After hit cap, spellpower gives you the most bang for the buck. That's not to say haste or crit are bad, but spellpower's better so there's no need to trade sp for haste or crit. I basically try to keep a healthy dose of all three.
The usual tradeoff is crit vs haste, given the way things are itemized. After a certain minimum spellpower, haste is a bit better than spellpower to cap. Spellpower remains superior to crit/haste generally. Which of crit/haste is better depends on your gear and your spec. Extremely large amounts of haste without any crit, or the reverse, will cause you to want more of the other, but the way Wrath gear is itemized it is hard to avoid getting a fair amount of both.
After hit cap, spellpower gives you the most bang for the buck. That's not to say haste or crit are bad, but spellpower's better so there's no need to trade sp for haste or crit. I basically try to keep a healthy dose of all three.
That is subjective, and it has been explained in the first post:
Originally Posted by Roywyn
Mage Gearing and Hit Cap at Level 80
Your first prority is getting spell damage. Your second second priority is also spell damage.
Even in crit heavy Fire and Frostfire specs, spell damage will be your best stat to stack via gems for a long while.
You also want to cap spell hit, but not at the cost of using inferior gear just because it has more hit.
When you get decked out in wisely chosen Naxxramas gear, you should easily reach the hit cap. Gem for it if you're close.
Spellpower gives you the most damage per item point irrespective of hitcap, post-BC. You can argue all day about missing a scorch refresh, or having to recast a LB, but that won't make Hit strictly superior to Spell in DPS terms.
Wouldn't this also activate your second trinket too early, starting the fight with it on internal cooldown?
I personally LB, Scorch twice and FFB till LB explodes before popping cooldowns to avoid Combustion charges being taken by LB, having the internal cooldown syncing with my other cooldowns is a nice bonus.
Casting PoM locks out AP until PoM is consumed and for another 1.5s afterwards.
Casting AP locks out PoM for 10s. Having the AP locks out PoM while the you have the buff.
You cannot AP-PoM anything any more, even with glyphs, tricks and cheese.
// Arcane Potency affects all 5 volleys of Arcane Missiles.
The above seems wrong. The first missile consumes the buff and over.
Arcane Barrage coefficient is down to 2.5/3.5, from 3.0/3.5.
Glyph of Arcane Missiles works exactly like all other crit bonus damage increases like Burnout or 4T7.
Going to add this and clean up the OP soon.
Feel free to add if there are other things I've missed.
For what it's worth I'm disappointed by the mana gem glyph change, that only means that once we're in T8 content our mana gems will once again become almost useless. Since even with the change the glyph is subpar for any spec, a much better way would have been to just change the Gem itself to grant 40% more mana. Or maybe change the glyph to 40% more mana and spellpower like T7 (although I have a suspicion that even with the spellpower boost it's not enough to overcome Molten, might be better then AM glyph for arcane).
2 pc T7 will be pretty easy to keep until you have 4 pc T8 and you never know what the T8 set bonuses are going to be like, so it's quite possible you'll never miss the T7 ones.
The problem with the old mana gem glyph was that it was underpowered for a major glyph, so no one in their right mind took it. The new one is pretty well balanced with the mage armor glyph (especially since it doesn't rely on mage armor) and works well for PvP as well.
I think the original 3 tier system for glyphs would have been better... 3 purely cosmetic glyphs (possibly from achievements etc), then what we now have as minor glyphs and then major glyphs. Right now all glyphs are class-specific, but it would have been nice to have cosmetic glyphs that aren't specific to classes.
Actually you would be dropping 2t7 much earlier than getting 4t8 due to the simple fact that ulduar items will probably be better and since the set bonus although good is not overpowered it'll happen much faster than you imagine.
Balanced with mage armor.. hmm it's weaker than Mage Armor and Mage Armor is not a glyph you should be using anyway since it's subpar to every other glyph for any spec. I wasn't starting a discussion on glyphs, just mentioning the fact that Mana Gems are lackluster, the best thing blizzard did was make a set bonus to make them 'fun' to use, without the said bonus we'll be reduced to using the good old [Flame Cap].
[b][size="3"] [Potion of Wild Magic] changed to +200 Spell Power and +200 crit rating for 15s. Competitive now, but still below Speed Potions in mot cases.
I was under the impression that wild magic potion, while slightly less of a bonus than the speed potion, is better when you stack with heroism. I could be wrong because I've made a lot of assumptions here, but it doesn't seem you get the benefit from the speed potion during the heroism because you are already capped out on haste. So in a boss fight, where you pop heroism every time, wouldn't that essentially make the comparison 1.3 x wild magic vs 1 x Speed Potion? Then you add on to the benefit because you normally pop other cooldowns during heroism too like AP and mana gem.
I was under the impression that wild magic potion, while slightly less of a bonus than the speed potion, is better when you stack with heroism. I could be wrong because I've made a lot of assumptions here, but it doesn't seem you get the benefit from the speed potion during the heroism because you are already capped out on haste. So in a boss fight, where you pop heroism every time, wouldn't that essentially make the comparison 1.3 x wild magic vs 1 x Speed Potion? Then you add on to the benefit because you normally pop other cooldowns during heroism too like AP and mana gem.
It depends on your spec/rotation. As long as a potion of speed doesn't take you below the 1 second gcd cap on the meat of your damage output, you're getting full benefit from it. However under bloodlust you may be inclined to drop instant casts as they're well below gcd cap; again this is spec dependent. With my fairly poor/low haste rating gear, with raid buffs + lust + IV + potion of speed my arcane blasts are 1.1 second cast. With better gear, they'd probably dip under 1 second gcd, so I'd no longer be getting full benefit from it and I'd look at other options (either a wild magic, or using potion of speed just after IV so I get 20 seconds of IV + lust, 15 seconds of lust + potion of speed). I suspect that my AB cast would have to drop significantly below 1s with potion of speed for other options to turn out to be superior though.
Last I remember reading on the subject was that wild magic was better for FFB in general, about even for firearc, and inferior to Potion of Speed for arcane. This was pre- arcane missiles glyph change, which has slightly increased the value of crit to arcane compared to what it used to be. I believe arcane tends to drop abarr whilst instants are <1 sec, while ffb/firearc continue to re-apply living bomb/use hot streak procs despite being under the gcd cap.
Interesting, but there is no gain from a speed potion used during heroism/bloodlust versus using the speed potion outside heroism. The increased speed does not gain an opportunity advantage by using it during this buff.
The wild magic potion, on the other hand, is multiplied by the heroism/bloodlust. 200 spell power, and 200 crit multiplied by 30%, and of course multiplied with other cooldowns used at this time. It seems to me the comparison is better looked at as 266 spell power and 266 crit rating vs 500 haste.
Interesting, but there is no gain from a speed potion used during heroism/bloodlust versus using the speed potion outside heroism. The increased speed does not gain an opportunity advantage by using it during this buff.
The wild magic potion, on the other hand, is multiplied by the heroism/bloodlust. 200 spell power, and 200 crit multiplied by 30%, and of course multiplied with other cooldowns used at this time. It seems to me the comparison is better looked at as 266 spell power and 266 crit rating vs 500 haste.
You seem to forget that haste effects stack multiplicative as well. So Bloodlust and Icy Veins improve your Speed Potion as much as they improve your Wild Magic.
The only thing that's additive is haste rating, everything else gets multiplied. So, the Speed Potion does get significantly better during haste effect cooldown, until of course you run into the soft cap (GCD at 1.5s) or the hard cap where your main nukes (Fireball/Frostbolt/Arcane Blast) hit the 1.0s cast time cap.
Your casting speed is (1+Bloodlust)*(1+IcyVeins)*(1+AirTotem)*(1+Netherwind)*(1+RetAura)*(1+GearHaste+Haste RatingProcs), the significant cooldowns stack multiplicatively.
After a small fuss with a random mage on my server, im just here to get something confirmed.
Speccing torment-fire gives a increase in overall dps due to being less RNG based, and the use of torment ofc?
As far as i see, and on simcraft and simulations in Rawr, is that if you can support TTw fire due to the hit, it gives a average 200dps increase over Ffb?
After a small fuss with a random mage on my server, im just here to get something confirmed.
Speccing torment-fire gives a increase in overall dps due to being less RNG based, and the use of torment ofc?
As far as i see, and on simcraft and simulations in Rawr, is that if you can support TTw fire due to the hit, it gives a average 200dps increase over Ffb?
I think rawr already answered your question
But yes, with proper gear 18/53/0 will beat 0/53/18. Can't say if it's exactly a 200dps average, but somewhere in that region, probably slightly less depending on TtW uptime, and whether or not you got a mage buddy to trade your FM with.
I can tell you anecdotally as someone who basically has all the best in slot gear that 18/53/0 put me and the other regular mage in our guild WAY ahead on dps compared to either 57/3/11 or 0/53/18. We do about 6100 dps on Patchwerk as Fireball, 5800 as Arcane, and 5600-5700 as Ffb. For now, as long as we stay hit capped, we're going with Fireball.
Perhaps your raid's composition favours Fireball spec? With today's super-short boss fights such as Patchwerk, I, with my almost-best-in-slot gear using FFB spec, can beat our fire (and arcane) mages with their almost-best-in-slot gear. Caveat is there's focus magic on me and we have a DK who uses Rune of Razorice, so conditions are favourable for FFB.
With such short fights, I observe that whoever has the best luck with RNG in getting more crits wins. I suspect we won't see much difference until Ulduar where bosses may have significantly higher HP pools. For now, choose whichever spec you prefer according to taste. I keep FFB spec because it has more usable AoE, i don't like flamestrike's small impact radius and I don't like having to be at point-blank range to AoE, due to whirlwinding mobs and aggro issues. For our usual raid setup, Rawr says Fireball spec would give me 20 more DPS, which isn't worth the switch.
Your casting speed is (1+Bloodlust)*(1+IcyVeins)*(1+AirTotem)*(1+Netherwind)*(1+RetAura)*(1+GearHaste+Haste RatingProcs), the significant cooldowns stack multiplicatively.
Didn't they change that with 3.0 that all non-selfbuffs of the same category don't stack, and only the strongest counts?
So you either have Bloodlust OR WoA totem OR Ret Aura?
I thought the same too, but ive been told many times it isnt the case and that ret aura/imp moonkin aura stacks with everything else. Even my spreadsheet on the ffb thread had that bug all along.
<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, I think you answered a slightly different question than he asked.
Granting a similar effect does not mean it's in the same non-stacking category. Air Totem is a Spell Haste buff, Moonkin/Ret Aura is an Everything Haste buff, and Bloodlust is... a Bloodlust buff, being of large effect, small duration, and with an exhaustionbearance side effect. They look similar since you're getting haste from all of them, but they are distinct. Of note is that Retkin aura (I believe!) provides melee haste as well, which apparently makes it a completely different buff category.
[e] On second read, maybe you were answering the same question. I thought you were saying Ret aura and Moonkin aura stack with each other, not with everything else.
Moonkin Aura and Ret Aura are both genereic 3% haste buffs. I.e. melee haste, ranged haste and spell haste.
And they are categorised as raid buff, so they stack with everything else. Like WoA Totem and Bloodlust, which are different categories.
The only thing that does not stack intentionally are 1-person buffs. From the 3.1 Patch Notes:
Originally Posted by Classes: General
* Hysteria, Tricks of the Trade, Enrage, Wrecking Crew, Death Wish, Arcane Power, Owlkin Frenzy, Beast Within, Avenging Wrath and Hysteria damage bonuses no longer stack together.
I also remember Power Infusion not stacking with ... Bloodlust? Or at least they announced something to not stack with.
Things got changed too often for me to remember what it used to stack with or not, and how it actually is now.
Well, the way I have it set up in the spreadsheet (so, the way I believe it works) is [ret aura / imp moonkin form] and [bloodlust / PI / woa]. As far as I know those are the only non-stacking haste breakdowns.
<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
02/02/09, 3:40 AM
