Zaldinar

With 2/2 Arc Sub being in melee range is not an issue (as far as threat goes that is, the question of what to do if you pull is still present).

110% threat to pull at melee, 130% to pull at range, 40% threat reduction for AE, at most 10% threat reduction at range (that is, FS/Blizzard/SoC, any other AoE). Ignoring Salv etc since they would benefit both sides equally. We come up with a value of tank threat required per point of damage dealt to hold aggro of:

AE:
1 * .6 / 1.1 = 0.5454

Other:
1 * .9 / 1.3 = 0.6923

With AEs capped damage per cast time being observed as equal to SoCs, we can say that in a capped environment AE has the threat advantage. Mix in Spellpower, IV, Arcane Impact, our crit rate vs locks, Shatter, etc, and AE comes out the theoretical best for damage output.

To truly model the game, we first must research it.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...icId=109841969
Proven TheoryCrafting Stuff, chain casting in a PTR near you soon.

 

Deedre

Werebeef, dirty little mage secret: our top aoe spec is deep arcane, not deep fire. Betcha Manly and company could post top WWS parses if they ever really wanted to for Felmyst anyways by a simple respec.

I'm not familiar with the particulars of M'uru or KJ and have no idea how arcane would do there, but the spec does have tricks to increase sustainability (magic absorption), plus you can gem for int with the build. This is possibly not worth the bother as it requires building an entirely new set for just those two fights, arcane has rather idiosyncratic gear requirements.

Post 2.4 deep arcane mages spamming AE more than hold their own against seed spam. I've done 6k+ dps on Hyjal trash waves with the build.

 

Jarlyn

Our AoE is fine, with the glaring exception of when you can't be in melee range. That's why warlocks dominate M'uru and KJ - fight mechanics prohibit being in proximity to the adds. That's also why I'd like to see Living Bomb changed to some sort of ranged, targeted AoE. World in Flames might fix Flamestrike to an extent, but there's still the issue of it's targeting circle being very small.

 

arch

Just make living bomb castable on mobs over like 30 yards aswell as being usable on self.

 

Zaldinar

The big question with World in Flames is whether or not it changes the spells AOE Cap. I hope that its either configured to increase the cap, or indicates a change in logic for the caps. Otherwise, its a rather gimp ability.

To truly model the game, we first must research it.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...icId=109841969
Proven TheoryCrafting Stuff, chain casting in a PTR near you soon.

 

Roywyn

Imp. CoC doesn't, for what it's worth. But I'm being optimistic that it the caps might get a review in their interaction with those and other talents! Maybe :o

The issue I see with all the fire AoE talents is that currently, Arcane Explosion is still the most important AoE spell we have.
Flamestrike has slightly worse scaling (scales worse, but can make up some with crit talents), but it's damage cap is 1/4 lower while having twice the cast time.
So AE is more than twice as good when you're at the cap.

Blastwave is slightly worse than AoE, but more than makes up with crit talents.
Dragon's Breath is equal, gets more from talents, but you can't guarantee to hit all targets with it (cone).
It's arguably better to hit every mob for 12k total than hitting half the mobs for 14k total.

Living Bomb, I don't think we know anything reliable about it and its scaling yet.


And even when when you use Flamestrike every 12 seconds (to get most out of the uncapped DoT part, as the DD part scales and caps badly), BW every 20s, DB every 40s, that still leaves you ~65% of your cast time to spam AE.

I honestly don't see the point of putting 9 points (IFS, WiF, BW/DB/LB) into fire talents when they are just slightly better than AE, and when they make up at most 35% of our cast time, and even less when we account for haste.

You also get 50% more threat from fire damage, which may be an issue with the higher crit rate and crit bonus at the start of a fight. Just mentioning it, since AE vs. Seed threat has been mentioned before.


Maybe they tweak caps. Maybe Hot Streak will significantly improve Fire AoE as well. We just don't know enough.
But right now, I don't really see that the fire AoE spells/talent give a significant enough advantage.


What I'd love to see is a comparison of AoEing, say, 15 mobs for 35 seconds (=4*Flamestrike with full DoT duration if recast properly) at 1500 spell damage, no haste (to favour fire) and 25% crit (gear/buffs).
Once as Fire spec spamming AE, once using FS/DB/BW as well. And maybe once as Arcane, or Seed spam.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Jonny_Monroe

Quick analysis of the mana return function of MA:

Resistance - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

Tells us that 100% resist rates don't significantly increase untill ~55%+ resistance. Given 120 base resistance on MA and MA, we get 22.5%. To reach 55% we would need ~293 resistance. After a resistance aura/buff (130), we're at 250 resistance. At this point, a simple 100resistance on gear (I can get 100resistance right now off a pair of rings or trinkets) would start to see us some rather significant mana returns from any regular amount of AoE spell damage (or even regular secondary target spell damage). With a 20k mana bar on an arcane mage at 80(somewhat conservate, given current mana pools of 15k+ raid buffed), we get 1k mana back on a resist.

Assuming (and this is a total guess), a fight where some form of spell damage hits you every 10 seconds, at 60% average resist (320 resistance; buffs +70 from gear), you have 12% to completely resist, thats or 60mp/5 (if my wretched, wretched math is right). At this point, due to the way resistance mechanics work, adding more resistance becomes exponentially more potent.

This completely ignores binary effects which are FAR more powerful (in the above example, an AoE silence every 30seconds would equal 100mp/5). It also doesn't take into account the damage reduction, which by itself is a great benefit to a group/raid.

Sorry to be a little off the current thread topic, but I wanted to make an analysis of the tallent for my own purposes and I figure its worth sharing the conclusions.

OMNOMNOM.

 

Pintofbrew

Locks can't sustain AoE DPS either. The fact that they Tap their mana up and receive healing doesn't change the fact that they gain an awful lot of mana via heals. SoC costs 884 mana per cast, that's 442 mana per second. AE is only 363 mana per second, and a mage will have Mage Armor up while AoEing, granting at least 200mp5 more than a lock enjoys.

The fact that you don't "count" life tap healing as a mana source displays a problem with your representation of the situation, not the mechanics.

Being in melee range is irrelevant; it has been proven that melee range @ -40% agro is more agro threshold than ranged @ -10%. It also puts you in prime position to use all your AoE snares, if shit hits the fan. CoC, DB, BW, Nova all need proximity. The only AoE snares we have that don't, are talented blizzard and the Elemental's Freeze.

I disagree with your position about warlocks being superior. It is far within the realm of understandable that you supply your AoE with an SP at this junction in the game, and unless you're not getting an SP a warlock will only surpass a mage provided you're supplying heals to his LT and only when the mage is oom. Which, ultimately, is not even a clear point, because a warlock using inferior DPS SoC, having to LT will be even less DPS than a mage on AE, who has managems (which on AoE trash should be combined with SCB), and Evocate, and Mage Armor. The warlock can not deal with "oh shit" scenaria, like for example, a warlock pulled an abomination via his uncontrolable agro, can not blink out of melee range if he percieves he's in danger, or indeed blink through a consacrate, and certainly can't Ice Block.

The warlock can also not IV-AE, or depending on spec, AP-IV-PoM-Flamestrike->AE spam.

In fact, the only thing I see warlocks capable of doing right now, is supplementing AoE to mages, which by the way, needs a mage to burst. Unless you like watching SoC tick away it's piddly damage, waiting for it to expire before detonating.

E: And that's without even considering how sick [Ashtongue Talisman of Insight] is on AoE. It's absolutely permanently up 145 haste, which fully affects AoE output by quite a significant amount.

 

Deedre

Jarlyn, out of curiosity, what's going on in M'uru and KJ that precludes aoe at melee range?

 

Crepusculu

M'uru and KJ events produce massive short-range AE damage. M'uru's void spawns have something like a 20-30 yard AE shadow volley. Clumping together during KJ tends to quickly kill people from splash damage. With target switching for single target dps, mages won't have their scorch debuff on, which is further dps loss. This is why no one wants mages for either of the fights. The amusing thing is that the zone wide buff in sunwell provides 40 int, so you just need a mage for biscuits.

Addons
http://www.wowinterface.com/list.php?skinnerid=35267

 

Last_Human

You bring up a few good points but I cannot agree with everything you say.
Lifetap healing has never, ever been an issue in any 25 man non pug raid I've ever been in, lifebloom is amazingly mana efficient, and other HoT's/CH while not as good tend to get the job done.

Melee range is not often a problem, but it does have its disadvantages, pulling aggro means you need the likes of blink or fn or you'll likely die while a warlock has time to SS or call for a BoP. In addition on Muru it's not viable to do any melee range AoE and while I haven't fought KJ yet (on Muru) there appears to be events that dissuade clustering.

Mage AoE is strong, and ideally mage and lock AoEs compliment each other, but I believe we need a good ranged sustained option.

Regarding AoE mana, it's been an issue in the past on sloppy pulls in hyjal or when we're short on locks and I've been AoEing on Muru. If you run AoE light or have a few people die it can certainly be a factor.

 

PSGarak

Given appropriate healing (which is to say, given that we haven't pulled agro and are getting hammered one), lifetap is mostly a time sink. Estimate about 2 lifetaps per 3 SoCs, that makes 1/3 of our AoE time lifetapping after we blow through our mana bar the first time. That's a non-trivial DPS drop, although it does take us about 20 seconds at max DPS to reach that situation.

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

 

Bisbus

I believe you're looking at this only from an arcane mage's point of view. As an arc/frost mage I can spam AE as long as I need to without much concern for mana. As fire or frost, however, they are extremely taxed for mana which will give warlocks a large advantage. I will say on hyjal trash there is absolutely no issue with me out damaging warlock seed, but the current concern is on fights like Muru or KJ where AE isn't viable and we must rely on inferior forms of dmg.

 

Obaid

Last_Human, healing is not the issue, it's the 1s+ wasted to Lifetap. That 1s+ wasted is DPS not done.

It's similar to how tanks think of the [Formula: Enchant Boots - Boar's Speed] enchant as being extra threat because they do not have to waste threat time as much by running around. Similarly, anything a lock is casting that is NOT a DPS spell is DPS time lost.

Any Mages have any opinion on [Airman's Ribbon of Gallantry] on Hyjal AoE trash?

 

Sorcerer

Both classes mana pools suffer a lot from AOEing but oom mage does nothing, oom lock will lifetap.

 

Last_Human

I'm well aware of dps lost due to lifetapping both on SoC and in general SB spam.
Pintofbrew specifically mentioned twice in his post the burden of healing the lock as a disadvantage, which, while it naturally is, doesn't play a large factor in current raiding.

 

Sancus

I'm sorry... what? Have you ever actually aoed in a raid situation before? Look, here is how it works: You aoe for maybe 30 or 60 seconds tops, then you have a break before the next wave you need to aoe. Guess who is full mana when that wave comes? Oh, right, Warlocks. Guess who can barely regen at all? That's right: Mages. Life Tap regens more than twice as much mana per second as evocation. It doesn't matter that SoC costs slightly more mana per second, because Warlock mana regen is much more powerful than the difference.

All of you people quoting aggro as the main downside of being in melee range sound very out of touch with reality, btw, that is not the main problem with it. The main problem is that being in melee range puts you at risk of short range aoe effects like the ones on M'uru and KJ, not to mention in situations like Hyjal it leads you to being instantly killed if you pull aggro, whereas range gives time for both you and your tanks to react if you pull aggro on a couple of mobs, which does happen. Range is vastly superior in every way.

For these two reasons, our inability to sustain aoe for any significant amount of time and our inability to do it from range, boss encounters that include AOE have become Warlock encounters. Warlock aoe is superior in the current design of raids, period.

Warlocks are 100% ensured Vampiric Embrace in any good raid group, and it instantly makes healing a complete and utter non-issue. Don't cite Warlocks requiring healing as an issue in raids. It isn't, and you only make yourself look incredibly foolish by acting as if it is.

Even if you had to pump sizable amounts of healing into Warlocks, it would still be irrelevant, because the difference between Mages and Warlocks isn't amount of aoe dps or mana efficiency or anything like that: It's the simple fact that Mages can aoe for about a minute and then they're done for the rest of the fight, and Warlocks can aoe forever-and-ever. Give them 10-20 second breaks, and they don't even spend any time Life Tapping while aoeing.

The ideal Mage AOE encounter is Felmyst, where you aoe only 3 or 4 times in the whole encounter, and you do it for less than 20 seconds each time. The cute thing is, that this requires that the aoe be a joke that isn't actually a challenging part of the fight. The ideal lock encounter could be 10 minutes long and could involve aoe for 30-60 seconds with 20 second breaks... it doesn't really matter. Mage AOE is only useful under extremely short time constraints.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Pintofbrew

Sancus: I don't appreciate your aggressive tone. I assure you I have AoEd plenty. Note how I refrained from commenting on KJ and M'uru as I have not had first-hand experience, but while pointing out everything you do, you simple do not address any of the issues I state:

Warlocks have no AoE tools aside from SoC, which is only DPS and only provided someone detonates it.

Warlocks, whether or not they get healed have to lose 40% of their AoE DPS to tap. If they get healed or not doesn't matter in this context.

Nobody is forcing you to be in melee to AE, if you can't sustain melee distance, and as you noted later in your post AoE DPS doesn't matter, then use Blizzard or Flamestrike, what's yout point? AE gives you a far superior aggro margin at the cost of zero utility, while Blizzard gives massive utility and lower DPS.

Pointing out LT gives more mp5 than Evo is irrelevant, given your arguments. Your whole argument revolves around DPS being irrelevant, otherwise you'd not bother, because we already established a SoC is miles behind AE spam.

The only actual argument in your post is that mages have limited mana sources. How quaint; so 175% of your mana pool isn't enough, counting evocation, with the addition of a mana gem and mage-armor at 200mp5 at least over a warlock? How much AoE exactly are you talking about here, you realize that if you have to, using all these tools for the AoE in question, we're talking close to 2:00 minutes? I'm tempted to run the numbers, and evaluate one mage on Mage Armor, with a gem, an SP, and an Evo, how long he's going to cast to run dry, then run the same numbers for a lock with the same SP, and count how much LT he'd have to do, how much of his time would be left to SoC and compare the actual AoE DPS through that, but I don't think there's a point, I think you're just flaming.


The only thing I get from your point is (1) There's AoE in KJ and Muru I'm not aware of, which I knew before you pointed it out and (2) you're extremely bitter because you're looking at the other side through green-tinted glasses, swapping to shit-tinted ones when you look at your own side. Every argument pro-mage you take as granted and dismiss, while every semi-credible point about warlocks you treat like it's the best thing since Mage Table.


Because gaining 80 spell while AoEing, when your spell capped-out 300 spelldamage ago will help you?

 

Finkum

Unfortunately raising your magic resist doesn't improve your chance to fully resist (non-binary) spell effects. Back when Kara was progression content for my guild I ended up tanking the Illhoof imps due to a complete lack of warlocks. Even at 350 FR, I didn't see more than the expected 3 - 4% resist rate due to spell "misses." There's even a thread here in EJ somewhere about the issue if you dig back far enough.

 

Roywyn

From my experience in Hyjal, mana is very tight as a fire spec. You cannot Evocate on every pull. Even drinking up isn't guaranteed on every pull.
Clearcasting/Meditation/Arcane Mind play role at least as important as the ~20% damage increase from crit/spell power talents.

And you dismissed his point that mage ranged AoE is pretty bad. The difference between Blizzard and AE is ~40% DPS and you can't use TLC/AToI/4T5. Flamestrike's targeting circle is small enough that it's often not very useful, especially with its 3s cast time.


Most of the time in Hyjal, I'm not capped (as fire spec). With my current gear, I think I cap at 14/15 mobs.
A number that I hit very rarely in Hyjal.

That being said, I don't think the trinket is any good.
You're not going to get a killing blow until the first AoE'ed mob dies. At that point, most of your AoE work is already done, and you didn't have the 80 damage proc for most of the time that it mattered.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Lileith

Do we have a confirmation that the dispell immunity on Mage/Warlock's Armors is an intended change and not a bug?

 

Anedris

It would be nice if mages got the old DnD-style fireball (a bolt that explodes in an AoE blast on impact). Seed of corruption is an extremely convenient AoE. Unlike blizzard and flamestrike, it can be used easily and efficiently on a moving pack of mobs and unlike AE it can be used at range (which is sometimes important - M'uru being a principle example but it was also useful when the Morogrim strategy was to seed everything to Hell and back and then let them all die before they can crawl the 30 yards distance to the warlocks). That seed needs to be triggered isn't really a drawback - it will trigger itself given enough time - and can actually be an advantage, allowing warlocks to pre-load a huge amount of burst AoE (again, was useful for Morogrim for guilds who did it without a protadin).

Not a big deal though.

I guess the other thing that has happened is that the advent of prot paladins has rendered blizzard's snares largely superfluous. Back in an era when it was mostly impossible to tank a dozen mobs at once (at least without an army of tanks) for more than 6 seconds (challenging shout duration) the immense AoE snare that blizzard provides was far more important (along with frost nova rotations). Paladin tanks have made blizzard's utility largely unnecessary, leaving it as simply a lower DPS AoE usable at range. (It retains certain spectacular uses - Illidan's shadow demons being one notable one - but has become a niche spell instead of a spell that you want up everytime there's something to be AoEed.)

Of course, if the extra 10% snare goes through and imp. blizzard is able to reduce mobs (or players) to 15% movement speed... that will be a huge amount of control and may provide a solid option for a raid without a protadin against any snareable AoE pack. It will even in some ways be superior to a root because a snared mob will continue to chase its aggro holder (instead of swinging at anything nearby as a rooted mob will).

I am not sure an 85% snare will be allowed to see live though. It would be a tad ridiculous. (It likely has some serious PvP implications too. The duration is short, but it would not have diminishing returns, and in larger arena brackets would likely allow a frost mage to wreak havoc on any melee-focused team... though I suppose a frost mage kind of does that already.)

 

Cornelium

Can't agree more with what Pintofbrew states.

If there's a point where mages shouldn't complain is probably AOE damage.
While i know it doesn't matter for TC purposes, i have to say MH has always been a walk in the park to me, even without a shadowpriest in the group (please notice i was arc/frost at the time). Doing more DPS than warlocks as arcane is extremely easy, thanks to your manapool, gems, BT trinket and such. With an elemental shaman AND a shadowpriest the gap in damage will be huge.

However, our highest single-target-dps spec does not provide such advantages. More aggro, less radius with your only "spammable" spell and only a cone available to the highest dps spell are big disadvantages. Not to mention the (small, yet existant) amount of spelldamage lost by using AE with fire damage gear on.

This doesn't mean mages are second dpsers to warlocks. The problem is that, while warlocks' single-target spec is almost equally good in AOE damage as their "utility" one, the same can't be told about mages. And despite the presence of good AOE talents on WotLK fire tree, the absence of a fire-based effectively spammable fire spell is something that will keep our dps on stall for the time being.


E: In reply to Judy, one thing i'm very fond of in regards of WotLK is the frostmage/frostDK sinergy. We're likely to see such 2v2 teams in arenas, and -this is just a hope- an incredibly good sinergy between the two in PVE.

Make love, not war!

 

Deedre

This is coming down mostly to an encounter design issue. Are M'uru and KJ exceptional, or can we expect a lot more of this in the future? If the former, we are fine, if not, our ranged AE may need some help.

 

Pintofbrew

I believe the dispell protection is queued for the next patch, no?

Roywyn: With hind-sight, the only thing that worries me with respect to WotLK is Burnout and AoE. It'll inevitably force the cost of AoE up by a (smaller than sing-target, relatively) noticeable amount, as it's practically impossible to not crit, except in the case of Living Bomb, which obviously can crit, just at the end and (I assume) at no extra burnout cost. I think it's unlikely it retroactively charges you 1% when it goes off.

While I do love the idea of World In Flames, I'm confused as to what exactly a Firemage is expected to use as AoE? Clearly not FStrike, because you can't have LF at the same time, clearly not AE, because WiF does nothing to it. BW and DB are both too-long CD to bother... What's the deal, yo? Start with a Strike, switch on LF and only benefit from WiF on those two while AEing really seems lame. I'm thinking perhaps FS spam will be fine and benefit nicely from WiF, even over-writing the DoT all the time, but if that's the case, what's the point in LF?

Given the added mana issues we're facing, I'm contemplating dropping IV in fire builds, going for arcane 13 or 18 instead at this junction. I'm either not "getting" how we're supposed to AoE, or I'm not seeing how WiF-FS-LF-AE can in fact be superior, despite AE not gaining WiF.