TBC Mage Theorycrafting - Page 82

Dendory · 04/05/07, 9:20 AM

Well personally I used to be 10/0/51 for a long long time. But let's face it the elemental sucks, so I respec'ed 40/0/21 to try it out and I'm very happy with it. My average normal unbuffed frostbolt hits went from 1460 to 1510, crit from 2960 to 3340, with 1051 +dmg and 20.24% crit. I used to be with other mages and 1 of our warlock ahead of everyone else in raids, now I'm just ahead of everyone else. Last night at the end of our kar run I was at 23% with the closest one (rogue) at 15% on the dps meter. Never underestimate frost! ;P

You can check my spec here: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...cream&n=Pamine

Maligne · 04/05/07, 12:32 PM

Ok so I just downloaded Vontre's spreadsheet (yeah yeah, months behind) and I'm pretty shocked that as 37/0/24, ABx3/Fireballx2 is outperforming ABx2/Frostboltx2. Is there a big OOM time difference that I'm missing or something? I've never even considered using fireball with 0 points in fire.

Also, I couldn't get ABx3/Frostboltx2/Fireblast to work, does anyone have any numbers on this cycle?

Leto · 04/05/07, 12:52 PM

ABx3/Frostboltx2/Fireblast is too tight to fit into the ab debuff time with any lag.

Kalman · 04/05/07, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by Leto

ABx3/Frostboltx2/Fireblast is too tight to fit into the ab debuff time with any lag.

Uhm, FBx2/FiBl is a 6.5 second + lag*3 delay, so unless your effective cast lag exceeds 500 ms, it fits into the 8s window just fine. If it isn't workable, honestly neither is Scorchx4, which we all know works just fine (6s + lag*4).

Phalanx · 04/05/07, 1:09 PM

Originally Posted by Kalman

Uhm, FBx2/FiBl is a 6.5 second + lag*3 delay, so unless your effective cast lag exceeds 500 ms, it fits into the 8s window just fine. If it isn't workable, honestly neither is Scorchx4, which we all know works just fine (6s + lag*4).

Agreed. AB x 3/Scorch x 4 works just fine realistically when you don't have much lag (which I am lucky to not have).

Leto · 04/05/07, 1:42 PM

Originally Posted by Kalman

Uhm, FBx2/FiBl is a 6.5 second + lag*3 delay, so unless your effective cast lag exceeds 500 ms, it fits into the 8s window just fine. If it isn't workable, honestly neither is Scorchx4, which we all know works just fine (6s + lag*4).

My mistake, just added quickly and was off by a second, not used to thinking about frostbolt times, so I had 7.5 sec instead of 6.5.

Yea, that cycle should work fine, I do ab/4xscorch often.

Vontre · 04/05/07, 1:54 PM

I accidentally left Frostboltx2 defaults to off because I could not get that cycle to work against 2x or 3x arcane blast. Not enough time for the debuff to tick down. Frostboltx2 Fireblastx1 fits rather snugly, as does Frostboltx2 Scorchx1

Even so I'm a little surprised at your result as well, however remember we're assuming Improved Scorch debuff - which is a decent assumption for most 25-man raiders.

Edit: As a side note, lately I had not been able to fit Scorchx4 reliably into my rotation, but my latency is sub 150ms... something is wrong =(. Do I need a better wireless card or something?

Kalman · 04/05/07, 1:58 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

I accidentally left Frostboltx2 defaults to off because I could not get that cycle to work against 2x or 3x arcane blast. Not enough time for the debuff to tick down. Frostboltx2 Fireblastx1 fits rather snugly, as does Frostboltx2 Scorchx1

Even so I'm a little surprised at your result as well, however remember we're assuming Improved Scorch debuff - which is a decent assumption for most 25-man raiders.

Edit: As a side note, lately I had not been able to fit Scorchx4 reliably into my rotation, but my latency is sub 150ms... something is wrong =(. Do I need a better wireless card or something?

Are you using a /stopcasting macro?

Maligne · 04/05/07, 2:00 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

Even so I'm a little surprised at your result as well, however remember we're assuming Improved Scorch debuff - which is a decent assumption for most 25-man raiders.

Ah good point. I guess when there's no fire mage around to provide the debuff I'll stick to ABx2/FrBx2.

Vontre · 04/05/07, 2:03 PM

Originally Posted by Kalman

Are you using a /stopcasting macro?

Nope >.>

I kept cancelling my spells on accident. I just macroed /stopcasting to the begging of my scorch and arcane blast spells. Is that the right way to do it?

Kalman · 04/05/07, 2:07 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

Nope >.>

I kept cancelling my spells on accident. I just macroed /stopcasting to the begging of my scorch and arcane blast spells. Is that the right way to do it?

Yeah. I'd recommend getting a castbar which includes latency estimation; IceHUD does a nice job of this, which is what I use, but I suspect other castbars include it.

My Scorch macro, for example, is:

#showtooltip Scorch
/stopcasting
/cast Scorch

As long as I time when I hit it, I rarely lose a cast, and definitely spam Scorch that much faster.

Vontre · 04/05/07, 3:22 PM

So an interesting note. I was mentioning earlier how with arcane power, you could see over 12k total damage on an AP crit pyro. Averaged out of 180 seconds - or 3 minutes - that's 66 dps from a single instant.

I think modeling the overall effect of arcane power and presence of mind over a long casting cycle might be worth investigating. I'd estimate an increase of overall dps, over the 3 minute cooldown, by 30-40 points, which is likeley more significant than combustion.

PapaShlapa · 04/05/07, 3:51 PM

Originally Posted by Joink

I wasn't referring to a shadowpriests silence specifically but any counter spell by any class that has one. Anyway I still don't see the value of high resilience on mages. 200+ is about 5% less crit chance from the target and 10% less dmg on crits. If the stat points where used else where your looking at about +200dmg gain or +7% crit.

The only other interrupts you're likely to face are kick and pummel, both of which would assume that you have one, or multiple people, attacking you. This is when you'll want that resilience the most.

That 200 resilience though, also stacks with molten armor. So, you should be at -10% chance to be crit. Resilience is one of those stats that, the more you have of it, the better each point gets. Taking someone from 30% crit to 25% is nice, but taking them from 25% to 20% is even better. In the case of your average AP Frost mage for example, he's going to have ~15% crit unbuffed. Maybe 20% with molten, kings, and AI. That same 200 resilience, with Molten Armor, will take him to 10%, cutting the number of crits you recieve in half. Bottom line, if you don't have a very large hp pool, combined with high resilience you're going to die, very very fast. This really only applies to 5v5 though, as my experience in 3v3 and 2v2 is limited.

There were some tests I did, incidentally enough, that seemed to indicate resilience had a bigger impact on my frostbolts than would be expected. I didn't log it too fully, but I remember my test subject's resilience should have been ~10% reduction from crits, but he was seeing closer to 20% reduction. Something like 3.5k to 2.8k on a frostbolt crit. I don't know exactly how to explain it, maybe because of modifiers like Spell Power and Ice Shards, but he was definitely taking less damage than he should. In a later test, we used Kick from a rogue, and he recieved the expected 10% damage reduction.

If I can find the time, I'll try to do some more testing with this, and report the results here.

Vontre · 04/05/07, 4:16 PM

Originally Posted by PapaShlapa

The only other interrupts you're likely to face are kick and pummel, both of which would assume that you have one, or multiple people, attacking you. This is when you'll want that resilience the most.

That 200 resilience though, also stacks with molten armor. So, you should be at -10% chance to be crit. Resilience is one of those stats that, the more you have of it, the better each point gets. Taking someone from 30% crit to 25% is nice, but taking them from 25% to 20% is even better. In the case of your average AP Frost mage for example, he's going to have ~15% crit unbuffed. Maybe 20% with molten, kings, and AI. That same 200 resilience, with Molten Armor, will take him to 10%, cutting the number of crits you recieve in half. Bottom line, if you don't have a very large hp pool, combined with high resilience you're going to die, very very fast. This really only applies to 5v5 though, as my experience in 3v3 and 2v2 is limited.

There were some tests I did, incidentally enough, that seemed to indicate resilience had a bigger impact on my frostbolts than would be expected. I didn't log it too fully, but I remember my test subject's resilience should have been ~10% reduction from crits, but he was seeing closer to 20% reduction. Something like 3.5k to 2.8k on a frostbolt crit. I don't know exactly how to explain it, maybe because of modifiers like Spell Power and Ice Shards, but he was definitely taking less damage than he should. In a later test, we used Kick from a rogue, and he recieved the expected 10% damage reduction.

If I can find the time, I'll try to do some more testing with this, and report the results here.

You should try it with something that is affected by lethality. I'd be extremely interested in seeing the results of these tests. You could probaby determine from comparing the two talents (spell power and lethality).

• frmorrison · 04/05/07, 4:21 PM

Originally Posted by PapaShlapa

That 200 resilience though, also stacks with molten armor.
There were some tests I did, incidentally enough, that seemed to indicate resilience had a bigger impact on my frostbolts than would be expected. I didn't log it too fully, but I remember my test subject's resilience should have been ~10% reduction from crits, but he was seeing closer to 20% reduction.

I thought Molten Armor only removed Spell Crit (not melee or ranged)? Thottbot and Wowhead say only spell crit.

The small sample size may have screwed up your testing.

Northerner · 04/05/07, 4:36 PM

"Spell Effect: Apply Aura: Reduce Attacker Critical Hit Chance by %" is the aura name and I've been acting under the assumption it works against all attacks. "Spell Effect: Apply Aura: Reduces Attacker Chance to Crit with Melee" is the Druid talent version for comparison.

PapaShlapa · 04/05/07, 4:46 PM

I just read the tooltip =x
"Chance to recieve a critical hit reducd by 5%"

• Hamlet · 04/05/07, 7:03 PM

Originally Posted by Kalman

Yeah. I'd recommend getting a castbar which includes latency estimation; IceHUD does a nice job of this, which is what I use, but I suspect other castbars include it.

My Scorch macro, for example, is:

#showtooltip Scorch
/stopcasting
/cast Scorch

As long as I time when I hit it, I rarely lose a cast, and definitely spam Scorch that much faster.

To be honest, I still haven't gotten around to learning this yet.

Do you know if oCB includes latency? If not, is it really a big deal, once I get the hang of the timing?

Joink · 04/05/07, 7:08 PM

Originally Posted by PapaShlapa

The only other interrupts you're likely to face are kick and pummel, both of which would assume that you have one, or multiple people, attacking you. This is when you'll want that resilience the most.

The point I was trying to make is that as a mage, avoiding damage is easier to do than other classes due to the abilities we have. Example, getting caught stunned after using blink or not having iceblock to clear debuffs or nova available to get melee off you, kills mages. As a cloth class even non crit damage is rather high, and reducing a hunter or warriors crit rate from 35% to 30% for example doesn't seem as important as say gaining +150dmg and 50 stamina from other gear.

Originally Posted by PapaShlapa

That 200 resilience though, also stacks with molten armor. So, you should be at -10% chance to be crit. Resilience is one of those stats that, the more you have of it, the better each point gets. Taking someone from 30% crit to 25% is nice, but taking them from 25% to 20% is even better. In the case of your average AP Frost mage for example, he's going to have ~15% crit unbuffed. Maybe 20% with molten, kings, and AI. That same 200 resilience, with Molten Armor, will take him to 10%, cutting the number of crits you recieve in half. Bottom line, if you don't have a very large hp pool, combined with high resilience you're going to die, very very fast. This really only applies to 5v5 though, as my experience in 3v3 and 2v2 is limited.

AP Frost mage is a bad example imo since they would typically wait for the target to be stuck in a fnova for a +60% crit rate before dishing out major damage. Anyway it may stack with molten armor but using that over ice armor seems unwise. Going for crit and stam gear, when I was frost arena spec'd, I had around 27% crit buffed, close to 4digit +dmg and 11k buffed health. Preventing any bust damage was easy with 2 iceblocks, and my causes of death where never due something I could see resilience help preventing.

In my opinion resilience is better for classes that are expected to take hits in pvp like warriors and healers, whereas classes that are better at avoiding damage, not so important. ie rogues and mages.

Praanz · 04/05/07, 7:23 PM

Vontre: There is one thing that I do miss in your spreadsheet and it's a fireball-fireblast cycle - what I rate as beeing highest mage dps possible atm.

When I DPS I always cram in as many blasts as I can for max DPS. Sure it means Shadowpriest + gems + mana pots. But it would be interesting to see the output on your sheet - can a high enough +dmg make the fireblast go obsolete? I'm 900+dmg@33%crit at the moment with a 10/48/3.

My cycle would look like 3(fblast-fireball-fireball)-fireblast-fireball-scorch-scorch, or just fblast-fireball-fireball if I had someone who kept the debuff up for me.

Kalman · 04/05/07, 10:13 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

To be honest, I still haven't gotten around to learning this yet.

Do you know if oCB includes latency? If not, is it really a big deal, once I get the hang of the timing?

It's a big deal because it isn't a constant thing. The amount of time I have to preload my cast by varies by probably 200-300ms total; I do not know if oCB does latency estimation, but I'd bet it does.

Zeku · 04/06/07, 8:28 AM

What are you using for your evocation switch? All I have is soulkeeper and ameer's impulse taser.

Drauk · 04/06/07, 8:38 AM

Originally Posted by Zeku

What are you using for your evocation switch? All I have is soulkeeper and ameer's impulse taser.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31289 +20 spi chant

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25295 of Spirit

Zeku · 04/06/07, 8:55 AM

Thank you, you have no idea how helpful that was. Only 80g for the staff.

Kalman · 04/06/07, 2:12 PM

Originally Posted by Vontre

So an interesting note. I was mentioning earlier how with arcane power, you could see over 12k total damage on an AP crit pyro. Averaged out of 180 seconds - or 3 minutes - that's 66 dps from a single instant.

I think modeling the overall effect of arcane power and presence of mind over a long casting cycle might be worth investigating. I'd estimate an increase of overall dps, over the 3 minute cooldown, by 30-40 points, which is likeley more significant than combustion.

You're overestimating AP/POM's benefit to pyro a bit. You need E(AP POM pyro) - E(1.5s normal casting), basically, to come up with the actual benefit from AP/POM on pyro (same method can be applied to any other spell, though).

(12k? 12000/2.45/1.3 = 3767, so you'd need to have non-crit pyro's for 3800 - is that reachable?)