Lil_Dollar

just wondering if anyone is running a 58/3/0 build (with 2pcT5) and if there are dps numbers out for this spec... here is how I am speced on live currently.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

feedback would be much appreciated.

 

Ivorthemage

I did several battlegrounds as a deep frost spec last night. Won all three games, but the main thing I noticed is that I caught that I had a fingers of frost buff just once, and never noticed a single brain freeze proc. I do have WOW's combat text up, but I only noticed fingers of frost there that one time, and brain freeze never.

The playstyle of a class dependent on procs requiring reaction is new to me. In pvp, I am usually paying attention to visual cues. Range, their buffs, presence of a freeze debuff, casting bars, etc. Watching scrolling combat text for procs seems to simply be very difficult for me to do at the same time.

But this struck me as something that mods might be able to help out with. Does anyone know of a mod that makes monitoring procs easier? Or is this something I just have to get more experienced with?

 

solbergb

I'm just going to go 61 fire for now. At my gear level (~1100 spell damage, ~18% crit ~5% haste, hit capped before buffs/talents/consumables) it seems like dipping into arcane or frost doesn't really do much for my single target DPS and it hurts other things. The real DPS talents are all third tier, meaning going X/51/X is kind of pointless unless you are having mana issues (arcane) or hit cap issues (frost)

Near as my math can make out,0/61/0 is mildly inferior to 13/48/0 or 0/50/11 for fireball/scorch rotation but if I can get living bomb to work it's actually better than either and lets me take also all of the non-DPS talents, or nearly all (5 talent points, 8 if I ditch empowered fire to spend on flamethrowing, burning determination, fiery payback, firestarter, burning soul and blazing speed...I'll probably ditch the latter two and empowered fire because I want to see how bad pushback is and try out the newer talents)

It's also pretty strictly superior for any AOE or battleground PVP situations to either of the stripped down single target specs. Perhaps frost or arcane is better, but who cares. Fire's what I want to fool around with right now.

Whether I can actually do the rotations I have in mind, reacting to procs, keeping living bomb up and not getting killed by latency with all these instant and 1.5s spells, that's the question.

I'll worry about level 80 when the time comes. The talents, spell base damage and spell mana costs will likely be tweaked between now and then anyway, and I'll spec based on my actual gear, not the current forecasts.

 

atliens

How are you guys running 10/51/0 and 11/50/0? You'd be giving up 3% hit with Elemental Precision. Add to that the hit cap is now 1% higher yielding 4%. How did you replace that 50 hit rating or did you forego it?

Are you dipping into arcane for clearcasting? I ran BT last night and the mana regen was absurd. That and the bosses fall so fast now. I am running 0/53/8 and noticed humptydumpty was as well. Just want to understand if I am missing something!

 

inphared

The 3% from elemental precision is made up for by SPriests or Moonkins who now give a raid wide 3% hit buff. So really its only a 1% change in hit if you regularily run with a spriest or moonkin in your raid.

 

mako

Mages who previously ran with an elemental shaman and had 3/3 elemental precision will need 4% hit after misery/faerie fire.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

inphared

A question about frost in SWP. What bosses will kill the elemental?

Brutallus Slash?
Felmyst Gas Nova?
Twins AoE raid wide damage?

Im debating just going 0/0/61 till the exspansion if 11/50 doesnt work out but I haven't read anything about SWP Frost Mages.

 

Shamroq

We all came in very close to each other - I was the middle with 1 about 50pts above me and 1 about 45pts below. However.. to be honest I don't think I maxed out LB. There are something things I'll change next time around (mana gem instead of flame cap could have meant no evo necessary). In the long run it appears it will prove out to be the most dps.

It's worth repeating though that focus will increase another raid members dps as well as your own too - so the total raid dps of the two may prove equivilent or even better depending upon who the focus is placed on.

Re asking about hit - the moonkin or shadowpriest buff makes up the difference, not to mention the easy availability of surefooted or even using hit food - things that weren't available to casters before. (though I sometimes had ele sham before I did not count on them being in the party and was hit capped to 164)

As to using a 61pt deep fire.. you may not notice mana issues in BT (due to the HUGE nerf) but in a longer fight you will start seeing them. 10/51/0 seems to be the answer best for those mages who still want living bomb.

Of note.. this may seem to be a "duh" but something we did discuss in guild - 1 mage went LB while the others opted for focus. As LB does not stack on a boss, it's a waste for more than one mage in a run to spec it IF you could better use that talent point elsewhere. It's wonderful for aoe / trash pulls if you're targetting different mobs.. just can't put 3 stacks of LB on the same mob.

 

inphared

Sham I know you used glyphed Mage Armor but did the other mages use Molten? Im wondering if mage armor is needed or if you can get away with Molten + Glyphed mana gem.

And another question that hasnt been asnwered. Does the SCB and glyphed Mana Gem stack or no?

 

Shamroq

I believe we were all using mage armor.. but not sure if they glyphed it. I'll ask tonight. For me... I wouldn't have been able to use molten + glyphed.. but LB is a major mana burn.

 

inphared

Well from another SWP mage Im talking to he said from Kalec > Felmyst running with Motlen Armor and using 11/50 he had 0 mana problems and never had to evocate. Either LB is that big of a mana hog or he was getting way more mana regen than you.

 

Shamroq

I've read his posts to, haven't compared gear.. will jump this over to that thread and chat.

 

solbergb

Where I'm going to be raiding, mana is not likely to be an issue because the fights just won't last that long. It is not just boss hitpoints dropping, it's the fact that individual and raid damage is way up.

If it becomes an issue, I can modify my spell rotation (eg, drop living bomb). Without living bomb, my mp/5 burn is essentially identical to an 0/50/11 model and has about 9% more burn than the 13/48/0 model. Living bomb is something like 8% of my damage though, so I'd go into mage armor+glyph first before rotating it down.

In an environment like 3.0, I'd rather accept the risk that I might go OOM if I go overboard with living bomb than have a flat 10% mana improvement but miss out on experimenting with 10 points of the newer fire talents.

 

Solisa

Yes, we did Kalec-Brut-our first Felmyst kill and we had no problems with mana, I only ate one mana charge of a mana gem on brut and never went below 50% mana. We did have a ret paladin keeping up JoW for what difference it makes, as well as a total of three replenishers in the raid.

 

eltigeron

So Rawr is all for making me gem with mostly Runed Crimson Spinels. However, my crit chance to fire unbuffed with no gems into T6 chest enchanted with +6 to stats is 24.81%. I think that seems quite low for a fire mage unbuffed at least.

I can try to get some badges for the badge gloves. That would certainly help. Would help even more if I had a metagem slotted pve head piece.

What do you guys think? Should I gem up with crit gems now considering 3.0.2 patch and the value of Hot Streak?

If so, Potent Pyrestone or Gleaming Lionseye to account for spell power bonuses?

 

solbergb

Does that 24.81% include the spell-specific crit enhancers? That's not great but it's not as bad as you probably think it is. While I weigh in a few % points higher unbuffed, I've got no plans to regem for crit.

Keep in mind you'll get another 10% from scorch, 3% from molten armor. That puts you at a fairly comfortable 39% or so for any spell. For things where 3/3 incinerate or 3/3 world in flames apply you're up to 45%. Toss in a boomkin or whatever and you're already up to 50%.

I'd still go with the RAWR analysis though. If it says spellpower gems, that's probably right. (Spellpower wasn't made better or worse by the patch, and is just plain itemized better for rating on gems than crit or haste)

 

burnbabyburn

Hey EJ!

I have been raiding as a fire mage for a long time and I recently went frost (for the first time) to test it out.
I love it and I have been doing some insane amounts of dps. Here is my armory link:

The World of Warcraft Armory

However, I find myself button pushing and mouse clicking (at the same time) when using the water elemental.
It becomes awkward after a while. I was wondering if anyone could post some macros to help me manage my water elemental lol. Its weird spamming frost bolt with the number 1 key and then clicking my mouse button for water bolt on the pet bar.

I'm looking forward to trying arcane as well. Any suggestions on specs or arcane rotations?
My guild will be attempting Sunwell this weekend. Any suggestions on my talent tree or gear would be greatly appreciated.

 

hiisukun

You should be able to right click waterbolt to make it 'autocast'. (It should behave that way by default).
You'll need to either bind a key to /petattack or.. put that in the macro somewhere.

I use a macro that summons my water elemental with the same key that casts the pet's nova.

I have had this since way back when the water elemental was on test. I'm sure there is probably an updated version - but this saves me one button and does the job.

Hope that helps.

 

mako

Waterbolt should autocast, as mentioned above. Next time you summon it, look closely, sometimes it is hard to catch the little sparkles that signify it's on.

Since you are not a fan of clicking, just bind attack to a key/combination that you are comfortable with.

My personal preference is to bind "pet attack" to shift + mousewheel up and "pet follow" to shift + mousewheel down. This gives some control over the water elemental, at least so far as starting dps, stopping dps, or moving out of hazards.

Alternatively, you could create a macro containing only "/petattack" which would set the elemental to your target. A "/petfollow" macro could be used to have the pet follow as well, but it should be simpler to bind the actions directly through the keybinds menu than to macro and then bind those spaces.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

OrdinAiry

Is anyone else finding that their overall damage has dropped post patch in comparison to the melee folks? We raided ZA on Saturday and I was getting beaten in overall damage by pretty much everyone, including the protection warrior who was MT.

I spoke with a spriest friend in another guild who is finding the same issue when raiding.

I'm hoping that this is just temporary until we can start leveling again, but if not then either:

1) I'm a much much worse mage than I ever thought, or
2) mages need some major increase

Anyone else running into the same issue or do I need to switch my main because I stink as a mage ??

 

Keldarn

Only hunters have significantly increased on me from what I can see. Rogues seem to have been boosted slightly as well, but I don't have conclusive numbers, only some recount data. Forgot to enable logging for WWS parses.

 

Thalur

I've been doing Sunwell as a frost mage yesterday (was 11/0/50, deep frost w/ Focus Magic). Deep Frost seems to be in the lead, because you got enough points for all damage amplifying talents you would take at level 80 (one point short, took that out of Arctic Reach).

The elemental will not die in the first 3 bossfights. It never gets any damage from Kalecgos (demon realm) and it is not affected by Brut's Meteor Slash. Felmyst's Gas Nova did kill it pre 3.0.2, but since it has > 6k life now, this is no longer a problem (if it gets dispelled by the mass dispell). The only time it dies is if your group gets the Encapsulate, and you don't give the follow command very very fast (while you are blinking). Otherwise, it will be healed by chain heal, wild growth and other group heals, and never get in danger of dying. Should be fine on the Twins too, but I can't tell about M'uru and Kil'Jaeden.
The elemental did 11% of my dmg on Felmyst as well as on Brut.

Here is my question: does the mana reg ability of multiple water elements stack? We were 2 frost mages yesterday, and the elemental's manareg was huge. If they do stack, then frost mages will fulfill the old spriest's role in wotlk and get stacked; if not, the manareg of a single elemental is plainly OP.
Comparing elemental's manareg to Replenishment (spriest/hunter/retri): on Brutallus, the overall manareg was
* Improved Water Elemental: 70k
* Replenishment: 40k
* Judgement of Wisdom: 40k
Additionally, replenishment got almost completely absorbed by the 5 warlocks, leaving little for the healers. The elemental's reg is the same for the whole raid (depending on max mana), returning ~3k mana for everyone on Brut.
WWS Brutallus - manareg by Improved Water Elemental
WWS Brutallus - manareg by Replenishment

 

spaace

I've been using 11/50/0 build and I've noticed, even with these short fights, and longer fights (uh.. KJ?), using mana gems, and if really needed, evocation, there is absolutely no issue with mana.. Would there be more benefits taking icy veins, and dropping that 3% hit for more haste/damage, or is it possible that clearcasting really is helping that much, and I don't really notice?

 

Keldarn

Clear casting effectively reduces your spellcost by 10%.
Unhasted, that is about 15 mp5 at level 70.

 

Vulkaire

My advice would be to skip Dr. Boom and just go to a target dummy.