The problem I fear with arcane potency granting 30% crit as long as you stick to instants and AM is that this prevents AM and AE to be balanved properly for anyone who doesnt have arcane potency. AM isnt much of a loss for more forey nad frosty mages I guess, but making AE worthless for anyone who doenst have arcane potency doesnt seem like a gain for the mage class. Cause lets face it, blizzard will not let us keep an AoE + talent combo that makes for completely OP AoE damage. Im sure that they will balance AE to be a good AoE spell dealing very good damage, but Id very much prefer if it was able to do this without some lame PoM combo. To not mess up PoM being consumed by instants they could perhaps give PoM a duration so you could use the combo for some burst AoE but only for a limited amount of time. That would fit very well with the arcane playstyle imo.
I am pretty sure the +30% crit bonus from Arcane Potency is a bug and will be fixed.
At one time any instant spell would consume PoM, Blizzard then changed it so that any spell needs a cast bar for it to be consumed.
Not only do I agree that the +30% crit from PoM will change, I also hope that it does. If it does not change, all mages will have a 21/xx/xx. I feel like the entire reason for revamping so many of the talent trees for WotLK was to get people out of cookie cutter builds.
I would love to be amazingly OP as a class but I also want some versatility in my builds.
Actually I didn't test that since I read the talent as "fire spells" for some reason. I'll let you know shortly.
Edit: No, blizzard can not proc hot streak.
Edit2: Can't proc MoE either.
Sounds like they don't have the on-crit effects fixed yet. I bet Lightning Capacitor does not function for blizzard.
The closest spell to the current Beta Blizzard would be Arcane Missiles, which iirc, does not proc MoE either (can you check and see if it procs hot streak as well?).
Last edited by Fireflash38 : 08/07/08 at 11:10 AM.
Not only do I agree that the +30% crit from PoM will change, I also hope that it does. If it does not change, all mages will have a 21/xx/xx. I feel like the entire reason for revamping so many of the talent trees for WotLK was to get people out of cookie cutter builds.
I would love to be amazingly OP as a class but I also want some versatility in my builds.
And I stand by that. How ever fun it may be I do not think we will be allowed to keep any spell and talent combos that makes our AoE so overpowered its silly. It doesnt matter if its the only use hot streak has. I think that the final implemetation of it will allow mages to hit the aproximate damagemark blizzard has set for the mage class.
Then we could ofc discuss if it could be that blizzard really plans to make mages twice as effective ar warlocks at AoE, but unless that is their intention I dont think it will happen, no seccond round of "whops SoC was too good".
Plopp plopp kaboom! This is an intelligent signature.
This whole 'AoE-king' class design fiasco is starting to remind me a lot of the talk going on regarding priests' ability to heal in PvE around the time before the 1.10 patch when my priest was my main character. Priests were upset about having both Druids and Paladins outscaling Priests for single-target healing (back when greater heal was a 4 second cast). The reply from Druids and Paladins began to develop a sense of entitlement as if it was intended that Priests were not meant to be single target healers, and their justification was that "Priests are better group healers, while Paladins and Druids are the single-target healers" ...
Well, that sounds nice and reasonable in theory ... but there was rarely, if ever, a need to heal a group as a whole outside entirely gimmick encounters such as Vaelastrasz, Firemaw/Flamegor, and Huhuran. Group healing was a rare gimmick technique for rare gimmick mechanics, so the idea that Priests were to become a class designed to be mediocre for the heart of raid encounters' healing, with justification in that Priests had occasionally useful heals was not well received in the slightest.
Thankfully such a class direction did not materialize ... but fast forward to TBC->WotLK and transpose the exact same situation onto Mages and this whole concept of "kings of AoE" and you see history repeating itself.
Mages are being spoon fed the idea that excelling at AoE will be the 'signature' of the class ... but that simply can't be allowed to substitute for any shortcoming in the single target DPS department for the same reasons that Priests being inferior at single target healing would be unacceptable; rare gimmick encounters do not supply justification for the existence of an entire class. Morogrim murlocs, Hyjal trash, RoS trash, Kael'thas weapons, and Solarian waves were cute and interesting aspects of raiding in TBC... but it certainly didn't ever warrant a class designed and specced to overcome them. Obviously the thought that Mages provide little beyond AoE is exaggeration and unreasonable... but in a game of min/maxing you are brought for your contribution to the bulk of a raid's progression-based content, which has undeniably and overwhelmingly boiled down to single-target DPS for DPS classes. If your class cannot keep pace in such content, you are left behind and often left out.
The idea of merely having "par" single-target DPS to complement the AoE role also does not sit well with me. Mages give up a lot as a class to DPS, arguably more than any other class. Mages now share the room with Rogues as the only classes with no healing mechanic whatsoever. Mages have the lowest HP, lowest armor, lowest endurance, lowest stat benefit, lowest stat concentration, lowest passive/white damage (zero), lowest utility, and lowest DPS mobility. It would be hard to convince me, or anyone, that sacrificing that much as a class rewards merely a marginal AoE advantage in situational gimmick circumstances.
While nobody can say for certain what WotLK raid encounters will entail, it is more reasonable to assume that Bllizzard will continue its strategy of not diverting from 'what works' for raiding than it is to assume almost every progression-based content will have finely tuned sensitive AoE mechanics. This means that AoE will likely continue to be a rare circumstantial gimmick and any need for AoE will not be to the degree that a specific class or spec will be required. So tell me, if a Fire Mage specced into AoE talents isn't required or highly desired by a raid ... what is the point to ever speccing such AoE talents?
Lets not forget... if some radically progressive movement in raid encounter design transgresses, Mages have been given nothing to address the fact that any Mage dealing a significant amount of AoE damage will unquestionably experience significant mana sustainability issues. Mages cannot sustain AoE for any substantial period of time while maintaining a mana pool capable of supplying valuable single-target DPS like a Warlock can. If a Mage ever does viably execute competitive single-target DPS following AoE, then regressively that AoE is in fact a gimmick and not a critical aspect of the encounter. The result is a paradox; either AoE will become a significant responsibility in WotLK raids, which Mages could not sustain .... or AoE will be a sustainable gimmick that doesn't warrant class design or balance implications.
All in all... if Mages are to become 'AoE kings' then it must become a base trainable class characteristic (re; SoC) and not something that requires a devoted spec which eats up valuable talent points and forces sacrifices of more practical & productive talents.
It'll more than likely remain a single charge and work the same way shatter combos work now. Frostbolt's travel time allows you to get the ice lance in before frostbolt breaks the frost nova/frostbite. With FoF, similarly, frostbolt's travel time will allow you to get an ice lance in before frostbolt consumes the debuff. In both instances, the two spells both get the shatter crit bonus because a spell's damage is calculated upon completion of spell cast, not when it hits the target.
As mentioned upthread, this won't work, because Fingers of Frost is a buff, not a debuff, and is consumed on cast, not on hit. In order for it to work as Karaa described, it has to be timed, not charged. Someone with Beta access should post a thread with a very clear topic such as "Fingers of Frost does not allow Shatter combos" and explain this, because his post implies pretty strongly that it's intended result is different from its actual result. A very short duration (like 3 seconds) without charges would do the trick.
Originally Posted by Zinaida
Netherwind Presence:
Adds 6% haste rather than 6% worth of haste rating.
194 passive haste rating - 2.23 second AB cast.
With an additional 94.2 haste rating expected cast time is 2.11.
With NWP the cast time is 2.10, which shows that NWP is multiplicative with haste rating like IV and heroism.
Thanks for the testing, Zinaida!
Originally Posted by Roywyn
Hot Streak is exactly that though, and it's arguably the only situation where that talent is worth its points.
As was discussed waaaaaay upthread, as a general rule of thumb, any talent that provides a 1% increase in DPS per point is a good one. With Hot Streak, we were all looking at it with the expectation that crit rates at 80 would be similar to those at 70, around 35% for Fire when well-geared. At 35% crit, Hot Streak provides a bit less than 1% crit per point, so it could be considered a pretty weak talent.
However, then Winter's Chill changed. And at 45% crit, Hot Streak provides about 1.35% crit per point. So at this point, I have to consider Hot Streak a pretty good talent. Is the single-target benefit dependent upon raid configuration? Yes, sure. But when you combine how well it performs when you have a Winter's Chill Mage with its benefit to AOE, Hot Streak sure looks like a good expenditure of 3 talent points to me.
Fire's woes can probably be cured by fixing Burnout and replacing Firestarter with a single-target DPS talent.
Last edited by Lhivera : 08/07/08 at 11:55 AM.
Reason: Copied the wrong number off my hot streak chart
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.
'Makes the next spell cast withiin 10 seconds instant' - POM, AM/AM/Pyro. A nice little break from whatever rotation you're otherwise doing for a little damage increase, followed by landing a pyro on the guy to really milk it.
'Reduces the cast or channeled time of your next spell by 95%' - I like this one for AM/blizzard synergy. 1second blizzard with +30% crit behind it could be scary (assuming they fix potency to work with channeled spells). It also kills the +30% crit AB/AM rotation idea. You could have instant spells consume the buff and just get the GCD benefit from it.
Netherwind Presence:
Adds 6% haste rather than 6% worth of haste rating.
194 passive haste rating - 2.23 second AB cast.
With an additional 94.2 haste rating expected cast time is 2.11.
With NWP the cast time is 2.10, which shows that NWP is multiplicative with haste rating like IV and heroism.
This is good news, and is much more clear-cut with regards to theorycrafting. I assume it can be treated like a damage modifier in that case and just considered a multiplicative 6% DPS increase.
I'm in the process of programming Hot Streak into my personal spreadsheet but I have a quick question regarding mechanics which may have been answered at some point before; I'm under the impression that Hot Streak automatic crit procs can be used for both fireball+fireblast like the combustion crit bonus, is this confirmed?... I'm also under the impression that the guaranteed crit(s) is counted towards the next requisite of 3 crits for the next proc, is this also confirmed? If both are true, is fireball+fblast crits supplying 2 crits towards the next set of 3, or just 1?
This is good news, and is much more clear-cut with regards to theorycrafting. I assume it can be treated like a damage modifier in that case and just considered a multiplicative 6% DPS increase.
I'm in the process of programming Hot Streak into my personal spreadsheet but I have a quick question regarding mechanics which may have been answered at some point before; I'm under the impression that Hot Streak automatic crit procs can be used for both fireball+fireblast like the combustion crit bonus, is this confirmed?... I'm also under the impression that the guaranteed crit(s) is counted towards the next requisite of 3 crits for the next proc, is this also confirmed? If both are true, is fireball+fblast crits supplying 2 crits towards the next set of 3, or just 1?
From what I read earlier up thread, the 100% guaranteed crit does count towards the next Hot Streak. I would assume that fireball + fblast would count for two, but I would also not be surprised if they put an internal cooldown on it (similar to TLC), or latency causing issues.
And if distance matters that much, you would have to close in to 26 yards to be casting fireblast, which might be an issue in some fights.
There are some significant Fire changes coming in an upcoming build, I'll see if I can get the web team to update the calculator.
Fire is intended to do compelling single target damage, as it's traditionally been. When first designing the classes, we always intended the Mage to be the king of AOE and for AOE to be an important part in the game. Living Bomb, and other talents in the tree are intended to bring the Mage back in line with our original vision. Part of what pegged the Mage down a notch was Seed of Corruption, which ended up being better than we anticipated.
That said, again, we do want Fire to be a strong single target DPS spec along with Frost and Arcane. Frost is not intended to be the Mages "PvP spec" and Fire isn't intended to be the "PvE spec," they only turned out that way because of unintended factors. We're trying to make Frost more viable in raiding by allowing you to effectively freeze the target without having to nova it, allowing you to throw in some "shatter combos" in your rotation. Arcane, Frost, and Fire (and a mix thereof) should all more or less be viable in as many aspects of the game as possible. Where they should be different is in playstyle and gameplay differences (stacking Scorch vs. freezing and shatter etc.).
AOE will be more prevalent in encounters in the game, yes. However, Fire mages are assuming they're being converted into a pure AOE spec, which is not the case. We want the strong AOE to just be a feature of the Fire Mage. The Fire Mage doesn't need a new single target DPS nuke or ability as a 51-point talent in order to continue to be a good single target DPS class.
It mostly falls in space of the way I saw things. it's clear that they have buffed Fire AoE significantly and they want it to be superior than other trees. I also did feel that a buff to the Fire tree was incoming. It's obvious that they want all 3 trees to be strong in PvE (and PvP?).
They have also mentioned 1-2 times that they are working around a way for classes to have 2 specs that they can switch easily around. Maybe we'll have 1 AoE spec and 1 single target spec in the future
From what I read earlier up thread, the 100% guaranteed crit does count towards the next Hot Streak. I would assume that fireball + fblast would count for two, but I would also not be surprised if they put an internal cooldown on it (similar to TLC), or latency causing issues.
And if distance matters that much, you would have to close in to 26 yards to be casting fireblast, which might be an issue in some fights.
Tested and confirmed - If you get hot streak you can fireball + fireblast, they will both crit and both count towards your next streak.
TLC works with blizzard.
It seems to be very difficult to get flamestrike to proc hot streak without using combustion, even when the combat log shows 3 crits in a row. I *think* you need to crit every mob with your flamestrike in order for it to proc.
Perhaps the same is true of blizzard, but this would be extremely difficult to test. I did however try using blizzard on single mobs, and 3 consecutive crits did not proc hot streak. Though having now spent about 20 minutes spamming blizzard on the dr.boom adds i'm almost certain that it cannot proc.
Edit: Some further testing and inspection of the combat log shows me gaining hot streak, even though it doesn't appear on me as a buff. It seems that a single flamestrike can both proc and consume hot streak. However in order to proc it, the crits must appear consecutively in the combat log, to just crit 3+ mobs with one cast is not enough.
I assumed that if they were going to fix it that way they would have done already, since the bug already exists on live with clearcasting.
It does -- but as Manly pointed out upthread, they are finally taking action on that bug with Clearcasting. They're not doing so correctly -- you get the crit bonus on the wrong cast, but at least you only get it on one cast now. Give them time and I expect they'll work it out.
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.
As mentioned upthread, this won't work, because Fingers of Frost is a buff, not a debuff, and is consumed on cast, not on hit. In order for it to work as Karaa described, it has to be timed, not charged. Someone with Beta access should post a thread with a very clear topic such as "Fingers of Frost does not allow Shatter combos" and explain this, because his post implies pretty strongly that it's intended result is different from its actual result. A very short duration (like 3 seconds) without charges would do the trick.
Yeah, this was my point, above. (And thanks to Merena for posting on the beta forums about this.)
I'm still a little unsure about it being a buff and not a debuff. This means you could proc FoF on one target, turn to a different target, and shatter crit them if you are fast enough. Even in its current form you could proc FoF, cast Blizzard as your next spell, and get 8 seconds of shatter criting blizzard strikes. (At least I assume that is how it would work. If you start Blizzard with 1 second left on heroism, it determines the channel time at cast time and you get a fully shortened Blizzard.)
A debuff makes much more logical sense to me and sure make it a self-only debuff to prevent crazy scaling/stacking of mages.
Yeah, this was my point, above. (And thanks to Merena for posting on the beta forums about this.)
I'm still a little unsure about it being a buff and not a debuff. This means you could proc FoF on one target, turn to a different target, and shatter crit them if you are fast enough.
Based on the tooltip wording, I'm assuming it's intended to be specific to the target that produced the proc. This should be possible; after all, combo points are tracked by target. I don't know if it really works this way, though.
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.
Tested and confirmed - If you get hot streak you can fireball + fireblast, they will both crit and both count towards your next streak.
TLC works with blizzard.
It seems to be very difficult to get flamestrike to proc hot streak without using combustion, even when the combat log shows 3 crits in a row. I *think* you need to crit every mob with your flamestrike in order for it to proc.
Perhaps the same is true of blizzard, but this would be extremely difficult to test. I did however try using blizzard on single mobs, and 3 consecutive crits did not proc hot streak.
As far as I know (I never had a TLC to check this myself), TLC used to proc for individual crits within an AoE, resolving them sequentially and sending out the bolt to every 3rd mob that got crit (possibly proccing multiple times within one spell). After the 2.5 sec internal CD was added, this mechanism didn't change, it just prevented TLC from proccing more than once per AoE spell.
If this same mechanism were applied to hot streak, it would mean that whenever an AoE has 3 consecutive crits within it's sequential resolve, the next hit within that sequence would be a guaranteed crit. That way, the benefit from hot streak is resolved within the aoe cast. It would mean the effect of hot streak on AoE would be similar to its effect on single target dps. Also, an AoE would only leave hot streak up after a cast when its last 3 hits all crit.
I'm not claiming this is how it works. I'm just suggesting it as an explanation for your observed result.
EDIT: your edit is further evidence to my explanation.
Yeah, this was my point, above. (And thanks to Merena for posting on the beta forums about this.)
I'm still a little unsure about it being a buff and not a debuff. This means you could proc FoF on one target, turn to a different target, and shatter crit them if you are fast enough. Even in its current form you could proc FoF, cast Blizzard as your next spell, and get 8 seconds of shatter criting blizzard strikes. (At least I assume that is how it would work. If you start Blizzard with 1 second left on heroism, it determines the channel time at cast time and you get a fully shortened Blizzard.)
A debuff makes much more logical sense to me and sure make it a self-only debuff to prevent crazy scaling/stacking of mages.
I really don't like the idea of more debuffs being put up on the target, to be honest. Top guilds are running occasionally into the debuff limit already, and with the advent of the Death Knight... well, you get the point. I am all for FoF becoming a timed self-buff, though.
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.
I heard rumours that the devs intent to nerf the scaling of Arcane Barrage to 43%. Anyone else heard that?
Well, there is a PvP video on the WoW Mage forums showing off ABar (despite the clips showing off a bugged talent, every 3 minutes for AP + trinket, and vs. players leveling in PvE gear with PvE specs) ... so a nerf wouldn't surprise me, you know how those things go...
Originally Posted by Zinaida
Tested and confirmed - If you get hot streak you can fireball + fireblast, they will both crit and both count towards your next streak.
This is really interesting news, making the talent seem a lot better than it did at first glance. The main complaint still remains how rare it would be to get the first Hot Steak proc (0.1^(1/3) = 46.4% crit rate required for a 10% chance to have 3 spells in a row crit)
Edit: Some further testing and inspection of the combat log shows me gaining hot streak, even though it doesn't appear on me as a buff. It seems that a single flamestrike can both proc and consume hot streak. However in order to proc it, the crits must appear consecutively in the combat log, to just crit 3+ mobs with one cast is not enough.
This news really ruins what I thought was the only legitimizing aspect of the talent; AoE. Hot Streak seemed like an AoE talent in disguise... but if this is how it behaves for AoE then it loses almost all of that AoE viability. It would be monumentally rare to have a fire AoE spell only crit in a multiple of three concluding with the last 3 logged damage critting... and then that only gives one AoE spell a 100% crit chance.
***Although theoretically, if you were able to proc Hot Streak then AoE a group of mobs totalling a multiple of 3, wouldn't Hot Streak proc perpetually from every spell? (until perhaps a resist)
As far as I know (I never had a TLC to check this myself), TLC used to proc for individual crits within an AoE, resolving them sequentially and sending out the bolt to every 3rd mob that got crit (possibly proccing multiple times within one spell). After the 2.5 sec internal CD was added, this mechanism didn't change, it just prevented TLC from proccing more than once per AoE spell.
If this same mechanism were applied to hot streak, it would mean that whenever an AoE has 3 consecutive crits within it's sequential resolve, the next hit within that sequence would be a guaranteed crit. That way, the benefit from hot streak is resolved within the aoe cast. It would mean the effect of hot streak on AoE would be similar to its effect on single target dps. Also, an AoE would only leave hot streak up after a cast when its last 3 hits all crit.
I'm not claiming this is how it works. I'm just suggesting it as an explanation for your observed result.
EDIT: your edit is further evidence to my explanation.
Yea, that would explain it nicely, and matches up with the screenshots I posted in my edit. Unfortunately this does mean that you can't use it for guaranteed crit DB/BW unless you get very lucky.
Originally Posted by Qbert
***Although theoretically, if you were able to proc Hot Streak then AoE a group of mobs totalling a multiple of 3, wouldn't Hot Streak proc perpetually from every spell? (until perhaps a resist)
I think the behaviour would be that you would only get the 100% crit on one of the three mobs.
edit: Nope, i'm wrong. With the hot streak buff on you your flamestrike will crit all the mobs, so in theory this could work, but it's far too unreliable anyway.
Based on the tooltip wording, I'm assuming it's intended to be specific to the target that produced the proc. This should be possible; after all, combo points are tracked by target. I don't know if it really works this way, though.
Well it is possible but that is a whole new kind of buff. What would it say when you mouse over it? "Fingers of Frost. The boar you last hit with a spell will be considered frozen if you choose to cast another spell at it and only it". Seems odd.
If it works like a clearcasting proc or any of the other new procs, then the target of the spellcast that cause the proc doesn't enter in to the equation. Your comment about combo points is interesting, but that isn't really like a normal buff a rogue gets. It's a special buff that has it's own slot on the target.
Hmmm...now THAT would be cool. Winter's Grasp gives 3 combo points on the target just like a rogue--those are caster only, just like a rogue. As long as the target has any combo points on him, it is considered frozen. Each hit with a spell removes a combo point. Somebody suggest it!
08/07/08, 9:56 AM
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