[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 221

Qbert · 08/01/08, 12:22 PM

Yes, but that's a whole other problem. I'm not trying to argue that the tree is fine as-is; it clearly isn't; I'm frankly not even sure how it can be fixed at this point without badly overpowering some individual talents, or (this is the only real option) completely replacing some of them with single-target DPS talents.

....

That's pretty much spot on to the way I see things. The trees look like a whole pile of confusion, no real clear direction or role, just a little of everything with haphazard scaling.

itchytf · 08/01/08, 12:37 PM

While +dam -mana ones are simple for everyone and are probably the best bets for main nukes, I'd like to see something a bit different

Glyph of Iceblock - Regenerate 5% health for every debuff removed by Iceblock over 10 seconds. All attacks made against your iceblock reflect back 20% of their damage to the attacker. Reflected damage can not exceed 50% of the mage's total health.
Glyph of Polymorph - Your target is disorientated for 3 seconds upon polymorph breaking or being dispelled.
Glyph of Fireblast - 50% chance on cast to immediately cooldown and become available to cast again.
Glyph of Blink - Now drops target on cast (come on, everyone wants this!)
Glyph of Frostnova - Victims are now caught in chains of ice causing them to becomes unable to attack or cast spells for the duration.
Glyph of Counterspell - Places a buff on the mage that will reflect the next spell cast back at the target and do 50% extra damage if the spell is capable of doing damage. Reflected damage done will not exceed 50% of the mage's total health.
Glyph of Spellsteal - Will now attempt to steal the most beneficial/powerful buff instead of being at random. Will also break through dispel resistances.
Glyph of Mana Shield - Upon breaking, the mage will regenerate 100% of the mana drained by the spell over 30 seconds. This mana regeneration buff is not dispellable, but will overwrite each other (so you will have to not recast mana sheild for 30 seconds in order to get all your mana back).
Glyph of Arcane Power - The mage becomes immune to spell pushback, silences, counterspells, stuns and crowd control abilities for the duration.
Glyph of Pyroblast - Reduces the cast time to 3.5 seconds and upon detonation causes an explosion similar to that of flamestrike in addition to the damage caused on the original target. Increased mana cost.

Note: I've not really put appropriate drawbacks on some of these which might obviously need them - the frostnova one for example is ripe for abuse in both PvE and PvP so would need an appropriate drawback, but the general jist of it is that people wouldn't get meleed to death if they were standing next to a pack of mobs that were being AOEed and the mage wanted to use a shatter combo on them.

Lhivera · 08/01/08, 12:39 PM

I realize this is hardly important, since with a 3-second tick period it'll pretty much never tick, but does anyone know whether the DOT on Frostfire Bolt is Fire or Frostfire damage? In short, will it tick on Fire-immune targets? Description says Fire, but the description seems to be somewhat out of date for some of its other mechanics.

aikiwoce · 08/01/08, 12:46 PM

Ok I'm collecting the glyph ideas, simplifying them, and trying to combine similar ones. I'll try to keep updating this as posts come.

Radius increases - Flamestrike, Blastwave, Dragon's Breat
Lower mana cost, lower cast time, or increased dmg - Arcane Blast(ala 2t5), Arcane Missiles, Pyroblast, Scorch
Pushback resistance - Arcane Blast, Blizzard, Evocation, Frostbolt
Increased chance to proc beneficial talents - Impact, Clearcasting, Missile Barrage, Frostbite
Lower cooldown - Blink, CS, DB, BW, WE, Deep Freeze

Spell Improvement -
Polymorph - no heal, disorient if dispelled or broken early
Arcane Brilliance/Intellect - secondary effect or bonus
Mana Shield - secondary effect, regens mana lost via buff for x amount of time if not recasted
Invisibility - duration, aoe avoidance, increased run speed
Slow Fall - slower fall

Blink - drops target, decoys, etc
WE - chance to Ice Tomb attackers, Frost Dmg heals/gives mana, FrostFire Elemental
Wands - mobile wanding, mana return
Portals - faster cast, random nature, other funny stuff ala engineer transporters
Campstrike - Your flamestrikes spawn a campfire when cast. (Cosumes 1 piece of simple wood, if you have no wood you cast an ordinary flamestrike without getting a campfire.)
generic - knockback/knock up/stun/+haste/+spell damage effect
Ice Block - Health regen, damage reflection
Frost Nova - victims can't use offensive spells/abilities, -chance to hit, etc
Counterspell - Self-buff a la Shield Reflect
Spellsteal - cuts through dispel resist, increase chance to steal more powerful buffs first
Arcane Power - stun/interupt/pushback/cc immunity
Pyroblast - Explosive effect

Cosmetic/Minor -
Polymorph - extra creature types, morphs person who broke it into a little girl
WE - Hat/monocle, morph to ice gnome
Arcane Power/Icy Veins/Presence of Mind - Glowing eyes
Ice Lance - turns your Ice Lances into snowballs

I really like the idea of toss-able conjured water though. Might be cool for it to function like this without a glyph.

Update: I'm really simplifying some of the ideas, so send me a PM if you feel your idea got oversimplified.

Bonus: I hope the baby penguin looks like the pic on this page.

Bonus 2: Stole these ideas and modified them from wowinsider:

Glyph of Sheep's Wrath - Any friendly target that breaks your polymorph effects is transformed into a little girl for 10 sec.
Glyph of Cute Little Hat - Your Water Elemental pet wears a cute little hat. And a monocle.

Update: I've found a unique idea, over on the official mage forum, for a glyph that turns your WE into a FrostFire Elemental. He would cast FrostFire Bolts, and be immune to fire/frost. Nice PvP option for the WE I think.

Praest · 08/01/08, 1:22 PM

I was unsure (at least I did not spot it) if this had been posted, and although it's not a big deal really, this does strike me as something that will get the nerfbat:

Either the bonus from PoM will be an On next spell (my guess) or they will be unable to stack, but to get +60% crit on clearcasts is amusing at least.

aikiwoce · 08/01/08, 1:24 PM

Originally Posted by Praest

I was unsure (at least I did not spot it) if this had been posted, and although it's not a big deal really, this does strike me as something that will get the nerfbat:

Either the bonus from PoM will be an On next spell (my guess) or they will be unable to stack, but to get +60% crit on clearcasts is amusing at least.

HAHA... Double-dipping is the new Mage specialty.

Nurru · 08/01/08, 1:29 PM

Originally Posted by Lhivera

I realize this is hardly important, since with a 3-second tick period it'll pretty much never tick, but does anyone know whether the DOT on Frostfire Bolt is Fire or Frostfire damage? In short, will it tick on Fire-immune targets? Description says Fire, but the description seems to be somewhat out of date for some of its other mechanics.

It ticks specifically for Frostfire damage.

Erdluf · 08/01/08, 1:41 PM

I'm trying to compare Moonkin numbers to Lhivera's:

Low Gear Stationary DPS Frostbolt, Fireball on Brain Freeze: 3006 DPS, 18.6 DPM
High Gear, same rotation: 4837 DPS, 28.7 DPM

For Moonkin, rotations are

Low: Wrath, Starfrire*4
High: Wrath, Starfire*3

In both cases using Glyphs so that SF maintains Moonfire DoT for free, and Moonfire DoT gets 75% damage boost. DPM calculations count mana regen from crits as reduced mana cost (rather than increased mana regen).

Low: 2699 DPS, 16.2 DPM
High: 4273 DPS, 26.9 DPM

In both cases I assumed
- 1% miss (probably should be 0% for WotLK?), but no resistance.
- 0 Lag.
- 13% Curse of Elements.
- 10% boost to Arcane from Scorch.
- 6% boost to Arcane and Nature from Earth and Moon.
- Improved Moonkin Aura haste bonus 22% of the time.
- Eclipse bonus's to Wrath and Starfire 20% of the time.
- No bonus from Owlkin Frenzy
- Not counting time spent refreshing Faerie Fire (would be a 4% nerf)
- No use Force of Nature or Starfall (each have long cooldowns, so add only a few% to a long fight)
- Ignore mana-starvation considerations, but current Druids would rarely see mana issues with these rotations.

For the low gear case, 735 buffed Int. 1800 buffed +spell, before Lunar Guidance (which adds another 88 spell), 20% crit before Mk aura, 5% haste before IMk aura (no totem?).

For the high gear case, those numbers change to 800 Int, 3000 +spell, 30% crit and 10% haste.

Do those assumptions sound comparable to Lhiv's?

Søndag · 08/01/08, 1:53 PM

Originally Posted by Alvira

Granted 100% crit is impossible. But how about 50% crit? At 50% crit, the DPS of the specs with same +X damage is as follows:

Arcane will do 1650 DPS, Fire will do 1705 DPS, Elemental will do 2000 DPS.

So, as gear inflation pushes crit rating higher, the relative performance of the specs are all flipped around and arcane becomes the worst spec. The only way what you and Lhivera says will fit, is if the flip side is now true for +dmg. Hence, Arcane scales the best with +dmg, fire second, and elemetal third.

Very very surprising. Perhaps we really should have more faith in Blizzard!

How would a frostbolt in a arcane/frost spec look in your calculation? You could achive 50% crit from spellpower, and 100% from iceshards while having 6% haste, and get even more crit from Arcane potency, shatter and perhaps some winters chill.. or is the frostbolt to weak to really gain enough from crits?

Joink · 08/01/08, 2:31 PM

Originally Posted by Lhivera

I realize this is hardly important, since with a 3-second tick period it'll pretty much never tick, but does anyone know whether the DOT on Frostfire Bolt is Fire or Frostfire damage? In short, will it tick on Fire-immune targets? Description says Fire, but the description seems to be somewhat out of date for some of its other mechanics.

Frostfire bolt does full damage to frost immune and fire immune mobs. The dot still ticks on fire immune mobs and the slow effect still applies itself to frost immune targets.

Vontre · 08/01/08, 2:49 PM

Lhivera,

Are these the results where frost spec was off?

3163.11: Arcane Blast spam (105.69% of Arcane)
3005.89: Frostbolt, Fireball on BF proc, 50% WE Uptime (w/Frozen Rune Weapon) (100.43% of Arcane)
2992.88: 1x Arcane Barrage, 3x Arcane Blast, Arc Missiles on MB Proc
2824.41: Frostbolt, Fireball on BF proc, 50% WE Uptime (94.37% of Arcane)
2412.05: 8x Fireball, 3x Fire Blast, 1x Scorch (80.59% of Arcane)
2345.87: 9x Fireball, 1x Scorch (78.38% of Arcane)
1571.98: Frostfire Bolt (deep Fire spec, for Fire-immune targets)

Your arcane cycle is incorrect, and you don't have an elemental build listed at all. Arcane should be using an intelligent rotation based on haste which uses the least number of ABs possible. This depends entirely on the amount of haste your character has available, but I did the calculation with all raid synergies available, which means ridiculous haste from moonkin procs and shaman. 2x Arcane Blast 1x Arcane Barrage was the standard possible rotation, but 1x arcane blast is preferable. 3x is just bad. 1x Barrage 2x Scorch when necessary. This is for a 51/20 arcane/fire build.

Elemental spec is 34/37 frostfire bolt spam with scorch.

Water Elemental uptime is too high for a 7 minute fight. The most you could get is 42%.

Lhivera · 08/01/08, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

Lhivera,

Are these the results where frost spec was off?

Your arcane cycle is incorrect, and you don't have an elemental build listed at all. Arcane should be using an intelligent rotation based on haste which uses the least number of ABs possible. This depends entirely on the amount of haste your character has available, but I did the calculation with all raid synergies available, which means ridiculous haste from moonkin procs and shaman. 2x Arcane Blast 1x Arcane Barrage was the standard possible rotation, but 1x arcane blast is preferable. 3x is just bad. 1x Barrage 2x Scorch when necessary. This is for a 51/20 arcane/fire build.

I've included Moonkin haste, though not Shaman haste. Also, are you counting the 6% haste on NP as additive or multiplicative with gear haste? I was under the impression that static haste bonuses were additive while buff haste was multiplicative, but that could be wrong. I'll try again with the alternate Arcane Blast numbers, but frankly, my results were not very different at all between 1 and 3 blasts. I'll fiddle and see if it improves, but I don't expect much. I was assuming a different build, too, with 11 in Frost.

I'm working on the FFB spec now, but I'm coming up with significantly higher DPS on a 0/30/41 build than the 0/34/37 build so far.

Water Elemental uptime is too high for a 7 minute fight. The most you could get is 42%.

00:00: WE, IV, CS
00:20: IV
01:00: WE
03:20: IV
04:00: WE
06:20: IV
06:24: CS, WE
06:40: IV

Total WE time: 3 * 60 + 36 = 216
Fight duration: 420
Total uptime: 216 / 420 = 0.5143 = 51.43%

Edit: It occurs to me that I didn't give the WE the benefit of boomkin haste. I'm recalculating to add Wrath of Air haste, and will use a more complex Arc rotation as well, but it'll be a while. I'll post when it's up.

Roywyn · 08/01/08, 3:18 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

Lhivera,

Are these the results where frost spec was off?

Your arcane cycle is incorrect, and you don't have an elemental build listed at all. Arcane should be using an intelligent rotation based on haste which uses the least number of ABs possible. This depends entirely on the amount of haste your character has available, but I did the calculation with all raid synergies available, which means ridiculous haste from moonkin procs and shaman. 2x Arcane Blast 1x Arcane Barrage was the standard possible rotation, but 1x arcane blast is preferable. 3x is just bad. 1x Barrage 2x Scorch when necessary. This is for a 51/20 arcane/fire build.

Elemental spec is 34/37 frostfire bolt spam with scorch.

Water Elemental uptime is too high for a 7 minute fight. The most you could get is 42%.

Hm, what kind of Arcane cycles are you looking at exactly?

(ABar-ABla*2) could be (ABar-ABla(0)-ABla(1)) with debuff resets or (ABar-ABla(3)-ABla(3)) with the debuff staying up.
Same with (ABar-ABla(X)), which could mean X=0 for resets or X=3 for staying.

I'm kind of confused, because you state that you have a lot of haste, which means that you don't have the time for the Arcane Blast debuff to fall off.

But if you don't let the debuff drop off, then you should just skip Barrage because 3-stacked Blast is more DPS and more DPS with the new Barrage coefficent.
And if you want to let the debuff drop, you have use somthing else/additional to Barrage.

Also, do you use or skip Missile procs in your sims?
Logical thing should be only to use them if you let the debuffs drop, but I don't know how you handle it.

On Haste: All haste effects are multiplied. All haste rating - on gear, procs, clickies, drums, etc. - is added up and treated as one single multiplier, and everything else should at least be multiplied.

Post Scriptum: Frostfire Bolt's DoT scales like Pyroblast, 5% of your spell damage on DoT ticks. Not that if ever ticks while spammed, but still ...
[Edit]: No idea about Fireball, I don't have Beta. The Frostfire DoT numbers from Quantum's videos.

Lhivera · 08/01/08, 3:21 PM

Originally Posted by Roywyn

Post Scriptum: Frostfire Bolt's DoT scales like Pyroblast, 5% of your spell damage on DoT ticks. Not that if ever ticks while spammed, but still ...

I suppose it's too much to ask that Fireball's DOT has received a similar improvement?

Arkx · 08/01/08, 3:34 PM

What would be nice is if the DOT wouldn't reapply if it was already on the mob. Something similar to "a more powerful spell is already active". One per mage of course.