Dustwhisper

1: You wouldn't spam AB with a hybrid-spec... Why on earth would you? Dump your mana for less scaling? The only place you'd actually dump mana with AB spam is at the end of a boss's life and that's where molten fury kicks inn..

2: Icyveins firespec > cookiecutter firespec. You are only dropping clearcasting to get a hastetalent that increases dps.

 

Wug

Sorry, I didn't clarify the AB spam part very well. The idea is that it could be a viable mana dump in exchange for increased DPS, either at the end of a fight or durring AP. Normally you would be using fireballs, yes.

Regarding molten fury, the DPS numbers for the 10/48/3 spec are already counting MF as a net 4% DPS increase for the entire fight. Thus, it's not quite accurate to say that Molten Fury gives a comparable DPS boost to AB spam at the end of the fight, given that MF is already being factored into the total DPS for the deep fire build.

Note, though, that my introduction is a bit misleading. (I forgot to change it after finishing the math.) The numbers indicate that Arcane Fire builds are close to 10/48/3 in DPS output, but still don't quite reach it. And as I said at the end, IV will likely make the Arcane Tree even worse. Hopefully Blizzard will notice this and do something to arcane...

 

Pintofbrew

Wug:

Firstly, this post should have been situated in http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16781-mage_help_me_please/ if you are expecting advice. This is the TC thread and your post seems to me as off-topic.

Secondly, there is no such thing as AB spam, nor speccing for it. There are so few cases where AB spam is in fact an option and these are so far between that speccing it is almost irrelevant.

Lastly, beyond any question, reproach, reason or rhyme, arcane-fire is so totaly dead after 2.3.1 it's not even funny any more. Full fire with Icy Veins will leave it far behind. If your mages are serious about raidng, and at SSC they'd better be, they should spec out of arcane and into fire or frost. At this level both are fine, with the difference of one being useless at Al'ar and the other being useless for half of Hydross.

Arcane-fire is a crutch for low-level gear mages. It's perfectly fine and competitive during leveling and fresh at 70, but the more gear you gain the more abysmal is it's scaling. Mind mastery simply does not scale almost at all, and fireball gets very very few talents that increase it in a percentile way. Once out of Gruul 40/18/3, 40/21/0, 43/18/0 and all associated specs should be discarded.

Arcane-fire hybrid (33/28/0) while signifficantly better than arcane-fire is still considered to be sub-par. Some raiders in BT swear that it's fine, some swear at them. The jury is out. Chances are it won't be -strictly- better than full fire on most occasions, but many are remaining competitive with it. Either way, the need for dramatic amounts of hit mandate it can only be considered competitive at BT level gear, as getting 202 hit with T5 means much compromise in terms of dmg/crit.

Once 2.3.1 is out, however, 33/28/0 will simply not be competitive under any circumstances because it won't have the (soon to be standard) 11 frost.

 

ebbv

Wug, the reason you're seeing numbers from 33/28 being close to 10/48/3 is because your example Mage has low +damage. Even in "high" +damage gearing you are only rocking 794. The advantage to Fireball is in it scales much better. And yes, this is exactly what should go in the "Help me" thread.

 

Wug

Hmm, I guess I'm a little confused about the purpose of these various threads. I actually wasn't trying to ask for advice with my initial post, but to provide some hard data on the relative value of some different specs. I know that it's old news to most folks, but I've read this entire thread and saw very few hard numbers comparing the hybrid arcane/fire builds with other builds post 2.3. I thought that providing some numbers to that effect might make for a more robust theorycraft on the subject.

Ebbv: It's 794 base + 221 fire = 1014 total damage when casting fire spells. Not great, but fairly typical for mages entering SSC. Sorry if that was confusing in the initial post.

Pintofbrew: I'm confused by your dismissal of 40/18/3 coupled with your half-hearted endorsement of 33/28. My numbers show them to be within 15-20 DPS of each other on a fireball spam. Also, moving from 164 +hit to 200 +hit on the 33/28 build only increased fireball DPS by 7. I could have made a mistake, but those are the numbers I got. If they're correct, then 33/28 would not seem to rely on insanely high +hit gear.

Regarding Icy Veins, remember that it's not yet a done deal. I do think Blizzard reads these boards, and I'm hoping they realize the damage that IV will do to the arcane tree unless they give that tree a little help.

 

Grecasi

Like Hate Monkey says, the sacrifice is far to great and fire has 70% and when you pair that with conc aura (35%) there is no pushback anymore. Some claim you only get 79%, but since I've been raiding for 2.5 years (may 2005) I can say never seen pushback with fire when I've had conc aura, so in my opinion it's 70+35=105%. For T6 mages with 4 pieces this is really out of the question of being optimal. For mages with lower gear it's a whole different story I'd say, as I mentioned in my edit.

 

ebbv

Oh my apologies for misreading. Yes that is much more typical and reasonable.

Still, no, you're not giving us any new information, and it's not really hard data. It's just the same spreadsheet results we've known for some time.

 

Searix

Little something for you musers out there:

33/0/28 will always pair icy veins with AP, both being exactly on 3 minute timers (which is a small advantage over the 3:10-3:20 cooldown of combustion). Will the synergy be enough to pop 2 min trinkets (specifically braid/skull of gul'dan)/drums/destro pots on 3 minute timers with them? Or will it be more beneficial to pop them every 2 minutes?

 

Northerner

One can pop them on the two-minute cooldown and still hit two out of three three-minute cooldowns if the fight is long enough. That may seem obvious but there is certainly no point in 'saving' them to synch each and every time when you can keep a 3:2 synch ratio regardless. I'd also advocate popping combustion a bit early so that it is synched in on the third cast or so. Combustion will creep no matter what though and that's life.

The only time I could see delaying a trinket-IV use would be if fight length is well known and you can synch up with sub-20%. At that point it is pretty obviously a trivial situation anyhow of course.

 

Hate Monkey

This type of build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft ?

First off, why the hell would you even spec that? If you're going to factor in all consumable usages, then you got to factor in Bloodlust/Heroism, which as Frost would put you below the global cooldown, causing a stop in dps gain for that spec with those trinkets/drums.

But to your question, it all depends upon where your raid dps is at. If you down a typical boss, Rage, Anetheron, Kaz'Rogal, Naj'entus, Teron, in under 3 minutes, then its best used to pop the 2 minute timers at the start of a fight, and line the timers up at the end under the effect of bloodlust and such. But if you take 4 minutes to kill those bosses, then it's best used to pop everything together to get the maximum possible burst.

 

Pintofbrew

Wug: 33/28/0 does need 202 hit rate, that is significantly more than 164 at pre-ssc levels. You also miss-read me: I did not say 40/18/0 is not competitive with 33/28/0, I said both of them are lagging badly compared to 10/48/3 and even worse compared with Full-fire/IV. While you noted that between them there is little difference, the hybrid 33/28/0 scales better than 40/18/3 and if you try data on a simulator with much superior gear you'll find 33/28/0 to be notably ahead of 40/18/3.

Either way, however, discussing the finer minutiae of arcane/fire and arcane/fire hybrid is pointless; They're both DOA come 2.3.1. As Ebbv posted, you are not posting "hard data" you are merely linking simulator output of what is known.

As for "Regarding Icy Veins, remember that it's not yet a done deal. I do think Blizzard reads these boards, and I'm hoping they realize the damage that IV will do to the arcane tree unless they give that tree a little help." I don't quite get what the point of your statement is? We get what is probably one of the most important buffs/changes to our class since BC came out, barring Tax removal, a new game mechanic and a new variant to make frost more than a "3-talent wonder" and all you can say about it is you hope it'll get a re-think because you feel Arcane/Fire builds are let down? Perhaps Warlocks should re-think Soul Link because poor Affli/Destros can't spec it too?

Arcane is currently Broken. It has always been broken. It only managed brief glimpses of glory during (a) Damage tax and (b) Item Abuse 2.2. Never has arcane stood on it's own two feet. Removing IV to gimp every other spec will not make it any better, thank you.

Hate monkey: Though I agree as to why the hell would anyone want to make a Arc/Frost hybrid, I believe the 33 was refering to Arcane Power + Spell Power (minus one point Arc. Potency and Arc. Mind).

This spec is a poor variation of the (up to now) controversial 40/0/21. The main difference being, it can eventually Winter's Chill for it's self, and in exchange loses Mind Mastery. Is it worth it? I can't say, but intuitively it doesn't look like it.

IV synergizes nicely with Ap, perhaps there is more merrit to 40/0/21 now than there ever was before. Given WC from another mage, I can see this spec having potential. More TC needs to be done.

 

Searix

Sorry was thinking AP fire, yes 40/0/21.

And for the person who does the TC: plz check to see if it would be better to save 2 minute timers for AP/Veins. Napkin math is that you lose 50% uptime saving the 2 minute timers for 3 minutes, but gain 1.30 (AP) * 1.16667 (Veins) = 1.5x dps for duration, on par dps UNTIL you consider that by pairing all these cooldowns (skull, braid, destruction pot, drums with AP and icy veins) that they get an exponential effect on each other, which should increase everything by everything. Good stuff.

 

Vannik

I was searching for about an hour to try to find the calculations someone made comparing fireball spam to a fireballx2/fireblast rotation. I like to do my own spreadsheets and i'm having trouble proving mathmatically why fireballx2/fireblast is less dps.

I think i'm overexaggerating how much damage a fireblast does. just was curious if someone has that thread handy so i can check my math. i'd also not mind sending my quick and dirty spreadsheet i whipped up if someone wants to look at it.

 

Ignus

A question about the 2 points in arcane for Fire/IV spec, am I missing something or wasn't arcane subtlety pretty marginal for non arcane mages? only benefits I can see is for arcane explosion spam at low threat, I'm not sure if that's the intended use of the talent. it looks like you could pick up some better frost goodies such as permafrost +frostbite + imp blizzard and aoe farm using that, or drop points in imp. flamestrike for AoE, or pretty much anything more useful than get 10 spell penetration. Is that 10 spell penetration actually good enough to bother keeping it?

 

Iod

Frostbite + Blizzard AoE grinding = Bad thing. Tried it a few times, and always have better results with NO frostbite. As for your question- Arcane subtlety is for when you have to burst AoE things in a GROUP situation. The 40% Threat reduction is a godsend in these situations since most raid mobs will one or two shot you. And where the heck are you getting '10 spell penetration' from?

[Edit: Clarified why I mentioned the solo grinding. I'm well aware it doesn't belong in the TC thread.]

 

Pintofbrew

I think it's safe to assume that grinding and soloing is beyond the scope of the TC thread. Arcane Subtlety is indeed there for AE, and as to whether or not blizzard's slow is worth it over AE it depends on your group: Blizzard is lower DPS than AE (though AE caps faster unless I'm wrong) and perhaps is not necessary depending on setup. Some groups have a retadin tank the mobs and use flamestrike spam, some have a frostie imp-blizz them for slow, some just charge in with faith in God and AE ti'll the mobs cease.

For two points, AOE peace of mind is rather invaluable, but if your AOE role is control via slow, by all means, get imp blizz. Your guild group-setup will dictate which one is best for you.

 

• Arawethion

Last I knew, Blizzard was not capped, but this may be out-of-date.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Roywyn

WoW Forums -> Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing page 3/4.

Blizzard caps at 28.950, or 3619 per second.
Cone of Cold caps at 6500, or 4333 per second.

Arcane Explosion caps at 6730, or 4486 per second.

Flamestrike caps at 7830, or or 2610 per second. The DoT portion is not capped
Blastwave caps at 9440, or 6293 per second.
Dragon's Breath caps at 10100, or 6377 per second.

The AoE penalty for +damage is 50%, so the spells get casttime/3.5s*50% of your spell damage. CoC/BW/DB get 90% or 95% of that value since they snare/disorient.
This means instants get 21.4% of their spell damage per cast.

Flamestrike is split 55% DD, 45% DoT. That means the direct damage gets 23.57% (55%*1/2*3/3.5), and the DoT gets 3% (45%*1/2*2s/15s, ticks every 2s, 15s is the normalised DoT duration) per tick.


Blizzard scales with haste gear, Flamestrike scales with crit and haste, the other instants only scale with crit.

Seed of Corruption is capped at 12.600 I think, 6300 per second.
I remember that number from a post where people tested it on a PTR, can't find it anymore.


Clarification - the "cap per second" is not an actual cap per second. The cap is still per cast, and I just divided that cap by the cast time/GCD to get a figure to compare the capped DPS of AoE spells. So at the cap, DPS still increases with crit and haste gear where possible.

 

Ignus

Thank you for the clarification, and for frostbite I was thinking more IV + frostbite on super imp blizzard would mean 75% slow reduction with a 40% chance of sticking the mob in place per tick, unless I misunderstand the mechanics of blizzard.

That makes a lot more sense to pick up the talent for the -threat on AE, which I did mention in my post Iod ^^

And to pintofbrew, My thinking was to use flamestrike spam in a raid situation where you need the damage, and should not have to worry about the threat(basically hyjal trash) in which case, getting improved flamestrike would seem to be a better choice than getting arcane sub and using AE. Also, I love your M:tg reference in your avatar XD

and in general... I think this is within the scope of the thread since we are only comparing the last... 9? leftover points in the deep fire/IV spec after getting all essential talents. my post was more a reaction to having lhivera's theorycraft bot list the spec as "2/48/11+7" when I am of the opinion that the notation should probably go "0/48/11+9" I just found it odd that it was included as an "essential" talent, and wondered if I had missed something.

This does bring up another question though. as IV Fire, are you going to be better off with flamestrike or with arcane explosion? If I skip frostbite, and assume that the slow on blizzard will be enough to keep me alive when AoE'ing in small group content, even while I have threat, and at the same time have an additional benefit to another area of the game, wouldn't that make it such that AE would only be used in large group content? I could see it remaining the de facto AoE spell for 10 man raids, but for 25 mans, specifically hyjal, would we want to shift to using flamestrike spam, or would we be doing more damage by using DB/Blastwave/AE in melee range?

To clarify, if I'm AoE'ing in hyjal, with a paladin tank, will I not take aggro with flamestrike spam? And is it viable DPM? I had sort of written off both blizzard and flamestrike as being frivolous AoE's that would not be very helpful, so I'm personally trying to explore the validity of those spells in different situations just in terms of my understanding.

Thanks as always for answering my questions ^^

 

Nickolina

We pretty much flew through MH/BT with a fleet of Arcane Fire Mages, and we have been doing very well ever since. We tend to use AM spam until opertune moments for AB spam. We have all chopped and changed spec's and we all end up swapping back to Arcane Fire builds. 10/48/3 tends to work very well for most encounters, but phase 2 of illidan is a dps race that 10/48/3 tends to fail badly at. Arcane Missile spam for Illidan in phase 2 works wonders. Illidan is the only thing that puts me off 10/48/3 though tbh.

We can clear Black Temple and Mount Hyjal in 2 evenings now, and a lot of that has to do with the utility of good controlled aoe/arcane bursting in Hyjal.

We may not be the best guild out there, but those are our findings at least. My biggest bug bare is loosing my 4 part T5 set bonus lol, I don't want to lose it

I'm keen to test out Icy Veins next patch though.. Hopefully the one thing that can convince us all to respec.

 

Rouncer

Blizzard is indeed capped now but they also increased the damage it does at the same time.


It gets 8/3.5/2= 114.28% of your +damage now.

Blizzard is actually comparable dps to AE with enough haste.

Basically AE rises above the cap with crit rating and Blizzard rises above the cap with haste rating.

I'm planning on using Flamestrike to proc the Ashtongue and then popping IV and then alternating Blizzard with Flamestrike till nothing moves. From some preliminary tests using that rotation as deep frost with the Ashtongue (but no Icy Veins yet) I was able to keep up with the other mages who were spamming AE on the packs before Supremus and during the packs in MH. By "keep up" I mean I was the lowest mage but not by a substantial amount (DM order was warlock, mage, mage, mage, warlock) and once Icy Veins enters the picture I'm thinking it may even be superior to non-arcane mage AE spam.

 

Trawnis

Isn't the aoe cap applied to damage/spell and not damage/second or did I completely miss something?

 

• Arawethion

Right, so a Hasted Blizzard will do the same damage in less time.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Rouncer

Only issue is that for some reason Blizzard's casting bar is never adjusted when haste is applied so the cast just ends before the casting bar completes. The issue is present on the PTR as well so I don't think it will be corrected for next patch either.

It's a ton of DPS using a MSD proc on a Blizzard.

 

Vhad

I don't really see how that is an issue? The spell ends when it ends so you can just use it immidiatly after, it's not like you ever had to /stopcast macro Blizzard.

What!?