AM is still bad even if it could proc NWp on each missile, which it currently cannot.
I guess they figure the main advantage to AM is that its channeled or has no pushback or something ridiculous like that.
Well, AM has a lot of benefits and a lot of drawbacks. It can allow for FSR, has a high and mathematically logical per-spell coefficient, it's pulsing damage so it's unique in that it's the only quasi-dot that can crit, and has in general very nice synergy with multiple arcane talents (Arc conc, arc potency, and even works nicely with MM). However it also has definite drawbacks in that it has a very restrictively high mana cost, it leaves the mage very vulnerable to interrupts and pushback if not talented 5/5 imp AM, and it's coefficient per second isn't as good enough to make it outclass other spells.
While I'd like to see it buffed by dramatically decreasing its mana cost, from a design standpoint it's a pretty perfect spell. Lots of advantages, some disadvantages, it really can't out-class any other spells, and it's a very unique spell.
Still, I'm not sure what their hardon is about making it so difficult for arcane to be a standalone tree, but I guess now that's more of a beef I have with mana dependency and mana (in)efficiency.
Well, AM has a lot of benefits and a lot of drawbacks. It can allow for FSR, has a high and mathematically logical per-spell coefficient, it's pulsing damage so it's unique in that it's the only quasi-dot that can crit, and has in general very nice synergy with multiple arcane talents (Arc conc, arc potency, and even works nicely with MM). However it also has definite drawbacks in that it has a very restrictively high mana cost, it leaves the mage very vulnerable to interrupts and pushback if not talented 5/5 imp AM, and it's coefficient per second isn't as good enough to make it outclass other spells.
While I'd like to see it buffed by dramatically decreasing its mana cost, from a design standpoint it's a pretty perfect spell. Lots of advantages, some disadvantages, it really can't out-class any other spells, and it's a very unique spell.
Still, I'm not sure what their hardon is about making it so difficult for arcane to be a standalone tree, but I guess now that's more of a beef I have with mana dependency and mana (in)efficiency.
Actually mana cost is not at all the issue with Missiles. Now I mentioned this before, but I spent a lot of time all the way up through Illidan (though not to sunwell, where I finally switched to fire), trying to make an Arcane Missiles build viable, using 4 piece T6 and just about every max possible benefit to AM I could find (which trinket wise ended up being the Ashtongue Talisman and TLC. I had around 70% uptime of 145 haste from the Ashtongue trinket on average, which is amazing... and yet still not enough to make AM viable).
Here's the deal. AM may cost quite a bit of mana, but because of its interacting with Judgement of Wisdom, and 30% Arcane Meditation combined with extra int from Arcane Mind post-spirit change, AM is actually very gentle on your mana. The cost is high enough that unless you get really luck with JoW procs you won't gain mana doing it, but you won't lose mana any faster than a fire or frost mage either.
It's two things that kill missiles, and two things only.
An incredibly weak coefficient (with 1300 spell damage, missiles only hits for around 770 damage a tick, whereas a fireball with 1150 (about the difference Mind Mastery makes) should if my numbers are right hit for around 2736 (assuming scorch debuff), which works out to be 912 per second. 912 is a good 18% higher than 770. This is in large part because Missiles' Improved talent does not increase DPS, only mana efficiency (AM has no cooldown, so pushback protection is purely mana efficiency) whereas Fireball/Frostbolt Improved talents are a substantial DPS boost. It has a much larger Empowered Talent, but it isn't enough to make up for the Improved talent and other lack of direct damage boosting talents in arcane.
Weak crits. That same fireball will crit for 5745 damage including ignite damage, the missiles will crit for 1347 (or 4042 in 3 seconds). The fireball crits 42% harder. Moreover, AM only gets about +7-8% crit from talents (3% from Instability, 3% from Potency, and around 2% from Arcane Mind, though that's generous to give Mind), whereas Fireball gets 9% from talents not counting Combustion.
The biggest advantage AM has always had is its ability to proc effects more rapidly than any other nuke (MSD, Capacitor, etc). And yet aside from the Ashtongue Talisman, every single one of these has been nerfed in a way that substantially decreases its synergy with AM. They may not have targetted AM intentionally but it was very badly affected. If Netherwind Focus worked per-pulse on AM it'd be nice, but it seems Blizzard really doesn't want this sort of synergy to happen.
One thing I've always thought should happen is a change to Improved Arcane Missiles. 5 points at 20% pushback resistance per point for a SINGLE spell is incredinly talent-expensive. Call it 'Channeling Mastery' or something instead, and give it this per point for 5 points: "20% pushback resistance, decreases casting time by 3%, for all channeled spells).
At 5 points this would make Arcane Missiles, Evocate, and Blizzard immune to damage pushback, reduce the casting time of AM from 5 to 4.25 seconds, Blizzard from 8 to 6.8 seconds, and Evocate from (T6 and the proposed new 10 second expansion version) 8.5 seconds. It wouldn't quite catch up AM to Fireball or Frostbolt, but would close the gap between the raw coefficient/second substantially at least, and on top of that would make the talent itself more attractrive to frost/fire mages trying to get up to Arcane Concentration.
See what I like about arcane is that it's about mana control and using your spells effectively, so I wouldn't want to buff it to make arcane specs into just AM spam. That's why I think that reducing AM's cost would be a good solution, because then arcane specs are still about using AB for good, high dps while using another nuke for efficent damage and mana control.
I do think that AM should be doing slightly less dps than fireball or frostbolt, because AB does remarkably more, so rather than big consistency it's about controlling highs and lows and yada yada yada.
Plus, I think lowering AM's cost would only affect AM and arcane builds that could incorporate it more, whereas a talent change like that one you were thinking of, or another change that would remarkably increase the dps of AM would have a much bigger affect on the big picture, and would have a lot more consequences.
Good info though, and I do just wish that they'd combine improved AM and empowered AM into one talent.
EDIT:
Oh and it is complete crap that they keep nerfing anything that AM has good synergy with like TLC, MSD, etc etc...
I do agree, yeah, that Missiles doesn't need to be the top DPS spell or anything since it works well as Blast filler. The issue just comes down to Missiles isn't a little less DPS than fireball or frostbolt, it's a LOT less, so much so that using frostbolts as mana-filler is tons better than using missiles even though you're 40 points deep in arcane. Even if you catch the coefficient up (like per my suggestion) it'll still be the lowest DPS of the 3 main nukes due to the weak crits. Just won't be so far below it isn't worth even considering despite having tons of points in the arcane tree.
I just want it to be a viable spell in a viable rotation of SOME kind since I like the look of it a lot more than the little red / blue bolts.
Oh and it is complete crap that they keep nerfing anything that AM has good synergy with like TLC, MSD, etc etc...
You have to balance items around the spec that gets the most possible benefit from those items. With AM working the way it does with those effects, it simply introduces too much of a gap between how those effects increase AM's viability and how they increase other spells' viability.
I'll be honest: I have no love for AM's funky mechanics, for any ability to proc on each missile tick a specific effect that affects whole casts. That said, as far as AM proccing a talent on every tick is concerned, there are no principles of proportionality violated by this. Proccing an item's effect on each tick, though, strikes me as increasingly dangerous territory...unless you begin to adjust itemization formulas towards the spec of greatest benefit, which Blizzard is not likely to do.
Yeah but murph think back to the hayday of t5 when arcane with AM was being hailed as the best spec. I loved arcane and loved playing it, but there were a WHOLE lot of mages around who stuck with fire because it looked better on paper, and a whole lot of mages trying to force arcane and failing miserably at it. It wasn't benefitting from TLC/MSD so well that any mage could spam a macro and autowin, it was just a very nice tool that could abuse some procs and effects. Realistically, TLC/MSD could have never been changed and everything would be about the same as it is now.
Basically, what I'd like to see is to have Arcane Missiles's mana cost reduced by about 30%, the talent Empowered AM removed, and Improved AM changed to:
Your Arcane Missiles spell has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to avoid spell pushback, and gains 20/40/60/80/100% of your bonus spell damage affects.
As it was pointed out, AM has a bad coefficient but also doesn't benefit from crit nearly as much as frostbolt or fireball, so a big coefficient will be what makes AM valuable. With that change the missiles would hit hard but continue to benefit less from crit, so I figure it'd even out.
Damnit... off topic and back to "if I were a dev". Sorry, but it's my $0.02 about what it'd take for arcane to be a standalone tree.
The coefficients per second for AM, Fireball, and Frostbolt are all really close. 37.57% for AM, 38.3% for Fireball, and 36.57% for Frostbolt or 32.57% in an Arc/Frost build. And the base damage for AM is higher DPS than Fireball and Frostbolt as well. But that's as far as the equivalences go. 3% damage increase from talents for AM, while Frostbolt and Fireball both get significantly more. The debuffs for Fireball and Frostbolt are both better as well, being that Arcane has only CoS/E and Misery, which also affect Fireball and Frostbolt. So, given that a Fireball with a standard fire spec was doing 18% more than AM with a deep arcane spec seems reasonable, since Fireball gets 10% more talented damage and 15% more debuff damage. The additional fact that crits are terrible for AM compared to Fireball or Frostbolt hurts it even more.
However, the addition of another arcane damage debuff in Nature's Fury will help some, but not enough, since it still won't make up for the difference in crit damage or in the difference in talented damage increase. Even Nature's Fury only offsets Piercing Ice, though, which you would be getting in an ABr if you planned to use Frostbolt fillers. That leaves AM with NWP and IA (since AM would scale better with spell power than Frostbolt in such a build) to compete with Frostbolt's +50% extra damage on crits, in a tree that looks like it will increase crit rate by a ton. They could fix it by doing anything to offset the extra damage that other spells get on their crits, as that's the bigger imbalance between AM and any other spell. I just hope they don't try to fix it with a set bonus.
On the subject of using Frostbolt vs AM as filler for ABr, AM could be superior if you didn't care about interrupting your AM after 2 or 3 missiles. The mana efficiency would go down the drain, and thus it would have to be compared to AB spam as well in terms of damage, assuming AB benefits from whatever fixes AM crit scaling.
On the subject of using Frostbolt vs AM as filler for ABr, AM could be superior if you didn't care about interrupting your AM after 2 or 3 missiles. The mana efficiency would go down the drain, and thus it would have to be compared to AB spam as well in terms of damage, assuming AB benefits from whatever fixes AM crit scaling.
Actually It could be a good way to improve AM a bit if the mana cost was "per missiles" allowing a lot more flexibility in our rotations.
Basically, what I'd like to see is to have Arcane Missiles's mana cost reduced by about 30%, the talent Empowered AM removed, and Improved AM changed to:
Your Arcane Missiles spell has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to avoid spell pushback, and gains 20/40/60/80/100% of your bonus spell damage affects.
As it was pointed out, AM has a bad coefficient but also doesn't benefit from crit nearly as much as frostbolt or fireball, so a big coefficient will be what makes AM valuable. With that change the missiles would hit hard but continue to benefit less from crit, so I figure it'd even out.
That comment made me think - what if the AB description
Blasts the target with energy, dealing 648 to 752 Arcane damage. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the casting time is reduced while mana cost is increased. Effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 8 sec.
was changed to something like this:
Blasts the target with energy, dealing 648 to 752 Arcane damage. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the casting time of all arcane spells is reduced while mana cost for Arcane Blast is increased. Effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 8 sec.
Basically that would make AM castable in 4 sec instead of 5 when 3 AB debuffs were up, which mean you had to do some sort of rotation including both ABs and AM to make use of it, which means less 1 button smashing, which to me seems like a goal from Blizzard.
Hmm well, at a first glance, and personally, i'm not that satisfied with the preview. The reason is that i don't really see the dmg boost we have been asking and needing through entire TBC.
Sure, these are alpha talents and changes will occur, no doubt about it, but this is the real problem
I'm fairly sure people here will remember some of the beta TBC talents, like Empowered fireball and Molten Fury. For those who can't recall what they did look like, i'll just refresh it: Empowered Fireball gave 25% additional bonus spelldmg instead of the actual 15%, and Molten Armor was proccing at 30% with 30% increased damage, instead of the current 20/20.
Now, if we consider these numbers it will appear kinda clear that, if the Devs didn't touch them, we would have avoided soooo much of the QQ read on official forums and everywhere, because with those value we would have been exactly where Kalgan said, aka "still above others, hopefully not too much". And it would have been fine, let's be honest.
What's my point, at the end, you are surely asking.
Oh well, i brought u the example of TBC beta talents and current ones to let you check the difference...We are already a bit unsatisfied with what we are seeing, and considering the "change behaviour" that has been applied in the past, i really wouldn't be confident in a bright and shiny future.
And again: thinking that the mage class will always be played because it's a desirable one only for its mechanics/charme and not for the efficiency, and making other classes/specc more efficient (in terms of raid dps, because we don't take raid spots just for decursing and buffing arcane intellect) to encourage more people choosing it, then maybe the error is not really in the values/coefficients/numbers that we see in the talents, but more in the main design concept.
If the mage is described as "primary ranged damage dealer" and again "unsurpassed in this" and also "AoE king" then it has to be like this.
I'm not here to discuss what class should be above the other, i'm just saying that from what we see our role is not clear.
Top Dpsers ? Decursers? Average Dpsers? Buffers?
Under this point of view devs are forgetting us. Or well, dunno really. Sometimes i think about devs having tantric brainstorming sessions before they actually apply changes
In the end, i am worried like many of you guys here, for the simple reason that i've put too many efforts in my mage to be even thinking to reroll another class.
Empowered Fireball began as 20%, not 25%. Molten Fury was +30% damage at 20% health, not at 30% health. Water Elemental also cost 90sp in reagents, was permanent and had no Freeze.
You state "if the Devs didn't touch them, we would have avoided soooo much of the QQ read on official forums". I firstly don't understand what you mean. Are you implying having these go live would "avoid the qq"? If so, yes. That's because they'd be Over Powered. You don't "avoid qq" by having an Over Powered ability, you merely multiply it by 8 (which is the number of classes without it) and move it to every other class.
Secondly, Official Forums are a breeding ground for some of the worst bullshit in the WoW experience. Who cares what happens there? If a change improves something, people will "QQ". If it nerfs it, people will "QQ". If no changes happen, people will "QQ". I only use "QQ" because what goes on there, is beyond the scope of the conventional "Whine". A whine often has to contain some modicum of disappointment as well as validity. The "QQ" only needs to contain juvenile rage, jealousy, and short-sightedness. It's more akin to 4 year-olds threatening to hold their breaths till they die than mature players complaining of their perceived injustice. The "corporate knowledge" of the forum is like that of a goldfish; they only remember and maintain knowledge that is less than 4 days old, and because half the posters aren't there to discuss but to rant, it isn't a real Forum in that no conversation is held. It's an infinite succession of Whine, followed by cattle-style "YEA! YEAA! THIS IS SO TRUE! LINK THIS AROUND!" mostly punctuated with "GG Blizz, I'm rerolling (class)", "I'M NOT PAYING FOR THIS". And "lol l2p, rouges r fine n00b" as the most common indication of disaproval.
Your post is wrongly informed. You are selectively trying to label what happens as part of every single game (that is, Ballancing) as what you like to think of as "Nerfing".
Using previous ballance-choices as indication of a trend that Alpha/Beta talents are toned down as proof that we'll get nerfed, is about as relevant as claiming you lost a BG, just like you did back at lvl 60, so this trend proves in WotLK mages in BGs will be underpowered.
You then end with you're not seeing our role clear. This has been known since BC launch. Pre-nerf Shadow Weaving ensured it, and when it was nerfed T5+ Warlocks did. You are not presenting anything that hasn't been discussed to death.
As for whining about "devs forgetting us", I believe that's much more suited to the style of posting of the afforementioned WoW forums.
... That's a joke, right? Neither 20% Empowered Fireball nor 30% Molten Fury were overpowered, or would be overpowered today, and had Blizzard actually bothered to do math they wouldn't have nerfed them.
<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl
Would you like to prove that with maths rather than speculation? I'd suspect 20% E-Fball would be borderline, but I'm quite adamant adding a further 10% on MF would be very significant.
Intrigued, I did some myself. Admittedly sloppy, but good enough for ball-park figures.
Rather than botch the mechanics, I'll do it backwards. Let's subtract 5% damage amplification.
I took an optimum pre-SWP geared mage, in an optimum group with a Shaman and an SP, with all conventional buffs including CoE. Hex/Skull and hitcapped, I made Rawr 2210DPS.
5% damage on the +1565 spellpower, is +78spell power. For an ugly comparisson, I'll remove the Flask of +80.
Dropping effective 5% damage empowering effect would take us to 2133. About -80dps.
Simming MF, however, is a little more complex. What I'll do is spec 1/2 MF, see the DPS drop, and then make a badly-simulated attempt at claiming this is as much as having 30% instead of 20% buff on it, just backwards.
DPS drops to 2164. That's another -46.
So in an ugly way, we're looking at perhaps +125dps, bringing the total to 2335DPS for an increase of 5.6%.
Same thing for SWP top-end gearing precipitates: 2445DPS, droping 5% spelldmg: 2357DPS, dropping 1/2 MF:2394DPS. For a resultant increase to 2496DPS, an increase of a mere 2%.
Taking a T4 hitcapped mage, same buffs except Supreme Power instead of Pure Death (as Pure Death was added much later) and no JoW/i-JotC, as retadins were not prevalent back then.
Plain DPS: 1611
Dropping 5% spell: 1557 (-54)
Dropping 1/2 MF: 1586 (-25)
Adding up to: 1690DPS, an increase of 5%
Accounting for how adding the loss from -10% on MF is not the same as adding +10% on MF, and for the slight skew on Emp. Fireball, it could be fairly accurately suggested it's unlikely these changes, combined, would offer less than 5% or more than 7% buff to mage RDPS output.
The SWP drop in value is purely due to the Fball talent causeing crit and haste to lose value relative to +dmg, making the gearing under question wrong or sub-optimal. This is particularly true given the setup's total spellpower is almost identical to the T6 pre-SWP setup.
This is along the lines of the benefit gained from a current warlock using CoD. It is held that 0/21/40 warlocks using CoD are out of line of current DPS consensus, that is to say, they clearly have too much. With the possible exception of Thori'Dal 7/20+/30+ hunters and dual-glaive rogues on demons.
To me that says "Over Powered". To you it may not, you could very well argue that given warlocks exist currently and are clearly raiding with this alleged overpowered state, it gives you justification to argue mages should be allowed to as well. As far as I'm concerned two wrongs don't make one right, and if a certain class has a way of surpassing all the others cleanly and with no excessive raid demands (ie, no mad scenaria like "if an arcane mage gets two SPs, a Rshaman and three innervates, he may do 2800DPS) without sacrificing any of it's excellent utility while doing so, it's a case of "they need a nerf" (just like the one they're getting) and "I don't want an identical power hike", rather than "I want one too".
Changes under 5% can be totally game-altering. We gained IV and gained an overall benefit of less than 4%, yet we consider non-IV specs totally non-competitive. We're gaining CoE/CoS integration soon. This is another huge buff which changes the meta-game a lot. If 5% doesn't seem like much to you, think of it, instead, as having 2.5 flasks instead of one. I'd consider that Over Powered.
Tbh i would expected everything except and harsh answer like yours.
Rawr gives only rough numbers, the dmg meter on fights gives real ones. I won't go theorycrafting here, too many ppl more experienced than me that write posts i read, but it should be clear enough that with a normal current setup (implying a shadowpriest and a restoration shaman, no chickens nor elementals and only 1 BL) we are BELOW, and the amount is easily figured around 5-7%.
IV? Didn't even cover the gap, it has shortened it.
So, at the end, you say that we are fine and it's just other classes bit overpowered?
If it's so, then devs should put his hands over Locks, Rogues and Hunters. 3 Classes to work around instead of 1. If this happens, then yes i will agree with you that every single slight change, even 1%, would be overpowered. But i'd rather see devs modifying 3 classes instead of one.
And oh, about the crap written on official forums: i wasn't really referring to what players post there, but more what Kalgan wrote. So, are you saying to me that Kalgan talks crap? This might be a personal opinion of many of us but no one is enough "gosu" to tell it clearly. I don't really recall about anyone "clean" enough to launch the first rock.
Also, i really don't see how the integration of CoS/CoE will change the meta-game ALOT as you say. Would you like to explain?
Actually Lhivera did a lot of the TC that showed that much of the "ZOMG MAGES ARE OVERPOWERED" commentary on the official forums were kinda "off" lets say.
CoS/CoE integration means that we won't have to beg for a debuff to be applied to a mob...regardless of the mage spec that we are using at the time. Basically becomes debuff the mob for erverything except nature damage.
Yeah but murph think back to the hayday of t5 when arcane with AM was being hailed as the best spec. I loved arcane and loved playing it, but there were a WHOLE lot of mages around who stuck with fire because it looked better on paper, and a whole lot of mages trying to force arcane and failing miserably at it. It wasn't benefitting from TLC/MSD so well that any mage could spam a macro and autowin, it was just a very nice tool that could abuse some procs and effects. Realistically, TLC/MSD could have never been changed and everything would be about the same as it is now.
They're odd mechanics that make the math (and hence the balancing) much more difficult, in my opinion, than the value they bring in terms of depth. There are 18 other ways you could buff AM that doesn't involve any other sort of asymmetric mechanics.
Basically, what I'd like to see is to have Arcane Missiles's mana cost reduced by about 30%, the talent Empowered AM removed, and Improved AM changed to:
Your Arcane Missiles spell has a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to avoid spell pushback, and gains 20/40/60/80/100% of your bonus spell damage affects.
As it was pointed out, AM has a bad coefficient but also doesn't benefit from crit nearly as much as frostbolt or fireball, so a big coefficient will be what makes AM valuable. With that change the missiles would hit hard but continue to benefit less from crit, so I figure it'd even out.
Damnit... off topic and back to "if I were a dev". Sorry, but it's my $0.02 about what it'd take for arcane to be a standalone tree.
An Empowered AM has an m/r value of 703, compared to 682 for Emp. Frostbolt or 639 for Emp. Fireball. If we do as you propose, that would bring Emp. AM's m/r down to the neighborhood of 540, making it rival Starfire (and, I might add, Shadow Bolt) in terms of scaling with +damage.
One more question for your list, Lhivera. Is the Elemental Precision bug providing frostbolt with ghost hit fixed? I suspect it is due to the apparent removal of binary resist mechanics, but if the one isn't confirmed, neither is the other and will need to be tested when beta hits.
Will people really ask for this every single patch? Like seriously its getting old. If it gets changed, you'll know I'm sure its going to be posted all over the place.
nm that was a question for the wotlk list.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
... That's a joke, right? Neither 20% Empowered Fireball nor 30% Molten Fury were overpowered, or would be overpowered today, and had Blizzard actually bothered to do math they wouldn't have nerfed them.
I think inter-tree balance is/was a concern as well. Frost and Arcane are already a few percent behind Fire in potential damage; Frost particularly sucks after T5, from what I've read (I don't raid at that level). All other things being equal, a stronger Molten Fury would widen that gap which seems like a bad thing.
Originally Posted by Audax
Also, i really don't see how the integration of CoS/CoE will change the meta-game ALOT as you say. Would you like to explain?
It means that all mage specs benefit from the same buff, and raid composition doesn't have to stack a particular class and spec to take advantage of a finite number of Warlocks and/or debuff slots. The one Warlock in the raid maintaining CoE will support all your warlocks and shadow priests without leaving Fire and Frost mages crying in their milk.
Majes will still be inferior in high end raid fights, in particular Maru and KJ. SOC will still own our aoe abilities and lock single target dps will continue being superior to us.
How much would flamestrike need to be buffed to bring it near soc?
Last edited by Maglors : 07/11/08 at 2:49 PM.
Reason: quote removal
FYI, I'm updating that question list as people post or PM new questions (though in some cases I'm not including questions that I feel are already covered pretty well in stuff already on the list). I'm not going to announce it every time I update it. What I may do is post a copy on my site and link to it in my sig, just for ease of locating/editing.
Originally Posted by Maglors
Majes will still be inferior in high end raid fights, in particular Maru and KJ. SOC will still own our aoe abilities and lock single target dps will continue being superior to us.
How much would flamestrike need to be buffed to bring it near soc?
I'm thinking that with World in Flames and Hot Streak, Flamestrike is already going to kick SoC's ass up and down Main Street in terms of damage. Flamestrike's only significant problem is its radius; I think it'd be worth adding a radius increase on Flamestrike to World In Flames. We've asked for it many times on Improved Flamestrike and Flamethrowing, of course, with no results, but maybe they'd be more amenable to adding it to a very deep talent.
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.
FYI, I'm updating that question list as people post or PM new questions (though in some cases I'm not including questions that I feel are already covered pretty well in stuff already on the list). I'm not going to announce it every time I update it. What I may do is post a copy on my site and link to it in my sig, just for ease of locating/editing.
I'm thinking that with World in Flames and Hot Streak, Flamestrike is already going to kick SoC's ass up and down Main Street in terms of damage. Flamestrike's only significant problem is its radius; I think it'd be worth adding a radius increase on Flamestrike to World In Flames. We've asked for it many times on Improved Flamestrike and Flamethrowing, of course, with no results, but maybe they'd be more amenable to adding it to a very deep talent.
Is that taking into account how time consuming it is to aim? Being able to tab target mobs has as much to do with soc's superiority as damage. If Living Bomb was targetable on mobs/other players I would far happier with it. Of course it would have to damage the target some and have a cooldown among other tweaks.
An Empowered AM has an m/r value of 703, compared to 682 for Emp. Frostbolt or 639 for Emp. Fireball. If we do as you propose, that would bring Emp. AM's m/r down to the neighborhood of 540, making it rival Starfire (and, I might add, Shadow Bolt) in terms of scaling with +damage.
Right but both starfire and shadowbolt benefit at least 14% more from crit. That's the whole point... AM should have one of if not THE best coefficient in game, because it is the nuke that benefits least from crit values (and I'm gonna throw in "not counting priests" because their nuking capabilities are kinda screwy and subjective).
If you're purely looking at damage for a nuke, there's coefficient and crit values. Deep fire fireball and destro shadowbolt are two of the best nukes in game for both coefficient and crit values (shadowbolt would be considering ISB), and I think that's a little weird. When you make a spell one of the best in terms of coefficient per second as well as one of the best in terms of benefit from crit, it's guaranteed to simply outclass other spells, which is exactly what fireball and shadowbolt have done.
So yeah, my suggested change would make AM one of the best CPS spells in game, but it's one of the worst in terms of benefitting from crit... so I think it balances out. Though imo, I don't think they should be so stingy about making small adjustments for the sake of balance. If you buff some talent you think needs help in a small way and it turns out the change was a bad idea, hotfix it back. Small adjustments are where real balance is at in a game like this because you can never have good mathematical balance... there are just too many variables. However, when you have a site like WWS reports showing classes that are ahead or behind, or you can get a general consensus that maybe paladin healers need a slight buff in their single target healing to really set them apart again, changing empowered fireball to 20% instead of 15% or upping the base healing of maxrank flash of light by 5% doesn't make any huge sweeping changes on the game, just a slight adjustment on balance.
Is that taking into account how time consuming it is to aim? Being able to tab target mobs has as much to do with soc's superiority as damage.
It's slow if you're moving your mouse back and forth between your action bar and the target area, but if you have the spell hotkeyed, not so much. key-mouseclick-wait-repeat.
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.
I am aware there is a lot of speculation that is going into the current TC and we only have a limited view of what is in alpha at the moment, but I was curious what some of the numbers and prominent specs would look like at level 70 with our current gear level if current leaked WotLK talents where released prior to the expansion akin the what happened prior to TBC release. I have not seen any speculation about this in the current thread although I may have missed this topic being addressed awhile back. My assumption would be that a deep frost/shatter build at level 70 might possibly out scale deep fire with the addition of improved water elemental, chilled to the bone, and WG.
07/10/08, 9:18 PM
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