Prinsesa

Good point, I had missed that.

Assuming there's a Frost Mage, and he's facing a boss who randomly cycles between taking significantly more elemental damage.

If we compare casting completely untalented Fireballs to casting Frostfire Bolts which deal Fire damage (since the boss is "more vulnerable" to that) and benefit from Frost talents, as well as casting fully talented Frostbolts which do not benefit from the increased damage debuff, is there some point of inflection for "x% more Fire damage taken" where the three switch priorities?

===

EDIT for Draele: Wouldn't that be another use for Frostfire Bolt, though? While I don't practice it, I understand the sentiment of being attached to a spec, and FFB would allow you to participate as a Fire specced Mage in a Fire immune fight without having to respec.

Granted, this would be susceptible to really finely-tuned fights (Brutallus comes to mind), but wouldn't more people be open to respeccing if it meant beating an encounter?

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Jarlyn

Respeccing on a per-encounter basis goes way beyond mages. In the process of Sunwell progression, just about every class in the game has respecced at least in a minor sense to get the extra edge for a first kill. The extremes are frequently paladins, some of whom respec for every single encounter in Sunwell, but that's uncommon. These days though, it's stupid *not* to respec for a progression kill if, by respeccing, you could be providing a greater benefit to your raid.

This argument about Frostfire Bolt is going in circles. If I'm a Fire mage and there's a Fire immune mob, unless casting FFB as Fire spec would produce more DPS than simply going Frost, then I'll be respeccing Frost and that's the end of it. My personal preferences and likes/dislikes in regards to spec are moot in the face of raid progression, and even though I might dislike switching specs, I dislike wiping to bosses even more. With FFB, it's either a primary nuke, or the only realistic situation where I'll use it is in a fight with rotating immunities. The exact numbers and mechanics of FFB are certainly open to interpretation, but beyond that I fail to see any further point to discussing it's purpose.

 

Skallewag

Not youre wriggling out of some of the options mentioned earlier. A priest CAN spec holy and then in his regular dps gear heal att full potential as a healer, OR not respec and perform at medium level. The exact same choise that mages, boomkins and elemental shamans face. Yes you loose out on damage and mr mana battery, but if the mana thingy is really vital for a battle with the shadow immune boss then its quite posible to spec disc as there will be mana battery talents in there as well. Every battle doesnt haveto be designed for optimal shadow dps, just like every battle isnt optimally designed for other classes. Theres anti melee features, anti caster features and sometimes resistant bosses.

It really boils down to one simple question. Why should any class be immune to battles were they haveto do something else than their regular task? Dont try to give me the "cause that means less DPS" It does mean that, but every fight isnt a DPS race. Hydross is a good example, or the curator. They are controll fights. Well in fact they also have an enrage timer but its not really a tight one. But the point is that those two totally mess with mages, shamans and boomkins. I still like those bosses, they were very fun fights. Like I said not every fight is about optimal mage DPS, why should every fight be about optimal priest DPS?

 

Prinsesa

They shouldn't, and that's exactly why there aren't any Shadow immune bosses - a Shadow Priest's regular task is DPS.

If he tries to DPS as Holy, his DPS is likely to suffer so much it'll be much better to just bring a different DPS.
If he tries to heal as Holy, he isn't doing his regular task.

That's what I've been trying to say all along.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Skallewag

Ok thats the opinion you´re trying to get across, but I got that allready. Yes if the priest heals he/she isnt doing the regular task, or just tries to support heal or deal holy DPS and do medicore damage. Thats the effect of a shadow immune boss. Im not asking for the effect of introducing a shadow immune boss either since I can pretty much figure that out.

What I would like you to explain is why shadowpriests and warlocks in particular should never have a fights thats stacked against them? Elemental shamans have it, boomkins have it, mages have it. On those fights its better to just bring another class unless the player respecs. Now Im all ears to hear what makes shadowpriests so special that they should never haveto endure something like that.

 

Prinsesa

I already covered this as well.

Boomkin do not have it: Nature immune? Moonkin already use Starfire. Arcane immune? Switch to Wrath, whose personal and raid DPS loss is nowhere near a Shadow Priest using Smite and the rest of the raid losing his utility (de)buffs.

Elemental Shaman do not have it to a much lesser extent: Enhancement, although it admittedly requires a 2nd set of gear.

Mages do not have it. We already know this.

Shadow Mages cannot have a fight stacked against them because Holy DPS is so poor that they will be replaced or will be healing.

For Boomkin, Shaman, Mages and Warlocks, you cannot stack a fight against them even if you wanted to because they always have an alternative spec that produces enough DPS and/or raid utility to let you afford keeping them.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Actovision

Clearly you're baiting someone to say "VT" so you can jump all over them with an already thought-out post talking about how non-essential VT currently is and how one can work around the lack of it. Being combative doesn't change the fact that this discussion is even more fruitless than other speculation since we don't know firsthand how FFB works, what its intended uses are, what its possibilities are, or how any raid encounters will look in WotLK except Naxx (maybe).

 

Obeast

I proposed what I think is a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon on the last page -- namely, that caster raid balance depends upon having a certain set of buffs from the shadow school (curses, misery, spriest regen) available. This is not true of any other spell school.

 

Anedris

Assume the boss is actually hard. In this context, as a raid leader:

- I am not going to bring a crappy DPSer. This means no fire mages slinging frostbolts, no shadow 'locks slinging incinerates, and no shadow priests smiting. I am going to either ask these people to respec or I am going to sit them.

- I am not going to bring a crappy healer. I will either have my shadow priests spec holy and wear healing gear or I will sit them in favour of other healers or DPSers.

- Realistically, because so many caster buffs rely on shadow effects (misery and VT and I'm not sure if the curses are shadow-based?), I am probably going to simply sit most of my casters and stack melee and hunters. It worked on pre-nerf Shahraz.

Incidentally, that last point is probably why they don't make shadow immune bosses. They already made a boss where casters were totally hosed, and people did the fight with two melee groups, a hunter group, and a dozen healers - oh, and one warlock for CoR. (I'm exaggerating - I know the original Shahraz was entirely possible with a balanced raid. However, the optimal raid for that fight was one without casters, and raid leaders noticed - and so did Blizzard.)

Edit: Obeast more or less said this just above me.

Another edit to make a conclusion: There will never be a shadow immune fight, unless it is a complete gimmick fight where the normal rules of DPS do not apply (or all the DPS is done to non-shadow immune adds, etc.). Frostfire bolt will be used only if there is a fight with rotating fire and frost immunities (which would be dumb unless mages were for some reason heavily advantaged in some way to make them worth bringing) or if it stands on its own. A fire mage coming up against a fire immune boss will respec. Ditto for a frost mage against a frost immune boss.

Oh, and when Blizzard told you that being able to deal damage with multiple elements was an advantage? Ya, they were lying

 

Xentropy

You can't pretend that such an encounter is impossible to balance, though. Give the boss a ton of armor and lower their hitpoints compared to a non-resistant boss. Suddenly the nerfed melee and caster dps output is AS DESIGNED for the encounter, it just requires someone other than mages to respec for once.

 

Anedris

It could be balanced, yes. But look at it from Blizzard's perspective - what's the point? No one likes being nerfed. So the melee and hunters will hate it (grr, high armor, I do crap DPS here), the shadow priests will hate it (oh yay, I get to respec and heal!), the shadow locks will hate it (grr, respec...), and the mages will feel smugly superior and vindicated for about half an hour and then realize that actually they kind of like VT, misery, and CoE, and then they'll hate it too. (Actually maybe watching warlocks squirm will never get old, who knows.)

 

Xentropy

What's the point of the CURRENT immunity fights? Or resist-based fights, for that matter. Or any fight where you have to collect a particular set of off-gear just for that fight.

Everyone hates it when they're the one being targeted by the annoying-encounter-of-the-month. Mages are more often targeted than other classes due to the fact we can deal damage with the most different schools. Which as mentioned on the previous page is completely backwards.

It doesn't even match Blizzard's own stance on talent specs. They've answered pleas for cheaper respecs over and over again with, "We don't WANT respecs to be cheap. You should feel invested in your spec. It should be semi-permanent." Then they throw encounters at JUST mages that require we become uninvested in our spec to get a raid invite. Huh?

If they're going to create encounters that many people hate because they have to jump through extra hoops such as collecting offspec or resist gear, respecing, or any other errand unrelated to playing in the raid itself, why not a shadow immunity fight?

 

Prinsesa

1. If you feel attached to your spec, FFB is supposed to help by letting you deal damage without having to respec. They recognized how annoying this was and made a spell to ... make it less annoying

2. They already announced they're introducing easier respecs, which SHOULD reduce the annoyance level even more depending on how it's actually implemented.

I recognize that #2 may in fact be used by Mages to store PvE/PvP specs, which might be of the same element, so FFB still retains its usefulness as an immunity backup.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Xentropy

1. As Anedris said, however, unless FFB is going to be overpowered for elementalists, it's not going to provide 100% of the dps of respecing, and thus raid leaders will require the respec. If you're a frostie and throwing FFB's that benefit from your frost talents does 90% of your normal dps but specing deep fire and throwing fireballs would do 98% of your normal dps, and the encounter is not trivial, you'll be forced to respec, no matter how "invested" you might be in your spec. And if a single-talented FFB does 98%+ of your frostbolt damage, you'll have been required to respec elementalist to throw double-talented FFB's at 120% a long time ago.

2. The announcement was actually that you were going to be able to save one additional spec. "Easier" wasn't stated, just "free". This, to me, means you'll still have to be at a trainer to do so, and it will likely act like a stable slot, meaning you take out your saved spec and your current spec goes into the slot. If you use the "spec stable" for a PvP spec, having to respec for an immunity fight will still require two respecs (before and after) and not really save anything. If you use the "spec stable" for an alternative PvE spec, you'll still have to pay for two respecs to PvP.

Really the only options for Blizzard to "make things fair" would be to remove immunity fights altogether or throw together a shadow immunity fight and balance around the debuff changes. Bottom line, though, is all of this is really just us whining about how "unfair" it all is and Blizzard will continue to ignore us and stick to the tried and true fire and frost (with the occassional nature) immunities, because they're proven to work, while other immunities have not been proven to work. Life's not fair, even in WoW. And the spec stable and FFB, while handy, won't eliminate the penalty attached to having multiple damage types.

 

kargathia

Doesn't FFB have the implied opportunity for blizzard to allow mages to have a loophole through the whole resistance fight problem? If the best raid dps spec is an elementalist, who can work around both fire and frost immunities then mages would get hit a lot less hard by fights like al'ar and hydross.

 

Jonny_Monroe

Nope, respeccing deep frost/fire will STILL give better numbers than elemental spec;

Fire immune boss-
Frost mage loses nothing
Fire mage can't work at all
FFb mage loses ignite (it still DEALS fire damage, even if frost proc'd it), FFb mage loses imp. scorch

Frost immune bosses-
Fire mage loses nothing
Frost mage can't work
FFb mage loses winter's chill, and possibly frost vulnerability and winter's grasp (depending if they're frost or physical debuffs)


So for hardcore min/max'ing; you still have to respec.

I agree that they need to stop advertising a mage's versatility of spell schools as being a class advantage though; as long as the content is bending over for shadow users, its just a disadvantage.

OMNOMNOM.

 

Anedris

I'm not going to defend immunity fights - I think they're dumb. (They would be interesting if the opposing element gained an advantage against them - so Ragnaros takes double damage from frost, nature-Hydross takes double damage from arcane, etc. - but that wouldn't work in WoW since respeccing/raid stacking are too easy.) I don't personally mind them since I like to try out different trees (gets boring doing the same thing forever) but other people don't enjoy that and obviously I can respec without needing a resistance fight to force me to do so. (Ergo, no point in annoying people who are more spec-loyal than me.)

 

Zeldyrr

The attitude towards respec'ing in this thread depresses me. Am I only the one that finds the whole idea of respec'ing cheezy and lame? Especially for hybrid classes, respec'ing can change the character as much as picking a different class. If respec'ing is trivial and easy why shouldn't I be able to reclass? I mean I could easily level a lock and mage to 70 (80). One raid encounter calls for shadow damage, in comes the lock. The next frost? In comes the mage. Since that is so easy to do, why not just let me reclass between mage and lock? To me that idea is a silly as insta and constant respecing.

I really really hope Blizzard doesn't go too far with the 2 spec thing they have alluded to. Something like you get to swap between your two specs once or twice a day. That would cover the "I raid as a prot warrior, leave raid, swap specs to arms, and do some arena" as well as the "I spec one way in raids, swap specs and farm/do dailies." But all this talk of swapping specs on the fly as long as you aren't in combat is ridiculous. A druid charges a mob, rips it up as feral. Jumps out of kitty form and BAM! he's a super healer. Heals two of his friends against another mob. Really? Are spec's like guns in Counterstrike? Press a key, become a completely different character?

I would love for Blizzard to implement something like the following. When you hit level 80, you can specialize in a tree. When you specialize, you get a bonus talent point or 2. You can also then respec as much as you want, as often as you want. But the catch is that whatever tree you specialized in must always have more points in it than either of the other trees. So if you spec frost, you can go arcane/frost hybrid or deep frost or elementalist but in all cases number of points in frost > fire and > arcane. The kiddies of the Blizzard world would never stand for it but I'd love to see it.

 

Xentropy

I (and probably many others) wouldn't have such a cavalier attitude about respecing if there weren't so many game mechanics (PvP and some raid encounters among them) that basically came with giant neon signs stating, "You must spec THIS way to enter."

I would love to see huge barriers to respecing, basically the ability only being there as a catch for misclicks and major shifts in playstyles. I've personally only respeced my mage twice in my three years of playing WoW. To fire for Hydross progression, then back to deep frost where I was for all of Pre-TBC and have remained now. I love deep frost, I consider it part of my character and it's my favorite playstyle. Milking every second out of my water elemental during burst opportunities is a thrill. Or at least a heck of a lot more of a thrill than 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 ooh time to scorch 2 3 3 3 3. . .

I'd rather see people respecing no more than once a month instead of daily the way many do now. However, to pull this off Blizzard would need to change a lot of aspects of the game. Immunity fights aren't the only thing that requires people to respec, though it's the most visible to mages. Tanks and healers frequently need to respec for better dps to solo or farm. One warlock needs to respec to tank Leotheras. One warlock may need to spec *out* of nether protection to tank Capernian. A game with talent trees more like Diablo 2's, which could never be changed (or had barriers to change added that would result in no more than say monthly or even quarterly changes) would be a very different game. Guilds might need legions of alts with specific specs that were only brought in to cover a particular need in a given fight. Every tank and healer would need a dps alt to efficiently farm with. It just, in a nutshell, wouldn't work without significant design changes across the board.

TLDR version: It's a pipedream, but I like to dream too.

 

Lhivera

Based on the summaries I read, they didn't even state "free." They just said you'd have access to two specs. Of course, you have access to two specs now, so we know something is changing, but we have no idea what or how.

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.

 

mkultra55

As has been stated already...Immunity fights represent a rarity now and (hopefully) in the WotLK so it's silly to spend this much time on the issue. We don't have enough information about the new content or EXACTLY how FFB works to comment without it being pure speculation.

One thing that does stick out from these posts is maybe something is seriously wrong with Blizzard's encounter design if one school of Magic (Shadow) is so important to overall Raid success. Logic states that a Priest specced Shadow that drops form and throws out Smites is about as effective as a Fire mage tossing Frostbolts and a LOT more effective than the thought of an Elemental Shaman going... Enhance???? (You had to be kidding right?)

That said the argument is that Blizzard has balanced Raids around DeBuffs from only 2 classes and if they were gimped all raids would fail? Either Blizzard is more screwed up than I thought or the logic of that statement is way off.

 

Prinsesa

Ultimately, because Blizzard said so.

They decided (however arbitrarily) that the barrier to respeccing should be 50 gold.
They decided that the barrier to "reclassing" should be several weeks of leveling and gearing.

They want to make one distinction harder to overcome than the other, and at the end of the day, they have the power to lay that down.

Not really, no. Assuming the Shaman has relatively equivalent sets of gear, the DPS output between Ele and Enh shouldn't be as drastic as between Holy and Shadow.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

Deedre

Zeldryrr, in an ideal world, I'd agree with you, and Lhivera has argued eloquently elsewhere in favor of sticking to your spec from a role playing standpoint.

But progression enforces its own priorities. Especially when encounters are tightly designed and unforgiving such as those in Sunwell.

Ultimately it's up to Blizz to design encounters in such a way as to discourage rampant respeccing, or, better yet, encourage diversity in specs even within a single encounter. In my perfect world, a raid would have room and reason to include a frost mage, a deep fire mage, and an arcanist. (With elementalists as reasonable substitutes for either frost or fire mages.) I don't pretend to know how this could be done or even if it is possible.

 

mkultra55

I think you keep missing my point. I'm not talking about a full respec I'm talking about switching to an Off Spec for that fight. The idea of respeccing on a fight by fight basis is somewhat repugnant to me and takes away what little RP'ing we still have in this "game".

Yes for Min/Max "World First Boss Kill" guilds they will stack the deck on an encounter by encounter basis. So for those Guilds a Shadow Immune Boss would just mean stacking Mages, Elemental Shammies, Hunters and Melee DPS. They would adopt and min/max their way to victory. For a Nature Immune type Boss they wouldn't have an Elemental Shammy respec to Enhance...they would bring another ranged DPS to take his place.

For the average progressing Guild however you do what you need to do. They don't always have the luxury of a "bench" of epic geared players of other classes/specs waiting their turn to get in. If two of your best players are Fire Mages and you are doing A'Lar then you probably bring those Mages along and have them go Arcane for the fight rather than respec for that one encounter. The same would hold for a Shadow Priest on a Shadow Immune fight.

 

Roywyn

No, shadow immunity means immunity to VT/Misery/curses/shadow embrace. That means they run with no/one (for buffs/utility/whatever) mages, warlock, shadow priests, then no elemental shaman or moonkin (the classes that these hybrids are missing).
It'll just be tanks, healers and melee/hunter comps.

That's the whole point with shadow immunity.
No one cares about fire/nature/arcane immunity - immunities suck, but those three schools don't matter.
Holy - means no ret paladin, and if your MT is a paladin he'll enjoy his night off.
Frost - no one cares right now, but it might mean that your Deathknight main tank will level his fishing that night.

Shadow means that the lack of curses, misery, vampiric touch and shadow embrace will make a minmax raid to run a cleave comp without casters due to the lack of damage debuffs.

As a raid leader, I wouldn't care about sitting out an SP and having some locks respec.
I would care about having to sit 1/3 of my raid or more because they become subpar DPS compared to physical DPS.
(Loss of CoR is ~7% compared to 18% misery/CoE and another 5-10% from VT.)

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.