Touching on a point a few pages back about Hot Streak procs getting eaten by a casted pyroblast:
Nightfall had the same bug, and was fixed a few years back, so yours can be fixed too.
For reference, Nightfall is a warlock talent that randomly gives you instant-cast shadowbolts, and has been around since release. It's possibly to get the nightfall buff (shadowtrance) in the middle of casting a shadowbolt (probably more frequent too, since we use non-instant shadowbolts more than you use non-instant pyros). For about the first year or so of the game, your shadowbolt would keep casting and consume the shadowtrance when it casted. Exactly like is happening with hotstreak. They fixed it. I don't know how, but if you cast a non-instant shadowbolt with shadowtrance up, you keep the buff. Put in a bug report and ask them to borrow the old nightfall code, which I believe has since been recycled for Backlash in TBC and Glyph of Corruption in WLK.
The biggest issue I have with Arcane currently is that it does not bring the 10% spell crit chance to the raid as Fire and Frost do, which given that we are the only class that brings this buff, has to be considered a factor.
Uh.... wasn´t that exactly what I was talking about? Tree is bloated so you you havto really stretch it just to get all the needed raid talents. Arcane can bring the debuff, but has to spread really thin, just like it has to in order to pick up the DPS talents from inside the arcane tree. Thus what the spec needs is some streamlining so that you are given an actual choise of flavour in yer spec and are not just forced to diss one or two of the least DPS increasing talents without ever having a chanse to look at anything beside just DPS talents. Simply adding a crit debuff to AM through Arcane Empowerment would be a simple solution.
Hot streak isn't very complex. (code fragment and description)
That (the description, not the code) is exactly how I modeled it, and in play that's how it has behaved. Like combustion, it's got a persistent counter. Expressed in "spreadsheeteese" you go about it a bit differently but the concept is the same.
Thanks Lhivera and others. That is a very clear explanation.
In order to get the same effect from Fingers of Frost as from actual frozen targets, we would have to set up the spell the same way as freezing, so that you could sneak that Ice Lance in between Frostbolts. Right now you get 2 big hits from Fingers of Frost, which you rightly want to spend on Frostbolt. If we changed Fingers of Frost so that Frostbolt always broke it, then you would want to get that Ice Lance in there, but your overall dps would go down. We'd need to compensate Frost some other way for that nerf, and it's the kind of thing that might not be popular with the mage community because we'd be nerfing Fingers of Frost's damage potential in order to force you into using Ice Lance all in the name of more interesting rotations. (Obviously we're not that nervous about making unpopular changes when we think they are warranted, and overall encouraging players to use different kinds of spells is a good thing.)
Of course if we also made Fingers of Frost (or Ice Lance) better, then we're just going to have problems with Frost in PvP.
Frost's PvE dps is very good right now -- if anything it's a little closer to Fire than we predicted. If Frost starts to fall off for any reason, that would be a good opportunity to revisit FoF to see if we can get more of the behavior you're describing, because ultimately I agree it would be cool to see more PvE Ice Lances.
If you have good suggestions though on how to preserve Frost's PvE dps without making it OP in PvP and without having to change a whole bunch of spells, please share them.
To me, this is a very worrying response from GC about Shatter Combos and Frost's PvE playstyle. For one, it sounds like Blizz doesn't want Mages shattering in PvE, and see FoF as a pure damage increase for FB spam. For two, GC basically ignores what Lhiv said about Ice Lance and re-iterates the problem that we all know would exist.
There's still no acknowledgment that Frost's PvE playstyle is, frankly, boring, instead harping and holding onto the fact that Frost seems to be viable pure DPS wise.
I've not been keeping 100% up to date with Beta changes and our portrayed dps via spreadsheets and simulations, but last I checked fire and frost are both not viable compared to FFB, right?
A big problem with frost spec is that it only has 50 points that actually increase your dps, the rest of the points invested doesn't really add anything, you can get blastwave and better DPM from fire, or PoM and better DPM from arcane or a ton of "PvP" talents in frost.
GC said at some point that if you invested points in PvP talents you should do less dps, but if you don't have any other options then frost will always be doomed to be the PvP spec?
What's the latest on Brainfreeze by the way, is it still nothing but a DPM increase?
Edit: What if Brainfreeze procced an instant FFB instead of Fireball? FFB get's some talent support from frost and you can get something from fire as well.
I've been doing a lot of BGs lately and had an interesting experience with Winter's Chill. Whether it was somehow spellstolen or otherwise, I somehow managed to apply the Winter's Chill effect in my debuff slot. Which lasted for 30 minutes. Further it acted as a buff rather than a debuff - ie it increased my chance to crit by 2% (it was only one stack) even though it was in the debuff slot.
Not sure how I came to acquire a 30 min debuff/buff but I was running around spellstealing like a madman so I can only assume that's how I came across it.
A Mage in my guild mentioned that Winters Chill seems to last 30 minutes now, which I'm assuming is unintended. As to it giving you the crit bonus, well that's just weird.
I've been doing a lot of BGs lately and had an interesting experience with Winter's Chill. Whether it was somehow spellstolen or otherwise, I somehow managed to apply the Winter's Chill effect in my debuff slot. Which lasted for 30 minutes. Further it acted as a buff rather than a debuff - ie it increased my chance to crit by 2% (it was only one stack) even though it was in the debuff slot.
Not sure how I came to acquire a 30 min debuff/buff but I was running around spellstealing like a madman so I can only assume that's how I came across it.
(I'm an arcane mage)
I've had that happen to my rogue as well so I don't think it is related to spellsteal. I think it was related to me having the debuff on me just as the BG ended or if I cloaked it at that time. I don't remember the details but I had a 30 minute debuff called Winter's Chill on me when I exited into Shattrath. Kind of a strange bug.
I'm almost afraid to post here and have a poor idea, but there's a lot of good and bad ones being thrown around on the Beta forums where I'm unable to post on. I have a comment followed by a question and hope to get a response on the implications of it PvE wise. Also, how would others see flaws in a PvP environment?
Simple Solution #1:
-FoF becomes a timed buff that replaces Frostbite procs on targets that cannot be rooted, it behaves exactly as a Frostbite proc does, breaks on damage instead of charges, or after a given amount of time. It can remain as a caster buff if desired to avoid having multiple mages benefit from it. Has the benefit of giving the exact same behavior that Shatter combos provide on Frostbite / Nova / Freeze. Also potentially allow Freeze to proc it on un-rootable targets to give some decision making potential to Water Elementals.
I wanted to add to this idea as it seemed to stand out as a very viable solution to frost mage DPS in PvE. What if the buff were to work on all frost spell damage and be visible to anyone in the raid? You would have to increase the amount of damage before breaking. This would work as Frostbite proc works, but with this one, it'd increase the crit chance of Frost spells in general. The timed idea where FoF becomes a duration debuff rather than a charge based seems like a very good solution. Making it visible to all casters may help with dps on other casters such as elemental/enchancement shaman utilizing frost shocks and stacking frost mages to up the percentage RNG based proc.
Would this be asking too much or does this seem like a viable solution?
EDIT: The other idea I really found extremely viable was the Glyph adding a cool down to Ice Lance but increasing the damage it deals.
Originally Posted by Auralyne
a. Your ice lance spell now does 5 times normal damage against frozen targets, but has a 10 second cooldown.
b. Your ice lance spell now does 5 times normal damage against frozen targets, but has a 1.5 second cast time.
To me, this is a very worrying response from GC about Shatter Combos and Frost's PvE playstyle. For one, it sounds like Blizz doesn't want Mages shattering in PvE, and see FoF as a pure damage increase for FB spam. For two, GC basically ignores what Lhiv said about Ice Lance and re-iterates the problem that we all know would exist.
There's still no acknowledgment that Frost's PvE playstyle is, frankly, boring, instead harping and holding onto the fact that Frost seems to be viable pure DPS wise.
I didn't really find this as worrying as you did (of course, even if they fix this, I'm gone, so maybe I've started taking things less personally...but considering I can't seem to tear myself away from the problem, maybe I haven't). I interpreted his response as follows:
- He gets now what we mean by "Shatter Combo" and understands the problem
- However, the problem is extremely difficult to address without unbalancing PvP because it requires making Ice Lance (or some other instant cast spell) significantly stronger than it is
- If you've got any ideas, post 'em
I'm encouraged, frankly, because up until today, I don't think they even understood what we were blathering on about in all those PvE Shatter Combo threads, and now it's pretty clear they do. Getting them to see the problem is half the battle. Doesn't mean we win, but at least there's a chance now.
Originally Posted by Vhad
I've not been keeping 100% up to date with Beta changes and our portrayed dps via spreadsheets and simulations, but last I checked fire and frost are both not viable compared to FFB, right?
A big problem with frost spec is that it only has 50 points that actually increase your dps, the rest of the points invested doesn't really add anything, you can get blastwave and better DPM from fire, or PoM and better DPM from arcane or a ton of "PvP" talents in frost.
GC said at some point that if you invested points in PvP talents you should do less dps, but if you don't have any other options then frost will always be doomed to be the PvP spec?
A max-DPS Frost spec would include Ignite and Focus Magic, which should produce a fairly decent DPS increase over a pure Frost build with all the PvP talents. 11/10/50, no Brain Freeze.
Edit: Duh. Of course if you don't take Brain Freeze, you also wouldn't take Ignite. Nevermind me, it's late.
Last edited by Lhivera : 10/28/08 at 3:43 AM.
Reason: I'm a dope.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
How about this solution to the shatter problem. Instead of personal charges gained from FoF have it proc some kind of combo points on the mob. Combo points are personal and have worked fine for rogues for years. That would still be a sort of charge but this is easily solved by having a FoF proc give a full stack of FoF combo points on the target but with a short duration. So use as many as you got time for (meaning two frostbolts and an icelance in most cases) The reason I suggest combo points is that its a code sequence for personal buffs that I know blizzard are capable of programming, adding a duration to them can´t be that hard. This would remove the ability to proc on one target ant then "shattercombo" on another in PvP, but that was never intended in the first place, its just something they havn´t bothered removing cause they couldnt get the first atempt of debuff on target working. Also since a change like this is a PvP nerf they could perhaps consider puting the damage back on DF.
What you want is an extra interaction on icelance that creates (no matter how indirectly) extra damage in PvE but can't be taken advantage of well in PvP because it's either long-term or counterable. Upping the damage of Icelance (even with a penalty, like glyphs) is probably not available, since it gives frost more burst in PvP. So what we're looking at is probably some sort of longer-term buff, caused by ice lance hits or crits, probably crits to favor the proc towards shatter combos. If it's just a damage buff, what sort probably doesn't matter that much, although I think haste may have the least spikey effect on PvP damage. However, damage buffs in general may need to be what we move away from. If frost weren't so damn efficient already I think some sort of mana thingy would be the best way to give a long-term PvE DPS increase without affecting PvP burst of shatter combos. Hell, you could even make it a spirit-based things making frost mages like the stat for once.
So apparently my suggestion is to undo the bandaid mana-cost reductions and make icelance crits proc meditation instead. I'm just as surprised as anyone else.
A max-DPS Frost spec would include Ignite and Focus Magic, which should produce a fairly decent DPS increase over a pure Frost build with all the PvP talents. 11/10/50, no Brain Freeze.
Edit: Duh. Of course if you don't take Brain Freeze, you also wouldn't take Ignite. Nevermind me, it's late.
That's sort of my point. Frost has 50 points increasing it's single target dps, the rest are aoe or pvp/survival related talents, so even if you wanted to spec for max dps all you'd get is better DPM which frost already kings. I guess you could spec 11/7/53 or something for 2 points in ignite, but that just improves dps of an already dps decreasing but dpm increasing talent.
Wouldn't changing brainfreeze to FFB solve all this, perhaps put back mana cost on the proc so it's closer to Hot Streak?
Sorry to pull the discussion back to Fire AoE, but how does AoE strengths look if you consider the fact that using different ranks of flamestrike can allow the DoT to stack? I've just tested it on a lot of undeads from the invasion event and I'm certain that flamestrike is stacking between ranks 5,6 and 7 at least. I havn't tested ranks below that but I see no reason why they wouldn't stack also.
This is not how it really works, is it? Using your code, the casts
Fireball (crit) -> Pyroblast (noncrit) -> Fireball (crit)
would not result in proccing Hot Streak, which it does if I got it correctly. Like only proccing off these certain spells, the counter only gets reset by non-crits of these, not other spells.
Sorry to pull the discussion back to Fire AoE, but how does AoE strengths look if you consider the fact that using different ranks of flamestrike can allow the DoT to stack? I've just tested it on a lot of undeads from the invasion event and I'm certain that flamestrike is stacking between ranks 5,6 and 7 at least. I havn't tested ranks below that but I see no reason why they wouldn't stack also.
At 80 with blue/epic mixed gear and no buffs, the damage is as follows.
Rank 9: 1338 hit, 4*387 tick
Rank 8: 1180 hit, 4*327 tick
Rank 7: 715 hit, 4*212 tick
Rank 7 is just strong enough to pull ahead of Arcane Explsion, so you can do a 3-rank-rotation with at most 12% haste.
Or more haste and more fat-fingering. If those Flamestrikes ever gets reduced to 2 seconds.
The problem is still that I'm not going to use that spell because it's terrible to aim.
It's like using Pyroblast with Curse of Tongues on a speed clear.
On a group of mobs that are tanked stably the aiming isn't that bad. I still feel flamestrike is a prime candidate for a +radius glyph. Better functionality could also be achieved by having the targeting ring stay on the mouse until the completion of the cast, although I'm not sure how accurate that would be given latency (where your mouse is when the server checks the end of the spell cast versus when your client receives it).
Edit:
So an arcane AoE rotation might see better returns using FS(r8)/FS(r9)/AE(x2) repeat (add in more AE as haste stacks). Certainly an arcane/fire build with ignite should take this route.
Last edited by Jonny_Monroe : 10/28/08 at 8:09 AM.
Edit: What if Brainfreeze procced an instant FFB instead of Fireball? FFB get's some talent support from frost and you can get something from fire as well.
I understand your logic. The reason it won't happen is that the Brain Freeze talent is available much much earlier than the Frostfirebolt is so before level 75 it would be a dud-talent.
I understand your logic. The reason it won't happen is that the Brain Freeze talent is available much much earlier than the Frostfirebolt is so before level 75 it would be a dud-talent.
On a group of mobs that are tanked stably the aiming isn't that bad. I still feel flamestrike is a prime candidate for a +radius glyph. Better functionality could also be achieved by having the targeting ring stay on the mouse until the completion of the cast, although I'm not sure how accurate that would be given latency (where your mouse is when the server checks the end of the spell cast versus when your client receives it).
Edit:
So an arcane AoE rotation might see better returns using FS(r8)/FS(r9)/AE(x2) repeat (add in more AE as haste stacks). Certainly an arcane/fire build with ignite should take this route.
Flamestrikes glyph should turn it into a single target spell that explodes outwards from it's target. This would remove the horendous aiming problems with flamestrike.
On the same topic - apart from a fully talented Blizzard, what exactly are mage options for long range AoE right now? It seems we have a large amount of close range stuff, but often AoE is better off at range and Mages just fall apart there.
Problem with makng glyph solutions to AoE spells is that most of the time they wont be used. We will have easy acess to trash specs if we want to but glyphs require you to go to a tome of power to swap them. so essentially you haveto to the same trip as if respecing (but longer cause the place you need to visnt isnt exactly where you port). since the AoE caps have been increased by such a lot one would think that it would be only fair to simply give flamestrike the blizzard radius. Or if it is to have a really small radius and have a large prtion of its damage be a dot it should do a LOT more than an AE cast. That way if you manage to focus mobs together and have time to cast then flamestrike is superior while AE has mobility and less need to gather mobs up first while blizzard offers controll. This way all three spells would have an area of usage. Actually when I ponder the matter I think blizzard should have some sort of slowing effect as baseline.
We only have one option for viable AoE and that is Talented Blizzard, we have so many AoE talents and skills but I'd trade them all in for a single spell that does it all well. Much like every other ranged class has a good AoE spell.
I don't really want to hang up Blizzard on the statement that we were supposed to be king of AoE because that's outdated, but it'd be nice if they recognized and corrected the problem with our AoE at the moment. We have way too many mediocre aoe abilities that need massive talent support to be viable and even when invested in they only just match up to the AoE of everyone else.
Edit: in reply to the post before me, I don't have a link to it, but what I read in regards to the 2 spec deal it was said that glyphs and keybinds/bars would all change to the setup you had for your spec. Meaning you have 1 spec + glyphs for Trash AoE and they stay when you switch to your boss spec. Much like you change gear for trash.
10/27/08, 6:00 PM
