At first glance it might look that way sure... But with alot better scaling, aoe spell and spell pushback immunity the nerf feels very balanced and probably puts us at 50-60% of the efficiency we are at today.
This, considered against other aspects such as the improved benefits of BoW/JoW (and better viability of ret pala) and generally more abundant amouts of spirit leads me to beleive that mana is going to be about the same place in WotLK as it is in BC, just with less dependance on a Spriest.
This, considered against other aspects such as the improved benefits of BoW/JoW (and better viability of ret pala) and generally more abundant amouts of spirit leads me to beleive that mana is going to be about the same place in WotLK as it is in BC, just with less dependance on a Spriest.
You're forgetting what haste does to your manabar. Couple what haste does with mana with the fact that everyone's getting an aoe spell and we might have quite a few very mana intensive fights out there. I think we'll still see fights where atleast 2 shadowpriests will be VERY beneficial.
I think the AoE changes have more to do with balancing 10-man instances. For example, in KZ there are a few AE pulls before the second boss. Up until WotLK, only mages and warlocks were able to do any worthwhile AoE damage, but not it seems as though Druids and Shadow Priests will be able to fill this roll as well so that you no longer need to take that mage or warlock in addition to the Druid or Priest. They're probably just looking to add more flexibility to the classes that are brought so that no class is absolutely required in the 5 or 10-man instances.
I don't know how Shadow Priest or Balance Druid AoE will eventually turn out or how the damage will compare to what mages and warlocks do now, but it's not necessarily a bad thing for those classes to actually be able to fill some rolls outside of being DPS enhancers in 25-man raids. Letting a Balance Druid root indoors probably means that he can fill in for a mage in a 5-man pretty easily.
I like where they're going, but they do need to make sure it balances well and scales properly.
Above argument is in my opinion wrong. You never needed an aoe class for KZ as example. Even for illhoof you don't need. So i doubt it will matter in 10 mans. You can always run a heavy melee 10 man raid or a caster one and be succesfull in karazhan or any other place. I can understand people generally overgear KZ level but even back than year ago it was perfectly fine.
Giving aoe skills to 'others' will limit spots for mages/locks as long this classes don't provide better DPS and/or utility and so fourth.
I would like to see a new thing though for mages and probably other classes. I noticed lately how many skills i have to actually use on my mage and clicks compared to other classes especially in arena. I know it has other side making some classes dull but after you have spent ~300d/played on a mage alone and a lot on other classes it's making me feel like im trying to play 3 classes at once on my mage.
Above argument is in my opinion wrong. You never needed an aoe class for KZ as example. Even for illhoof you don't need. So i doubt it will matter in 10 mans.
Those are designed solely as 10-mans. We have a very different situation now with 25-man raids having a 10-man mode. In order to preserve as much of the fight design as possible between the two modes, not to mention increasing the challenge for 10-man mode, it would be useful for Blizzard to have required AOE as one of the tools in its design toolbox; this would require that more classes have AOE capabilities to ensure a 10-man raid is equipped for the encounter.
Back when Kara was hard, you didn't need an AoE class for Illhoof in the same way that you didn't need a warrior for Nightbane or a warlock for Aran. You could do them all without those classes, but you were making it way harder than it had to be.
Changes:
Changed page organization to make it easier to read.
Added Information at the top.
Added New Input Stats which include:
-Spell Hit
-Spell Haste
-Number of Mages
-Travel Time + Latency
Added Calculations for Winter's Grasp using a simple formula of:
-Uptime = WGDur/(WGProcRate^-1*CastTime)
-TotalUptime = 1-(1-Uptime)^NumMages
-NumBolts = ROUNDUP(TotalUptime*WGProcRate^-1)
-TotalNumBolts = NumBolts+IF(EmptyWGTime<TravelLatency,1,0)
-WGCrit = TotalNumBolts/WGProcRate^-1*.5
Added rough calculations for Combustion
-If someone could post the algebraic formula for how much crit Combustion gives, I will add it as soon as I can.
Corrected how Critical Bonus was calculated.
Corrected how Multiplicative Damage Increase was calculated.
Corrected how Multiplicative Mana Decrease was calculated.
Haste now effects mana cost of spells
-Since time is not calculated in to reflect the effect of haste of mana spent.
If you find any more errors please tell me and I will fix them as soon as I can.
If you have any suggestions to make it better, please tell me, I would be happy to make it better.
If anyone knows more about excel then I do, could you please help me make graphs that use a variable spell damage or variable crit as the X axis, and the dps of the 5 specs as the Y axis?
The calculations are a lot more perfect then they were before, so don't expect any large changes in the results at this point forward.
Very nice. There is one thing I'd like you to calculate though for verification. In your 34/37 WG/Ffb build would you mind switching the points from pyromaniac to playing with fire and the points from winter's chill to arctic winds and assume that winter's chill is being stacked by another mage?
Very nice. There is one thing I'd like you to calculate though for verification. In your 34/37 WG/Ffb build would you mind switching the points from pyromaniac to playing with fire and the points from winter's chill to arctic winds and assume that winter's chill is being stacked by another mage?
Ah, well I tried out 4 different specs according to what you said. First of all, Arctic Winds only effects Ffb when its doing frost damage, so if I changed the spec to that, you would be doing 5% more damage with Arctic Winds instead of the 15% more damage from Imp Scorch. But I experimented with a combination of PWF, Pyromaniac, and Combustion and this is what I found:
First, I'm glad that I'm not the only one who was seeing crit as being more valuable in this build. That was what I wanted to see verified by someone else and it seems that you are seeing that as well. The change from pyro to PWF verifies this. I first noticed this when I was coming up with my initial build 33/38 build earlier in the thread. After throwing in improved moonkin it became pretty obvious to me that crit was going to probably overtake damage, just not sure by how much since we still don't know all the on crit procs that are going to be coming in WotLK.
Second, thanks for pointing out that arctic winds doesn't affect ffb unless it's dealing frost damage. I was working under the assumption it did but now that I know that it doesn't this will make my TC much more accurate. I mainly wanted to see this because of a certain raid composition I am interested in looking into. Granted the overall conclusion would be the same with 34/37 dealing more damage than WE/fire it's still nice to be that much closer to what I can expect to happen in game.
Mainly, I want to thank you for verifying what I've been seeing since it mainly goes against what most mages have taken as canon when it comes to speccing and gearing up.
Anyone else disappointed with the talents concerning pve buffs? Winters grasp is the only real buff added in regards to this and thats deep in the frost tree. Many classes now have talents in all trees that offer good group buffs or target debuffs that all classes benefit from. I was really hoping for something like an improved scorch talent that helps all dps classes or an icy veins type spell that helps the entire party, to give raiders more incentive to bring mages to raids.
I used to want something like that Joink, but in the end we're not a hybrid class. It's not really our job to buff others, but rather to do enough damage to warrant being buffed by them.
As for a good reason to bring mages to raids, beyond what we have now? Call me crazy but the Death Knight is Blizzard's new baby. They are going to make PvE content to help them shine. As it stands now mages appear to have better synergy with them than most.
I still dont understand whole idea behind hybrid classes having utility while pure dps classes can't have some of it. Hybrids will always have more of it.
It's time to stop following the 'old' class and game design and make it equal and fair for all. Whatever was 3 years ago is totally outdated, this games changed insanly from the early BC beta.
It would be best idea to stop the crap behind factions being hostile also, i still dont get it why blizzard don't plan to shaft whole idea behind them? Ok, lore, seriously couldn't care less like probably very big % of players. I want to group up with alliance as horde etc. World pvp doesnt exist anyway, but this thing is for totally new topic.
Those are designed solely as 10-mans. We have a very different situation now with 25-man raids having a 10-man mode. In order to preserve as much of the fight design as possible between the two modes, not to mention increasing the challenge for 10-man mode, it would be useful for Blizzard to have required AOE as one of the tools in its design toolbox; this would require that more classes have AOE capabilities to ensure a 10-man raid is equipped for the encounter.
You mean, Boomkins getting more AE abilities (check) or other non-AE classes getting abilities to help with AE (Fury and Prot and Restodruids, check)?
SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)
Anyone else disappointed with the talents concerning pve buffs? Winters grasp is the only real buff added in regards to this and thats deep in the frost tree. Many classes now have talents in all trees that offer good group buffs or target debuffs that all classes benefit from. I was really hoping for something like an improved scorch talent that helps all dps classes or an icy veins type spell that helps the entire party, to give raiders more incentive to bring mages to raids.
For myself, I want more damage. And it looks like we are getting it. Not just in absolute terms, but I think also in relative ones. I don't play a mage for utility and find a lot of the utility we do bring irksome in practice as it tends to interfere with our dps. (Does anybody like, say, decurse spam on Kalecgos, for example?)
Utility be damned. Give me a group version of amp magic and call it a day so far as utility is concerned. If our nukes can put in the hurt, then all is well.
And none of this even considers what DK's will have. So yeah, it really does look to me like they're making certain a 10-man raid can demand heavy AOE damage without requiring Mages and/or Warlocks. And I applaud that -- not many of us really relished the idea of being the AOE class and giving up single-target performance for it. I'm very happy to see the role spread around.
You mean, Boomkins getting more AE abilities (check) or other non-AE classes getting abilities to help with AE (Fury and Prot and Restodruids, check)?
Don't forget the new shadow priest aoe. Fury on the other hand since the sweeping strikes change has been kind of a half aoe for awhile now. Personally I love cleave spamming during things like hydross, the murlocs on morogrim and hyjal trash, its a ton more dps and it has the added benefit of putting me high enough on threat that they won't go splat a clothy or a healer. The extra rage from taking damage is pretty nice also.
Yes, shadowpriests are getting mind sear - channeled 5 sec aoe on no cooldown... but since shadow form will be immune to pushback completely, it is not that bad.
Atrocity conflicted with SoC - most likely reason it was removed. It applied AOE corruption on every target, SoC overwrites corruption for warlocks so even if you had both spells, you could only use one or the other to do your damage. And I suspect SoC would be more dps as well.
Boomkins are not only getting finally AOE abilities, they are getting their melee defence/escape ability (typhoon), and instant caster interrupt (typhoon) on 20 CD (short enough to use it 2-3 times in a fight).
Atrocity conflicted with SoC - most likely reason it was removed. It applied AOE corruption on every target, SoC overwrites corruption for warlocks so even if you had both spells, you could only use one or the other to do your damage. And I suspect SoC would be more dps as well.
Not true -- SoC only overwrites corruption on the mob you cast it on. So if you have 8 targets, you would cast Atrocity, and then follow up with SoC. One of the mobs would get only SoC; the other seven would take both the SoC explosion damage, and would still have the Atrocity Corruption ticking on them.
AoEing with SoC generally involves stacking SoC on as many mobs as you can, at least until the first one detonates. The two abilities don't quite make each other completely useless, but they do step on each other's toes. On the other hand, cripple as it stands now (20-second no-cooldown silence/snare/pacify) is due for a change as well, so maybe the next try will go back to an AoE spell.
DK AoE, off the top of my head, includes Death and Decay, Howling Blast (which can get rather painful when mixed with frost nova and their frost force-crit), and possibly Blood Boil if you've somehow gotten diseases stacked up everywhere. Possibly Army of the Dead, no one quite knows how that works either. Some powerful moves, but I also think all of them have cooldowns currently and blood boil kinda has a taunt component.
I still dont understand whole idea behind hybrid classes having utility while pure dps classes can't have some of it.
I think you meant that mages as a class lack synergy.
Otherwise we have plenty of utility that we bring to raids:
We're 1 of 2 classes than can decurse.
We have one of the best CC spells in the game in that it works on many mobs, can be recast on that mob without hassle, and keeps the mob in roughly the same place.
We have a spell that gives everyone an extra 41 intellect. That's more mana, crit, and mp5 for some classes.
We have a spell that increases the amount of healing that everyone takes. It's almost always a good idea to use Amplify Magic.
We're 1 or 2 classes with viable AoE.
We can provide food/water to the raid.
We can provide portals to the raid if someone needs to respec or step out.
We can interrupt spell casts really easily.
We have plenty of utility as a class. The only problem is that most of that utility can be provided by one mage. I think that we're fine with little or no synergy so long as our pure single target DPS is good enough and our utility is needed.
Last edited by alvinrod : 06/08/08 at 3:29 PM.
Reason: Additions to list of mage utility
From my perspective, most of that utility is a totaly unneeded/unneccesary. I don't won't to nulify your arguments with our utility becouse it's not point, we know they exist its just everyone would be fine without most of them.
And yes, i was leaning more towards synergy and arena 3s+.
Actually, you could test this by seeing if Winter's Chill gets wiped off of Hydross when he switches from poison to frost mode.
Faerie Fire is not removed when he switches to nature form, but it cannot be reapplied until he is back in frost. Not sure if that helps you figure it out or not.
I mentioned it way up in the thread but now that we know FFB is affected by both ice shards and ignite what do you guys think of this build (for Frostfire Bolt spam):
Triple dip Spell Power+Ignite+Ice Shards (not even sure how to calculate that crit bonus but I know it is big) and Netherwind Presence self proccing, not to mention all the other arcane goodies.
Netherwind presence isn't going to be so hot on a 3s spell. Or, for that matter, any spell which isn't AM and that only on a per missile basis, which we still aren't sure is how it works (we don't have any clear confirmation on this.) Unless you are making a build based on AM as your primary nuke, NP isn't worth the bother.
We also don't know if arcane affects FFB at this point at all.
Triple dip Spell Power+Ignite+Ice Shards (not even sure how to calculate that crit bonus but I know it is big) and Netherwind Presence self proccing, not to mention all the other arcane goodies.
06/07/08, 7:15 AM
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