people to screw up and cause a wipe.

Yes something is optimal 100% of the time, the point of Theorycrafting is to tell us what that is. Yes in practice you may have variant outcomes, but the prior math has told you what will have the optimal outcome if you do your part correctly.

This was disproven by earlier math in this thread which apparently you felt you could simply skip over. With Improved Cone of Cold FN + CoC is slightly better, without Improved CoC then FN is a wasted GCD. Personally I've never found a good way to fit Imp CoC into my raid spec.

No, Frost does not come out ahead. Are you not paying attention at all to this thread? It comes out a little bit behind.

And no the scaling is not identical. You cannot simply make the claim that it does come out identical and have it be so. You must support your assertion.

The scaling is not remotely close, I laid out how the talents are currently stacked in favor of Fire for PvE and instead of addressing that you simply respond by repeating yourself.

If you want to count Winter's Chill OK we'll do that and count Fire Vulnerability too.

Fireball Gets:
+9% crit
+28% damage
210% crits
134% coefficient over 3.5sec

Frostbolt Gets:
+15% crit
+11% damage
200% crits
128% coefficient over 3.5sec

So the difference for Frostbolt is:
+6% crit
-17% damage
-10% damage on crits
-6% coefficient


That's not even counting Molten Fury and Combustion. You think the Water Elemental makes up for all that? I love him, but no. He doesn't. Even without premature deaths.

It's also not accounting for more esoteric advantages of +6 yd Range and 70% pushback protection. Frost's main advantages are Ice Block and Frost Barrier, both of which are simply "death protection" not "do more DPS protection", and in fact using either lowers your DPS.

The big issues for Frost Scaling are listed above. Please pay attention to this thread if you're going to post in it.

edit:

The main thing working in Frost's favor is the extra hit it gets due to some bug, which may or may not even be an advantage depending on if your gear will allow you to ditch that extra hit for more damage or crit.

I'd like to clarify also that this is not meant to be a "Frost vs. Fire" post. I agree with manly that's not very productive and I think the real proof will be in the WWS pudding after 2.3 goes live. But, I cannot abide when people come into the thread and toss around blatantly incorrect statements like that. I'm simply trying to point out the underlying facts of the situation as opposed to the unsubstantiated claims some people like to throw around.

 

Darkchani

I fail to understand why you're additionning the spell coefficient and the spell damage ? by all logic shouldnt it be a multiplication ???
Same thing with crit% and crit bonus too...

 

◊ Vontre

Also not counting that 10-20% of your fire dps is scorch.

Frost also doesn't really lag behind at all until you pass up the ~5 minute mark.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

ebbv

Much closer to 10%. I don't know anyone who uses a 4 fireball 1 scorch rotation.

Wouldn't this be because you're using WE + Snap + WE early on?

Anyway the point of my post wasn't that your numbers (or anyone else's) are wrong and there's no way Frost is within 2% of Fire once 2.3 goes live, it was that Faxmonkey's assertion of Frost scaling better than Fire is wrong.

Whether your numbers were right or not will be obvious after we have some WWS.

 

Rouncer

Scorch never needs to be restacked?

 

ebbv

Yes once in a while something goes bad and Scorch has to be restacked, whether it's Supremus being out of range or one Naj'entus' shield being up too long when the debuff was going to fall off soon, yes sometimes this happens. But that exception doesn't account for Scorch being a full 20% of your DPS*. Unless you're stacking and maintaining it all by yourself it's really not a big deal at all. And remember you don't sacrifice an entire Fireball to cast Scorch, only half a Fireball. So you're not losing as much DPS as you may think.

* - Even my off the cuff "4 fireball 1 scorch" rotation wouldn't be 20% of my DPS as Scorch. It would be 12 seconds of Fireball followed by 1.5 seconds of Scorch, or 11.11% of my Time on Target as Scorch. In a fairly typical 8 Fireball 1 Scorch cast rotation you're only spending 5.88% of your time casting Scorch. So yes, even with Restacks 10% is a pretty conservative number.

 

Faxmonkey

I haven't actually done the math for 2.3 with the coefficient removal. That could possibly tilt it slightly in fire's direction. I was referring to 2.2. As was the post was I was referring to. I do not believe there is relevant math for that in this thread.

You forgot one major frost advantage in your list of things. Namely that Improved Frostbolt improves dps by significantly more than Improved Fireball. 1/6th of casting time vs 1/7th.

At any rate, the scaling probably changes in Fire's Favor in 2.3 given that the coefficient change is a bigger buff to fire (since it originally lost 10% of it's whole coefficient, while frost lost like more like 8% -- since 10% of 80% is 8%)

Let's assume you have a 20% crit rate. Fireballs +damage% per second is going to be:

(115/3)x1.3x1.29x1.09 (assumes all raid debuffs are in place) 70.7% per second

Frostbolt would be

(91.43/2.5)x1.15x1.35x1.11 = 63.023%

Now, lets add in the water elemental. We'll assume he's up for 45 seconds out of every 120 (instead of 180, we're assuming efficient coldsnap usage).

Waterbolt will get 71% of 35% of my +damage every 2.5 seconds. This works out be exactly or 10% every 1 second. So:

10%x1.15x1.20 (I'm assuming the water elementals *base* crit rate is around 10% -- it's not very high).

So take that, multiple by 45 and divide by 120 to get average contribution of 5.175% per second over the course of the entire fight.

Add that into frostbolts and we get 70.7% vs 68.2%. Pretty close still, but a definite edge for fire. The edge for fire increases a bit if you consider that fire crits are 210% instead of 200% and if you add in values from Molten Fury and Combustion.

Frost, on the other hand, benefits if you consider the shaman totem Wrath of Air. As your Water Elemental gets 135% of that +damage instead of just 35%.

All of this, unfortunately, also ignores chance to miss as a factor. It assumes everyone's at equal hit rating. Of course we know that frost seems to be getting extra hit% from talents somehow and that the water elemental is likely to have a high miss rate as well.

My point was never that frost is better than fire in 2.3, merely that it's an option. You seem to have it in your head that for scaling fire blows frost out of the water, and this simply isn't true. It carries an edge, but hardly one that leaves frost unacceptable.

 

ebbv

You made this mistake before and I responded to you at that time that this thread is about 2.3. I'm not sure why you continue to talk about 2.2 in a thread entitled "[Mage] TC after 2.3". It's really not helpful at all.

And yes the relevant math is present if you read the thread. There's a lot of good posters here contributing worthwhile data to the discussion. Please enjoy it!

 

Faxmonkey

If you read what you quoted, I make it quite clear I was responding in reference to 2.2 BECAUSE the person I was responding to was referring to 2.2. If you feel the need to interject yourself into someone's conversation, please at least know what is being discussed first.

You may believe that a discussion on past scaling is not relevant in a thread discussing future options, but apparently someone felt that it was and I felt obligated to clear up a misconception. It's as simple as that.

 

Muphrid

I'm not adding them. I have base damage divided by coefficient, and this quantity is added to +damage. This is, essentially, base damage + coefficient*+damage all divided by coefficient.

 

Faxmonkey

This, believe it or not, changes nothing. Hyjal Trash gets shattered just as much as non-hyjal trash. I merely meant they were different in that Hyjal Trash has tanks. The nerf to Lightning Capacitor should change the math, possibly in Fire's favor -- though I've seen your own math and when it came out showing an advantage for frost, you simply dismissed it and said "Oh well, CoC is hard to aim".

You choose to be as condescending as possible in your replies, telling me to "read the thread", and yet you apparently have not even read your own posts.

DPS is one of my jobs. But it's rarely my primary job. For example, my *primary* job on Bloodboil, is taking a bloodboil rotation. I couldn't, for instance, ignore this job to do extra dps -- it's crucial. Frost makes me better at this job. It lets me fill in the gaps if someone dies and take two, but iceblock them off.

On Illidan, my job is mostly killing parasites. This is better done with frost.

I have many, many jobs in many fights and DPS Is just one of them. You obviously measure your self-worth by damage meters, and I understand how fun that can be given my current arcane spec.

DPS is important on so few fights, these days. They're mostly technical fights. No one cares how much dps I do on Archimonde, only that everyone near me is decursed asap and I don't run into the doomfire or die of falling damage. That's it. That's my job. If I do it right, and everyone else does theirs right -- we win. Enrage timers on most bosses are there only to keep you from limping past he finish line with 5-10 people -- even with low dps you will never hit them with everyone alive.

This is an interesting philosophy we could argue. Longer fights do mean more idiot checks (more spouts, more thaladred glares, more air bursts, more parasites, etc, etc) -- but I don't think the way you're meant to deal with idiot checks is by minimizing their number -- I think it's by "not being idiots".

The closest relevant math that I read, and I did read this thread, concluded frost to be better. And it ignored Frost's largest advantage (at the time it was posted) of Lightning Capacitor which procs obviously way more often for a frost mage. This will continue to be *an* advantage I suspect, but significantly less of one. Still, by your own math as long as you can AIM coc and you have Imp CoC in your spec then frost comes out ahead.

Since I only need 2 points into arcane (never understood bothering for clearcast in a frost spec -- maybe some guilds need to recruit more shadow priests), it's easy for me to get there.


The issue I listed is actually far more significant. Hidden hit rating and impenetrable partial resists for fire seem like bigger issues simply because we know less about them, and thus they are hotter debate topics. But in terms of what actually impacts frost's scaling the most, it's the fact that the source of a significant chunk of my dps does not scale at all with 3 major stats -- while 100% of fires damage scales with every stat.

An extra 3% hit rating, should it exist, provides only for a bit of extra crit rating on gear, perhaps -- not nearly enough to make a *significant* splash to scaling.


And thus the pickle we find ourselves in. My response was prompted by someone else's "blatantly incorrect statements" and now I find further responses provoked by yours. How do we end this vicious cycle?

The proof will not be in WWS, by the way. Nobody argues that Frost will do more DPS. Certainly not me. WWS will only confirm that fire does more damage. While a WWS parse can tell you a bit of the story, it can't tell you the whole story and frankly relying it on to determine which spec is better is just silly.

But hey, if you honestly believe your *primary* job is DPS go nuts. But unless we're talking about a fight with a fast enrage timer where you can stand still and DPS like nuts (like old school patchwork when people's gear was bad) then I just don't agree. And maybe what the two of us think about everything else is colored by that disagreement.

 

ReignConfused

While I'm not in favor of frost being King DPS, it's unarguable king Utility, always has been. Iceblock alone, not even as an idiot save, is one of the best, if not THE best spell a mage has in his arsenal. Not to mention the sheer stupidity of saying that no matter what Fire is better because the fireball scales better than frostbolt. I think anyone arguing that should spam Pyroblast more, because it scales better!

But while we can run tests on PTR all day, and run TC all day. Right now it's all theory and there's no reason for anyone to get heated about one person saying this is better and another saying this is better.

My personal thought on the subject is that Blizzard has historically opted to give Fire "King DPS" and Frost "King Survivability" and Arcane's been kinda batted around all over the place. So in all seriousness I think it's silly to argue the subject because even if Frost is better in one patch, the majority of the time it will be worse.

For the record, I'd like to see WWS parsings proving how amazingly awesome Shatter is. Or even screenshots of meters. Have 2 mages spec frost, have both spam frost nova on every cooldown, at least 3 other AoEing people (warlocks, hunter multishotting etc etc.) And both shoot their CoC's off on every nova as soon as they can. And then next week repeat the fight doing everything the exact same except shoot your CoC before you nova and spend the GCD on AE or something. Because from what I've personally seen, unless you have 3 mages and maybe 2 warlocks and NO one else AoEing, too many shatters will break too fast to justify the global cooldown on a spell that's insanely low DPS on it's own. And for that matter, even you Fax pointed out that you can shatter another mage's nova with AE. Which IMHO fucks your DPS even more. Cause your shattering his CoC which would have hit harder, and he in turn is going to break your CoC (I'm having so much fun with CoC! *HA DID IT AGAIN*) with HIS AE and screw your CoC (WoW)


Just having fun with numbers, pretend your AE hits for 700 crits for 1150. Your CoC 900 crits for 1800 (I'm sure these numbers are wrong but ballpark) Nova hits for 100 crits for 200. So you have a 30% crit rate for both schools.

10 mobs (10 is an easy number!)

you AE and CoC : 700 700 700 700 700 700 700 1150 1150 1150
Your AE hits for 8350
900 900 900 900 900 900 900 1800 1800 1800
Your CoC hits for 11700

Your AoE rotation hits for 20050

you Nova CoC : 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 200 200 200
Your AE hits for 1300
900 900 900 1200 1800 1800 1800 1800 1800 1800
Anyone smart knows why I made one of those 1200
Your CoC hits for 14700

Your AoE rotation hits for 16000


I'm sorry did your TLC hit for 4000? Cuz it's not going to after the nerf and I'm glad you're the only one AoEing there! Otherwise those nova's might have broken and made shatter even sadder.

 

Prod

By the way, I'm pretty sure you can still refresh the scorch debuff even though he is immune to the scorch damage.

 

Amrahil

Aye you can, handy that.

Only time I loose my my Fire Vurnability is when my scorch gets resisted, this happens once in a blue moon, but is pretty damn frustrating. Especially if I play a strict rotation and have only a few seconds left on the debuff, so no chance to recast Scorch.

Pretty irrelevant right now, but can anyone tell me a addon that makes the Fire Vurnability timer be visible for every Mage, not only the one who started the debuff?

 

Prod

I don't know of one, and that makes it hard for 2 mages to try and time 8 fireball/redebuff. I'm sure there is one, but either way I think 2.3 by default lets every mage see the timer.

Edit: trying to find where I read this so I can link it. I don't think I dreamed it.

 

◊ manly

Actually, in 2.3 the game itself will refresh the scorch timers across mages, so that shouldn't be an issue anymore.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Rudie

Hi guys, just registerd to Elitist jerks, shouldve done it ages ago but it aint bad to just come on and read good info. now im not sure if i shouldve made a new topic as i thought this is class mechanic thread.

Ok. now the guild im in have tonite killed Rage winterchill and Anerthron - im specc'd 10/48/3 capped with +hit and have 1100 +Dam with fire. Normally theres either a shadowpriest or an Ele shaman with the group of 3 mages which is a lovely group set up for mana regen and +hit / +dam tots but the problem im havin is tonite i chugged down rather too many mana pots to keep up with the heavy AoE needed in Hyjal.

As i said, i apoligise if this is the wrong area to post this, i was just wonderin how other mages cope and deal with mana in Hyjal with all this crazy AoE.

Regards Rudie