delete

Probably depends on the raid. However AOE tanking has improved enough that AOE may become the preferred means of dealing with trash and sometimes trash clearing speed matters. One nice thing about trash is that you can usually drink between pulls so mana burn is less of a concern.

Most leveling specs will want some good aoe capability, as will battleground specs. I don't think it's as useful in arena except maybe as raw burst (more "instant" stuff you can do, similar to how in 2.4 I chased wounded people around spamming arcane explosion because it did more than ice lance even on one target)

Thanks for your further validation Actovision, I appreciate it. And to further your discussion on taking skills off the gcd.

I agree with the devs its going to cause a storm of GCD removal requests. I was watching as it was discussed though the hunter forums, and how taking the aspects off the GCD so they can swap between Viper (mana regen) and Hawk (dps). I immediately thought well, that is a direct correlation to mage armors.

Currently in BC 25man raids, mana is a laughable non-concern so Molten armor all the way. However, it does perk my interest when Ghostcrawler makes makes posts and takes action to lower the costs of our primary nukes due to "mana concerns". Should mana become a major issue with raiding in wrath I hope that the armors are also taken off the GCD, or that mage dps is balanced around using mage armor. This issue, btw, becomes all the more exacerbated with the glyffs pushing more regen and more crit.

Looks like Deep Freeze is officially dead for PvE raiding. From Ghostcrawler, talking about 51-pt talents.

I guess he flatly disagrees with Lhivera, who has argued all but two of the 51-pt'ers were useful in raiding.

Is it just me or does this seem totally contrary to the 51 point talents in everyone's trees currently?

I won't go down the list, since Lhiv has done it already, quite well, but...it's not like GC is telling us bold faced lies here. There must be some explanation for this drastic disparity in viewpoints. It's quite sad on Deep Freeze's end as well, such a neat idea for a PvE frost mage, now down in the bucket for good.

/tongue-in-cheek
Perhaps "situational" is meaning...situations where you find yourself in combat?

Ghostcrawler apparently equates "has a cooldown" with "situational." Which is dumb. Nobody would seriously argue that Arcane Power, Icy Veins, and the new Metamorphosis, off the top of my head, are situational -- they will be used at every possible opportunity in a boss fight.

People have already linked my list, and I'm sure some people will dispute some of the points on there, but so far most of the objections to my list are not "Talent X would not see regular use in a boss fight," and rather "Talent X would not see regular use because the tree it caps is terrible in PvE." Since of course the assumption is that every tree is going to become useful in PvE (if Blizzard does their job right, which I grant at this point is a huge freakin' 'if'), I don't feel a talent can be disqualified on that basis. Rather you need to say, "OK, if I were specced deep into Tree Y, would I be using its 51-point talent on a regular basis in boss fights?" I think the list probably stands up pretty well if you look at it that way, and Ghostcrawler's argument is a load of crap from the same point of view.

I am embarrassed to admit that while I have cancelled my account (five months left paid up, but I'm writing them off), archived my WTF in case a miracle happens, and purged both the live and beta folders from my system, I can't help but keep looking at the beta forum in hope of some significant change coming along to reverse my decision. And today, I couldn't help but compile the following list of conflicting and confusing statements related to Frost PvE:


Ghostcrawler on Frost DPS

Things start out pretty unambiguous:

9/18/2008: If the question is: should we expect Frost, Fire, Arcane (and perhaps Frostfire) do be doing competitive raid dps, the answer is yes.

9/29/2008: We would like to see similar dps from all 3 trees. However, if you go for a heavy PvP build (in any tree), you will probably sacrifice some dps to get there.

10/01/2008: Frost, Fire and Arcane are intended to do equivalent dps. If we perfect a Frostfire build, it should be similar as well.

Two weeks later, reversal:

10/14/2008: Just as a hypothetical question, do you think if Frost's dps was identical to Fire, that there would be a thread much like this one saying "Fire fails for bosses because Frost does just as much dps, but also provides better control on trash fights?"

10/17/2008: Frost is intended to be a little low to make up for the snares and freezes it can offer. But it shouldn't be so much lower that Frost mages stay in PvP and don't raid.

But wait:

10/22/2008: We try not to balance classes or specs around their AE potential because that can be situational and players tend to evaluate a class or spec based on its single-target dps potential or PvP viability.

Other related comments:

10/17/2008: We're unlikely to enforce a time-based cooldown on (spec toggling). That defeats the whole purpose of giving players flexibility.

Conclusion: So, Frost is supposed to do the same DPS as Fire and Arcane. Except not really, because occasionally its snares and freezes come in handy -- which is obviously very different and less situational than, say, AOE, because we wouldn't want to balance DPS against something situational. But don't worry, it'll be high enough that you'll be perfectly happy raiding as Frost...except since you can push a button as soon as you reach the boss to switch to a higher-DPS Fire spec, you won't really be raiding as Frost. Because it's not like you should care about your spec, or anything, and treat it as an integral part of your character.


Ghostcrawler and Koraa on Frost Playstyle

8/06/2008: We're trying to make Frost more viable in raiding by allowing you to effectively freeze the target without having to nova it, allowing you to throw in some "shatter combos" in your rotation.

9/29/2008: We think (monotonous, one-or-two-spell playstyle) is a totally valid concern. It's also not one unique to mages. We have been trying to address it for all of the classes who seem to have that problem, and you can probably identify most of the specific talents and abilities that we introduced for that purpose.

10/17/2008: I find (the opinion that Frostbolt spam is boring) a little at odds with your "I'm an objective researcher" persona, but point taken. Note that Zaldinar prefaced his post with a warning that it would be an opinion piece, not his usual research-type material.

10/21/2008: ...we're pretty happy with mage dps in PvE so we want to take care not to hurt it...We are changing Brain Freeze to only proc off of Frost spells that can chill...Ice Lance gets used a lot more in PvP, so we don't think this will hurt Frost as much in PvE.

Playstyle-related comments from elsewhere:

9/24/2008: ...and gave the classes who had little to no rotations a rotation.

10/21/2008: (Why is 1-button spam OK?) It's not. We changed both warlock and hunter rotations early on in our development...The things we really wanted to do with warlocks for LK were to make spell rotations more interesting...

Conclusion: I'm not sure even Ghostcrawler knows what's going on with this anymore. Using Ice Lance on a Fingers of Frost proc was already a highly debatable decision, and only if you could reliably exploit latency to get a third charge out of the buff. Now that the Ice Lance can't proc Brain Freeze, it's completely out of the picture for PvE Frost rotations -- there's no question of that anymore.

Of course, Ghostcrawler's statement that Ice Lance doesn't get much use in PvE implies that he already knows that the whole Shatter Combo idea didn't work out. So are they still planning to make the Frost rotation more interesting, or have they given up on that? Because the way things stand now, they couldn't really have designed the talents better to discourage Shatter Combos if they had tried.

Edit: Never mind, not contributing to the conversation, just going on into the black hole from prior two posts.

All of these changes being discussed in this thread are all probable. So far from what we've seen, Blizzard is not listening to the community.

With that said,

I think it's start to take a step back and start theorizing what can be done with our current skill set to best optimize ourselves with the tools we currently have. If my opinion doesn't matter, than maybe a few people will read this and help me out =D.

The biggest problem I'm finding with balancing PvE DPS is gear. In order for you to gauge yourself against someone with similar gear, you'd have to be farming content for months. This raises the issue I sit at with my current guild. We blew through BT and with this recent nerf, are starting in sunwell (without a problem). Our gear as a guild is very unbalanced so seeing similar numbers is impossible. The other issue is that it's extremely difficult to build a guild full of the exact same 25 people to run content each week. This varies the gear even further.

My issue is this:
I have three Mages in my guild who are very differently geared. Some have a ton of haste gear where others are 4xt6 and others are stacking hit. None of us are able to find our sweet spot for optimal raid dps and our numbers are all over the place. We're all confused as to what gems to use, or where our points are best spent. We're raiding 5-6 nights a week and have respec'd 2-3 times a day each for the past week the patch has been up.

Nothing is working to give numbers which remain consistent. We're finding that all the spec's are too RNG dependent and that nothing is skill or gear based anymore. We're finding that current mage DPS is more luck than anything and nothing can be done to prevent this.

EDIT: In the past, if someone didn't have the gear to support an end game fire build, they threw on 2x T5 and went arcane. I accept the fact that the current patch is not optimized for 70 raiding.

So far, our best solutions have been to bump up the probability of the RNG for fire mages by stacking more crit instead of SD. This goes against all previous TC because all past research has shown SD scales the best for a raiding fire mage. For frost they're doing a similar thing, but stacking a bit more haste with their gear and where the arcane mage is concerned, he's just pissed off at random lag spikes destroying his rotations.

So, my question, and I prey for some possible answers. WTF are other mages currently doing in raids to optimize their DPS and would it be possible to divert this conversation to what is viable for raiding 3.0.2?


EDIT2...

I've read the posts... I've got Rawr... since everything is RNG or lag... is there anything skill based that other mages are doing to improve DPS. Has anyone found a trick, or...

For me my focus is to leave my equipment alone and work on my keybindings and reflexes to learn new rotations. I'm using a spec that will be similar to my trashkilling spec, because frankly my boss-killing rotations are easier.

My performance fight over fight depends more on whether I execute the new talents (living bomb uptime, hot streak pyroblasts cast, not running outof mana) than which spec I choose or anything I can do to my gear in the time I have. So what I've been doing is putting myself in untenable situations and seeing if I can fight my way out of them and still get decent output. I am not going to execute a new rotation in a raid if I can't do it in more chaotic environments than a target dummy or Dr Boom. I'm finding pulling elites in normal mode dungeons to be good for learning how to get the most out of my new tools. The repair vendors are going to be able to buy a vacation home when this is over, but I'm getting better at it. My "mobile fight" DPS is WAY up. My "stand and shoot" is better but needs me to ride the global cooldown better to really get anywhere near the theoretical DPS.

If your crit rate is <50% and the fight durations are short yeah, you'll be very RNG dependent as a significant amount of our DPS seems to be random procs. (hot streak pyroblasts, shatter, free fireballs for frost, arcane random damage boost talents). A lot of that will even out just with longer fight durations. It may be that crit is worth working for in the new itemization too, but the jury is still out on that. It's likely as good as or better than haste for some specs but not all.

Sorry to ask the question again, it doesn't seemed to have been answered yet. Anyone on the PTR 3.0.3 can confirm if the new focus magic stack if they are traded with another mage.

I'm finding with my current gear I simply under gear any spec. I can't supply myself with enough hit, crit, and spell damage to make anything viable. I either sacrafice all haste which gives me decent numbers on a dummy but in a "real world" situation fails because of mobility issues. If I drop in SD, I'm unable to hit hard enough, but man, I crit often, or my spells go off fast.

When BC dropped, every class saw DPS increases. I'm feeling that this current patch took a base of a typical SWP geared mage. This is really making the game unfun to play. I love my class, but I really feel broken right now and nothing I'm doing works. Do I drop another 2k in gems to re-socket for crit? I've already spent 10k this week alone. The TC is getting expensive and old.

Should I just call it quits and wait till 80 to be fixed?

EDIT:
I'm critting with fireballs at about a 60% rate. Every 3rd spell is a hot streak and this seems to go alright untill you get those "Cold Streaks".

F'N RNG sucks.

Oh, it definitely works... but isn't there suppose to be a 4 second internal cooldown? and i can't see the double procs as 'working as intended'.

Definitely not working as intended. You do realize, that Enhancer got 87k mana from JoW in a 6 min fight?

But, knowing it is bugged on live (no CD whatsoever), the question is, how does it currently work on beta? Did they change the 4s raidwide CD back into a 4s CD per person, as the whole thing was intended to work like that?

hello,
i have a question about mage gear/gem:
*** here were several stupid questions ***

thanx in advance, and thanx to all the contributors of these great forums, keep it up.

++
Phlo

PS: thanks to the answer right below.
i'm such a moron.

The answer to all of your questions is that you are mana-starved in your Rawr. I would check to make sure you have Replenishment and Judgement of Wisdom checked in your buffs list.

Currently im full frost and sometimes i try out 11/0/50...My guild is about to head into sunwell thanks to the patch. I feel like my crit is too low to make fire viable. 11/50/0 or 0/50/11 would be awesome but ive tried it on Teron Gorefiend and I did 2600 DPS in frost but I only did 1900 as fire. Im not the best theorycrafter but I was wondering if anyone else was experiencing this or could maybe shoot some suggestions over on if im doing something wrong?

In case the obvious answers are what comes up....I do pop my insta pyro whenever it is up, but if just dosent proc that much for me right now. And my rotaion as fire is get my 5 scorch debuffs up and fireball till my pyro proc and keep up scorch of course.

Also mana is ALOT worse as fire.

If im missing out on dps please let me know because I will do anything to bump up on meters. Thanks in advance!

scroll down

Threat with FFB/MI

Frostfire Bolt get threat reduction from both, Burning Soul and Frost Channeling.
They however not do not stack, so you get 10% threat reduction if you spec into one of them, but not more.

Ignite probably doesn't benefit from Frost Channeling, but that's more or less meaning less for practical purposes.


Mirror Image works like a Fade. You disappear from the mob's threat list for the duration.
That means if threat is really a concern, you have no idea where your thret will be when Mirror Image ends.

So, be careful, and know when to use Invisibility when 5 seconds remain on Mirror Image.


Test was done with Omen for 3.0 and Dr. Boom. Target Dummies have no threat table.

Well we killed him before 2nd set of constructs. On supremeus I pull about 1700 to 1800 and never go oom or pot and have Molten up the whole time and since all the CD reductions for WE and Cold Snap I can keep him up 2/3 of the time on most fights. Supremeus is a hard fight to judge it on though too, since the fire dmg reduction. /sigh

I wanna go fire its just that every time I sit down and try it my mana seems to go fast and DPS is around the same or less.

A simple Pyro macro eliminates this situation by allowing only instant casts:

/cast Pyroblast
/stopcasting


Question:

A guild mate told me Thunderclap will satisfy the snare requirement for TtW (or will in the next build), yet all my research is showing that only Slow will. Can anyone confirm/deny?

is it smart to interupt a cast to hit a hot streak proc or shouldn't I just finish the next cast since I've spent .5 seconds in it already do to travel time?

Currently I spam fireball and wait for my hot streak, finish next cast and hit pyro for the proc.

This is how you should do it. Don't cancel to cast Pyro, just finish your cast and do it afterward.

You can even go as far as casting Pyro after your 2nd cast as long as you do it quickly. The Hotstreak buff is removed the moment you cast the instant Pyro, but the next Hotstreak is not added until your Fireball crits, so there is a small window of time to squeeze it in and not actually lose a Hotstreak Crit.

I have seen the following happen....
Fireball Crit (1.A)
Fireball Crit (2.A)
Hotstreak (A)
Fireball Crit (1.B)
Fireball Crit (2.B)
Instant Pyroblast (A)
Hotstreak (B) [while waiting on the GCD]
Instant Pyroblast (B)

This isn't the optimal way of casting, but it can help you "catch up" if you miss a Hotstreak proc.