WotLK Talent Discussion (Part Two) - Page 4

Gediablo · 08/19/08, 6:40 AM

I just tested if the ignite bug is still present on the wotlk test realm.

Gediablo's Fire Blast hits Dr. Boom for 2525 Fire.(Critical)
Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 4766 Frostfire.(Critical)
Gediablo Combustion is refreshed.
Gediablo Combustion is refreshed.
Combustion fades from Gediablo.
Dr. Boom suffers 954 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Icy Veins fades from Gediablo.
Spell Power fades from Gediablo.
Dr. Boom suffers 105 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 954 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Dr. Boom suffers 105 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 106 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.

Should have been 1458 pr ignite tick

Gediablo's Fire Blast hits Dr. Boom for 2400 Fire.(Critical)
Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 4426 Frostfire.(Critical)
Combustion fades from Gediablo.
Dr. Boom suffers 886 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 885 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.

Should have been 1365 pr ignite tick

Gediablo's Fire Blast hits Dr. Boom for 2213 Fire.(Critical)
Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 4536 Frostfire.(Critical)
Dr. Boom suffers 907 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 907 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.

Should have been 1350 pr ignite tick

Gediablo's Fire Blast hits Dr. Boom for 2299 Fire.(Critical)
Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 4462 Frostfire.(Critical)
Dr. Boom suffers 893 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 893 Fire damage from Gediablo's Ignite.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.
Dr. Boom suffers 95 Frostfire damage from Gediablo's Frostfire Bolt.

Should have been 1352 pr ignite tick

Like on live realm it is not every single time it happens, but it is very easy to force these missing Ignites, especially when 2 fire spells hit the target nearly at the same time (like with fireball+fireblast or frostfireball+fireblast combos)

Qbert · 08/19/08, 10:21 AM

The ignite bug will have a significant impact on the value of Hot Streak and Fire DPS in general. In TBC it was generally a bad idea to ever cast Fire Blast, so the issue was pushed to the side... but with Hot Streak being a potentially solid DPS boost in theory, yet having a 2 year old bug make it much less appealing in practical circumstances, I could foresee an overestimation of damage potential.

Assuming Fire Blast does 60% of the damage that a Fireball does, the Ignite bug will cause a loss of about 11% total damage for each Fireball+Fire Blast crit combo. I really wish they would finally address the issue in some form or another.

Zeldyrr · 08/19/08, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by Lhivera

Well, define "suck" here. I think a spec that brings more utility needs to bring less DPS, but I tend to think in small percentage differences here. If you're saying, "it's not acceptable for a Frost Mage to do 20% less DPS in exchange for bringing the Water Elemental's regen buff," I'm right there with you. If you're saying, "it's not acceptable for a Frost Mage to do 3% less DPS in exchange for bringing the Water Elemental's regen buff, I think I'd probably have to disagree.

Oh, I'd have no problem with a 3% difference. If top, top mage dps theoretical was 5000 and frost came in at 4750 and had WC and WE mana regen, that would be cool with me. But if top mage dps is 5000 and frost comes in at under 4000....that isn't acceptable.

Flipping the question around, do you think the mage/WoW community would accept a frost spec that is 3% off top mage dps and give the WE regen at its current levels? If the answer is 'no', then it is time to nerf the WE utility, not the damage.

Slander · 08/19/08, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by Lhivera

So we won't all be geared identically -- is that really a problem?

Not really unless blizzard wants us to gear identically, which is a bit concerning making a parallel to spirit here. Either molten armour becomes little useful for raiding/PvE or spirit becomes useless for many mage talent speccs. I don't want to see this happen to yet another stat.

Zaldinar · 08/19/08, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by Gediablo

I just tested if the ignite bug is still present on the wotlk test realm.

Can you also confirm that the Hiccup timing bug is still present (what some are erroneously calling "rolling")?

The reproduction scenario is to use an approximate 2 second fireball cast (or just good timing) and crit on top of an ignite tick, sometimes that tick is not counted as used by the bank.

If you're having issues observing this yourself, there's an un-polished version of an ignite tracking addon here ( http://zaldinar.bounceme.net/zit/zitv03.zip ), I'm planning on finishing it up into a more shiny version for actual bug data collection later. If its suddenly kaboom broken by the beta then ohwell, but it theoretically should work. You'll be able to see that bug occur by watching the 'gained bug' area of the display for whatever mode you decide to be in (recent or historical will be the easiest).

◊ manly · 08/19/08, 12:54 PM

Reposting my own post from the BB. Figured I might as well throw it here.

--------

Yeah. Basically the result is OK. Heres a more complete list:

(spell power and burnout have the same multiplier. using burnout in the examples, but applies just as well on spell power)

Fireball/Frostfire bolt + ignite = 210%
Fireball/Frostfire bolt + ignite + CSD = 216.3%
Fireball/Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout = 245%
Fireball/Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout + CSD = 254.45%
Fireball/Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout + CSD + CSD = 264.1835% (2nd CSD from blacksmithing)
Fireball/Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout + CSD + Elemental Oath = 273.917%
Fireball/Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout + CSD + Elemental Oath + CSD = 284.23451%

Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout + ice shards + CSD = 330.75%
Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout + ice shards + CSD + Elemental Oath = 363.195%
Frostfire bolt + ignite + burnout + ice shards + CSD + Elemental Oath + CSD = 380.39085%

-----
1.5 * 1.03 (CSD) * 1.03 (CSD) * 1.06 (EO) = 1.686831
0.686831 + 0.686831 (ice shards) + 0.5 * 0.686831 (burnout) = 1.7170775
Pre-crit damage: 1.7170775 + 1 = 2.7170775
2.7170775 * 1.4 (ignite) = 380.39085%

Qbert · 08/19/08, 12:57 PM

I'd actually argue that if the WE mana regen is a very valuable mana boost, then 3% wouldnt be enough to justify anything but a Frost Mage. 3% damage is much less than the average player-based damage variation ... so having a small amount of additional skill/effort let you consistently out-damage and out-contribute any other spec would make the specs practically obselete. Obviously the same person respeccing would see the 3% increase... but when considering 15 DPS classes would you really consider a ~0.2-0.3% increase to overall raid DPS worth the loss of said 'valuable mana boost'?

I don't see how 10% less damage would be unacceptable if the mana supply was considered nearly essential. But again, it comes back to just how valuable the Imp WE mana is. If it is an excessive addition or simply a nice perk ... then the damage gap should decrease accordingly.

Personally I've always been sort of disappointed with the lack of any real distinct role for each spec, but admit it isn't as easy to create in practice. It seems quite apparent that Blizzard is not going to have different specs offer noticeably different damage potentials, so it comes down to a measure of utility. This is the problem with the Imp WE. It sets the bar for utility so high that it would require the other specs to either match the utility and sacrifice hope for top-end damage potential ... or vastly out damage Frost specs.

Since up to this point it doesn't seem like the utility is being balanced, it would be foolish to give the specs near equal damage potential. There should never be the case where 2 players of the same class with the same spec is preferred over 2 different specs of the same class. I just don't see 3% individual damage (0.2-0.3% raid damage) being more valuable than a large increase in raid mana regen. Naturally one of the 2 would have Imp Scorch duty, though.

◊ manly · 08/19/08, 1:00 PM

To be honest, I'm not surprised at all that the ignite loss bug still exists. For as long as ignite is calculated upon casting a spell and not upon landing (unlikely to change), it will remain. Your bolt that will crit contains the 'ignite' that will override whatever ignite was there before. Thats how it always worked. I doubt that is going to change. If you get a tick while fireball is in mid-air, I expect it to behave the same if you can get ignite losses (ie: free damage).

Zaldinar · 08/19/08, 1:08 PM

Originally Posted by manly

To be honest, I'm not surprised at all that the ignite loss bug still exists. For as long as ignite is calculated upon casting a spell and not upon landing (unlikely to change), it will remain. Your bolt that will crit contains the 'ignite' that will override whatever ignite was there before. Thats how it always worked. I doubt that is going to change. If you get a tick while fireball is in mid-air, I expect it to behave the same if you can get ignite losses (ie: free damage).

I would tend to agree on all counts. Considering the history of these two bugs and their juggling back and forth from known issue to unknown issue to not an issue I'd say it's likely they are considered like the blink bug or interruption effects not quite happening correctly at the last second etc, considered to be unfixable given existing game structure without a major revamp. The fix for them would likely be to revert to the old style of debuff, which came with the rolling mechanic, that they don't want.

But, its a quick and easy check with the right observation tools, and if we confirm one exists, its not that bad to confirm the other.

◊ manly · 08/19/08, 1:08 PM

Currently, in TBC, frost is 4-5% behind fire (depends highly on context - short fights will favor frost, but then again theres the WE dying too). Thats 4-5% behind without any raid utility. How much WE utility should play, I don't know. If I were to guess though, I'd guesstimate 1-2 % ? Now the real question is whether or not that should make frost with WE 6-7% behind fire. And the tricky question, is 6-7% behind fire acceptable when frost doesn't have imp WE in his spec.

Lhivera · 08/19/08, 1:13 PM

Originally Posted by Qbert

I'd actually argue that if the WE mana regen is a very valuable mana boost, then 3% wouldnt be enough to justify anything but a Frost Mage. 3% damage is much less than the average player-based damage variation ... so having a small amount of additional skill/effort let you consistently out-damage and out-contribute any other spec would make the specs practically obselete. Obviously the same person respeccing would see the 3% increase... but when considering 15 DPS classes would you really consider a ~0.2-0.3% increase to overall raid DPS worth the loss of said 'valuable mana boost'?

I don't see how 10% less damage would be unacceptable if the mana supply was considered nearly essential. But again, it comes back to just how valuable the Imp WE mana is. If it is an excessive addition or simply a nice perk ... then the damage gap should decrease accordingly.

Please don't read my 3% as a number I was specifically advocating for. I was just trying to point out the importance of defining what, exactly, one means by "suck" in Zeldyr's context by using two extremes. 20% would be too large a gap. 3% would be too small a gap. I really don't know exactly what the correct gap would be, but it would obviously depend a great deal on how valuable that mana regen really is. If healers struggle without it (assuming an "average" amount of other external regen, whatever that may be), then it justifies a larger DPS gap; if the only thing it accomplishes is allowing your one Arcane Mage to cast more Arcane Blasts, because everyone else already has more mana than they can burn, then it justifies a very trivial DPS gap. But there is, of course, a limit to how much personal DPS can go away before the spec is considered nonviable regardless of utility.

Anyway, the point is, everyone's assuming that the Improved Water Elemental regen is too strong, and will shove other specs aside, when in fact it may be that 90% of that mana is wasted. We just don't know how much external regen is actually going to be useful in level 80 raids and gear.

Originally Posted by manly

Currently, in TBC, frost is 4-5% behind fire (depends highly on context - short fights will favor frost, but then again theres the WE dying too). Thats 4-5% behind without any raid utility. How much WE utility should play, I don't know. If I were to guess though, I'd guesstimate 1-2 % ? Now the real question is whether or not that should make frost with WE 6-7% behind fire. And the tricky question, is 6-7% behind fire acceptable when frost doesn't have imp WE in his spec.

Remember, though, that there really isn't any justification for that current 4-5%. The popular justification is "well, Frost is better at PvP," but Blizzard's made it clear that they're trying very hard not to make tradeoffs like that -- performance in one type of content isn't supposed to be balanced against performance in another type of content.

So going by the new, improved WotLK rules, equal utility between Fire and Frost should mean equal damage as well; the 4-5% gap that already exists would have to be justified by a utility increase under the WotLK rules.

◊ manly · 08/19/08, 1:17 PM

I think the real question is how to balance frost DPS for specs without imp WE.

I think I'm getting to the point where basically you can't put a dps penalty for the utility, or if not, you force all frost spec to be balanced around having the talent. Which is kind of weird and a bad way to do it.

Lhivera · 08/19/08, 1:20 PM

Originally Posted by manly

I think the real question is how to balance frost DPS for specs without imp WE.

I think I'm getting to the point where basically you can't put a dps penalty for the utility, or if not, you force all frost spec to be balanced around having the talent. Which is kind of weird and a bad way to do it.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to balance a deep spec around the assumption that it takes certain core talents. It would be weird to balance a deep Fire spec around the assumption that maybe someone won't spec Burnout, for example, or that a deep Arcane spec might not take Spell Power. The Water Elemental is a core talent, and it seems quite reasonable to assume that a deep Frost spec should take the points to improve it and balance around that assumption.

Slander · 08/19/08, 1:21 PM

I actually think that utility versus dps concept needs a bit of clarification from blizzard side. Take improved water elemental for example as it's a hot topic, there is no way you can logically conclude how much of a penalty frost should take as it value will vary depending on the specific situation, you might be able to 'balance' it for some situation but not all making it gain an unfair (dis)advantage in other situations. Then take the utility that is sheep, it has nothing to do with rDPS at all nor does blood pact and various other 'utilities'. Therefore I'd say utility that doesn't give an increase in rDPS consistently isn't worthy of penalising your own personal damage.

Lhivera · 08/19/08, 1:28 PM

Originally Posted by Slander

I actually think that utility versus dps concept needs a bit of clarification from blizzard side. Take improved water elemental for example as it's a hot topic, there is no way you can logically conclude how much of a penalty frost should take as it value will vary depending on the specific situation, you might be able to 'balance' it for some situation but not all making it gain an unfair (dis)advantage in other situations.

What you do in that situation is try to balance around the average and make the variance small. It's not a horrific problem if you go into an instance with 9 encounters and find that you're 5% overpowered for 3 of them and 5% underpowered for 3 of them.

Similar example on the whole Molten Armor issue. It doesn't have to be that you're either 3% overpowered when you use it or 3% underpowered when you don't; it could instead be that you're 1.5% overpowered when you use it and 1.5% underpowered when you don't. Not a problem, as long as you can use it approximately half the time. (Doesn't mean I don't think we should have a real PvE-focused armor, mind you.)

Balance in a game like this is never going to a perfectly stationary and even scale with microgram precision; it's going to be a see-saw, and you're aiming for it to have small oscillations and to spend rough as much time with one side up as the other.

Qbert · 08/19/08, 1:29 PM

Originally Posted by Lhivera

Anyway, the point is, everyone's assuming that the Improved Water Elemental regen is too strong, and will shove other specs aside, when in fact it may be that 90% of that mana is wasted. We just don't know how much external regen is actually going to be useful in level 80 raids and gear.

I think the general realistic understanding would be that the mana would clearly be valuable or the entire mana system would become obselete. If 90% of the mana is wasted then mana in general has become a trivial mechanic and the game has bigger problems.

I have no problem with Frost Mages being the most desired spec of the class... I do however have a problem if the damage + utility of the alternate specs do not rival Frost's, which they currently don't appear to. Naturally a raid-wide mana battery is a more 'desired' spec while it may provide equal overall contribution to a raid as another more DPS-centric spec... which is fine. Its just that utility, appeal and contribution appear to eclipse alternative specs, making Fire/Arcane the "last picks in Dodgeball" so to speak.

Originally Posted by manly

I think the real question is how to balance frost DPS for specs without imp WE.

I think I'm getting to the point where basically you can't put a dps penalty for the utility, or if not, you force all frost spec to be balanced around having the talent. Which is kind of weird and a bad way to do it.

I disagree, because that would be equivalent to balancing a shadow priest's damage in TBC around the assumption that VT isn't used. Add the utility and you add incentive/contribution, so balancing specs when ignoring it would be false balance.

The problem is that the mana supply can be potentially so valuable that a vicarious damage reduction is warranted... thus devaluing a majority of the player's gametime. Frost mages don't want to pay a huge damage penalty for imp WE simply because they don't want to feel like a passive mana-bot whose gameplay is largely irrelevant to their contribution, despite whether or not it is warranted given the mana provided. It is simply bad design akin to inferior damage compensating for passive auras or totems or automatic debuffs. Players want to feel like it was them that contributed to the raid, not their spec. However that is all semantics, and not relevant to damage + utility balance.

Zeldyrr · 08/19/08, 1:31 PM

I apologize for not being clear with my previous posts. I'm not trying to determine what % damage decrease improved WE with mana regen should be. I'm trying to point out that having the regen be over the top useful and thus damage way way behind (10% is way way behind) is bad design.

It makes frost mages into shadow priests 2.0. You don't bring them for their damage. You bring them to keep the WE out and alive as much as possible. Since their personal damage sucks anyway, you probably make them spec improved scorch (the "other" issue) because it has the least impact on raid DPS to have them keep the scorch debuff up. (After all, casting improved scorch doesn't affect the WE's uptime. Having a FFB mage cast scorch means loosing a lot of DPS from a missed FFB that has WC and Improved Scorch up from another source.)

This is not a role anyone should be saddled with. Blizzard devs have already posted how they messed up with shadow priests in BC. They had "I need it now" utility and piss-poor personal damage. Thus the nerf to VT and the increase in personal shadow DPS. And I'd argue strongly that frost mage DPS + WE should still be above shadow priest DPS + VT because doing damage is what mages do.

The pure DPS classes are different than the other classes. For druids, the specs are ranged DPS, healing, and tanking. Each with three distinct roles. The three roles of the mage specs should be damage, damage, and damage. Sure there is some utility for flavor. Sure they do damage in completely different ways so that playing a different spec is a different experience. But arcane should not be lighting up the meters with huge numbers while frost sits in the back keeping his pet out of harms way.

It doesn't matter if one can perfectly determine that WE utility is worth X%. I don't want X to be big. If it is, reduce WE utility. I didn't pick a frost mage to be a mana battery who cheers from the sidelines in raids.

(And personally, I don't care if frost mages were 5-6% behind in BC. Utility aside, I want them to be equal in WotLK. If we add a little more utility to them, sure a few percent is fine. But equal is the baseline we should start from. And if fire/arcane have utility that has to be balanced against the WE mana regen and WC.)

Roywyn · 08/19/08, 1:40 PM

Originally Posted by Gediablo

I just tested if the ignite bug is still present on the wotlk test realm.

Should have been 1458 pr ignite tick
Should have been 1365 pr ignite tick
Should have been 1350 pr ignite tick
Should have been 1352 pr ignite tick

Like on live realm it is not every single time it happens, but it is very easy to force these missing Ignites, especially when 2 fire spells hit the target nearly at the same time (like with fireball+fireblast or frostfireball+fireblast combos)

In all your examples, you got the Fireball Ignite but lost the Fire Blast Ignite.
Have there been cases where you got the Fire Blast Ignite but lost the Fireball Ignite?

=> If we reliably get the Fireball (or Frostfire Bolt) Ignite and lose the Fire Blast, we're still closer to my "50% chance on bugging" than our "100% chance on bugging".

Also, has anyone got Ignite data on Fb-Sc-FiBl triple crit scenarios?

Edit: Frost mages are far beyond Shadow Priests with current talents/scaling. 40-50% ahead once they get gear.
They are also 5-10% above Moonkin and 10-15% above Elemental Shaman.

This is partially meaningless because they haven't touched the DPS check/balance yet. Although I need to harness all my optimism to convince myself that it'll end up better tuned than this time.

Qbert · 08/19/08, 1:44 PM

It makes frost mages into shadow priests 2.0. You don't bring them for their damage. You bring them to keep the WE out and alive as much as possible. Since their personal damage sucks anyway, you probably make them spec improved scorch (the "other" issue) because it has the least impact on raid DPS to have them keep the scorch debuff up. (After all, casting improved scorch doesn't affect the WE's uptime. Having a FFB mage cast scorch means loosing a lot of DPS from a missed FFB that has WC and Improved Scorch up from another source.)

In fact, Frost Mages would be an even worse version of Shadow Priests. SPs at least had mana supply scalable with damage, making their mana utility dependent on their ability to do damage.... so the more effort, the more damage, the more 'skill'; the more utility. Frost Mages however are totally independent of their utility. WE mana supply is automatically scaled and provided without any input from the Mage except use of the cooldown.