[Mage] 2.4 TC, aka Guys in Blue Dresses - Page 21

Jarlyn · 05/14/08, 4:10 PM

Originally Posted by Blizzard

[Shifting Naaru Sliver] has been fixed and now affects the caster only.

Well that's interesting. The passive haste makes the trinket an upgrade over HSH for sure, and I wonder if it will stack with the Skull? I'm still a bit confused as to the practical point of the whole "Power Circle" mechanic, but whatever, I guess.

◊ Kurisu · 05/14/08, 4:27 PM

Maybe balance, but probably mainly for look, actually I haven't seen a picture of the "power circle" so I'm interested in how it looks and how big it is.

thedopefishlives · 05/14/08, 4:41 PM

Originally Posted by Jarlyn

Well that's interesting. The passive haste makes the trinket an upgrade over HSH for sure, and I wonder if it will stack with the Skull? I'm still a bit confused as to the practical point of the whole "Power Circle" mechanic, but whatever, I guess.

I wonder if it's supposed to be a tradeoff between mobility and spell damage. Obviously, with most on-use trinkets, you can pop it and keep blasting, and if a deadly boss ability heads your way, you can move and still keep the benefit, provided you have time to fire another cast after the movement. With this Power Circle implementation, they could make it so that you'd have to risk getting gibbed by <random boss ability> to gain the full effect of the trinket. *shrugs*

◊ manly · 05/14/08, 4:56 PM

The way the [Shifting Naaru Sliver] is basically a ~4y circle (shown, but 5y effective). You gain a 15s buff (which apparently has also been renamed in 2.4.2), and if you leave the circle you have a ~3-4s grace period where you still have the buff while outside of it.

Also, apparently since 2.4.2 the trinket cooldown is 90s instead of 2min, finally matching better the 15s duration (I mean, makes more sense). And yes, before someone mentions it, I am well aware that thottbot/wowhead does not confirms my claims.

---- edit
Before people ask, its single player. And it has always been. Pre-2.4.2 it was giving a buff to everyone, but the buff was inactive except to the trinket holder. They changed the name of the buff in 2.4.2 and now it only applies to the caster.

Ztorm · 05/14/08, 5:01 PM

Originally Posted by Jarlyn

Well that's interesting. The passive haste makes the trinket an upgrade over HSH for sure, and I wonder if it will stack with the Skull? I'm still a bit confused as to the practical point of the whole "Power Circle" mechanic, but whatever, I guess.

EDIT: nevermind, misread update.

Darkchani · 05/14/08, 5:30 PM

Originally Posted by Ztorm

The Power Circle mechanism is what makes this trinket insanely good. It effectively makes this trinket a raid buff as opposed to an individual buff. Depending on how you position your raid, when you time your trinkets, and how well coordinated your casters are with their CDs, this trinket may be the best piece of loot in the game based on the benefit it provides.

Errrr did you not read the post above yours ? it only affects the caster.

Rounced · 05/14/08, 6:17 PM

Originally Posted by Silentwalker

Awesome you just proved to us how much of an idiot you really are thank you! Frostbolt is a binary spell it can only hit or not hit and it can not be partially resisted. On Rage as well you would as Manly pointed out Arcane Blast him. WTF are you talking about with movement.. it should not take you 23 seconds to move out of Death and Decay even like a chicken with your head cut off. Also, with frostbolt, assuming that you put 3 points into elemental precision and you are hit capped the number that you do miss with your frostbolts should be around 1% anyways as it is a hit or miss binary spell.

This is actually incorrect.

A binary spell can only hit or miss but when casting on something with a significant amount of resistance it will miss a lot more then 1% of the time.

How a binary spell works is that first the level based resistances are checked and then the resistances are checked. Any additional +hit that you have will actually be applied against the target's resistances and will actually act like spell penetration (whereas for any spell that can be partially resisted the additional hit is simply wasted).

The classic example:

For binary spells only, there is an additional modifier for the resistance of the victim to your particular spell school: fire, frost, shadow, nature, arcane. That modifier is multiplied by your hit chance to get your actual chance to land. This is done with binary spells only, because they never do partial damage.

Example:

Eyonix the Mage (level 60) fires a frost bolt at Yeti of Doom (level 63). Eyonix is also wearing a total of +6% spell hit gear. Yeti of Doom has frost resistance such that he takes 50% from level 60 frost attacks. So, here‘s the hit calculation:

0.83 (83% for +3 levels mob) + 0.06 (+6% spell hit) = 0.89

0.89*0.5 (50% damage from frost) = 0.445.

The game will roll a number between 0 and 1, and if it‘s less than 0.445, the frost bolt will hit for full damage. Otherwise, a resist message will appear.

2nd Example:

After the resist, Eyonix decides to fire a fireball at Yeti of Doom. Eyonix still has +6% spell hit. Fireball is not a binary spell. Here‘s the calculation:

0.83+0.06= 0.89

The game will roll a number between 0 and 1, and if its less than 0.89, the fireball will hit. Otherwise, a resist message will appear. After the fireball lands, the game will then apply spell resistance to determine a partial resist, if any. Assuming the yeti also has 50% fire resistance, on average, 50% of the damage will be resisted.

I hope that illuminates the impact of +spell hit gear on magical combat.

For Binary spells the first equation is unbound (can give a result above 100) meaning that additional +hit will be applied towards the second part (which is why it acts like spell penetration).

Edited to add - first time I ever responded to a post that ended up in the Dungheap, not sure if I should delete my response or not.

◊ manly · 05/14/08, 6:46 PM

Originally Posted by Rounced

This is actually incorrect.

A binary spell can only hit or miss but when casting on something with a significant amount of resistance it will miss a lot more then 1% of the time.

How a binary spell works is that first the level based resistances are checked and then the resistances are checked. Any additional +hit that you have will actually be applied against the target's resistances and will actually act like spell penetration (whereas for any spell that can be partially resisted the additional hit is simply wasted).

Actually, empyrical evidence proves you wrong too.

Historically TC has dictated that there is 'unmitigeable' partial resists which are level-based (ie: ~2% per +1 level, with ~5-6% partial resists on boss-level types). In practice, this has never been shown to be true, even despise the oft-cited blue example. I am talking here about binary spells, or frostbolt in particular.

If binary spells are single-rolls, then you can conclude that, assuming 'unmitigeable' partial resists apply to them (corrolary: why shouldn't they ?), that binary spells should 'suffer' an extraneous 5-6% miss rate. In practice, I have never seen this to be the case. It used to be said, back in the day, that overflowing on hit rating (ie: > 16%) was able to affect your 'unmitigeable' resists since it was a single-roll. Problem is, I have never seen evidence of that, or let alone see level-based resists affect binary spells.

---
Just to dispell some myth. If you check WWS you will see on average 4-5% fire partial resistance on bosses. This is because the shown damage on the combatlogs of partial resist hits don't take into account debuffs on the target (!). I have never verified it, but this is what I have read on the partial resistance thread. So the 4-5% combat-log-shown resistance is in fact higher than that in practice if the above is true, leading theorycally into the realms of the expected ~5-6% unmitigeable partial resistance on boss-level mobs.

ainav · 05/14/08, 7:03 PM

I really hope that it is not because of you guys, but tonight having 10% hit 3 points in elem.prec. and a draenei shaman in my group, i was having around 4% resist on each boss.
Don't know if somebody have payed attention to it but the conclusion from those over 1000 frostbolts for me is

1) Either Blizzard ninja nurfed elem.prec. to its normal value of +3% hit
2) Or they have implemented the same system Manly is talking about in the above post!

Anyway I am depressed now, because i cannot figure out how to get all that lacking +hit, but still have in mind that there is a change in the +hit required for frost now.
Will post more when i gather enough information.
WWS coming soon.

Rounced · 05/14/08, 7:53 PM

Originally Posted by manly

Actually, empyrical evidence proves you wrong too.

Historically TC has dictated that there is 'unmitigeable' partial resists which are level-based (ie: ~2% per +1 level, with ~5-6% partial resists on boss-level types). In practice, this has never been shown to be true, even despise the oft-cited blue example. I am talking here about binary spells, or frostbolt in particular.

If binary spells are single-rolls, then you can conclude that, assuming 'unmitigeable' partial resists apply to them (corrolary: why shouldn't they ?), that binary spells should 'suffer' an extraneous 5-6% miss rate. In practice, I have never seen this to be the case. It used to be said, back in the day, that overflowing on hit rating (ie: > 16%) was able to affect your 'unmitigeable' resists since it was a single-roll. Problem is, I have never seen evidence of that, or let alone see level-based resists affect binary spells.

I never said that Binary are single-roll. I said that Binary functioms as a 2 roll system. I know that the partial resists that are supposed to occur are missing but that doesn't mean that they aren't functional on a fight where the target actually has frost resistance. I've been frost on rage without CoE and you will miss a literal shit ton on him which implies that while there may be something fishy going on with the level based resistances there is nothing wrong with how binary resists function on a target with actual resistances.

Another thing to keep in mind is that due to those binary resistances any additional hit acts as spell penetration and that due to the 2 roll mechanic it actually would be able to remove those "unremovable" resistances. Pretty sure that even 1 additional +hit would be enough to remove those resistances completely.

As for where this all was proven. There was a nice thread in the old forums prior to TBC that had a TC sticky and at the very end of it there was an experiment done by a couple of warlocks who took the time to prove/disprove how the binary spell mechanic functioned. They sat down and put on resistance gear and varying degrees of hit gear and cast CoR and then CoS at each other and checked the resist rates and were able to get a sample size of a sufficient quantity that they proved that for binary spells additional hit acts like spell penetration.

If the mechanic was changed after TBC came out I really wouldn't know but since most testing of the mechanics with Frostbolt were done before people realized about the phantom hit associated with elemental precision it is quite possible that the reason no one saw the 5% miss predicated by those unremovable resistances is that they were wearing an overabundance of +hit to the point where those resists were being penetrated unknowingly.

◊ manly · 05/14/08, 8:02 PM

As far as I can remember, elemental precision did not exist back in those days. (the days that I recall the binary tests were done)

cryek · 05/14/08, 8:05 PM

I think [Shifting Naaru Sliver] uses the circle mechanism rather than a simple damage buff for pvp balance, not pve. Raiding casters would have a considerable advantage over non-raiders in arenas, but as it stands the inability to move while maintaining the buff would limit its usefulness in arenas.

JaMMi · 05/14/08, 8:27 PM

Originally Posted by Rounced

So I guess what the WWS reports really show is that even in a raid group that minimized your own personal level of responsibility to the point where you were actually able to spend the majority of your time dpsing you still failed by comparison to a mage who not only shouldered the majority of the decursing but who also outdpsed the crap outta you.

I'm glad you spent so much time digging down into the depths of the WWS to find statistics that merely back up the fact that you missed the spirit and obvious intonation of my post. If you won't accept that I decurse like a pro, more than any other mage in my raid, and even tonight on Archimonde again my warlock friend in my group was saying I decurse like instantaneously (because im almost always coming out of a 1.5 second cast time during the fight) - then you are clearly hiding yourself behind some weird kind of denial. The fact that you missed the tone of my post which was mildly inflammatory (in a tongue in cheek way) coming off the back of a fun night raiding on a first time downing of Archie where I did my job in an exemplorary fashion, introducing an element of "arcane can and does deliver" .. "fire has limitations whenever you have to move".. means that there is no point in even discussing it with you. Re-read the post, though I think you are too far gone with your conviction.

Frah · 05/14/08, 9:05 PM

Originally Posted by manly

---- edit
Before people ask, its single player. And it has always been. Pre-2.4.2 it was giving a buff to everyone, but the buff was inactive except to the trinket holder. They changed the name of the buff in 2.4.2 and now it only applies to the caster.

What if 2 people have the trinket? Could 1 person use it and both stand in the bubble and get the buff?

Rounced · 05/14/08, 9:34 PM

Originally Posted by JaMMi

I'm glad you spent so much time digging down into the depths of the WWS to find statistics that merely back up the fact that you missed the spirit and obvious intonation of my post. If you won't accept that I decurse like a pro, more than any other mage in my raid, and even tonight on Archimonde again my warlock friend in my group was saying I decurse like instantaneously (because im almost always coming out of a 1.5 second cast time during the fight) - then you are clearly hiding yourself behind some weird kind of denial. The fact that you missed the tone of my post which was mildly inflammatory (in a tongue in cheek way) coming off the back of a fun night raiding on a first time downing of Archie where I did my job in an exemplorary fashion, introducing an element of "arcane can and does deliver" .. "fire has limitations whenever you have to move".. means that there is no point in even discussing it with you. Re-read the post, though I think you are too far gone with your conviction.

Probably gonna get a warning for a useless post but you are, to put it quite simply, an idiot.

I was Arc/Frost up till yesterday and I probably will be again too, so not sure where the hell convictions come into play. You brought up a WWS to compare to yours saying "OOO look at me, I'm Arcane and I rocked the meters so much harder then that other other guild's fire mage even though he had better gear".

Then we point out that Archi is not a good fight to make comparisons from, and you argue that. Then I point out that your decursing sucked compared to the other mages, so you argued that. Then I actually break down the dps and the actual raid groups and show that the other mage's performance was far superior to your own and now it's my convictions that are preventing me from seeing the brilliance that is you.

Sorry but I think you really just need to take a moment to examine your own convictions and figure out why you are unable to come to grips with why your entire conceptualization of Arcane as the superior spec fails so miserably.

Pintofbrew · 05/14/08, 10:57 PM

Quite honestly I don't think I'm the only one who'se had it up to here with Arcane mages turning up full of steam, hell-bent to prove that arcane is <insert whatever the fuck wound them up in /trade>. It seems regular as the 9:00 from Houston that each week some new Arcane mage shows up and argues some imaginary battle in his head vs. a nonexistent opponent in the TC thread that Frost > Fire because <insert utterly subjective/wrong/misled/idiotic reasons>

Can we please stop with the penis-fencing? Why do half the world's arcane mages seem to be in a Crusade to cleans the world of it's anti-arcane misconception when (a) there isn't one (b) nobody is challenging it (c) it's been said before and (d) they can't hold an argument with an autistic squirrel.

Until someone comes up with some bizarre Fire is better than Everything post, can we all stop replying to it?

Alvira · 05/15/08, 1:02 AM

I think its because it just much easier to play fire well than to play arcane well.

I see tons of mages in wow forums and even here who have obviously not raided as arcane. And even those that contemplate the spec from their eixisting frost or fire spec often do not have a clear idea of what makes that spec work. They are still trying to come up with some kind of set rotations, think rotations matter, and think they need to conserve mana through rotations so that they can spam AB during bloodlust.

They are in fire gear emphasising +dmg,+hit, +haste, with low stats. And they wonder why they are doing so badly when they switch to arcane.

It just reinforces even more steorotyped views about arcane which isn't needed. Fire specs don't need to be explained. Every decent mage should know how to raid well with fire. Keep scorch up, fireball away, time your trinkets, destruction pots, etc with bloodlust and molten fury stage.

But arcane spec raiding is not as well understood. Especially if its from mage who have never raided as arcane before. The legacy issues that cause AM spam to be popular in legacy patches, and complex AB cycles in others haven't helped and have been perpetuated by mages who are not up to date. Not everyone has been reading and following all the mage TC threads on EJ forums from the very first page.

Even the sweet information thread, is not very complete in that it doesn't address arcane spec raiding sufficiently.

If arcane specs was just an oddball spec with no serious raid viability compared to fire. Then it probably wouldn't matter. But it isn't. Its a viable competitive raiding spec to fire. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. So, the many misconeptions and failure to understand that AB spam is at the core of arcane raiding makes things worse.

If everyone understood perfectly how to raid well as arcane. I would be very silent. But many mages don't. I believe even amongst the experts, there is some uncertainty on smaller issues like which spells to use as filler, whether it is truely best to gem for int,spirit vs damage. And to what extent haste rating is good for arcane.

Fire specs don't need that much discussion or even explanation at this point. Are there really a lot of issues to clear up about how to raid well with fire or how to maximise fire dps? Arcane - there is not even any clear "accepted" method of how to raid well with arcane. Some say alternate frostbolt/AB to always keep the debuff up, but still try and spam AB as much as possible. Others might say go with the two cycle theory. Spam AB, then use filler like frostbolt when low on mana only when necessary. Is there an "accepted" way of masimising arcane DPS agreed by all the experts here? There isn't.

Is int, spirit accepted as the way to gem for arcane? Rawr shows that. But I rarely, if ever come across arcane mages that really out fit every single one of their slots with +int gems. Because int,spirit is only that good for the long fights. For the short fights, gemming +dmg is still better.

Arcane deserves much more discussion than fire simply because it is not as well researched, not as well theorycrafted and not as well understood. The pity is that it always degenerates into a fire vs arcane argument. It shouldn't be at all. Arcane mages should be gathering together to try and figure out how to maximise arcane dps in all situations and how best to gear up for it in all situations. Not try to argue that their dps is better than fire.

Jarlyn · 05/15/08, 2:01 AM

Originally Posted by Alvira

Stuffs.

I understand what you're saying, but I totally agree with Pintofbrew. There's been no serious discussion of arcane TC lately, for the past few months it's just been a stream of people with the same "I top meters in my guild as arcane so it's clearly the best spec" argument that was old months ago and is just stupid now. If there's a discussion taking place where something might actually be learned, I'm all for it, but that hasn't been the case really since 2.4 went live.

Ahramis · 05/15/08, 3:18 AM

Originally Posted by Rounced

On another note, has anyone retested Arcane Blast in 2.4.2 to see if the whole 2.5-2.5 thing is still in place. I tried stacking the debuff with straight Arcane Blast spam last night and even though the cast bar was showing the bug my latency meter on Quartz was significantly larger then normal (during the stacking) and then returned to normal once AB was full stacked) and it seemed like the spells were casting much faster then the bugged casting bar would lead one to believe.

Maybe someone with a G15, a spam macro and a stopwatch could go a few rounds with Dr. Boom and see if that bug is still actually active or merely a client-side UI discrepancy.

As far as I had seen before switching to fire for kicks this week, the bug was still active. In order to avoid getting incorrectly debuffed Arcane Blasts you would have to wait ~1 sec or so for the debuff to appear. On the other hand, I haven't had to sit staring at the tiny 90 latency bar on quartz trying to time my /stopcasting macro correctly either in the last few months. I can't say which bug I prefer more.

• Alcyon · 05/15/08, 3:37 AM

Originally Posted by manly

Also, you seriously need to understand that "gives him more mana than he can spend" does not apply to fire. Fire does not like remotely have mana issues. The only time I use evocation is after phase 2 on Illidan and maybe* kaz'rogal if I don't get any resist. Fire does not have mana issues, and always has more mana than it can spend. Movement does not affects that.

Sorry to take you away from the unending Arcane vs Fire arguments, but I've seen you say this before, Manly, and I'm interested to know what you assume to make this judgment. The reason I ask is that my guild killed Illidan for the first time a month ago (so we normally do better than the examples I'm about to give) and I ran OOM on a pretty poor Teron kill last night that went for over six minutes. This is clearly not a regular lasting Teron fight but I potted twice, gemmed once, used a full 10 second evocate and used a flame cap near the end (before everyone started dying and we limped through to a kill - of course I had planned for a shorter fight and ended up OOM 30 seconds before the kill due to the flame cap). I did not have a shadow priest or a resto shaman, only a moonkin. The mana issues were hardly isolated to this fight - on Naj'entus I gemmed twice, potted twice, and got half an evocate during a shield with a shadow priest and still OOMed a few seconds before the end. This fight lasted a little over 5 minutes.

Now obviously our fights take longer than yours would due to lower DPS (which also means the returns from a shadow priest are less as they do less damage themselves) but do your statements that a fire mage has nothing approaching mana issues assume sufficient DPS for a three minute Teron kill, a shadow priest, a resto shaman and chain potting which then doesn't even require an evocation? Or do you think a mage only gemming and evocating with no other synergy would be able to keep himself going?

Obviously this question is a bit loaded, but some sort of statement from Manly (and other high end mages) would be useful for a lot of people to show their guilds in case that mages do have mana issues outside of decent group setups and where the guild DPS is lower than that of the top end guilds where mages might in fact have no mana issues.

[Disclaimer: I'm in no way trying to foster the already terrible Arcane vs. Fire arguments - I've played arcane for a week or two but respecced fire due to arcane having even more emphasis on the terrible mechanic that is mana. I'd love for Blizzard to give us some sort of interesting mechanic like Rage or Energy or Runes but I guess that ship's already sailed.]

JaMMi · 05/15/08, 3:42 AM

Originally Posted by Jarlyn

I understand what you're saying, but I totally agree with Pintofbrew. There's been no serious discussion of arcane TC lately, for the past few months it's just been a stream of people with the same "I top meters in my guild as arcane so it's clearly the best spec" argument that was old months ago and is just stupid now. If there's a discussion taking place where something might actually be learned, I'm all for it, but that hasn't been the case really since 2.4 went live.

I cant believe this is getting blown out of proportion like this. I actually am losing faith with EJ... Which I didn't think was possible because normally its so good.

You have patronisingly assumed that I am some bone-headed arcane wannabe, not the TCing no-lifer that I actually am. I have tried all specs and all rotations from within a raiding environment, and would not be here posting if