ebbv

Faxmonkey you quoted me in the reply I responded to (though you did not credit the quotes to me.) I would not have responded otherwise. And I assure you that I was not talking about 2.3.

Regardless, why do you say Frost scales better if you are not asserting that Frost will do more damage? Those kind of go hand in hand.


Good to know that Scorch refreshes through Naj'entus' shield. I never tried while I owned the stack so I never knew.

 

Malevalon

I'm not a veteran here by any means, but I can tell you that posts with terrible grammar/spelling are not the way to make a good first impression. You might want to [re-]review the stickies in the Public forum and revise your post accordingly before your tenure here ends before it begins.

 

Muphrid

I realize this may be somewhat out of context, but scaling better does not imply dealing more damage. A low-damage rotation may have better scaling than a high-damage rotation, but what matters is the gear level interval across which this is considered--that superior scaling may not be enough to overtake.

 

Amrahil

I have a few tips for you from my own experience in Hyjal dealing with the waves.
There's a few things you can do to improve your mana consumption AoE'ing:

- Use Mage Armor, for Rage/Anetheron you can arrange for the AoE spot to be near Jaina and get boosted regen from her Brilliance Aura (100% Spirit) while AoE'ing.
- Burn your Evocation early (stand near Jaina for 5000-6000 ticks) it will probably be ready again for one of the later waves, and I never personally need it for bosses as Shadowpriests + Mana Tide can sustain my mana pool there, they are rather short fights.
- Use Combustion to get some MoE mana returns while AoEing, preferably casting Flamestrike & then spamming Blast Wave right after (2x burst crits heaven), this returns quite some mana and does good burst damage.
- Always use Mana Gems early while AE'ing (I never tend to forget, as I have the Serpent-coil Braid) so the cd is avalible as soon as possible again.
- I spam Arcane Explosions after I've consumed the Combustion buff. But sometimes when my mana gets low I fall back to Flamestrike for MoE returns (I'm not actually sure if it's better DPM, but it feels like it.) Guess AE is also preferred due to the lower threat.
- You can use Invisibility after the AoE is done, or a little bit before, conjure Mana Gems and rest up fully while the Necromancers & kited mobs are handled with single target DPS. You don't loose too much damage spending that time resting up.

We have a Protection Paladin, who makes these waves pretty much trivial, can go all out AoE'ing without waiting long.

I find my mana is a bit harder to manage at the horde camp, and always try to be ready no matter what for the waves with a heavy amount of Necromancers for sheeping. It's very important not to be dry of mana & not be located far away from the fresh wave, drinking up, while these approach the raid. They can insta-gib our Paladin/other tanks easily if they all get a SB off at the same time.

My Master of Elements talent gives me about 30-40% mana, of what my Shadow Priest provides me through VT in a typical Hyjal raid on the first 4 bosses incl trash, of course the VT return is much higher on the bosses than MoE, as the SP is free to remain stationary and nuke without chasing any mobs.

You might also just consider whispering a Druid for an Innervate, it has a 6 minute cooldown and should be avalible for the druid again @ the boss if you time it well. I don't think anyone is burning through more mana than a typical Mage on those AoE waves anyway.

Oh and this probably belongs in some help thread.

 

ReignConfused

I just said it in my other post but it's making me pull my hair out that it's still getting brought up. I'm pretty much just agreeing with Ebbv here, but if something scales better it doesn't always mean more damage. Otherwise we would all be Pyroblast spamming.

 

Prod

I don't see why you're even bringing this up. A 10 second cast spell with 200% coefficient doesn't scale better. You have to look at the scaling per second (or 3 seconds, or whatever spell you're comparing it to). If pyroblast scaled better, I would be spamming pyro.

 

Redbeard

At the risk of off-topicness, you could try out this mod: Scorchio! Official Thread

 

Muphrid

By what metric? +damage/cast? Because that's pretty much invalidated when you look at +damage/sec or +damage/base.

Your point is correct, but it really bothers me when people imply that scaling is related to +damage/cast (that is, the +damage coefficient) alone, without regard for at least casting time, if not base damage (or current damage).

 

Searix

Muphrid, we're talking about 2 different things

1)We're talking about scaling in reference to damage per second (dps) upgrades. As you get a normal x gear upgrade your damage increases by y dps. If 2 specs gain 2 different y dpses for the same x gear upgrade, then the higher one "scales" better.

2)You're talking about scaling relative to the basic spell's specifics, in other words that your defintion of a better scaling spell, a fireball that does 800 base and gets 100% co-efficient or a fireball (same everything but only differences are base and co-efficient) 1 damage base 90% co-efficient, that the second one "scales" better at most normal gear (1-2000 +damage gear) because it scales much better relative to it's base.

Which is fine and dandy, and probably more accurate than the commonly used meaning of scaling, but talking about your scaling doesn't help us increase our dps

Edit: If something scales better at a linear rate, it will eventually (or already has) out pace the slower linear growth

 

Faxmonkey

I don't recall the exact post I quoted, but it was a laundry list of reasons why Fire is better than frost (read: "is" not, "will be") and I felt compelled to respond since many of those reasons were flawed if not flat-out wrong.

Also, it's important to understand that simply because one spell scales better than another does not guarantee superior damage output -- spells are not simply the function of their scaling, but also of their *base* damage. Superior scaling would only guarantee superior damage if you had an infinite amount of +damage. At any amount less than infinity, there may well still be a gap -- even a large gap -- between the two.

This was the case with Frost vs Fire in 2.2 -- you could not have gotten enough +damage in 2.2 to possibly do more damage with Frost than with Fire -- there simply wouldn't have been close to enough +damage on even the best of gear to close the gap. And again, as my own math a few posts back demonstrated, the balance of power is now back in fire's court anyways -- something like 70% vs 68% damage per second IIRC. Still fairly close, though . . .

Also, for the record, you can apply any debuff you like to Naj'entus during shield -- scorch, winters chill, DoTS, Curses, whatever -- he's not "immune" he simply "absorbs".

 

Searix

In WoW, you can typically ignore the affects of base spell damage on scaling, they're usually to trivial to really affect scaling

 

Saffron

Mana potions is your best friend. If they help you do more damage, drink them. I pretty much maximized the use of them in Hyjal when we weren't too familiar with the waves, 25-30 pr night was nothing extraordinary.

 

Dustwhisper

Mage armor, mana pots, mana gems and evoc. The trick I found was to remake the managem I used on the trash at the end so I had it for the next and drink between waves. Using manapots is nothing new though. I spend about 30-40 manapots in an evening at 15g per 5 and they used to be 25g per stack of 5 :| Luckily I get stacks sometimes at 10g from guildies but AH is just hell. Only place I don't use a lot of manapots is at KT due to how you can use wand to regen a lot.

 

Pintofbrew

That is wrong. Base spell accounts for a signifficant chunk, even if after BC it's much less than half.

At this level of Theorycrafting we're doing, where we're arguing for pages amongst pages about 2% discriminations I assure you base spell is very important.


Rudie:
Firstly, welcome to EJ.
Secondly, Do Not Sign Your Post.
Thirdly: Read the forum rules, this is not WOW EU forums.
Lastly: If you managed to delve so far into the forum as to press the "next page" button, you'd discover exactly the post you'd want to ask about, namely http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16781-mage_help_me_please/ . This is Theorycrafting After 2.3.

 

Rudie

I posted my 1st post on ElitistJerks about 1am, was a little tired but you have insisted on pointing out terrible grammar/spelling like its a really bad problem, thankyou for replying to me in this manner, how do you not know that I could be dyslexic and struggle with words.

But anyway.. Thank you Amrahil for a good bit of info




Much appreciated mate



I understand, I'll check the whole site out more, thanks Pintofbrew.


Edit: Have just read the forum rules and now understand that signing posts and letting people know that I've just registered is a bad thing. Just earned my 1st infraction on the banhammer. I'll make sure I do a spell check and not sign my posts.

 

Muphrid

I realize the distinction. I was only saying that Pyroblast spam is not justified at the infinite gear level, as it does not scale well by either definition.

 

Looney

Has anyone of you realised a change in the casting system on 2.3 PTR?
On the first few days when it went up, I was raiding ZA and I was able to spamm my fireball like I did far in the past :>
There was no such thing like a "penalty cooldown", you know the thing that happens when you are hitting the buttons too fast. this global cd of like .25-.5 seconds which doesn't allow you to start a new cast although you havent startet any cast in the past 1.5 seconds.

But yesterday, when I logged on the PTR, I realised a change in all this.
Now, there ist this "penalty cooldown" and I get problems with proper casting when I just spamm my fireball.

So I just tested it under 3 conditions, THE FOLLOWING TESTS WERE MADE ON PTR WITH ~400-500ms DELAY!
I also did this with 59 Spellhaste Rating, so the Fireball casting time SHOULD be 2.89 seconds


Using a G15 Makro which hits the button every .005 seconds:

Hitting the Button by myself as soon as the castbar reaches the red part of quartz:
Trying to use the old /stopcasting /cast Fireball macro(a few casts were cancelled to see what happens with the following one):

 

Cardynal

Just playing around with Vontre's spreadsheet with these assumed bonuses.

With 0 push back, 0 bloodlust uptime, Coe @ 10%, Full raid buffs, molten armor, and WoA totem...i'm seeing these kinds of numbers...

Frost (Frostbolt spam w/ water elemental) - 2268dps - 90 second fight
Frost (Frostbolt spam w/ water elemental) - 1978dps - 300 second fight
Frost (Frostbolt spam w/ water elemental) - 1927dps - 600 second fight

Fire (8xFireball: 1xScorch) - 2022dps
Fire (Fireball Spam) - 2061dps

I'm not entirely sure the spreadsheet is modeling the Water elemental correctly. If you take the duration down to 90 seconds (which would give 100% uptime), the spreadsheet is trying to give it 125% uptime...which would skew the calculation. I edited the Water Elemental Uptime to simply 1% on the numbers I gave for 90 seconds.

 

Rouncer

From my understanding of the new system Quartz may need to be rewritten a bit to really work well with the new casting system.

I was playing with Dr Boom a bit last night and I was actually able to hit the button before the red without any issues whatsoever. Not sure if that was due to the spell casting on "button lift" or if it was associated with them incorporating the "leeway" they said they were thinking about adding to the casting system.

If you try to cast way too early or you clip into the GCD then what happens is you are "screwed" and you have to wait for the spell completed command to be returned from the server.

If they have incorporated "leeway" into the system then there is no need to try and get as close as possible to the red anymore and that spamming would be about the worst thing you could do, since it will restart the GCD and you will have to wait on latency to return the spell completed message from the server before you could initiate your next cast.

Try your spam routine again but try for "button up" (hold the key down and lift before the red without using any of the G15s spamming features) just before the red and see what the results look like then.

 

Looney

This is what i did ^^

 

Rouncer

before the red or trying to hit the red?

 

Cardynal

I was looking around for possible solutions to the Arcane item nerfs and I came up with the following.

Change Empowered AM to the following.

Empowered Arcane
Your Arcane Missiles spell gains an additional 25% of your spell damage
Your Arcane Blast spell gains an additional 8% of your spell damage.

(The increased mana usage removed)

After running the modifcation through Vontre's spreadsheet...the numbers are coming pretty close to deep fire and frost using both a 3xab, 1xam, 1xscorch and a 3xab, 2xfireball rotations. It would also greatly help with that mana issues.

(This is assuming the 2t5 bonus is removed)

 

Vianine

I was reading about the mystery hit for frostbolt so I went back to the WWS for my last three Al'ar attmpts and the numbers were indeed off. I did these attempts with 132 hit rating and no shaman. Basically I had the gear in my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

Vianine - WWS
Attempt 1: 149 frostbolts, 1 resist, 99.3% hit rate.

Vianine - WWS
Attempt 2: 221 frostbolts, 2 resists. 99.1% hit rate.

Vianine - WWS
Attempt 3: 93 frostbolts, 1 resist, 98.9% hit rate.


all together 463 frostbolts, 4 resists, 99.1% hit rate (the cap essentially.)

This says I'm at or above the hit cap even with only 132 hit rating, even though I should be getting a 96.46% hit rate instead of the 99.1% I am getting.

 

Antoine

If this is true with frostbolts getting mystery hit, and it's also true that hit beyond the cap mitigates partial resists that get turned into full resists because frostbolt is binary, would that make any hit rating between 130ish and 162ish completely useless for frost?

 

Grai

Yes, if this was the case frost mages could potentially re-gem their PvE boss sets to gear toward more Spell Dam and would be able to avoid spell hit in some slots and on some items (trinket slots come to mind) as they wouldn't need as much hit to be at the cap.

It's important to note that although we've seen a lot of evidence in this thread, this theory has not been proven to an extent that people are generally accepting it yet. It is still seemingly being conceived of as a bug at best. Similarly I doubt that even if this was intended, and if frost mages began gearing with it in mind, that frost would be able to outdo fire with the small gem and item changes it would inevitably benefit from.

However, this could potentially give Frost an advantage over Fire in early PvE due to spell hit on early Blue quality items potentially being hard to come by.