Regarding stacking mages, that's going to run into problems due to raid limits and group composition. Each mage requires some amount of group support. And other classes bring their own very attractive buffs, however nice WG might be, are you really going to eliminate, say, 2 warlocks to make room for 2 additional mages and forego curses? 3 mages + 2 warlocks with support is already pushing 10 slots. Then you have the healer group, then the tank group.
Short of abandoning melee dps altogether, it's going to be nearly impossible to squeeze more mages in there.
Short of abandoning melee dps altogether, it's going to be nearly impossible to squeeze more mages in there.
This is precisely the problem. If it proves to be higher DPS (and safer, with the trends of dangers for melee DPS), then min/max raiders WILL choose this option.
Mages in min/max guilds have to live with only having 1 spot in a raid currently, we know how much it sucks. Its a hard trend to break but they don't seem to be showing any signs of trying to break it with these tallents.
It's true that the opportunity cost of stacking mages may be too high to muscle out other classes, even with Grasp working as it does now. Going from 1 Frost mage to 3 probably increases the average crit chance increase per mage from 10% to 30%, but what do you have to give up to get that? Maybe the problem isn't as big as we suppose -- strong group buffs are rather better spread around now than they used to be in the Rolling Ignite days.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Yeah, it's really tricky as it stands. It's going to be very difficult to prevent it from being overpowered with stacked mages without also making it worthless for a single mage. Arazan's comparison with rolling Ignites, below, is very apt. I love that they're trying to solve the problem of so many Frost talent points being tossed out the window on boss fights, and I hope they don't have to abandon it.
Sure they can easily prevent if from being overpowered.
Drop the duration to 3 seconds.
Since frost mages will be spamming Frostbolt reducing the duration to 3 seconds gives them the opportunity to add an Ice Lance onto the end of the next Frostbolt cast and it will give the same sort of synergy but with only a 3 second duration it would require so many Frost mages to give a decent uptime that it wouldn't be a viable raid stacking technique.
They could also leave the duration at 5 seconds but then make it so the effect is incapable of having it's timer refreshed by another proc and if that wasn't enough then they could even add a cooldown to the effect to prevent it from being reapplied.
Plenty of options before resorting to the circular filing cabinet and going back to the drawing board.
Sure they can easily prevent if from being overpowered.
Drop the duration to 3 seconds.
That's what I've been thinking about, but I estimate that three Mages could still maintain a good 40% uptime on the debuff with a 3 second duration, resulting in a 20% crit rate increase.
I don't think it's impossible, but it's definitely tricky.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Yeah, it's really tricky as it stands. It's going to be very difficult to prevent it from being overpowered with stacked mages without also making it worthless for a single mage. Arazan's comparison with rolling Ignites, below, is very apt. I love that they're trying to solve the problem of so many Frost talent points being tossed out the window on boss fights, and I hope they don't have to abandon it.
The issue is not with the effect, but the fact that other mages can benefit from it because it is a -Debuff-. Simply make it a buff where all targets are considered frozen for the duration. A rename unfortunately may be necessary. :P
"Winter Incarnate"
"Frost Thought"
"Cool Aid"
Something.
Honestly, I think this would also make Deep Freeze more desirable, and still balanced.
No, the real problem is that switching to ice lance increases your spell cast speed, which increases uptime, which creates a feedback loop. According to magegraf, 3 mages can reach 70%-ish uptime.
Edit: a diminishing returns solution, instead of increasing returns, is probably possible if the debuff can't overlap.
Vontre, is that really so terrible in comparison to, say, ISB?
Actually I'm glad that it gets that high with just 3 mages, as it removes a lot of the incentive to bringing more mages. (And mages don't have curse of doom.) Presumably it runs into sharply diminishing returns from mage 4 and up in the same fashion ISB does for warlocks.
That's what I've been thinking about, but I estimate that three Mages could still maintain a good 40% uptime on the debuff with a 3 second duration, resulting in a 20% crit rate increase.
I don't think it's impossible, but it's definitely tricky.
They could also make it only apply with Frostbolt. Otherwise, Icelance spam might actually be the best DPS spec for deep frost. 3 Mages spamming icelance w/ a decent amount of spell haste could keep WG up nearly 100% of the time, especially with well timed IV and Heroisms.
Johnny, your raid with 10 mages is going to run into problems when it hits Void Reaver mk2, or M'uuru/KJ mk2. Encounter design matters.
And gearing up your guild will be a nightmare, as non cloth gets sharded and all the cloth is engaged in a wild food fight over the limited drops.
This is an area where the 25 man model is possibly superior to the 40 man one, it inherently limits raid stacking abuses.
I didn't mean that would be a regular occurance in raids, obviously you change things as the encounter demands, but in raids where you need to maximise DPS (Brutal v2), then I would hate to see raids considering this option even if it is the best result.
Vontre, is that really so terrible in comparison to, say, ISB?
+50% crit vs. +15% damage -- yeah, I'd say it's pretty terrible.
Originally Posted by Thegoodman
They could also make it only apply with Frostbolt.
That may be a reasonable solution, actually. It moderates the proc rate somewhat, and also extends the average rotation by one extra non-shatter Frostbolt (since the ice lance thrown in at the end hasn't got a chance to re-proc the effect).
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
Vontre, is that really so terrible in comparison to, say, ISB?
Actually I'm glad that it gets that high with just 3 mages, as it removes a lot of the incentive to bringing more mages. (And mages don't have curse of doom.) Presumably it runs into sharply diminishing returns from mage 4 and up in the same fashion ISB does for warlocks.
ISB gets harsh diminishing returns on the second warlock.
No, the real problem is that switching to ice lance increases your spell cast speed, which increases uptime, which creates a feedback loop. According to magegraf, 3 mages can reach 70%-ish uptime.
Edit: a diminishing returns solution, instead of increasing returns, is probably possible if the debuff can't overlap.
While I was browsing around the early part of this thread earlier I stumbled across some TC on this. I'll see if I can find the link for it, but the math showed that IL spam did result in significantly higher uptime on WG, but when it wasn't up the DPS was so horrible that it was actually better to spam frostbolt and not even bother to lance at the end of the debuff. The best DPS, of course, came from using the ice lance at the end, but it's was only something along the lines of a 2-3% increase in DPS. The water elemental was excluded as well so the overall damage increase would be probably closer to 2%.
I think you guys are thinking a little strangely about stacking mages in regards to WG. As was pointed out, WG as it is now provides an exponential damage return when stacked. That doesn't so much mean you'd make all your 25mans something like 3 tanks, 7 healers, 15 mages... but what it does mean is that given 8 ranged dps slots, you'd bring 1 warlock, 1 shadowpriest, 1 hunter, and 5 mages... rather than a more balanced setup. On a ranged friendly fight, maybe you would see 7+ mages, as well.
Basically, you cannot have something that gives exponential returns without pushing out other classes. Even ISB has some drawbacks in that more shadow dps'ers can and will end up reducing ISB uptime, but one of the biggest downfalls of mages in TBC is that they don't benefit from ISB... and it's one of the reasons why warlocks are such a superior ranged dps class to mages.
WG is strictly better than ISB (and ISB is being nerfed to only affect non-periodic spells), and as it is currently designed, highly promotes stacking frost mages due to a broken mechanic.
The only way they could really balance it would be to make WG a charged debuff, similar to ISB. Just make it into:
Winter's Grasp
Your frost spells have a 5/10% chance to increase the chance of all attacks hitting that target by 2%. In addition, the the next 2 frost spells cast against that target will treat the target as though it were frozen.
^^ And just make it a charged debuff. That is the *ONLY* way that WG could ever be balanced.
While I was browsing around the early part of this thread earlier I stumbled across some TC on this. I'll see if I can find the link for it, but the math showed that IL spam did result in significantly higher uptime on WG, but when it wasn't up the DPS was so horrible that it was actually better to spam frostbolt and not even bother to lance at the end of the debuff. The best DPS, of course, came from using the ice lance at the end, but it's was only something along the lines of a 2-3% increase in DPS. The water elemental was excluded as well so the overall damage increase would be probably closer to 2%.
You are thinking about this in terms of black and white. Performing one ice lance at the end increases the average number of ice spells striking the target per second, which increases the uptime of the debuff, which again increases the number of ice lances you can cast for triple damage (which is better dps than frostbolt).
You are thinking about this in terms of black and white. Performing one ice lance at the end increases the average number of ice spells striking the target per second, which increases the uptime of the debuff, which again increases the number of ice lances you can cast for triple damage (which is better dps than frostbolt).
The simulation data I saw showed that adding the extra IL at the end increased the WG uptime by something like 1 or 2% and that the total DPS difference between lance at the end and straight bolt spam was something like 60 DPS.
So, over the past 4 days I've read most of this thread during my free time, skipping the occasional pointless reply. So bear with me as I weigh in on the various discussions that have sprung up in this thread.
Firstly, I believe one of the more important issues currently facing the mage community is how Blizzard sees the role of the mage class. There are 4 primary damage dealing classes: hunter, mage, rogue, and warlock. The role of hunters is to manage and modify threat (or more broadly: provide utility), while doing reasonable DPS in the process. The role of rogues is to provide constant DPS over the course of a fight. Their use of an energy bar means that they will always do close to their maximum optimal DPS regardless of fight duration. Both hunters and rogues are easy to place into roles. Warlocks and mages aren't as easy.
Both classes provide single target magic damage, in relatively equal amounts. Both classes also provide multiple target magic damage, in relatively equal amounts. Both classes benefit from the approximately the same raid buffs and neither provide good group buffs. Both classes are limited by a finite pool of mana from which to deal to damage and after that pool is spent, damage drops off considerably. Both classes have two talent/gear specs for mix/maxing DPS and one talent spec for threat management (or had anyway, warlocks seem to have lost theirs).
The big differences between the warlock and mage classes are that warlock single target nukes scale better, while mage AoE is more effective, has less threat generation, and has more variance. This leads me to believe that Blizzard expects mages to handle AoE situations better, while warlocks focus more on single target DPS.
The rest of my post should be read with that in mind.
Now to touch on talents. To me, the arcane tree has always been the tree that you resort to in threat sensitive situations. Being able to deal slightly less damage, with significantly less threat means that you end up dealing more damage if you are threatcapped. I would have said the same about the warlock Demonology tree, but Blizzard has done away with that, so they lost that option, even if none of them cared to explore it. Our arcane tree is also our utility school, with spellsteal, arcane blast, and slow. I was sad that neither of the utility gimmick spells (spellsteal and slow) saw any upgrades in the leak, and AB seems to have been put in it's place as a low threat mana dump.
However, we did get other utility talents. Incanter's Absorption looks like a great way to buff the low DPS of the tree by providing another way to be buffed by other classes. A lot will depend on the actual implementation of the spell, but one thing that hasn't been mentioned is how similar abilities that act with absorption shields work. Reflective Shield, the disc priest talent, returns 50% of the damage absorbed to the attacker. The interesting effect is that it doesn't differentiate between an attack that is fully absorbed and an attack that is partially absorbed. So, a 5k melee hit that gets 2 points of damage absorbed should only return 1 damage to the attacker, but it instead returns 2.5k, or half of the attack that was "absorbed" by the shield. If that is intended, or isn't fixed for WotLK, then Incanter's Absorption may be significantly better than expected.
People have already done enough work on Netherwind Presence, so I won't say anything about it. Same with Arcane Barrage.
Potent Spirit will probably be worth 1% crit per point at level 80. I can't imagine that spirit levels will not end up somewhere on par with where intellect is now, once gear is changed to having it. 300 spirit should be close to 1% crit, and Student of the Mind will only help by providing more crit, more spell damage, and more mana regeneration. They aren't stunning talents, but you have to have filler talents and it is better to have fillers worth taking rather than crap.
For fire, I've always seen powerful inefficiency. Playing With Fire is a good example of a current inefficient talent, but we take it anyway because it makes us more powerful. Fireball has a very high mana cost compared to frostbolt. Ignite and the fireball dot are horribly inefficient for debuff management compared to frostbolt or arcane blast. Combustion is a pretty terrible talent for just giving us another 2-3% crit on average. Some of the other talents are better, but for the most part, we spend 48 talent points in the tree for 1 very situational spell (pyro), 2 close range AoE spells while already having arcane explosion (BW and DB), and a ton of buffs to fireball (and scorch). 45 points worth of fireball buffs is a ton when other trees have significantly less wasted talents or better utility fillers. And we do it because it provides us with the most powerful spec we can get. I don't see that changing. However, our talent choices might, depending on if we really want to do more AoE damage.
Fiery Payback seems like our 1 gimmick talent. If things continue as they have in SWP, there's going to be a lot more raid damage, and some of it should be resistible (although the changes to resist mechanics may make it less likely). The wording however, might make it work on partial resists, and that'd be a plus. I doubt it, but wouldn't rule it out. If so, it provides us with a way to do extra damage, which we've already shown to be a good enough reason to take shitty talents (PWF).
Hot Streak has been talked about, and looks pretty good, if still a poor way to get 2-4% extra crit. I'll talk about Burnout later.
World in Flames is one of the big talents that leads me to think that mages are being thought of as the primary AoE class for raids. Depending on the implementation (and other things), it could be a great talent. Combined with Imp Flamestrike, it would be providing a sizable buff to Flamestrike DPS. Especially with the increase to the DD damage compared to the DoT portion. If WiF doesn't suffer abortion from damage caps, it will be a very good talent for AoE. It would be better as a "If you fire AoE spells hit more than 3 targets, all targets hit by the spell are affected by the WiF debuff, which increases fire damage taken by 15% for 9 seconds." That would help with the damage cap issue, would give us a bit more raid damage buff utility (magma/fire nova/fire elemental totems, hellfire/RoF, other mages' flamestrikes, explosive/immolation traps), and would do the same thing as currently planned.
I think Living Bomb is going to be an awesome AoE tool. Not only does it deal more damage per cast time than any other base AoE spell and has a lower "cooldown" than the two spells that do more base damage than it, but it also deals damage 4 times, which reduces the damage lost to the damage caps, assuming the DoT portion even has a damage cap. All of that may be irrelevant if the coefficient sucks, or if the damage cap is really low on the explosion or DoT portions, or if other damage caps are increased significantly more than the expected damage increase. Still, I think it will be worth speccing for instead of trying to cut down on points spent so that you can get Cold Snap or PoM.
Frost was the efficiency and control tree back in vanilla WoW. However, it now suffers from a ton of bloat. It has great talents all around, but too many talents combine a small DPS increase with something else, as others have discussed previously. Some of those talents really need to be combined together or have the number of points reduced.
Winter's Grasp has been discussed. Brain Freeze doesn't make sense as it is. Would be better if it reduced damage dealt by targets or something that will result in damage mitigation 100% of the time, rather than just part of the time. Imp WE is a pretty basic talent that doesn't really need discussion.
Chilled to the Bone suffers from the same bloat that affects the rest of the tree. Moderate damage increase paired with a some other type of utility or defense effect.
Deep Freeze seems like a pretty poor talent. The only thing I can see it being good for (in PvE) is replacing icelance in a burst combo in order to extend the burst combo by an extra frostbolt. And that is assuming that it gets changed to an instant cast. In raiding, most people have stuns, and stuns procs aren't reliable (WG has to proc for it to be useful at range, and a rogue or warrior or paladin or feral druid can easily provide a melee range stun.
All in all, the talents are focused into the 40-45 point tier talents being good, while the 46-50 tier is relatively crap, and maybe the 51 point talent is useful. Arcane Barrage is great in a tree that is subpar, Living Bomb is good in an okay tree, and Deep Freeze is meh in a great tree.
I said I'd discuss Burnout later. Now seems like a good time. Based on what the other 46-50 point talents give, it wouldn't make sense for it to be what we all want and hope it will turn out to be. A 3-4% damage increase is all that the comparative talents give, so it can't give much more than that. The 1% mana cost isn't even a big deal. I'm betting that regen will be the big stat of this patch, and getting to the point where you can regen enough mana to sustain yourself without much support will likely be possible. As a result, more focus will be on stacking spirit rather than int, which reduces the mana you lose to Burnout, without changing your effective mana pool.
The huge increase in DPS seen in BC vs vanilla is not going to be repeated in WotLK. I foresee at most a 7-8% increase in DPS for each class, while the effects from ratings drop and spell damage continues to grow at about the same rate as seen in BC raiding. People expecting to see the same jump that we saw from vanilla to BC are going to be disappointed (and that is most of us, it seems).
Enough on talents, those are going to see changes anyway. The next item that is interesting to me is how mana regen is going to scale in WotLK. Currently, the stats we have to go for are damage, crit, hit, haste, and int/spi, only because the latter give damage and crit. In WotLK, mana regen seems like it will be a bigger issue, as I mentioned before. As a result, haste will suffer, since haste reduces the effect of mana regen.
And that's the end of my post, other than a final touch on the warlock/mage issue. Ignore it if you don't care.
And warlocks and mages really need to accept that we are in the same boat. Looking at the warlock talents, they took a nerf to the destro tree (as a result of Blizzard's failure to recognize the incredible scaling inherent in it) and end up getting access to imp lifetap and instant corruption, which will probably end up being a slight DPS increase, though maybe not as much as everyone else. Fire destruction is going to see good improvement. Shadow destruction will probably end up being a hybrid spec with affliction or demonology, with similar damage to what you see now. Things are going to get shuffled around, I think, but you'll find that stuff works out to a similar increase that everyone else will see in the end.
I think you guys are thinking a little strangely about stacking mages in regards to WG. As was pointed out, WG as it is now provides an exponential damage return when stacked. That doesn't so much mean you'd make all your 25mans something like 3 tanks, 7 healers, 15 mages... but what it does mean is that given 8 ranged dps slots, you'd bring 1 warlock, 1 shadowpriest, 1 hunter, and 5 mages... rather than a more balanced setup. On a ranged friendly fight, maybe you would see 7+ mages, as well.
I can't imagine any raid setup running with only 1 warlock. You need 2, minimum, for curses.
Your total caster dps support for 8 slots consists of a single hunter and a shadowpriest. No moonkin? No shaman? This is just a bad raid setup. I anticipate that any reasonable caster dps group is going to require at least a moonkin and shadow priest per group. That's already 4 spots in 2 groups. Throw in 2 locks, and we have 4 total spots left in 2 caster groups, to be split among mages, shaman and hunters.
No, the only way you are ever going to see absurd mage raid stacking is if you dip into the melee dps group, and outright replace it with a 3rd ranged dps group. Is WG that good? I'm doubting it.
I think you're missing a couple points in regards to warlocks. What warlocks have become in T6 and Sunwell levels of gear is an aberration of what the class was intended to be, or at least an unforeseen evolution of the class. Destruction locks don't use pets and don't cast DoTs, which seems counter to general warlock design. And Blizzard knows it; if you look at the recent changes to the Destro tree they're really trying to push warlocks away from Demonic Sacrifice and back into using a pet. The other thing you missed is that warlocks do bring buffs to the raid - even if you discount Health and Soulstones as not being "group buffs", there's still curses to consider.
In regards to AoE, I'm all for being AoE kings, but since a lot of classes will be able to AoE at least in some form or fashion in WLK, it's not an area that greatly concerns me (with the continued exception of AoE at range). There aren't many situations where top-notch AoE is mission-critical, and I don't want too much emphasis placed on AoE at the expense of the other aspects of the class. Keeping those things in mind, I wouldn't for an instant trade a single target DPS buff for an AoE buff. If we get to a point where our AoE is super-godly but our single target DPS is terrible, then if AoE isn't needed for a boss fight, then mages really will become trash bitches that you sub out at bosses.
I was running some numbers for possible specs for FrostFire Bolt, and it occurred to me that partial resists may have a reduced effect on the spell. The principal of the argument being, that the spell would preform separate resist checks per spell school, on it's way to ultimately determining what type of damage it would deal. At the time I figured it would lose about 2.5-3% of damage due to resistance (as opposed to the 5-6% we see on regular, single school, spells). However my assumption is in fact, much higher than the result that I obtained once calculated.
My assumptions:
-The spell when not resisted would deal equal amounts frost or fire damage.
-The resist checks for the spell are separate, with the one providing the most benefit to the caster being used.
-100% hit chance ie: I ignored spell hit mechanics for the time being.
Where the target is 3 levels above the spell caster expected partial resists would be:
Chance for 0% partial = 0.83
Chance for 25% partial = 0.11
Chance for 50% partial = 0.05
Chance for 75% partial = 0.01
This works out to 0*83 + 0.25*0.11 + 0.5*0.05 + 0.75*0.01 = 0.06, or 6% expected damage reduction due to partial resists.
Keeping in mind that in wolk partial resistances seem to be calculated in 10% increments the overall effect should be about the same. The reason I haven't use the 10% increment model is because I am uncertain of the probability distribution for a +3 level mob.
(The raw values for the equations are the result of a simple probability tree that I drew)
This works out to 0*0.9711 + 0.25*0.0253 + 0.5*0.0035 + 0.75*0.0001 = 0.00815, or just 0.815% expect damage reduction due to partial resists. Needless to say that provides a huge scaling benefit compared to fireball/frostbolt (if it is true that frostbolt is no longer binary).
I can't imagine any raid setup running with only 1 warlock. You need 2, minimum, for curses.
Your total caster dps support for 8 slots consists of a single hunter and a shadowpriest. No moonkin? No shaman? This is just a bad raid setup. I anticipate that any reasonable caster dps group is going to require at least a moonkin and shadow priest per group. That's already 4 spots in 2 groups. Throw in 2 locks, and we have 4 total spots left in 2 caster groups, to be split among mages, shaman and hunters.
No, the only way you are ever going to see absurd mage raid stacking is if you dip into the melee dps group, and outright replace it with a 3rd ranged dps group. Is WG that good? I'm doubting it.
You're missing my point. Winter's Grasp is exponentially beneficial. That is, more mages benefit more simultaneously while also increasing WG uptime. As it currently stands, there is no need for ranged dps other than frost mages (or frostfire mages), because the more you stack the more absurdly high all their crit rates become, until you get to the point where you have nearly 100% WG uptime, at which point you can assume that all your frost mages have crit rates in the 75%'ish area, and your frostfire mages have 85+% crit rates. At that point, it'd be insanely easy for a mage to be doing the level 80 equivalent of about 4000 dps, if not far higher, because of a broken mechanic.
So, unless the encounter is specifically anti-ranged (note: you can't even use frost-immune as an excuse here because all your mages could just 33/38 it and use FFB to dodge immunity), there is no reason to bring dps classes other than mages, again... all because of a broken mechanic. There's no need to bring an elemental shaman or extra utility classes because group buffs are nothing compared to what one mage can bring with WG. You only need one warlock to put up CoS (remember CoS and CoE are being joined in 2.4.3), and one shadowpriest for misery and mana restoration to the healer group... and since VT is being nerfed I'm not even so sure you'd want to bring the one shadowpriest.
As it is now, WG is as broken a mechanic as rolling ignites were. It inspires insane stackability because of an insanely overpowered debuff that is timed and not charged. There is no need to bring multiple hunters, multiple warlocks, or many hybrid classes with the one exception of moonkin, but moonkin are only an exception because of the amazing haste buff scaling with WG.
Basically, imagine if mages got a talent deep in the frost tree that says:
Increases your crit rate by 2^n%, where n is the number of mages in the raid.
That's roughly what WG does.
EDIT:
Oh and another note, you can still stack mages even if you already have 100% WG uptime. Let's say you have 7 deep frost or frostfire mages in the raid, and you have about as close to 100% WG uptime as you're gonna get. You can STILL bring even more mages because they can spec 33/10/28 frostfire, and leech Winter's Chill and WG from the other mages, and by critting 80% of the time with the insanely high crit modifier that the build brings.
EDIT2:
There's also no need to bring shadowpriests to groups abusing WG. Frost mages are exceptionally good at maintaining mana and simply don't need shadowpriests, and frostfire builds will have MoE... and if you have 80% crit rates you're going to be getting such an insane amount of mana back from MoE that the need for a spriest will be eliminated.
Really thinking about this, I'm going to say that WG as it stands would actually be MORE broken than rolling ignites were. It's actually pretty scary.
I don't see how you can dispense with CoR, Arazan, if only to improve tank threat. That means 2 warlocks.
Improved boomkin aura is a more or less permanent 20% haste buff to any caster in their who can crit sufficiently often. That is huge. It's exactly the sort support a crit happy WG frost mage might want. Boomkins are going to be essential components of caster dps groups in the future, in exactly the same fashion that enhancement shammies are for melee dps groups on live.
And our permanently hasted frost mages are going to be burning through mana at a fierce rate, hence the shadow priests.
In other words, you simply cannot look at WG in a vacuum without considering what other classes are bringing to the table. Sticking 5 mages in a group and calling it a day isn't going to do, WG or no.
I don't see how you can dispense with CoR, Arazan, if only to improve tank threat. That means 2 warlocks.
Improved boomkin aura is a more or less permanent 20% haste buff to any caster in their who can crit sufficiently often. That is huge. It's exactly the sort support a crit happy WG frost mage might want. Boomkins are going to be essential components of caster dps groups in the future, in exactly the same fashion that enhancement shammies are for melee dps groups on live.
And our permanently hasted frost mages are going to be burning through mana at a fierce rate, hence the shadow priests.
In other words, you simply cannot look at WG in a vacuum without considering what other classes are bringing to the table. Sticking 5 mages in a group and calling it a day isn't going to do, WG or no.
Well, what I'm looking at for a standard raid with stacked WG mages is something like:
Prot Warrior
Frost DK
Tank (or OT, kitty would fit nicely)
Hunter/Rogue
Enh Shaman
Holy Pally
Holy Priest
Resto Shaman
Healer (doesn't matter, IDS priest would be nice)
Spriest
^^ With a setup like that, you can assume nearly 100% WG uptime, and all the mages will have boomkin haste buff as well. Also note that FFB should be affected simultaneously by the threat redux of Burning Soul as well as Frost Channeling, so you might need all your mages to be FFB/WG spec or else they'll be generating far too much threat, or else put a resto shaman in the group with all the frost mages and megacrit mages for Tranquil Air Totem.
CoR is easily expendible if you're scrimping melee dps. The extra threat generated just isn't worth the huge loss of rDPS.
That raid comp has 1 blessing, only one war to cover shouts/thunderclap (and he is the MT), two out of mana Moonkins, and a lot of OOM mages. 6 healers is a tad light, as well. No ret paladin for judgments, either, thanks to the lack of a proper melee group, which further strains our dps casters' mana pools.
WG had better be something really special, or this is going to fall flat on its face.
06/25/08, 3:49 PM
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