Since everyone seems to be talking about frost specs I figured I would throw up the old build I used to run with. Its Frost/Meditation with only 4/5 Winters Chill to get Ice Barrier in. The 20% loss in application of winters chill will result in a nominal loss of DPS in the end as it is a chance to lose 2% bonus crit which will happen only on occasion since winters chill is basically only applied at the beginning of the fight and is up for the rest of it. In my book i would rather have the added survivability of Ice Barrier. I know theres no imp Blizzard like someone mentioned above but honestly Ive never had a problem AoE'ing without it, nova and CoC work fine, throw up ice armor while you jump through and nova if you need to. The mana efficiency of this build is insane, with JoW and BoW I can get through a 6 minute encounter without using a single pot, with a spriest its amazing. Well now that I've talked about it enough heres the build 18/0/43
*edit* oh yea one more thing I have always wondered, with frost crit dmg is doubled, so wouldnt crit be a desirable stat for a frost mage? If hit is point for point 2x better than crit but with frost crit dmg is doubled wouldnt they then be equal?
*edit* oh yea one more thing I have always wondered, with frost crit dmg is doubled, so wouldnt crit be a desirable stat for a frost mage? If hit is point for point 2x better than crit but with frost crit dmg is doubled wouldnt they then be equal?
While others here know much more about the actual math there are a few things I know:
-The exact relative value of stats is dependent on what your current stats are, check Rawr for information specifically relevant to your situation.
-Spells are on a two roll system so before the cap adding hit also increases the number of crits you will get.
-You should not confuse stat percentages and stat rating points, crit rating converts to crit percentage at such a bad rate that in chunks of equal itemization value (gems) it is in all reasonable situations never better than hit (before the hit cap), raw damage, or haste.
*edit* oh yea one more thing I have always wondered, with frost crit dmg is doubled, so wouldnt crit be a desirable stat for a frost mage? If hit is point for point 2x better than crit but with frost crit dmg is doubled wouldnt they then be equal?
The previous poster covered most of it. But basically when people talk about hit being so much more valuable than crit, they are usually including the talents you are referring to since almost every caster spec has something to bring crits up to double damage from the basic 1.5 damage modifier for spell crits. (mages have: Ignite (210% effective fire crits), Spell Power (175% crits), and Ice Shards (200% frost crits). Both the fire & frost talents do stack with the arcane talent, but that's only applicable to hybrid builds of course)
Of course missing these critical (no pun intended) talents would make crit rating an even more abysmally bad stat when compared, point-for-point, to others.
The rating conversions Eyegore mentioned are an important part of it. Crit rating converts to crit % at about 23 rating to 1%. Hit rating at 12.6 rating to 1% (& haste somewhere in between, around 16 rating to 1%) - the exact details of these rating conversions should be on the first post or somewhere equally prominent.
Oh yea I just added that as an afterthought, for some reason i was thinking it would be a 2% increase in dmg but it was only 1%. Thats what I get for letting my fingers get ahead of my brain lol. But the real point was the spec :P
See this is what I don't get. There's a "sweet info" thread, with a guideline of what's considered "standard" for everyone in the mage comunity. You come up, juggle some talent points, make up an almost identical spec with quite a few utterly mind-boggling choices, ask "why doesn't anyone mention this spec I invented", somebody answers "it's sub-par" and you counter their statement with "no it's not".
Do you post wanting to hear an opinion, or do you post to argue why your choice of weird spec nobody else abides by is as good as if not better than what we all chose?
I would love to hear an opinion thats the main reason for posting here. I just hate an opinion of someone that answers that my spec is sub-par then gives no reasons why it is sub-par.
You spec 60% AM interrupt resist. Congrats. You missed at least two points in Arc. Focus, thus you're not hitcapped for Spellsteal on Council and may *resist* the first one, dying, or may *resist* on stealing RoS, wiping your raid. Better still, you may *resist* countering CoH on council while BoP is up and cost your raid another 1:45 worth of encounter on the longest, most exhausting T6 content fight because you felt 60% uninterruptable AM was a superior choice.
Yes I realize that AM is useless I was only got that because I am not the mage tank nor am I the shield stealer for ROS i just placed those just to get CC. But i totally see your point and will move those points to Arc. Focus.
I'm not even going to coment on Frost Warding, patently the worst early talent in the mage tree, marginally beaten by i-Wand.
I only got this because of BloodBoil. I tend to always get the buff during Phase 2 so i figured the extra armor would help me survive
Then the fantastic 3/5 i-Fbolt and none in either permafrost or i-Blizz. You have no AoE slow, you have no AoE stun, you can't help on Illidan Parasites or on AoE pulls in MH which botch and the paladin gets gibbed. You also have no nuke to cast on Illidan P2, but as you seem to be early BT I assume you'll respec for that.
Yeah I dont know the Illidan fight at all so i didnt know that i would need i-blizz or perma frost.
Finally, the 4% clearcasting will do exactly: Fuck all. You're losing a significant amount of usefulness without gaining anything that'll change your game play for the better. Even with 10% clearcast, you'd still need an SP to perform. Now you still need one, just a tiny bit less. So when the encounter is over, you and your fellow 0% clearcasting mage who is in the same SP group, will both have used 1 pot, 0 gems and no Evo, just he'll be on 4k mana and you'll be on 5.1k. This is why we don't spec Clearcasting.
I really had no idea that CC would be that worthless to me. I really thank you for pointing out the flaws in my spec. I'm really sorry if my previous post made me seem like a noob. I was just trying to find a better place for the points in Pyro, BW and DB since i never use them during raid and they seemed wasted to me. I guess i was trading wasted points for wasted points. I guess if I go fire I will go 40/21.
As arcane though where is the point that I can start gemming +dmg instead of Int/Spi currently raid buffed i have 14.5k mana and 400+ Mp5 while casting. Is that enough that continuing to gem Int/Spi is wasted?
but i get everything a 3/47/11 gets but Pyroblast which shouldnt be used in raid, Blastwave AE is more effective anyways, Dragon's Breath AE is better in more than 1 way and 1 point in Incineration since i will only be casting 1 scorch every 7-8 Fireballs if i am in charge of that. With 7/43/11 i gain Clearcasting you can max incineration if u feel its worth the point but you still get 1 point in CC
Incinerate, as others have mentioned, is a small DPS loss but it is an actual DPS loss. If replaced with something better than a marginal bit of DPS, then it could be worth dropping.
Pyroblast is only needed for blast wave, but blast wave has some special advantages over other options available to you. Primarily it is a daze effect that works on damn near anything, slowing the monsters and letting tank get control back in an "AOE fuckup". The combination of dragon breath followed by blast wave disorients and then slows the enemy, letting squishies get some distance and doing whatever threat dump they might have (including just not attacking) until tank gets controll back. Both fire AOE's together provide burst dps on the monsters about 50% higher than arcane explosion, which sometimes matters.
Dragon breath is better than blastwave, and blastwave MIGHT not be worth 2 talent points. But you gotta look at what you're replacing it with.
3 points of arcane hit. Which you will never, ever need unless you are arcane explosion or polymorphing or spellstealing a boss. I would guess that the situational advantages of blast wave and dragon breath will be more useful to you than slightly reducing the resist rate on three spells against monsters that are normally either immune to those spells or are not fought in AOE situations.
2 points of clearcasting. The odds that you'll exceed the DPS gain of incinerate, tiny as it is, by not going OOM because of clearcasting is....zero...at the level you're playing. Typical raid support allows arcane mages to arcane blast for entire boss fights, something that consumes vastly more mana than fireball/scorch rotations do.
It's not so much that the talents you're taking from the fire tree are amazing. They're useful but worse than much else in the fire tree. It's just that the alternatives in other trees are worse. There's nothing in the frost tree that's really any better either after you've got icy veins, although some apple/orange adjustments are possible (as in the 2 points of incinerate for 2 points more of imp blizzard)
Fujisaw: Frost Warding for Bloodboil isn't particularly helpful, at all. When you get Fel Rage - Spell - World of Warcraft you gain 15.000, bringing you to circa 16.600. Adding a further 645 with Frost Armor will do little, and spending two points to gain 193 extra armor will make your damage mitigation increase by 0.01%. This is considered a Bad Deal and hence we don't bother with it.
The only reason you should consider Frost Armor is (1) if he hasn't got Thunderclap, which he absolutely should, the chill effect will do the same thing (2) there's nothing else you can do, might as well Frost Armor!
As for arcane: When I was arcane a few weeks ago, I found that past 400mp5 casting it 'felt' like I had too much regen. Note that this will change depending on (1) if you're 50/0/11 or 40/0/21 and (2) exactly how much mp5 your SP is worth. It's also a matter of preference; having extra mana gives you options and as Kavan has shown, if you fuck up, you can always make up later with more AB. Having pure +dmg may give under an ideal scenario the same output, but it is not as forgiving.
Assuming you're getting a nice, plump, 80%+ AB from bossfights (or 75% for AB/FrBolt), I think it's safe to say you can go for some more damage in the future. I advise gemming 2-slot items for +12dmg and keeping the three-slotters for int/spi. This represents the most gain.
Perhaps I'm thinking of this wrong, but assuming that Spell Haste increases the usefulness of Spell Crit, is there a specific ratio for the amount of Haste to make Crit worthwhile? Numbers wise, casting 100 fireballs with 35% crit SHOULD result in ~35 crits. Adding spell haste to that would mean more fireballs and thus more numbers of crits, given the same crit percentage. Would this necessarily mean the more spell haste, the less important spell crit becomes assuming the same spell damage applied?
Also to increase overall dps, would spell haste be best modified with spell damage based on mana regen? The more casts the more mana you spend. Using mana potions and gems over Destruction potions and flame cap would obviously result in a dps loss. So, taking into consideration the amount of mana returned from crits, spriest, mana spring, JoW, etc. Is there a way to gauge how much spell haste to stack against spell damage to allow the usage of dps increasing consumables over regen based cooldowns?
Perhaps I'm thinking of this wrong, but assuming that Spell Haste increases the usefulness of Spell Crit, is there a specific ratio for the amount of Haste to make Crit worthwhile? Numbers wise, casting 100 fireballs with 35% crit SHOULD result in ~35 crits. Adding spell haste to that would mean more fireballs and thus more numbers of crits, given the same crit percentage. Would this necessarily mean the more spell haste, the less important spell crit becomes assuming the same spell damage applied?
Also to increase overall dps, would spell haste be best modified with spell damage based on mana regen? The more casts the more mana you spend. Using mana potions and gems over Destruction potions and flame cap would obviously result in a dps loss. So, taking into consideration the amount of mana returned from crits, spriest, mana spring, JoW, etc. Is there a way to gauge how much spell haste to stack against spell damage to allow the usage of dps increasing consumables over regen based cooldowns?
You're thinking of this wrong, as you said.
No amount of anything will make crit worth while, except theoreticall, totally impossible amounts of spelldamage. Haste affects other stats in absolutely no way whatsoever, appart from possibly altering the required fireball:scorch ratio. Haste only affects the time things take to happen, it does not affect how good: a crit is relative to a hit, a hit is relative to a resist, or a resist is relative to a crit. The exact same shit without haste happens when you have haste. It just happens faster.
I do not understand your second question. You propose to modify the value of haste based on whether or not you have to pot because of haste. It is impossible to accurately put a finger on this, as it depends on too many variables. It's not like saying "I live 20miles from my friend, my car does 25miles per galon, it has 2 galons fuel, do I need refueling?". It's closer to asking "I may have to go between 10 and 200 miles, my car does 25mpg, or 30mpg if I use different fuel, it has 10 galons in the tank. Does taking a 5mile shorter route mean I don't have to refuel on my unknown-length route?".
In short, you're asking for a specific answer to a global question. The current state of mages is such that it's extremely unlikely haste will specifically be the cause of your need to switch from Dpot/Fcap to mana consumables; As has been said before we're either overflowing or gagging for it, and assuming the former the answer is "no it won't".
However, Rawr will take all this shit into account depending on the setup you specify and give you an indication which is example-specific, rather than the generic 'one answer fits all' reply you're looking for, which will invariably be partially wrong or inapplicable.
Perhaps I'm thinking of this wrong, but assuming that Spell Haste increases the usefulness of Spell Crit, is there a specific ratio for the amount of Haste to make Crit worthwhile? Numbers wise, casting 100 fireballs with 35% crit SHOULD result in ~35 crits. Adding spell haste to that would mean more fireballs and thus more numbers of crits, given the same crit percentage. Would this necessarily mean the more spell haste, the less important spell crit becomes assuming the same spell damage applied?
Also to increase overall dps, would spell haste be best modified with spell damage based on mana regen? The more casts the more mana you spend. Using mana potions and gems over Destruction potions and flame cap would obviously result in a dps loss. So, taking into consideration the amount of mana returned from crits, spriest, mana spring, JoW, etc. Is there a way to gauge how much spell haste to stack against spell damage to allow the usage of dps increasing consumables over regen based cooldowns?
Your haste vs. crit argument is only applicable in situations where you stand completely still and cast until the boss is dead. Unfortunately there are almost no fights where you do this. However, since most fights do require movement, Haste becomes even better in application because you never know when you will have to move, so the more casts you get off between movements, the better.
In many boss situations you will have to interrupt a cast to move. You definitely should do your best to avoid these situations, but they are inevitable. This is where haste really overtakes crit for usefulness. Haste is working for you as soon as you start the cast where as crit only works for you if you complete the cast. Haste also helps tremendously more than Crit when CD's are used since a majority of them are based on time, and not # of casts.
On paper, Haste is slightly more useful than crit, but in application it is far more useful.
Thegoodman, you're wrong. On paper haste is much better than crit. The only thing worse than crit is Hit, past the hitcap, which is worth zero.
His argument of crit vs. haste is wrong because it is irrelevant. It's linking apples and orranges. Both are fruit, both are edible, but they don't affect each other.
I wasn't arguing the value of spell haste over spell crit. I know that spell haste vastly outweighs the utility of spell crit. What I was asking is if higher amounts of spell haste reduces the value of crit further.
And yes, in application spell haste is the most valuable stat a mage can possess, especially with our increasing utility role. Most fights where we are expected to kite, decurse, and kill adds centralize haste as a key statistic.
My second question was geared toward M'uru P2 and Brutallus, where we are standing and nuking. The focus was towards increasing DPM. Essentially mages would be doing their maximum amount of damage by finishing a fight with minimal mana, meaning we maximized our dps increasing cooldowns without worrying about mana conservation. What I was proposing was taking the values of mana returned from your shadow priest, mana spring, JoW, and Master of Elements and gearing Spell Damage to Spell Haste to where the fight would be ending with us around zero mana, having used damage increasing cooldowns only.
I wasn't arguing the value of spell haste over spell crit. I know that spell haste vastly outweighs the utility of spell crit. What I was asking is if higher amounts of spell haste reduces the value of crit further.
Haste doesnt change relative values of anything else to anything else, it only changes their values relative to haste (and that not very much unless you get haste-capped, not likely for specs that mostly cast fireball or frost bolt).
If spell damage is worth 1.3x spell crit, it will still be 1.3x spell crit if you cast all spells faster. Because haste scales with a different mechanic (cast faster) vs spell damage and crit (do more damage per hit) direct comparison takes a lot of math, but it appears blizzard did the math because a point of spell haste rating is very close to a point of spell damage rating in how it affects DPS at pretty much any realistic gear setup.
Your idea of using spell haste to translate extra mana into extra DPS is a bit beyond my experience, so I can't comment on that beyond saying that it seems unlikely that in most fights you would be able to time your mana burn vs mob death precisely enough to get a noticable shift in the valuation of haste vs crit.
Why would you ever attempt to maximize DPM with firespec? I can assure you that even under the most dire mana constraints (spellsteals -> 5x pyro) and 400 passive haste, I still make it through muru/entropius. I even finished at sub-1k mana this week because we did an early transition, so no double mana tide. Even despise that I finished just fine.
<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
Why would you ever attempt to maximize DPM with firespec? I can assure you that even under the most dire mana constraints (spellsteals -> 5x pyro) and 400 passive haste, I still make it through muru/entropius. I even finished at sub-1k mana this week because we did an early transition, so no double mana tide. Even despise that I finished just fine.
Your reference to mana tide partly answers my question. My group uses an elemental shaman compared to your resto shaman which means no mana tide at all for me. Also, is your shadow priest a draenei? And were you using Mana Potions/Gems or Destro/FC? These are the questions I am trying to get answered. And to find the math behind this. The way you ended Entropius is what I have been getting at. You obviously played the fight perfectly being that you ended with a minimal amount of mana, which means you used the correct cooldowns and maximized your available dps time/cooldowns.
Ok let's break this down so you can understand what I am talking about.
Fights should end with mages being close to oom. First I would be taking the length of the fight and considering the approximate amount of spells being cast.
Using fireball as an example.
Brutallus
6 minute fight=360 seconds
Fireball = 2.6 seconds (passive haste)
360/2.6= ~138 fireballs cast (not counting drums, IV, or heroism)
# of fireballs x fireball mana cost = amount of mana used during fight
passive mp5 + JoW + Spriest mp5 + mana spring + mana returned from MoE = mana gained during fight
Mana Used - Mana Gained = Mana needed from cooldowns
Therefore by measuring this, we can see what cooldowns should be used when (if any). Also depending on what would be better to use, potions, gems, ticks of evocate, etc. in order to make up for the amount of mana we need to replace. By doing this we eliminate the factors that would decrease our dps.
So, my original query was whether or not it would be viable to gem for more damage versus haste in order to help alleviate the mana cost, therefore eliminating the need for excess time/cooldowns spent during the fight.
Therefore by measuring this, we can see what cooldowns should be used when (if any). Also depending on what would be better to use, potions, gems, ticks of evocate, etc. in order to make up for the amount of mana we need to replace. By doing this we eliminate the factors that would decrease our dps.
So, my original query was whether or not it would be viable to gem for more damage versus haste in order to help alleviate the mana cost, therefore eliminating the need for excess time/cooldowns spent during the fight.
I thought it would be relevant to point out that next release of Rawr is finally able to answer this kind of questions.
No you got all of it wrong. What i do is a simple matter of using the most optimum consumables -- not really a matter of playing the DPM game. I do absolutely everything to screw DPM, and will gladly keep doing so since it doesn't really affects my play.
You always priorise mana potions over destro pots, then as the last resort you also use mana gems over flame caps. I have never seen a case where I had to resort to mage armor (for mana regen) in all of TBC. Or even innervates for that matter. There really isn't anything else to understand here. If you're unsure about which to use, I recommend always to go for mana consumables over dps consumables. Its not like 1 destruction potion will really have much of an impact on your dps, but being 3k mana short certainly can. I just don't get why so many people put an over emphasis on destruction potions or flame caps -- they're certainly nice to have, but won't really have much of an impact. Hell, I don't even use them on felmyst. Or even kalecgos. I don't either on muru (I prefer healthstone / shadow prot for entropius) and its a tossup on KJ.
I do use 1 innervate every brut kill, but all it does really is allowing me to use 1 more destruction potion (used only with trinkets, so its really quite bad).
<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
No you got all of it wrong. What i do is a simple matter of using the most optimum consumables -- not really a matter of playing the DPM game. I do absolutely everything to screw DPM, and will gladly keep doing so since it doesn't really affects my play.
You always priorise mana potions over destro pots, then as the last resort you also use mana gems over flame caps. I have never seen a case where I had to resort to mage armor (for mana regen) in all of TBC. Or even innervates for that matter. There really isn't anything else to understand here. If you're unsure about which to use, I recommend always to go for mana consumables over dps consumables. Its not like 1 destruction potion will really have much of an impact on your dps, but being 3k mana short certainly can. I just don't get why so many people put an over emphasis on destruction potions or flame caps -- they're certainly nice to have, but won't really have much of an impact. Hell, I don't even use them on felmyst. Or even kalecgos. I don't either on muru (I prefer healthstone / shadow prot for entropius) and its a tossup on KJ.
I do use 1 innervate every brut kill, but all it does really is allowing me to use 1 more destruction potion (used only with trinkets, so its really quite bad).
Manly, I'm guessing you are using evocation as well on Brutallus?
<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
Manly has better spriests than the majority of raiding mages.
I don't evocate on Brutallus either, and our spriests probably only were averaging around 1300-1400 dps. His experience isn't a limited case, nor is another 200 dps from a shadow priest really going to make much of a difference overall..
Particularly given that I have 403 spell haste / 25.6% passive haste. I really make no attempt whatsoever at doing anything to help my dpm, and have never came across a case where I had to give some serious thoughts towards mana.
<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'd say Brandox was thinking about mana and dps quite rightly. The questions about appropriate item and ability use are not inappropriate; it's just that analysis on those questions has been done, and some mages around here may take knowledge of the answers for granted. Refer to and bookmark this post for a guide to various options.
Also, I interpreted the question about haste and crit more generously, in the sense that, as with all of the stats that increase each other's value--hit, bonus damage, haste, crit--higher haste does indeed increase the value of crit rating, since it is only meaningful to speak of that value as compared to other options. If you only wish to speak of other stats in reference to bonus spell damage as the universal currency, then yes, haste does not change the ratio between bonus damage and crit rating. But I wouldn't say he was thinking about it all wrong. In fact, for an arcane-frost spec, one can easily reach the point, with Sunwell gear, where a [Potent Pyrestone] is as valuable as a [Reckless Pyrestone]. Perhaps neither would be better than a [Runed Crimson Spinel] to fill a red socket, but if the question is how best to fill a yellow socket with a worthwhile bonus, then comparing crit rating to more bonus damage is not relevant, and it is perfectly appropriate to say that having that much haste has increased the value of crit rating.
Why are all of you obsessing over DPM? What the man is saying, and what has been said before, is it's a matter of scale. Gearing for so-called DPM will net you a crap-tastic perhaps 2-3% difference in mana costs. Chain-potting will result in ten times the effect of "gearing for DPM". You're discussing farting to change the wind's directions, he counters with "I switch on a really big fan" and then you ask again about farting... The difference in gearing is insignificant. like he said, he gears WORST DPM possible. This means low crit, massive haste. And still, the effects of mana-regen are more overpowering.
As for "haste increasing crit's value". I'd like to see proof please, Geodel. Your assumptions are all wrong. 5 Crit never was and never will be for mages ever equal to either 6 damage or 5 haste. Currently, 5 haste _is_ equal to 6 damage. I never said that one shouldn't compare the stats between each other, I claimed there is a disconnect between stacking one stat influencing the others. Crit does not gain value based on Haste. Period. Do I really need to do an example of "assume N casts, with M% crit rate, then assume the exact same, just at half the cast time" and then assume "M+1% crit" in both cases to prove there is literally no connection between Haste and Crit?
I assure you, I've raided arcane for a long time. At no point is Crit a competitive stat. In any way.
The only thing that can happen to affect crit via haste, will be the inadverted result of "gearing for haste drops your crit" and as is well known, crit rating scales negatively with it's self. Simply, 0% to 1% crit is a lot more than 99% to 100% crit. However, this is not an increase in crit's value due to haste, it's an effect of increased crit value due to there being less of it.
07/08/08, 12:52 PM
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