I can confirm that I am getting a phantom 3% additional hit on frostbolts. I do not know the mechanics, nor do I know the reason behind the phantom bonus. This is not hearsay or rumour, this is fact, or a coincidence of the highest order.

As are all our mages. I have WWS parses of fights for all our guild attempts and kills of recent bosses, and have correlated the hit rating I was wearing at the time, and that of the other mages in our guild, over an extended period of time.

For example, I foolishly forgot to change out of my trash clearing gear, with 89 hit (7.1% hit) on our recent Kael attempt, and my frostbolts recorded a 2.3% miss rate (I was in a group with an elemental draenei shaman, +4% hit)

Maths would indicate that I should have had a 16-11.1% miss rate = 4.9%. If we add the phantom hit, we get a 1.9% miss rate (and accounting for OOR / totem dropping and them dying to Thaladred) that's well within my sensibleness range.

I will also say that this is completely consistent over a very large number of fights, and only our frost mages (3x arc/frost, 1xarc/fire, 1xdeep fire) are getting the bonus hit, and only on frostbolts.

I'm willing to share all my WWS parses, but they're not very useful without knowing what the +hit was for the mages at the time.

I will also say that since I've noticed this anomaly that I've geared, gemmed and trinket-ed so that my "hit cap" is 13% and mostly wearing about 126 hit on bosses (10%) so I feel that I can't correlate that hypothesis with the numbers that I'm seeing.

I first really noticed this anomaly when I was bitching out our mages for having really shitty +hit (in the 80-100 range) and them saying "well, I only miss 1-2%, so why bother getting more". That made me start looking more closely at our WWS parses.

Okay, thanks for your answers, for someone who just entered BT/MH this is very interesting indeed.
I'll head over to the 2.3 thread and have another look at it.

It took me awhile but finally I found it. http://elitistjerks.com/538273-post676.html, thanks mate.

On a sidenote, could anyone confirm that the following is correct? I have done multiple searches with different keywords without finding any relevant information.

"The mechanics of frostbolts allows any spellhit over the 16% cap to be turned into a special form of penetration that allows your frost spells to penetrate the otherwise impenetrable latent resistance any mob above your level have."

I think the general consensus is that those level-based resists simply do not affect Frostbolt.
Might be that they don't affect binary spells at all, and can only cause partial resists on spells that can be resisted partially. Just like glancing/crushing blows can only affect white hits.

Long story short:
With 10% hit from gear/buffs, 99% of your Frostbolts will hit, and all cause full damage.
Elemental Precision makes up for the remaining 6% hit, and you don't get any additional resists from the level-based resists.


Edit: 16%-6% = 10% =/= 12%. I suck at numbers, thanks for clearing that up

The generally accepted explanation is that Frost simply ignores the "latent resistance" of mobs above your level, and that is has nothing to do with hit over the cap, but I haven't seen it extensively tested.

Still, people testing with 6% hit below the cap are not showing more than their expected resistance, and since Frostbolt can't partial resist, they should if they were not over the cap including the 6% bonus.

Correct me if im wrong, but wouldnt 10% from gear be sufficient since talents would give you 16% (hit cap being 16) wich would then give you a 99% chance to hit?

I know it's possible to compare gear using Vontre's spreadsheet but it hasn't been working for me using Open Office. I recall seeing back in 2.2 that the [Bracers of Nimble Thought] were better for AM spam then [Cuffs of Devastation]. Does this still hold true for fire?

a) Does Molten Armor decrease the chance that I am critically hit only for spells?
"Apply Aura: Mod Attacker Spell Crit Chance" is what wowhead lists, but the tooltip is not clear... does anybody know for sure?

b) Does Molten Armor stack with Resilience - will it give additional crit resistance if you are at -12,5 crit via resilience or is the sum of both effects capped at -12,5 ?

The "marginal change" calculator on the right hand side of the main sheet should still work in Open Office (at least is does for me). So you can enter all of your stats with one set of bracers equipped and then just test the change of removing the stats from that one and replacing them with the other. Though I haven't looked at your gear, it's most likely that Nimble Thought will come out ahead for you.

It applies to melee as well. If you look at the spell data for Blessed Resilience, you'll notice the same language about "spell crit chance." BR most assuredly reduces melee crit chance as well as spell crit chance.

Testing has only shown that the reduction in damage taken on a crit caps at 25%. There is no evidence to support the conclusion that there is a 12.5% cap on total crit reduced, and a lot to suggest otherwise. So I would operate under the assumption that MA does in fact allow you to reduce your chance to be crit by more than 12.5%.

I was under the impression that resilience (at about 500) caps at 12.5% critical chance and therfore 25% critical damage. There was a debate in Priest forums about the first concept of the new priest talent, which did not provide a survivability increas because it shared the cap with your equipment.

Hi Guys,

Whats the utility value for 1 spell hit rating?

I'm using 1.05 for spell haste, 1 for spell damage and 0.69 for spell crit rating at the moment

Cheers

If you don't have access to BT gems, you can do what I do and count 4 hit as 5 damage due to how you would shift around veiled noble topaz. Depending on your gem situation, 4 hit on an item may only be worth 4 damage if you are forced to change an existing VNT to a Runed Living Ruby. That's how I use it anyway.

According to the numbers that I use the crit and hit from serpent coil braid is worth about 36.6 spell damage (assuming you don't have access to BT/Hyjal gems but that would only increase it to 39-40). With the new buff to mana gems it would be a waste to pop a gem before you were quite low on mana, which imo limits the versatility of this trinket. The extra crit would be good for mana efficiency with MOE and it's 225 for 15 seconds vs. 155 for 20 seconds but the extra damage from the spells you got off in the first 15 seconds should make up for the last 5 seconds after modifiers I guess. I'd say they are close to even overall, but I'd probably stick to the Icon just because I can use the activation anytime without wasting other resources. Also, I think [wowitem]Hex Shrunken Head[/wowitem] + Darkmoon Card: Crusade is the new hotness anyway

I believe the buff to mana gems only applies to the Mana Emerald, which gives you 3 charges. I currently run frost spec and in the beginning of most boss fights I find it very useful to jam a mana Jade, destro pot, WE, and Crescent Icon and go to town. The Jade returns a tasty bit of +dmg and since it's the beginning of the fight, I don't feel bad blowing the gem cooldown on something that returns such little mana. By the time the CD is back up I can use it on a bigger gem to maintain my pool. I plan on continuing this tactic after the changes but might replace the 2 lesser gems (Agate and Citrine) with the 1 Emerald. However, I believe that regardless of what other CD's you're using, you should always use a cheapo mana gem at the start of a fight to boost your damage. It's just smart SCB usage imo.

Assuming the SCB mana bonus works on all gems (I thought it did, and now I may have to double-check), you'll sometimes actually net a mana gain if you quickly create a Mana Jade and immediately use it. This makes it quite good for even trash - create a jade right before the pull, pop it (or build your debuff stack first), and go to work.

Help the Raid Leader!!!

So my mages are very unhappy during raids these days, they are always out of mana. If they have a shadow priest and a another shadow priest/shaman, they are more agreeable to be around. Here are the numbers I ran:

Talents:

Arcane:
Clearcasting (10% chance for free cast) ??/mp5
Arcane Meditation (30% regen while casting) ??/mp5

Fire:
Master of Elements (30% mana back on crits) ??/mp5

Frosts:
Elemental Precision (3% cheaper cast for fire/frost) ??/mp5
Frost Channeling (15% cheaper frost spells) ??/mp5

Raid/Group Buffs:
Blessing of Wisdom: 41 mp5 (imp, 49mp5)
Mana Spring: 50mp5 (w/ talents and 2pc t4: 72mp5)
Shadow Priest: ~250mp5

Judgement of Wisdom:
(from the ret pally thread)
Fire
Typical Rotation: (After Fire Vunerability x5 is applied) Fireball x8, Scorch, repeat
Ideal Mp5 from JoW: 65.29 Mp5

Assumed 5/5 Improved Fireball

Frost
Typical Rotation: Frostbolt, repeat
Ideal Mp5 from JoW: 74 Mp5

Assumed 5/5 Improved Frostbolt

Arcane
Typical Rotation: Arcane Blast x2, Arcane Missiles x2, Scorch, repeat
Ideal Mp5 from JoW: 138.75 Mp5

Consumables:
Chain Chugging Super Mana Potions: ~60mp5
Sporefish: 8mp5
Mana Gems: ??/mp5

Anything I missed?


---------

So... what do you do for the mages in raids to make them more effective and help their mana issues? And what should the mages be doing to help themselves?

Any advice is appreciated!

A few things:

You can't calculate the mp5 for the talents you listed (besides Arcane Meditation) because they reduce the mana cost of the spells and depend on how many spells you cast per minute.

You forgot mana gems and Evocation in the list.

Generally without a shaddow priest, mages will run out of mana on many of the longer fights, even if they get all the other buffs you listed.

Things which could help:
-Check and increase the JoW uptime
-Make sure your mages have all 5 mana gems and potions available and they use them as soon as possible.
-Try to give the mages some innervates from your feral druids ...
-Pray for patch 2.3.2 soon.
-give us more information on the bosses where you have problems, armory links, wws, ...

Neone:

Calculating DPS cost in terms of MP5 is a bad methodology, it will not yield consistent results and it will not be of any use.

No mage should be OOM with a SP in his group, there is something clearly wrong with the way they're playing.

A few pointers:

1) There is no arcane spec. If you have an arcane mage in 2.3, you need to direct them to EJ forums to read up on why it's so shit or simply oblige them to turn to 10/48/3, 0/45/11+6 (after 2.3.1), 0/0/44+17, or if they're in sub-kara gear 40/18/3.

2) Frostbolt is bugged and does not proc JoW currently in 2.3. It is not known if this is corrected in 2.3.1. If you're frost and having mana issues in AoE-utility fights like Morogrim (and you can afford the boss-nuke loss), make sure JoW is up (if you use pala-agro for the murlocks this is quite common) and tell them to use rank 1 arcane missiles. For a piddly 22mana this will proc 4 possible JoWs, usualy resulting in a net 120 mana per 4sec it lasts. If you're fire in the same situation, scorch will be a lovely choice. It's inherently cheaper than fireball in mana/second, it crits more thus returns more from MoE and procs twice as many JoW.

3) If you think they'll hit the bottom of the mana-barrel, Mage Armor should be prefered to Molten. Keep in mind this is a signifficant DPS loss however.

4) Conjuring all 5 gems and mashing them as soon as they'll return benefit is vital. If the fight is hugely-draining (too few AoEers eg.) waiting mashing Pot CD first is more important: You'll prefer to get more pots in than more stones in as it's significantly more mana per pot than per stone, particularly later on when you're down to the piddly 600 mana stones.

5) Are your fire mages being idiotic and mashing Fireblast? If so, stop it. The more gear you gain the worst it becomes, with T5ish gear + raidbuff making it a DPS loss. Not to mention it costs a bloody mana fortune. Fireblast should only be used on the move, and only given you're not bleeding your mana dry.

6) If you're experiencing OOM too much on AoE fights, you have too few AoEers. Less mages/locks means more dmg per player and one less can mean 15-20% more drain on the others, making the fight unsustainable.

Ideally your mages should be self-sufficient with one of the following options:
either: Resto-shaman + chain-gem
or: SPriest + chain-gem
or: Ele-Sham + chain-gem + some pots perhaps
or: Alone + chain-gem + chain-pots


Concerning AoE cap: Is the aoe damage cap affected by global % increases? I do seem to recall parses which indicated that for mobs which progressively got CoS, AE would cap out higher and higher. With this in mind I'm moved to wonder: Will Imp. Cone of Cold make any difference to CoC AoE cap? On AoE fights we always use nova-rotation (don't ask why) and as I'm shatter-specced my AE capps out all the time. I was thinking though, perhaps I-CoC would raise the damage potential a little.

Some background: My guild is a fairly casual raid guild that's trying to push harder through content while maintaining its schedule of 2 25-man nights per week. I took about 4 months off in the dark days of late 2.0 through 2.1, during which my guild moved from starting to work on Shade of Aran and HKM to clearing KZ and killing Gruul. We're now downing VR regularly with one Hydross kill. I am currently 10/48/3 and have been for almost all my length of time at 70.

I've always been somewhat serious on my theorycrafting, and loved the TC addon in the days of MC. Our loot system (the casual-popular Suicide Kings) has pushed me to pick up a ton of alternate items when I can do so cheaply. Karazhan also drops a lot of items that overlap for which there's rarely competition given that lots of folks picked everything up during my absence. Look at Ruby Slippers and Boots of Foretelling, where one has Spell Hit and the other Spell Crit - I can't imagine not having both of those items to choose from if I could (and now do). There's also Spirit items thrown in (Boots of the Infernal Coven). While I haven't managed to get every single drop, there are lots of places where I have multiple relevant items - and as a non-enchanter I really have nothing useful to do with them. As a Mage I have very little that I need to keep on my character, so I tend to save every item that isn't 100% outclassed by something else.

What that means is that even before I went into Karazhan, I was very nearly capped on Spell Hit since I had Starkiller's Bauble, Scryer's Bloodgem, a level 69 boe blue with 30 spell hit I bought for like 6g, and various other quest items and instance drops. It has also meant that I have not wanted to put spell hit gems in any of my gear. Such gems only came out after I returned and thus I was somewhat unaware of them, but as much as I might want my Trial-Fire Trousers to have a little spell hit on them I could just put on T4 legs if I needed a bit more spell hit. Since I have gear that can put me well above 200 spell hit, I can assume that I can gear myself to have around 160-170 spell hit. Since most of my best pieces of gear have spell hit (VR's Cowl, Shoulders from TK trash, Prince's Cloak) I find myself stretching down to blues with better dmg/crit stats if I put on all my epics with spell hit, which makes little sense. I greatly prefer my Trial-Fire to have no spell hit on them even though putting 3 Veiled Noble Topaz would make it a better item by itself since it might become a worse item (compared to 3 Potent NT or 3 Runed LR) considering the spell hit cap.

Now given my guild's painstakingly slow progression, I suppose that my experience is not quite the same as others but those farming Hyjal/BT seem like they might be in a similar situation of having multiple items of the same quality for some slots where one has spell hit and the other doesn't. Does it ever make sense to socket spell hit gems when you have so many items that you can use to push over the spell hit cap? Does it require access to Tier-6 level gems?

--

Also, is 10/48/3 downing Destro potions comparable to x/4x/11 in 2.3.2? With gems being equal to potions, I lose out only on the piddly amounts that the gems are giving me now. Since I'll also be getting slightly more mana back in MoE from the destro potions, I can't imagine mana will be an issue. I'm assuming those with Icy Veins will probably need both timers (or more outside help) to keep up.

No it makes no sense what so ever, under any circumstances, to go beyond hit cap. Only in T6 level gear, when there is no choice (the gear has superfluous hit) should you encounter this problem.

From your post I'm slightly confused. I don't get why you advocate hit/dmg gems. I think what has happened is that you've fell into the information that hit/dmg is the best gem in the business, which is strictly true given two considerations: (1) You're not capped and (2) you don't ditch a significant set bonus. Typical examples include T4 head, which has a blue socket with +5dmg. Clearly a stam/dmg gem would net 6sta +10dmg, which is arguably comparable to a 4hit 5dmg gem.

As for access to T6 gems, I don't exactly understand what you mean? Syntactically I fail to get the point: Are you trying to ask "does socketing hit gems past hit cap require T6 gems?"? Perhaps I'm missing the point you're trying to make, please elaborate.

Thinking Destro pots will increase your mana efficiency through MoE is silly. During the duration of a whole Destro pot you will not significantly see any difference from the 2% crit. Over months, dozens of destro-pots, with a total of 200-300 spells cast while potted, yes, you will see a trend. But to think that 2% crit will make such a difference to DPS (let alone the piddly 30% mana returned from MoE) is not realistic. Particularly when combined with Combustion, which is 5 times the same effect on it's first charge and more than doubles your base crit by the last one.

I assume you're comparing 10/48/3-Destro pot to x/45/11+5 due to mana issues. You should not be having mana issues, even in Karazahn. Any one of: SP, BoW, Mana-spring/tide totem, JoW can all almost assuredly be relied upon to keep you a-ok in mana terms for any encounter you might be up against. The question isn't "can classic fire with D-pots compete with IV-fire?" The question is: "Why don't you spec IV-fire AND down D-pots?"

Either way, comparing IV to Destro pots is rather short-sighted. If you really are such an avid theorycrafter, all you have to do is run the numbers for your gear with +44.8crit and +120dmg. This will result in the DPS of a Destro pot. Multiply your average fireball damage by 5 and subtract the un-buffed ave. fireball by five. This is your increase in damage per destro-pot, per 2m. This increase will vary by mileage depending on how much of an increase D-pot is to your own spell power (ie, D-pot to a +1500 raid-buffed is clearly a lot less potent than to a +890 Karazan geared) hence I can't provide an example of percentile increments. I'm purposefully leaving Combustion out of the equation, because since it is on a 3m CD, it'll only be in effect for 1/3 of your Destro-pots, or if you delay the pot 50% longer, which in it's self is a DPS loss. If you want to make modeling more complete, feel free. The point I'm getting across will become obvious though when you model IV:

Take your average 8 fireballs, subtract 6.7 fireballs from that and you have your net-benefit from IV. 20% haste means 20% more fireballs in the same time. In 20 sec you'd normally get 6.7 balls, now you'll get 8. The result is a 19% increase for 20sec per 3m. This works to an average increase of 2.11%, a value not to be sniffed at.

If the increase from IV is more than Destro-potting*1.5 (because the cooldown on one is 3m and the other is 2m) then you have a net gain.

I still maintain however, that Clearcasting is a talent best forgotten. Nowadays mana sustainability is a non-issue and as such it is a lost cause to ditch such a significant mechanic as IV in favour of a measly >10% economy talent.

I do remember that i-CoC would just push you to the damage cap faster. This can be shown through the fire AoE's. The Damage cap is the same, regardless of whether the person testing it has Fire Power (+10% Damage to Fire) or not. This shows that a % increase to (damage type) just pushes AoE to the cap faster.

The preface to the hit gem discussion was to point out the fact that I have a lot of alternate gear. Enough so that I can swing between the hit rating I get with just the absolute best epics I have, and between 200+. I only go with the former on trash, and have only checked the latter as a curiosity. I have run with 162-170ish hit rating ever since I had the gear to hit the cap (164), and since then as I've been able to pick up spell hit gear no one else wanted I have done a lot of examining of various gear combinations to see how to best increase spell damage and crit while maintaining 1% miss. The amount of effort needed to wade through all the permutations of gear I have would take me far to long and I'm not a programmer, so I mainly am looking for a general answer. If you have many pieces of alternate gear that can take you above the spell hit cap, would you still socket for spell hit to fill a yellow socket and then rearrange your gear to stay near the cap? Or is my situation in having excess alternate gear somewhat unique?

I suppose if BT/MH gear has way more spell hit than is needed then gemming it at that level would be stupid.

--

The question isn't whether Icy Veins Fire Mages will be able to use Destro potions with just MoE and Gems for regen, but comparing the package of Mana Potions + Icy Veins vs. Clearcasting + Destro potions. If the question is obviously on the side of the former from your point of view, then I have my answer.