* Combustion now also increases your critical strike damage bonus with Fire damage spells by 50% when activated, now lasts until you have caused 3 non-periodic critical strikes with Fire spells.
At first I doubted it'd go through like that, because it'd essentially be giving you free damage. However, it's not exactly like the (possible) free augmented LB crits will rock the record charts.
At least it's a lot more useful than its current incarnation. At least now you can realistically expect that one talent point to increase your output, and have some non-trivial effect when CD-stacking at >35%.
Let alone the fact that now, it'll be possible to sync its CD, instead of having to worry about "everything else is up, just Combustion may or may not be for the next 3-9sec".
I've recently picked up [Reign of the Unliving], and I've noticed some odd behaviour, for instance on an Algalon 10 fight, 4 pillars hit Living Constellations I of course never targeted them.
It seems the damage is applied to the target with which you have the most threat comparatively (they probably had a random agro on me at the time?).
probably a living bomb explosion hit them and triggered the last crit. pillars always hit the mob that the last crit happened on, independent of your current target
No, the pillar is cast on whichever target generated the 3rd mote from a critical spell hitting said target. So what happened was you had 2 motes of flame, your LB on Algalon exploded, and the explosion hit the constellation with a crit, thus generating the third 3 mote and sending your pillar at the constellation instead of Algalon.
What is very nice about the new combustion is that it "now lasts until you have caused 3 non-periodic critical strikes with Fire spells" which means we don't have to worry LB dot crits from consuming charges (which was such a big problem with the old combustion). it is likely to affect all spells (periodic and non-periodic) and if it does then using it while putting up multiple LBs (as mentioned a few posts above) will likely be the best time to use it since your LB dots will crit more and harder until combustion is consumed by the explosions and you would not have to worry about Fireball consuming your first charge when you pop combustion because it would have crit anyway.
Though combustion won't last long (since crit rates are so high we may consume it in 3 seconds (Fireball followed by a HS pyro and LB explodes) I can see a decent boost in DPS/damage done because the 50% crit damage will not only affect our direct damage, but also ignite which will follow after our barrage of massive crits. I will be sure to test this on the PTR assuming that the 50% will be additive to burnout and will make our crit modifer 200% + ignite = 280%, will confirm when I get home tonight and have the chance.
Though combustion won't last long (since crit rates are so high we may consume it in 3 seconds (Fireball followed by a HS pyro and LB explodes)
I would think you'd want to time LB and combustion to ensure that all the charges were spent on fireballs and pyros and very specifically NOT LB detonations, as LB detonations are a significantly lower damage ability - thus, guaranteeing a crit on your LB explosion and having it soak up a charge would be less of a damage gain than having that same charge used on a bigger spell.
I do wonder, however, if the new combustion will allow you to "double dip" on the last charge much like FoF, so you'd have a sequence like: Fireball, Fireball (HS Proc), Fireball+Pyro
I don't believe there's any precedent for a temporary buff that modifies the critical strike damage multiplier in the game, though (only talents), so PTR testing would likely be necessary to determine if both the trailing fireball+pyro, or only the fireball benefit from the +50% crit bonus damage effect.
I would think you'd want to time LB and combustion to ensure that all the charges were spent on fireballs and pyros and very specifically NOT LB detonations, as LB detonations are a significantly lower damage ability - thus, guaranteeing a crit on your LB explosion and having it soak up a charge would be less of a damage gain than having that same charge used on a bigger spell.
I do wonder, however, if the new combustion will allow you to "double dip" on the last charge much like FoF, so you'd have a sequence like: Fireball, Fireball (HS Proc), Fireball+Pyro
I don't believe there's any precedent for a temporary buff that modifies the critical strike damage multiplier in the game, though (only talents), so PTR testing would likely be necessary to determine if both the trailing fireball+pyro, or only the fireball benefit from the +50% crit bonus damage effect.
the lightning buff in the hodir fight is actually a critical strike multiplier.
I believe you will still be able to double-dip from combustion as the charge is consumed upon impact and not cast(it still works this way, right?), i.e you will have the combustion buff until your third critical lands meaning you can cast a hspyroblast while the third crit is flying. As far as I know critical strikes are determined on the successful cast and not the impact, it would be very weird if critical strike damage didn't work the same way.
While combustion in practice is now good enough to take I think it still lacks conceptually, or has even become worse. It already scales negatively with crit however now it will do so with haste as well as the more haste you get the less lb tics will benefit from combustion, or am I driveling now?
I'm not sure but it might just be a band-aid for a more elegant solution incoming in 3.3 or Cataclysm.
The example I mentioned (poping combustion then FB,pyro and LB explosion to cosume it right away), though sub-optimal, just showed how fast combustion can be consumed, givin the situation. I also did mention that likely the best time to use combustion is when applying LB(s) since you do not want the fireball you just casted to crit and take the first charge right as you pop it, you may also want to use it after renewing scorch since it would have the same benefit but I'd prefer after using LB since you would then have the full 12 seconds of LB to consume the charges with FB and pyro before the explosion.
* Combustion now also increases your critical strike damage bonus with Fire damage spells by 50% when activated, now lasts until you have caused 3 non-periodic critical strikes with Fire spells.
Currently, Fireballs typically hit critical strikes of ~ 12000-14,000.
Combustion isn't a 50% crit multiplier. It's an additive 50% of the critical strike bonus damage, like 5/5 Burnout. That means you go from 175% to 200%, or from 181.75% to 209% with CSD.
With these numbers, it's a 15% increase in crit damage. With the given values of 14k Fireball crits, which are close to 20k with Ignite, Combustion adds 3k damage to 3 crits, thats 9k extra damage every 3 minutes, that's 50 DPS or 0.5% DPS at best. You'll get some Living Bomb ticks increased as well.
Still not great, but should make it better than Student of the Mind at least.
The two questions that remain are:
1) Fireball (crit) => Combustion. Does this still eat 1 of the 3 Combustion charges? It doesn't benefit from the 10% crit chance bonus, I presume it doesn't benefit from the 50% crit bonus damage either?
(That one might acually be easier to test with Scorch.) [Edit] Answer: It eats a charge but also benefits from the increased crit modifier.
2) Can you Shatter-Combo Combustion? Casting CastCombustion"-FB1(crit)-FB2(crit)-FB3(crit)-Pyro(crit)-CombustionFades, getting the crit change and especially crit damage bonus Pyroblast? [Edit]: I'm referring to the instant cast (Pyroblast or Fire Blast), whether it gets the crit chance and damage bonus of a 4th "Ghost Charge" or not.
You want to know if FB in the air->Combustion eats a charge if it crits, and if it gets the benefit? I'll have an answer in a few minutes.
Edit: Answer, Yes it eats a charge, yes it benefits. FB->Combustion->FB->FB produced three crits all within 70 damage of eachother and the combustion buff went away.
I'm not sure I follow your second scenario though, do you mean can you sneak an extra crit out using an instacast at the end of the series? That is:
FFB 1 eats charge 1
FFB 2 eats charge 2
FFB 3 + Fireblast eats charge 3 and both get benefit?
edit: Cant read
Last edited by Zaldinar : 09/10/09 at 5:05 PM.
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The wording is "critical strike damage bonus", so like Burnout, Ice Shards, etc it's talking about modifying your base 50% bonus damage on crit, not the total crit damage. If I remember correctly, the crit bonus damage multipliers are additive? So for fireball we're looking at something like hit * (1 + 0.5 * (1 + 0.5) * 1.03 * 1.4 without the new Combustion up and hit * (1 + 0.5 * (1 + 0.5 + 0.5)) * 1.03 * 1.4 while it's up I'd imagine. So you're gaining hit * .25 * 1.03 * 1.4 while it's up.
With those numbers and the WoL link above during combustion I'd expect the following bonuses:
Fireball: 2,589 extra
Pyroblast: 2,301 extra
Living Bomb (tick): 436 extra
Living Bomb (bomb): 954 extra
If I understand my mechanics right, in the absolute best case, you could get three fireball crits out of it, one HS-Pyro at the end, two LB ticks, and the LB explosion, for a grand total of 11,894 bonus damage. I'd expect the timer to work just like existing combustion, so it's 3 minutes from the end of combustion rather than the beginning so say 189s total. That's 63 dps in a very ideal single-target situation.
Worst-case, crits are bad so an LB pops, none of the ticks crit, and you get two Fireball crits. So 6,132 damage over say 192s or 32 dps.
I could have my math or mechanics wrong, and I didn't account for stacking it with Molten Fury, Flame Cap, or things like Icehowl stun, Valk empower, or a mega stack from Jaraxxus, but it seems lackluster compared to what I had originally hoped. Well, at least it doesn't scale negatively with crit. My numbers are a bit rough, but I really doubt there will be substantial negative-scaling with haste due to consuming it before LB ticks. If anything, I'd say it'd say positively with haste cause you're trying to use it up before LB pops.
Combustion isn't a 50% crit multiplier. It's an additive 50% of the critical strike bonus damage, like 5/5 Burnout. That means you go from 175% to 200%, or from 181.75% to 209% with CSD.
With these numbers, it's a 15% increase in crit damage. With the given values of 14k Fireball crits, which are close to 20k with Ignite, Combustion adds 3k damage to 3 crits, thats 9k extra damage every 3 minutes, that's 50 DPS or 0.5% DPS at best. Still not great, but it makes it better than Student of the Mind at least.
The two questions that remain are:
1) Fireball (crit) => Combustion. Does this still eat 1 of the 3 Combustion charges? It doesn't benefit from the 10% crit chance bonus, I presume it doesn't benefit from the 50% crit bonus damage either?
(That one might acually be easier to test with Scorch.)
2) Can you Shatter-Combo Combustion? Casting Pyro-CastCombustion"-FB1(crit)-FB2(crit)-FB3(crit)-Pyro(crit)-CombustionFades, getting the crit change and especially crit damage bonus Pyroblast?
It strikes me as quite odd that a mid-air fireball would benefit from combustion. For all we know, damage is calculated upon cast, not upon landing. Additionally, it makes one wonder if it gains the extra crit% as well on a mid-air fireball. Basically, either they did some kind of special patch for combustion specifically, or theres a fundamental shift in the way damage calculation is done. Is this an indication that now all damage is calculated upon landing ? (which would mean shatter combos don't exist anymore and that ignite munching is gone) Or is it only for combustion?
<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
Anyone noticing their SPI drop dramatically with 245 loot and tier? The three tier pieces I have (hands, helm and shoulders), the two crafted items and the BOE cloak, have no spirit. I went from ~850 raid buffed to about 450.
Anyone noticing their SPI drop dramatically with 245 loot and tier? The three tier pieces I have (hands, helm and shoulders), the two crafted items and the BOE cloak, have no spirit. I went from ~850 raid buffed to about 450.
Agree, Looking at other 245 items that are not teir set peices that have +90 or more sprit on them. If the other stats can make up 2% more crit, I would be happy to skip the 4 peice bouns. Rarw should help cacluate that. Just watch out for gear with lot haste and spi.
It strikes me as quite odd that a mid-air fireball would benefit from combustion. For all we know, damage is calculated upon cast, not upon landing. Additionally, it makes one wonder if it gains the extra crit% as well on a mid-air fireball. Basically, either they did some kind of special patch for combustion specifically, or theres a fundamental shift in the way damage calculation is done. Is this an indication that now all damage is calculated upon landing ? (which would mean shatter combos don't exist anymore and that ignite munching is gone) Or is it only for combustion?
Manly, three more tests, same exact results. Also confirmed by ZIT that Munching and gaining bugs are both still present. And a quick few attempts shows shatter combos as working as we know them to work... This is odd indeed.
Roywyn, in answer to your second scenario, getting to two charges consumed on ignite, casting Pyroblast->Fireblast produced two crits consistent with the extra 50% damage value. 3011 damage from fireblast and 5623 from pyroblast, with 1677 spell power, expected ranges with the 1.75 crit modifier are 2876 to 3174 and 5492 to 6054 respectively with no CSD and 0/5 Firepower, 0/3 PwF.
To truly model the game, we first must research it. http://zaldinar.wordpress.com/
Proven TheoryCrafting Stuff, chain casting in a PTR near you soon.
My best guess based on this is that whether or not a cast is a crit is calculated upon leaving your hands, but how much damage that particular hit or crit does is calculated upon hitting the target. Having CoE placed on a target while a fireball is mid-flight is another thing to test to confirm or deny this hypothesis.
Edit: Well, I'm not fully understanding Zand's last sentence there. Are you saying a fourth "charge" of combustion is receiving the extra crit damage bonus as well when a spell is in the air and combustion falls off before that spell hits the target? If so, then the hypothesis is already wrong, and somehow Blizzard has specifically coded combustion so that a spell in the air at activation will benefit from it, whereas no other status changes (whether positive or negative) will affect a cast in-transit.
Edit2: Okay, did my own testing. When trying to use a 4th "charge" of combustion, the bonus crit chance does seem to affect the fourth cast (I almost never failed to crit on those casts) as it always has, but NOT the bonus critical damage.
My fireball crits with combustion (including the ones that hit just before combustion faded in my fireball->instapyro combos and the ones that were in the air when activating combustion) were all in the 8606-9166 range. Fireball crits without combustion were 7530-7932. Pyroblast crits with combustion were 8917-9440. Pyroblast crits without combustion (which includes the ones that hit just after the buff faded when the fireball hit a split-second before the pyroblast in the air behind it) were 7843-8251. This was with about 20 data points per "situation", so won't be full ranges of damage, but is enough to establish only the fireball in the fireball->pyroblast "double dip" of the fourth charge was benefiting from the critical strike bonus damage.
However I also re-established most definitely that Praxis from 2pT8 procing wasn't affecting the damage of the fireball that proc'd it, only subsequent casts, so changes in spellpower doesn't affect casts in midair. It seems to be a specific feature of the critical strike bonus damage mechanic that it takes effect on hit instead of cast insofar as affecting the damage done on that hit.
09/09/09, 9:23 PM
