Valean

Not quite sure if this is the best place for this, but its worth a shot...

Four bosses in BT

This is just the report for me, from last night. When analyzing my performance, I see that my DPS, while acceptable, still lacks in comparison to the other casters, specifically the Warlocks and Mages. I know part of this is that my gear not up to par with most of the other casters, but I also cant help but think that i'm failing in some other aspect.

For the entire night, my miss % came up to 4.3%, and add that into a mitigated % of 6.6%, roughly 10% of my fireballs were not doing their full damage. On boss fights i run at about 150-160 +hit, on trash its about 130. I'm working on upgrading my gear, but it's been slow going so far. i stick with the usual spell rotation of 5 x scorch (im the only fire mage) and then fireball spam while keeping scorch up every 30 seconds or so.

Can anyone offer any advice? Is there something i'm missing. I hate feeling like i'm not holding my own weight.

 

Kir

There's a '[Mage] help me please' thread (title might be a little different, should be in the first page or two) for those kinds of questions. Nothing personal, but it's there for a reason, you'd be better off posting in that thread.

 

Rouncer

It's not you, it's your raid leader who is making you look like you aren't pulling your own weight. From a quick look at the charts you seem to get the short stick in regards to groups.

Take a look at Teron Try 7

Vocal got back 50% more mana from VT then you did and he also had Mana Tide and was Bloodlusted. Bloodlust and Mana Tide means he got Wrath of Air. Ferocious Inspiration beats Aura of the Crusader as well. So I think your performance is more predicated on the groupings then on your personal performance.

Then there is Supremus. 3 warlocks and none of them threw up a CoE on a boss that actually has FR??? Basically the warlocks sacrificed 45% of your dps so they could look good on the meters. Ask them which curse does 400dps and when they stare back in blank amazement tell them to pick one of their number to stick CoE up on that fight.

This really does belong in the mage help thread but next time you question your performance don't forget to take the support classes and buffs/debuffs into account before thinking you are doing something wrong.

 

Aldric

From a raid utility purpose I would take arcane impact (13/0/48) over investing points in shatter. It has been discussed many times in this thread (or the old one maybe) that shatter is not an effective AoE dps increase. AE will be your primary AoE spell, why not improve that first?

And thank you Rounced for posting Linerva's math on the talent. I'll have to look it over when I get out of this meeting at work. At first glance it looks like the top end damages are being used for the two spells instead of their damage ranges, which may or may not (I haven't looked) make a substantial difference.

 

Rouncer

Well averages are averages aren't they so the damage range shouldn't make that substantial a difference.

WoW Forums -> My 21-point Frost talent w/arguments

That's the thread that all the math is coming from and the basis for the math is given in the first post.

I still think that it's the best idea for the new 21 point Frost talent but the other option that I kinda like would be a magical debuff that does exactly the same thing as CoE but doesn't stack with CoE. That way a Frost mage would be able to debuff the target for Frost and Fire damage and not have to rely on the warlocks. Also if the spell is cheap enough it would make a nice replacement for Detect Magic as a polymorph dispel protector.


Heh - I just thought of another concept for the 21 pointer that could work.

Ice in the Vein
Whenever a target has their movement speed affected by your chill effects, 50% of that value will be applied to casting times, attack speed and ranged attack speed.


Only issue is that it neither of those other options does anything to address the current monotony associated with much of Frost raiding, eg. frostbolt+frostbolt+frostbolt+++ ad nauseum. Fixing that is probably the best aspect of Lhivera's talent concept.

 

Kir

I never said I was getting shatter for AE purposes. You are diverting the discussion away from the theoretical situation IF the talent being proposed existed to the current mage situation. But, ok, I'll go with it.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft 13/0/44, 4 points left, what next? Imp blizzard? Chill? Those are both talents that would mainly be used in AE situations, and we took Arcane Impact as an AE talent. Frostbite is pvp/solo talent.

I was disagreeing with your statement about the talent point investment for a 2-3% dmg increase on boss mobs not being worth it. My point was that it's fine, because there is no other damage increasing talent available to pick over it, anyway. After getting every damage increasing talent possible, you end up with left over points. You are picking situational talents at some point, no matter what. Arcane Impact is only useful for AEing, it has no effect on a boss mob itself. I classify that as situational. It's not a 'must have' talent, it's a matter of personal preference imo. But, even with picking it, you still have 4 points to use on shatter if you wanted, which would definitely be worthwhile with Lhivera's proposed talent. 5 points if you go 4/5 Winter's chill, which some people do if they have multiple mages specced frost in their guild.

 

Kir

God, that would be awesome. Luckily for us, we have a destro warlock who puts up CoE a lot, for his own fire dmg spells. But, I can always tell if he's not there, as my dps starts sucking, and it's like pulling teeth getting another warlock to keep it up on trash or keeping 100% uptime on bosses. Hell, we had one stupid emo warlock who had improved CoS and would never throw it up on trash back when most of our mages were arcane, and we had 3-4 locks and 3-4 shadow priests on every raid. He got bitched out a ton and just went all emo about 'it's just trash!'. Meanwhile, we've got people complaining when our farm nights don't go smooth or take too long.. ¬_¬

 

Aldric

So the actual averages for

Ice Lance: 174 Lihnerva: 186.5 delta: +12.5 effective damage delta: 87.5
Frostbolt: 620 Lihnerva: 623.5 delta: +3.5 effective damage delta: 3.83

Just from my initial first look at the calculations, you can see that the base numbers are incredibly far off, and they favor deeply ice lance. And thats just in the base, consider then that the ice lance calculations magnify that error by 300%, it's huge. Not to mention that 1200 damage is way off for a T6 mage. I don't even have full T6 and I have 1200 damage in my frost gear. Add to that flask, food, totem and oils and you're looking at a more realistic 1450 damage. Keep in mind that every point of plus damage is practically nothing for lance, and it's pretty huge for frostbolt.

Note: Turns out Lhinerva's numbers are right, shame on me for not knowing that the base damage on lance scaled with level

 

Rouncer

Not sure what the damage deltas mean but those discrepancies I'll leave to Lhivera to explain or discount.


Why do you keep saying that Ice Lance gets practically nothing from +damage? On a Frozen target it scales just as well as any other instant cast spell. It gets 14.29% base and then when you triple that to account for a frozen target it then equals 42.86% which is the same as all other instant cast spells. Sure that scaling doesn't quite compare to Frostbolt due to Improved and Empowered talents but it isn't something to be scoffed at either.

Discounting the talents they both share, Frostbolt gets 36.57% +damage per second and Ice Lance gets 28.57% +damage per second on a Frozen target. I agree that Frostbolt scales better but I don't think that difference is enough to account for the notion that Ice Lance gets "practically nothing" and that every point of +damage is "pretty huge" for Frostbolt.

 

Muphrid

This is probably a result of Lhivera using actual level 70 untalented base damage ranges, and not the ranges you had when you trained the ability (which is what every site will list). You did know that spells slightly increase in damage as you level, right?

 

Aldric

Huh, well, I'll be damned, learn something new every day. That pretty much completely invalidates all my assumptions on a talent like that. Good call Muphrid.

 

Muphrid

Welcome. It's worth noting that some talents modify the tooltip, but not others. Piercing Ice, for example, modifies Frost spell tooltips, but Arctic Winds does not. I've theorized, though not tested, that only abilities that increase damage of a spell line or tree (not a spell school) increase the listed damage on tooltips. Something I do notice, though, from wowhead...

Both Piercing Ice and Fire Power have "Apply Aura: Add % Modifier (22)" as an effect. What I do not know is whether Fire Power increases the listed damage.

At any rate, though, once we know all the talents that affect listed damage, we can solve for real base damage, at least until someone is generous enough to compile an actual list of base damage values at level 70 (which, actually, is not a bad idea).

 

Aldric

Sounds like a good addition to Vontre's new mega thread. I'll cross post it over there.

 

Pintofbrew

Gentlemen we're missing the point: We shouldn't get tied up to the minutiae of numerical specifics when the whole concept is up in the air. Granted, Lhivera's talent doesn't scale well for Sunwell gear+ for purely PvE bosskill DPS.

However, Aldric, Talents are not designed to fulfill your raiding needs alone: The blastwave and fireblast effect is there because there's more to being a mage than lvl 70, and it's pointless to have a 21 talent that needs a 64 spell to function. Clearly from a TC perspective Ice Lance is the only one we're looking at.

Given the mechanic suggest "behaves as frozen" it doesn't take a rocket scientist to assume this works better with Shatter. What's the point of adding "and the spell gains +x%crit" when the previous talent does the same thing? You claim Shatter is a non-raid talent? Well it's a non-raid talent because 7 points for a crit CoC are of no use whatsoever and a CoC is about the only thing today that'll benefit from Shatter in a raid.

You can not claim a talent useless in any environment when the NEW talent suggested directly is influenced by it. You say raiding mages don't take Shatter? I agree, but given that Clearcasting aside theres about nothing else in the whole fire/arcane tree you could possibly give a damn about, with Lhivera's talent we gain the option of either Permafrosted Imp Blizz, or Shatter for Lhivera procs + Icelance to up the DPS a little.

The point Lhivera was trying to make by suggesting the talent was a decently-thought out idea to introduce at least SOME element of interest into what's patently the most boring spell spam rotation in the game. Numbers can be tweaked to increase or decrease efficiency more or less at will, but pulling out a magnifying glass and dismissing what's most likely the most original and well-rounded talent since the Trainable IB anouncement because you assume sunwell gear will render it useless is mean and irrelevant.

Iod: Unless I misunderstood the opening sentence of your post you state that 21 talents is too shallow for a 2% dps boost. If this is the case you clearly have not noticed the frost talent Piercing Ice at the third tier. If I am mistaken, forgive me and please elaborate as to what do you mean by "21 points is too few points in the tree".

 

Rugrud

just FYI if you haven't read it yet, there was actually a bug with frozen bite talent, as stated by Eyonix:
"Investigations proved fruitful. We were able to identify the bug affecting Frostbite. We're working on a solution and will make sure it's fixed as soon as possible (very likely the next patch, which isn't too far out)."

I hope they haven't discovered the ele precision bug while investigating this...

 

Pintofbrew

I wonder when the frost 21 beta will be anounced... Given next patch will (a) not be Sunwell, because if it's "not too far out" it seems unlikely and (b) be the last one before Sunwell, it seems reasonable it'll be the patch we get IB.

 

Iod

I meant for my idea, as dumb as it was. I'd say Lhivera's suggestion would fit very well in the 21-point slot.

 

Aldric

I certainly didn't mean to be mean spirited in my criticisms of Lhinerva's 21 point talent, I was just offering my viewpoint to counter what was pretty much just commented on as this talent is the bee's knees.

Whenever I see a postulated ability there are three areas you need to consider; PvP, PvE (raiding/grinding), and leveling.

Right now I think we can all agree that frost is the PvP tree and probably the leveling tree as well, PvE, close but not quite there.

The intent stated by Blizzard of removing the IB talent from the frost tree was to make other talent builds competitively viable in PvP. From this we can rule out the 21 point talent being overwhelmingly PvP oriented. Lhinerva's talent is ok in this area. However, I can see potential outcry over the likely combo of Nova->Frostbolt(shatter)/Lance Shatter->Buff Applies (due to latency)->Ice lance virtual shatter. That's a lot of damage, and I'm not sure Blizzard would want that in arenas.

From the leveling prospective you gain use of 1/3 of the talent at level 30 when you can pick up 21 point talent through the use of fire blast. And that is a pretty cool little leveling bonus. The only downside is that you pick up the 2nd portion of the talent at 51 when you can get blastwave, but that keeps you from progressing in the frost tree, whats the fun in that?

For grinding at 70 it's pretty sweet, I give it a A+ in that area. Raiding is the other part that we've been discussing and where I think the real crux of it being a viable talent lie. My feeling was that an 8 point investment for a 2% buff that won't catch the tree up to fire certainly isn't worth it.

My personal preference would be, as others have stated, to make a mage synergy talent just like ISB except for fire and frost attacks. Such a talent would be great for all 3 aspects of gameplay, wouldn't be terribly overpowered, and would make great bounds advancing mage raid dps as well as the viability of frost as a raiding tree.

 

Pintofbrew

Sorry if I came across too defensive against your opinion Aldric, but as suggestions for the 21 have been so dramatically shoddy, unoriginal and boring over the past few weeks I felt you were being too critical of the suggestion.

As for your suggestion, combining ISB-like powers and "wouldn't be terribly overpowered" in the same sentence is a tough act. What is hands-down the single most scale-tastic talent in the whole game can be considered anything but "not terribly overpowered". As it stands, I feel mages have perhaps 2-4% margin worth of damage gain before they start to become excessively potent w.r.t. other DPS classes by blizzard's (and the hunter's/locks) perspective. Combining the recent announcement that "class ballanced is being looked at VERY closely" (source: WoW Forums -> Nerf Hunters Now!! ) the prospect of a powerful mechanic along the lines of ISB would become unlikely.

As for your suggestion of mage synergy, a frost-effect "increases X (crit/dmg/anything) from Y (possibly another mage source) for Z duration per proc" is an intelligent suggestion from a raiding perspective. Perhaps there's some way to work the benefit to become more useful for fire, but to come from frost, so we create a lock-like situation where we need 1x frost mage to buff the fire-mage's Molten Fury hits (just like destro's need one affli for malediction-CoS).

 

◊ manly

I still maintain everything I said. 21 points talents are new spells on a cooldown. It's almost a universal truth. With this said, I don't think anyone can or will come up with the proper talent. I am also sorry to say but a 2% frost dps increase would be too good in my view. Maybe my opinion would be different if EP wasn't bugged and if frost had to deal with supposedly unmitigeable innate resists.

The talent needs to not suck at low levels. It's one thing to give the talent synergy with ice lance, but given the fact its a TBC spell (ie: over lvl 60) doesn't makes much sense.

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.

 

Rouncer

Why blastwave? Lhivera's original concept had the buff being utilized by Ice Lance, Fireblast and Cone of Cold. Blastwave wasn't anywhere on the list.

I suggested having it apply to all instant cast spells (as trained - made instant by PoM wouldn't count) which would make it effective for Blastwave as well but that was my conceptualization of his idea, since I thought that would add more cross-tree utility to the talent.


If they want to add something to give cross-tree raiding utility for fire and frost then they should just make the talent into a Mage magic version of Curse of Elements and have the effect not stack with the Warlock CoE. Although I really wish they would just move CoE over to the mage class since we are the only ones who really require it on a consistant basis, either that or follow Manly's suggestion and combine CoS and CoE into a single curse.

3 mages last night (2 Fire and 1 Frost) and I think we had CoE up for maybe 2 fights......CoA/CoD made their normal appearance but no amount of QQing or was able to get CoE to make regular appearances.

"Everything I cast is getting pushed off..." was the explanation offered up.

 

Duodecimal

I do not believe that this is an optimal tactic, unless I misunderstand when crits are deducted from the 3 charges on Combustion. I'm pretty sure that crit charges are deducted on hit and not on cast.

It is always better to Fireblast while a Fireball is in the air to get a 4th crit out of Combustion. If you trigger Combustion while a non-combusted Fireball is in the air, there's a good chance it'll crit even though it didn't get the first 10% combustion bonus.

What this means is that you're starting Combustion with 2 charges left and at least 45% crit chance on the next Fireball, instead of 3 crits left. This leaves you with a 10% lower chance (on average) of your final Combustion charge critting on either the Fireball or the cheat Fireblast.

This is why I also feel cheated when I get a crit on a fireball that was in the air when I triggered Combustion, as another poster mentioned.

As for any worries about the cheat Fireblast crit overwriting the Fireball ignite, it's always better to get Fireball + Fireblast + Fireblast Ignite than to get just Fireball + Fireball Ignite.

 

◊ Vontre

Speculation and suggesting ideas is dumb, always has been. Check this out.


WoW Forums -> Mage Improvements!

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

 

Nurru

I never would have believed those changes if you hadn't linked the post.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Duodecimal

Good lord ... might be time to move out of Clearcasting. 2/47/11 +1 somewhere ...