Fire Cataclysm Discussion: OP Updated for Release - Page 13

Bashram · 09/26/10, 11:55 PM

New Combustion is sexy. Even if it loses the auto-crit, it makes up for it by being that much cooler.

Originally Posted by arch

FFB glyph changed according to what Kalgan was talking about:

Glyph of Frostfire - Item - World of Warcraft

Increases the damage done by you Frostfire Bolt by 15% and your Frostfire Bolt now deals 3% additional damage over 12 sec, stacking up to 3 times, but no longer reduces the victim's movement speed.

Hrm. My gut tells me that, unless the stacks have separate durations--the first stack falls off after twelve seconds, no matter how long is left on the debuff itself--this is going to be complicated. If you have twelve seconds after getting the third stack, wouldn't it be more efficient to cast Fireballs for most of that time period?

Also, I don't fully understand why they decided that the alternate Fire spec is going to be the one that benefits more from Fire's mastery. Why not give Fireball the DoT and make Frostfire the more direct-damage spec?

elluminea · 09/27/10, 6:06 AM

Originally Posted by Bashram

If you have twelve seconds after getting the third stack, wouldn't it be more efficient to cast Fireballs for most of that time period?

Tooltip damage with FFB glyphed is like 2 damage less than fireball right now, the two spells have identical cast times and mana costs, so you won't gain more than a couple hundred damage on even the longest of encounters. Unless you have them BOTH glyphed there is virtually zero incentive for Fireball.

This implementation is tricky... As it is I get the feeling that this glyph means at X mastery the DoT will outscale 5% Fireball crit, and we'll all be FFB mages again. I mean haste and crit are going to scale the same for both Fireball and FFB, mastery is just going to give extra to the FFBolter. It also only serves to increase the power of our dps cooldown as well.

If the Fireball glyph was "Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Fireball by 9%" it would be a different story, the story Kalgan tried to set out with the 2 paths for fire mages. Right now it's just one path that changes colour when you get a certain amount of gear.

An interesting thought about the spec however: if the FFB glyph behaves as the frostbolt glyph on live does, where the snare is present, just set to 0%, a fire mage has more potent access to MS as 0/31/8+2. Probably could confirm this right now in a duel.

Zaldinar · 09/27/10, 6:12 AM

My tinfoil-hat is telling me that FFBs damage value is going to be readjusted later, and they want to encourage beta Mages to use the Glyph for a little bit to make sure it works and see how the DoT stacking mechanic feels.

Edit: Was working with a mistake from Lhivera, the damage values aren't skewed intensely to FFBs favor at the moment. Its 3% DoT vs 5% crit, the crit comes out on top in most reasonable gear levels, but not by huge margins. Some tuning of base damage could easily make it more attainable.

Fizzl · 09/27/10, 12:57 PM

I got the impression FFB is supposed to replace fireball.

Fireball is now just a direct damage spell that isn't effected by your mastery (unless you crit) so you use FFB with the Glyph for more damage, and a stacking dot that scales with mastery. It also has the added bonus of another dot to be consumed by combustion. Blizzard don't like the idea high level spells you will almost never use. It also looks prettier. :P

I think we are supposed to be using FFB.

Pasture · 09/27/10, 1:08 PM

Originally Posted by Fizzl

I got the impression FFB is supposed to replace fireball.

Fireball is now just a direct damage spell that isn't effected by your mastery (unless you crit) so you use FFB with the Glyph for more damage, and a stacking dot that scales with mastery. It also has the added bonus of another dot to be consumed by combustion. Blizzard don't like the idea high level spells you will almost never use. It also looks prettier. :P

I think we are supposed to be using FFB.

This has already been covered by blue posts.

Fire mages who stack mastery should use FFB as their main nuke.

Fire mages who focus haste / crit as their preferred stats should use FB as their main nuke.

You're not supposed to use one or the other as standard. Fire mages can either choose which they'd rather use and stack the relevant stats, or just change their nuke / glyphs depending on what gear they happen to pick up.

It gives Fire more stat flexibility than pretty much any dps spec out there. It's a really nice idea. I'm sure ultimately, either FFB or FB will top the other, but hopefully it's close enough to remain a choice.

arch · 09/27/10, 1:23 PM

"Cata" on the beta forums made a good point about combustion:

A ret, talented with 3/3 Sanctified Wrath, has AW on a 2 minute cooldown. This is their main dps cooldown and it is a flat 20% increase to ALL their damage and healing for 20 seconds.
Combustion is a Fire mage's main cooldown, and it's.... Just another (admittedly powerful) DoT which lasts 10 seconds. My point is therefore, will Combustion give as much of a damage increase for a fire mage as AW does for a Ret?

This has had me wondering too for a while. Obviously there is a decent burst and dps increase involved, but how large is it in reality?

As far as I know, the 100% crit version of combustion which was scrapped last build was never added to hot streak. Kalgan said the critting combustion would give you a chance for a pyroblast but hot streak never supported the actual combustion crit to my knowledge.

The point is that at 2 minutes cooldown, that 100% crit with the chance for pyroblast would have given us some extra controlled burst on top of that DISPELLABLE dot.

Now that the crit portion is removed and we don't know if the direct damage part of combustion will be supported by hot streak, what warrants the 2 minute cooldown?

From day 1 when the ability was changed to the dot merging mechanic, I felt the cooldown should be like 1 minute or so(this was before combustion did damage on its own). But this has no maths supporting it all, I have yet to see any numbers of the current combustion as we know it. If those numbers are off the charts, then fine, 2 minutes it is.

If they aren't that impressive I'd argue 1 minute cooldown would be called for. The DoT is dispellable after all.

If the numbers are decent but not great, I say bring back the 2 minute version with 100% crit on the dd portion of combustion, with a chance for the hot streak proc. It does about the same damage as a critting fire blast which is not overly crazy, so the damage from combustion itself can't really be overpowered.

As always, I'm looking at the PvP angle here. The setup time required and the fact that the dot is dispellable might make this a marginal talent for PvP. Last weeks version with the critting dd and alleged chance for HS proc was great for PvP.

Logix · 09/27/10, 3:47 PM

Originally Posted by Logix

The issue I see perhaps occuring, is that unless they decide to, say, make 2 versions of tier gear (mastery heavy and crit/haste/whatever heavy), we will most probably be left with attempting to 'turn into a frostfire mage' through offset pieces. I don't know how this will turn out, since it basically adds another headache of trying to figure out "should I fore-go tier gear so I can be a frostfire mage? Is the loss of the set bonuses worth it?" (I'm assuming tier gear will support the standard "fireballing" mage, due to the set bonus).

A somewhat important update on this issue. The new set bonus for mage reads:
"Reduces the cast time of Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, and Frostbolt by 10%."

So it seems that my previous worry has been put to rest. Mage set bonuses will (should) come ready made to support a FFB mage spec. Coupled with reforging and a selection of items/trinkets. I think that the overall worry of "FFB is only going to work with enough variety in gear allowing the mage to make a choice" may end up being a non-issue.

Dejah-Thoris · 09/27/10, 3:59 PM

I got on the PTR this weekend. I looked at 2 things:

1) Hot Streak T3. I didn't see anywhere near the 70% on-crit proc rate other people reported. At first I thought the talent was broken because I didn't get any procs when hitting test dummies with Scorches and Fireballs (on different test runs). It looks like they may have toned down the proc rate a bunch.

2) Molten Shields. I didn't put any points in Blazing Speed, then put up Mage Ward and jumped into the lava in Ironforge and Blackrock Mountain (which was a pain because they screwed up water). Molten Shields will proc the Blazing Speed effect even if you don't have any points in Blazing Speed.

Maje · 09/27/10, 6:29 PM

FFB glyph seems to be bugged, naked level 85 gnome the FFB tooltip says 1435 to 1753 damage, one stack of ffb dot does 13/14 damage, 2 - 27/28, 3 - 39/40 that closer to 1% dot every stack.

The stats are normal fire spec, 191 spellpower and 8 mastery from the talents which translates to 2.5% flashburn.

The stacks work as expected ie. they don't drop one by one but rather they refresh (like scorch did a long time ago). Seems odd but FFB now seems more inline with how fire feels where is fireball seems like an oddball. They definitely should reverse the roles, with Fireball being the dot one and FFB front loaded.

Silverwind · 09/27/10, 7:34 PM

I noticed in beta, that my LB and FFB dot were producing a 5th dot tick.

After some testing, I found out that the extra tick is related to dots scaling with haste. If I were above a certain point of haste, I got the extra tick (which still happend as the debuff fades). The required haste value for this extra tick seems to be between 12.22% and 12.24% (including 3% talented haste).

First test was at around 12.20% haste. Total LB duration = 10.656.

00:04:30.812 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED Living Bomb
00:04:33.453 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:04:36.031 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:04:38.796 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:04:41.468 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:04:41.468 SPELL_AURA_REMOVED Living Bomb
00:04:42.062 SPELL_DAMAGE Living Bomb

Second test was at 12.24% haste. Total LB duration = 13.266s.

00:05:35.515 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED Living Bomb
00:05:38.203 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:05:40.734 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:05:43.328 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:05:46.218 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:05:48.781 SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE Living Bomb
00:05:48.781 SPELL_AURA_REMOVED Living Bomb
00:05:49.578 SPELL_DAMAGE Living Bomb

I don't know if this is intended by Blizzard, but the value of ~12.23% seems very strange. How can it be explained? Does it work with other scaling dots?

Edit: There seem to be even more such tresholds, ~37% for 6th tick, ~65% for 7th tick. Damage per tick stays the same.

Tristany · 09/27/10, 9:13 PM

Tested the Combustion to see if it changed with the tooltip. It did.

Now when you stack your DoTs on the target and hit Combustion... a new DoT appears but does NOT consume existing DoTs in the process.

In addition... casting a Procc'd Impact will spread the Combustion along with the existing DoTs.

Impact still is bugged though... spreading a "regular" cast Pyroblast DoT, but not the DoT created by a HotStreaked Pyroblast.

It does however copy the stacks of a glyphed FFB... testing it I see it copying 3 stacks... The damage of the ticks do seem less than thye should be. They can crit and contribute ignites.

Aestis · 09/28/10, 12:57 AM

I created a simple spreadsheet for Fire DPS: http://www.crystal-lp.com/wow/Catacl...B%20cycle.xlsx

Numbers are pretty rough but tested DPS was within 5% of expected in several gear scenarios. I used Lhivera's coefficient data for build 13066 posted on the beta forums, and hacked approximate base damage data.

Version 13066.10
Currently supported: Goblin race only, FB spam, Scorch spam, Pyro spam, basic FB rotations, stat scaling via manual input, item valuation and comparison, gem/socket comparison
Currently unsupported: Many talents, non-standard glyphs, HS modeling, Scorch-based rotations, granular hasted DoTs, dynamic stat scaling, mana (Infinite mana assumed), all CDs, non-goblin races

Again these are very rough numbers and it's nowhere near ready for cycle analysis, as it ignores CDs entirely. Right now I'm using this mainly for item comparison and stat scaling... this is alpha quality really. Comments and especially bugs are welcomed!

Roywyn · 09/28/10, 3:19 AM

Originally Posted by Silverwind

I noticed in beta, that my LB and FFB dot were producing a 5th dot tick.

You get an additinal DoT tick once you an amount of haste that would give you half a DoT tick.

You tested Living Bomb. Ususally, it ticks 4 times, so - in theory - you'd need 25% haste for one extra tick and n*25% haste for n extra ticks. However, you get the first DoT tick at 12.5% haste, the second at 25%+12.5% and (n-1/2)*25% for the n extra ticks. Not sure why you get your first extra tick a tad earlier at 12.24% instead of 12.5% though, maybe a tooltip calculation or rounding error with your haste talent?

Zaldinar · 09/28/10, 3:35 AM

Originally Posted by Dejah-Thoris

I got on the PTR this weekend. I looked at 2 things:

1) Hot Streak T3. I didn't see anywhere near the 70% on-crit proc rate other people reported. At first I thought the talent was broken because I didn't get any procs when hitting test dummies with Scorches and Fireballs (on different test runs). It looks like they may have toned down the proc rate a bunch.

Which patch did you do this under? and did you happen to /combatlog the test?

Silverwind · 09/28/10, 2:02 PM

Originally Posted by Roywyn

Not sure why you get your first extra tick a tad earlier at 12.24% instead of 12.5% though, maybe a tooltip calculation or rounding error with your haste talent?

You're right, the value for the first extra tick is indeed at 12.5%. I had an error in my calculation because I forgot that haste stacked multiplicative. 9.24% (charsheet) + 3% (talent) = 12.5172%.

I can confirm that all our dot's except Ignite now scale with haste and Pyroblast,FFB and Living Bomb all conveniently tick 4 times in 12 seconds @ zero haste, so the haste values of 12.5%,37.5%,62.5% could be gearing goals. Combustion is an oddball tho, as it ticks 10 times in 10 seconds, so the values for extra ticks are 5%,15%,25%,35%,etc.