edit: also, FWIW, I do think the imp WE utility is kind of too good. Problem is, its hard to make a good assessment of it until we see how it goes in raids with everything else. It does look to be headed that way. Also, the more I think about it the more I think WC should be closer to 5%. I think the choice should be whether you want +10% damage vs [whatever frost offers], which is probably far more in line with 5%. Either nerf WE or lower WC.
I somewhat agree there. With the relatively large duraton of the Water Elemental, unless bosses have abilities they specifically use to target&destroy pets, this Water Elemental Innervate is a ~50% stronger Mana Tide Totem, plus it affects the entire raid. On a comparable cooldown.
It was "ok" as health, granted it was too iffy to use, but as manaregen it'd have to work different. Say 1% of mana, every 6/5/4 seconds depending on talent-level.
SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
They should make Winter's Chill affect only Frost, make it 3% crit per debuff, and push it deep into the tree. Swapping it with Chilled to the Bone actually looks like a great idea. You then bump Imp Scorch up to 15%, make it affect only Fire and Frost, and push IT deep into the tree. Finally, you add a 1-point talent in the Arcane tree that makes your personal Arcane spells be affected by both Imp Scorch and Winter's Chill.
+Frost damage/crit doesn't really result in raid synergy with non-Mages because nobody else really uses Frost. DKs use some Frost while tanking, but it's not the majority of their DPS and their DPS is low anyway because they are tanking.
This way, you always have choices. For the first Mage you bring to the raid, you have to choose whether you want Imp WE mana for the whole raid, or do you want +15% damage on your Warlocks, as well as some lesser boost to the damage of your Hunters and Shaman. The second Mage also gives you a choice, albeit a slightly more skewed one. If you went WE with Mage #1, you now get to choose between doubling up on WE mana or giving that damage boost to your Warlocks AND the first Mage. If you went Fire with Mage #1, you choose between giving your raid WE mana, or going for very high personal DPS with Arcane spec. (since you now have +15% damage to your Arcane spells)
The third Mage in the raid again gets to make a choice, at least some of the time. If the raid has Frost/Fire, they can choose between EXTREMELY high personal DPS with Arcane (getting +15% damage and +15% crit) or doubling up on the improved water elemental.
This also eliminates some of the problems with certain specs not logging on, since many different specs combos have synergy. Fire/Fire and Arcane/Arcane would suck, but every other combo has good synergy.
Frost didn't have to lose anything as they needed to catch up in damage.
The problem I feel here is the invention of one, damaging hybrid specs by altering low talent placement is uncalled for.
Fire has the utility of better aoe that I don't see mentioned as well as the only DoT a mage has.
I've been told specing deep fire gives the highest frostfire damage and this spec doesnt include WC.
So a mage wants to be a debuffer let him, a mage is meant to be the highest damage caster DPS and this has been said recently.
Having more debuffing ability reduces your damage comparitively to a pure deep spec, the damage of the mage should bring it to the raid if the vision of what the mage is supposed to be comes to fruition.
With the idea of making all 3 specs basically obligated a raid spot, creates some illusion that this is how it's going to be, fact is you simply don't have enough spots for 1 of each deep spec from each class in any raid of 25 let alone a 10 man which may not have room for each deep spec to be the singular debuffer, 5 deep specs are found wanting not even taking into account hybrids.
The fact that a mage is very good to have even just two of is definitely an improvement but all 3 are actually viable and now people are simply trying to invent more problems.
Fire has aoe high damage crit and ignite scorch debuff, frost has the pet WC and mana, arcane has the mobility, burst and threat management higher res and focus magic.
You dont have to move WC deeper into frost to avoid 1 mage picking it all. Moving Imp. WE should help too, as 1. frost mage wouldnt skip that talent.
And then move Imp Scorch down a bit too of course.
Like:
Imp Scorch requiring point 26-28 in fire.
Imp WE requiring point 46-48 in frost.
Focus Magic is a bit more difficult to place, as I both want it to be potentially reachable (so 2 mages could reach all 3 buffs, taking a significant self-DPS hit), but not as easy to get as it is now.
Now someone pointed out it would just recreate the problem for lvl 90... but really who cares. This is the case already for lots of talents, and talents are going to be redone totally in every single expansion Blizz will release, so trying to avoid future problems is fruitless.
Its easy enough to prevent frost mages reaching it easily, but quite a bit more difficult to stop fire from getting it (or from arcane to get imp scorch - at least you wouldnt be able to get Spell Power and Imp Scorch).
Originally Posted by Zephriel
Your first mage must take Improved Scorch. Your third mage must take WC. This implies a reduction in spec flexibility which Blizzard could prevent by buffing/tweaking talents within each tree to achieve its target DPS without relying on debuffs from the other schools. For example, instead of balancing fire and frost against Focus Magic, why not simply buff Empowered Fireball and Frostbolt coefficients? Instead of forcing arcane and frost into dependence on Improved Scorch, why not grant them (particularly arcane) those +10% damage (or similar) modifiers through talents for their own schools?
Not only would this approach free mages to stick with the schools of their choice in WotLK raiding, it would be inherently easier to balance.
It is surely easier to balance, but how would requiring specific mage specs be any different than how it is for most other classes? If you add a shaman to your raid,, you typically would want him to be of a certain spec, not just a random shaman who happens to bring the buffs he need for himself.
Not like a min-maxing raid will really leave any actual choice to your mage spec-wise anyway, he will obviously have to pick the tree with most dmg as it is now. Rather than picking the tree that is most raid dmg determined by how the other mages are specced.
This isnt just cross-spec buffs either, its cross-class. The frosts mage doesnt buff the fire mage only, hopefully he buffs the warlock too etc (maybe not enough as it is, hard to tell yet, since it depends on other classes optimal specs), obviously the raid buff had to be significant enough for even wanting to bring 2 mages to the raid for this to work.
It it was just mages buffing each other you are right, then it only locks mages into specs unnecessarily, but if they buff other classes I still think it adds to the overall incentive of taking mags to the raid (a mage locked to a certain spec for sure, but thats how it is already, you wouldnt take a frost mage right now if you care enough for min-maxing for all this to matter in the first place).
What a lot of people seem to want is having our dps as the sole reason for bringing mages to a raid. Being the supposed glass-cannon class that is pretty understandable and would surely be nice, I just dont see it happen given the strategy Blizz has pushed for quite a while. We wont have a significant enough DPS lead over those classes who bring more raid buffs, if mages raid buffs.
You would bring 1 mage for the heck of it (adding some utility like int buff, dps/aoe, decurse etc) and wonder why one would ever want to bring another mage, except in those cases where the boss would force you to bring more (again aoe, curses or maybe gimmick spellsteal/invis stuff *sigh*).
Mages are used to respeccing every other patch whenever Blizz adds some changes, a sudden T5 bonus appear etc. that tips our DPS spec of the month to another tree (and adds some theorycraft potential, maybe thats why people here seems to like it? ). Whereas hybrids usually arent this versatile, as Blizz could rebalance priest talents significantly, and you would still want to bring a shadow priest for the raid buffing anyway, and if (that might be a big if I guess, given current raid stacking issues) Blizz does their job properly, bring a holy priest regardless of any changes.
Fire has the utility of better aoe that I don't see mentioned as well as the only DoT a mage has.
'AoE spec' is a gimmick spec. It will never be viable to have an aoe spec on its own as I see it (once again, unles Blizz make gimmick fights where you MUST have fire mage aoe, but I doubt thats what people want as the reason to bring us). Fire has to carry its own weight DPS-wise (through personal dps or raid dps).
So a mage wants to be a debuffer let him, a mage is meant to be the highest damage caster DPS and this has been said recently
Yes, this was also said in early TBC...
This whole argument is based on whether pure DPS classes are dead or not (which I sadly think they are, and have been for quite a while). Hybrids are where it is at, so to speak, and the pure DPS classes need to adjust to this for balance. This doesnt mean Mages shouldnt be highest caster dps still, obviosuly some class will be the highest... it will just be a matter of having the balance higher dps + slightly worse raid buffing. Even higher DPS + no raid buffing = no go (thats my argument anyway).
Beside, the mage raid spec utility doesnt necessarily has to be a direct buff like scorch or WC... it surely could be something else (the Imp WE is already a very different type of raid buff). I just hope they add some reason to bring a frost mage, an arcane mage, a fire mage (and then force some hard choices when you cant bring all of course), regardless of their respective dmg.
Fire has aoe high damage crit and ignite scorch debuff, frost has the pet WC and mana, arcane has the mobility, burst and threat management higher res and focus magic.
Thats however not how it is now. Every goddamn mage potentially have imp scorch (and focus magic) not just fire mages. High dmg crit isnt exactly useful in itself, neither is higher res or even lower threat in most circumstances (lower threat will pretty much either be mandatory for everyone or a gimmick, it can never really be somewhat helpful as I see it, as you have to be able to use your extra threat potential for something (e.g. more DPS) for it to be useful.
You dont win anything by being at 70% tank threat instead of being at 99% (or 129%, you get the point).
One very simple way to solve all the problems of mages being forced to invest heavilily in their off trees is to give firevunerability, WC and FM an invisible debuff cathegory that makes them mage curses. They all have diferent effects but you need three mages to apply all three. Thus no need to spec any debuff exept the main one for your tree. The only thing blizz would haveto worry abut is not macking FM suck so bad that arcane mages still haveto spec 18 points into fire to keep the better scorch debuff up. Further this would cause less hassle with cast rotations. No weaving in spells that are crap for your DPS to buff raid damage. Just do your stuff, deal heavy damage and you will be buffing the raid while doing so, at the same time RLs will want to bring more than one mage cause besides good DPS that buffs raid damage further.
Plopp plopp kaboom! This is an intelligent signature.
If you went WE with Mage #1, you now get to choose between doubling up on WE mana or giving that damage boost to your Warlocks AND the first Mage. If you went Fire with Mage #1, you choose between giving your raid WE mana, or going for very high personal DPS with Arcane spec. (since you now have +15% damage to your Arcane spells)
This isn't really a choice. In order to be an asset for the raid, Arcane with 15% crit would have to be equal to Fire_DPS_w_Both + .15 * Frost_DPS to be worth it over fire. Since this isn't particularly likely (and that's not even counting the non-mages), you couldn't really spec arcane as the second mage.
For the sake of argument, let's say that Arcane does enough damage that this IS worth it and that Frost and Fire do roughly even dps when buffed with both. This would mean that Arcane with only the crit bonus does 15% more dps than fully buffed fire or frost. Now, let's make the Arc mage the third mage and the first two Fire+Frost. The Arc mage is now doing 32% more damage than the frost and fire mage.
So, if we're assuming that's fair and balanced, let's compare to our friends the fire locks. If we assume the locks are buffed with both Scorch and WC, how much damage should they do? As much as the Arc Mage? If so, then congrats, you've made Fire AND Frost martyr specs who deliver spriest level dps. As much as the Fire/Frost Mage? Do you think locks will be happy with Arc doing 30% more damage? You'd only take one lock for CoE and that if you didn't take an Unholy DK. Moreover, how much damage should the rogues be doing in comparison?
Edit: Bah, did this comparison as Frost + Arcane instead of Fire + Arcane. The principle is the same, but the numbers are going to be lower since Arc only has 175% crits.
Edit2:
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
Because the chimera ability does two types of damage at once (like the new Mage spell), it seems to have some crazy scaling effect [ed: critting for 6k]. This is the first pet ability with two types of damage, so it's likely that is the problem.
Is the Arcane Blast rotation you're talking about
a) sustainable
b) where are you going to get 33% haste except from really excellent gear? You can't keep Icy Veins up all the time.
6% tallents
10% WoA totem
3% ret aura
1% ToW (glyph)
13% more from gear, doesn't seem like a daunting task.
Whether or not the cycle is sustainable is yet to be seen, but the numbers so far look very close. 33% is a sweet spot for arcane regardless, its the point at which you can put instant spells in between arcane blasts without killing the debuff. Throwing in Barrages is a solid DPM upgrade for roughly the same damage, or you can get the focus magic refresh in if the spell gets changed to not b a DPS downgrade for the raid. It also allows you to blink out of the fire to keep chain nuking without losing the debuff.
The chance of that Frostbolt having FoF up is actually better than 10%, because it could also have procced on the first FoF Frostbolt:
0.00 - You finish casting Frostbolt 0, which will hit and proc FoF
0.00 - You start casting Frostbolt 1.
2.50 - You finish casting Frostbolt 1 that gets FoF <--- This spell can proc FoF as well as consume it
2.50 - You cast Deep Freeze 1 (or Ice Lance 1) that gets FoF <--- This spell can also proc FoF as well as consume it
4.00 - GCD is over, you start casting Frostbolt 2.
5.00 - You're still casting Frostbolt 2, 40% done casting. <--- FoF is up if either of the previous two spells procced it (19%)
DF's proc chance actually comes before Frostbolt 1's proc chance, assuming that the proc happens on spell hit (even if it happens on cast, really, you'll already have hit the button), so you can't really change up this cast based on those extra procs if they happen.
However, yes, you're right, even with this higher chance that FoF is active, 3K spell power and 30% crit before WC/Emp Frostbolt is just about the breakeven point.
In that model, I want use Deep Freeze whenever I can. I.e. whenever the second last cast procced FoF.
That means if Frostbolt 1 procs FoF again, I would want to cast a Deep Freeze 2 instead of Frostbolt 2.
Yeah, that doesn't work due to cooldowns, I know, but that's how my simplified Excel sheet works.
I have a column that compares "1x 100% FoF FrB" with "1x 100% DF + 0.39x 10% FoF FrB", 0.39x because I put 50ms lag into everything when I made the sheet.
I'm actually quite confused now. 10% FoF FrB isn't corrent, it would be 19% FoF as you said.
However the computations below would assume that after the FoF DF, you get in 90% of the cases (FrB1 didn't proc FoF) "0.39x 10% FoF FrB" and in 10% of the cases (FrB1 did proc FoF) you'd get "0.66x 100% FoF DF" I think.
Aargh! Headache. Cast whatever you want
For the actual computation of the "total casting", I use a rather simple cast summary.
It consists of 18 Frostbolts, 2 Deep Freezes and 3 Fireballs.
That's 20 frost spells cast. I cast Deep Freeze whenever your second last hit procced FoF, i.e. 10% of the time.
Otherwise I cast Frostbolts, which has FoF whenever the last spell had procced it, i.e. 10% of the time.
The total uptime of FoF is 100% for 2 DF and 10% for 18 FrB, that's 2 + 1.8 = 3.8 spells total of 20, or 19%.
So it also is balanced in that way.
So just that you know how I actually compute stuff there.
Whatever would be correct, DF is pretty good at entry level gear.
~3% total DPS boost at 1.8k spell power.
~0% total DPS change at 3k spell power.
~1% total DPS loss at 5k spell power.
And yeah, Improved Water Elemental is pretty nuts. Assuming ~20k mana pools:
* 3/3 Imp. WE is ~300mp5 raidwide with 50% uptime.
* Glyphed Mana Tide is ~150mp5 partywide if used twice in 6 minutes.
The other option is to reduce the effectiveness of the debuffs so that they aren't such huge rDPS increases. I don't understand why Blizzard gave such huge utility to talent trees. Utility should be base class abilities like CoE, primary spec buffs like shadow weaving and old Imp Scorch and WC, small benefits to the raid from having a certain spec in the raid like mangle/trauma and talented ret aura, or stuff that is non-stacking with other things and just provide a variety of ways to get something like AP reduction effects and attack speed reduction effects.
Things like the new Imp Scorch and WC really aren't good at all. They are such a huge benefit, that even with only 3 or 4 people benefiting from them, they become 500-1000 rDPS increases, making them something that you are required to get. They aren't class defining or spec defining, but they will end up defining our specs.
Speaking of non-stacking debuffs, do we know if Imp Scorch stacks with CoE, Misery, or Ebon Plague? It would solve our dilemma if they don't stack.
In what way would it be a good solution for mages of scorch debuff and CoE dont stack? Since CoE affects more schools and simply out does scorch, mages would have payed a bit of their total possible DPS in the balancing of our class for a buff that isnt used. Also if we imagine that scorch and CoE had the exact same impact on raid DPS you would jsut be stuck in a situation where mage DPS is weighted agains warlock DPS.
If however the mage debuffs stacked with other classes debuffs but you needed one mage for every mage debuff you want then people wouldnt haveto go out of their way to spec then, wouldnt haveto use crappy spell rotations to keep them up and bringing more than one bitch speced mage would be meaningfull. Each mage would be speced for optimal DPS and each mage flavour would bring a good debuff. Also even if it might not completely bypass the fact that WE manaregen is very powerfull atm it would still count for something that a firemage keeping scroch up would deal better damage than one full frostie and one bitch speced frostie keeping scorch and WC up.
Plopp plopp kaboom! This is an intelligent signature.
Also even if it might not completely bypass the fact that WE manaregen is very powerfull atm it would still count for something that a firemage keeping scroch up would deal better damage than one full frostie and one bitch speced frostie keeping scorch and WC up.
Fairly certain this isn't the case. Frost is providing more synery/utility AND more personal dps. Fire would have to be quite a ways above frost's personal dps for it to be considered for the first mage in the raid. As many have stated i really wish they would just change winter's chill back to only frost and imp scorch to only fire and balance dps accordingly. We are not a utility/debuffing class. If we get any utility it should be in the form of small perks like the hunter's ferocious inspiration and things like that, not things that you build a raid around.
Originally Posted by Vontre
Protip: I don't actually raid on my mage, it's more fun to make spreadsheets.
Not really sure you would build a raid around these buffs, after all, its 'only' buffing fire, frost and arcane, only useful if locks go fire, and if you got a balance druid around too. You would surely want to have them yeah, but the point is.. you would like to have all classes and specs as they all bring something to the table.
We dont become a debuffer class as such, since we still primarily bring DPS (there arent really any true buff class in the game), we just dont bring much more dps than those other classes/Specs which bring more utility/buffs.
People are looking at this in a vacuum.
Yes, those talents might bring a nice amount of raid DPS, and make them required in any mage spec (and so what? Improved fireball is a must in any fire spec right now, is that ruining fire? Why will some new required talent suddenly ruin a tree?). There will still be a 'best' fire spec, hopefully we might just get away from having 1 best mage spec, and instead having 1 best spec for each tree, each adding something to a raid.
However, its not like adding a mage will magically give you XXXX more raid dps because of said buff, since you are choosing not to bring some other class which would also have brought a buff with them which added YYYY raid dps (or some other comparable utility).
If we imagine an example where you only bring 1 mage to the raid, then surely that mage would want to bring the best buff we can offer, thus forcing him to spec for that buff, but I really fail to see how that is any different than how we currently spec for the best personal DPS tree mages have to offer. The amount of choice is the same, you pick the best whatever it is.
Obviously WE mana regen is very strong right now, but to be fair, do we expect that to go live anyway? It will likely be nerfed down to something useful (hopefully) but not totally blowing up raid setups, like Spriests had a tendency to do with TBC.
Right now it still seems like there is or will be one best dps spec but no one will ever be able to actually spec it unless you are stacking mages because the first mage needs to be frost and a second mage would also greatly benefit the raid by being frost and getting a second imp WE. It's kinda like how priests are right now. A smite spam spec is definitely more personal dps than shadow but you don't see any smite priests because VT->>> personal dps from smite spec.
Originally Posted by Vontre
Protip: I don't actually raid on my mage, it's more fun to make spreadsheets.
The only reason you want the second mage to be frost is because WE is too strong right now, thats not going to stay imo.
They could fix that in so many ways. Like just not making 2 WE mana regens stack?
This isn't really a choice. In order to be an asset for the raid, Arcane with 15% crit would have to be equal to Fire_DPS_w_Both + .15 * Frost_DPS to be worth it over fire. Since this isn't particularly likely (and that's not even counting the non-mages), you couldn't really spec arcane as the second mage.
I think you misunderstood me. Winter's Chill would affect Frost only, and 15% crit. Scorch would be Fire + Frost, and 15% damage. Arcane would get a talent that lets both apply to Arcane spells. The reason I had to do it in such a convoluted fashion, instead of just making WC Frost and Arcane and leaving Scorch as Fire/Frost/Arcane is because Moonkin use Arcane, and double 15% Arcane buffing them would sideline locks to one spot for CoE only and make many of the Moonkin talents useless, like Eclipse.
Both of these decisions are between more damage and more mana. If you start with Frost, Frost + Frost is lots of WE mana for the raid, Frost + Fire is lots of extra damage for the raid. If you start with Fire, Fire + Frost is extra mana for the raid, Fire + Arcane results in one very high DPS character. Fire + Arcane is unlikely because very high DPS on one DPS class probably doesn't beat out tons of mana for the whole raid, but there could be fights where it's relevant.
I realize that technically Frost + Arcane is a possible choice, but I didn't mention it because it's obvious that +15% crit to Arcane is probably bad compared to the alternatives.
For the sake of argument, let's say that Arcane does enough damage that this IS worth it and that Frost and Fire do roughly even dps when buffed with both. This would mean that Arcane with only the crit bonus does 15% more dps than fully buffed fire or frost. Now, let's make the Arc mage the third mage and the first two Fire+Frost. The Arc mage is now doing 32% more damage than the frost and fire mage.
From my reading of the talents, now that they've buffed Arcane Barrage back to 86% coefficient, Arcane already does more DPS than Fire or Frost alone, but provides no synergy besides Focus Mind, which isn't great. With a 51/9/11 spec, if you alternate AB with Frostfire Bolt, using AM only on missile barrage procs, you are casting spells with massive damage potentials compared to their cast times. Arcane Barrage and Arcane Missiles have double the normal spellpower coefficients for spells of their cast times, with this rotation. Frostfire Bolt gets you 330% crits, and it gets boosted up by all the deep arcane talents. IMHO FFB alone will be close to the damage of deep fire Fireball, and it's Arcane's weakest spell.
Deep Arcane FFB gets:
86% coefficient
+9% damage (Prey on the Weak, Instability)
+6% crit (Instability, average of Clearcasting + Potency)
+6% haste
Some non-trivial amount of extra damage from Arcane Power, Mind Mastery
330% damage crits
Deep Fire Fireball gets:
115% coefficient
+13% damage
+9% crit
Non-trivial amount of extra damage from Hot Streak, Combustion
245% damage crits (often less, as you'll lose the second Ignite tick with two consecutive crits)
Fireball probably has a slight edge due to its higher coefficient, but it's not much. Arcane Barrage and AM's double coefficients for their cast times will more than make up for it.
Anyway, to summarize, Arcane already does more DPS than Fire alone or Frost alone, and when you give them access to both synergies they'll be far, FAR ahead of Frost and Fire mages. But that's perfectly OK, because Arcane has no amazing synergies. (so the DPS should be higher)
So, if we're assuming that's fair and balanced, let's compare to our friends the fire locks. If we assume the locks are buffed with both Scorch and WC, how much damage should they do? As much as the Arc Mage? If so, then congrats, you've made Fire AND Frost martyr specs who deliver spriest level dps.
More than the Fire/Frost Mages, but less than the Arc Mage, when both Imp Scorch and frost-only-WC are up. Warlock DPS with ONLY their curse active should be in line with Fire Mages with ONLY Scorch active. If you have Fire Mage, Frost Mage, and Warlock in a raid, the Warlock should be ahead of both of them. The Frost Mage is doing mana regen, and the Fire Mage is buffing the lock's DPS more than his own DPS is getting buffed by the lock. The Warlock's DPS should still be much lower than Arcane though, because Arcane is only providing the mediocre Focus Mind as a synergy, and is getting their DPS buffed by all three of these classes.
1) Living Bomb, if it can indeed be used properly as Fire DoT spell, is an extremely good addition for single target DPS.
We're talking about a ~10% increase in single target DPS.
2) Frostfire Bolt is quite competitive wit Fireball in a Deep Fire specs with 14 points in frost as off-tree.
At the sampled high gear level, it depends on the exact cycles you can use to determine which spec is slightly ahead.
We're talking about ~1% differences here.
Frostfire Bolt pulls further ahead if you get more crit from whatever sources.
3) For personal DPS, speccing from "Blast-with-Imp.Scorch" (50/21/0) without WC up to "WC as FFB hybrid" (0/30/41) is a 1605 DPS loss.
That means you need at least more casters that want WC to just make up for the DPS loss.
That means if you only have 1 mage in a 25-man raid, it might not always be beneficial to have them spec frost.
If you have more than one, it'll likely end up as one frost mage and the rest as Blast spammers (50/3/18).
With most of the errors removed, it looks like this now:
TL;DR Spec summary
5347 - Frostbolt with instant Fireballs in 0/18/53 and 53% pet uptime; 3/3 IWE for raidwide mana
5574 - Frostfire Bolt spam as 0/30/41 with 45% pet uptime; no mana from the WE
5803 - Without Winter's Chill: Spam Fireball*5/LivingBomb, use Fireball+FireBlast on Hot Streak; including FB DoT; assuming no Ignite bugs
5821 - Best Barrage Cycle: (ABar-FrB)*7-ABar-MBAM (19 DPM) with frost off-tree; is haste capped
6338 - Spam FrostfireBolt*4/FireBlast*2/LivingBomb, even through on Hot Streak; including FFB DOT; assuming no Ignite bugs
6385 - Spam Fireball*5/LivingBomb, use Fireball+FireBlast on Hot Streak; including FB DoT; assuming no Ignite bugs
6922- Arcane Barrage (16 DPM) as filler spell
7881 - Spammed Arcane Blast as 50/3/18 (18 DPM)
*7955 - Frostfire Bolt that double-dips from CoE/Scorch/WC (as 0/51/20, casting FFB*5/LB, FFB+FiBl on HS)
First of all, WE is not up all the time. Second, it's quite possible that mana restorative abilities will NOT stack. It's possible that Imp Scorch does not stack with CoE/Ebon Plague. We can obviously debate how things should/shouldn't stack, but what's the goal we're looking for really.
The way I see it, you have some specs that bring a lot of utility, and a few specs that bring a lot of damage with, well, a lot less utility.
More Reasonable Arcane: 53/18/0
Elementalist WC - 0/43/28 or 0/30/41, maybe 0/27/44 (Doubtful)
High Utility:
Deep Frost - 0/18/53
Deep Frost - 20/0/51 <tow + focus magic omgs
Bitch Specs that Don't Make Sense:
11/50/10 11/51/9
11/18/x
If Arcane Blast spam isn't feasible and Imp WE is as good as we think, both your first two mages in a raid should probably be deep frost, one tow, one imp scorch. If you were to bring a third, he'd be whatever the highest DPS spec would be, either Arcane or Elementalist. (Looking like retarded AB spam particularly with two Imp WE mages)
If WC was tier 4, both your Arcane or Elementalist mage could pick it up and you could potentially see either being your second mage in a raid. A lot of people want to see this it seems.
If you drag focus magic deeper into Arcane and leave WC as it is, I'm just not seeing the viability of any spec with more than 18 in fire.
I'm very confused by how it seems that 0/51/20 is emerging as the best Ffb spec -- if this happens, Fireball is a useless spell despite it being Empowered and us having a retarded number of points in fire. I'm probably okay with this being true, but it leave us with dead weight talents. The only way to bring back a deep fire spec is probably to have Burnout be Fireball/scorch/fireblast only, but no matter what you do, it seems like it is either/or as far as Elementalist and Deep Fire. (This is extremely true if you remove double dipping from stuff like WC)
At the end of the day, there's going to be the "best" spec mage for 1 mage raids, the best two mage setup, and the best 3mage setup, and so forth. Because all of our trees are "damage" trees, it doesn't seem likely that you can keep not only the deep tree specs but all the cross over hybrid specs viable. So it's pick and choose.
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*7955 - Frostfire Bolt that double-dips from CoE/Scorch/WC (as 0/51/20, casting FFB*5/LB, FFB+FiBl on HS)
Just to clarify on the double dipping thing, do you mean that it gains double benefit from both the scorch and WC, ie, 10% frost damage, 10% fire damage etc, or do you mean that it benefits from both at the same time? (Since there was all that talk of them not working at the same time easrlier, and I am easily confused)
In what way would it be a good solution for mages of scorch debuff and CoE dont stack? Since CoE affects more schools and simply out does scorch, mages would have payed a bit of their total possible DPS in the balancing of our class for a buff that isnt used. Also if we imagine that scorch and CoE had the exact same impact on raid DPS you would jsut be stuck in a situation where mage DPS is weighted agains warlock DPS.
I would be enormously surprised if two debuffs that did not affect an identical list of schools failed to stack.
Originally Posted by Shadout
Yes, those talents might bring a nice amount of raid DPS, and make them required in any mage spec (and so what? Improved fireball is a must in any fire spec right now, is that ruining fire? Why will some new required talent suddenly ruin a tree?).
The problem isn't having required talents for your own spec in your own tree, the problem is having required talents for your own spec three tiers in another tree, because that severely limits your spec options. Having to take Improved Fireball consumes 5 points in a tree you're trying to climb anyway; having to take Improved Scorch as a Frost Mage consumes 18 points, most of which are of no use to you whatsoever, in a tree that you really don't want anything to do with.
Remember why they made Evocation trainable: Blizzard didn't want people being required to spend those 11 points no matter what spec they were trying to build. We can take that precedent and conclude that they're making a mistake by requiring 18 points in Fire no matter what spec you're trying to build. If you move the talent out of reach of any spec that includes some 45-50+ points in a primary tree (and do the same with Winter's Chill), then you eliminate that problem; you effectively mark that talent "for deep specs only," because it would take a special kind of heartless SOB to insist that you surrender your top 3 tiers of talents for the sake of a utility buff that deep in a secondary tree.
The goal here should be to make it so that a raid leader is more or less equally happy to have someone specced deep Frost and bringing only Winter's Chill, someone specced deep Arcane and bringing only Focus Magic (assuming they make something useful out of it), or someone specced deep Fire and bringing only Improved Scorch. As long as we have a situation where the raid leader is going to force one of those three to respec if another of the tree doesn't show up, or where one of them is going to consistently be left behind in favor of another, the tree designs don't work. (I suppose we have to leave out the top few % of min/maxers who will always do this even if the difference in performance is 1%, because perfection isn't achievable.)
A main watchword of this expansion seems to be, "play the spec you want to play." They're putting a lot of work into trying to make this possible. So when some of their own changes are undermining that goal, that indicates mistakes that need to be brought to their attention.
Not really sure you would build a raid around these buffs, after all, its 'only' buffing fire, frost and arcane, only useful if locks go fire
That's not really in question at this point; Destruction Warlocks will be casting Fire spells almost exclusively, the performance gap between Fire and Shadow will be huge. The intent is really for Destruction to be Fire, Affliction to be Shadow, and Demonology/Destro hybrids to be casting a mix (though I'm not sure they've achieved that last goal).
Originally Posted by radikal
First of all, WE is not up all the time. Second, it's quite possible that mana restorative abilities will NOT stack.
If Ronwyn's correct about deep Frost falling 20% behind other specs, then Imp. WE isn't too strong. If Vontre's right about it staying pretty equal (my conclusions tend to lean more in Vontre's direction), then Imp. WE is definitely too strong even if they don't stack. Hell, wait 10 seconds to summon it and then the first two Water Elementals will basically keep the whole raid at full mana for the first two minutes of the fight.
However, this is all 25-man thinking. In a 10-man, a Frost Mage may well be the only mana-restore spec in the raid, and in that case it's not necessarily overpowered at all. This may be a case where they're accepting some significant overlap and redundancy in 25-man configs in order to allow necessary flexibility in 10-man configs.
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Here is a thought about Imp Scorch/Winter's Chill.
I'm a new poster here. One of the trend that I've seen in this thread is that there are some concerns about how placing such important talents will limit the flexibility of the mage class because you will need a utility mage for Imp Scorch and Winter's Chill just to get started. The second mage will be able to benefit from both debuffs and take talents that give him the max dps.
What I'm asking is, is this such a bad design? After all, don't locks have it the same way in TBC? First lock doing CoE, second doing CoR, and the lucky third on CoD. Why can't mages do the same?
If the answer to that is 'because the other mage would need to respec if the first mage failed to attend a raid' then isn't a more sensible solution is to hard-code the effects of Imp Scorch into the spell Scorch itself, without needing talents? This way then there is no compelling reason to take 18 Fire Talents just to obtain a very powerful debuff that increases almost all ranged dps (assuming fire locks and all mages) by 10%. This is not a small contribution.
What I'm seeing here is that Mages are taking the roles of Warlocks in terms of raid debuff. I don't see anything wrong with that: in fact I'm very glad that mages actually gain a raid-wide utility that do not affect their own dps (old Imp Scorch and old Winter's Chill). Anyone who's done 4/6-6/6 Sunwell would know that raids rarely bring more than one mage to raids because of their lack of utility, lack of dps, and lack of survivability. Hunters/Locks do much more dps for Eredar Twins/Muru via single target and Multishot/SoC while mages take a backseat. Hunters with Multishot kill adds faster in KJ, and Warlocks with 2.5sec base Shadow Bolts kill Shield Orbs much faster and more efficiently.
The Mage changes seem to be VERY welcome as it gives the raid a very good reason to bring multiple mages. If Imp Scorch and Winter's Chill are reverted back to affecting only Fire/Frost spells respectively (in response to Manly's suggestions), Mages will again lose that very utility they may provide the raid with.
First lock doing CoE, second doing CoR, and the lucky third on CoD. Why can't mages do the same?
Main difference is that I see is that one mage can apply winter's chill, focus mind, and scorch. You still need at least 2 locks to meet the curse req's for the raid.
I think that ideally class utility abilities should require 2 members of the class to obtain. Not more, not less. Enough to ensure that even if you're not top dps you still get 2 spots.
If for example mage dps is underwhelming and one mage can cover all the utility. That one mage is all you will bring and stack other classes that do more damage or bring more utility.
The problem isn't having required talents for your own spec in your own tree, the problem is having required talents for your own spec three tiers in another tree, because that severely limits your spec options. Having to take Improved Fireball consumes 5 points in a tree you're trying to climb anyway; having to take Improved Scorch as a Frost Mage consumes 18 points, most of which are of no use to you whatsoever, in a tree that you really don't want anything to do with.
Remember why they made Evocation trainable: Blizzard didn't want people being required to spend those 11 points no matter what spec they were trying to build.
Yeah, but you can pick 2 solutions for this.
1) Only let buffs affect their own three = you can skip the other trees buff
2) Place the buff so deep in the other tree that you simply cant reach it = You are forced to skip it
Which is why Ive argued Imp Scorch should be moved down.
It cant be compared with Evocation, since you obviously had to have evocation to use it, while you can get another mage to pick the other trees buff for you here.
It severely gimps mages if you only got 1 in the raid then, but isnt that to some degree how sorch is already. The more mages, the less casttime is spent on keeping scorch debuff up combined.
About Blizzards goal of making all specs feasible to use, I highly doubt that will be a success for end game raiding (25 man at least). If they succeed in making all specs feasible for 5 mans and 10 mans that will be quite an achievement though, and affect a pretty big chunk of the playerbase too.
5347 - Frostbolt with instant Fireballs in 0/18/53 and 53% pet uptime; 3/3 IWE for raidwide mana
5574 - Frostfire Bolt spam as 0/30/41 with 45% pet uptime; no mana from the WE
5803 - Without Winter's Chill: Spam Fireball*5/LivingBomb, use Fireball+FireBlast on Hot Streak; including FB DoT; assuming no Ignite bugs
5821 - Best Barrage Cycle: (ABar-FrB)*7-ABar-MBAM (19 DPM) with frost off-tree; is haste capped
6338 - Spam FrostfireBolt*4/FireBlast*2/LivingBomb, even through on Hot Streak; including FFB DOT; assuming no Ignite bugs
6385 - Spam Fireball*5/LivingBomb, use Fireball+FireBlast on Hot Streak; including FB DoT; assuming no Ignite bugs
6922- Arcane Barrage (16 DPM) as filler spell
7881 - Spammed Arcane Blast as 50/3/18 (18 DPM)
*7955 - Frostfire Bolt that double-dips from CoE/Scorch/WC (as 0/51/20, casting FFB*5/LB, FFB+FiBl on HS)
If these numbers are correct, this has to indicate that we are still far from seeing the end to changes in the mage specs. The situation described by the number above don't work. Problems:
-- If Frost is that far behind fire/arcane the only reasons you'd bring a frost mage to a raid is for (1) WE mana regen and (2) WC debuff. If their personal damage is so low, you'd force them to also pick up improved scorch (and heck, focus mind) and keep all three debuffs up (and keep the WE up as much as possible). I seriously doubt Blizzard wants to relegate one much into being a buff bitch, while boomkins, retpaladins, etc are enjoying great personal DPS.
-- If the WE mana regen is so good that it justifies being 20% lower in DPS then you have the respec problem. A bunch of locks & boomkins log into the raid, but only one mage (not specced frost). The raid leader has to say "go spec WE for mana regen", I'll being the other classes for DPS. Just like now when we've had a holy priest spec shadow when our regular spriests didn't show--the mana regen is so good it is better to respec them shadow and replace them with a resto shammy/druid. When Blizzard nerfed VT they said they didn't want a single spec invited just because of the buff/debuff it provides. They wanted each spec to bring better personal DPS. (And they mentioned things like multiple specs bringing similar debuffs that don't stack.)
-- How odd would it be that a spec's defining role of a non-pet class would be to put two points into a talent that improves a pet and your main job in a raid is to keep your pet alive? It would be like making the defining role of a holy priest be some crazy raid wide buff he mana puppy gives.
Sure you can speculate about what specs are "required" using the current numbers but I think it is clear that the current numbers say that the current numbers have to change. Hypothesizing now about what current specs HAVE to be is akin to dreaming about mirror image or mana link when we don't even know if/when they will be implemented.
After all, don't locks have it the same way in TBC? First lock doing CoE, second doing CoR, and the lucky third on CoD. Why can't mages do the same?
You said it yourself, because mages have to respec for this raid utility while CoE, CoR and CoD are baseline abilities for locks, gained at levels 14, 32 and 60 (I think...). Right now we have 40/21 destro locks switching those roles depending on the raid's situation, but you will not be able to do this with mages because in the end you can't expect the 2nd fire mage (eg.) to keep up WC even if it was built into Ice Lance or Frostbolt.
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It seems that there are a lot of possible solutions to this problem:
1) Have WE regen debuff that ensures raid cannot benefit from more than one mage with imp. WE.
2) Increase potency of scorch vis a vis WC considering the fact that scorch debuff relies on sub-optimal dps rotation
3) Curse effect: I forget who suggested this, but making sure that a mage could only stack one or the other debuff would be a good idea.
4) Change locations in trees.
5) etc...
08/10/08, 5:48 AM
). Whereas hybrids usually arent this versatile, as Blizz could rebalance priest talents significantly, and you would still want to bring a shadow priest for the raid buffing anyway, and if (that might be a big if I guess, given current raid stacking issues) Blizz does their job properly, bring a holy priest regardless of any changes.
not just fire mages. High dmg crit isnt exactly useful in itself, neither is higher res or even lower threat in most circumstances (lower threat will pretty much either be mandatory for everyone or a gimmick, it can never really be somewhat helpful as I see it, as you have to be able to use your extra threat potential for something (e.g. more DPS) for it to be useful.
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