Thanks for the data, Manly. If I'm reading correctly that's 10%/20%/30% partial resists on a minion one level higher, against whom you should be hit-capped.
What are the implications? Is there any way to avoid these partial resists?
Some nice swaps they could do to current arcane talents would be:
Replace Arcane fortitude with Incanters absorbtion. If some mechanics change arcane might find a use for the talent but above all the only mageshield worth using would benifit from it. Its probably a concious choise to put IA just out of tange from mages with Ice Barrier, but if mages are not supposed to shiled themselves to get some nice spelldamage then what is the point of the talent? Use your one potion per battle (if potion sickness goes live that is) on a resistance pot for a one time shield? Like stated is was probably intended to work together with shatter shield, but now that is a frost talent so why not let frost benifit some extra from IA and get rid of arcane fortitude once and for all. Not to mention sliming the top end of the arcane tree down a little.
Furhter they could mix focus magic in with magic attunement. Have magic attunement remain a 2/2 talent that allows you to cast these two spells at hostile mobs with 25/50% of its regular effect. Both these talent ideas are pretty close to begin with. Arcane mages are masters of magic and can dampen/amplify it on anything at will.
Then have the 11 point talent of arcane be a simple 1 point talent granting range. Simple well placed talent that any arcane mage would want to pick upp. I guess one idea could be to make magic attunement the 1 point talent and range remaining 2 points. But the main ploint is to like some has suggested merge amp/damp magic with focus magic and make range a separate talent.
So catching up with the thread, 51/20 is the arcane build. I thought this was evident as traditional nomenclature involves preceding a zero if you are using the second tree, i.e. 0/51/20 would be elemental. In english you almost never shorthand something by cutting off the beginning of the term...
I tested several arcane builds and determined that 51/20 was optimal.
The builds are based on level 80, the ranks of spells as well as the gearing used is based on level 70. There could be some slight differences when things are scaled up to level 80. I plan creating a fully level 80 version soon.
Lhivera, did you remember to remove the binary resist bonus from frostbolt because it's no longer applicable?
I've only been in this thread since ~page 100, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned....but any word yet on what school(s) is locked out of a CS'd FFB?
I've only been in this thread since ~page 100, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned....but any word yet on what school(s) is locked out of a CS'd FFB?
Frostfire bolt locks you out of fire and frost spells.
Thanks for the data, Manly. If I'm reading correctly that's 10%/20%/30% partial resists on a minion one level higher, against whom you should be hit-capped.
What are the implications? Is there any way to avoid these partial resists?
Interesting in that the partial percentage is based on base damage and not critical. (good)
It could be that level based resists is kicking in "quicker" than was previously seen because the level based resistance has a greater chance to show when things are on a 10% scale.
Lhiv, could you tell me what stats you used exactly for your calculations and what buffs you included?
I did the math for pre-nerf Arcane, full Fire, full Frost and Elementalist with 1.2k spellpower & 25% crit as base (careful estimates on lvl 77-80 blues gear) with 150mp5 & 5% hit from gear and I came to the conclusion that compared to Arcane;
Fire did 5% less DPS, but was 10% more efficient
Frost did 10% less DPS, but 20% more mana efficiency
FFB did the lowest, 15% DPS less, but with 35-40% more efficiency and scaling absuredly with crit (280% crits)
This was with ABar/ABl cycle and the other specs all spamming their main nuke.
Arcane is the top spec currently. Your rotation should look something like Arcane Barrage -> Arcane Blast x2 or x1 depending on your current haste. Frost is somewhat weak without WGR, elemental solidly beats it.
A subject that hasn't seemed to get a lot of attention in all this theory-crafting is scaling. If arcane does end up being our best dps spec at 80, how will it compare to other level 80 endgame dps, given the weak scaling on both spell damage and crit? I have a bad feeling that things will end up just like TBC with jaw-dropping dps on low-end gear, and mages getting out-scaled in end-game by physical dps in particular. If double-dipping curse of elements and scorch is actually a bug, we're going to be left with nada in the way of nukes that scale well with gear.
(on a side note, why do I sometimes get the impression a lot of theory-crafters are accountants?)
More importantly, I'm looking at this 15-20% gap between Fire and both Arcane and Frost. Now, Fire now buffs every Mage and Destro 'lock by 10%, and boomkins and elemental shaman by some amount less than that. That's a hefty chunk of raid DPS; frankly, someone who's bringing that kind of debuff shouldn't be matching the individual DPS of specs that are not bringing a debuff like that.
First off, the lock brings curse of elements. That boosts the dps of all shadow priests, mages and boomkins.
As far as boomkins: how many boomkins go, you're going to have like 1 boomkin in the raid you're buffing ?
Improved scorch will still primarily be a mage boosting debuff.
Theophanes brings up a point that greatly concerns me, especially with regards to arcane barrage now having a lower coefficient. How is that going to look down the line when we are in t9/10 content? The spell doesn't especially scale much with haste, it gains most of its punch from spellpower, but less so now.
I may have missed this in the last couple of pages, but in case no one else was aware, a Ret pally friend in beta did some testing on the stacking of haste effects. The 3% ret aura stacked with WF totem and - here's the kicker - Bloodlust. I assume the same is true for Wrath of Air. I don't know if this is intended or just something Blizz forget to fix with the new changes, but it appears that all non-self-only haste buffs are stacking with each other. If someone in beta could test this with a boomkin to confirm, it'd be appreciated.
If this has already been altered in the last day or so, I apologize for spreading misinformation. Just something to think about with regards to mana.
Looking at the patch notes, it doesn't appear that water elementals are going to be seeing any significant reduction in damage from incidental aoe.
Avoidance (Felguard): Now reduces damage taken from area of effect attacks by an additional 80% and is automatically learned for the Succubus, Imp, Voidwalker, and Felhunter at level 10.
Theophanes brings up a point that greatly concerns me, especially with regards to arcane barrage now having a lower coefficient. How is that going to look down the line when we are in t9/10 content? The spell doesn't especially scale much with haste, it gains most of its punch from spellpower, but less so now.
I guess it might be too early to bank on set bonuses since itemization is practically nil, but that is one way to add a damage increase along progression.
Just had a thought about brain freeze. Though it looks like more of a pvp ability. But we often have movement fights in pve now as well. If the buff is up indefinitely once it has proced (no duration). We don't have to break our stride to cast a fireball. We can wait until the typical "move from point A to point B" that often happens in raid boss fights, then shoot off the instant cast fireball while we are doing it.
That way, it will still be a DPS gain. The way I see it, we are the one that will decide when we want to use this instant cast fireball. So, we don't have to use it while we are standing still spamming frostbolts.
It may not seem like much, but its still a dps gain if we look at it in that respect since we can't very well cast frostbolt on the move anyway. So, let's say a raid boss fight has 20 times where you have to move from point A to point B. And with a 15% chance proc, and since you will definitley be spamming frostbolts in between those "movement" times. It should be almost certain that by the time you reach that "movement" phase, you will have this proc up.
So, that's 20 instant cast fireballs in a raid fight that you will do on the move. It does add up. And its better than fireblast too because for one thing, fireball has a much longer range than fireblast.
One more thing, seems like heavy arcane will have a much better fit with fire than with frost. There are a lot of nice fire talents in early tiers like incineration and world in flames that buff arcane spells. Plus pyroblast is always fun and nice to use in conjunction with POM. For frost, you need to have a heavy 20 point investment into the tree to get shatter, and if you only go as far as 11 for icy veins, then the 10 points in the ower tier have no benefit what so ever on arcane spells. So, it seems like heavy arcane, minor fire is better unless you plan to use frostbolt actively as a filler and you want shatter. Another option arcane has is to have 10 points in fire, and 10 in frost and use frostfire bolt as a filler. But this requires exactly 51 points in arcane, which is not easy given arcane has so many must have talents at this point.
I guess it might be too early to bank on set bonuses since itemization is practically nil, but that is one way to add a damage increase along progression.
Although Blizzard may change their approach in the future, I haven't noticed any particularly adept attempts to equalize damage through gear. On the contrary, gear usually makes scaling issues that much more obvious. In any case, gear seems like a band-aid fix to a problem which can generally be quickly identified by individuals with a sound grasp of mathematics. The simpler solution would be to fix abilities or talents to address scaling issues.
Just had a thought about brain freeze. Though it looks like more of a pvp ability. But we often have movement fights in pve now as well. If the buff is up indefinitely once it has proced (no cooldown). We don't have to break our stride to cast a fireball. We can wait until the typical "move from point A to point B" that often happens in raid boss fights, then shoot off the instant cast fireball while we are doing it.
That way, it will still be a DPS gain. The way I see it, we are the one that will decide when we want to use this instant cast fireball. So, we don't have to use it while we are standing still spamming frostbolts.
It may not seem like much, but its still a dps gain if we look at it in that respect since we can't very well cast frostbolt on the move anyway. So, let's say a raid boss fight has 20 times where you have to move from point A to point B. And with a 15% chance proc, and since you will definitley be spamming frostbolts in between those "movement" times. It should be almost certain that by the time you reach that "movement" phase, you will have this proc up.
So, that's 20 instant cast fireballs in a raid fight that you will do on the move. It does add up. And its better than fireblast too because for one thing, fireball has a much longer range than fireblast.
Doesn't this rather depend on how long the buff lasts, and whether it's a fire on proc ability, or a fire whenever ability? At the same time, speccing frost for a chance at an instant fireball seems a little silly when frost is sub-par dps, and arcane has a clearly superior instant nuke on a much shorter cooldown than a 15% chance to proc off frostbolt. It just seems a backwards thing to do to spec frost to gain the ability to do worse that which can be done better by a superior, more rounded spec.
I may have missed this in the last couple of pages, but in case no one else was aware, a Ret pally friend in beta did some testing on the stacking of haste effects. The 3% ret aura stacked with WF totem and - here's the kicker - Bloodlust. I assume the same is true for Wrath of Air. I don't know if this is intended or just something Blizz forget to fix with the new changes, but it appears that all non-self-only haste buffs are stacking with each other. If someone in beta could test this with a boomkin to confirm, it'd be appreciated.
If this has already been altered in the last day or so, I apologize for spreading misinformation. Just something to think about with regards to mana.
I saw screenshots of WF totems stacking with each other, so I doubt they have the haste effects fixed yet. However, it'd be nice if we could get updates on haste effect stacking every time they patch. Also, we need weapon/cast speed info from a 3rd player, not the paladin or shaman, since haste effects from you should stack with haste effects from other people, but haste effects from two other different people shouldn't stack with each other.
Doesn't this rather depend on how long the buff lasts, and whether it's a fire on proc ability, or a fire whenever ability? At the same time, speccing frost for a chance at an instant fireball seems a little silly when frost is sub-par dps, and arcane has a clearly superior instant nuke on a much shorter cooldown than a 15% chance to proc off frostbolt. It just seems a backwards thing to do to spec frost to gain the ability to worse that which can be done better by a superior, more rounded spec.
yeah, but since no duration is mentioned anywhere, I am taking it to mean that it is up "until used". Kinda of like how POM works.
While it seems silly because yes, a fireball will be subpar DPS to a forstbolt. But if we are on the move, then we can't cast frostbolt anyway. And this is deep in the frost tree. So, people that deep in the frost tree are already commited to going deep frost and will not have arcane barrage.
Not all procs with a limited duration mention the duration in their description - Blizzard is notorious for poor tooltips and this is no exception. (I can't from the top of my head think of what spell/effect I noticed that has a limited duration but doesn't mention it, but I am quite certain there is at least one.)
Lhivera, did you remember to remove the binary resist bonus from frostbolt because it's no longer applicable?
I did indeed. A 5.1% resist penalty is included in the "universal" multiplier on my main page. (Note that I'm not sure it'll really stay 5.1%. If it remains 24 resistance, it'll reduce to 4.5%. But it's universally applied to all spell schools in my post, which is the important thing.)
Originally Posted by WarTotem
Lhiv, could you tell me what stats you used exactly for your calculations and what buffs you included?
All assumptions are listed on the main page (here). The detailed math for all three specs is linked at the bottom of that page.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Note that for deep Frost (the only spec that can actually get the talent), Brain Freeze is always a DPS increase, even in a no-movement fight - even with completely untalented Fireball - but equally it is almost always a marginal increase.
With Frost self-buffs only, Brain Freeze's instant Fireball scales ~10 - 15% better than 0.6 of a Frostbolt (which is how much you can get off in the equivalent GCD time, as haste affects both equally until you hit the 1.0 GCD cap). At 20% base crit, 2k spellpower, each point is worth ~16dps compared to Frostbolt spam (maybe 0.8 - 0.9% DPS increase per point), although significantly more if you can use it on the move.
With ideal Frost conditions (Frozen Rune Weapon, Elemental Oath etc) the scaling is so close as to make my 2-significant-figure napkin-math unreliable, but because of Fireball's higher base damage you would need unrealistic amounts of spell damage for Frostbolt to pull ahead. However, the DPS gain is tiny (making it sensible to wait for movement if proc duration allows).
In order to make the talent both thematically palatable and a reasonable DPS increase per point when not moving, it would still make much more sense for FFB to be procced instead of/in addition to Fireball (goes from 16 -> 40 dps per point at 2k spellpower/20% crit - ~2% dps increase per point). Probably want to make the spell cost mana though, or else the talent might be a bit strong.
Alternately, the talent could be moved up a couple of tiers so that elementalist specs could grab it.
Note that for deep Frost (the only spec that can actually get the talent), Brain Freeze is always a DPS increase, even in a no-movement fight - even with completely untalented Fireball - but equally it is almost always a marginal increase.
With Frost self-buffs only, Brain Freeze's instant Fireball scales ~10 - 15% better than 0.6 of a Frostbolt (which is how much you can get off in the equivalent GCD time, as haste affects both equally until you hit the 1.0 GCD cap). At 20% base crit, 2k spellpower, each point is worth ~16dps compared to Frostbolt spam (maybe 0.8 - 0.9% DPS increase per point), although significantly more if you can use it on the move.
With ideal Frost conditions (Frozen Rune Weapon, Elemental Oath etc) the scaling is so close as to make my 2-significant-figure napkin-math unreliable, but because of Fireball's higher base damage you would need unrealistic amounts of spell damage for Frostbolt to pull ahead. However, the DPS gain is tiny (making it sensible to wait for movement if proc duration allows).
In order to make the talent both thematically palatable and a reasonable DPS increase per point when not moving, it would still make much more sense for FFB to be procced instead of/in addition to Fireball (goes from 16 -> 40 dps per point at 2k spellpower/20% crit - ~2% dps increase per point). Probably want to make the spell cost mana though, or else the talent might be a bit strong.
Alternately, the talent could be moved up a couple of tiers so that elementalist specs could grab it.
are there any tallents that are completely useless long after you can take them? the problem with it having FFb on the proc is that you don't GET FFB untill 75 - making the tallent pure filler untill then. No, it could maybe proc for both fireball AND FFb, but not pure FFb.
To answer my own question though - yes, improved reincarnation in the shaman tree can be taken long before you learn the spell. fun times.
07/31/08, 8:33 PM
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