Quartz is a very good option for managing your casting. Even though you can't nano-manage the extra 1%, you will find that you get better with greater insight into your casting process.
Bugged EP applies only to Frostbolt and no other spells.
Ignite doesn't get knocked off very often. There is a debuff prioritization going on that, while imperfect, does leave Mind Flay up and Fireball ticks off. It is very hard to see the actual prioritization take place as there is no combat log entry to allow us to recreate it. There are several unit frames that allow you to display 40 debuff slots; Pitbull is what I use.
Ignites overlap (step on) each other sometimes, and sometimes they compound each other. Look for the thread on this forum about Rolling Ignites coming back.
Getting your spells knocked off can be monitored, using something like Quartz, so you can reapply them when it happens. Quartz shows a timer bar for each DoT effect on the target.
Your arc/fire mage was obviously a good mage, being held back by their spec. To note: 2/47/11+1 is the current best deep fire spec; Drop Clearcasting in favor of aggressive gem/pot usage and try to get into a shadowpriest group.
1. Haste matters, even if you don't see it- unless your spells are faster than the GCD of 1.5 seconds.
2. No, just Frostbolt (or maybe frost spells). It can also be changed back at any time.
3. I've never seen Ignite get knocked off, but I'm not paying attention to that.
4. Yes. Most frame mods allow seeing all the debuffs on a mob. There are also specific mods (Demon and Debuff Filter) that allow for seeing specific debuffs on a mob.
5. Yes, the fireball DoT counts. Yes, it will knock off SWP (thank you stuck-at-60 priority system).
6. Overlapping ignites just stacks the ignite damage higher. It only matters if the mob dies before the ignite is over
7. Our hunters are only allowed to use Scorpid Sting. The 40-debuff limit is annoying, but it shouldn't be an issue until the warlocks start complaining.
8. Deep frost (10/0/51) is a better spec than an arcane/frost hybrid. I have no idea what an arcane/frost build would rotate like because I've never bothered enough to care after doing the math.
9. Raiding specs should be some variation of 2/47/11 or 10/0/51. There are some choics that can be made to trick out the specs (such as sneaking a couple points of clearcasting into fire at the cost of AE) but those are the two "best" specs. Deep fire is the easier spec to play overall because it doesn't require pet management or as much cooldown management. Deep frost, on the other hand, lets you do damage to Al'ar or Illidan phase 2.
I didn't understand: "Ignites overlap (step on) each other sometimes, and sometimes they compound each other. Look for the thread on this forum about Rolling Ignites coming back."
So I am not losing damage when Ignites overlap? You're certain?
Assume for example you had 50% crit, so Ignite is ~always~ overlapped. How many debuff slots would you be using on the boss then?
Assume 4 mages in raid (yes we really do have that fairly often). Each fire mage using: one debuff for Ignite (or more?), 1 for fireball (or is it more?). Add stacked scorches & CoE. 4 mages = 10 debuff slots (or is it more?) Should I start being horrified now? Eeeek. How exactly is this working? Do my DoT from fireball overwrite each other?
Theres only two ways to lose ignite damage. The first is to cast a fireblast that hits a target while a fireball is in the air, and they both crit. You'll lose one of the crits ignite damage. Chain casting any spells with cast time can't cause this (scorch/fireball).
The other problem (that gets discussed a lot in one of the threads, due to a wws parse from manly), is when you crit, the next ignite tick gets delayed till 2 seconds after your crit. The damage is added up properly, but if you are getting enough crits, you can delay the ignite tick for a long time, so when it does tick, it can do a lot of damage. However, if the mob dies with the ignite on, you can 'lose' a large amount of damage.
Yes, your mages would be using 9 debuff slots if they all had ignites at the same time (4xignite, 4xfireball, 1xscorch). Each mage can only get one fireball dot, and I believe its just a straight overwrite.
Re: watching for specific debuffs (like scorch's fire vulnerability), there are mods like NaturEnemyCastBar that not only track debuffs but show you a timer as well. Very useful for keeping scorch up when a different mage owns the stack.
Well, just to make this clear because I hate people getting the wrong ideas. Yes, fireball dots overwrite themselves over and over - one mage will never have more than 1 dot. This is fairly easy to test if you cast fireball rank 1 and fireball max rank, you can tell from the fireball dot dmg that they overwrite each other.
Also, while it is true as far as I am aware that the debuff prioritisation has never been updated past 60, the fact still remains that the fireball dot is extremely low on the priority list. And that Ignite is notably high on the list, because back at lvl 60 you had 1 ignite for all mages so that was pretty much the top debuff that would never get pushed off. Yes, post-60 debuffs should be knocked off by debuffs that existed at lvl 60, but other than that, everything can and will push fireball dot amongst the first things. So in other words, you can somewhat safely ignore the fireball dot as taking one of the 40 debuff slots - because in pratice almost everything else will push the dot away.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
The damage is added up properly, but if you are getting enough crits, you can delay the ignite tick for a long time, so when it does tick, it can do a lot of damage.
How would this work out as you near 50% crit? What kind of delay are we talking about then? Is there a limit on how much crit you would want in practice? Is my ~42% already too high?
How would this work out as you near 50% crit? What kind of delay are we talking about then? Is there a limit on how much crit you would want in practice? Is my ~42% already too high?
Thanks for the link: it did clarify.
You could have 100% crit rate it wouldn't matter. As long as your target receives all ignite ticks before it dies you won't lose damage (unless you do fireball/fireblasts). You might, in fact, should you get some luck on the timing of your fireball, get extra damage thanks to rolling ignites.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
-40% threat to Arcane Explosion is particularly nice. There aren't many situations where Imp Blizzard is actually useful, and especially on Tidewalker those murlocs should be dying quick enough that a couple novas is enough.
"33/28: Arcane/Fire 'huge crit' build. This is also a poor build that should never be used in raids."
I would just note that this is not a Poor build if you know what stats to go for with it. its mechanics are totaly different of other builds, and in the right hands this can do signifigantly more damage in 25 man instances. If you take the post originaaly from wow WoW Forums ->
Taking that graph shows where to be depending on your stats, and atm. i have out Dps'ed many mages in equally as good gear as my self. but it is also a very hard build to play, its crucial that you do things the right way. and uses the right stuff (or turned around ive been Out dps'ed by one mage so far)...
(In raids fully buffed my stats are 1100-1300 Fire damage, 42-50% Crit, 2-16% Hit,10-12K mana) Depending on what i shift in and out of gear + what im in group with.
33/28/0 has many problems. It is the best scaling build once you get in the 70-80% crit rates. Problem is, its not possible besides loatheb to get such crit rates. Your non-crit fireball will hit for significantly less than a non-crit deepfire fireball. Sure, they will crit (edited) for slightly more, but not much more. The point of the build is to use 245% (edited) fire crits by using spell power, so it stacks as many +crit% talents as possible. But again, it stacks a bunch of crit talents, all the while skipping on things that increase your fireball damage, and this is what kills it. The other problem of the build is that in theory it makes sense to abuse 245% (edited) fire crits, but in practice the ilvl formula works against the build in such a way that the more you try to maximize your build, the more you get punished by the formula (ie: bad dps tradeoffs). If you needed something around 15 crit rating for 1% crit, then that build could work, but in its current state its just not realistic.
Again, if you can guarantee 70-80% crit rates, then you will equal deep-fire scaling.
Of course, like any build, there are some corner cases where it will shine. Oh, it will do much better on AOE than deep fire. It will have similar, if not better, AOE dps than deep arcane. Sure, it has the up-side of allowing you to go 2pct5 and AB spam, although your AB spam will kinda suck. It's like a jack-of-all-trade-master-of-none. Other than that, the single-target dps just flat out sucks.
Last edited by manly : 01/24/08 at 1:41 AM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
50% crit is quite easy to reach with 33/28. Problem is, DPS will suck.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I personally went 47/14 for Improved Blizzard. Contrary to popular opinion thus far, I think it is one of the more useful utility talents a mage can pick up, certainly better than -40% threat to a spell that 1) requires you to be within smashing distance of angry mobs and 2) is from a school that receives no other talent benefit.
As I see it, if your tanks are sufficiently skilled to get and reliably hold aggro on all the mobs being AoEd then they are skilled enough to pull all the mobs together to make flamestrike/DB/BW a viable option, and if they can't reliably do this then the snare from blizzard gives them time to react before an unfortunate seed-happy warlock falls over.
The breakpoint of how much crit chance you need for 33/28 to work goes way down with your spell dmg. However the fact is at any gear level, if you're gearing properly (even taking this spec as the base) your crit will be too low for your spell dmg for this spec to be worth it. While with very poor gear 40-50% crit may be enough to make it worth it, you will never have that much crit with poor gear. Once you get good enough gear to get 40-50% crit without gimping dps, your spell dmg will be higher and you will need way more crit to make the build worth it.
So at the end, 33/28 single target dps sucks. Just look at the spreadsheet and see for yourself. If 33/28 dps is better than deep fire, you're probably gearing yourself EXTREMELY wrong.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Fair enough, I didn't realise you could reach 50% chance to crit with +1300 dmg and hit capped.
Would love to see some gear showing this, seeing as I'm such a noob to seeing gear that shows high crit rates.
On that build that Manly linked...
Looks kinda fun tbh
Besides the extra IV, it seems that it could be great for fire mages that still want to have good dps at A'lar or stage 2 of Illidan.
However, if I was actually thinking of using frostbolt in the above mentioned raid encounters, I would spec something like this. Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Same spec as Manly, except some small adjustments in frost tree.
<@Terror> "It's easy to forget what a sin is in the middle of a battlefield."
<@cky> opposite over hypotenuse
Well, frost encounters are kinda rare and your dps will suck with or without the frost increasing talents. The point of the build i linked above is that you can cope with the lack of dragon's breath and blastwave by maximizing on blizzard as your (sole?) AOE spell. Hence why the talent selection was slanted towards blizzard. But one thing is sure, you absolutely need 3 points in frost channelling for the heavily reduced AOE mana cost and the minus threat.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I can't see Blizzard being competitive damage-wise, given a non-trivial investment in fire talents -- especially so considering the damage cap. Flamestrike/DB/BW/AE will always be preferable for pure damage as they can crit. Blizzard is for those occasions where you value control over raw dps, so if mana is an issue I'd just downrank and let the warlocks do the real work of killing the mobs (I used to use rank 1 blizzard on Nightbane skeletons on those occasions where a shadow priest wasn't available, for example).
01/23/08, 12:03 PM
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