Gediablo

Defining classes are hybrids or not depending on if they can drop aggro or not seems pretty wrong - by that logic e.g. mages and warlocks pre-TBC were hybrids...

The problem if a mage and a druid do the same damage is that it makes the needs for a moonkin druid much much bigger than the need for 2+ mages in a raid, due to added utility of Innervate, combat res, imp fairy fire, aura and whatever. The second mage only bring damage, and as you already stated the moonkin can bring that just as well. On top of that the raid most likely will need at least 1 feral and at least 1 resto-druid. So that means 3 druids pr raid is pretty much mandatory while only 1 mage can cover every single bit of mageutility needed for a raid. 10 different classes, 25 raid spots, not possible to bring every class and spec to every raid, so you pick the classes and spec giving you best general lineup to cover most fights. In my eyes the only way such a lineup will include more than 1 mage is if the raid will gain:
1 - more utility bringing extra mages
2 - more damage bringing extra mages

Since we both agree that mages aren't supposed to be a hybrid class, I'll prefer the damage output of a mage to be significantly greater than the dps of a hybrid. I'm all for Moonkins being viable, but I have yet to be convinced that raids in TBC will be stronger bringing 2 mages rather than 1 mage+ 1 moonkin (and certainly not above the 2.5 average)

 

Sardaukar

Most warlocks are pretty annoyed with how terrible the new talents are, especially the destruction ones. You have a couple of talents that are trying to encourage us to use shadow and fire nukes (yet Demonic Sacrifices one school buff makes that seem unlikely) including a talent that give us an instant cast searing pain or immolate after a shadow bolt critical strike (wow a talent that lets me instant cast an already 1.5 second cast spell...), you have the old Improved immolate talent (buffs the initial damage of immolate) that is a requirement for conflag, but a new talent that allows incinerate to refresh the immolate dot so that you are unlikely to cast immolate more than once on a boss fight, some weird % of our spirit = spell damage talent, and a talent that increases the crit strike talent of immolate (cast once on a boss fight), conflag (never cast on a boss) and shadow fury (which we probably won't even have).

I'm glad that it looks like mages will probably overtake warlocks in dps, I just wish they would have done it by giving mages great buffs and warlocks good buffs, instead of giving mages good buffs and warlocks very little

 

Kludge

Lhivera: is there a reason why you applied IV to every bolt? That is making the assumption that each spec will include it. Given that deep fire may need Clear casting instead of IV.

Removing IV from Arcane and Fire shows that it is still just a slight increase and continues to fall behind destruction spells.

Avg DPSCT Increase per point of +Damage
---------------------------------------
1.0501: Immolate (741 mana)
0.8927: Incinerate (584 mana)
0.8767: Fireball (616 mana)
0.8684: Shadow Bolt (679 mana)
0.7738: Frostbolt (416 mana)
0.7379: Arcane Blast/3 stack (1067 mana)
0.7148: Ice Lance (148 mana)
0.6833: Scorch (235 mana)
0.5709: Arcane Missiles (1167 mana)
0.0473: Waterbolt (~17 mana)

 

Lhivera

Mainly because I expect people to fight tooth and nail, beyond all reason, to hold onto IV. But, this is why I linked the code for download, so people could tweak it if they wanted to make different assumptions.

Bear in mind that there is another factor that the script doesn't account for, which is adjusting the average casting time of the Warlock nukes based on time lost to Life Taps.

 

◊ manly

Don't get me wrong, I agree. But you need to understand a crucial detail here. The only good thing about all the new talents, combined, is burnout if and only if it applies 25% to the whole 150 damage (262.5% crits) and not '25% of 50' (227.5% crits). In other words, all that we get out of all the new talents is 262.5% crit multipliers or 227.5% crit multiplier. If it is 227.5%, then all the new talents will be totally useless and not used, since the talent Spell Power already gave better results.

You want to argue that mages have it good, but all of this hinges on the assumption of how one talent behaves. If it doesn't behaves like we hope it does, then we're still in the shitter.

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Lhivera

Essential to remember this, although Vontre seems confident in whatever sources he has that it is behaving as we hope.

 

Deedre

Lhivera, out of curiosity, your script makes firelocks look a lot better than shadow destro on live, but that hasn't turned out to be so in practice. What gives?

 

• Suggestive

Its mostly human error, its really not possible to come close to achieving 100% immolate uptime. Its even more annoying when you have to deal with haste.

 

Lhivera

Also, latency will have a larger effect due to the shorter cast time, and my --test assumption of 50% ISB uptime may be quite low for some raid compositions. This script was never meant to have its test mode output taken as gospel -- that's why I made it easy to change the assumption values.

 

PSGarak

The initial conditions had only 50% ISB uptime, which is a low estimate. We usually take 60-65%. Also, that was a rather high crit chance before talents, at least for warlocks. We're usually closer to 20% than 25%. I don't quite know how this will change in WLK.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Sardaukar

Thats a pretty significant change I would imagine, although its hard to figure out how that will work with the new life tap. Life tap time is not insigificant, especially if you do not have a shadow priest.

 

Lhivera

To my surprise, I found that the Destruction warlocks in my own guild were closer to 25% than the mages were. I assume they were focusing more on Crit than Haste, since Haste means more life tapping.

The test values are nothing more than my wild guesses at level 80 values. Play with them at will, please.

Aye, if anyone wants to propose an approximate value -- like, casts per life tap, or mana expenditure per life tap -- I can work that in. It will have a very significant impact.

 

Deltrus

Lets not forget that we probably will get at least 2 more spells. I'm hoping for an awesome arcane spell.

 

Rouncer

really??


Pretty sure the data-mined stuff showed Frostfire at 75 and shattershield at 80 and the changes to Mana Shield in the early 70s. That's 3 things. TBC gave 4 things. So at best I would expect 1 new spell and at worst that would be all we are getting and now all they are doing is defining the specific numbers for the talents and spells and things that they already have.

 

Lhivera

Changes to Mana Shield? What changes to Mana Shield?

There should be four new spells (not changes to existing spells, or new ranks of existing spells, but brand new spells). We know of two of them so far: Frostfire Bolt, and Shatter Shield. Should be two more coming.

Last time around, we got 1 Fire (Molten Armor), 1 Frost (Ice Lance), 2 Arcane (Arcane Blast, Invisibility). So far we know of a new Frost spell (Shatter Shield). As Frostfire Bolt, while it technically falls into the Fire tab of the spellbook, is really a funky multischool hybrid spell, I kind of expect to see a new Fire spell and a new Arcane spell.

 

Last_Human

We also got Spellsteal bringing it up to a total of 5 new spells. I would be a little annoyed if we only got two brand new spells this time around.

 

Keldarn

Wasn't there some arcane barrage spell or something?

 

◊ Vontre

That's a talent. By the way the ACTUAL coefficient on Arcane Barrage appears to be 3/3.5, which makes sense. So it turns out that its more dps than a full ramped arcane blast. This kinda dampens the need to cast AB the first place. Currently the best I can do is a frostbolt->arcane barrage rotation build. Unfortunately there's not much mana left over to replace Frostbolts with AB, which does give a small increase in dps. So the arcane mage does the worst dps, but has the best mobility which could be interesting.

Oh and, every build should have shatter now.

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Deltrus

Nice, arcane barrage might be sorta good now. I'm still sorta hoping for something like a push/knockback added to it even though I doubt it will happen.

 

PSGarak

Knockback on a 3s-cooldown instant-cast seems a bit much for a base, even as a 51-point talent. Inscriptions are always possible.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Deedre

Wow, that's exciting news about arcane barrage.

I thought there was something funky about the numbers it showed on the vids, but everyone had me convinced that they fit in with a 1.5/3.5 coefficient.

Now if this Netherwind stuff works out right, things are looking decidedly up for arcane.

Edit: also, why frostbolt/arcane barrage? I'd think that AM/ArBar would be the way to go here if NP functions appropriately. With NP procs inserted as they come up. Really hope that Blizz finds a way to make arcane work as a standalone tree with arcane nukes only.

 

Lhivera

That's interesting, but pretty weird. Wouldn't we then expect Fire Blast to have 8/3.5? Tying the coefficient to the cooldown is certainly a unique approach.

ETA: The conclusion is that they intend for it to be an honest-to-god primary nuke, not a situational spell at all. Which is quite exciting for deep Arcane builds, and is certainly going to mix up the playstyle a good bit.

 

Nota

If the coefficient for barrage is 3/3.5 then should we assume that it's meant to be a main nuke replacement that isn't affected by spell haste? If that's the case then wouldn't it end up hurting dps to spec for it at some point if they continue to make haste a significant portion of our dps increase from gear? I guess we could hope that haste reduces the cooldown as well but I wouldn't count on it.

 

Lhivera

But it is affected by haste, since the GCD is reduced. The only thing Haste adds to the mix is the need to use more than 1.5 seconds worth of filler spells between Barrage casts, which could be two Arcane Blasts, or a Frostbolt, or an NP proc Fireball and one Arcane Blast, or whatever.

 

Rouncer

Sorry Mage Armor not Mana Shield