Idea for Deep Fire Talent:

I'm not sure the wording, etc for the talent, but the jist of it is:


A talent that would 'explode' our current Ignite tick. I thought of this because I was paying attention to the number of Ignite ticks I was losing when a boss / mob died with a huge ignite tick on it. All that ignite damage is lost when the mob dies...it seems a waste when you have other classes that don't technically 'lose damage' when a mob dies.

So why not have a talent that would cause all of the Ignite damage to explode causing "X" Damage to the target where X would equal the Total Ignite or the Total Ignite with a modifier?

If it's put on a 2 minute cooldown, then you could use this to end your Burn / Cooldown usage phase at the beginning of a fight and Explode your ignite tick after you know it's a relatively sizable amount, then start the wait for the <20% phase.

Absolutely. I'm tired (as a frost mage) of sitting back and watching other mages out dps me. So are affliction locks. And subtlety rogues. And boomkins. And shadow priests. Blizzard realizes this and (thankfully) has stated they are working to change this. The old situation where a shadow priest brought tons of utility (mana/health regen) at the cost of personal dps was bad game design. It meant you HAD to have a shadow priest in your raid (or 2 for another caster group), this person who got to go was frustrated trying their best to do damage but falling short while being told to "shut up and mana battery".

Paradigms change, as was stated above. Blizzard doesn't want fire to be the king of PvE raid damage. Where you stack fire mages and support classes to boost that damage. They want more direct competition between the ranged, magical DPSers. The fire mage didn't show up? Bring a 2nd boomkin. The frost mage is busy? Bring a shadow priest. Interchangeable parts is the way that Blizzard is heading.

If you could 'consume' an ignite, that would lead to a 'shatter-combo'. You would effectively take advantage of the ignite mechanics to 'always' gain a 'free tick' from what you consume out of ignite.

ex:
1x 500 dmg ignite tick left to be done.
you finish casting fireball (crits for 2500, which gives 1000 ignite. when fireball land, it will apply 1000+500 ignite)
you cast the 'consume ignite' spell, which will consume the 500 ignite tick
fireball lands, applying a 1500 ignite.

Sorry, one last thing that I forgot:

Water Elemental survivability. Good luck getting 50% uptime of 3%mp5 if it gets 1-2shot by AoE encounters. I don't think they are going to give the WE the same survivability as the lock/hunter pets got.

Some encounters are all about timing with the elemental, but some are impossible for you to have it up for more than 15s, unless it gets healed as well.

Hi Vontre,

Fire still seems to be ~500 dps behind a 0/21/50 lock. That makes it somewhat hard to chill out since it means mages will become the 0/18/53 raid utility bots rather than pure DPS if you really want to min max.

The debuff's already been replaced with a Runeforging enchant; question is whether it's one a DK will actually use, and I have no idea. With that option unchecked, things look a lot more reasonable in terms of relative performance, but we're still stuck with the spec-forcing problems for raid composition.

Would you care to share with us why WE AoE survivability is such an unlikely scenario? Blizzard are fixing and looking into lots of mage issues. some are so far unsolved and others have been nicely adressed. WE survivability is something the mage community have been talking about for al ong time and some of the new WE talents depend on the elemental not getting instagibbed. So, long story short: Why is AoE evasion such an unlikely change?

It is because damage is calculated at the time of the cast, not impact. Debuffs are also calculated into spells at spell cast, so you would be double dipping as explained.


Edit: Double dipping only if the fireball cast would crit, so you would be taking a bit of a chance. Best bet to make this spell better would be to add a cooldown on it so that such double dipping couldn't be exploited.

I doubt DKs would use it.

Rune of the Fallen Crusader - Spell - World of Warcraft is supposedly the way to go.

I think it is mostly the track record in the past of Blizzard's fixes. Most people when they think of pets, they think of Hunters/locks.

However, if DK's pets get the avoidance, it is nearly guaranteed that WE will as well.

Maybe it is because I am just naturally pessimistic

Since it hasn't been announced, or confirmed on beta, I would assume that it is not going to get it and make calculations from that. If it gets changed, we can recalculate. I just would not count on blizzard to change something like that, especially if there isn't a brouhaha about it.

Pessimism: Always right or pleasantly surprised.

All dps casters are interchangeable and always have been. Some swaps may be less optimal than others, but other than progression/hard dps fights nobody much cares.

Utility and rDPS buffs must have a cost, if they don't then you are forced into specing it. If a shadow priest does as much damage as a mage, than why take more than one mage? With the shadow priest you get mana/heals and the same dps. Beyond the first mage who specs for both debuffs you gain only in curse removal, and CC. (Trash polymorph is always gotten around by someone bringing an alt mage in for trash.)

Think of it this way, if frost got the mana regen removed from the WE, and winters chill was removed. Than fire got all these talents in some way, would you ever see anyone spec frost? The answer is yes, because in solo/pvp/party/10 mans? the survivability and control you get with frost has real value. Again, suppose that we currently got FFB, would mages just progressing on a fight like Illidan still stay fire? Probably not, because the control you get and the extra survivability in frost is handy for learning the fight.

That value has to have a dps cost, how much, and to what degree are about the only logical debate.

You can turn the debuff off in the options, but it does still seem to assume you would cast FFB instead of FB, LB, etc.

No. Priests, Mages and Warlocks are hardly interchangeable and anyone who believes this simply hasn't had much raid experience, and I'm not even factoring in Elemental Shaman as a "caster". Even disregarding DPS, you're not going to say "Well, we don't have any Shadow Priests lets just bring more Mages", or "We don't have enough AOE, lets grab Priests instead". Now factor in the fact that an average Shadow Priest does half to two thirds the damage of a destruction Warlock and your claims are even more absurd. This isn't even including encounters where you specifically need one of the three in T6 content. Each class serves a specific role beyond single target dps, even if the line between Warlocks and Mages is a bit blurred and skewed in BC.

As I discussed a few pages ago, there are basically two categories of things a class can bring:

1) Vital abilities that a raid leader will take into consideration when deciding who comes to the raid. This includes personal DPS, raid DPS buffs/debuffs, and group/raid mana regen.

2) Flavor abilities that change playstyle and can be handy on a raid, but will never factor into the decision about whether you get into the raid or not. This includes AOE, survivability, non-combat utility, crowd control, etc.

The total value of category 1 needs to be very similar across specs. The total value of category 2 should be reasonably similar across specs, but this is not as important as balancing category 1. Most importantly, items from category 1 and items from category 2 cannot be balanced against each other, because only category 1 is important to raid composition.

So, is it OK for Frost to do less damage than Fire because it brings Imp. WE? Yes. But it's not OK for its damage to be reduced further because it has greater survivabilty. Is it OK for Fire to do less damage than Arcane because it brings Imp. Scorch? Yes (sort of, it would be more true if it were deeper). But it's not OK for its damage to be reduced further because it provides superior AOE. Just as a couple of examples. And similarly, it's not OK for an Elementalist spec that takes both Imp. Scorch and Winter's Chill to do as much personal damage as a deep Fire or deep Frost built that brings only one of those.

The trick is actually achieving this balance, which is going to be difficult.

Between specs, not nearly as difficult as with the myriad hybrid group buffs that are being pushed out left and right.

I'd say that the problem is more that "crazy AOE machine" requires speccing to do nothing but AoE situationally and unnecessarily, whereas Imp WE and Winter's Chill are useful pretty much in all situations, not that a Frost spec can spec into Imp Scorch.

I despise the setup of the fire tree ATM not because I don't want to AOE... but that I don't want to spec any talent that does nothing but AoE (save Blastwave/DB which are actual new spells). Firestarter & World in Flames are totally situationally useful and marginally benefiting talents, they just don't warrant talent points. I think we can all easily agree that the AoE benefits of the fire tree do not even approach the benefits of Imp WE.

It is just a matter of degree, as you say below. The degree is so strong now that yes, most raiding guilds do care. I am one of the officers in a odd hybrid of a casual-hardcore progression guild. We only raid three nights a week to prevent burnout and because many of our core members (now good online friends) have wives, kids, and RL issues that makes 5-nights a week raiding undesirable. We've done well, Illidan is down but looks like we will miss out on most of Sunwell with the expansion looming.

Even at our level we don't stack feral dps or boomkins in raids. We stack mages and locks and give them elle shammies and shadow priests. We stack rogues and give them WF totems and arms warriors. The parts are not interchangeable.

On this I completely agree. My (very strong) preference is to nerf utility and keep personal DPS strong for all mage specs. I didn't roll one to keep a pet out and give people mana. I think two things are happening in this discussion:

(1) People say "frost has more utility" without thinking just how valuable that utility is. In the same post people argue that mana regen probably won't be that big of an issue in raids but the WE mana regen justifies a 20% reduction in frost mage DPS. They say "frost mages have survivability" but that doesn't come into play anymore in 99% of boss fights.

(2) They want things to remain as they are: fire does the ZOMG damage, frost is that pvp spec with all the survivability and utility. It has been beaten into their heads so much they can't imagine a (virtual) world where this isn't that case.

I think I am going to pull a Lhivera and say I'm done arguing this point--continually commenting on posts of this type isn't helping the discussion in this already epic thread. So I'll summarize:

-- All mage DPS should be comparable. By comparable I mean within a few percent.

-- All mage specs should have some utility. This utility adds flavor and should be about equal in benefit.

-- All mage specs should be at least a little dynamic. Reacting to procs, timing trinkets with cooldowns, changing rotations based on the situation, etc.

-- The first 3 points do not make mages boring because all three specs are "the same." Playing an ABr/AB/MBAM weaving arcane mages is a totally different experience than a shatter comboing / WE summing frost mage. At least as different as WoW can allow.

-- The first 3 points do not make mages overpowered. I'm not asking for mages to be 50% above lock damage, or bring more utility than all the hybrids. Adjust the numbers so it is fair, just equal for all specs. Fair and fun.

-- If it kills me I am going to get a beta account and post this where Blizzard can read it.

OK, that's enough on this subtopic. I return you all to your "it's OK if frost mages suck and are just buff bots" posts.

1) 51/20/0 ends the fight with 8k mana and uses a very low amount of spirit. Not sure if the new JoW is in, and what it ticks for. Having iWE mana instead seems like a good approximation for it though.

What I'm getting at - Blast spam is listed as 4761 baseline without cooldowns/etc., while the spec produces only 4314 with low spirit and a lot of mana to spare at the end.
So, we could have done better, and a dedicated Blast spec would probably get even higher numbers.


2) You can everything for single target DPS with 59 in Frost, including Ice Barrier for utility.
I think you can safely skip Frost Channeling, down to 56: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

You can cut it down to 53 by skipping Arctic Reach/Ice Barrier.
If the above talents are useful for the fights in question (I wouldn't want to skip Reach), skipping Ice Flows should be the next best bet. It offers about 1% total for 3 points.

Keep in mind that you want 10 points in Fire for Brain Freeze to maximise DPS as "Full Frost".
Reminds me of "Veggie Salad with Ham" in Paris. *headdesk*

So, 0/10/61 could be at most 1% above 0/18/53 for DPS, the rest is utility.


[Edit]:
I didn't mean to disagree on the design there, I was just trying to answer your question of how Frost+Scorch compares to MoreFrost.

I'm still not sure what to think of BrainFreeze and Ignite synergy.
I'm torn between considering it pretty funky and pretty retarded


3) Putting in 3k spell power, Skull/Sliver clickies and CSD meta:

7015: 0/51/20 (FFB) (Brings 1 debuff)
6746: 51/20/0 with 9.6k mana to spare (Brings 1 debuff)
6497: 2/58/11 (Brings 1 debuff)
6492: 0/20/51 (Brings 2 debuffs and imp. WE)
5613: 0/30/41 (FFB) (Brings 2 debuffs)

Fireball takes over the two WC specs (deep frost barely), while Frostfire Bolt overtake Arcane that doesn't only spam Blast and still has half a mana bar left for some reason.


Where we agree is that WC is a debuff that only Frost/Frost+Fire brings, while we disagree on Scorch.
I consider it more a universal talent that every mage can bring with extremely little drawback (~1% for frost, ~2% for arcane), while you consider it more a Fire perk.

We'll see how Blizzard goes with all those things, I doubt we've seen the end yet.


Vontre's doesn't sim the latest changes, partially because the warlocks are too lazy to figure out how their talents actually work.

The current Warlock tree was balanced (more or less) with the change to Imp. Scorch. I.e. due to the 5% less fire damage, they got 12.5% more haste on Incinerate. *cough* Balance *cough*

After that, Winter's Chill was changed, giving them nearly 20% more crit due to Empowered Imp, and talents haven't changed yet to reflect that.

Hence the absurd scaling. When checking my stats, Blast spam should still overtake Fire Locks by 5-10%. Mostly because both are overtuned right now.


The current Living Bomb is scaling extremely well and offers a 5-10% DPS boost for single target spam.
It also is limited by taking 12 seconds to detonate and limited to one target, so you can't spam it like seed.

Honestly, it's pretty much the best talent in the whole tree. It might even be useful for AoE!
What more do you want, really?

You can certainly do that, but, to put it bluntly, a lot of us won't want to. A Frost build that doesn't include all those fun snares and such loses a lot of its flavor and starts to feel really generic. Skipping Ice Floes, for example, may make sense from an average dps per point perspective, but it costs heavily in terms of the feel of the build in day-to-day play (which includes time outside raids, natch). So it's worth comparing how a truly deep Frost build, instead of this Frost/Fire hybrid abomination we're all looking at the numbers for, will compare with the rest of them, just as much as we want to see how a true deep Fire build will perform with Fireball instead of FFB.

Funny part is, I don't expect anyone to put points into either firestarter or world in flames. I'm not even sure about blastwave and dragon's breath as it is, so what are the odds I go for more aoe (not to mention, I already have living bomb)?

Heres an example of a 'primary fireball spec, but with the option to spam FFB'
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000
Note how theres only blastwave/DB/living bomb for aoe, and there isn't any place left for them (firestarter/world in flames). And I didn't take 2/2 fiery payback, which I doubt I would normally actually do. The only way I could see myself take aoe talents would be to cut in FFB-spam talents from the frost tree -- namely, go from 20 frost to 18 frost (18 frost to get 3/3 frost channeling). That leaves me 2 more talent points. With 2 talent points, I'm either going for fiery payback, or master of elements (which leaves me 1 spare point). In all cases I will never put any points in aoe talents. The only possible way to do it is to play a pure FFB-spam spec, with no points in empowered fireball, and recoup those 3 points into aoe talents.

Roywyn, what about a 51/0/20 spec or thereabouts to get the benefits of IV to help dump mana? Assuming scorch already provided.

Even 50/0/21 for double IV's, just for blast spam, because your results seem to be saying that it is most definitely sustainable.

Which is exactly my point. You can't justify a spec with a characteristic that nobody will ever want to spec. It's like if they were to give improved portals and conjuring into deep Arcane and then calling that the identity of the tree's utility. Nobody would spec it, so using it to counterbalance the utility of other trees or class' specs is void.

I also like the complaint about Imp Scorch being a damper on Fire Mage DPS compared to nearly every other utility's DPS rotations save maybe Shaman's totems. Imp SB, WC, misery, shadow weaving, VT, etc. are all perfectly good utilities that don't require the applicant to lose DPS to apply them, however this stubbornness to keep Imp Scorch has always hurt Fire DPS. I would much rather prefer Pyroblast's DoT to apply the effect and Pyroblast to supply a DPS increase along with a DoT duration increase; this prevents spamming and gives Pyro some actual purpose. Of course there would have to be something else to give value to Scorch, but it could never give a DPS increase over Fireball without making Fireball obselete.

Would you still forego Firestarter if many boss encounters and much of the trash in every instance included an AoE component? It's probable that a lot of them may, from what we've seen so far.