Well here's the thing, the first post was made a while ago. It's quite possible the a game mechanic had changed slightly since then, so I wasn't sure if the information was accurate. Also, I'd like to see some math backing up why spell power is more valuable if possible, because it just doesn't seem logical that spell power could still be worth more to a spell that receives benefits from so many crit talents. I don't doubt that I'm wrong however....I would just like to see why.

The first post is not out of date. See lines 3 - 6 of the first post:

I haven't looked for the math to back it up that is almost certainly in this thread. But obviously, neither have you. Please look for it.

Gems should be the only time you'll really need to balance crit against spell power. And even then, yes, you will reach a certain point where it may say that 1 crit is worth more than 1 spell power, just as Rawr was doing for haste pre-wrath.

Concerning items, consider the difference between [Mana Attuned Band] and [Ring of Captured Storms]. Same ilevel 141, and you're gaining 29 haste and 19 int, but losing 29 crit, 8 spell power, and 1 hit. Crit is a very expensive stat, because it takes much more crit to reach 1% than it does haste to reach 1% haste. Spell power, on the other hand, is usually an independent stat. There's only more spell damage on the ring of captured storms because you're losing int (though I'm sure haste is contributing to this as well).

And as far as logic... well, logically, you could be at 100% crit rate, but if you have 0 spell power, you're not really better off. Crit has to have something to multiply off of. Crit rating is increasing your chance to multiply your spell power. Each time you crit, you are converting 1 spell power into X more damage.

Without doing the math, the output damage can vary between 2-3, if not higher under some conditions. If you aren't critting enough, then Rawr may tell you to start stocking up on crit rating. Where as with fireball, the crit bonus likely isn't high enough to warrant trading spell power for crit. With frostfire bolt, it's always better to crit than not to crit, so much so that until you reach a very comfortable crit level, crit will be a desirable stat.

There is undoubtedly a formula out there somewhere, but it has something to do with the number of your crits versus your non crits. Because spell power is worth more when a spell crits, you need a high crit rating to boost this up. Make sure you have the approriate raid buffs and enchants on, as well as food (46 spell power, 40 haste, 40 crit, and 40 hit). Hope that helps!

My guess as a comfortable crit rate for Frostfire bolt is roughly 20% for all spells which i'm guessing from fire talents boosts it up to 30% then with x5 scorch makes it 40%. I could be wrong about how much crit the talents give. I completely screwed up when I was leveling my mage. Now i'm sitting at 203 haste, 950 SP and 13% crit, 20% fire crit. That makes me sad. I am running heroics as much as possible. And enchants would help too, but there arn't too many people on my server yet with WLK enchants.

I feel like a noob asking this, but its honestly... for my own sake. im level 80 and this is my build WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

My friend tells me to go change my build to WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator
But I DO NOT GET IT, WHY get shatter if you cannot freeze a boss unless FoF procs? inwhich this build does not have? please help me, he told me to read the 160 some page thing and figure it out.. and that's really time consuming, so I beg you guys to help me. he said it has to do with Frost Death Knights.... and I was like... uh what? bosses are still not freezable and chains of ice doesn't say they are considered frozen

I posted this in simple questions simple answers and didn't really get much of a response, but yeah he was arguing with me for like an hour and saying how shatter is NEEDED for a FFB build, please explain this for me

~Fury

More than likely your Firend is refering to Hungering Cold, not chains of ice, which freezes Enemies within 10 yards. I seriously doubt that a DK would be using this on a Boss fight, However it would come in handy for AOE groups. It would depend on the raid/instance and your personal playstyle. If you want shatter, get shatter.

As stated in a reply to your post on the Simple Questions/Simple Answers Thread, Please review the posts regarding the 0/53/18 builds if you want some detailed information.

I did, but didn't see anything about shatter so I just wanted to double check, sorry for the repost
also.. with a 3% talent the hit cap is 368 correct? just to double check again I know FFB double dips, but it WILL get fixed so i'd rather be safe than sorry.

Seo, I will ask him once our server comes back online and he comes online aswell, I will ask him to post it here so you can see and discuss. and it was more like a demand rather than suggestion, he seemed really determined about this and I was using my gut.. and I just wanted to make sure I wasn't messing up.

I am pretty knew to theorycrafting and simulation, but I've been seeing discrepancies between what my numbers show (and those on this board) and the advice I've been given by experienced mages on my server.

I've done tests with Theory-craft-matic, Rawr, and simulationcraft using a pretty standard LB/FF/IV build and they all show approximately the same results:

(I'm at work so I am using Theory Craft-o-Matic)
( 1 Spell Power ) =
( 0.6028 Crit Rating ) =
( 0.7939 Hit Rating ) =
( 0.5475 Haste Rating )

This would suggest that I stack SP, SP, SP, Hit, and Crit (in that order).

The advice I've been getting is to add more crit and hit to my build. I understand the concept of hit capping, but I don't see why it's necessary to hit-cap when I get more overall DPS by adding Spell-power. The same goes for Crit (although actual instances show that my DPS kicked up a knotch when I swapped my SP trinkets for Crit trinkets).

Are the simulators wrong? Do I need to add Hit and Crit over SP until I get to a certain level? If so, what would that level be (for Crit)? I noticed some of you guys were discussing this today, but I haven't seen any hard numbers or any other reason why the numbers from the simulators would indicate not adding crit or hit.

Vees, I think you're reading the output backwards. It's telling you that 1 spell power is worth less than 1 hit rating, less than 1 crit rating, and less than 1 haste rating. That is...

1 spell power = .7939 hit rating

This means...

1 spell power < 1 hit rating

Make sense? That means the most effective stat is the one that spell power is worth the least of. In this case, that's haste.

That said, it may be I'm the one reading it backwards...

Edit: I do think I'm reading it backwards. Increasing spell power made the hit number go up, which would mean you read it right the first time. It also means I need to go ask Zaldinar what, exactly, those numbers are supposed to signify.

Vees,

If your gear never progresses then you are right. But the problem is that as your SP, Crit, Hit, Haste change their relative contribution from stats to the over all dps changes too. Since you are familiar with Theory Craft-o-Matic, change the value of spell power up and re-compute. What you will see is that as your SP increases the hit value begins to be more important. My personal toon and spec reaches a 1:1 ratio at 1600SP which Im over when fully raid buffed.

So, if eventually the goal is to become hit capped at say 1600 spell power, then you may want to begin moving towards that goal. If not you will reach the SP needed and gear will be behind in hit and will be difficult to start hit capping.

I'd like to post this and please feel free to dispute it but from my playing experiences so far I have come to observe something interesting.

Frostfire bolt's snare seems to trigger TTW even on mobs that cannot be snared.

There's a catch to this however. If said mob is IMMUNE to the Slow spell (i.e. you get an immune message when trying to cast Slow on it) you cannot trigger TTW. But as long as said mob/raid boss is not immune to the Slow spell Frostfire Bolt seems to be triggering TTW.

So from my observations TTW cannot be triggered on any mob immune to the Slow spell by any means but if Slow is capable of being applied then any form of applicable snare effect (such as FFB's dot) will trigger it.

Has anyone else observed or explored this?

I've always loved arcane and the spec I am enjoying is 63/0/8 using FFB as my filler. I waste no GCD's or mana on Slow and gain the benefits of TTW on all the spells in my rotation as long as whatever I am fighting can have Slow applied to it.

If my observations are correct would that not make TTW fire builds not require a "Slow slave" and simply be able to work an FFB into their rotation for the TTW benefit?

Can you or anyone else back that up with two screenshots?
Arcane Missiles non-crit before and after putting up the FFB DoT on a raid boss would be best.

Checking your armoury, you have 1122 spell power. Which is quite low.
For pure DPS, +hit becomes better than +dmg at around 2k spell power.

That's why T-Com and other tools will tell you to go for +dmg right now.

As you start to get raid gear, your damage will get up and the value of +hit vs. +dmg goes up, so you'll want to cap hit.
Also, missing Scorches and having to restack them is really annoying.

I'll do so as soon as I am able.

Thanks for pointing that out. *grin*

I see this now. I plugged in 1600SP and suddenly Hit became more important than spell power. At 2500SP, Crit became more important than SP.

I like Eaden's suggestion about working on Hit before I reach the 1600 SP mark. So my plan becomes:

1) Work on SP and Hit before 1600.
2) Hit cap at or soon after 1600.
3) Focus on SP and Crit after I Hit Cap.
4) Focus on crit if I ever reach 2500 SP (is this even possible).

Thanks for all the feedback. For some reason I was seeing the ratios from Craft-o-matic as static despite everything I've read to the contrary.

Upcoming Paladin change post:
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Consolidated list of upcoming Paladin changes
4) is going to be very interesting to say the least!

Mages have significantly less base mana than any other class, see Base mana - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
That might actually be a good thing, because then we get the least mana from it.
Which means that not having JoW isn't a bit difference for us, which is good because we have no Tap/Viper.

I wonder what 5) means for mana-drainers fighting bosses with a few hundred thousand/million mana (as I vaguely remember Ragnaros and probably a multitude of others had)

I do not have a screenshot to provide, but I went to test on Dr. Boom in Netherstorm.

The Frostbolt snare does not apply to Dr. Boom, but Slow can be applied to him and TtW works normally with the Slow debuff. With the Frostfire Bolt DoT on him, my AM ticks the same as it does normally. If Dr. Boom can be any indication, then the Frostfire Bolt DoT component does not trigger Torment the Weak.

"The amount of DPS gained out of 1.000 points of spellpower, that much spell hit will have .7939 as much DPS." It's basically the increase in DPS, normalized to the DPS increase of spellpower. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether it's per-stat-point or per-budget-point. At this level it's academic but in general it makes a difference.

I have read through most of this threads post posted after wotlk release and sadly most of them wasnt helpful at all as lot of unceartanty seems to be around.

Is there the possibility that maybe thread starter clears out some of these things and edits them in starting post?

little list coming in my mind:
- does slow work on majority of wotlk bosses
- does the slow effect of fostbolt/frostfirebolt add same effect
- how much damage does a arcane mage loose by adding slow into his rotation (to have some basis for calculating possible tot/fire builds - if the dmg decrease is high u cant expect a slow on bosses as many calculations do)
- how much hit does elemental presecion gives to ffb
- overall damage of living bomb
- issues with living bomb-, firebolt-, pyro-, ignite- ticks

There are many more in my opinion minor issus, but how shall are calculations done when there is so much of game mechanics kind of unclear?
Also I havent seen anywhere a total list which buffs/debuffs stack - does for example improved fearyfire stack with the debuff from shadow priests?

Ok now I want add 3 things to the discusion:
1. some people think that there might be a reason to add shatters to frostfire build via freeze procs, but more me it seems that the proc just goes away when other people crit the mob/boss - only useful shatters I have seen was in some - forstnova-->blastwave combo what opens question if u think that a ban of blastnova in raids is justified
edit: acording to starting post it would
2. what do u think about the "raid support" in a arcane 68/3/0 build like amplify magic, or neededing lesser healing due to 200 resistance or even using manashield for casters absobtion - does it justify lower damage?
3. as arcane mage I sometimes got problems with lost arc. missles during a barrage proc when trying to chain casts - how do other arcane mages deal with this? do u wait a moment before chaining the next arcanebarrage?


well i m truly sorry if some of mentioned topics arent as "unclear" as it seems for me but I have read lot of different assumptions in this thread.
Also please understand that I m no native english speaker and therefore my grammer and spelling might not be on same high standard as you are used to on this board

2. Not worth it since you are spending nearly twice the amount mana and the damage is still lower and you don't provide a spell 10% crit debuff. In a few mobility fights, and aggro sensitive fights arcane is doing ok - but overall I wouldn't consider it a strong raiding spec (I actually preferred arcane for SW 3.0 raiding due to the tanks threat on trash hadn't reached the 80 level yet). Since improved water elemental doesn't have a working replenishment I wouldn't recommend deep frost either.

3. You could try using a makro to prevent it. On the top of my head try something like this:
/cast [nochanneling:Arcane Missiles] Arcane Barrage

Personally I found a FFB spec with low crit to be less than optimal. With hitcap I'm focusing on SP whilst trying to find pieces that have as much crit on them as possible.

- I would say 50/50 it works or it doesn't. I would also really appreciate a full list of bosses that can be affected by Slow.
- Slowing effect of frostbolt and ffb are considered as a snare effect while most of the bosses are immune to them.
Intermediate Conclusion: Talking about Wotlk bosses, slow works better than slowing of frostbolt or ffb, considering snare effect damage bonus.
- I wouldn't expect much of a decrease but it needs some calculations ofc. But keeping in mind than ToW adds 12% more damage, I would suggest to keep Slow on the target all the time.
- 6% for the time being. (Read patch notes carefully in future, a correction is expected).
- Asa you cast it, it deals 12 secs DoT. Dot part is not affected by 10% damage from Firepower talent. After 12 secs, it explodes and deals AoE damage (very very like Seed of Corruption). If you are unable to cast spells (dead, silenced) target WON'T explode.
- issues? thats the whole thread, check the first post.