Vand1

One thing I have not seen suggested for our mana regen issues is to do exactly what Bliz did for warlocks when they made life tap scale with spell damage. How about making our mana gems scale with our (arcane) spell damage? After all, they are created using an arcane spell. Oh, and take them off the same CD as the healthstones.

 

Habanero

A Spell Crit/Haste weapon enchants (possibly procs just like Mongoose) would be nice. Also speaking of weapons, [Blade of Eternal Darkness] was an example of a really cool caster weapon I'd love to see the mechanics of recycled.

 

Ztorm

I seriously don't see how increasing the mana gem return, unless they DRAMATICALLY increased the amount returned for ALL ranks or have it based on spell damage/int. Same goes for the changes to mage armor. If you're OOM and there's 10% left, it means either you fucked up on mana-management or your SP died. I mean, having it free will be nice, but as a fire mage, the situations in which you would have to revert to mage armor are rare. Until Blizzard does a massive overhaul of mana-regeneration, we're going to be dependent on shadow-priests to do optimal DPS.

In regards to rogues, I wonder why so many mages think we should be able to out-DPS them on meters. In terms of class roles and definitions, we should always be behind rogues in single-target boss fights. Rogues bring very little in terms of raid buffs and utility. They can silence targets via kicks, they can use wound poison/mind numbing - which results in a dps loss for them, and that's about it. In terms of weaknesses, rogues are limited in their target switches due to combo points and distance; they are restricted in positioning - especially if they're daggers. Rogues have no "expose weakness" or other debuffs that increase raid damage, no AoE capacity, no buffs to increase raid survivability or give healers mana, and a very weak CC. Meanwhile, mages bring the best CC in the game, food/water, raid buffs (AI), and low-threat AoE. A rogues DPS has to exceed ours by a margin that can justified the loss in utility.

 

Northerner

It's an old saw by now (and I happen to agree that Rogues should be number one single target dps by a fair margin) but it's not so one-sided for utility.

Kick really is incredibly good and near mandated for a number of encounters. It's certainly better than CS/ES by a huge margin. Poisons also are near-mandated or extremely useful in several as well and Blind/Stuns are pretty nice for trash too. While it is a bit more of a stretch, Sap even is used in BT and situationally is superior to poly for some pulls while distract oddly enough is pretty nice as well for MH bosses or some trash in BT. Only Spell-Steal is actually needed for Council and AB/Food-water is also accomplished with a single mage.

At the same time, Rogues have the best personal survivability of any class in MH/BT fights and that should account for something I think. Vanish, Evasion, Sprint (or Improved) and CoS are all very nice things to have.

It's an old argument again but the Utility card is overplayed a lot I think. I'd honestly say that Rogues bring more stacking raid utility than Mages. The only notable exception is AE situations but even there, AR/BF Rogues bring pretty decent damage to what AE situations presently exist.

 

Pintofbrew

I didn't know that life tap scaled with gear. This is rediculous: No mana return in the game scales with anything, except shadowpriests and Life Tap? What the hell is wrong with Life Tap? Costs for spells stay at the same level, I don't see why the damn thing should scale at all. I'm sorry, but +spell gear reducing a warlocks tap-time is utterly unjustifiable. Do we get haste with spell damage? Do we get to cast more spells per minute with more gear? Didn't think so. Why should a lock?

I'm getting sick of the problem-plague the mage class seems to enjoy. It's been almost 3 years since WoW has been out and barring the first few months when indeed locks sucked salami it's been rather clear-cut that in most scenaria locks are better off than mages.

How can I help not wondering whether WotLC is a good chance to reroll orc lock?

 

Habanero

Life Tap has benefited from +shadow damage for a long time. It does not increase the amount of mana you get per point of healing (Improved Life Tap, Fel Armor [w/Demonic Aegis] do that directly), but it increases the speed at which you can replenish a given amount of mana. That would be akin to +arcane damage reducing the cooldown for mana gems.

 

Antoine

It was changed sometime after Naxx came out, I believe. It's because it was giving back a trivial amount of mana (base at that level was 430, whereas shadowbolt was 380ish) and still took up a GCD (which mana pots/gems don't).

 

Sancus

No? Maybe that would be true if you could make enough of the best mana gem to cover any fight - the amount of mana that you get per point of healing is an almost entirely irrelevant number for raiding, as the ratio of healer mana: lock mana provided is so incredibly good, healing locks for life tapping is a negligible drop in the bucket compared to the actual normal raid healing on any encounter.

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

 

Pintofbrew

I agree with Sancus: The conversion rate is irrelevant because the lock will either regen the health (however much it is) or get healed. The fact remains that the scaling increases the gain/tap.

say: Lock with 0 damage gear needs to tap 3 times per 10 bolts, Why does lock with +1000 gear only tap once per 10 bolts for same effect, given they have same manapool?

It's unreasonable: If the damn thing doesn't give enough mana, increase the spell. Not scale it!

The only energy gain that scales apart from that is shadow priests and I think we've established that that one factor makes them unbalanced for a number of reasons. I subscribe to the theory that VT should keep scaling mana regen for the SP himself but only return a fixed amount to the group he's in.

 

Rouncer

I don't even think that VT should scale for the priest - it should give back a fixed percentage of the mana cost of the spells that being used on the thing that it afflicted by VT. However this is the Mage TC thread so don't think that we should be worried about warlock and shadowpriest mechanics (no matter how broken they are).

 

macbeet

There are a lot managregenerations you forget.

Scaling Life Tap does not make the Warlock Imbalanced damagevise, it just makes him indepentent of group setup (which is good).

Scaling Shadowfiend (Priest pet) does not make the Shadowpriest overpowered either, it just is his form of evocation... and without shadowpriests would have very hard mana issues.

One of the last shaman spell in the enhancement tree gives mana back based on melee attack power dealt, so it scales too and has a CD.

Evocation scales with Spirit and soon with int, although we do not tend to increase these stats as we gear up. Scaling Mana Gems would not make us overpowered either, just indepentent of group setup, and I think we all agree that the current dependence is crap...

All these abilities are somewhat capped in their pvp power: evocation and shadowfiend have a cd, managems too and are limited/block the healthstone, lifetap hurts yourself so you need some air to use it....

So blizzard, give us scaling managems !

PS: Hunters seem to be the only class without a scaling manaregeneration(unless i miss something), and guess what, the suffer like us in long fights...

On the other hand: should every class (especially healers) get sclaing mana regeneration, better gear would increase the boss fight duration to keep them challenging. Not a nice afterthought... bssfights are already getting much too long in my opinion.

 

Rouncer

Actually yah it does, you need to really think that statement through before posting it.

If they don't have to life tap then they are spending more time shadowbolting. If they have to pause every 10 shadowbolt to lifetap then they are losing 6% dps time to lifetap. Now lets say they only have to lifetap every 20 shadowbolts, then they are only losing 3% of their dps. That means they just gained 3% more dps in addition to what the gear did.

420 mana per lifetap was pretty retarded but 2k+ per lifetap is also.

 

macbeet

Their damage increases, yeah, but I dont think it is to harsh to say, that an extra 1.5 seconds now and then will make them imbalanced, especially since their base spell cost is pretty high.

 

Vand1

Life tap increases by 80% of a warlock's spell damage, so rather than the top rank returning 580 mana like the tooltip says, it's likely closer to 1500 for a decently geared warlock...in other words, more than our top mana gem, even if we've got SCB equipped. Plus they can do it anytime they damn well please. A very good and intelligent warlock friend of mine insists that scaling life tap is perhaps the biggest single change that made warlocks what they are today. She recalls the days in MC where she would have to tap several times in a row in order to get back enough mana to continue fighting (hmm...sound a bit like evoc downtime?). Now, a single life tap is all decently geared warlocks needs to keep going for a good while more.

 

pipermoonrunner

I remember the consensus for relative stats for 10/48/3 is about

1 hit = 1.5~1.7 dmg, 1 crit = 0.5~0.7dmg, 1 haste = 1.3~1.5 dmg

I went on the PTR today, respec and put on my available fire gears, at

Int: 415, Spi: 258, Fire dmg: 1102, Hit: 128, Crit: 320, Haste: 25

I plugged them into Lhivera's script, to my very surprised i got the following relative stats:

1 hit = 1.39 dmg
1 crit = 0.61 dmg
1 haste - 0.99 dmg

haste is a lot lower than I expect. I planned to switch to back to fire and get all available new haste gears (Except for pants, T5 is good for the hit).

I can't figure out why haste value is so low.

 

• frmorrison

Making Life Tap is want put Warlocks at the top or near it n the TBC. I lose 15% of my dps time to the scaled Life Tap. Assuming it just gave 580 mana, that time would at least double.

Don't forget Dark Pact, it gets 98% of +damage, so at a certain point it gives more mana back than Tap (assuming the pet has mana to give and you have the talent).

 

Pintofbrew

If you're saying this on EJ forums you've clearly missed the point. Here we discover that balance and imbalance can be lost and found within less than 2% variations. theorycrafted frost and theorycrafted fire are less than 10% appart and for EJ standards, that's a lifetime.

If you think 1xGCD won't make a difference, I'd like to see some mathematical evidence proving it please, because from where I'm standing, whether a lock taps once or three times in a 6 shadowbolt rotation is the difference between "locks are fine" and "we'll never make up the difference". Two Taps are one shadowbolt. And that's at least 2.5k noncrit if memory serves.

Yes enh shaman's regen scale with AP, however Enh Shamans are more similar in terms of game mechanics to Rogues than casters: I assure you that even without shamanistic rage, they WILL mash both shock and stormstrike CD. Their regeneration via their 41st talent is irrelevant, in fact on my enh shaman who is barely in T4 level gear I don't particularly care for the damn spell most of the time anyway. BoW, JoW, new manaspring/shock cost-reduction talent/water shield will make the 41st talent redundant in every way possible barring the damage mitigation it will grant.

Yes shadow-fiends scale with gear, but for healing priests we don't care, they can have all the mana they want as far as I'm concerned and we've already established that Shadow-priests are unrealistically over-capable in regeneration terms.

Piper: Haven't you already posted this same story about stat equivalence already in this and other mage threads? Can we please keep the discussion relevant to TC in 2.3 rather than rehashing the same-old "1Hit=1.7dmg for 10.48.3" please. We all know by now that a number of theorycraft formulae and/or calculators/simulators/spreadsheets will produce stat equivalence and I don't see how re-stating them for everyone's gear helps us discuss 2.3 TC.

 

Antoine

I find it ironic that you say this when you've spent the last page whining about Life Tap. It's established at this point that Mages and Warlocks have a different relationship with mana. Warlocks use mana faster and have a spammable way to regen, where mages have different ways but spend it slower. This isn't changing any time soon, especially in 2.3.

 

Pintofbrew

Touché. I have a particular dislike for redundant posts, especially of the "x gear y spec, thorycraft = ?" kind. Perhaps I've been using my Tear Stained Handkerchief - Items - World of Warcraft too much.

The exploration into lifetap is however relevant, even if by proxy, as you will know we're getting our "mana issues" looked into, apparently. Knowing and understanding the competition I feel is a part of that.

Edit: And as for how we deal with mana, you are absolutely right: We do have a different relationship with mana. We regen give or take 10% the same way from level 70 greens to BT epics while you seem to scale much much more effectively. Barring of course arcane meditation and mage armor, which while they do scale with gear (despite our best efforts to avoid spirit) they are neither specced nor cast under most scenaria. Nor do they scale nearly as well as your regen mechanic does.

 

pipermoonrunner

Pinkfbrew:

My question/confusion is that, my finding seems to contradict to what's commonly proposed.

 

Pintofbrew

To be honest it does look a tiny bit off, but I wouldn't say it's so far off as to be unreasonable. I'd say it's not so much that hit/haste lost value as it is a side-effect of spell damage -gained- value due to removal of dmg tax. Relative values of crit/hit/haste between each other seem intact, just everything seems globally lower w.r.t. +dmg. Working As Intended I'd say.

 

Zwink

Mana issues are being way overblown in the last few pages of this thread. Mana is a major problem with Arcane Blast and Missiles, but not so much with either Fireball or Frostbolt. Mage Armor, Evocation, and the occasional Mana Potion should resolve any mana issues you have spamming Fireball on any Black Temple encounter. You won't be able to use Molten Armor or Destruction Potions, but you'll most likely be able to chain Flame Cap every cooldown. It's when you need to AoE or Spellsteal that mages have mana issues, but that is what Shadow Priests and Mana Tide Totem are for. To further eliminate any mana concerns, I've been considering going 18/43/1 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. With all the Hit on Black Temple gear I would just have to switch out Anetheron's Noose or Waistwrap of Infinity for Belt of Blasting. Elemental Precision gives 7 mp/5 per point, whereas Arcane Meditation is over 25 mp/5 per point raid buffed.

The biggest issue facing Mages today is that CoE is only used by our class and currently it requires 3 Warlocks for you to get it. Depending on your raid makeup 3 Warlocks most likely means one less Mage in the raid. I know I'll be planning our progression raids around 3 Warlocks and 2 Mages most likely.

http://vodka-guild.com

 

Darkmantle

While the high end lifetaps may be excessive the number of naxx guilds that dropped warlocks down to 2 because they just didn't do enough damage has to be remembered. In a wonderful reversal of the current situation those warlocks did coe and cor because fire mages were such better damage than them.

 

ebbv

I use Molten Armor except on fights where the Resist is helpful. If my shadowpriest doesn't die I don't have mana problems at all. If he does then I have to start chain chugging potions. I really don't think mana is a big deal. I swap in a Nightstaff of the Everliving with +20 SPI currently for Evocation, and the new Evocation should return the same amount without swapping any gear (BTW when deciding if INT gear is worth the bag space note that we'll only gain about 300 mana by swapping in INT gear for the new evocate, ~375 with 2pc T6.)

Regarding Lifetap, it's an old topic, and let's be honest, the problem is not Lifetap, it's that Warlock single target DPS *and* AE are as good or better than ours. That's our beef. But c'mon, it's been clear since Magister's and Dreadmist which class Blizzard favors.

 

Muphrid

You can't just slap scaling with +spell damage to anything and everything. Life Tap scaling with +damage, for example, was and is poorly conceived. It does not take a genius to see that the X% of time they spend Life Tapping at one gear level to maintain a rotation goes to 0 as gear levels increase, meaning not only does gear increase their damage, it increases the proportion of time they spend actually dealing damage.

Scaling itself is all about precision. Tagging scaling with +damage to mana gems is highly imprecise.

Past injustices do not excuse present ones.