Sunstealer

Right, i guess that's more or less along the lines of what i was asking... Less about whether it actually double dipped and more-so wondering if this was intended or not.

 

Arazan

Well, when your build is mana starved you'll do anything to increase your efficiency. If your rotation is Abar->Fireball with AM on MB procs, about 45% of the spells you cast will benefit from MoE, which means while not optimal, it's still a decent increase to your efficiency. That was basically my point, that while it isn't optimal, it IS an increase in efficiency which the build desperately needs.

I also wasn't trying to say that Abar->Scorch x2 in a 55/13/3 build would be good, just saying that it'd be the only way that a deep arc spec could work using a fire off-spec nuke, because scorch is the only nuke other than frostbolt that can work as that mana efficient offspec nuke.

Basically I'm saying that arc/fire with more than 40 points in arcane is a waste because it's too mana inefficient to work.


Then again, I think that basically ALL mage raiding specs will require WG and shatter until it's nerfed into the ground... so imo talking about deep arcane or arc/fire specs is a moot point because neither can rival 0/33/38 FFB, 0/30/41 FFB, or whatever deep frost variant you want.

 

Saizul

I have no doubt that depending on how things turn out, a WG build might be required of all mages.

However, I think it is a bit difficult to pinpoint what mana will be like in the expansion. There is a lot up in the air right now, but it seems to me the devs are trying hard to make it a more interesting resource. Costs are increased, but we all know spirit will be much more prevalent on gear, and arcane mages will be running at 60% regen. Spriest regen has been reduced, but at the same time we will have raid-wide mana tides, as well as extra regen coming from hunters, resto druids, and perhaps some other sources? A ret pally will be present in most raids and arcane gets far more chances at JoW procs than most specs.

I just think it is hard to tell. You may be completely right, and arc / fire cannot support itself. But for me at least, it is difficult to imagine everything that will be happening in a fully synergized raid in wotlk. Regardless, I think everyone is basically saying the same thing in that if arc / fire cannot support mana costs, then MoE will make very little difference.

As for scorching for your filler, it obviously is a bad choice. We are looking for chances at missile barrage procs. I am only suggesting to use scorches to fill in the ~.5-1 sec gap in your rotation after shooting a 1.5 volley of AM.

 

Sunstealer

This is why i dont think the FFB spec will survive beta. It's entirely too overpowered. If it's shutting out other spec by 35-40% that's a little ridiculous to me.

If arcane cant effectively compete with the elementalist spec then i may play my druid instead. I'm becoming incresingly happy with the data i get back regarding arcane and it's nice seeing the randomocity that it entails. FFB will be just another spam 1 button and go afk...

I see what you're saying. Hasted GCD (Abar) + AM proc = about 2.7 sec... I guess you could throw in a fireblast on those occasions?? we can only hope that haste will effect the cast speed of a proc AM. That would really make it that much better.

Can anyone on beta confirm/deny that the Missile Barrage proc'd AM is always 1.5 sec cast regardless of haste??

 

grayrest

The way things stand today, the most significant source of mana for a raid will be a Ret Pally's JoW. The mechanics were just changed to be 9% of AP+SP for JoW and twice that for JoL. This means that which pally doing which judgement matters and that Ret judgements are about twice as powerful as other specs. My t5 ret pally currently has 2700 AP raid buffed, which would produce a 316 mana proc on JoW. At 3500 AP, it'd be 409 mana per proc. Since it procs on attack, this is the only mana source that scales with haste.

As for the rest, current shaman mechanics show Mana Spring stacking in party and only one spring affecting the raid as a whole (as a warning, most shaman spells/abilities seem to be rather broken atm). Mana Tides are in party only. Surv Hunters should mix well. Their ability has an 8 second cooldown, so assuming they proc every 9 seconds, you're looking at 200 mp5 with a 18k pool. The druid version is 15% per 3 seconds for 2% mana while Rejuv, so I'm not expecting much. The only other mana source I'm not seeing is the Ret Judgements of the Wise, but you're not going to be grouped with a Ret pally.

 

PsyBomb

Is anyone else concerned about Arcane Meditation being moved a tier deeper? 18 points is a bit sharp for a Frost spec to be able to conveniently take nowadays, and in order to do so I needed to drop most of the threat reduction, Ice Barrier, and a point from Improved Water Elemental.

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

Lhivera

Meditation isn't moving...it's 18 points already. You also really shouldn't need it for deep Frost. The spec's efficiency is such that even Clearcasting is often superfluous.

Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden from it in terror. -Ming the Merciless

 

Roywyn

When I'm looking at the numbers, I feel that Winter's Grasp is quite balanced when used with Frostbolt.
Ice Lance spam is quite strong due to high uptime with several mages. Tie proc rates to cast times?

The thing that's completely out of whack is Frostfire Bolt. Multi school mechanics.
If just Ignite double CoE didn't work with FFB, it would be 10% below Barrage rotations and not 35% above.
We'll have to wait and see what their ideas and intentions are and how it'll be handled.

As for mana - Arcane has the power to sustain the absurd mana burn that AB is right now.
Barrage rotations are much less mana spent, and we get more mana at 70.
And some of the current mana regeneration mechanics are up for a retuning as well. 500 JoW ticks anyone?


On a different note: TCing Fireball+FireBlast bugs and exploits for Hot Streak is a headache

[Edit]: I think I fixed my Hot Streak sheets, and the results are hilarious!
It's the first spec that let's you adapt your playstyle to your observed buggyness of Ignite!

Now that's what I call real interactivity and dynamic gameplay!

If Ignite never bugged or bugs 50% of the time, you'd run a 3Fireball/1FireBlast rotation, and use a Fireball+FireBlast combo on Hot Streak.
However, if Ignite bugs more closer to 100% of the time for you, you'd spam Fireball and use a Fireball+FireBlast combo on Hot Streak.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput
This assumes Rune of Razorice and Slow for Torment unless noted as "No TtW".
More detailed at http://elitistjerks.com/923110-post2775.html

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.

 

radikal

After playing with Frostfire Bolt for the past hour or two, I'm revoking my agreement on it being JesusBolt. It really really is only a raiding spell.

I'd like to add that while you can theorycraft on how WG works, playing with it is a bit different. It's not quite so simple as: When WG procs, fbx2, IL. Very often your second frostbolt refreshes the WG or your ice lance does -- these play out into either:

If your second fbolt refreshes WG and you already queued IL, you have 3.5 seconds to cast. I've been fb->lance on these.

If your lance at the end refreshes, you have closer to 4.25 seconds. You're on global but part of that global was spent on the lance's travel time. So you can fb->lance->lance. Once you do this, you have another nesting of possibilities for how you'll react to WG procs.

This changes with haste. And with cooldowns. IV Heroism etc. It gets more confusing when people heroism mid cast or you get a haste proc of some sort. Eventually, I think we'll be optimal at spending WGs, but playing "perfectly" to maximize WG's effect is definitely NOT trivial.

Sorry if this is a bit scattered, trying to test out ffb a bit more to see if I can find a viable use for it, but as for now, I'm sort of writing it off as "that 25man spell." So while we might fear that WG+FFB is overpowered with stacking mages, if it isn't the best raid nuke, what's the point?

 

Setia

Frostfire Bolt + WG is powerful, but it's only "way overpowered" when you start stacking mages. Given the current numbers, if you have only one mage in the raid it's pretty balanced.

Regarding Ice Lance, it is a spell that scales horribly, and as such, it's not worth it to use an Ice Lance on a WG proc as a Frostfire spec at most realistic level 80 gear levels. My spreadsheet is telling me that IL with a 100% chance of WG > Frostfire Bolt with a 10% chance of WG only at the following combinations of spellpower and crit % (not including talents): (1200, 15); (1400, 15); (1200, 20). With gear that is anywhere over that, you're better off to keep spamming Frostfire Bolt.

 

Arazan

Ah yes, so we should trust in the playerbase to not abuse an easily exploitable mechanic...


I hate to really turn into a broken record but you guys need to understand exactly why WG is so dangerous. WG, in its current form, inspires mage stacking because it gives exponential returns. One mage means one benefit from WG and once source of WG. Two mages is two sources of WG (higher WG uptime) and even more dps from each mage. Three mages means three sources of WG (even higher WG uptime) and every mage gets a substantial dps boost.

For every WG mage you bring into the raid, each of your mages' damage gets a boost. The more, the merrier, as it were. If FFB mages can be stacked with WG, there won't be any need to bring a different dps class or even a differently spec'ed mage unless that fight SPECIFICALLY works against FFB mages, and due to the nature of FFB *and* Ice Lance, the only time where a fight specifically hurts mages is if the mob in question is BOTH fire and frost immune. Remember that your 0/33/38 and 0/30/41 mages can swap to Ice Lance in case the fight requires a lot of mobility or is fire immune (remember fire immunity = no ignite), and if the mob is frost immune then FFB deals all fire damage and there's no problem.

Sadly, I don't think that bliz devs understand how dangerous of a mechanic WG is. If they designed it exactly like ISB where it lasted ~12 seconds but only had 2 or 3 charges (for balancing reasons, remember +50% crit is far more valuable than +20% damage), it would be fine... but this is the chain of events I see coming:

1. WG makes it to live because tested with one or two WG mages it's nice, but not really overpowered.
2. Progression guilds start taking 7-10 WG mages to each 25man, exploiting the exponential returns of WG.
3. WG is either changed to a self buff or otherwise nerfed into general unusability, or removed entirely.


The sad thing is that with how underwhelming the deep fire talents are, how mediocre for pve the deep frost tree is without WG, and how difficult to play and possibly underwhelming the deep arcane tree works out to be, it will leave mages off in the exact same position that they are now, possibly even worse. Remember that the deep arcane tree is relying on quite a bit to really be decent. Abar needs to continue with the 3 second coefficient, the deeper arcane talents (Missile Barrage or whatever makes it to live) need to be powerful, and most importantly spirit needs to be easily itemized to cover up the poor efficiency of arcane spells and allow arcane mages to cast purely off of spirit regen.

I really hate to sound like Chicken Little but really the mage class's problems are pretty simple. Mana efficiency for fire and arcane needs to be increased and scaling talents (the empowered talents) need to be buffed... not in any ridiculously huge way like making empowered fireball +10% coefficient per rank, but +4% per rank would probably do it. With arcane it's a little trickier because you need to establish either AB or AM as a primary nuke... but the fact remains the same: Empowered AM needs to be strong enough and AM needs to be efficient enough to be a primary nuke.

Sadly, none of those problems are being addressed, so I honestly cannot see the mage class genuinely improving in WoLK... at least not in the long run after WG gets heartily nerfed. Or they can make mages the undisputed king dps class by giving them a broken and exploitable mechanic, but that's making the mage class better at the expense of all other classes' dps specs.

 

Roywyn

Even with one mage, FFB elemental as 1-button-mashing with a scorch every 30s is more DPS than a proper Arcane Barrage Rotation, and anything but Arcane Blast spam with 2T5.
That seems to be the case in lower (1.8k dmg) and and higher (2.6k dmg) gear situation.
I consider this already too much.

The lower gear assumes ~14% crit from intellect/crit rating, which becomes ~40% crit with Totem of Wrath, Judgement, Molten Armour, Winter's Chill, Critical Mass, 1/3 Pyromaniac.
This massive crit stacking does pretty painful thing to Frostfire Bolt's crit scaling before Combustion/Winter's Grasp comes into effect.


Ice Lance is not worth it for FFB spec, you're correct. It's not like anything could even remotely compete with that absurd scaling.
Ice Lancing on a fading WG to replace a Frostbolt however seems to be worth it even at the higher gear set with 4 more mages who could get up WG while you'd cast your Frostbolt.


Also, at the higher gear set, Barrage rotations without shatter outdamage Frostbolt spam with 100% Winter's Grasp.
I stand by my point that Winter's Grasp is balanced in the context of Frostbolts (and PvE Ice Lance).
Otherwise you'd have to call Arcane Barrage overpowered as well.

The only thing that's totally out of whack are the multi-school mechanics of FFB.
Even without shatter/WG, FFB in a 0/36/35 spec will outdamage Barrage Rotations and everything else.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput
This assumes Rune of Razorice and Slow for Torment unless noted as "No TtW".
More detailed at http://elitistjerks.com/923110-post2775.html

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.

 

Setia

*edited out, need to check my math.*

 

Aramezzet

This is all just in line with Blizzard's tendency to overcompensate and drastically overdo buffs and nerfs. They have a tendency to try to do everything three steps at a time.

 

Arazan

Could you actually clarify that please? Do you mean arc/frost rotations with shatter beat out deep frost rotations with shatter at 100% WG uptime or that arc/fire rotations beat out deep frost rotations with WG and shatter?

And in all fairness, if it weren't for FFB I wouldn't be nearly as cautious regarding WG, but that's just because 0/33/38 FFB manages a 2.8 crit modifier and gets 40% more from crits than frostbolt does.


Even so though, I really need to see what your numbers were and the situations regarding when ABar rotations beat out frostbolt/WG ones. Would you mind being a bit more specific?



EDIT:

Oh and I think it's a bad assumption to think that pve mages of any spec will be able to use Molten Armor. With how they're greatly reducing the mana efficiency of all spells, as well as adding things like casting regen to Fel Armor, I think they're basically going to force all casters to have some amount of casting regen... which for deep fire and frost mages means tossing on Mage Armor, or putting 18 in arcane... or both.

 

PsyBomb

Thanks for the smack upside my head, I guess Frost just got so much more bloat deep-tree that the points became near-impossible to spare. Seems to have happened with all 3 of the trees (or would have if the bottom third of Fire could compare)

To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.

 

grayrest

After thinking about the implications of larger procs from JoW on target, it occurs to me that AB as a fill may be doable. If we get a 450 mana JoW proc (coming from a 3850 AP Ret pally, and gaining 1k AP from my current stats doesn't seem unreasonable to me), that works out to an average of 225 off most spells and 1125 off AM. I'll assume 2k SP, 25% haste, 2t5 (gloves+shoulders) work as it currently does, ignore latency, and ignore crit since the spells are all the same school. If you want numbers including crit, multiplying the dps/dpm by (1+crit_rate*.83) should do the trick.

Arcane Barrage: 1.03*(1040+(3/3.5)*2000) = 2837 in 1.20s (2364 DPCT, 945 DPS) for 610*.97*.9=532-225=307 mana (9.24 DPM, 256 MPS)
Arcane Missile: 1.03*(1800+(5/3.5+.45)*2000) = 5724 in 4.17s (1373.76 DPS) for 1135*1.03*.9=1052-1125=-73 mana (-17.5 MPS)
Missile Barrage AM: 5724 in 1.20s (4770 DPS) for -73 mana (-61 MPS)
Arcane Blast: 1.23*(985+(2.5/3.5)*2000) = 2968 in 1.20s (2473 DPS) for 335*1.17+335*.75*3=1145-225=920 mana (3.23 DPM, 766 MPS)
ABr->2xAB: 2837+2968*2 = 8773 in 3.6s (2436 DPS) for 307+920*2=2147 mana (4.09 DPM, 596 MPS)
ABr->MBAM->AB: 2837+2968+5724 = 11529 in 3.6s (3203 DPS) for 307+920-73 = 1154 mana (9.99 DPM, 320 MPS)

Total (weighted 85/15%): 9186 in 3.6s (2552 DPS) for 1998 mana (4.60 DPM, 555 MPS)

By the way of comparison, 2t5 AB spam today with no haste and no JoW is 449 MPS. So we're looking at a 23% increase in mana spent from 70->80 if current JoW mechanics go through, or roughly the increase from the haste. That's not terribly unreasonable considering all the other regen boosts, but we've got another option: downranking. Rank 2 (L71) and Rank 3 (L76) should both be full coefficient if the 11 level downranking rule holds. How do they compare?

Arcane Blast R4: 1.23*(985+(2.5/3.5)*2000) = 2968 in 1.20s (2473 DPS) for 335*1.17+335*.75*3=1145-225=920 mana (3.23 DPM, 766 MPS)
Arcane Blast R3: 1.23*(870+(2.5/3.5)*2000) = 2827 in 1.20s (2356 DPS) for 300*1.17+300*.75*3=1026-225=801 mana (3.52 DPM, 668 MPS)
Arcane Blast R2: 1.23*(745+(2.5/3.5)*2000) = 2673 in 1.20s (2228 DPS) for 255*1.17+255*.75*3=872-225=647 mana (4.13 DPM, 539 MPS)

Total R3: 8926 in 3.6s (2479 DPS, -2.86%) for 1777 mana (5.02 DPM, 493.8 MPS, -11.0%)
Total R2: 8640 in 3.6s (2400 DPS, -5.96%) for 1493 mana (5.79 DPM, 414.7 MPS, -25.3%)

So, R2 AB spam rotations are more than sustainable with the beta JoW mechanics. I'm stacking up a lot of assumptions here, but hopefully it's interesting. Not sure how the numbers compare against other fill, since it's a tradeoff between better fill dps and MB procs.

 

MetallicaRulez0

This is it exactly. Hunters and Warlocks were in a pitiful place 2 years ago, both of them in the bottom rung of DPS classes. Look at them now. Blizzard overcompensated and created 2 classes that scale way, way too well. Frostfire Bolt is essentially the same thing as the current Shadow Bolt, except it scales a LOT better and gains even more benefit from stacking. I would absolutely hate to see WG nerfed since it's really the only interesting talent we have gotten in my opinion, but it really is just more of the same stacking problem that's plagued BC.

 

aikiwoce

I'm sorry if this was discussed, but I'd really like to know what talents/debuffs are confirmed to work with FFb. Here's what I've gleaned so far:

Impact - yes
Ignite - yes, but only if target isn't fire immune
Flame Throwing - yes
Burning Soul - yes
MoE - double-dipping, likely to be fixed
Critical Mass - yes
Firepower - yes
Pyromaniac -yes
Combustion -yes
Molten Fury - yes, but any reports of bugged dual-school behavior?

Elemental Precision - double dipping, right?
Ice Shards - yes, assuming no frost immunity, right?
Piercing Ice - yes
Frost Channeling -yes
Shatter - yes
Winter's Chill - benefits, but does not apply?
Arctic Winds - yes
Winter's Grasp - yes

CoE - double-dipping, or not?
Improved Scorch - yes
DK Frost vulnerability - yes?

Finally, how is school-specific dmg treated with this spell? A la, [Flask of Pure Death] vs Flask of the Frost Wyrm?

P.S. Did I miss anything?

 

Xeddicus

Quantum posted upthread the following already:

Elemental Precision (working)
Ice Shards (working)
Piercing Ice (working)
Arctic Reach (not working)
Frost Channeling (working)
Arctic Winds & Winter's Chill (working)
Winter's Grasp (working)

Apparently everything works except range enhancing talents.

 

Kopalec

Impact - yes
Ignite - yes, but only if target isn't fire immune
Flame Throwing - neither range increase talent works on FFB
Burning Soul - yes
MoE - no, MoE is a proc on a per cast basis, thus there is only 1 chance for it to proc.
Critical Mass - yes
Firepower - yes
Pyromaniac -yes
Combustion -yes
Molten Fury - yes, it doesn't double dip though. The double dip seems to only occur when the talented effect mentions both Frost + Fire receiving the buff individually. MF is a universal effect that buffs all damage types (Nature for example if we had any) The exceptions being the range increasing talents.

Elemental Precision - yes, and it doubles up
Ice Shards - yes, unaffected by immunity, the damage is applied directly, not by a debuff like Ignite.
Piercing Ice - yes
Frost Channeling -yes
Shatter - yes
Winter's Chill - yes, unless immune to Frost damage
Arctic Winds - yes
Winter's Grasp - yes

CoE - yes, and doubling up
Improved Scorch - yes
DK Frost vulnerability - yes

I haven't seen any information posted on the effect of single school damage, from gear / consumables. It likely is, but how and to what ex