Dustwhisper

Our SP regens something like 10-12k in the 4 minutes rage takes to die. Do you use fireblast in your rotation? I've even went OOM on lurker with SP, chainpotting, geming, evocating, only using fireballs.

 

macbeet

Evocation is 8 minutes. Thottbot test data lists Cold Snap as 8 minutes as pointed out by Mulgero: Thottbot World of Warcraft: Cold Snap

With Icy Flows that will be 6:24 minutes... now I have not been to many fights in T6 content, but wont this let you use Cold Snap twice per fight, and hence give 1 additional WE and 1 additional Icy Veins over the previous cooldown?

edit: misslinked, i suck

 

Pintofbrew

I specified that I was not reffering to T6 content and you ask me to confirm my statement given T6 content? Evocation has been 8m since release, while over the past two years every single new talent/mechanic/workaround has been implemented with the same ballancing around 1,2 and 3m CDs. My reasoning was pattern recognition, though speculation alone. Moving it to 8m has reasonable belieavability because it's a 20% decrease and that's a common modifier for blizzard alterations. Even though, Ice Floes lowering it to a fraction like 6:24 seems rather ungainly and silly.

Realistically it should stay (talented or not) longer than twice the best CD it resets. Otherwise we'll reach a state where every other CD you cold-snap which is plain silly.

 

Goggles

I don't know how that's even possible. I just looked at a random 8.5 minute Lurker kill of ours. My shadow priest was not well geared (1 bit of T5, 2 bits of T4, rest Karazhan gear, not a tailor/engineer/enchanter etc) and didn't do very good dps by his standards. I got 12k mana over the entire fight from him, I used evocation once and 3 or 4 mana gems, no mana potions. I can guarantee I never had or looked like having mana issues as I'd have used a pot or 2 then. Was just using a normal scorch/fireball rotation (possibly didn't even use scorch that much if another mage owned the debuff). Only 2 things I can think of are that I a) used Mage Armour and b) didn't use fireblast. I can't see b) that significant a difference even if you're using it every cooldown. No idea about the difference in mana regen between Mage and Molten but again can't see it being massive. I use Mage because it's always seemed to me better but I've got no maths to back it up. I only use Molten on short DPS races.

EDIT: In reply to Dustwhisper

Not actually a member of Refusion on Burning Blade.

 

Dustwhisper

I always use molten armor, I only use fireblast when I know I won't go OOM or have a SP.. I have very very high dps uptime on most fights though. On lurker the only time I stop dpsing is between last guardian thing and when lurker pops back up and while waiting for adds to spawn. No way I can see people not going OOM, especially when not having a SP.

 

arch

Is fire blast still viable in the fire rotations? I thought 8 fireballs 1 scorch was the optimal rotation, mainly because of the fireball unnerf and the new casting system.

 

Skinkelinken

Still good for the last stack of combustion where you cast a fireball and cast a fireblast while the fireball is in the air. Also very good when moving (wich you do most fights). On trash I use it as a killing blow spell, in other words when I know the mob will go down within 1.5 seconds i use fireblast instead of scorch.

To change topic:
Cant wait to see new calculations that compare frost to fire again, Im hopeing to start using frost in PVE soon but whant the numbers on my side

Edit: What do you guys think about Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (for icey veins after patch)

 

Frenzi

No it was reduced to an 8 minute CD from 10 minute pre - TBC IIRC

 

Vhad

Not really no, ignite has been FUBAR since it's implementation, but exactly this won't work well and hasn't since they nerfed the Naxx Era of Ignite. What will happen is the Fireblast crit to land last and proc the ignite, this ignite will override the one from the fireball, granted that crit too, and you lose a good chunk of dmg.

What!?

 

Silke

While this is true, it can also be a boost to our DPS along the same line of thought. Remove Health Potion and replace that with Destruction Potion and you'll see where I'm going with this. I'm only working on T5 content and despite carrying several stacks of Destruction Pots around with me, I'm very hesitant to use them. I much prefer saving my cooldowns for a Health Pot or a Mana Pot as needed. However, with the changes to Mana Gems it will be much more "safe" to burn a Destruction Pot instead of holding onto the cooldown for a Mana / Health pot.

 

Skinkelinken

What I mean is that fireblast helps you make combustion last for 4 crits and not 3.

When you popped combustion and critted 2 times you basicly make sure to cast a fireblast before your fireball land to get a extra crit in.

 

Dustwhisper

Yes this does open for destropots. Nowhere in Tier5 do you need a healthpotion really, think only place I ever used them was on Leotheras cause our healers cba healing ranged on that fight.

 

Pintofbrew

That may be true but the man pointed-out that double-dipping nerfs your fireball's ignite. Is there really a benefit to wasting an additional GCD to gain a Fireblast crit at the expense of the Ignite portion of your Fireball's crit?

 

Dustwhisper

well you can technically or maybe I'm just extremely lucky, trippledip it with fireball->scorch->fireblast. Which i get on certain fights depending on latency/distance to mob.

 

Leialyn

I thought about this as well, but I'm not so sure about the rest of the frost spells... maybe spec a bit into frostbolt for times where there are fire immunes (Illidan P2, Al'ar, etc).

 

Zalbo

If your fireblast crit + ignite damage is greater than just the ignite damage from fireball, then it would, wouldn't it? E.G. a 6k fireball crit means fireblast would have to crit + ignite for over 2400 damage, which I think is fairly likely at such a gear level/raid debuffed mob.

Edit: I haven't been fire for a while to check on this, so someone who is fire could provide the actual numbers.

 

Dustwhisper

Btw regarding 4part t6 item stacking. From looking over vontre's spreadsheet again and testing diff items without actually trying to max for hit or anything it seems to me like stacking 4part t6 with random epic the epics come out like this

Cowl of the illidary highlord = 4 dps over > Vestments of the seawitch = 1 dps over > leggings of channeled elements = 8 or so dps > hatefury mantle.

This is also without modelling the CSD which I guess would put cowl of the illidary highlords a lot more infront of vestments.

Might turn out differently if I actually try to stack gems right but this was mainly filling with +12 spelldmg gems and removing any other gear that had +hit on it just incase one combo put it over the hitcap compared to another.

 

Amarek

This is not true. Ignite doesn't work like it did pre 2.0, but now it works exactly like the tooltip states. Every crit provides 40% of the crit-dmg as a dot, ticking 2 times for 20%.

If you crit again before your first ignite ticks, the damage get added. I even checked our last Kael-Try WWS.

Flamestrike: 1512 (crit)
Blastwave: 1684 (crit)
Dragon's Breath: 1824 (crit)

There was no ignite tick in between, and the first ignite tick after 2 seconds was for 1004, which is exactly the right amount (add everything and multiply by 0.2).

 

Doroteasenjk

Comparison of 2/48/11 and 10/47/3+1

This is a rough, back of the envelope, comparison.

Clearcasting effectively adds 10% to your mana pool. Roughly, in a 5 minute fight, you will spend 4500 more mana without Clearcasting than with; in a 10 minute fight, you will spend 9000 more.

The new mana gem protocol has 3 charges of average 2400 mana per charge. In a 5 minute fight, you will consume 2 gems, which give 2450 more mana than in 2.3; in a 10 minute fight, you will consume 4 gems, which give about 4400 more mana.

With 2/48/11, you will have a 2550 mana shortfall after 5 minutes and a 4600 mana shortfall after 10 minutes. The deficit rate is about 8.5 mana per second or 42.5 mana per 5seconds.

The question comes down to: "Do I have 42.5 m/5s to spare?"

Notes:

Switching to Mage Armor for the long fight gains 44m/5s (in my case) at the cost of 3% to crit. 3% to crit is definitely more than 2.2% damage increase, so is not a win.

Serpent Coil Braid changes the deficit to 6.3 m/s or 31.8 m/5s.

Our raid group has 2 active shadow priests, who, for some reason, are never in the same raid. We have one active shaman. This will be a really tough call.

 

Doroteasenjk

This works most of the time. Occasionally, the crit will overwrite the other that occurred too closely in time. This has been repeatedly documented on the Mage forums and the Bug report forums (Blizzard's, of course). Blizzard has not acknowledged that the overwriting occurs, but the logs are pretty clear.

 

Skinkelinken

I do agree, buy my choice basicly came down to what I can have use for when casting fireballs, the typical fight so to say.

forst warding: gives some defense to you
imp frost nova: our raidleader and MT often asks for a nova to make it a bit easier for the tanks when we pile up mobs for aoe
permafrost: havent even looked at the frost tree for ages but dosent this also make your FN last longer? If not this is a very bad choice but if it does i picked it for the same reason as imp FN.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft might be a better choice though

 

Roywyn

3% crit is a ~2.5% damage increase (assuming fire spec, CSD, 35% crit with mage armour) if you do the maths.
So, the difference is down to 0.3%. Mind that you can gain more than the average value for IV if the fight is not a multiple of 3 minutes, and you can stack it with cooldown usage.

Also, you should be able to start channeling Evocation when IV is about to end to get more benefit from it by hasting a long spell.

 

Sancus

I have 4pc T6 - using Fire Blast in my rotation reduces my dps - and there's also no good reason for me to be that close to a boss either. So no, I don't. 4 minute rage kills are really slow, too, that might be part of your problem :/ Slow overall dps hurts mana classes bad.

My Shadowpriest does 11k mana in 3 minutes also, btw (300mp5) Mana Tide @ 2600 mana helps too.

(Elenya - WWS)

Really? I guess your gear is pretty bad, but is this number raid buffed? I have 56.4mp5 from Mage Armor without raid buffs, and raid buffs add another ~50 spirit if you don't have Divine Spirit, and ~105 if you do.

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

 

Lhivera

Assuming Thottbot is correct...

Summary

- Icy Veins has a mana cost but is very cheap

- Icy Veins most likely provides 20% haste, not a 20% cast time reduction

- New Cold Snap cooldown increases IV and Water Elemental uptime by a small amount

- In fights ranging from 5 to 20 minutes, average DPS gain is:
--- Fire: 2.77%
--- Arcane: 3.05%
--- Arcane/Frost: 4.15%
--- Deep Frost: 4.80%

- The theoretical DPS gap between Fire and Deep Frost narrows by ~2% (assuming 2/47/11+1 builds; narrows by almost 5% compared with 10/47/3+1).


Icy Veins

Mana cost: 3% base mana. This should be about 67 mana at level 70. With Elemental Precision, 65 mana. With Elemental Precision and Frost Channeling, 55 mana.

Haste: So, is Icy Veins 20% casting time reduction, or 20% haste? Well, thottbot says it applies the following effect:

Apply Aura: Haste - Spells (127)
Value: 20

What do we know that applies a similar effect that could be tested now? Heroism, of course. Heroism applies:

Apply Aura: Haste (Melee, Ranged and Spell) %
Value: 30

So now the question becomes: does Heroism reduce casting speed by 30%, or does it apply 30% haste?

We can test this with the Water Elemental. The Water Elemental has a 2.5 second casting time, and is unaffected by latency. The speed with which it reports to my log is affected by latency, but the variance should be small enough with my < 100ms latency to tell us which is correct.

So I poked through my log from a couple nights ago to find an instance of the elemental gaining Heroism, and happily I found one on Kaz'rogal. Heroism was applied at 18:55:29.983. Waterbolts occurred at the following times following the Heroism cast:

18:55:31.146
18:55:33.348 Interval: 1.163
18:55:35.399 Interval: 2.202
18:55:37.388 Interval: 2.051
18:55:39.418 Interval: 1.989
18:55:41.401 Interval: 2.030
18:55:43.467 Interval: 1.983
18:55:45.408 Interval: 1.941
18:55:47.459 Interval: 2.051
18:55:49.436 Interval: 2.030

If Heroism is a 30% casting time reduction, we expect a casting time of:
2.5 * 0.7 = 1.75

If Heroism is 30% haste, we expect a casting time of:
2.5 / 1.3 = 1.923

My conclusion is that Heroism is 30% haste, and that despite the differently-worded description, Icy Veins is also likely to be 20% haste.


Ice Block

Ice Block appears to be entirely unchanged -- same duration, same cooldown.


Cold Snap

Cooldown is reduced to 8 minutes (can I call it or what?). With 2/2 Ice Floes, this reduces the cooldown to 6 minutes, 24 seconds. More Icy Veins, more Water Elementals.


Ice Floes

Does not affect Icy Veins.


Icy Veins and Water Elemental Uptime

Fire and Arcane simply use Icy Veins every 3 minutes.

Arcane/Frost uses Cold Snap for additional Icy Veins as long as there is more than 90 seconds remaining on the Icy Veins cooldown; otherwise, it waits and cold snaps afterwards.

Deep Frost never needs to delay Cold Snap by more than ~21 seconds in fights up to 20 minutes, so the calls are easy.


DPS Increase

- Assuming Water Elemental adds 30% DPS when up.

- Arcane spec uses AP with IV. This essentially means IV is a 22% DPS increase while up rather than 20%.

- Arc/Frost spec uses AP with IV on 6 of its 9 casts. This makes for an average 21.33% DPS increase instead of 20%, and doesn't require losing any AP casts in fights up to 20 minutes.

 

Doroteasenjk

Let's skip the insults, please. "Pretty bad", indeed! Nowhere did I indicate that I was raiding past the early part of SSC/TK (3/6, 1/4). I have gear commensurate with that: SF/SS, plus badge gear and gear from KZ/SSC/TK. In fact, from the last summary posting by Winsome on WoWJutsu raid progression, my gear is likely to be at the median for raiding mages. I'm not sure if you can access my Armory profile from my posts, but you can see for yourself.

Remember, the longest fights are in SSC/TK, and those are the ones of interest to me. The gear I have is appropriate for these fights. Spirit was almost nonexistent on the crafted stuff, and rare on the drops & T4. I said that you would never use Mage Armor to compensate for missing Clearcasting, and none of your numbers change that fact.

To add some construction to this post: I got feedback that I presumed only 2 gems in a 5 minute fight, and 4 in a 10 minute fight. By popping a lower ranked gem first, after about 30 seconds, you get an extra (smaller) burst of mana and trigger Serpent Coil Braid. The deficit in that situation drops to 1300 and 2300 mana (with SCB) at the 5 and 10 minute marks. This, in turn, changes the needed extra mana to 22.7 m/5s and 19.2 m/5s at 5 and 10 minutes. These are much easier numbers to achieve, lacking a shadow priest in the group.