Dersuuzala

I am not sure if I can agree on that, if you mean we cannot work around capping hit with other than the braid(you are writing it has 30 hit rating and I can only see 12). There are tons of options where you can cap it and only remain on 1 top 2 "old" items(read T5 lvl of items).

I did a "Dream Gear" topic on my guilds mage forums, with a intention to make the best gear possible while going for staff/head from Illidan(love those 2 items). I didn't go thru all the possible options but I tested few things and working around hit can be a bit time consuming if you want it proper =)

Here is the gear compilation I found my satisfaction in:

Head: Cowl of the Illidari High Lord With Chaotic Skyfire Diamond and 12 spelldamage gem

Neck: Hellfire-Encased Pendant

Shoulders: Mantle of the Tempest With red/blue gem(Glowing Tanzanite) 6spelldamage/6stamina and a yellow one giving 8 to hit(which gives socket bonus of 4 spelldamage)

Back: Cloak of the Illidari Council

Chest: Robes of the Tempest with three +12 spelldamage gems

Bracers: Bracers of Nimble Thought

Gloves: Gloves of the Tempes with one +12 spelldamage gem

Waist: Cord of Screaming Terrors with two +12 spelldamage gems

Leggs: Leggings of the Tempest with one +12 spelldamage gem

Feet: Slippers of the Seacaller with one red/blue 6spelldmg/6sta gem and one yello +8 to hit gem granting a +4 spelldmg socket bonus

Ring1: Band of the Eternal Sage

Ring2: Ring of Ancient Knowledge

Trinket1: The Skull of Gul'dan

Trinket2: Hex Shrunken Head

Wand: Wand of the Forgotten Star

Weapon: Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer with sunfire enchant ofcourse =)

note: I am using the shoulder and feet item to fill up hitrating gap and also to make sure the Meta gems gets the proper amount of blue gems it requires to work. By doing this I not only reach hit cap, I also make meta gem work and activate 2 socket bonuses). Also you see the Lurker belt and solarian wand as the "old" items to work in the correct ammount of +hit. Anyway, this is just a rather quick gear compilation I did and I am sure it can be adjusted alot better.

This brings me to:
505 intellect
313 spirit
519 stamina
1157 spelldamage(all schools)
1258 firespell damage
318 crit rating
164 spellhit rating
114 spell haste

 

Searix

First, switching one of the purples with the +12 in the head nets you an extra +1 spell damage :P just tossing that out there

Couples pro's/con's in hex vs. braid assuming you get full use of the +hit

Hex:
-Higher non use dps (5.28 for me, assuming flask, food buff, and weapon oil for my gear)
-Longer duration use(Pairs perfectly with Skull)
-Can be used at hit cap

Braid:
-Higher +damage on use for the duration, for a shorter length (5 seconds). Gives the added benefit of helping your "big combo" more while it's up (EX: Arcane Power/Combustion, both 15 seconds or less, as is destruction potion)
-600 mana more per Mana Emerald hit

Very close, with the advent of "super combos" (Veins/AP/Destruction Potion/Skull/Hex|Braid/Heroism) i'm not sure if hex is highest dps, considering the 600 extra mana PER mana emerald (meaning 1800 free mana by 4:10-4:20 minute mark), and the ability that lets you not go mage armor, super mana, or having to evocate based on the fight's length.

 

Dersuuzala

Well what braid would give me considerig its mana gain, is a freeup on Mana pot cooldowns for dest pots, specilly once 2.3.2 hits live. But not sure if there actually is a dps gain using braid over hex. Will have to dig thru Vontres dps sheet again
If mana is an issue then it might be the proper choice, but mana aside I think Flame caps can fill in its "boost" pretty well.

 

Rouncer

Why Cord of Screaming Terrors over the Belt of Blasting?

Also why would you want to stick to Zhar'doom over going with Tempest/Chronicle?

Pretty sure 42 damage, 11 crit, 34 hit > 24 stam, 13 int, and 55 haste.

That 34 hit would also mean you could skip the socket bonuses on shoulders and feet and stick 12 damage gems in all 4 of those sockets. Then stick purple gems in helm and legs and you gain 43 damage while keeping your meta gem active. I think you will end up being 20 hit over the cap so then you could swap into the belt from Supremus or from Anatheron and be just a few point below the hit cap.

 

◊ manly

Somewhat ironically, I know that logically warlocks should get better scaling with e.shaman due to +3% crit -> more ISB uptime and a lot more dps, but in practice I have seen time and time over that they get more dps from resto shamans due to decreased lifetap time. Of course, this varies from fight to fight (ie: would they have had to lifetap in the first place?).

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Hate Monkey

You guys are forgetting a ring, [Mana Attuned Band]. 18
[Leggings of Channeled Elements] 18
[Cowl of the Tempest] 13 [Glyph of Arcane Power] 14
[Robes of the Tempest] 13
[Gloves of the Tempest] 20
[Tempest of Chaos] 17
[Chronicle of Dark Secrets] 17
[The Skull of Gul'dan] 25
[Wand of the Forgotten Star] 11

Total of 166 Spell hit.

 

Imbar

I agree with this. Part of why arcane was so gimmicky (and I hate to beat the red-headed stepchild again) was because of all the extraneous factors. But arcane isn't my point here, planning gear around assuming you'll always have an ele shammy or spriest or <insert character here> is just irresponsible. In my opinion, your gear shouldn't rely on others, you should be a self contained bubble of happy dps.

 

Customs

With this gear setup, you will lose 4pcT6. Which is a significant DPS increase in itself.

 

Searix

Shoulders are the peice you're forgetting

 

Etherealz

Serpent coil EVEN taking the hit as face value dps is NOT better than crusade OR Hexlord trinket.

For me Serpent would be equivalent to 73 face value damage
vs ~78-79 on crusade
vs ~88 dmg on hex shrunken head

and of course the skull for me
8 fireballs at 175 haste = 2.4s saved (assuming 0 haste to begin with) to make matters simple assume straight fireballs for the haste calculation.....
is equivalent to 2.94s fireballs averaged = 32 haste rating (which for my gear) = 42.7 dmg + 55 dmg base = 97.7 dmg b4 hit is considered.

Edit: I guess you could also try to argue that using the braid frees up Destruction pots - which of course would be flawed logic since mana pot / flame cap is > dps than destro pot / mana gem

The other argument would be that you didn't have a shadow priest and needed the xtra mana - of course playing with no shadow priest in your group is NO TIME TO EPEEN!

 

◊ manly

Ah sweet, proving a point using flawed theorycrafting is the way to go...
The dmg values you use are based on a worst-case condition, whereas current tc takes into account fight duration to adjust the proper worth of activable trinkets. Vontre's spreadsheet has supported this for months already.

And haste potions only gives melee haste, not spell haste.

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Dustwhisper

I have noticed the same but on the other hand it's the same arguments warlocks in my old guild loooveed to use in return "restoshaman manaspring gives you more mana back and totem helps us with more ISB". I would probably dare to say the perfect dps castergroup would be ele shaman + sp + 3 destrolocks with an afflictionlock having malediction in another group.

Btw manly something you have to answer me on because it's bugging the living shit out of me for ages now. Seeing as you probably could've had every item in the game in your bags by this point, why have you chosen Leggings of the channeled elements + 4p t6 over Cowl of the illidari high lord and 4p t6? From everything I've seen on lhiveras, vontre's and swapping around and calculating I always find Cowl + 4p to be ~12dps or so better than leggings. I even find Vestments of the seawitch + 4p t6 to be 2 or so dps over leggings.

 

Etherealz

Sorry I meant Destruction potions.

And while I realize TC can take into account fight durations. Everything but the Darkmoon card has the same cooldown.

Edit: You of course are insinuating that during say a 3 minute fight you would see a maximum uptime on the use trinkets. While you might also consider that I could make a very similar argument for a 4 minute fight where popping 2 flame caps and using a different trinket would most definately pass up the braid, even taking into account both braid uses being popped with combustion. So please take your nose and turn it up elsewhere - because the only "FLAW" in my theory crafting is that the comparison involves the darkmoon card which is not a use trinket.

Also the argument of best and worst case scenerios on 3,4,5 minute fights is also VERY DEPENDENT on how consistent your guild's raid dps is from week to week.

 

◊ manly

Look again ! hahaha

No seriously I just like to keep switching gear around. It's almost a challenge to go below hit cap. Not that it matters really, but the real reason for this is mostly that I get from time to time random PMs asking me questions about things like 'why are you using -20 res (I prefer the old naming nomenclature over +20 spell penetration) enchant over -2% threat'. So as a result I switch gear around from time to time to keep them guessing. If you see me switch to arcane some day its probably just to see what kind of question I get from that move rather than actually using it for raiding. I mean if they fix it and it becomes the best pve dps spec I will sure switch to it, but as long as it isn't the case I will enjoy proving arcane mages wrong.

The only thing I need is the najentus boots from BT. I somehow managed to lose every single roll on all the previous drop, and I am now the last one to not have them. At least I am guaranteed to get the next one. My current gear selection was originally intended to use a dmg/hit gem on the gloves which would bring me exactly to 166 hit rating, but the problem is that once I get the naj boots I lose the hit rating from boots of blasting, which I will have to fix with swapping in belt of blasting. This will give 161-18+23=166 which puts me back to 166 hit rating again, but without having to resort to hit gems. So because of that I did not bother putting a yellow gem on my current gloves. I should put a dmg/crit gem ideally but I don't really feel like asking gurgthock because I will have to ask for 4 red gems once I get najentus boots so I can gem boots + regem belt of blasting.

Anyway, my gear aside, the main different between 4pct6+[Cowl of the Illidari High Lord] vs 4pct6+[Leggings of Channeled Elements] is that the cowl gives more hit rating, and makes CSD much easier to enable (ideally you would put cowl+pants blue gem and all red+yellow on glove). So if you end up above hit cap (like, say, with tempest of chaos), then youre better off with hyjal pants since they have less hit but damage more spread elsewhere. If you 'struggle' to get hit cap then the cowl is much better. In short, the cowl is better as long as you make use of the extraneous hit.

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◊ manly

I get your point that they all have the same cooldown, but nevertheless the odds are much higher that the fight duration is not a multiple of 2 min, which makes every activable trinket much better in practice than crusade.

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Searix

Also, not sure if anyone has noticed but using AP, Veins, Skull, Braid, Destruction Pot, is ~206.7% trinketed DPS for the duration (tested via vontre's dps chart turning off used effects) with 40/0/21 next patch without heroism (Which unfortunately puts you under

And, for fire next patch, Veins, Skull, Braid, Destruction Pot, Combustion (i modeled at 1.5 extra crits over 15 seconds, or 25% more effective fireballs (it's less than 30% due to higher crit rate with destruction pot and haste, so really somewhere ~25%, used 25% to model) is ~199.2% trinketed dps for the duration, ~291.2% at <20% with heroism.

The implication of this is that activated trinkets are can be 3 times as effective during their use.

On a side note: Frostbolt caps at 66.67% haste (at which it's <1.5 second spell), aka 1046.7 haste, veins, heroism, and skull only leave you with 86 haste before you get to cap (using drums that leaves me with 6, and i use zhardoom/crafted bracers). Oh well.

Btw Vontre's spreadsheet assumes 100% haste is the cap for both fireball and frostbolt, when it should be 100/66.7

 

Hate Monkey

I would of hoped people were smart enough to know that a 100% hasted Frostbolt is a 1.25s cast, and is "too fast", but in reality that fast of a cast for a spell that has no pushback protection is almost worth it. Almost.

 

JasonX

I have one question about haste rating. A while ago, someone mentioned that haste rating may be applied to the base cast time, not on the cast time after talent is applied, which we all seems to assume. Is there any verification on this? Has anyone done any conclusive test to verify it?

 

Hate Monkey

It's done after talented cast time is calculated.

It's really simple to prove too. Equip an item with haste, take the original cast time, and divide by the haste.

(Cast Time Talented)/(1+haste) the haste is in decimal form, so if its 2% haste, .02. If the number you get, rounded, is the same as the tooltip, then it's right.

This is back several pages, prolly 20-30 pages ago this was done.

 

BrTarolg

Well, thats all handy dandy, but if you don't have a shadowpriest with the mage you can be damned sure he isnt going to last longer than 4-5 minutes~ on a boss before he goes OOM, chaining SMP. Maybe it's because i havn't progressed far enough yet (sigh stuck in a guild which doesn't even 25 man anymore T.T) but i carry bags of SMP and i still run out of mana chaining everything whilst the rest of the group is still happily DPS'ing. I'm even resorting to wearing a gladiator wand for the DPS when OOM, and getting wandspec and magic attunement.
Ele shaman however, is purely a luxury for me. Same for resto shamans.

But from theorycraft alone, I cannot understand why people would bring more than one mage to a raid unless there is a requirement for it (sheep, buff, portals, water). And sad thing is, whilst i've tried my best to farm the best possible kara+5 man gear for 25 man so I can get into a progressing guild, most replies i've gotten are "we are full on mages", noting that they will always take less mages (to the point of 1-2 max per raid) than locks. (Thus i'm trying my hand at pvp I suppose). Have one mage max, and you can keep all the locks happy by gibing them all the mana, so less lifetap, less CoE and more DPS.

So I cannot help but build myself around a shadowpriest, as without one i'm dead doing a max of 300 dps~ wanding - considering in the guild i'm in atm we reguarly take fights to 8 min or more.

 

Searix

I was talking more pve, but you still can't go over cap in arena without equipping every peice of haste gear, getting hero, popping skull and veins

 

◊ manly

Searix, keep in mind a few things:

1- 40/0/21 is bugged on Vontre's spreadsheet and has really high dps because it counts WE being active... This might affect your numbers a good deal, depending on whether or not that got fixed (which to my knowledge it didnt)
2- Vontre's spreadsheet does not appropriate models +% faster cast mixed with haste ratings. This used to not be a problem with only bloodlust being a %, but with icy veins it won't produce accurate results. % modifiers are multiplicatives, and haste ratings are additive.

with this said you might wanna try Vontre' simulator instead.

Log on with different model:
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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

◊ Vontre

Dude.. my simulator is still being worked on.. and is not open to public viewing.. and is not actually a simulator.

Also Manly the water elemental counting for 40/0/21 was a bug in my UNRELEASED SIMULATOR, not in the spreadsheet, which is working fine. And the current spreadsheet build doesn't even have Icy Veins in it, at all. I still need to update it.

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◊ manly

Sad thing, just when I was starting to accept 40/0/21 as being viable :P

Log on with different model:
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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Massael

Manly if you don't mind me asking, how many mages do you typically run with in your raids and what groups do you build around them? I ask because your locks are already geared at the level where we can start to discuss group composition changes for shamans/boomkins (if you use one).