Maledict

Yes Pintobrew, the last testing I read on it concluded that was *exactly* how it works. As you gear up, you hit the damage cap earlier and earlier. It could probably do with re-testing though, as it's been a long time since Blizzard introduced the changes, and many patches have gone by with some fairly fundamental mechanics changes in them.

The only number I can remember from the initial testing was that Cone of Cold at maximum rank was capped at around 5600 damage. Easiest way to do it would be to do SM with Herod and see what you get on the adepts with your maximum rank spells.

 

Leialyn

I don't criticize the Cap itself, I criticize the fact, that the cap is a fixed amount and does not scale with spelldamage (As Maledict stated "As you gear up, you hit the damage cap earlier and earlier.")

There are a lot of things in WoW that do not scale with equipment (like the threat bonus on warrior spells that I mentioned) .. or if you take all caster classes, the basic concept of caster had almost no equipment scaling in it until they introduced spelldamage. You can see this best at the base stats: How much do Melees profit from mark of the wild and blessing of kings? And how much do caster classes do?

Thats what I mean with "blizz screwing the game".

 

marloz

Rounced is correct, AP does not increase the damage further than the hard-cap. AE cap is 6730.

14 targets no AP:
481 hit 875 crit

14 targets with AP:
481 hit 875 crit

Single target hit: 706 (AP: 903)

This is with 1189 spelldamage (1340 with Arcane Mind) which means AP only benefits AE if there is less than 7~ targets. This will of course depend on your spelldamage.

 

Roywyn

Has anyone had a Frostbolt proc Judgement of Wisdom since 2.3 hit?

The total Rage WC => Archimonde => Reliquary clear yielded 2 JoW procs for me (frost), 0 for our second frost mage.
Our fire mages had 66 and 91 JoW procs. Our water elementals had 49 procs together.
The log is mine, so not all other mages were on every encounter.

One of my procs was on Essence of Suffering from an Ice Lance crit.
The other was from a wand hit on Teron Gorefiend (yay for 1 Evocation tick with 2/5 T6).


Anyone else seeing something fishy? I'd love to file a bug report, but WoW EU forums don't have that option.

 

Grai

So does this then suggest that if there is more then a certain number of targets (aprox 8 if I had to guess) that Blizzard would be the best bet for damage (assuming no spellfire, therefor high frost damage) over Flamestrike? Something similar for AE but I didn't napkin math it out.

Another concept, how does this apply to warlocks Seed of Corruption. With it detonating for aprox 1200, they hit this cap very quickly (5-6 targets). Should we then be encouraging RoF over seed for large AoE groups in Hyjal?

 

Maledict

When Marlox says AE, he means Arcane Explosion. Each area effect spell has it's own damage cap, so there's no real advantage in one spell over the other.

It could do with further testing though - things like :

i) does Curse of shadows affect the end result? (or misery)
ii) does the doT from flamestrike get affected by it?

 

Pintofbrew

Roywin: There's definitely something amiss with Frostbolt: It's not proccing Frostbite nearly as much as it should either. On Morogrim last night (only fight we get JoW) I didn't notice a single proc off it for my bolts either. We better get to the bottom of it quick, a hot-fix should be implemented.

 

universe

Was wondering which helm did more dps. I have max hit already without having the VR Helm. At the moment i have close to 40% crit and with my hit gear on 165 hit. Currently i am using the Aldor helm with the CSD in it. Seeing if anyone could tell me if using aldor helm with the CSD in it would be more beneficial to me as a 10/48/3 mage then the VR helm. Any suggestions would be appreciated thanks

 

galzohar

Can't see your armory but with maxed hit and 40% crit at T4 gear level (or even some T5) you cannot be gemmed properly, as in your spell damage must be lower than it could be (at the cost of crit, getting a net DPS increase).
Then again maybe I'm just wrong and you have full T6+ except headpiece but for some reason I'm guessing that's not the case.

 

universe

i have a 36% crit but i always have an elemental shammy with me so i have close to a 40% crit in raids. You never answered my question i need help with the 2 helms and knowing which will give me the most dps under the circumstances

 

Aldric

This isn't an 'answer my question' thread. That would be here. You could also look into Vontre's mage spreadsheet which will help you answer this one very specific question.

 

Northerner

As an example for the weapons I can only show this. I'd note that the non-AP part is a little off, likely because we'd paint with CoS/Misery as we went.

With AP:
10/9 20:30:41.671 Your Arcane Explosion hits Devastation for 1130 Arcane damage.
10/9 20:30:41.671 Your Arcane Explosion hits Infinity Blades for 1133 Arcane damage.
10/9 20:30:41.671 Your Arcane Explosion hits Phaseshift Bulwark for 1135 Arcane damage.
10/9 20:30:41.671 Your Arcane Explosion crits Warp Slicer for 1957 Arcane damage.
10/9 20:30:41.677 Your Arcane Explosion hits Cosmic Infuser for 1143 Arcane damage.
Without AP:
10/9 20:30:53.642 Your Arcane Explosion hits Devastation for 963 Arcane damage.
10/9 20:30:53.642 Your Arcane Explosion hits Infinity Blades for 926 Arcane damage.
10/9 20:30:53.642 Your Arcane Explosion crits Phaseshift Bulwark for 1615 Arcane damage.
10/9 20:30:53.642 Your Arcane Explosion hits Warp Slicer for 955 Arcane damage.
(Sorry, mace doesn't live long.)

Now, for Hyjal packs it's a bit different. I generally tried to skirt the damage cap by only APing small packs.

APed:
10/17 18:27:26.722 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1853 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:26.722 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1852 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:26.722 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 1059 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:26.722 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1853 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:26.722 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 1058 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:26.722 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1852 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:26.722 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 1058 Arcane damage.

but

10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 927 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 927 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 926 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 926 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 926 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 926 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 927 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:28.360 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 927 Arcane damage.

and

10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion hits Crypt Fiend for 926 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion hits Abomination for 972 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 926 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion crits Crypt Fiend for 1621 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion hits Crypt Fiend for 927 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1621 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1621 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:41:41.966 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 927 Arcane damage.

These show pretty clearly the damage cap in effect even with relatively small target numbers.

Non-AP for a psuedo-control:
10/17 18:27:23.496 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 814 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:23.496 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1423 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:23.509 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 799 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:23.509 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1407 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:23.509 Your Arcane Explosion crits Ghoul for 1399 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:23.509 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 835 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:23.509 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 793 Arcane damage.
10/17 18:27:23.509 Your Arcane Explosion hits Ghoul for 818 Arcane damage.

Make of it what you will.

 

Queuetip

Regarding JOW proc from frostbolt, here is a WWS report from last Thursday.

WWS Report

This was for random trash, Leo, and Vashj attempts
Alprazolam is Fire
Both myself and Aeriscats are Frost

Something is definitely up. The shadowfiends got more procs than us

 

Cardynal

Wierd that a damage cap is applied before crit is considered. It does seem that AP benefits 8 mobs...raising the limit before crit to around 7400.

 

marloz

That's weird. You do 7416 total damage to 8 targets which exceeds the cap by 686 dmg. I know, the chance is small, but - was CoS up on all targets? Because 10% of 6730 damage is 7403, pretty close to your end result.

Except for that, I don't see any other reason why your AE should hit for more than 6730.

Cardynal: I've tried AE'ing 8 targets with AP and even on use +dmg trinket, and under no circumstances it exceeded 6730 total damage in hits.

 

Maledict

No, that's not how this works. The limit is *nothing* to do with the number of mobs you are hitting.

The limit simply states : "Arcane Explosion can never do more than 6730 damage". So if you have 100,000 spell damage or so, even on one target it would hit the cap and do 6730 damage.

So, Arcane power will increase your AE if you are only AE'ing a small number of mobs, or you don't have much spell damage gear. So for Kael AE'ing the weapons, Arcane Power will be useful because you're normally only hitting 5 or so targets, and that's not enough to hit the cap. It would be better to call it a damage cap rather than a mob cap to be honest, because that's what it is.

From the results posted by Northener, it definitely seems to confirm the case the debuffs such as Curse of Shadows / Misery apply after the cap is reached.

 

Inoko

Which makes sense from a mechanics point of view. The "rolls" would likely go like this.

1) AE is cast.
2) Targets are allocated.
3) Damage is capped.
4) Each target takes damage (here is where debuffs and crits are applied).

That's how I see it working, at least.

[Edit: Resists shunt damage over to other monsters, apparently, according to a few posts I saw, so I guess resist rolls go in 2) and remove the target from the "pool"? I'm not sure.]

 

Northerner

Well, I know we carried a lot of warlocks (typically two spriests and three warlocks) and CoS and Misery could quite possibly be on some of the targets. In fact, I'd guarantee that one or the other would be on some. It is extremely unlikely though (damn near impossible) that all targets would have both and equally unthinkable that all targets would have CoS and not Misery.

I would only presume that CoS/Misery are added in on a per-target basis before the damage splitting occurs and do allow damage over the cap. I certainly don't think that it is AP doing so or that itself would be obvious from your own test.

EDIT: The oddity is the Abom that takes an odd damage amount on what otherwise is a capped AE. Perhaps CoS is merged and Misery added after. That would be strange mechanically but certainly makes sense of the log since the spriests would be sticking to the more annoying/higher HP targets for the most part.

 

Cardynal

Yes I know how the cap works. You simply don't see it under so many mobs because you're not reaching it. I was trying to explain the difference between 10% increase done on some of the mobs (7403 dmg cap)

My thought is that the mechanic may work that under so many mobs, AP would work in some wierd mechanic where it only gives a 10% increase. I wouldnt' assume that CoS was on every single one of those mobs at the time they were hit....on every test he did where he used AP...and not on his control. The fact that the control (non-ap) has the 6730 limit and the others have a 7400 limit...both when hitting 8 mobs, and the same test done at 14 mobs show the 6730 cap, shows that the number does matter in some way.

We need to see logs showing consecutivly growing AP's and non-AP's increasing in size by 1 to 14 mobs.

 

Sancus

I completely disagree with this. A number of classes have "stupid tricks" that they can perform that they should absolutely not be able to from a strict view of balance - warlocks at high gear levels can drain tank and solo absolutely retarded things, I know a Warlock who was working on soloing Onyxia by swapping aggro back and forth between him and his pet and drain tanking, and last I checked he got her to 50% by doing this before he got bored of the game and quit. He likely would've killed it, and certainly would with Sunwell gear. He easily tanked heroics and a number of 5-man mobs. Hunters can do ridiculous solo things in instances, including soloing mother shahraz trash because of Feign Death and pet tanking, too.

The bottom line is that aoeing 91 mobs was not very useful except in one idiotically designed and implemented temporary quest. It was just a neat trick. It was only profitable because Bliz put 91 melee mobs in one spot with no significant ranged capability. Nerfing aoe because you don't know how to design mobs is lame, and nerfing it in a way that makes it not scale with gear is not only lame, but makes them underpowered.

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

 

Hate Monkey

This could be tested really easy on the first wave of Rage Winterchill's and Anetheron's packs. Since the waves contain 10 mobs only, and a hunter usually takes one away to grab some npc's, this should easily provide enough evidence with minimal effort.

As for the Frostbolt not procing Frostbite and JoW, that seems like something with Improved Frostbolt got screwed up with the coefficient nerf was removed. And is Elemental Precision bugged still this patch for 6% frost hit?

It's also nice to see this thread going into different mechanics, and bugs now than the previous 10 pages of dribble discussion mechanics from pre-tbc.

 

Inoko

It's hard to tell if you're referring to the cap existing at all, in which case it's been tested thoroughly: it does, or to the weird 10% increase that was displayed in one group of monsters with AP up, in which case, that doesn't really test it, anyways.

 

Darkmantle

I think that the damage cap had more to do with being able to tune raid dungeons than anything else. Before the AoE on things like Nefarian, the amount your AoE put out was directly related to how tlghtly you pack the mobs. WIth the implementation of the cap you know 200k hp of aoe adds will take a specific number of AE's or the like and you can tune up or down to get your target raid composition. Faxmonkey doing his thing merely accelerated the process.

 

Eusheka

Another oddity i noticed while frostspec the other week in Hyjal was Blizzard.

When AOE'ing trash with blizzard i noticed its damage changed as more or less mobs were in the area of effect, as expected.

What wasnt expected however was that it was acting in reverse.

4 mobs would give tic's of about 385 (Number might be off but for the purpose of this explanation its ok)
With 7 - 10 mobs, each mob would get hit for over 460 .. the cutoff point seemed to be about 14 mobs where the damage would not increase anymore.

 

Pintofbrew

Sancus: The fact that other classes can do stupid abusive things does not mean that they should be able to, nor does it mean we should be able to. The way AoE damage cap does not scale with gear is clearly wrong and so while I will accept that the current cap is idiotic I don't see how you can endorse AoE not having a cap at all; Realistically, there should be no encounter where a player should need o surpass the cap (again, if the cap was better thought-out and scaled with gear instead of being frozen) and hence it does not hinder you.

What a warlock can do by exploiting level difference in old-world content, or in heroics exploiting path-scripting, or aggro-juggling is irrelevant; Having uncapped AOE simply begs to be exploited and as such has no place in ballanced games. Some retard is bound to come up with a stupid way to exact more worth than they should. The fact that the Naxx-opening event at the time was the only place where AoE was blatantly, dramatically over-abused is irrelevant: It was an exploit at the time and so was leveling via cauldron AOE-farming between 50-60.

I'm all for the AoE cap, but at current it seems to be too restrictive. I don't see where the harm is in making the cap scale, as everything else in the game does.

Hate Monkey: Ele Pre is most assuredly bugged. Over the whole of SSC minus Vashj and VR/Solarian i got 0.8% resist average on 124hit. Granted, trash wasn't always 73 level, but taking boss-only data increased miss to 1.4% which is 0.2% more than it should be given bugged hit rate, and 2.8 less than it should be given correctly functioning hit rate.

Unrelated Note: I specifically let my water elemental sit in 5 of VR's Arcane Orbs today as a fellow frostie said his didn't die to them and to my bewilderment it suffered approximately 0 damage. Note: Not half-damage, as I was told hunter pets do, Nil. Anyone else noticed such? Is it a VR-only story? I'm suspecting perhaps it's behaving "immune" to arcane as well as frost (what about fire?). I know it died to Lurker's Whirl, but I think that's melee. Perhaps it's simply some high % to resist aoe spells?