Do you think [Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons] is worth breaking the spellstrike set for? The Spellstrike Infusion (5% chance on +92 spell dmg) proc has no internal cooldown and it is up all the time. I even get procs that renew the original proc multiple times!

Exchanging the pants would lower my hit to 165 (near perfect) but I have some trouble justifying breaking the set right now.

T5 helm has no hit on it so I'd be losing 21 hit if I swapped it for spellstrike helm (unacceptable), but this [Cowl of the Grand Engineer] would definitely be a feasible upgrade (I'd need to gem one yellow with +5 hit +6 dmg).

I think I'll add those two to my list.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

EDIT: Before I add these two to my list I'm going to compare the T5 helm + [Leggings of Channeled Elements] to the [Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons] + [Cowl of the Grand Engineer]

First off I would like to say I'm a new member of the forums and if this is the wrong place to be putting this post let me know please and I will post it in the correct spot. I have a question about Rawr. I just downloaded the program, which my I add is a sweet program, and after I got everything set up I started doing a bunch of comparisons. I don't know if its Tempest is that bad or what but in several cases Tirisfal scored higher that Tempest did. For example, [Tempest Keeper Leggings] was a significant downgrade in DPS as compared to [Leggings of Tirisfal]. I'm not sure if I'm using the program right or its a bug in the program. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Logis

@Logis: Make sure you've entered your talents, and pay attention to the gemming. T5 with good gems could concievably be better than T6 with crap gems. Also if you're below the hit cap, the extra 6 hit on T5 might be pushing it up. And of course whether or not its completing the set bonuses.

edit: looking at your current gear, you'd be losign the 4pT5 bonus, which is probably why Rawr says T5 is better.

Also don't sign your posts.

I have entered my spec in but I did notice that I would be loosing my T5 4 piece bonus which according to the program looks like its about 20ish DPS, is the 4 piece attributed to that much DPS out of curiosity?

Edit: Just saw your post. Thats what I thought it was I was just making sure.

Edit 2: Also I had a gem question, once the gem Vendor is out on our server, I was considering stacking haste/damage gems and haste/stam gems. As you have probably noticed I am well over hit cap as of now and I wanted to know if that was the best use of gems or should I go straight haste gems?

Haste/dmg and straight damage would be the best (depending on the socket bonus).

Why are you stacking hit gems if you're that far over the hit cap anyway? If it was because you were under/at the cap before, then your upgrades (eg: I guess you replaced [Spellstrike Hood] with that [Hood of Hexing] relatively recently) were not really upgrades unless you were willing/planning to regem away from hit to gain other stats.

Stop hitting socket bonuses that aren't worthwhile (pretty much all of them, at your gear level if you aren't using haste gems). Let's see.. 191 hit, so you have 27 unused hit.

Regeming your hood, robe, bracers, belt & shoulders "optimally" (to the best of my theorycrafting ability) you would:

(-20 hit)
-8 spirit
-12 stamina
-4 crit
+29 damage

The loss in hit is meaningless, since it's over the cap anyway. You can regem for stam if you really like, but I don't find it to be worthwhile, & spirit is.. meh (spriest should cover you there). So -4 crit +29 damage. Leaving you still 7 points over the hit cap.

Not sure how to "fix" those last 7 points (not that there necessarily is an optimal gearing for your currently available items that does bring your hit down to the cap), because I'm not sure how valuable the 4-piece is, or what items you have that you could put on instead of the T5. (for example - if you've got spellfire, then [Pattern: Spellfire Gloves] are great compared to [Gloves of Tirisfal]. [Pattern: Spellstrike Pants] have better damage stats than [Leggings of Tirisfal]. Not sure about [Spellfire Robe] over [Robes of Tirisfal] - I'd say the spellfire. So you're sacraficing a bit on every item to get that 4t5 bonus, & I can't say for sure if it's worth it or not)

I was under the impression that haste is a double-edged sword that you should only upgrade naturally. Gemming for haste turned out to not be "worth it" aside from a select few circumstances.

Sunwell loot gives some serious haste (~200) on the items themselves and that's where people are seeing a positive difference. The positive difference doesn't come with your 25 haste from gems (that you sacrafice dmg/crit to get).

Am I partially or wholly wrong?

Gem for haste to get worthwhile set bonuses via orange gems, otherwise use spinels. [Leggings of Calamity] and [Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents] are examples of good items where you can use some haste/dmg gems.

It's worth pointing out that we didn't have spinels when I obtained my gear, so I don't practice what I preach until the gem vendor is up.

Thanks, that helps out a lot.

Keep in mind that *any* spreadsheet/program that gives item scoring will be messed up whenever hit or set bonuses are concerned, since it's simply too complicated. Gaining hit over the cap will not directly increase DPS but will allow DPS to increase elsewhere by adding spell damage in place of hit, and the amount of spell damage obtainable in this manner depends on what gear you actually wear. Set bonuses like 4/5 T5, at some cases, may be too good to remove a single item to break the bonus, however replacing 2 or more of the set items can be a DPS increase. T5 is a perfect example where the bonus is pretty decent but each piece for itself isn't really great, making wearing 4/5 only good if you don't really have other options (badge, crafted, ZA...) and simply had those pieces handed to you by your guild...

Ok i'm lost, I respec'd to 10/48/3 (was 28/33/0 cause i'm a nub like that), and my dps has actually gone down (though dmg went up?). I changed my spell rotation to imp. scorch x5, fireballx3, fireblast, fireballx2, rebuff scorch... repeat. Am I using a bad spell rotation or is it mearly a gear issue? Please help me so I can get my dps back to atleast where it was.

Remember ignite bug, depending on exactly how it works, can actually make fireblast a DPS loss. Not to mention the DPS gain is rediculessly small for its mana cost, you're probably better off using that mana for speccing 2/48/11 instead, using molten armor, reducing evocation time, using flame caps and using destruction potions (more or less in that order of priorities).

When you get a new spec and find yourself doing *less* dps, it's most likely that your DPS time is low. Again don't look at DPS time in WWS as it hardly means anything, just look at yourself during a fight and tell yourself when you could've casted more spells and didn't. In reality DPS differences are caused more by how much time you spend casting and how hard you try to DPS than how good your gear is or how you're specced, although everything helps obviously.

...

I think the text of improved blink begs the question, 'doesn't it seem like this should apply to raid-wide boss abilities?' and now I'm really curious. Obviously there are some 'attacks and spells' that its worth the interruption gain a 25% chance of avoiding. Kazrogal mark? Soul charge? Certainly bloodboil's melee, if you could blink in any direction without wiping your raid. I'd be disappointed if it didn't provide the bonus to boss abilities that can be resisted normally. For certain fights this cute little 'pvp' talent seems more worth it than 2 points in arcane potency (which is what, 1.5% more dps?), especially for progression raiding.

Some fights you're not at liberty to just blink from side to side to mitigate damage or a debuff. Others, like perhaps Sharaz, have you always reaching for the blink key when you're about to take damage.

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know, using fireblast in a deep fire build with high end gear will be a dps loss since patch 2.3. The spellhaste buff in 2.4 might have changed this though.

Fire Blast has a very high base damage, Fireball has better scaling.
On paper, Fire Blast is more DPS until you have 2.3k++ fire damage.

However, Fire Blast is more affected by cast delay (1 lag per 1.5s instead of 1 lag per 3s), is pretty expensive (mana issues come into play, having to drop a destro for a mana pot, etc.), has a 20 yard range and bears the risk if overwriting your ignites.
Which makes it not advisable to use for normal fights.

I'll check the best case and add it to the mana compendium.

Hello. I came here looking for a specific answer to a gear question and have been unable to find it.

I am wondering if my currently equipped Lightning Capacitor is worth ditching for the new Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone. I don't know how to make the mouse over information blocks for these items, my apologies. Here is a link to my armory page The World of Warcraft Armory

The Lightning Capacitor currently accounts for 3% of my total raid damage output according to WWS reports. I do not have mana issues for any fights and would be looking for the benefit of helping the healers keep me alive with the mana being an added bonus. Is the overall dps increase worth it? I can't find any information on the comparative dps equivalent of the Lightning Capacitor to make an informed decision.

I also would like to know if it's even worth have the measly +5 haste gem on my shoulders or should I just go with +crit or straight + spell dam. I don't want to go over on hit and waste the points.

I am aware my head slot needs upgrading but I have yet to be able to get to a ZA guild run due to the times it's run on off nights and we no longer do TK so the cowl is out of reach. Saving badges at the moment to upgrade the boots.

Any other advice is appreciated.

3% of your damage is worth around 60 spell damage. To make a real comparsion you'd have to get more accurate numbers. Overall it does seem like you're getting more than you should, and since you're not stacking crit my only guesses are that you're either spamming scorch way too often or maybe looking at a full clear WWS that includes AOEing trash. Both of these don't make TLC a better boss DPS trinket but make it look like it is when you look at WWS.

Overall TLC is known to be way below most trinkets and worth a lot lot less than 60 spell damage in normal circumstances.

While we're at it, you could use some serious regemming (read original thread) as well as a respec - 10/48/3 over 2/48/11 or its variants is only worth it if mana pots, mana gems, evocation and possibly mage armor still aren't enough for you to last through the whole fight. If you're not having mana problems, you will get more DPS using icy veins over clearcasting and use mana potions, mana gems and evocation (in that order of priority, as in from smallest DPS loss to the biggest assuming mana pots replace destro pots, gems replcae flame caps and evocation replaces time that would've been spent casting fireballs).

Here is a quick and dirty calculation about how much TLC is worth since it's direct damage:

(694 + 806) /2 = 750 on average it does 750 dmg when you reaches 3 crits

Since your fire cirt is around 28.7% (with Molten Armor it should be 31.7%)

So (31.7%)^3 = around 3%

3% * 750 = 23.9 spell dmg

Of course that's without other crit buffs, note that you'd have to reach some where around 44% crit on average for TLC to better than straight up 60 spell dmg. That is in ideal situations. Some times you might not be able to get set of three crits on one mob or boss. So the alchemist stone is definitely worth a lot more than TLC

Yes, 3% is including full clear with trash. On individual bosses it varies from 1-3% mostly being 1% or 2%.

I am heavily scorching (it is 8-10% of my damage) as I am often the one in charge of that. We often only take 2 mages to raid and of the 4 in the guild 2 are frost and I am not always paired with the other fire mage during a raid. I may be able to cut back on it a bit but I often use it when there isn't enough time left on a mob to cast a fireball or I am reapplying the scorch to keep the buff up early due to movement requirements.

I have stacked hit, then spell damage and then crit in that order as long as hit is as close to max as possible (currently at 162) without going over and crit is at 30% or higher with molten armor for my fire tree (currently at 32.22% with molten armor and 28.70% without any buffs at all). From what I have read here and other places this is what I should be doing.

My guild requires me to have over 10k hp during raids which is why you see the sta gemming in certain areas and on the boots.

I have only recently considered changing my spec to 2/47/11 but with a new boss encounter every week right now as we go thru BT I have been staying with tried and true for security.

You mention I need regemming. I don't see where, other than the 5 haste/6 spell dam that may have been a bad choice. Could you please be more specific? The meta in my helm I chose to have the sta enchant for my boots and still have the run increase as well as reading that spell damage is > spell crit. Am I wrong in this thinking in this case?

@gidget
[Design: Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] with a boars speed is better than [Item not found!] and fortitude.

you shouldn't be gemming for crit at all (CSD aside). use spinels for dmg instead. if you want to make socket bonuses, like on your robe, use two [Item not found!].

In general, you shouldn't be socketing +crit at all. The only gems worth socketing are +dmg (red), +dmg/haste or +dmg/hit (only if u need hit) (orange), and hit/stam (again only if you need hit) or dmg/stam (purple).

Also, socketing anything other than Chaotic Skyfire is... well bad IMO. You can take the 3 stam hit if u want minor run speed on your boots.


Other than that, I feel like your guild leaders are morons if they require you to have 10k HP at all times while raiding. There are certainly fights where having high HP can help, but in a vast majority of them you don't. I only run ~9200 HP in my raiding gear and the only time I've used more HP was during some progression phases (mainly on illidari council).


P.S. Respec to 2/47/11+1 (I think the best spot is Arcane Focus for the last point, I just haven't found a reason to respec just for that 1 point). It's the same build except with Icy Veins instead of Arcane Conc, so you shouldn't have any hesitation. The play styles are identical save having an extra cooldown to blow with your trinkets (ie it's more than a 20% dps increase for the duration because of the way they stack).