Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 4

HowToReadPreviousPosts · 03/24/12, 7:11 AM

Originally Posted by Sunaseni

During Invocation, you'll spend 6 seconds casting Evocation regularly in order to keep up the buff. The multiplier to your base damage done would be calculated as: (100% * (n - 36) + 120% * 30 + 0 * 6) / n. Where n is the number of seconds between evocations. We spend 30 seconds under the 20% damage buff, 6 seconds doing no damage while evocating, then the rest spend under normal damage. If you simplify it, you will find that all the terms cancel and you're left doing 100% of your potential damage. The damage buff exactly cancels the time you spend evocating so long as you don't cut the buff off short, and your evocation isn't cancelled.

As you've maybe seen in the video above, Invocation now grants 30% increased spell damage for 40 secs, This would be an increase of 113% in total damage [ = (130% * 40s + 0 * 6s) / 46s ]
In conclusion then, this makes the spell damage boost of Invocation and Ring of Power almost equivalent.

Skem · 03/24/12, 9:29 PM

[Any Mage Spec] Glyph of evocation is a bit of equaliser in terms of quantifing the benifit of + health from Tier 6 talents

Originally Posted by Evocation

Regain 15% mana instantly and 45% over the next 6s, Cooldown 120s

No Glyph
Innovaction: + 0 health
Rune of Power: + 0 health
Incanter's Shield: + 0 health, upto 30% of mana as damage reduction- there is some risk with this as spell is 25s cd, while shield last 8s

With Glyph
Innovaction: regain 30% health
Rune of Power: +1% health every second
Incanter's Shield: regain 60% health

Personally I think Incanter's Shield is a little too situational and carries alot of potenital for 'user error' with the Glyph, Rune of Power is looking to me as a goto for damage heavy and Innovation for pure mana dumping DPS

Astynax7 · 03/25/12, 12:21 AM

Originally Posted by Skem

[Any Mage Spec]
Personally I think Incanter's Shield is a little too situational and carries alot of potenital for 'user error' with the Glyph, Rune of Power is looking to me as a goto for damage heavy and Innovation for pure mana dumping DPS

I agree. I read the sheild as a PvP usage. Something a mage pops as a second sheild that will also restore his mana. I doubt it's something we'll see a lot(or even at all depending on the encounters we see and math I have no ability to do) in endgame raids.

What I think is most intriguing is the dichotomy between invocation/rune of power. What is our mana regen going to look like exactly? (Someone said 1% Max mana/sec?) And in that case, does 200% mana regen cover for the free 45% mana over 6 secs (and 15% instant mana just for a 1 sec GCD)? Also, will the extra mana regen allow a mage to all-out nuke the enemies up? I mean, is rune of power enough extra that standing on it solves all your woes? Given our current paltry regen, the answer is no, but fire also rarely runs oom in most of my experiences. But arcane is a quite different story, although it too looks more mana efficient than in past iterations. I guess the questios are:
Does RoP's mana regen = enoguh that we won't be oom halfway through the boss without our evocation?
Does invocation allow us to nuke better than RoP?(although this is in some ways the same question, but setup to allow for changes to the rotation to 100% maximize Dps)
Does the free 1 sec = 15% mana regen makeup for something in that case?(even without the buffed power)
What about the what I can do with just using my one GCD? Does popping invocate, then dropping something off the GCD, then resuming casting effect my DPS, and how?
Will Rune of Power let me keep my procs up better, since I don't have to waste 6 secs channeling?(ignorable if you use invocation as a 1sec GCD free 15%mana)
And finally, if any of these are the case, how does that change the numbers we saw before in this thread? (thank you poster btw)

Alternatively, (although i may be speaking blasphemy in this group) did Blizzard accomplish their goal? Are the two.... I'm going to call them "raid" talents, actually so similar as to be approximately equivalent? Is the only difference a playstyle difference? *faints at the idea that a Blizzard system revamp could ever actually accomplish this goal so well*

Pasture · 03/25/12, 4:15 PM

Originally Posted by Astynax7

But arcane is a quite different story, although it too looks more mana efficient than in past iterations. I guess the questios are:
Does RoP's mana regen = enoguh that we won't be oom halfway through the boss without our evocation?

This seems a little moot for arcane while the mastery remains as it is. Arcane doesn't really make sense without Evocation. There's no potential to dump mana into damage via Arcane Blast which entirely defeats the purpose of the stacking effect. RoP doesn't seem like a very viable option for Arcane. Being at 35% of mana for the latter half of the fight might be fine for the other specs but it does not compliment Arcane.

Astynax7 · 03/25/12, 5:53 PM

Originally Posted by Pasture

This seems a little moot for arcane while the mastery remains as it is. Arcane doesn't really make sense without Evocation. There's no potential to dump mana into damage via Arcane Blast which entirely defeats the purpose of the stacking effect. RoP doesn't seem like a very viable option for Arcane. Being at 35% of mana for the latter half of the fight might be fine for the other specs but it does not compliment Arcane.

True, under the current system, but i thought I saw that Arcane Blast was getting a lower mana cost, which would mean your regen would be approximately enough to keep up with most of your casting it, with a few missiles here and there. Also wowhead is reporting the mechanics to allow this strategy very well. However, if the arcane spells remain expensive to cast, then that pigeonholes arcane into one choice: invocation. This is contrary to what Blizzard says it's trying to do, which makes the new changes to arcane believable to me. I guess what i'm saying is: under the current system, you're 100% correct, but i was under the impression that they were making changes to allow it to not matter(or be situational) for all specs.
(This is pure speculation on my part) If so, we might see arcane become a very mana efficient spec with a few dumps to give massive bursts of damage.

Skem · 03/26/12, 5:04 AM

We need to be mindful that while evocation is an accepted part of the Arcane spec because all T6 are about mana regeneration it could be a change that all specs will need to manage mana in a proactive way rather than passive. For example the specs no longer have access to each others key spells, meaning that optimising Fireball's mana for Fire spec, so it can play out as intended, wont make it more attractive to the other specs

IMO It would be a major failure on blizzards behalf if spec dictated this talent spend

Invocation: Arcane
Rune of Power: Fire
Incatner's Shield Frost

Astynax7 · 03/26/12, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Skem

We need to be mindful that while evocation is an accepted part of the Arcane spec because all T6 are about mana regeneration it could be a change that all specs will need to manage mana in a proactive way rather than passive.
IMO It would be a major failure on blizzards behalf if spec dictated this talent spend

Invocation: Arcane
Rune of Power: Fire
Incatner's Shield Frost

I agree. The way these talents are set up, I see them as being a major mechanics change to all mage dynamics. The sheer fact that an entire tier is focused on one spell makes me think that they're bringing some extra dynamics to the class. Rather than the same basic principles being kept for all specs (and changing only certain rotations or casting combos) mages appear to be getting their own identity where it might be possible for a fire mage and a frost mage to play drastically different, eve before endgame content. However, will these talents gear towards a certain spec, a certain boss, or a certain playstyle? I'm not on beta, therefore, I don't know the answers to these questions.

♦ nathanbp · 03/27/12, 12:46 AM

Interesting new find from mmo-champion: Nether Attunement: New. Your spell haste also increases your mana regeneration, and the effect of mana restores from Mage spells.

This means that our rotations can stay the same with respect to mana no matter how much haste we have. It also raises some interesting tactics, for example Arcane could burn lower during heroism and then have a larger Evocation to still get back to full mana.

Dylar · 03/29/12, 2:35 PM

With mana attunement being added, it looks like rune of power will be far superior to invocation (for arcane) for any fights without too much movement between more than two areas (as invocation removes passive mana regeneration). Even during helter-skelter type encounters, rune of power might still be better than invocation, even with the dps loss from casting rune of power more than once a minute. Haste will also further synergize with arcane mastery, most likely being the superior stat.

Guromin · 03/30/12, 6:04 AM

Lhivera made an interesting post about the normalized ceofficent data in Mists. Based on the data that can be found here, these are my observations.

Fire spell damage:

Spell	Coefficient
Pyroblast	4.216
Living Bomb	2.085
Fireball	1.884
Inferno Blast	0.789

Fire spells normalized for cast times:

Spell	Coefficient
Pyroblast (Hot Streak)	2.811
Living Bomb	1.390
Pyroblast	1.205
Fireball	0.754
Inferno Blast	0.526

Based on the data from the normalized table hard-casting Pyroblast could exceed the damage from casting Fireball. This, of course, does not include the benefits of casting quicker spells to increase the odds of a Hot Streak proc, however, with the addition of Inferno Blast it may be a viable option to hard cast Pyroblast. Since Inferno Blast has an 8 second CD the benefit from more spells hitting the boss is reduced. Acquiring one crit from casting Pyroblast every 8 seconds seems as thought it would be a viable method of dps if Pyroblast remains higher damage per second than Fireball.

Arcane has undergone a much greater amount of change than Fire based on the beta. I very, very quickly realized that the days of spamming Arcane Blast until the boss dies are over. Each stack of Arcane Charge increases the mana cost of Arcane Blast by 125%, which makes use of the spell at 4 stacks unpractical. Further analysis of the normalized coefficient data provides more evidence to support the termination of Arcane Blast spamming.

Spell	Coefficient
Arcane Missiles (4 charges)	3.240
Arcane Missiles (3 charges)	2.835
Arcane Blast (4 charges)	2.588
Arcane Missiles (2 charges)	2.430
Arcane Blast (3 charges)	2.264
Nether Tempest	2.088
Arcane Missiles (1 charge)	2.025
Arcane Barrage (4 charges)	1.942
Arcane Blast (2 charges)	1.941
Arcane Barrage (3 charges)	1.699
Arcane Missiles	1.620
Arcane Blast (1 charge)	1.617
Arcane Barrage (2 charges)	1.457
Arcane Blast	1.294
Arcane Barrage (1 charge)	1.214
Arcane Barrage	0.971

Here is the same data, but normalized for cast time:

Spell	Coefficient
Arcane Missiles (4 charges)	1.620
Arcane Missiles (3 charges)	1.418
Nether Tempest	1.392
Arcane Barrage (4 charges)	1.295
Arcane Blast (4 charges)	1.294
Arcane Missiles (2 charges)	1.215
Arcane Barrage (3 charges)	1.133
Arcane Blast (3 charges)	1.132
Arcane Missiles (1 charge)	1.013
Arcane Blast (2 charges)	0.971
Arcane Barrage (2 charges)	0.971
Arcane Missiles	0.810
Arcane Blast (1 charge)	0.809
Arcane Barrage (1 charge)	0.809
Arcane Blast	0.647
Arcane Barrage	0.647

Because of the ability to cast Invocation anytime there has been a lot of speculation that it will be best to simply spam Arcane Blast as much as possible and then regenerate the mana back. If you look at the chart above the damage from Arcane Blast at 4 stacks is not as strong as Arcane Barrage or Arcane Missiles at the same number of stacks. After some quick testing on PTR to determine how long I would be capable of sustaining a rotation of only spamming Arcane Blast I quickly realized that the burst would last only 30 seconds at best. Considering that when we level to 90 and the gear is weak in comparison to what we have now spamming Arcane Blast for higher damage will not work. Bellow is a graph that charts the benefit of Invocation based on the fequency of it's use. The formula for this graph is (3*x)/(x+6) where x is the time between Invocation uses.

The red line marks where Invocation changes from a dps gain to a dps loss. Casting Invocation every 20 seconds or more frequently is a dps loss because of the 6 seconds spent not doing damage. This brings me to my thoughts about how the Arcane Rotation could work out. Since there are more powerful spells than Arcane Blast and spamming Arcane Blast is unpractical, the rotation should be about maximizing the damage from Missiles and clearing stacks with Arcane Barrage. Arcane Missiles now stacks up to 2 times and adds a stack of Arcane Charge. Arcane will likely change to a priority based spell rotation that is dynamic with mana pools. Based on the data from above and some common sense, I think the rotation for arcane will look something like this:

1. Arcane Missiles (if 2 stacks are up)
2. Nether Tempest
3. Arcane Missiles (if Arcane Charge is 3 or 4)
4. Arcane Barrage (if no Missile procs are available and Arcane Charge has 3 or 4 stacks)
5. Arcane Blast (if stacks are less than 3)

Arcane Missiles while 2 stacks are up is placed at the top of the priority list because you never want to waste an Arcane Missiles proc. Nether Tempest is second on the list because it both does good damage and also gives additional chances to proc Arcane Missiles. Following Nether Tempest is Arcane Missiles while there are 3 or 4 stacks of Arcane Blast on the target. I think it will prove to be beneficial to save Arcane Missiles procs for high stacks and then dump them since Arcane Missiles costs zero mana and benefits from Arcane Charge.

Another interesting point is that as Arcane we will likely want to pre-invocate right before pulling a boss for higher damage. This means we will need a countdown timer of at least 7 seconds to pre-invocate, pre-pot and start up a cast.

I'm curious as to others thoughts on the rotation(s). Hopefully a few of you have been more fortunate in regards to beta invites than I have been.

nekyr · 03/31/12, 10:32 PM

"With mana attunement being added, it looks like rune of power will be far superior to invocation (for arcane) for any fights without too much movement between more than two areas (as invocation removes passive mana regeneration)."

The talent on beta actually states that it halves passive mana regeneration. A lot of the information on the talent website is out-dated.

"Nether Tempest is second on the list because it both does good damage and also gives additional chances to proc Arcane Missiles."

Currently on beta, only the initial cast of Nether Tempest can proc an arcane missile. Same with Living bomb. I tested for about 10 minutes of casting each bomb type.

Frost bomb is the only bomb talent that currently can provide an Arcane missile proc on the initial application and when it deals damage (Which is just the explosion at the end, but on multiple targets)

Lylandra · 04/03/12, 9:42 AM

I'd also believe that a priority-based rotation will be the go-to mechanic of arcane playstyle which is a relief after an expansion full of boredom.

However, I'm still thinking about keeping two phases (burn and conserve) vs. clearing all stacks after your last missile proc.
My burn phase could look like Guromin's priority minus arcane barrage which results in keeping 4 stacks and fishing for missiles proccs via AB throughout the burn phase, elongating the phase if the RNG gods are with us since missiles cost us no mana. After the obvious evocation we could return to a more mana neutral prio list with stack clearing after 3-4 stacks until evo is back again.

With invocation one could alternate mana regen and burn.

Nathyiel · 04/12/12, 5:59 AM

I have made some calculation to compare the 3 bomb spell. All data is based on mmo-champion extraction.

If we look at the spell coefficient, we can see that the base damage is inferior at 10% for 10k spell power. First conclusion, we can ignore base damage to facilitate the calculation.

The damage of all bomb can be separate in 2 parts : damage on primary target (i will note it a, b or c) and the damage of the second effect (noted a', b', c').

The global duration of each bomb is globally the same: 11.5s for the Frost bomb (FB) and 12s for Living bomb (LB) and Nether tempest (NT). For 2 or 3 bombs at the same time, there's a différence: 13s/14.5s for FB, 13.5s/15s for NT and only 12s/12s for LB.

Each bombs work differently:

FB have 1 tick (a) on the main target and 1 tick (a') on the others targets. The number damaged by a' is the number (N) of all target (Tmax) in 10 yard minus the main target. Tmax = N - 1. Can be cast only one at time.
LB have 4 tick (b) each 3 seconds on the main target and 1 tick (b') on 3 targets, the main target seems to be include. Tmax = 3. Limited to 3 bombs
NT have 12 tick (c) each second and 12 tick (a') on a second target, different of the main target. no limits in numbers.

Each bombs make different damage:

FB have a'=a/2 and is a direct damage and an AOE
LB have b'~b and is a DOT and a direct damage or an AOE
NT have c'=c/2 and is a DOT and a DOT

Frost Bomb	FB	a=209.2%	a'=104.6%
Living Bomb	FB	b=104%	b'=104.5%
Nether Tempest	NT	c=208.8%	c'=104.4%

For 1, 2 and 3 target, with 1 bomb:

	1 target	2 target		3 target
Frost Bomb	a=209.2%	a + a'	313.8%	a + 2xa'	418.4%
Living Bomb	b+b'=208.5%	b + 2xb'	313%	b + 3xb'	417.5%
Nether Tempest	c=208.8%	c + c'	313.2%	c + c'	313.2%

If you want 1 bomb per terget, you only have to multiply the result by the number of the bomb you have. In these case, we have to note that Living Bomb can be spread easily but Frost bomb and Nether Tempest have to be cast each time.

Conclusion:

On a single target, the 3 bombs will make equivalent damage.
On 2 targets, 2 Living bomb or 2 Nether tempest, Frost bomb is already behind.
On 3 targets, Living Bomb is far ahead (because of the spread), followed by 3 Nether Tempest
On 4+ targets, Frost bomb is behind unless you reach 10 targets for doing an equivalent damage of 3 Living Bomb, and 8 targets for 3 Nether Tempest But it's a AOE situation and a lot of other parameters can interact

Note:
It's note clear if Nether Tempest's secondary damage can be applied on the same target if there's only 1 target.
The new version of Glyph of Fire Blast is very confusing, so I don't take it in account.

Edit:
I have limited my calculation at 3 bombs at the same time.

Shendow · 04/12/12, 7:43 AM

If there is a boss fight where mechanics include a lot of adds lasting a good amount of time (let's say more than 20 seconds), won't NT tab-spamming be better than Frost Bomb due to the fact that AOE damages are capped but dots are not? Won't there be a cap of mobs where Frost Bomb will be less beneficial?

Pasture · 04/12/12, 4:53 PM

Originally Posted by Shendow

If there is a boss fight where mechanics include a lot of adds lasting a good amount of time (let's say more than 20 seconds), won't NT tab-spamming be better than Frost Bomb due to the fact that AOE damages are capped but dots are not? Won't there be a cap of mobs where Frost Bomb will be less beneficial?

It's not as simple as which bomb does the most total damage, but rather which AoE rotation does the most damage. NT tabbing is all well and good but that's all you will be doing. Living Bomb on the other hand can be spread with fillers used while it ticks. Frost Bomb, already simmed to do superior damage once 5+ targets are involved, also allows heavy use of filler spells until it's back off cooldown.

In a pure AoE situation I suspect you will want to put your Frost Bomb out, Flamestrike and then spam Blizzard.

That said the sims above are different to those posted by Lhiv recently, which shows NT as the single target winner, Living Bomb as the cleave winner and Frost Bomb as the AoE winner. I'm sure this is the intention as having the other bombs do equal single target damage puts NT out of the picture entirely.