With it's name it definitely would make more sense as a cooldown. Personally with the mana cost and low number of charges i would really only use it before popping cooldowns and at the start of heroism. If it turns out to be worth prioritizing over nukes and needs to be re-applied every 10ish seconds then i would honestly just quit my mage. Synergy is fine but synergy with such a massive mana cost and dps opportunity cost really clashes with the concept of mages.
To be perfectly honest...
I think Focus Magic would make a good 51pt talent in this form. To me, it screams 'Arcane Mage defining talent'.
In lore terms, I see it as the mage saying 'Look guys, i'm so much cleverer than you, so let me show you how to make your spells *really* efficient' */cast Focus Magic, huge spells ensue*
Arcane: 'I know EVERYTHING'
Fire: 'I know you're gonng go up in flames pretty soon, and it's gonna hurt'
Frost: 'I know you're not gonna do anything any time soon'
Judging by this, the Frost 51pt is the only one which fits (sorry, but Living Bomb is *that* underwhelming.).
Well, in my opinion the biggest problem of the new Arcane Blast is actually Spell Pushback. A single Spell Pushback while you are spamming AB means you have to ramp it up again (We might be able to overcome this with some haste, but it will till be pretty annoying I think)
I'm hoping that all the changes made to interrupts being removed from the GCD is a precursor to an announcement regarding the removal of the pushback mechanic... but I think that it is more wishful thinking than deductive. If there ever was a time to polish old talents that include pushback resistance, the time would be now.
I think Focus Magic would make a good 51pt talent in this form. To me, it screams 'Arcane Mage defining talent'.
In lore terms, I see it as the mage saying 'Look guys, i'm so much cleverer than you, so let me show you how to make your spells *really* efficient' */cast Focus Magic, huge spells ensue*
Arcane: 'I know EVERYTHING'
Fire: 'I know you're gonng go up in flames pretty soon, and it's gonna hurt'
Frost: 'I know you're not gonna do anything any time soon'
Judging by this, the Frost 51pt is the only one which fits (sorry, but Living Bomb is *that* underwhelming.).
Heh. I could definitely see arcane focus being the 51 point arcane talent if it was simply turned into a powerful rdps cooldown for casters. Probably would make the most sense in this form too. A debuff on the target that causes a buff when you attack the target that increases the haste of spells cast against the target by 4% and stacks up to 5 times and lasts 40 seconds on a 10 minute CD. Or possibly something similar to how it is now but with more charges/damage or a removal of charges. I think this would fit with arcane quite well conceptually.
In that regard, does anyone know how ABar-AM would fare with constantly 30% more crit (while PoM is active)? I think I've read in this thread that even with such a high crit rate, AM is pretty bad, but maybe it could be worthwhile depending on the number of pushbacks in boss fights...?
I.e. with PoM, Arcane Potency and Improved AM you'd get 30% more crit. for ABar and AM plus pushback immunity, as long as you don't use AB or other spells with a cast time.
It seems to me that if you were to make use of the 30% crit increase continuously with the only modifier to your critical hit damage being Spell Power, then the dps gain you would receive would generally be from 18-20%, depending on your initial crit rate.
I'm not a prominent theorycrafter, so please check my work.
Assumptions: All unnamed variables remain constant (i.e., number of casts, haste, spell damage, bonus crit damage, etc.).
S = Initial crit rate
Standard damage = S*1.75+(1-S)
Damage while benefiting from APot + PoM = (S+0.30)*1.75+(1-(S+0.30))
Assuming your initial crit rate was 23%:
Standard damage = 0.23*1.75+(1-0.23) = 1.1725
Damage while benefiting from APotency + PoM = (0.23+0.30)*1.75+(1-(0.23+0.30)) = 1.3975
%Change = (New – Old)/Old = (1.3975 – 1.1725)/1.1725 = 0.1918
or 19% damage increase
The question is, even with that increase, how does it stack up against other specs/rotations?
The higher your usual crit rate, the less benefit you gain. Using the CSD also changes the results (for the better). The best use of this, besides occasions where uninterrupted casting is necessary, is spamming AE. I think it is likely that they will change either PoM to have a timer, or will remove it from APotency.
With it's name it definitely would make more sense as a cooldown. Personally with the mana cost and low number of charges i would really only use it before popping cooldowns and at the start of heroism. If it turns out to be worth prioritizing over nukes and needs to be re-applied every 10ish seconds then i would honestly just quit my mage. Synergy is fine but synergy with such a massive mana cost and dps opportunity cost really clashes with the concept of mages.
All they need to do to make it worthwhile is take away the charges and just have it last 1 minute. 1 arcane mage would add 5-8% to spellcaster dps, that's still less than CoE.
I've been thinking a bit on Focus Magic an I don't like it at all.
First of all it doesn't at all work like other utility debuffs that work with %-modifiers and are either procs or have long duration.
I would more describe it as a normal damage spell and the best thing to compare it with is a DOT.
It's an instant cast with damage and duration depending on raid setup. It's scaling with average raid stats but only with haste and crit and not with spellpower.
The bad thing is that we will need to use of a lot of our dps time to keep the debuff up (see below) but the damage will be distributed on the rest of the raid
Imo this spell doesn't only give mages utility but can go all the way into turning us into a support class (Sacrificing our own dps for others) which is not something I want with my mage.
First let's assume the average cast time of spells is 2.0 seconds and that it only affects direct damage caster spells.
2 Casters
50 Charges in 50 seconds
1.5/50 ~ 3.0% of dps time to keep the debuff up
3 Casters
50 Charges in 33.3 seconds
1.5/33 ~ 4.5% of dps time to keep the debuff up
5 Casters
50 Charges in 20 seconds
1.5/20 ~ 7.5% of dps time to keep the debuff up
10 Casters
50 Charges in 10 seconds
1.5/10 ~ 15% of dps time to keep the debuff up
Crit
Let's assume an average raid crit rate of 25-40% and an average spell crit modifier of 2.0 and we get 25-40% more damage.
Spell coefficient
I really have no idea what to assume as an average coefficient. There are some spells like scorch and am that will lower it and not many spells have >= 1 so I guess somewhere around 0.7-9.
%-modifiers
Most spells have talent modifiers and with the new scorch almost all schools are affected by misery, 10% modifier (scorch, shadow weaving etc) and 10% COE which should make an average modifier 1.4-1.6.
50 charges would then give 9000 - 15000 damage
It's a spell with almost 10k damage per cast time which is more than every other spell we have which will make it a must to keep up as soon as the charges are used.
We need to know if rogue poisons and other melee attacks that deal magic damage also trigger this effect.
If that's the case it will mean that 50 charges wont even last for 10 seconds meaning we will need to alter our cast rotations to make every 3rd-5th spell Focus Magic. Not something I look forward to.
This is not the utility that mages have been wanting. It will be even worse than keeping scorch up. 0 damage and every 5-20 seconds (Of course it will probably be the same mage having to keep them both up).
Raid bitch spec http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...00000000000000
Now here's an idea... have Focus Magic be an aspect of Arcane Missles; instead of an instant cast debuff with charges, have AM pulses apply charges. That's the type of spec-based utility I was hoping for come WotLK. Focus Magic as it is now is too much of a 'set n forget' debuff that is disjoint from any real Arcane spec. Having the debuff depend on arcane-based damage would legitimize the utility aspect of the spec. Creative juices are flowing today!
Every raid would want an Arcane Mage present for the debuff, and the Mage would have to truly play as an Arcane Mage to be viable while applying the debuff. The debuff isn't so powerful as to keep Arcane damage potential near the top, and as long as it is viably kept applied by a single Arcane Mage there is no threat of motivation to stack Arcane Mages (i.e. Imp SB).
The mana cost is absolutely disgusting too. Not only are you wasting GCDs on something that doesn't do any personal damage, you are using a LOT of mana to do so, which further reduces your ability to dps.
Mages should be invited to raids for the same reasons that rogues and hunters are, that is because of their dps. The utility we provide should be somewhat of an afterthought and any synergy should be rather minor. BM hunters are great in this aspect. They are invited to the raid because their dps is amazing and they also happen to bring a couple nice perks like FI and MD. Their utility is useful but it is far from required and it isn't what gets them into raids. We should really be able to justify our spot based on dps rather than utility. We are a primary dps class, not a hybrid.
Edit: Basically i don't want to be invited to a raid because they need imp scorch, decurses, focus magic or polymorph. Those are all assets and they can make things easier but a mage shouldn't earn its spot based on things that have nothing to do with his dps. This whole shift towards utility really just doesn't set well with me. A dps class that isn't capable of justifying its spot based on dps just seems really poorly thought out and the synergy we are getting feels gimmicky because group synergy isn't what a mage is all about and synergy at the cost of dps is definitely not what a mage is about.
Now here's an idea... have Focus Magic be an aspect of Arcane Missles; instead of an instant cast debuff with charges, have AM pulses apply charges. That's the type of spec-based utility I was hoping for come WotLK. Focus Magic as it is now is too much of a 'set n forget' debuff that is disjoint from any real Arcane spec. Having the debuff depend on arcane-based damage would legitimize the utility aspect of the spec. Creative juices are flowing today!
The problem with this idea is it requires us to cast AM, and not just on chance missile barrage procs.
My personal feeling is that Focus Magic should be a passive buff (that a Mage gives to all people in the raid/party), not a spell. Basically it's the "Brilliance Aura."
The problem with this idea is it requires us to cast AM, and not just on chance missile barrage procs.
Of course the concept is flexible. AM pulses could apply any # of charges, like 3-5 per missile. Enough that Barrage procs could feasibly keep it up but not so much that it can be ignored otherwise.
My personal feeling is that Focus Magic should be a passive buff (that a Mage gives to all people in the raid/party), not a spell. Basically it's the "Brilliance Aura."
I respectfully disagree since I am a supporter of more synergistic utility instead of dry & bland flat modifier buffs, especially passive auras. Passive Aura utility is nice when placing value on a class/spec... but terribly boring when implemented in game, moreso if the class/spec is balanced around it causing the actual gameplay of the class/spec to become less influential.
Qbert: Well, rather obviously, Arcane damage couldn't eat charges, but otherwise I like this. If Arcane damage would benefit while not eating charges (rather like ISB used to not eat periodic damage but would benefit them), then we'd even have an Arcane-specific 'buff'.
Another option would be to combine Focus Magic and Slow (and let at least the FM part work on bosses), and get to play a game of 'smear the guy with the ball'.
In that regard, does anyone know how ABar-AM would fare with constantly 30% more crit (while PoM is active)? I think I've read in this thread that even with such a high crit rate, AM is pretty bad, but maybe it could be worthwhile depending on the number of pushbacks in boss fights...?
I.e. with PoM, Arcane Potency and Improved AM you'd get 30% more crit. for ABar and AM plus pushback immunity, as long as you don't use AB or other spells with a cast time.
ABar-AM under permanent +30% crit is like a 33/38/0 FB spec with the ABar coefficient nerf.
Barrage cycles (ABar-X, MBAM on procs) are now below 33/38/0, slightly above deep fire.
ABar-AM with constant +30% crit and unnerfed ABar would be above Barrage cycles, but below AB(3) spam.
Originally Posted by Densor
The problem I see with Manly's results is that +5 mobs are red, instead of orange. Given that +3 mobs (orange) were on a different scale than +2 mobs (yellow), it would make sense if +5 mobs were on a different scale than +4 mobs. Can you try a +4 mob at 11% hit, Manly (or anyone else)?
As 75% mitigation from armor is the max physical mitigation, it would make sense for 75% magic resist to be the max, and Manly saw a ton of those in his combat log snippet. He also saw:
a 70% resist (652 w/ 1522 resisted)
a 60% resist (329 w/ 492 resisted) from the WE
a 70% resist (267 w/ 622 resisted) from the WE
Everything else looks like 75% resists. And I can't figure out the crits. The resisted damage times any reasonable crit modifier plus the non resisted damage doesn't add up to the full damage of a non-crit times the same crit modifier. Of course, with the resists being all wonky with reporting already, maybe there's something else I'm missing.
You're right. I only checked the first few and last few hits and some crits and they all looked like 75% to me.
Crits work like they always did. "1120 Frost (1608 Resisted) (Critical)" - Frost with an CSD meta has 209% crits, 1120/2.09=535.885, and "535 (1608 resisted)" is a perfect 75% resist.
That means the log consists of only partial resists of 75%/70%/60%.
That could mean that the amount that you/mob can partially resist is now tied to levels.
Like mobs a level above you resisting 30%/20%/10% and higher mobs resisting more.
That could explain the mass reports of many small partial resists.
Originally Posted by Ulthwithian
Shotput: That data gives [Arcane Barrage] a coefficient of 0.64.
That would be a -25% penalty to its current value, or 75% of 3/3.5.
I respectfully disagree since I am a supporter of more synergistic utility instead of dry & bland flat modifier buffs, especially passive auras. Passive Aura utility is nice when placing value on a class/spec... but terribly boring when implemented in game, moreso if the class/spec is balanced around it causing the actual gameplay of the class/spec to become less influential.
Well in its current form it's exactly the same except you have to target the enemy. I can understand your disagreement, but Blizzard's ability to come up with interesting things that work has typically required patch after patch after patch to get working right. Even then after all those patches it becomes a laughable ghost (hi Ice Lance, Arcane Barrage as of right now) of what it once was and typically boils down to something such as an aura. I'm more of the "don't kid yourself" line of thought and believe that if the game is simple, the structures it is built around should be equally simple, or at least make sense towards that simplicity. Focus magic due to its limited status right now, doesn't; it serves as an ability to buff other classes as much as our own. Which is a tradeoff when we realize the absolute amount of our own DPS.
Roywyn: That's entirely possible. With no other data, I had only the following equations to use:
49x + y = 867.5
998x + y = 1475.3
where x is the coefficient of barrage, and y is the average damage without spell damage. This system is solved for when x = 0.64 and y = 836.14. Now, without information as to crit rate, this isn't a final answer, but does show some information, I think.
I really wish they would ditch the Focus Magic idea. Why create a new mechanic where one isn't required? We already have Amplify/Dampen Magic, so let us put it on enemies. It's already got a built-in downside for PvP, frees up the 11-point slot for Slow, and allows the developers to give us a good 41-point arcane talent.
Also please remove Arcane Fortitude, and replace it with Student of the Mind.
Edit: Ok talented Amplify would be like +360 dmg, that might be excessive, but you could mitigate like this:
Amplify Magic - Amplifies magic used against the target, increasing damage taken from spells by up to 240 and healing spells by up to 480. Lasts 5 min. Only 50% effective when used on unfriendly targets.
This would equal out to a talented max-rank Amplify Magic giving 180+dmg on the target for 5min. Then give us a group buff version that would last 15 min.
You can still keep things relatively simple while keeping the user-dependent utility aspect, but you're right in that there is a limit to which you can conceive of utility mechanics in order to be aware of the programming difficulty. I always thought that the VT debuff for Shadowpriests was a great idea. It required the SP to be aware of the debuff timer, made the SP able to return large amounts of mana by spreading it amongst multiple targets, and motivated the spec's DPS in indirectly... and it was a relatively simple mechanic. Other simple mechanics like group-based short duration buffs following crits (i.e. Enhancement Shaman) is another easy way to keep the utility dependent on the spec and dependent on the user. There are certainly times where creativity gets carried away beyond feasible programming capability but there are still countless ways to implement unique and interesting utility from both a theorycrafting and gameplay perspective.
You can still keep things relatively simple while keeping the user-dependent utility aspect, but you're right in that there is a limit to which you can conceive of utility mechanics in order to be aware of the programming difficulty. I always thought that the VT debuff for Shadowpriests was a great idea. It required the SP to be aware of the debuff timer, made the SP able to return large amounts of mana by spreading it amongst multiple targets, and motivated the spec's DPS in indirectly... and it was a relatively simple mechanic. Other simple mechanics like group-based short duration buffs following crits (i.e. Enhancement Shaman) is another easy way to keep the utility dependent on the spec and dependent on the user. There are certainly times where creativity gets carried away beyond feasible programming capability but there are still countless ways to implement unique and interesting utility from both a theorycrafting and gameplay perspective.
I hope you're right and I hope we find a great deal of it in the upcoming expansion. I'm very worried that they're stealth nerfing stuff already though. Transparency is really something Blizzard could stand to improve upon.
Qbert: Well, rather obviously, Arcane damage couldn't eat charges, but otherwise I like this. If Arcane damage would benefit while not eating charges (rather like ISB used to not eat periodic damage but would benefit them), then we'd even have an Arcane-specific 'buff'.
Another option would be to combine Focus Magic and Slow (and let at least the FM part work on bosses), and get to play a game of 'smear the guy with the ball'.
Shotput: That data gives a coefficient of 0.64.
I can tell you that the change has made the spell really quite unappealing to cast regularly. Compared to the other spells you can hit with, it has the feel and seeming purpose of being a more expensive, harder hitting ice lance. Kite, kite, abar, kite, kite, abar, etc. Something to cast while bouncing around in Mag's room, for example. I would expect that the live version will settle somewhere above where it is now, and below where it was, though where it was didn't seem too OP (due to not proc'ing MBAR).
Getting reports that Imp Scorch no longer affects multiple schools, Blastwave knockback was removed and Living Bomb actually got nerfed (mana burn aspect)? Can anyone confirm/deny?
Getting reports that Imp Scorch no longer affects multiple schools, Blastwave knockback was removed and Living Bomb actually got nerfed (mana burn aspect)? Can anyone confirm/deny?
I can confirm the Blastwave change. Dunno about the other two.
Getting reports that Imp Scorch no longer affects multiple schools, Blastwave knockback was removed and Living Bomb actually got nerfed (mana burn aspect)? Can anyone confirm/deny?
In the current active beta release, none of these changes are live. They all are as they were since Tuesday.
Edit: at least what's listed on the talents themselves.
07/31/08, 1:02 PM
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