Sweet Informational Thread - Page 61

hypetech · 05/26/08, 12:15 AM

Originally Posted by Nurru

I can't think of any point in ZA where I would want to cast AM because of its interruptible aspect (if I wasted 5 talent points).

I think the obvious example here is Hex Lord during the bolt volleys.

Wander · 05/26/08, 12:32 AM

Originally Posted by hypetech

I think the obvious example here is Hex Lord during the bolt volleys.

I just save IV for the Volleys he does under 80% health; the Volleys before that point are irrelevant and there's not usually more than two or three when he starts Drain Soul-ing.

If there are four or more volleys, I Ice Block rather than DPS through them, to save the healers stress and mana, which ultimately ends up being more valuable on longer kills.

Enthorn · 05/26/08, 1:09 PM

Originally Posted by Wander

I just save IV for the Volleys he does under 80% health; the Volleys before that point are irrelevant and there's not usually more than two or three when he starts Drain Soul-ing.

If there are four or more volleys, I Ice Block rather than DPS through them, to save the healers stress and mana, which ultimately ends up being more valuable on longer kills.

Similarly, you could just ask a paladin to throw up Concentration Aura, which will give fire mages 100% pushback resistance. I ice block in the most dire of situations then, IE, when the next shadow bolt volley is going to kill me. You should be running ZA with a shadow priest, and that will give you Prayer of Shadow Protection. That coupled with Mark of the Wild, and whatever shadow resist gear you have, will end up resisting about 1/4th of each shadow bolt volley's damage (about 100 resisted, 300 taken).

It's a tricky fight for mages because you'll want lots of hitpoint equipment on, but at the same time you won't want to sacrifice too much DPS. It's a good example of a fight where equipment that is middle of the line in terms of stats/DPS is appreciated.

Wander · 05/26/08, 1:36 PM

Originally Posted by Enthorn

Similarly, you could just ask a paladin to throw up Concentration Aura, which will give fire mages 100% pushback resistance. I ice block in the most dire of situations then, IE, when the next shadow bolt volley is going to kill me. You should be running ZA with a shadow priest, and that will give you Prayer of Shadow Protection. That coupled with Mark of the Wild, and whatever shadow resist gear you have, will end up resisting about 1/4th of each shadow bolt volley's damage (about 100 resisted, 300 taken).

It's a tricky fight for mages because you'll want lots of hitpoint equipment on, but at the same time you won't want to sacrifice too much DPS. It's a good example of a fight where equipment that is middle of the line in terms of stats/DPS is appreciated.

Yes, that's true about Conc. Aura, but the discussion was in the context of Arcane Mages, who don't have any Pushback resistance aside from Arcane Missiles

I don't see the value in swapping on SR gear for the Volleys; it's better to burn him quickly; longer fights increase his damage done to the tank in between volleys, make his abilities more dangerous and potent, and the first four volleys or so don't exceed 10,000 damage total even if they're completely unresisted. Putting on SR gear just prolongs the fight and makes all of his non-Shadow damage even more hazardous. Better to just gear as though it's a DPS race and rely on your healers.

Enthorn · 05/26/08, 8:20 PM

Originally Posted by Wander

Yes, that's true about Conc. Aura, but the discussion was in the context of Arcane Mages, who don't have any Pushback resistance aside from Arcane Missiles

I don't see the value in swapping on SR gear for the Volleys; it's better to burn him quickly; longer fights increase his damage done to the tank in between volleys, make his abilities more dangerous and potent, and the first four volleys or so don't exceed 10,000 damage total even if they're completely unresisted. Putting on SR gear just prolongs the fight and makes all of his non-Shadow damage even more hazardous. Better to just gear as though it's a DPS race and rely on your healers.

I suppose I should rephrase it, since no one in the group I run with uses shadow resist gear (that I know of), or at the very least, as in my guess, one piece of selective equipment. I replace [Violet Signet] with [Dark Band] (of Magic, +19 Spell Damage), which gives me more stamina, a decent amount of shadow protection, and minimal spell damage loss for a fight that favors survivability over DPS.

Do Arcane mages even spec for Icy Veins? Isn't haste exactly what an arcane mage doesn't want, since it just lowers DPM?

Wander · 05/26/08, 8:36 PM

Originally Posted by Enthorn

I suppose I should rephrase it, since no one in the group I run with uses shadow resist gear (that I know of), or at the very least, as in my guess, one piece of selective equipment. I replace [Violet Signet] with [Dark Band] (of Magic, +19 Spell Damage), which gives me more stamina, a decent amount of shadow protection, and minimal spell damage loss for a fight that favors survivability over DPS.

Do Arcane mages even spec for Icy Veins? Isn't haste exactly what an arcane mage doesn't want, since it just lowers DPM?

You've made a packed post here, so I'm probably going to respond in what you'll feel is a shamefully incomplete manner:

First, I disagree that Hex Lord is a fight that favors survivability over DPS. Every 30 Seconds, after 80%, he increases his damage by 10% and deals ~9k * (1.x) damage over ten seconds or so to everyone in the raid, where X is the number of times he's done it already. This is clearly a DPS race; survivability enters into only so far as you have enough HP not to require emergency on the first wave of bolts. After about 10k HP, you healers should and do have enough time to react to the damage being dealt; having more and more HP just gives you a larger buffer.

Additionally, this damage increase isn't just Shadow Damage; if he Siphons your Mage, and is on his fourth or fifth cycle (+50% damage), he's Ice Lancing for ~5k. If you're at all slow with Wings when he's a Paladin, he can three shot a tank by the third Drain Power cycle. Ditto for Blade Flurry. All of the raidwide damage he deals becomes rapidly more difficult to deal with, far outstripping any kind of survivability gain you can swap on via gear. Hex Lord is clearly a DPS race. After you have 9-10kHP buffed, and a Shadow Protection buff, your gearing calculus should be for DPS, not survivability. Additionally, swapping on one Blue-quality SR ring isn't going to change your incoming damage very much, if at all, and will only change it during the Spirit Bolts phase, in addition to only being what, an added 30 HP? I think you might be analyzing the goals of the fight incorrectly.

Moving on...

Yes, Arcane Mages today spec 40/0/21, eschewing Arcane Missiles entirely and using IV; this is partially enabled by the Haste changes allowing the GCD to be reduced to 1.0s, partially by the Spirit changes of 2.4, and partially by the fact that while IV is a straight-up DPS increase; the Fire Tree offers nothing aside from a bigger outlet for PoM. Also, Haste is not a DPM decrease; your DPM is static. Your DPS increases, as does your MPS (Mana Per Second), but your DPM is unaffected. Since most Arcane Mages are able to sustain 85-90% AB Spam for the duration of a fight, ending the fight at 0% mana, the accelerated Mana consumption isn't considered an issue.

durendal1001 · 05/26/08, 8:57 PM

I've got to say, whats with all this equipping shadow-resist gear / survivability gear for hexlord?

My guild pretty much only raids 10 mans, and we clean the floor with hexlord. All we do is a quick prayer of shadow protection, and stack around the priest during shadowbolt phase. Keep adds that can be CC'ed within reason CC'ed (such as we kill the shackle, as the priest has enough on his plate) of course too, but we don't go changing gear. We just destroy him. He's like a pinaita that refuses to hand over a hood of hexing for me, but is irritatingly generous with voodoo gnomes.

Nurru · 05/26/08, 8:58 PM

Originally Posted by durendal1001

I've got to say, whats with all this equipping shadow-resist gear / survivability gear for hexlord?

If you have the gear it doesn't hurt to wear it. I don't think anyone is claiming it's required. Hex Lord isn't much of a dps check either way.

Wander · 05/26/08, 8:59 PM

Originally Posted by Nurru

If you have the gear it doesn't hurt to wear it. I don't think anyone is claiming it's required. Hex Lord isn't much of a dps check either way.

About as much of a DPS check as you can design a ten-man boss to be and not require crazy stacking, anyway.

Sathvelin · 05/29/08, 4:03 AM

yes there was a purpose to my post. So let me put it as blunt as possible. in the 36 pages to this thread I see nothing about a 40/21/0 build I was wondering if it is a usable raid build. secondly I've seen some mages running around with a 39/11/11 build I wanted an opinion if either of those build are raid worthy or if you should just stick to the more common builds. also if they are what would the cast order be.

xiaoxin21 · 05/29/08, 5:26 AM

Sathvelin ,

Stick to 2/48/11 or 10/48/3 or 33/28/0 or 10/0/51 or 17/0/44.

40/21/0 get nothing much out of both fire and without T5 gear arcane still lags behind fire

39/11/11 is a weird build mainly because speccing for a 3 min per use spell(POM+Pyro) with a spell that have no much impact on POM+ pyroblast and not getting coldsnap is a waste.

Pintofbrew · 05/29/08, 7:48 AM

There is no reason at all to currently spec any variation of arcane past 33 with fire splash. There are a multitude of reasons to do so with frost.

Bugged EP means you need only spec 3/5 arcane focus and need exactly 10% hit for both to cap-out.

IV is much, much bigger DPS increase than PoM-Pyro

All of frostbolt's major damage talents are at the top of the tree; you can get a load more DPS out of 21-talented frostbolt than you can out of 21-talented fireball.

Deep arcane builds focus and revolve around AB. Whether you use AM or FrB as a filler is irrelevant, they're both more or less the same due to one being more DPS but costing more mana (thus less AB ultimately). The only reason 40/0/21 is superior to 50/0/11 is practically exclusively down to Cold Snap meaning it get's +1 IV.

There is no conceivable reason anyone would tri-spec arcane. It is utterly appaling and as far as raiding is concerned, foolish.

40/21/0 is a throw-back to the days when 31/20/0 was considered 3m spec and somehow useful. The same world-pvp one-kill-per-3m people today run 40/21/0 despite that very same spec having been proven, since BC release, to be inferior in any possible way to 33/28/0 hybrid. If you must go arcane-fire, do so as hybrid. You simply can not compare 40/21/0's mind mastery to fire's 6% crit and 6% fire damage. 8% damage if you spec correctly into 2/3 play with fire.

lellefot · 05/29/08, 9:07 AM

Now I apologize if I pop into the middle of an ongoing discussion here with something on a completely different topic.

On the very first page on this thread is states that the CSD is the best meta gem for mages. Now while that may be true for most mages I find myself wondering if it is true regarding arcane mages. Now for arcane mages more mana=more DPS. So I happened to put in an Insightful Earthstorm Diamond instead in my meta-slot, and I have to say that it does seem to offer a viable alternative. Now I have not done any real heavy theory crafting on this so I may ofc be entirely wrong. I looked at an average fight with Lurker for our guild of about 10 minutes. During the fight I had 11 proccs of the IED which came out to almost exactly 5% procc rate (which is the reported rate of the gem). This gave me an extra 3300 mana from the proccs, which is a considerable amount of mana.

Now the CSD gives a bonus to critical damage done. As I understand it it gives an additional 3% critical damage. So for the average heavy arcane mage it would mean you get 178% damage on your crits instead of 175%. so I did some quick calculations on the above fight.
During the fight I did 259982 damage on critical hits. So dividing this by 1.75 and then multiplying it with 1.78 should mean that with a CSD I would have done 264439 damage. A difference of 4456 damage over the fight. I am aware that I have not figured with the extra crit rating from the CSD or the extra INT of the IED, but this was just a quick calculation and I just wanted a rough figure so that I could see if it might even be close.

Now in my mind at least the 3300 extra mana would represent quite a bit more damage than 4456 (it giving quite alot more AB-spam) so at least in my case I feel that the IED allows me to increase my damage output more than the CSD does.

Now I know that this is hardly any sort of conclusive evidence of the superiority of the IED but I wanted to present it as an option at least. Many factors obviously affect this: crit-rate, cast time, fight length and so on. Perhaps someone more versed in the math involved can come up with evidence that I am completely wrong (or right for that matter), but as far as I can tell the IED outperforms the CSD for me at least.

Ilyawen · 05/29/08, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by Pintofbrew

40/21/0 is a throw-back to the days when 31/20/0 was considered 3m spec and somehow useful. The same world-pvp one-kill-per-3m people today run 40/21/0 despite that very same spec having been proven, since BC release, to be inferior in any possible way to 33/28/0 hybrid. If you must go arcane-fire, do so as hybrid. You simply can not compare 40/21/0's mind mastery to fire's 6% crit and 6% fire damage. 8% damage if you spec correctly into 2/3 play with fire.

The most interesting thing about the 40/21/0 specc is that it is BOTH inferior and less fun... which makes it quite horribly, actually. Considering PvE, there is no reason to specc either 40/21/0 nor 34/27/0, since they both just lose to the more common speccs in terms of damage, and even the most moronic mage will only claim that his specc is "so much fun" or "gains so much from crit" until they see that all their careful calculation (and amazing ignorance, for that matter) is crashed by sheer force of numbers on the WWS in the end.
Considering PvP though, I can admire the fun behind such a specc. Crit-instant-pyros are a lot of fun, and, lets be honest, probably the reason a lot of people rolled a mage-alt at one point or another. With the PvP-perspective in mind though, there is even less reason to specc deeper into arcane, considering that it only gives us a very minor damage-talent. One obviously leaves out Fire Power and Playing with Fire in a PvP-focussed build, but we gain Molten Shields AND the wonderful Blazing Speed, talents which will make your day in the battleground just SO much more fun (which is what the specc is all about, anyway). So, yes, clearly stay away from 40/21/0. It has no justification anywhere.

xiaoxin21 · 05/29/08, 11:54 PM

Originally Posted by lellefot

During the fight I did 259982 damage on critical hits. So dividing this by 1.75 and then multiplying it with 1.78 should mean that with a CSD I would have done 264439 damage. A difference of 4456 damage over the fight. I am aware that I have not figured with the extra crit rating from the CSD or the extra INT of the IED, but this was just a quick calculation and I just wanted a rough figure so that I could see if it might even be close.

It should be 259982 /175 *180.25=267781.46 damage which is a difference of 7799 damage.