I updated the Runspeed enchant part of the OP to include these points.
What it's ultimately is going to come back to is: When a Runespeed enchant lets you move to location so you can resume casting Burn Rotations faster, it will prove superior. If you move around faster while casting Scorch, and keep moving (or even stop) while still casting Scorch, the benefits will drop. My experience on raids this week is the former is still super common: Runspeed lets you move to location faster, so you can resume Burn Rotations.
On a fight like Atromedes air phase, for example, you're moving continuously. On a fight like Omnitron council, you often want to immediately move to a Void Zone - the faster the better - so you can immediately begin casting your Burn Rotation while inside it. On Atromedes ground phase, you're moving so much you don't really get a chance to Burn Rotation for long periods. Therefore any time you perform the required movement, you want to get it done as fast as possible, then immediately want to start casting Fireball again afterwards with the excess mana you're having difficulty burning off.
The Blink spell throws a wrench in this ("Just blink instead, that should be sufficient?") but i'm still confident it's the best advice for now. On Atromedes, even with Blink, I find myself needing to move fast to location more often than Blink's cooldown anyway. Will wait for more feedback on raid encounters before we consider rewording the statement below:
Runspeed Enchant: Time spent moving is effectively lost or lower DPS. Although you can still cast Scorch while moving, it's still lower DPS then a Burn rotation. Runspeed enchants therefore can be considered a DPS enchant for many encounters, and a strong one at that, with the actual value varying depending on the unique movement requirements of each encounter. In a Patchwerk style fight, however, where there's no movement at all - there are 50 Hit / Mastery enchants available which would strictly be superior for DPS. Generally speaking however, the vast majority of encounters require sufficient movement to make Runspeed the best enchant for boots by far
Has anyone calculated what is the value of ”Impact” in boss encounters? The guide says that it is “Highly recommended. Impact (DOT spreading) is a strength of the Fire tree.” but in my experience this is vastly overrated. In latest SimulationCraft there isn’t any damage done via Fire Blast, which may be simulation limitation, but causes me to wonder should I skip the points there and put them instead into “Arcane Concentration” since currently mana is real problem for optimal dps. (I am aware that this may change when we get better gear and mana shortage is lesser concern)
PS: First post from long time forum lurker.
Every spec should have Impact unless you are specifically fighting a single target boss and have a custom made spec for that boss only. Impact's value is worth it even if you occasionally have a second target and want to spread dots to it. Then on fights such as Maloriak or Halfus, a single Impact'ed fully charged Combustion can do 15-20% of my total damage for the entire fight, let alone the Ignite/Pyro that was also spread via Impact.
Despite sounding like a ridiculous thing to do, it could actually provide up to ~90% of the DPS your normal Fireball/Scorch rotation would ordinarily deliver. Surprised at how strong it is? The big reason is Hot Streak: Scorch is a fast casting spell, and casting it more often means you get many more opportunities for Hot Streak Procs. Those Pyroblasts are big DPS. Ultimately, attempting this style of play will be a DPS loss, even if not quite as big as you might initially suspect.
While you are trying to sound nice, you are still selling Fire-Scorch as completly unviable.
I think it would be good to add a few more facts:
In T11 ilevel 372 gear Fire-Fireball provides ~10% more DPS than Fire-Scorch for Patchwork Fights.
~3% of this is T11_4piece
~3% of this is Glyph of Fireball (vs. Glyph of Living Bomb)
Fights with (unexpected) movement or knockbacks will reduce the DPS difference.
Fights with adds will reduce the DPS difference.
While it wasn't intended to sound like that, I agree readers might draw that conclusion. Thanks for the feedback. With this in mind, that section in the OP was rewritten to sound a little less like Scorch Rotations are a dirty (or even wrong) thing to do when the situation calls for it. For easier reading, casting only Scorch in rotation is being referred to as a "Pure Scorch Rotation".
Pure Scorch Rotation|This refers to only casting Scorch in rotation, not casting Fireball at all. Doing this can still provide up to ~90% of the DPS of your Burn Rotation. Surprised at how strong it is? The reason is Hot Streak: Scorch is a fast casting spell, and casting it more often means you get many more opportunities for Hot Streak Procs. Pyroblasts are big DPS. For stationary Patchwerk style fights: A Burn Rotation is, in a vacuum, still higher DPS than a Pure Scorch rotation. Burn Rotations get further support from Glyph of Fireball and the 4-piece Tier 11 bonus, whereas Pure Scorch rotations do not. In practise, however, there are several factors which might prevent you from casting Burn Rotations:
Movement
Knockbacks
Adds or AOE required
In many encounters you'll find yourself unavoidably casting Pure Scorch rotations during these periods. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, in fact it's the opposite: It's obviously much better DPS to continue to cast Pure Scorch rotations - instead of casting nothing at all!
As far as we know, this is accurate. T3 Hot Streak is not affected by debuffs such as Critical Mass, and thus the proc chance of T3 HS is not affected by debuffs. T4 Improved Hot Streak is, by it's very nature, affected by debuffs, thus the chance of T4 HS is increased by debuffs.
In short, Critical Mass increases the relative value of T4 vs T3 HS.
* note: this needs/will receive more testing to confirm.
I was just brought back to this topic. Does the Fireball glyph affect the proc chance of T3HS? It doesn't affect the paperdoll critrate, so it might not affect the talent as well. Might be a another factor in the FB vs FFB comparison.
I was just brought back to this topic. Does the Fireball glyph affect the proc chance of T3HS? It doesn't affect the paperdoll critrate, so it might not affect the talent as well. Might be a another factor in the FB vs FFB comparison.
As far as I've been able to tell, only the character sheet crit rate affects the chance of T3HS. This would seem to imply that the FB Glyph would not decrease the T3 HS per-crit chance, but I've not tested it, partly because testing it will be difficult due to the enormous number of casts required to test it correctly.
Assuming that the FB Glyph does not affect the T3 Per-crit chance, it would increase the value of both T3 and T4 HS, relative to the FFB rotation.
A few PM's from readers saying the "Use Scorch Rotation" section still wasn't written clearly enough. It was thus rewritten again for better clarity. We're trying to explain that both types of rotations (Pure Scorch and Burn Rotation) have a time and place. Players shouldn't feel dirty for "Resorting to using Scorch", but should embrace the rotation when the time calls for it. And also to be mindful that there are times where the Burn Rotation is strictly superior and preferable, too.
Pure Scorch Rotation|This refers to only casting Scorch in rotation, not casting Fireball at all. Doing this could still provide comparable DPS to the Burn rotation. Why? The reasons are movement and Hot Streak: Scorch is a fast casting spell, and casting it more often means you get many more opportunities for Hot Streak Procs. Pyroblasts are big DPS. The other big reason is you can cast the Pure Scorch rotation while 100% moving. For stationary Patchwerk style fights: A Burn Rotation is, in a vacuum, still higher DPS than a Pure Scorch rotation by a margin of up to 10%. However, in practise, the difference may end up being much less: Burn Rotations get boosted support from the Glyph of Fireball and the 4-piece Tier 11 bonus, whereas Pure Scorch rotations do not. You may not have 4 piece, nor use the Fireball Glyph (See the Glyph section for more info). Furthermore, there are several additional factors to consider which can reduce the theoretical DPS difference:
Fight with frequent unexpected movement penalise a Scorch Rotation less (You keep casting while moving)
Fights with knockbacks penalise a Scorch Rotation less (You keep casting while knocked back)
Adds or AOE Fights may favour Scorch Rotations (Scorch produces more Impact procs than Fireball. Also means you will have more mana available to AOE instead)
In many encounters you'll find yourself casting Pure Scorch rotations during these periods. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Players might know a theoretical "Patchwerk" fight places Burn Rotation as superior DPS - but need to to take all this into account - before blindly making the assumption that Burn Rotations are always superior. They aren't. Both rotations have a time and place to be preferable, and optimal. It comes back to, again, the unique needs of each encounter.
I'll try to convert all this into something more tangible (and practical) players can relate to.
The relevant information to look at is not my dps, but spell damage sources: Scorch and Fireball. Atramedes is a textbook example of a fight where players need to embrace Scorch - and shake off the idea that "I should always cast Fireball where possible". This is why the appropriate sections of the OP are being rewritten, to make this clearer.
There are some periods in the Atramedes fight (Air phases) where you are moving nonstop for an extended period, and stopping to ever cast Fireball is often not possible, nor worth the risk. Other sections of the fight you may squeeze in Fireballs occasionally, but again, the large amount of movement required (Discs, Sonic Breath) will often quickly force you into Pure Scorch Rotations.
For this fight, i'd recommend players initially treat it as a Scorch fight. Once you become intimately familiar with mechanics, and won't fail them due to trying to cast Fireballs more frequently (aka standing still more often), start shifting into Burn Rotations where possible. But if you try to do this in reverse, chances are you'll be failing sound mechanics more often - which is a much bigger problem in the grand scheme of things. As you could tell via the Scorch damage in my log, I simply wasn't able to burn enough mana due to the constant movement required and number of Scorches therefore cast. Ending the fight at 0 mana just wasn't really possible - and I even used Evocation either - despite this being a 8.5 minute fight. These are all things we know we should aim to do, but sometimes it just isn't possible due to the unique needs of each encounter. In hindsight, I probably Scorched too much and should try to squeeze more Fireballs in, instead of playing it safe by constantly moving. But, being the first raid on Live with him, we wanted to play it safe in general.
Notice that Fireball was the main contributor for him/her. The difference in results comes down to various factors such as: strat, positioning (very important), skill, natural spec DPS variance, raidcomp, practise and experience with the fight, familiarity with the spec in general - and so on.
This particular fight also solidifes why Fire is king when it comes to choosing a Mage spec which favours Mobility.
Edit - I could go on writing about the various problems of Fire being exposed in current raid fights. High DPS variance, dependancy on Crit, Combustion being frustrating and awkward to use. But i'll skip those (for now) and keep this post strictly about Scorch, until more people are doing said fights and can relate first hand. All these points were documented well before release, during beta, and can be found in threads such as this one: Fire Mage: Lvl 80 vs Lvl 85 Comparison - Forums - World of Warcraft
Edit 2 - To the below poster, that's true. I rewrote that line to be:
Your goal is to end each fight with exactly zero mana. However, it's not always possible to achieve this in practise. This doesn't necessarily mean you've failed or done something wrong: Unique encounter needs might mean the optimal way to end a fight is indeed with excess mana, simply because you had no other way to burn it off.
This is a minor point, but the original posts says:
"Your goal is to end each fight with exactly zero mana. Unused mana is wasted DPS - you should have started casting Fireball earlier to burn it off."
To the point you just made, this is not entirely correct. On heavy movement fights when casting free scorches, you may indeed end up with mana remaining yet have put out the max dps given the mechanics.
I updated the Runspeed enchant part of the OP to include these points.
What it's ultimately is going to come back to is: When a Runespeed enchant lets you move to location so you can resume casting Burn Rotations faster, it will prove superior. If you move around faster while casting Scorch, and keep moving (or even stop) while still casting Scorch, the benefits will drop. My experience on raids this week is the former is still super common: Runspeed lets you move to location faster, so you can resume Burn Rotations.
On a fight like Atromedes air phase, for example, you're moving continuously. On a fight like Omnitron council, you often want to immediately move to a Void Zone - the faster the better - so you can immediately begin casting your Burn Rotation while inside it. On Atromedes ground phase, you're moving so much you don't really get a chance to Burn Rotation for long periods. Therefore any time you perform the required movement, you want to get it done as fast as possible, then immediately want to start casting Fireball again afterwards with the excess mana you're having difficulty burning off.
The Blink spell throws a wrench in this ("Just blink instead, that should be sufficient?") but i'm still confident it's the best advice for now. On Atromedes, even with Blink, I find myself needing to move fast to location more often than Blink's cooldown anyway. Will wait for more feedback on raid encounters before we consider rewording the statement below:
The problem I see with this is that, you can't always starts your burn rotation the moment you stop moving as you're tied to your scorch cast as well and you shouldn't ever stop casting. So getting there 1 second faster, doesn't matter if your cast still lasts 1.3 seconds.
Now I'm not arguing against the runspeed enchant, but your reasons aren't always true and incomplete.
Other valid arguments you can make for a runspeed enchant are:
*Getting faster out of the fire. This has nothing to do with doing more damage but rather from a survival point of view.
*Getting (back) in range because you had to be somewhere else or an add spawned on the other side of the room.
I tried Argaloth again this reset, and found it pretty easy to follow the "Ideal" mana plan outlined several posts back, and in the OP section. This is pretty good starting practise for raids. Just need to be mindful that Argaloth is certainly not the norm for encounters, and players will ultimately need to learn to deviate (to varying degrees) in pretty much every other encounter.
Just takes some practise with a couple attempts to gauge how long 35%->0% will actually last, which in turn will determine what size Mana Reserve you'll need to have on standby immediately prior to Molten Fury range. (Controlled via Hover Rotation + Scorch Weaving).
Did a test after noticing that Hot Streak proc chance was on the low side. The test was done on a level 85 mage, 24.26% character crit rate, talents where mangled to not include Impoved HS.
Casts: 1435 (scorch)
Hits: 980
Crits: 455 (31.7% fits the 24.26 + 5% from critical mass)
HS Procs: 119 (26.15%)
The previously known linear approximation is -1.7106 * hot_streak_crit + 0.7893 which expects 37.43% hot streaks or 170 procs. That is a very significant change or namely at 24.26% crit chance the proc chance was reduced by 10% from the previous beta values.
Regretfully I don't have accesss to a level 80 mage to check all the values, however if anyone else has, that would be appreciated.
One other thing, I have done some tests on the Pyroblast glyph, and it looks like the glyph doesn't really have any effect on Pyroblast! at least not on the dot ticks generated by it. I'm still checking the numbers in the logs.
This gives me a T3 HS Proc Chance of 57.76% vs an expected chance of 61.24% using the old formula. Both this and your data is outside of the 95% confidence interval, and so very likely imply that the formula has been changed. I would like at least two more data points before we start trying to pin down a formula, however.
Looking at your world of logs you linked tyrian, it appears pyroblast with it's dot is more damage per cast time than fireball and it's more dpm than fireball even if you spam it. It appears it would be worth casting pyroblast if pyroblast! dot isn't ticking.
Have you guys tried modeling/simulating pyro as a nuke instead of just an opener or proc?
I was a bit surprised by the result but you are actually right Mentalfloss, hard casting Pyroblast when there is no pyro dot on the target results in a DPS gain (~1% for BiS ilvl 372 profile).
Edit: Take these results with a grain of salt for the moment. There might be a bug in Sim Craft that creates this DPS gain. See Cataclysm Mage Simulators and Formulators for details.
Interesting indeed. However, even though a hard cast Pyroblast is more DPET with the full duration dot factored in, this tactic loses value if the DOT is overwritten by a subsequent Hot Streak Pyroblast!. The question is how long does the DOT from a hard cast Pyroblast need to tick to be worth the same or more DPET of a Fireball?
With the currently low Crit rates it is less risky to hold on to a Hot Streak until the Pyro DOT ticks down. Combustion Tracker will help keep tabs on the Pyro DOT.
It seems you would want to cast pyroblast when there's about 3 seconds left on the pyro tick, or more specifically just under the cast time plus flight time is left, instead of when it wears off.
Regretfully I don't have accesss to a level 80 mage to check all the values, however if anyone else has, that would be appreciated.
One other thing, I have done some tests on the Pyroblast glyph, and it looks like the glyph doesn't really have any effect on Pyroblast! at least not on the dot ticks generated by it. I'm still checking the numbers in the logs.
I haven't left Exodar since Cata Launch. Currently I'm planning on doing more with Combustion and hopefully get to Ignite next monday, and then do some rounds on T3 HS. I was planning on doing a ~10%, ~20%, ~30% from gear test to show the line (4 hours of scorch spam per should do it), then a shorter test with Critical Mass to see if that impacts it.
I'll obviously be posting once I get the data together.
To truly model the game, we first must research it. http://zaldinar.wordpress.com/
Proven TheoryCrafting Stuff, chain casting in a PTR near you soon.
That would be extremely helpful Zaldinar, probably an up to 40% graph would be very good since that's the range most t11+ geared mages will be heading for.
Now the first one basically is giving me 385 Spell Power... which worth 2.7381 per point comes out to be 1054.1685 With this trinket I have 7041 SP and 24% to crit on my character page. The haste use comes out to be 267.5 rating.
The second is gives me 285 int... which worth 4.2022 per point comes out to be 1197.627. With this trinket I have 6949 SP and 24.46% chance to crit on my character page. The haste proc on this comes out to equal ~213.75 rating.
So using the relative values the epic trinket is worth 1459.29725, and the blue is worth 1521.351375 - making the blue quality one better.
HOWEVER
The epic gives me 7041 spell power - and the blue gives me 6949 spell power, giving that a difference of 92 spell power.
Int gives me crit rating, so let me include that in my thoughts -- the int gives me .46% - which comes out to be 82.4688 rating (179.28 = 1%). Okay so using this thread relative value for crit that 82.4688 = 204.522624.
So the extra 92 spell power from the epic trinket = 92. Using it's relative value it equals 251.9052. The difference between those two is 47.382576 in favor of the epic trinket. How if we count in the haste use/proc of the two as stated above the epic trinket has a better overall haste value by 53.75 - giving the epic trinket an overall total of 101.132576 over the blue trinket.
So pretty much what I'm saying.... is when you break down the trinkets the epic comes out to be better - using the math posted the blue is better. I believe int is rated to high. Unless having ~4000 extra mana comes out to be values higher than the number posted above - but I really do not believe that to be true considering with proper mana management that 4000 mana really doesn't matter - especially because we have a spell that doesn't cost mana.
Something doesn't fit - and I believe this math proves it. Comments - corrections would be most helpful - but I believe this is right.
Last edited by afflic : 12/18/10 at 3:12 AM.
Reason: fixing the item links
I ran some tests today with Scorch for no particular reason. I was completely unbuffed (no AI, no Molten Armor)
Gear: Twobat @ Korgath - Game - World of Warcraft
Quick Stats
Spell Power: 5213
Hit: 885 (8.64% - The game estimates my miss chance at 8.36%)
Haste: 481 (3.76%)
Crit: 1208 (16.03%)
Mastery: 1117 (14.23)
Scorch
Total Casts: 5314 (100.00%)
Hit: 3963 (74.58%)
Crit: 897 (16.88%)
Miss: 454 (8.54%)
Total Damage: 29398064 (100%)
Scorch: 25,190,537 (85.69% - Avg Hit: 4380, Max Crit: 8896)
Ignite: 4,207,527 (14.31% - Avg Hit: 2622, Max Crit: 4028)
With the current value of "int" vs. "spell dmg" being at 4.2022 and 2.7381 I was looking over my trinkets.
Can you give a source for those numbers? Is this coming from simcraft, or vontre's or rawr or what? Incidentally, in your calculations you seem to have forgotten that the 359 trinket consumes the spellpower buff stacks.
but I really do not believe that to be true considering with proper mana management that 4000 mana really doesn't matter - especially because we have a spell that doesn't cost mana.
I guess the reason is that more mana = more fireballs/less scorches = higher dps.
Yes we have a spell with no mana cost, but that spell also has lower dps than fireball which means we rather use fireball if we have the mana for it.
Can you give a source for those numbers? Is this coming from simcraft, or vontre's or rawr or what? Incidentally, in your calculations you seem to have forgotten that the 359 trinket consumes the spellpower buff stacks.
The source is this thread - and it came from simcraft according to it. And yes the stacks do fall off - but they're back up in a very short amount of time. That should be included you're right, but it still leans in the 359's favor -- even though with the straight up numbers the blue is ahead by a lot.
The numbers just don't match up, but they should. When I broke down the two trinkets if the numbers were right - I would yield the same things wouldn't I. It's like if I had 2+2=4. It equals 4, but if i broke that down to something identical and got it to be =5, something would have to be wrong. Maybe I'm not actually adding 2+2, I should be adding 2+3 and there was a miscalculation somewhere.
I'm just saying these numbers should yield the same results because they're comparing the same thing, but they don't. One view of it yields a different result of the other view, but they're the same. The relative numbers are the source for all of this, therefore it has to be that they're off slightly.
Basically I'm just personally trying to prove that it's correct for me to be using the 359 trinkets. My target dummy numbers are higher - and my raid numbers are higher - but "it" said it's not as good for me. Yes these numbers are slightly higher, but still higher. It also didn't "add up" in my mind when I had a trinket yielding 385 SP and a 20 sec haste use and not using it because I had a blue with 285 int and a lesser haste proc.
Last edited by afflic : 12/18/10 at 3:27 PM.
Reason: typo
It appears as though you've essentially double-dipped when calculating the value for int: the value should take into account the crit generated by the int, so by manually adding it in you are essentially doubling the crit value gained.
If that isn't correct, feel free to correct me, but that is usually how stat weights work.
Edit: Disregard that, misunderstood the wording, feel free to delete.
Out of curiosity, which races would be the best for each faction for a Fire Mage? I'm currently considering a race change for my Mage and I was curious as to what the optimal would be from a dps perspective. The question has been put forth by another poster in Simple Questions/Simple Answers; however, it is unanswered and seems to be from a more general point of view, whereas I'm looking for input on fire specifically. Thank you in advance for any input on the topic.
12/14/10, 8:16 AM
