OK I will give it a go and respec to get burning soul.
I was listening to a book on tape 'Animals in Translation'/Temple Grandin on the drive back from the beach and ran arcoss something pretty interesting. There was a study where subjects were asked to watch a recorded basketball game and press a button every time they saw a pass. Thirty seconds into the recording a woman with an umbrella walks across the basketball court, remaining onscreen for 4s, and the recording ends 25s later. The interesting thing was that when questioned about it 48% of the subjects did not even observe her. See http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~cfc/Simons1999.pdf. When the subjects were not asked to perform any task they always saw her.
Now when we as casters focus upon some casting bar like Icehud or Quartz, we are likely to have an effect just like the above study, where we are largely oblivious to what else is going on in the game. For instance my first level 60 (before BC) was a priest, and I only ever really saw the inside of an instance much later when I ran them all over again with my warrior. Bar watching as a priest for me meant I saw very little else.
So I will return to one of my original questions here...how do you remain cognizant of the tactical field while using latency bars and stopcasting macros?
So I will return to one of my original questions here...how do you remain cognizant of the tactical field while using latency bars and stopcasting macros?
I make the casting bar resonably wide (the width of both my personal and target unit frames side-by-side, as it resides above them) and have the latency portion of quartz in a notably different color than the casting bar.
This allows for me to keep a pretty easy eye on the casting bar with my peripheral vision, without having a dramatic effect on my situational awareness. Also, as I have my casting bar, unit frames, and decursive all in a cluster, my eyes do not have to wander too much when looking at GUI information.
When initially transitioning from spamming (old fastcast days) to timing (/stopcast macros) I was pretty focused on the casting bar. At this point though, it lives near the bottom of the screen and I time off it peripherally without issues. The damn thing is about 24pts high and a third of the width of my screen though on a 22" widescreen monitor but it gets the job done.
In the end, I don't think it really requires much of my attention. That would vary were I using scorch or AB often but for steady fireball spam it's not bad at all with Quartz.
When initially transitioning from spamming (old fastcast days) to timing (/stopcast macros) I was pretty focused on the casting bar. At this point though, it lives near the bottom of the screen and I time off it peripherally without issues. The damn thing is about 24pts high and a third of the width of my screen though on a 22" widescreen monitor but it gets the job done.
In the end, I don't think it really requires much of my attention. That would vary were I using scorch or AB often but for steady fireball spam it's not bad at all with Quartz.
Yep, that's pretty much what I've done. The key to using quartz is to enlarge it a good bit, and especially width wise. After 4 weeks of using it, you just get use to it.
One other tip that I have not seen mentioned, which I use is to take advantage of the fact that spells are actually cast on key-up, not key-down. What this means is that when you press the key down and release it, WoW doesnt do jack until you release it. It's not much, but when your trying to shave .1 secs off, it helps.
So when I'm spaming fireballs, I simply press keybind down for fireball, and release it when the quartz bar moves into the lag area. This stops the current fireball (which still cast) and automatically cast the next one. I then press the key down again (which does not do anything) and hold it until the bar reaches lag area and release.
Yep, that's pretty much what I've done. The key to using quartz is to enlarge it a good bit, and especially width wise. After 4 weeks of using it, you just get use to it.
One other tip that I have not seen mentioned, which I use is to take advantage of the fact that spells are actually cast on key-up, not key-down. What this means is that when you press the key down and release it, WoW doesnt do jack until you release it. It's not much, but when your trying to shave .1 secs off, it helps.
So when I'm spaming fireballs, I simply press keybind down for fireball, and release it when the quartz bar moves into the lag area. This stops the current fireball (which still cast) and automatically cast the next one. I then press the key down again (which does not do anything) and hold it until the bar reaches lag area and release.
Well, ya learn something new every day! Thanks for the tip, I never even thought to check which event was used and key up is definitely easy to control.
While it does work, if you're aware of the fact that the casts are on key release and not on key press you can easily adjust and just click faster instead of holding the key down. It's easier to just do a quick click rather than time the "releasing" imo. But I guess it's also a matter of getting used to clicking to do an action rather than letting go.
As for the woman with the umbrella, the difference between that experience and wow is that in wow you are also given a task to look for a woman with an unbrella while you click every time they pass the ball. Do you think the subjects would *still* not see the woman with the umbrella if they were asked to look for one? Same thing in wow, you need to watch both your castbar and your surroundings... Not the easiest thing, but it's not the same as the umbrella thing as you KNOW you need to look around you especially if you know the fight and what to look for on that fight.
You need insanely high +damage and insanely low crit chance (really unrealistic amounts) for 1 crit rating to actually reach 1 spell damage. Unless you're 33/28 fireball spammer, but there's really little point speccing 33/28 over 10/48/3 if you're going to spam fireballs, and if you spec 33/28 for AB/fireball rotation the value of crit is about the same as it is for a 10/48/3, as fireballs get more out of crit with that spec but ABs get less, averaging to about the same crit->damage conversion value as 10/48/3. So no, as a rule 32 crit rating isn't better than 32 damage.
I'd like to verify that my math agrees with that of others here. I suspect this has been visited earlier in the thread, but the thread is long, and the quoted passage above may or may not be taking previous posts into account, so here goes:
If fireball is a mage's main spam spell, and averages 2210 damage (ignore scorch debuffs for this), and that mage is specced to do double damage on a crit (2/2 Spell Focus), then one crit rating would equal one +dmg, would it not?
Detail: a crit would do 2210 more damage (ignore the fireball and ignite DoTs; if they make the difference here, though, feel free to mention that); 1% crit = 2210 more damage per 100 fireballs, or 22.1 per fireball; so 1% crit = 22.1 crit rating = 22.1 +dmg, or 1 crit rating = 1 +dmg.
If, on the other hand, that mage uses 10/48/3, then crits are only 1105 more damage (again, ignoring ignite), so 22.1 crit rating = 1%crit = 11.05 +dmg.
However. If you figure in ignite, then crit damage shoots back up to about 1989 (1105 + 884 from DoT), which brings crit rating up to 0.9 +dmg. In fact, if you had both Spell Focus and Ignite, 1 crit rating would equal 1.4 +dmg.
And if your fireballs averaged over 2210 - which we all know is easily possible - crit rating would be worth even more in comparison to +dmg.
(I am assuming that applicable +dmg is proportionate to the spell's base cast time, even if improved, and I am also ignoring the effect of empowered fireball - though in both cases, I believe those are independent of the math here.)
Am I way off base here? In my case, it makes a difference in how I select gems...
All these things add up to make spell damage better than you listed it to be:
-empowered fireballs
-13% dmg from talents
-crit and spell dmg multiplying eachother, so with 30% crit 1 spell damage is multiplied by 1.33 (just like with higher dmg crit is more effective). I said it doesn't change much when you change your stats but that was becuase the effect of spell damage doesn't change much when your crit is 27% or 31%, but you can't assume 0 crit...
Add those in and it'll fix your breakpoint where 1 dmg equals 1 crit and will require a lot more spell dmg. In fact according to my spreadsheet I need almost 2000 spell damage for 1 crit rating to equal 1 spell damage, while keeping crit the same.
That's some good stuff there mate, I wasn't looking for exact numbers but rather a rule of thumb
I've recently been stacking crit because it makes the lightning capacitator even more overpowered then it already was, with me being an arcane mage and using short cast spells all the time, but I may need to rethink this a bit it seems.
I put some numbers together once, and, in short, 10 spell damage = 18 - 19 spell crit rating.
I read on the major Theorycrafting post that "10/48/3 is the highest PvE damage spec until you get at least 2 pieces of tier 5 gear" or whatever, and now I'm confused.
Does 10/48/3 lose in dps to another spec if you're decked in Tier 6 gear?
What other spec beats it?
Also, it seems to say that another spec comes close to 10/48/3 for PvE... which spec is that?
I read on the major Theorycrafting post that "10/48/3 is the highest PvE damage spec until you get at least 2 pieces of tier 5 gear" or whatever, and now I'm confused.
The two piece set bonus for tier 5 mage set is "Increases the damage and mana cost of Arcane Blast by 20%."
I think it's almost safe to assume that when you're decked in T6 the combination of dps lost due to using T5 pieces with less DPS on them and the fact 4-piece T6 adds to fireball and frostbolt damage arcane spec again becomes... Less useful. But when T6 is far and T5 is the best you got, you're gonna have the 2/5 with minimal dmg loss at the WORST, which makes 33/28 (or other arcane variants) worthwhile. 20% dmg on AB is THAT good, makes it from near-useless to the most awesome spell ever created.
I really hope they balance it out at some point so AB is useful without 2/5 T5 and nerf 2/5 T5 appropriately.
C'mon if we want to discuss things that should get fixed theres a countless list of things they could do. The exalted ashtongue deathsworn is a big lackluster, despise the effort required to get it.
<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
When initially transitioning from spamming (old fastcast days) to timing (/stopcast macros) I was pretty focused on the casting bar. At this point though, it lives near the bottom of the screen and I time off it peripherally without issues. The damn thing is about 24pts high and a third of the width of my screen though on a 22" widescreen monitor but it gets the job done.
In the end, I don't think it really requires much of my attention. That would vary were I using scorch or AB often but for steady fireball spam it's not bad at all with Quartz.
Most people use Quartz (spelling) however I have been a long time addict of ECB - which is compatible with SuperCast which ends up doing the same thing.
With ECB I can make the casting bar pretty darn huge, and I do, as well as make it opaque. I generally position it right smack bang in the middle of my screen so my peripheral vision always catches it while I look at something else.
"Being a leader is not a position of power. It is a position of service." ~ Barestomper
Here's something I posted in the "How to make arcane damage work" thread. I thought it would useful here as well.
Originally Posted by Logun
Here's Lhivera's Newest Theorycraft Calculator. It is the most user friendly and accurate one I have been able to find. It lets you select the the different types of builds and compare their outputs side by side in a readout. It will also show all the basic DPS/DPM results as well as how much DPS/SPM each trinket would add to your build, how much each Stat is worth to your build, and your Threat per second.
Lhivera will be adding a option to select t5 set bonus as the above data does not include it.
The above data also does not take into account that the arcane mage will be AB spamming the last 20% of the boss fight. However, Combustion is given a flat 3% crit and Molten Fury is given a flat 4% damage increase which I think is more than it should be since the last 20% interval is shorter than another other 20% interval in a fight (Everyone nuking, Warriors Executing, Mages ABing/Molten Furying ext.) I personally know that I can pull more out of an arcane build than I can out of any other build. Arcane requires more attention to detail and some mages just arn't able to adjust. Just like any other build, you need to gear for it and invest time in learning it.
C'mon if we want to discuss things that should get fixed theres a countless list of things they could do. The exalted ashtongue deathsworn is a big lackluster, despise the effort required to get it.
I'd put the improved fireball/frostbolt +damage tax at the top of the list. Their reason for putting that in (mages do more single target dps than any other class) doesn't reflect reality currently and I don't think it ever did.
At the point of start of TBC, when t4 was rare and equal to most blues, yet being hard as hell to acquire (hi gruul and mag pre nerf), mages with spellfire and spellstrike, that were superior to t5, and relatively easy to get (from my experience), were raping the damagemeters on almost all encounters, maybe the impression of that made them implement that "tax".
I am not at all sold though that this was the case. I push for dps pretty hard and I was a very early adopter in TBC (well ahead of most of my competition in terms of gear for the time). Still, even once I was geared in tailoring sets and with ring enchants, I could indeed be beaten and quite often was by warlocks and even our shadow priest.
Fast forward to now and I with the same tailoring gear and selected offset pieces and still competitive but not in the same way I once was I suppose. Rogues, Hunters and Warriors are now extremely competitive or better on most fights and Warlocks are essentially untouchable on fights with AE.
Regardless though, the 'tax' hit long before there were any parses showing Mages dominating and I think that's what sticks with me the most. A model had shown us doing too much dps and we were adjusted based on theory when in practice I still don't think we were ever out of step. Since then, of course, it's become canon though and to undo the measures would only really serve to hurt arcane builds relatively.
I honestly don't know how Blizzard should progress from here r.e. the Mage class. Perhaps adding raid damage utility or personal survivability/independence would be the best course. I could certainly live happily with my damage output were I also not a drain of raid resources and too glassy of a cannon.
I tried looking on worldofwarcraft.com forums and these forums but was unable to find the information I was looking for. Since respecing from 40/0/21 to now 10/48/3 I've noticed a lot of "partial resists" on bosses in SSC/Eye. Most recently after downing Lurker in SSC my Fireball spell had a partial resist rate of over 20% of my total casts, most of which being 25% and 50% partials. I have both the +20 spell penetration cloak enchant and to my knownledge (on this boss and others) curse of elements (-88 resistance) has always been on the mob. I've heard, but not confirmed that some mobs have a ~25 spell resistance that cannot be overcome by CoE or spell penetration, which only affects fire/arcane/shadow.
If someone could please clear up this issue of partial resists or point me in the right direction I would very much appericate it. While I am generally one of the top DPS in the raid these partials seem to be a big chunk of lost damage.
After digging a little deeper in this thread I found this:
Originally Posted by Yeonora
To kind of clear this mess up a bit. To my understanding:
- Binary spells do not suffer from the 5-6% resists against mobs three levels higher than you.
- Non-binary spells do suffer from 5-6% resists against mobs three levels higher than you in partial resists.
- You cannot overcome this "glancing" mechanic with curse of shadows/elements or spell penetration on gear.
- You cannot overcome "real" resistances (for example vs. netherdrakes or lvl70 players with frost resistance in PvP) with more hit rating on gear. Only spell penetration can do this.
- With 16% hit total, you get in average 1% complete resists against every mob three levels higher than you with every spell, provided the mob does not have additional "real" resistance thrown on that you do not penetrate.
I guess my only question now is... for end game raiding (SSC/Eye/MH/BT) does the CoE -resistance even benefit us fire mages? And more importantly, is the +20 spell penetration cloak enchant near useless for raiding, making the subtlety (-2% threat) enchant almost always better?
I think the answer to those questions is in the stickied theorycrafting topics.
Spell penetration as a stat has 0 effect in PvE. The only mob reported to have resists that can be affect by it in PvE in TBC is Supremus. On every other boss neither it, nor the -88 resists from CoE has any affect whatsoever in anyway.
The subtlety enchant has always been far superior - and thankfull in 2.2 peopel will be able to get hold of it again at last!
All these things add up to make spell damage better than you listed it to be:
-empowered fireballs
-13% dmg from talents
-crit and spell dmg multiplying eachother, so with 30% crit 1 spell damage is multiplied by 1.33 (just like with higher dmg crit is more effective). I said it doesn't change much when you change your stats but that was becuase the effect of spell damage doesn't change much when your crit is 27% or 31%, but you can't assume 0 crit...
Add those in and it'll fix your breakpoint where 1 dmg equals 1 crit and will require a lot more spell dmg. In fact according to my spreadsheet I need almost 2000 spell damage for 1 crit rating to equal 1 spell damage, while keeping crit the same.
Okay. I think the multiplying is probably the biggest thing I'm overlooking. Earlier, I asserted that 1cr=1dmg when avg fireball is 2210 and crit dmg is 100% non-crit. Let's assume current crit was 30%. With the multiplying, each +dmg is 30% likely to be doubled, so yes, 1dmg=1.3cr, or 0.75dmg=1cr, roughly. That's huge.
Empowered fireball - I'm a noob for not rereading the talent description. at 5/5, dmg is 15% more effective, so the conversion becomes 1dmg=1.41cr, or 0.71dmg=1cr. Not as big, but still big.
If crit dmg is only 90% non-crit (as in a 10/48/3), then 0.64dmg=1cr. (Is it really this low??)
If avg fireball damage is over 2210, crit is slightly more powerful in relation to +dmg, and if I'm correct, this time at least, it's in straight proportional rate - if avg dmg is 10% higher (2431), then cr becomes 10% more valuable in relation to dmg.
So if I wanted 1cr=1dmg, I'd need 2210 * 1.56 fireball - about 1238 more +dmg, which indeed would put me in the 2000 range. If so, that gives me a nice conversion I can do in my head. With 10/48/3, 30% crit, 1cr is about 5/8 of a +dmg if fireballs avg 2200, and for every 400 more dmg, 1cr gets about 1/8 more of a +dmg. (I'm currently at around the 6/8 mark. I'm also getting around 35% crit, so crit's actually somewhat less valuable.)
Thanks for the help.
[Again, I'm sure this was effectively proven somewhere in the 100+ pages of this thread, but it helps me to actually slog through this math myself. Plus, it's not enough for me to simply know that dmg>cr; I need to know HOW much more, since the time will come when I would indeed trade a little dmg for a lot of crit.]
07/10/07, 8:06 AM
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