Cataclysm Fire Mage Compendium - Page 9

trw1988 · 12/28/10, 5:47 PM

Originally Posted by Zaldinar

You are calculating your combined haste correctly as we would expect it to be. Mods that track your cast time will simply be telling you the same thing that your tooltip is, except to two more decimal places. This macro:

/script spell, rank, displayName, icon, startTime, endTime, isTradeSkill, castID, interrupt = UnitCastingInfo("player")
/script ChatFrame1:AddMessage("Duration: "..(endTime - startTime))

Should display that value while you are casting the spell, so add a line to it for /cast SpellNameHere, and spam it against a target dummy, that should tell you what your cast time is according to your cast bar.

Just used this macro.

Scorch: 1294, i'm assuming ms so it would be 1.294 s
Fireball: 2156 or 2.156 s
Pyroblast: 3019 or 3.019 s

All of these values agree with the tooltips, but why don't they agree with the haste calculation?

Kvaern · 12/28/10, 6:15 PM

Originally Posted by trw1988

Just used this macro.

Scorch: 1294, i'm assuming ms so it would be 1.294 s
Fireball: 2156 or 2.156 s
Pyroblast: 3019 or 3.019 s

All of these values agree with the tooltips, but why don't they agree with the haste calculation?

Do you by any chance have exactly 1 pt. in Pyromaniac?
Apparently it's currently bugged and gives you a permanent casting speed increase.

See:
Different casting times - Forums - World of Warcraft

Lordkonst · 12/28/10, 7:01 PM

I have tried to search for this information but i could not find anywhere any relevant information.

On fights live the Twilight Ascendant Council where you fight more than one mobs but they are far away from one another so that you cannot spread dots via impact, is it worth it the gcd to try and keep up your living bomb on both targets? Maybe with swapping the pyroblast glyph with the living bomb one?

I know that this was not true during wrath but since a lot have changed since then i am curious to see if it is worth it

Zaldinar · 12/28/10, 7:07 PM

Heres some more T3 HS data:

Character Pane Crit Rate	Non-Crits	Crits	Procs
0.1009	7341	807	559
0.3145	5527	2515	230

Solves to a formula of Y=-2.8147831*X + 0.97670059 where Y is the proc rate and X is the crit rate. The 31% crit rate point agrees with Shaewyns Y = -2.25*X + 0.8 formula, the 10% test may not have enough crits to give a good sample.

This is a level 80 mage vs a level 80 target dummy, specced thusly: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and as always, raw combat logs are available if anyone would like them. I'll see about doing a 20% crit test under the same conditions later this week.

Shaewyn · 12/28/10, 7:46 PM

Zaldinar: Thanks for the new data!

I think that your 10% point is probably more accurate than mine (larger sample size). Assuming that the T3 HS formula does not change with level, the formula should now be something more like y=-2.85x + 1. This is really interesting, as it implies that with a crit rate of 0, our T3HS chance should be 100%. Not sure if this is accurate... and testing a crit rate near zero is frustrating.

trw1988 · 12/29/10, 8:20 AM

Originally Posted by Kvaern

Do you by any chance have exactly 1 pt. in Pyromaniac?
Apparently it's currently bugged and gives you a permanent casting speed increase.

See:
Different casting times - Forums - World of Warcraft

Yes, I do. I didn't realize it was that buggy. I did notice at times I would have Pyromaniac up in ICC when we were on a single target like Festergut, but then the buff would actually show on my character. Does anyone know if they plan to fix that or should I just be happy about it?

BeeLz · 12/29/10, 9:54 AM

Ultimately, we'll be using the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond Metagem. However, the current requirements (More Blue than Red) are not worth the extensive gem/re-socketing tricks required for activation. Blizzard intends to revert the requirements in a future patch (Back to more Red than Blue). In the meantime, you can temporarily use the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond Metagem instead. If that is too rare/expensive currently on your server, the WOTLK version will suffice for now: Ember Skyflare Diamond

Do you mean it's not worth using Chaotic because it's only a very small dps upgrade and it's pretty annoying to gem for more blue than red or do you mean it's not worth using it because gemming more blue gems than red results in a dps loss?

Tyrian · 12/29/10, 11:08 AM

The latter. But the longer answer: It depends on your gear. If you only a few sockets on gear, (aka very poor heroic entry level gear) - you might be able to easily activate the Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond with minimal stat loss. Even with the current Blue>Red demands. As you get more upgrades, and more sockets, the Blue>Red requirements (essentially a loss of Int) become increasingly harder to justify.

You'll notice that some Mages are currently using the Ember Shadowspirit Diamond, temporarily for now, and will switch back to Chaotic Shadowspirit when the requirements are reverted back to Red>Blue. To active this, they'll place a single +40 Hit gem somewhere, preferably into a Blue socket that will also give a nice Int/Crit bonus. They will also reforge around this 40 hit gem, to make sure it's not wasted above the hit cap.

Chaotic Shadowspirit (With Red>Blue) will be the meta-gem of choice when the current requirements are reverted. Ember is only a temporary solution. I believe it was Roywyn who provided extensive analysis regarding these meta-gems. It can be found here: Cataclysm Mage Resources

Naqaj · 12/29/10, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by Saruk

That's strange. With 15,301 scorches and an observed crit rate of 27.247%, at a 99% confidence interval you would expect the actual crit rate to be +/- 0.93. That gives you a lower bound of 26.32% and you state your actual crit at 26.28%. So your actual crit was either slightly higher than that, or you managed to achieve a 1/100 dice roll.

Is it possible that the debuff is actually multiplicative with the character crit rate? That would result in an actual crit chance within the error margin of 0.93 (27.34%)

Saruk · 12/29/10, 4:38 PM

Originally Posted by Naqaj

Is it possible that the debuff is actually multiplicative with the character crit rate? That would result in an actual crit chance within the error margin of 0.93 (27.34%)

That makes more sense statistically. On balance of probabilities there looks to be about a 1% crit chance missing from the expected number for the scorch casts. However, the Pyro! numbers look in-line. So either the debuff is working differently for different spells or it was just a chance occurrence.

Brainpower · 12/30/10, 4:34 PM

Is it worth anything to use scorch's faster cast time to reapply living bomb faster than waiting to finish a fireball cast? The uptime of living bomb could be raised a bit but is it worth it dps wise?

Saruk · 12/30/10, 7:48 PM

Originally Posted by Brainpower

Is it worth anything to use scorch's faster cast time to reapply living bomb faster than waiting to finish a fireball cast? The uptime of living bomb could be raised a bit but is it worth it dps wise?

Considering scorch weaving is an integral part of fire mana management, I would says it's definitely worth casting scorch just prior to LB refresh if casting a fireball would mean going a second or two with LB off your target.

In fact, I would call it an optimal way to play a fire mage's rotation.

lynzh · 12/30/10, 9:31 PM

I did some math on which stat would benefit me most on gloves using the stat values in the OP and got some shocking results when I found that WOTLK's 28 SP was slightly better than 50 Mastery. The math is relevant if you are softcapped for haste. Just thought I'd share this as I haven't seen it mentioned in this thread yet, please do correct me if my math is false.

EXCEPTIONAL SPELLPOWER	28 * 2.6208 = 73.3824
MASTERY			50 * 1.4517 = 72.58500
HASTE 			50 * 1.3722 = 68.61

Edit: It is of course not TBC but an enchant from WOTLK. Cleaned up post.

Zaldinar · 12/30/10, 11:54 PM

Originally Posted by Shaewyn

Zaldinar: Thanks for the new data!

I think that your 10% point is probably more accurate than mine (larger sample size). Assuming that the T3 HS formula does not change with level, the formula should now be something more like y=-2.85x + 1. This is really interesting, as it implies that with a crit rate of 0, our T3HS chance should be 100%. Not sure if this is accurate... and testing a crit rate near zero is frustrating.

I can hit cap myself against an equal level target dummy with a 2.05% crit chance, which should give a 95% proc rate on achieved crits... But the amount of casting to get anything meaningful from that 2% rate makes me cringe. I've done worse in the past, and can certainly do this one too if it seems like the best way to prove it. I'd tend to think another four hour run at 20% crit would probably be better served towards verifying the formula. Or, better yet, this formula seems to come out to 35% being the zero proc rate point, I can get myself to 34.5% with gear and 3/3 Piercing Ice or Molten Armor, then can rearrange myself to be barely over 35%. It still might take a lot of casting to prove, but if I can establish a high point of crit where I can observe a T3 proc, then step over the expected limit, that could verify the end of the line.

• ash2ash · 12/31/10, 12:06 AM

Just a comment on clearcasting: I've found that arcane concentration has had the greatest effect for me when going into my movement/conserve phases due to it being intelligently consumed.

When I'm in a scorch phase, I have opportunity to cast 7 scorches between living bomb explosions (explosion can also proc it). Since clearcasting isn't consumed by scorch or pyroblast!, it usually gets consumed by living bomb. This is desirable because living bomb costs about 1.5 times fireball.

I did the math to find the expectation of clearcasting procs in a run of 8 spells (binomial distribution with n=8 p = .03,.06,.1), and it works out to be

.24 for 1 point in arcane concentration (3%)
.48 for 2 points in arcane concentration (6%)
.8 for 3 points in arcane concentration (10%)

Even under the best case scenario of 3/3 arcane concentration, you expect less than one clearcasting proc in between living bombs, so if you are fireballing on clearcasting procs, it will be a net reduction in mana compared to if you continue scorching and use it on living bomb (although it is a small dps gain).

tl;dr is that if you are in a fight where you are mana-limited, you should probably not cast fireball during the conserve phase based on clearcasting. You should consume it with living bomb.

edit: I miss one patch note and I end up doing a bunch of work for nothing. At least the conclusion is correct!