Anaxo

It's more of a warlock issue you're asking about, Alai. The consensus from the warlocks seems to be 2-3 fire/frost mages in the raid for CoE to outweigh the damage of that warlock's CoD/CoA. Emphasis on the tree distinction - arcane mages make use of CoS, not CoE. It also helps if said mages are excellent damage dealers to begin with - CoE with two great fire mages is more effective than CoE with two lackluster frost nukers.

 

Aldric

The general rule is 2 mages in a raid make CoE better than a damage curse. Keep in mind though that if your healers can handle it CoR will almost always be the best curse a warlock can apply.

If you want to provide hard numbers for your raid leader run a WWS report for your next raid. Find out how much damage your warlocks are actually getting from a damage curse for a fight. Then take 10% of your raids total fire and frost damage to the boss. If the fire/frost damage comes out ahead, then you have your answer and good evidence to back it up with.

 

Kikler

Warlocks are greedy , selfish damage whores welcome to the real world my friend , 4 locks in the raid today and they didn't apply COE for 50% on gurtogg till i yelled it 2-3 times on vent

 

Dothorio

I'm of the opinion that as long as there is two or more mages casting fireballs or frostbolts then your warlocks need to put up a CoE. Otherwise let them CoD.

J'adore quand un plan se déroule sans accroc

 

Stein

One other thing to consider is amplified curses. if all the locks are affliction, they should be doing amplified CoD & CoR/S/E rotations based on raid make-up.

 

◊ manly

amped curses requires points in affliction. Since typically you wont raid with more than 1 affliciton lock, you typically want maledictioned COS form that warlock, which means your amped curse won't be used.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

andastra

So, how valuable do people think spell haste is? When comparing gear, I usually use 1.5 spell crit = 1 spell hit = 1 damage. I'm thinking spell haste is probably as valuable as spell damage or maybe more valuable, but the lack of dpm increase might lower its value a bit. I got the pattern for shoulder of nimble thought last night and am wondering whether its better than the other BT/MH options.

 

Vhad

I'm torn with that too, I have the supremus belt and the crafted shoulders at the moment, I also have the noose off anetheron and t5 with epic gems, the belt is more or less a no brainer, but I can't decide on the shoulders.

What!?

 

Sancus

It.. is? I can't really see why you'd wear the belt, honestly. It's 56dmg + 32 spellhaste. The noose is 55 damage... but with two +12 gems, it's *79* damage and 24 crit rating. Even if you value crit rating as half as good as damage, that's still 91 "damage points" worth of dps output, whereas the belt is only 88, and as you noted, every point of damage on the Noose improves your dpm, while the haste does not.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Vhad

I meant it was a no brainer to use Noose over the supremus one

What!?

 

Roywyn

Pointwise for pure DPS, 1 spell haste is a tad better than 1 spell power. Around 1:1.1 to 1:1.2 with endgame gear.
It is a tad better for AM + Ashtongue, due to increasing proc uptime.

But it increases your mana usage (or doesn't increase DPM like every other stat, view it like you want).
Also, it won't add anything to AE spam, AB spam, scorch and MSD procs of Fireball/Frostbolt.

Nimble Thought - 44 dmg, 38 haste. Tempest - 70 dmg, 21 crit, Hatefury - 79 dmg, 24 crit.
Hatefury looks best, but bear in mind that you you should want 4/5 T6, and I think that you can get more damage from switching out leggings.

 

Warriorofplight

Vontre,

I was wondering if your Mage Spread Sheets are posted anywhere online? I am having trouble deciding whether Deep Arc or Deep Fire will put out better DPS considering my raids current progression, especially considering the repeal of the Damage tax.

 

Baruk

What I still dislike about spellhaste is that it actually lowers your dpm because
you get less manaregen per cast due to the reduced casttime and so the effektive cost
of the cast (manacost of the cast - manareg in the casttime) inceases... :*/

Per Aspera ad Astra

 

Docjowles

The URL is in his sig. Also, the "Vontre's Mage Spreadsheet" thread might be a good place to look .

 

Warriorofplight

Ahh I feel like a dunce.

Thanks.

 

Rouncer

Someone said something in the wow forums and it got me thinking.

Evocation is being changed to a straight percentage return every 2 seconds. This means that it is no longer tied to spirit regen on any level. Shouldn't this mean that haste would effect evocation in a good way?

Would be nice to be able to use a focus proc to turn evocation into 4 seconds of standing still instead of 8.

 

Pintofbrew

That's really profound, not until I read your post a few times and thought did I realise if you Evo on haste now you lose out on mana! post 2.3 it'll also help to maintain the Crusade buff up. It does have a tendancy to expire it's self if you take your leisurly time to cast an unbuffed AB after Evocating.

 

Dryssa

I don't know whether or not spell haste affects Evocation, though I am positive the MSD's Focus proc does NOT.

 

Rouncer

Currently haste has no effect on Evocation. A few patches ago haste did effect it and it would have been a problem but there was a nice exploit with Aran, since his slow would make it so you would get xtra ticks if you evocated while it was in effect (regen rate was the same only the channel lasted longer), and fixing that they removed the effect all haste had on evocate.

However with the change coming in 2.3 that exploit would not work anyway so hopefully haste will effect the speed of the channel so we can at least get a little buff from the new mechanism.

 

alvinrod

It's obvious that it doesn't scale as well as your Fireball with spell damage (especially with removal of the coefficient reduction from Improved Fireball in 2.3 or acquiring 4/5 T6) but for lower amounts of spell damage it's not a bad spell to mix in if you can spare the mana. If you could cast with near zero latency, then one point in Improved Fireblast would make it a very tight cycle. It does have a slightly higher chance to crit as well. Without factoring in the crit differences, it takes a little over 1500 spell damage before Fireball (with empowered fireball) would surpass the DPS of Fireblast. Having the T6 bonus as well drops it to under 1400, but that's still a lot of spell damage.

On the downside, you need to be a lot closer to your target in order to make use of Fireblast. It also uses more mana as well so depending on your situation it may not be an effective solution. If you don't take the improved Fireblast talent the cooldown is 8 seconds, which depending on your latency may leave you with some dead time that's completely wasted.

On paper, it's best to include it in your rotation if mana isn't an issue, but in practice I wouldn't be surprised if fireball is more reliable simply due to latency issues. For fire mages in KZ and other T4 instances, I think it's a viable strategy.

 

Roywyn

On Fire Blast:

Most Calculations I've done before made using Fire Blast after every second fireball a DPS gain. It gave a DPS boost comparable to using molten armour, and the mana drain was just a bit worse than what molten armour causes (over mage armour).

Removing the Fireball Tax, adding 4/5 T6 (+5% Fireball damage), having the MSD meta (unless they revive RED for casters) and adding some haste gear makes Fire Blast a DPS loss according to Vontre's sheet.

I can't exactly tell where the break point is, or whether you need haste/T6 gear or very high spell power to make Fireball overtake Fire Blast.
Toy with the sheet and try it yourself.

 

Kikler

I feel stupid that i went for random pieces instead of 4/5 T6

 

Mutant Santa

All mages should get a spell haste set just for quicker conjure water casts =P

 

Dustwhisper

To me the optimal gearchoice from BT(and Im not even there) for fire seems to be T6 shoulders, gloves, chest then it's a mixup between either going Illidari head + T6 pants or going T6 head + leggings of channeled elements. And I haven't really looked at the numbers of those 4 pieces to see whichever creates the highest/best gain.

 

Tyfusius

You should also keep in mind that running 4 locks and probably 1 or 2 SP's(?) will very often lead to curses getting knocked off. It should be the locks responsibility to reapply it of course, but it should also be wise to yell to ppl that they should stop using debuff slots on retarded debuffs.

As mentioned in here, we warlocks tend to favor CoS if we have to choose. Not just greedy but it will give the raid more. Depending on the fight and setup. At least in our guild you will see CoE up almost all the time. CoR is also better where it is allowed if you only have that many locks.

PS: Warlocks are greedy , selfish damage whores - is that a new Theory Crafting you have some numbers on? *