Given that there are several raidwide mana regen providers (Shaman, Frost Mage, Shadow Priest), and the ability of a Survival Hunter to provide rage, energy and runic power is unique, it seems pretty certain to me that they'll go into a melee group -- the mana return is for the Hunter's own benefit.

Well, the quote you'd originally responded to was specifically concerned about talent specs at level 70. Since you can't get Icy Veins and Living Bomb at 70, the frost tree is much less useful, as you're talking about 4.725 hit rating per point invested.

At 80 it gets trickier because you can get Icy Veins and still have points for Living Bomb (Which also makes the three points in Ice Floes a little more worthwhile). At that point, you're talking about 11 points to get 78.69 hit rating and IV on a 2.5 minute cooldown instead of 8 points to get 78.69 hit rating.

That is an entirely useless calculation in my opinion and would only apply if you were forced to choose only between crit and hit.
Crit rating has a horrid dps per rating compared to haste and damage (even with burnout.)

It would be a useful metric of a talent points power however if all ratings gave us the same dps increase. I don't quite understand why crit is so far behind in terms of power but I'm sure they have a reason for it.

Besides it's hard to quantify effects such as a 4 min c.d iceblock which could result in a large dps increase on Brutallus or Felmyst.

The real reason for possibly shunning EP is the fact you can't get IV and Lb at 70 and there may be mana concerns in that really we don't know if LB will be sustainable until we see the final talents that they will push live for 3.0.

I think you're confusing the value of Ratings with the value of the stats they convert to. Yes, Crit Rating is a terrible stat, horribly inefficient. Not because 1% Crit is worth a lot less DPS than 1% Hit, but because it takes so much more rating to get that 1%.

This is why it can be useful to look at talents in terms of the rating they provide: because it translates directly into budget savings on gear. It's a more efficient use of gear to use it to increase your hit chance than it is to use it to increase your crit chance (or haste, or spell power, or damage multipliers).

Hit Rating is a terrific and efficient stat, but the flipside of that is that hit talents are relatively inefficient. 1% hit for 1 talent point, OK, that's a good buy. 3% hit for 8 talent points? Not so hot. If you're not going all the way to Icy Veins -- and since you may well need Clearcasting to fuel Living Bomb, that's a good possibility -- it makes no sense to spend 8 points on 3% hit.

Well, my original remark here was that those 11 frost points turn into 30% mana regen and +10% spirit at lvl 80, both of which I value highly.

It is my understanding that ratings aside in a 2 roll system that 1% hit is superior to 1% crit and that the % increase in damage provided by 1% crit will diminish as your crit rate increases.

Assume 100 spells cast, 100 damage per spell, crits for double damage. 100% hit chance.
25% crit.
Total damage done= 75*100 + 25*200 = 12500
50% crit.
Total damage done = 50*100 + 50*200= 15000

Dps increase of 20% for a crit chance increase of 25%.

However regardless of that looking at talents as a rating equivalent is not wise unless you were planning on socketing that specific stat.
Is it more efficient to gem for hit IF there is direct competition between say a 3% hit and 3% haste talent? Sure but the savings have nothing at all to do with the rating equivalent of crit.

I see what you're saying and I agree with your general theme however the savings on item budget you get are not necessarily between what you are comparing (say hit and crit) but what you would socket instead.

A quick example again say Pyromaniac Vs EP.
You look at it as
3*(1% crit rating equiv) Vs 3*(1% hit rating equiv)
I look at it as
3*(2nd most efficient gemming option after hit) Vs 3*(1% hit rating equiv)

The relative value of hit increases as your crit increases, but the breakpoint of which is more valuable depends on your class/spec mechanics. A base caster with 0% crit and 99% hit gets twice the value from hit as crit; the same caster with 300%-crit FFBs gets three times the bonus from crit as hit, and that same caster at 33% crit gets double the benefit from crit as hit. A fire mage with ignite, hot streak, burnout, and MoE gets a lot of comparative benefits from crit, so the point where 1% hit is worth more is probably unobtainable, although it depends on how much you value MoE.

Looking at it in terms of item budget isn't entirely accurate, because one rating is worth a different amount of DPS depending on what rating it is. However, it does sort of give a worst-case estimate of the DPS cost of the talent by figuring how much you would have to sacrifice to regem for that stat. You could probably gain even more DPS by further regemming optimally instead of for the lost stats. A better approximation is 3% crit versus how much spellpower you could buy with 3% hit. The most accurate look is to calculate overall DPS for those specs including optimal gear/gems tailored for the individual specs; I'm not familiar enough with sunwell loots and mage styles to do that myself. Though, I suspect that Lhivera's general point is accurate that the spec without EP will come ahead because it's cheap to compensate with items.

To add to Lhivera's point: the disadvantage of a spec with a higher hit cap is generally erased or made less severe as gear increases. The itemization budget greatly favors a broader diversity of stats on items (hence why so many items with 3 different dps stats are greatly superior to their counterparts that have only 2). As long as the overall DPS tradeoff from losing the lower hit cap is a wash (and probably even if it's slightly unfavorable), the ability to get more bang for one's itemization bucks can easily generate an advantage.

In short, by needing a more diverse set of stats, a spec with a higher hit cap will likely be able to make use of more items with 3 dps stats rather than 2 and thus gear up along a path that is closer to the optimal gear path. However, if nearly all items have 3 dps stats (and few have, say, 4), this would be a moot point.

Indeed, I agreed with the gist of the argument, that is if it is possible to hit cap without using 'bad' gear then yes if you need to shed dps talent points for some reason then hit should be the first to go.
The comparisons to rating though needs to take into consideration what the next best gemming/gearing option is instead of the actual talent loss, especially if you're going to use some sort of rating per talent point metric.

On a personal note though I hate gemming things like Leggings of Calamity or Sunfire Handwraps with hit, I feel like I'm cheating the iLvl budget when I put damage/haste in there

+10% sprit is pretty bad. Even with 1k intellect and 700 spirit (high estimate) it's only ~20 mp5 with mage armour or meditaiton, 40 mp5 with both.
Elemental Precision would offer 50 mp5 just from the cost reduction.

Also, if Torment of the Weak works on bosses (not unlikely with all the "Ensnared" spam even on immune mobs), it's a strong alternative to Meditation.
Ballpark 250 mp5 vs. 250 dmg at high gear estimates. It would currently be better to chose Torment and accept a drop in LB uptime.
Or you can always take 2/3+3/3 there.


For the 18 Frost vs. 18 Arcane discussion:
Bear in mind that frost gives 10% universal cost reduction as well with 18 points. So its:
Frost: -13% mana cost on frost/fire (10% arcane), 3% hit, ~3% damage from Icy Veins, random utility/weavable FFB.
Arcane: -10% mana cost universally, Imp. Amplify/Focus Magic/+10% spirit, and 30% mana regen or +6% damage.

Those look pretty equal overall if Torment works. If not it's a clear choice between mana+utility vs. damage+control.
We also have to see what Focus Magic will become, and we have no clue whether we'll be OOM in a minute or never drop below 90% mana in level 80 fights.


Also, Devs often mentioned Survival Hunters as mana batteries. Which might mean that Hunting Party may go raid-wide.
If it doesn't, there is still a lot of scaling raid-wide mana recovery.

We simply have to wait and see how mana will look like in raids. JoW from a Ret Paladin alone is something absurd like 500++ mp5.


Sunwell gear has mostly has 3 DPS stats and manages to dodge +hit very well.
BT/HS gear mostly has 3 DPS stat and and a ton of +hit because +haste wasn't a mainstream stat yet.

If we could build our own gear from item budget, then +3% hit wouldn't add much.
However, we can't, and +3% hit can be anything from "completely wasted" (BT/HS) to "very valuable" (SP).

Right, that's a situation where most or all the gear has 3 distinct DPS stats, so the itemization budget advantage is nullified. People who need the hit will favor the BT gear, while people who have capped will favor the Sunwell gear. It doesn't totally work because of the item level difference--you might say high hit caps gain an advantage while progressing through BT that is nullified when they get to Sunwell.

A lot of the real tradeoff will depend, as usual, on how well Blizzard chooses to make their gear. There's nothing stopping Blizzard from making a plethora of 4-DPS-stat items, but even they must be conscious that their itemization budget system leaves room for a considerable gap in usefulness between "well-itemized" and "poorly itemized" items. The gap between a 4-DPS-stat item and a 2-DPS-stat item that spend the same proportion of the budget is not trivial.

Just a note on sunwell gear and +hit, someone listed all available +hit gear from sunwell a few pages ago. I believe the point was that you dont find much of it in there, but if you add upp all the +hit those mentioned gearpieces grant you and use the yellow sockets on them for hit gems you have 200 hitrating right there. And thats from sunwell gear exlusively. Not to mention that it seems kinda silly to ignore any gear setup that isnt entierly looted from sunwell. The point of minmaxing your stats be it for pvp or pve is always to perform well. You wont ever have completed the optimal set of gear untill you have allready beaten the content you obtain it from and put things on farm. Thus BT and hyjal gear is a relevant factor in the debate on how to most efficently beat SWP. Who cares what the optimal gear setup is after you have Kiljaden on farm, what matters is the way to get there and beat him.

That is an understatement.

Improved Scorch: Increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
Winter's Chill: Also increases spell critical strike chance against the target.
Focus Magic: Now buffs raid instead of debuffing monsters.

More so, those are only 3 or like 20+ buff changes. As predicted by some here, they went with a "most powerful buff wins" approach.

Furthermore, heroism/bloodlust is raid wide, but you can only hero once ever 5 min.

I really approve of the scorch/WC change--now identical. Affecting ALL schools is a unexpected (but pleasant) surprise.

Edit: Somehow I missed this huge, huge change:

First, wow. I am also willing to bet that this means mana regen is gone from improved WE, as it is not mentioned at all in the mana battery discussion.

misery is now +3% spell hit, meaning we no longer need ele precision for fire builds, as suggested in the last page or so.

It doesn't stack with Improved Faerie Fire, so it's no net change aside from more flexible raid composition.

We really need to wait for a new build with some of these changes implemented before we can begin serious speculation about it. The loss of Imp Scorch means we're due for some major re-tuning and I'll await those changes before further comment.

My only real thought at present is that if Imp Scorch and Winter's Chill are now identical, the Scorch glyph makes WC flatly inferior for any situation with multiple targets. However for sustained single-target fights WC would be preferred because it doesn't require casting a lower DPS spell to maintain.

Not sure of the importance of this but thought it should be pointed out. With the raid-wide Bloodlusts fire mages will not be receiving Bloodlusts timed with Molten Fury, or Bloodlusts will be timed by raid leaders at 20% which means everyone in the raid would be timing their cooldowns to expect it at that time. This only affects fire mages which there may be only one in a raid.

For some reason I didn't see the WE mana regen in the part of mana regeneration. Perhaps I just missed it or it was left out and does not work like other classes mana regeneration effects.

Making scorch the same as winters chill means, thats 3 less points I have to spend as a fire mage if there is a frost mage in the raid as now I won't need to waste time scorching? How was this even thought fair? That is a huge nerf to fire damage as it now stands and a very large one with what we thought was coming by it changing to frost arcane fire.

Just an observation, but how is putting the same debuff in two different trees smart?

Dieing to see the new beta build cause to be honest, the change to scorch and the fact that it doesnt stack with Winter's Chill is totally bullshit at this point. So lets see what else they changed to justify smacking pretty much the exact same buffs on 2 trees and not making them stack. Dont want 3 trees with the same buffs and the only option i get is what type of spell i am casting... thats the wrong direction.

10% damage is a huge "nerf" so yeah its worrying...

Hell I was already trying to position myself to accept the 5% damage decrease to fire alone, this one is prretty freaking huge as now it is losing 15% damage all at once. Why the hell would someone spend 10 seconds stacking 10% crit when frost can just cast normally and do the same exact debuff?

Maybe you missed the part about class performances not being finished:

"Before we are done, we will thoroughly test the performance of every class. Do not assume that the classes' current performance relative to others in the beta is final. Some classes (and specializations) will need to be reduced in power and some increased."

Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting the adjusted talent trees. Imagine, you could actually raid without being pigeonholed into one spec. Too good to be true? Who knows, but I'm optimistic.

I didn't miss anything. The fact that they changed it the way they have with the numbers that are before them just leaves me scratching my head. They posted just the other day that soon a patch with all these changes are going live then today making this post late in the afternoon makes me wonder who thought that giving mages the exact same debuff in two different specs was a worth while endeavor.

And then on top of that the same buff makes it so that fire mages will do even less damage while frost will remain basically unchanged as to its play style or damage. I wasn't aware that fire was blowing everyone away so bad that it needed a basically from one day to the next 15% damage tax.

Do not misunderstand, I realize this is beta, but why would anyone with half a brain pull the trigger on such a change?