I argued that very point about 4 months ago, that "if you don't gain 1 spell, you gain 0" but it got rightfully shot down. Arguing the zero-return only has a point if you have specific time constraints, down to the hundredth of a second. If we were playing a turn-based game, and we had 10 time-units, each fireball costing 5, then you -would- see a benefit for enough haste to reduce it to 3 or 2, but not 4. We are not, however, and as such arguing "2.95 fireballs are pointless, because in 30sec, you'll still do 10 casts" is pointless. In the same arbitrary fashion, the counter can argue "but if you had 29.9sec, you'd have got the cast off with 2.95 hasted.".

The only thing that is certain, is as you increase randomness in the time-frames you select, you increase the chances the hasted will fit more in, simply because it's "packet" size is smaller.

Ultimately, two years ago, this same damn argument was raging on forums concerning having 1% hit if you didn't cast 100 spells, and later on in BC gearing "less than" 1% hit ("but I can't miss half a spell, lol"). The final fact is, any increment is beneficial, even if it seems or is perceived to be irrelevant. Just as you won't go "158hit is fine, it's like 98.3% anyway, that's loads", you shouldn't claim haste "doesn't matter". Because likewise, minor spelldamage increments "don't matter" either, crit rating, etc etc etc.

No, first 1% does not have same effect as last 1%. As with most other stats, the more you get, the worse marginal improvements you receive.

On average, out of 100 spellcasts ...
First 1% of spellhit will make you hit 84 times instead of 83 times, so 84/83-1 = 1.205% DPS increase
Last 1% of spellhit will make you hit 99 times instead of 98 times, so 99/98-1 = 1.020% DPS increase

So in the end, you might be faced with decision whether to take +4 spelldmg and be 2 spellhit below cap -> you obviously would gain more DPS going for 4 spelldmg.

I agree with your overall conclusion, though.

4 spell damage will NEVER give you a 1% DPS increase. I guarantee that.

Edit: Nor whatever spell damage equals enough hit rating to be 1%. Whatever. Either way, hit to cap always.

Edit2: Ah, here we go, 12.6 hit rating is 1%, which in item value is about 15 spell damage. Anyway, my point was, that point per point, on either items or gems, spell hit will yield a higher DPS increase per point than any other stat until you cap it. Obviously in a non-gem situation this might not be true (trading like 20 damage increase and spell crit increase for a marginal hit loss) but saying 4 damage vs. 2 hit rating, I'd go with the 2 hit rating.

This isn't what he's saying. The last 1% (12.7 rating) of spellhit is just over 1% DPS, not the last 2 rating.

He's saying, correctly, that if you have to choose between 4 damage and 4 hit, and 2 of the hit is wasted, then the 4 damage is better.

Neither will 4 spell hit ...

This is wrong on so many levels. We do not care how much DPS we gain relative to ourselves. We care how much DPS we gain. Period. Using your numbers, if we cast 100 fireballs, and our average fireball hits for X. So over 100 spell casts the difference is:

84x - 83x = x
99x - 98x = x

Agreed. I for example decided to run the numbers on the CSF metagem, because it seemed counterintuitive that it was "much better" than ESD's 14 spelldamage and 2% int.

The arguments on page 2-3 of this thread were convincing, until I looked at the assumed DPS. A figure much higher than I'm currently generating.

When I ran it against the theoretical DPS I actually get with my blue-geared mage just entering level 70 with little or no raid support for DPS boosts, the actual spelldamage equivalent CSF gave was only about 12.

So yeah, I have the right gem in the socket for now, but I'm a whole lot closer to the tipping point on CSF than I thought (simply getting some random raid support buffs like windfury could kick it over, not to mention the first wave of gear improvements once I start doing heroics/raiding).

It means CSF is on my wishlist now, but prioritized below other considerations that will directly increase the base DPS that CSF needs to post its own good numbers.

I'm not entirely convinced though that as a rule of thumb the idea that DPS is DPS, and more is better is wrong. The metagems are unusual in that they scale, so your own base performance matters in the outcome. Likewise something that theoretically gives more DPS but increases complexity or is awkward to execute may not be a good choice for an individual who will fumble it in actual play, if any other decent alternative exists.

No, it's not. But read on, I'll use your example below.

Yes. But 1% hit added 10 damage every time. And in terms of time till boss goes down, you saved up exactly the same amount of time.

But, yes, I do understand your point. Stats' value goes up, the more you have in other stats. But your example is also flawed in another respect. Spell his is way better than spell damage, at any reasonable level of gear. For my current gear, for example, it's almost 50% better to get spell hit than spell damage, when gemming.

I don't think relative (as in, 1% increase in DPS, not as in relative to other stats) measurements are important. In the end, it only matters how much raw damage I can do, and that's an absolute value.

OK all you number people I am hoping that I can get some help with a numbers question.

edit: assuming a static 600 int


At what point in +dmg will 3/3 Playing with fire over take 5/5 mind mastery (the trade off being only 2 points ina 38/23 v 40/21 spec)

well talk about the value of 2x IV later 8^)

I think this is a moot point but I'll humor you. I assume we're talking about AB here?

25% of 600 is 125, coef of AB is .714, so you're getting 89.25 dmg out of it mind mastery

(3% of x) > 89.25 solves to total AB damge of 2975.

2975 = 700 + (dmg * .714) solves to about 3186 spell damage.

Now, go spec 40/0/21 or 50/0/11.

Ok I will try my best on grammar as someone reported me BUT its not my strength so my apologies in advance.


First your numbers are comparing 3/3 of "Playing with fire" v. 5/5 Mind mastery, that isn't the comparison. The comparison is 3/3 "Playing with Fire" and "3/5 Mind Mastery" or 1/3 "Playing with Fire" and 5/5 "Mind Mastery"

To help with the math:

10% +dmg from 600 int = +60 dmg

or

1.02 (Base damage + spell dmg*.71)

At SOME point along the + dmg line the 2% WILL be greater its just a mater of where.

I just cant seem to wrap my mind around the conversions.

spell hit rating (to cap) > spell haste rating > spell damage > spell crit rating > spell penetration

What is the agreed value for each stat in term of spell damage? I have seen it somewhere before but I cannot find it.

When Tyfon said "it's a moot point" I guess you didn't understand he was practically saying "it doesn't matter, they're both useless specs".

If you must spec arcane-fire hybrid, you will select the 33/28/0 variant. It has been proven to be superior to either of the specs you suggest. This spec clearly plays with Fireball, however. It is also almost unanimously considered inferior to fire/iv, though there are certain marginal scenaria where it may tie with it.

If you're trying to play Arcane and want PwF/MM as a boost to your AB, quit living in 2005 and de-spec Pyro, get Icy Veins in either a 50/0/11 or a 40/0/21 spec and reserve your PoM for AB when it's about to drop off mid-movement and you have to keep it up. IV will add massively to the overall DPS you'll achieve, much more than a pathetic PoM Pyro ever will and it will solve your hit-rating issues, which is to say, your AB will never miss but your firespells will suck balls at hitting anything. Unless you're packing 202 hit, which begs the question, how much more AB would you gain if you ditched all that hit for say, more int/dmg? Not to mention that Fball is a lot less efficient than Fbolt as a filler.

At the end of the day, arcane, as we have said many times, is 100% about using AB. We only bother with non-AB spells when we can't do anything else due to mana.

There are more ways to skin a cat, but using a hammer is a lot less efficient than a scalpel.


Asking that is inaccurate; the answer is "it depends" on practically everything. Buffs, debuffs, target, time, spec, spells, consumables, lag, motion, timing...

Note that in almost every possible case, Haste is either equal or very little more DPS than damage, while doing absolutely nothing to DPM. In many cases it's quite inferior.

However, I assume you're fire and I'll give you a ball-park. It doesn't matter what the value of hit is, because you -will- cap. If you don't it's probably between 1.6 and 1.8 damage equivalence. After that, depending on how you stack CDs, haste is between 0.95 and 1.1 damage. Crit is quite solidly last with ~0.7. For arcane it's quite different. Refer to arcane threads for much elaboration on this.

At endgame gear levels, 12 dmg ~ 14.41 DPS, 10 hit ~ 22.84 DPS (if below the cap)
I.e. 2 hit ~ 4.568 DPS. 4 dmg ~ 4.803, so your 4 damage is just barely (5%) better than your 2 hit for pure fireball spam.

Considering that you have to cast 15% more scorches, that will will eat up the miniscule gain from socketing 4 dmg over 2 hit.

So I've been dinking around with my new mage alt and having a lot of fun with it. I never thought throwing Pyroblasts at things and watching them lose half health before even getting in range to attack would be so much fun.

I'm also going with a Fire-heavy build that can raid but is also focused on letting me have some -style fun. I settled on this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Enough straight Fire DPS talents to not be useless, combined with PoM and a few other things so I can have some " I totally just PoM-Pyro-Fireblasted that Rogue for 8k " moments when I want to dick around.

But then I decided to see what I should do at 80 for comedy. And, uh...

That build I posted, take that point off of Imp. Fireball and slap ten more levels on it.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

All of a sudden it doesn't look so comedy. This will have a base crit range, without crit rating or buffs, somewhere in the very high teens to low twenties. It also weds Combustion to Arcane Power, and for boss kills allows you to fire off Molten Fury'd Arcane Power'd instant Pyroblasts followed up with several AP'd fireballs.

Now yeah, we're going to have new talents in the expansion, but they'll have to be fairly beastly to match this. I didn't think my comedy build would lead to something that could be a perfectly viable raid spec at 80.

What the hell was the point of your post, exactly?

Hello,

I've been trying to find some information about frostbolt's travel speed/time. Assuming you are standing at max range (i.e. 36 yards) how long does it take for the frostbolt to leave your hands and register as hit/miss on the server side?

Thanks for any help on this.

Hello,

Don't sign your posts. But my best guess would be 1.5-2 seconds from max range? I'm fire, so I don't know if Frostbolt is any faster. But Fireball is as slow as a diabetic mule.

[Shifting Naaru Sliver]
-----------------------

I had already elaborated in the past about how the tirnket works, and the bugs it had. However, recent testing has proven fruitful in finding a new bug. This time though, its good stuff.

Normally I try and describe things, but since this is kind of messy, I'll use screenshots.

First, the facts:

- 90s cooldown.
- Activating [Shifting Naaru Sliver] casts a 'power circle' on the ground (2-3y radius). When you move into a power circle while the trinket is active, you gain a 15s 'limitless power' buff, giving 320dmg. Activating the trinket always casts a power circle right on top of you, thus giving you the buff.

Now, the part not many people know:

- The effective range of the circle is much larger than is shown. The real range is ~1y larger than the flamestrike reticle. Refer to the screenshots for reference.
- To gain the limitless power buff, you must absolutely not have the buff when entering a power circle. I know this may sound redundant, but it means that walking form power circle A to power circle B without losing the buff will not refresh limitless power.
- If you activate, leave the power circle, then go back in (be aware of the effective range !), your limitless power buff will refresh back to 15s. However, once the circle you're in dies out, you lose the buff no matter how much time was left on it.
- You can use someone else power circle to refresh limitless power. However, if you did not activate the trinket, you won't gain limitless power from someone else activating a trinket (that would be right up there in strenght with legendary bows, oh well).
- It takes a while before you lose the limitless power buff after running out of the power circle. It is seemingly random. Sometimes it will last the full 15s while outside of it, sometimes you lose it immediately after leaving the circle.

Some of this info above is new, even to me. This has changed quite a number of things.
So now, heres the practical impact of what this means:

- Imagine a case where 2 players have the trinket. Manly activates his. 10 seconds later, Manlyclone activate his trinket (on top of Manly). At this point in time, Manly will have limitless power refresh to 15s thanks to Manlyclone power circle. However, 5 seconds later, both players lose the limitless power buff.

What?

That's right. When you stand in the effective range a power circle, no matter whose owner it is, everyone within it loses limitless power. This means that, the more players you have with this trinket, the more likely you will be punished since whoever activates first is at an advantage. You either need to coordinate their activations across players, or spread apart (and be aware, the range on it is larger than a chainheal hop, so keep that in mind). This is not a huge deal for most bosses, but any boss where you clump, such as felmyst or twins, you will pay a hefty cost for having many of them.

However, here is the new info. There is another bug.

- My earlier testing seemed to indicate that you can't trick things out into 'activate trinket, step out after 14s, go back in your circle to refresh limitless power to 15s'. This is because you lose the limitless power buff as soon as the circle you're in dies out, even if you had 14s left on limitless power. However, surprisingly, if you move to another power circle as yours is dying out, you get to keep limitless power.

This means, in theoryworld, that you can get 29s of limitless power every 90s. But you need to do movements for that. Now comes the tricky part. How exactly are you supposed to lose limitless power (in order to refresh it) efficiently, and also gain it back, efficiently ?

Through testing, I have come with a few interesting tidbits to answer that question. It was always puzzling me why I was getting inconsistent result on 'when' I lose the buff while leaving the circle. Then I gave it some thought. Since positioning data is handled client-side, then the most logical answer to that is that they need to do a full server-client roundtrip to validate whether or not the player stands within the circle. If you don't know what I'm tlaking about, try this test: Mount up, then walk into a building. If you only move forward, you'll generally go further before you unmount. If you do any other action, it seems to refresh positional data on the server and cause a near auto-dismount. You could argue that thats a quick fix to bypass the positional check while pressing the forward key. But in any case, the result is the same. If you want to lose the limitless power buff, your best bet is to have teh server know ASAP your positional data. To do that, move out of the circle by strafing rather than moving forward.

To that end, we tried a number of different strategies to maximize the limitless power uptime past 15s. The results were consistent. If you leave at 5s left on limitless power by moving sideways, you'll lose the buff with ~1s left. If after that point someone else activates his trinket (as soon as your buff dies out), then you get it refreshed to a full 15s, and it won't die out sicne you don't stand in your old dying power circle. At 4s we were consistently unable to refresh it in time - it would be too late.

So here is what I recommend for aspiring users. Check the screenshots for an idea of the effective range. Make sure the other player is not within that range since you will both lose the buff as soon as the 2nd trinket is activated (refer to the 1st bug mentioned). So make sure the other player is just far away enough. At 5s left on your buff, move out sideways. Make sure the other trinket user has you focused so he can refresh at the proper time - right as your buff dies out. Alternatively, you could do the following macro:

/use Shifting Naaru Sliver
/in 11 /p Activate trinket in 3.
/in 12 /p Activate trinket in 2.
/in 13 /p Activate trinket in 1.
/in 14 /p Activate [Shifting Naaru Sliver] now ! {circle}

Hello.

Thx for the heads up. Sig removed. Also, 2 seconds seems to be a long time. I would guess 1.5 seconds but it seems there is no solid info on this?

Depends on range, and depends on target's height. Without going into the inevitable Pythagorean Theorem, it gains distance to be travelled the taller the boss is. Despite both of these, you can rather accurately check the actual travel time by installing Quartz, G15ing your Frostbolt, sitting at desired range and Frapsing yourself chain-spamming. When you see impact time, freeze and check the time elapsed on next cast. I say this because technically it'll give the closest approximation of server-side travel time starting with next-spell starting, thus improving accuracy. Repeat for latency fluctuation.

Hey guys,

This is my first post, I have recently began advancing into endgame content on my mage and have come to the dilemna of the value of haste. I am currently running a 2/48/11 icy veins/fire spec. I see a lot of people in here putting haste pretty high on the totem pole but I have downloaded Vontre's Mage DPS sheet (v2.7.3.4) and am not seeing DPS increases with increased haste. The biggest example here is when I tried to compare my current boost (Vindicator's Silk Footguards) to the ZA boots with haste (Footpads of Madness) which many people recommend. This resulted in a significant damage decrease according to Vontre's sheet although all over the place I see these boots being hailed as the best before the seacaller slippers.

I understand that stat weights depend on your current stats but I am sitting at 1150 fire dmg and 30 crit (max hit of course), I would think that haste would start playing a more important role?

My armory sheet is here: The World of Warcraft Armory if anyone cares to look.

If this has been discussed before, sorry, there was a lot of information in this post before I came upon it and I read a good portion of it.