[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 91

Roywyn · 07/22/08, 9:06 AM

Most of the new blue items are "sta/int/spi/power", which makes them kind of terrible.
I'd guess that those are placeholders really. They just generated some "standard issue" items to full the loot tables and will hopefully review them over time.

On a different note, there are reports that the spell miss chance may be increased against mobs at +0/1/2, reduced against mob at +3, and that the 1% unremovable miss chance was removed.

The no-miss reports were from people in T6 gear who would always have a large amount of hit even in their grind/trash gear.
Might add that to the check list. 10 minutes AM spam against Dr. Boom should give a rather reliable figure.

Søndag · 07/22/08, 9:25 AM

Originally Posted by Roywyn

Most of the new blue items are "sta/int/spi/power", which makes them kind of terrible.
I'd guess that those are placeholders really. They just generated some "standard issue" items to full the loot tables and will hopefully review them over time.

Why is int, spi and power bad? combined with some haste i'd normally say that those are the stats to go for when you are hit capped that is.. but those blues we see right now are probably grinding blues.. the placeholders are prob. those with the company name..

Jonny_Monroe · 07/22/08, 10:38 AM

Originally Posted by Søndag

Why is int, spi and power bad? combined with some haste i'd normally say that those are the stats to go for when you are hit capped that is.. but those blues we see right now are probably grinding blues.. the placeholders are prob. those with the company name..

Spi is a horrible stat for levelling with because its a drop in the ocean compared to being able to drink whenever you need mana. We arn't being forced to chain-cast for 10-minutes while questing (at least, I honestly doubt it) - and thats the only real situation where SPI helps. Even as an arcane mage I think I'd prefer spell power for levelling on.

Jonny_Monroe · 07/22/08, 10:40 AM

On a different note, there are reports that the spell miss chance may be increased against mobs at +0/1/2, reduced against mob at +3, and that the 1% unremovable miss chance was removed.

yet another small nerf to magic absorbtion? Unless you had stacked resistance that 1% chance to resist accounted for the vast majority of your MA procs. Still, if its true its an over-all buff to the mage class I suppose.

Rouncer · 07/22/08, 11:28 AM

Not sure about the hit cap changing but it really does seem like the 1% miss is gone.

Went into RFC in Org and pulled about 30-40 mobs and AEed them down with rank 1 AE (which takes awhile to kill them even at level 70). Did that twice and didn't have a single miss. I know this is too anecdotal to be conclusive but I leave the real testing to people like Zaldinar who have a lot more patience then I possess.

Zaldinar · 07/22/08, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by Rounced

Not sure about the hit cap changing but it really does seem like the 1% miss is gone.

Went into RFC in Org and pulled about 30-40 mobs and AEed them down with rank 1 AE (which takes awhile to kill them even at level 70). Did that twice and didn't have a single miss. I know this is too anecdotal to be conclusive but I leave the real testing to people like Zaldinar who have a lot more patience then I possess.

That actually will be best proved by WWS reports, I can sit there super hit capped on Dr Boom and cast for hours and not see a resist, but as soon as someone who should be hit capped sees one, I'm disproven.

I've been getting a flood of information from a mage named Grastan from beta, been keeping my thread on the main forums (WoW Forums -> Zaldinar's WotLK checklist) updated, figured I'd cross post some of the highlights here:

Living Bomb
- Coefficient is approx 0.0668 on the DoT
- DoT benefits from PwF/Firepower/World in Flames
- DoT cannot crit, and does not interact with Combustion or Hotstreak in any way

Magic Attunement
- Increases the range of AI/AB, Spellsteal, CS, Amp/Damp Magic, and Poly
- Not yet tested Blink/AE

Counterspell
- The stupid tooltip that said "spell" was not our counterspell, ours is still a school lockout

Mana Shield
- Currently potentially broken in weird ways. More clarified testing pending, basically it looks like they did something to it with spellpower that it really really isn't happy with (does more damage to you than you normally would get hit for while giving you mana?)

Netherwind Presence
- 15 second buff, you'll never lose it to cast rotation issues
- Procs off initial cast of AM, not each tick

Evalara · 07/22/08, 11:36 AM

Originally Posted by Søndag

Why is int, spi and power bad? combined with some haste i'd normally say that those are the stats to go for when you are hit capped that is.. but those blues we see right now are probably grinding blues.. the placeholders are prob. those with the company name..

Crit is far and away the best stat for levelling. When you're hitting 5k hp mobs with 2k bolts, adding a few spell damage does absolutely nothing, but increasing your crit chance increases the expected speed at which you will kill mobs (since a crit will save you one whole cast's worth of time and mana). I'll be destroying most of my 12dmg gems in favor of 12crit and 9sta/6crit gems as soon as I can.

On another topic, I think I'm just missing the big deal with Winter's Grasp. With only a 10% chance to apply the effect it doesn't seem like it'll be up that often, certainly not often enough to create the "70% naked crit rate" people have mentioned.

Thegoodman · 07/22/08, 11:37 AM

I have seen a number of ideas that incorporate Arcane Barrage into a rotation but I am still not convinced it will be a worthwhile spell for raiding. Its +damage coeff. is going to suck since it is instant and w/o any percentage modifiers anywhere in any tree, it just isn't going to scale well as a primary/secondary nuke.

I think Slow needs to be changed to not suck and be useful in raids. When looking at the other classes talent trees, it seems that boss debuffs and group synergy are all the rage these days, but Mages are still being left without any significant contribution in either of these categories. I think Potent Spirit and Spirit of the Mind need to be combined into 1 talent of 3/3 that does 7/14/20% for both Spirit->Crit as well as total Spirit. This could free up 2 more talent for Improved Slow....

Improved Slow 0/2: Slow also increases Arcane/Fire/Frost damage to the target by 10/20%

This could make Arcane Missile much more attractive as well as offer some synergy to shaman/locks/boomkin/hunters(slightly)/other mages.

Also, Arcane Barrage needs some more umpff to make it worthwhile. Ripping off Lightning Overload wouldn't be hugely OP in PvE but could really make PvPing as Arcane much more fun and feasible.

Arcane Barrage: Launches several missiles at the enemy target, causing 936 to 1144 Arcane damage. If the target is effected by Slow, gives your Arcane Barrage spell a 20% chance to cast a second, similar spell on the same target at no additional cost that causes half damage and no threat.

Quantum · 07/22/08, 11:47 AM

I'm not the best of mages, but I'm willing to stand in front of Dr. Boom for an hour or two if it is any help to anyone. Just give me directions to what still needs testing, FFB for example.

Jonny_Monroe · 07/22/08, 11:58 AM

m I'm not the best of mages, but I'm willing to stand in front of Dr. Boom for an hour or two if it is any help to anyone. Just give me directions to what still needs testing, FFB for example.

wow... where to start? is FFb reporting 'Frost+fire' to the combat log? can you get a screen shot of it doing that? if you want to FFb Dr. Boom could you do it with a few different specs and find out what tallents are buffing it? (specifically - improved scorch, arctic winds and if you can find a DK to help - frost vulnerability).

That'd be top of my list but i'm sure other's here would have other requests

Cheers.

Quantum · 07/22/08, 12:06 PM

Yeah, I already took the liberty to test something and took some vids:

http://ork.netrebel.de/ftp/frostfire_bolt.avi
http://ork.netrebel.de/ftp/blizzard_crits.avi

I'll be back and do some FFB vids with Ignite. Right now FFB gets every benefit of frost and fire talents (but not range talents, but it's 40 yards already). And the combat log calls the damage "Frostfire".

edit: You'll have to use VLC to open the videos.

Jonny_Monroe · 07/22/08, 12:12 PM

Nice one.

If you can find another player thats willing to test with you, could you see how frostfire works with uneven resistances? Is it a hard gate system where it deals frostfire unless an immunity is met? is it a soft gate system where it will take the damage type of the lower resistance?

sorry to be asking so much of you but its rather difficult to milk any info out of the beta right now : /

Hairy · 07/22/08, 12:17 PM

Quantum, Zaldinar has a pretty nice list at the vanilla wow forums with theorycraft questions and test methodology:

(WoW Forums -> Zaldinar's WotLK checklist)

Thanks in advance for the info!

Quantum · 07/22/08, 12:29 PM

It's a nice thread, but I can't post there (me being from an european server), so maybe one of you could relay the info over there.

Frostfire Bolt with Impact, Ice Shards, Spell Power, Shatter and Ignite (Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft)

http://ork.netrebel.de/ftp/frostfire_bolt_ignite.avi

Dr. Boom is immune to both Impact and Shatter, but the procs are still observable.

Uglybugger · 07/22/08, 12:54 PM

Quantum, in order to satisfy the vast majority of the questions you will be pummeled with and avoid running your beta character out of gold from respeccing, you may wish to try something similar to:

1) Clear your talents completely at a trainer, but do not immediately choose new talents.
2) Go to Dr. Boom with your clean talent slate and fire up your recorder.
3) Cast Frostfire Bolt 10 times.
3) Apply points to one talent (partial or full, your choice, only the talents that may affect Frostfire)
4) Repeat step 3.
5) Add points to another of the talents in question, and repeat step 3 again.

That would allow everyone to see exactly how each of the talents in question will affect Frostfire Bolt as well as give them the untalanted numbers to compare to.

Quantum · 07/22/08, 1:01 PM

Well, respec is 1 copper, I think I can afford that. But I will take your advice gladly.

For the meantime, a combat log of the aforementioned spec (34/10/22):

http://ork.netrebel.de/ftp/frostfire_bolt_34_10_22.txt

Do you prefer a video, a combat log or both?

Uglybugger · 07/22/08, 1:13 PM

If you are creating a video adding one talent at a time as I suggested above, a video may be better. I'm not certain that anyone would want to sort through a combat log when the values will be changing every few talent point additions. I was thinking more along the lines of putting the values you recorded into a spreadsheet for data comparison.

However, a combat log may come in handy for someone out there, and for other types of tests certainly. One problem with the test I suggested is the amount of time you will be testing for, and that is where a combat log becomes very handy.

Bisbus · 07/22/08, 1:14 PM

Also if you meet any deathknights try to have one stack frozen rune weapon on a target then hit it with FFB. I would like to see if the increased frost dmg debuff would cause it to do frost dmg.

Jonny_Monroe · 07/22/08, 1:18 PM

Also if you meet any deathknights try to have one stack frozen rune weapon on a target then hit it with FFB. I would like to see if the increased frost dmg debuff would cause it to do frost dmg.

Ditto for improved scorch.

Zinaida · 07/22/08, 1:26 PM

Could you test frostfire bolt against some fire and water elementals and see how it behaves? Does it change damage type or lose the benefit of one school's talents for example?

Celebrimor · 07/22/08, 1:33 PM

Originally Posted by Kel S'jet

I did consider bloodbath, however, I believe that my intentions were to show the new abilities for existing classes between 71-80. I would not consider bloodbath as one of these 'new' abilities but rather a 'the class really should have this ability to serve its function'. We can see that blizzard has already done this before, especially with paladins (take note of the introduction of Spiritual Attunement at the onset of BC). I believe this is blizzard's intent with bloodbath as well.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Paladins got 5 abilities in tbc including spiritual attunement, it was not a freebie to the class at all eventhough it was moved down to level 10 from 64. Same thing with Righteous Defense. So they were just like every other class.

So eventhough bloodbath is a lvl 60 skill it will still take up one of their spellslots. The only freebie I see is druids ooc and that warlocks teleport mechanic requires 2 spells to work.

Celebrimor · 07/22/08, 1:34 PM

Originally Posted by Arkx

This is likely not a topic of great concern to most mages here but in all the information I have seen thus far I have not seen or heard mention of a "Ritual of Refreshment" Rank 2 for level 80. Am I completely missing something? It seems like this would be a no brainer level 80 trainable spell but I haven't seen it on any of the lists yet. Any insight?

Its most likely a drop.

Ramsden · 07/22/08, 1:48 PM

Quantum, I really appreciate you doing all of this testing/video making. I realize this is not as important of a question as those pertaning to talents and FFB but what kind of +dmg are you working with while making these videos? Just curious as FFB seems to hit pretty softly for a normal 3sec cast. If it hits too softly it might lower the worth of talking about what talents affect it.

Quantum · 07/22/08, 1:57 PM

My mage's gear sucks. I'm at 673 spell power and 15% crit.

Fire talents:

Impact (working)
Flame Throwing (not working)
Ignite (working)
Burning Soul (working)
Scorch (working)
Master of Elements (working)
Playing with Fire (working, watch for the dot)
Firepower (working, watch for the dot)
Combustion (working)
Pyromaniac (working)
Burnout (working)

Fire immune targets (still full damage, without Ignite apparently)

I also had a Hot streak proc, but not on video yet. Sucks with 15% crit rate.

Jonny_Monroe · 07/22/08, 1:59 PM

Quantum, I have alts on both EU and US servers so if you want to test some of the things in Zaldinar's thread I can relay your findings over there.