Oh lord I almost don't care about the raid dps possibilities, that looks pretty fun.
Question: I kept seeing Failed notices on your casting. Were you being interrupted by the "switching places" that you mentioned and that I could see in the video? If so.... that's pretty ill-conceived.
Very odd. I noticed since your images were using frostbolts even though you're fire, plus since you're the only one of the four to actually be procing anything, it's pretty obvious which is the "real" Thrudnir. Unfortunate issue PvP-wise. The damage increase seems quite significant, though. Do your images get the same health as you or significantly less?
I couldn't test more than 1 minute, stucked in the login screen since then. But I will try to test a lot more if we are able to login. I couldn't even check if they have health.
Someone posting on the official forums had time to do a scaling test, and said their images were hitting for the same amounts naked as fully geared. This could have serious scaling implications. (Overpowered upon reaching 80, followed by falling way behind as gear improves?)
From what I can see on that video the 'switching' may be interfering with the players spell casting. Its hard to tell. It doesn't seem to mess with the images casting though, since their spells stay synchronized throughout (except when one of them decides not to fireblast?).
Lets wait until someone on the beta can give some solid answers.
They also noted that the HP seems to be about 1/3 of your HP. I wonder if the dmg is meant to be equal to your naked dmg but divided between the 3 copies...
I can only imagine that this is going to be revised numerous times before live, especially the weirdness of switching around, interrupting casting, etc. A beta mage should also really recommend that each copy casts a different spell (1 from each tree seems appropriate).
This could have serious scaling implications. (Overpowered upon reaching 80, followed by falling way behind as gear improves?)
Like what? Do you think that our damage is going to scale so much that this ability won't be worth the GCD in a raid for damage? (ignoring some perks for having additional false targets around)
Like what? Do you think that our damage is going to scale so much that this ability won't be worth the GCD in a raid for damage? (ignoring some perks for having additional false targets around)
No, but blizzard balances our damage against them now, say they're 20% of our dps now, (and blizzard nerfs us to 80%), then they fall behind to 10% of our dps as gear progresses.
I did try hard to test mirror image, but the server is literally crashing every minute. I had the misfortune to hop on a flight path.
<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
...it sounds as if your threat may be split up between the three images (leaving yours wiped completely). Apparently he put some threat onto an elite, summoned his elemental and cast mirror image, and the elite proceeded to wipe out all three images and the water elemental before aggro returned to him.
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.
1- Gear/no gear does not changes the numbers at all. They do the same damage.
2- As mirror image is going on, it keeps randomly switching you across the images. Yes, this will interrupt your current cast and it will not complete. So far it seems on average I get 2-3 swaps per activation.
3- The mirror images cast and hit as people have said, fireblasts that hurt and shitty frostbolts. Spec makes no difference to their damage or what they cast.
4- The frostbolts from mirror images do snare.
5- The fireblast does not ignite.
6- for some reason, sometimes their fireblast crit for 4.8-4.9k damage. I simply don't get it.
(more to come, testing in between every server crash)
<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
Threat. A front-loaded crit will cause threat to ramp up much faster. In a raid, it's better to have the ignite, even if buggy. (And who cares about trash, we're all about bosses). The vast majority of your damage will not be bugged out.
I never understood why Ignite hasn't yet been changed to deal 40% damage in one tick, 2 seconds after the crit. It salvages the anti-threat mechanism, it solves any timing related ignite bug issues... and it simultaneously boosts the fire tree's PvP viability by making Fire crits less of a punishing back-loaded PvP damage talent.
Revert all mechanics back to pre-TBC days and stack all ignites into one debuff.... there is simply no potential for rolling ignites with a single ignite tick and there is no shenanigans with latency bugs.
If I'm interpreting that right, then the mirror images have 200% innate crit damage?
Edit: Missed your edit. 250% seems a bit excessive; I wouldn't guess that without a bigger sample. It could just be a wife damage range and the crits falling in the upper end.
edit #2:
Request: could an arcane mage try putting focus magic on the images and seeing if they benefit from it? Since they arn't 'controllable' pets, can you even buff them with it?
Alright so I got around to test a bit.
2- As mirror image is going on, it keeps randomly switching you across the images. Yes, this will interrupt your current cast and it will not complete. So far it seems on average I get 2-3 swaps per activation.
The switching of targets I would presume to be intentional.
The interrupting of your current cast I would assume (and hope) to be unintentional. The nature of the spell seems to indicate to me that as you don't 'voluntarily' move or perform any action that cancels a spell under live circumstances, the swapping of targets with mirror images is not meant to interrupt casting. At least this is how I interpret it.
A lot of polish awaits this spell, but it is far more exciting than Shatter Shield.
Something to try to test on Mirror Image is what does it look like from another player's point of view? (Especially from an enemy player's point of view?) If all 4 models look like they are doing the same thing to enemies (or even if they all have the same nameplate), it will still be good for confusion in PvP.
Edit: Also something to try would be to determine exactly how the threat reduction works (If you're in a group and don't have aggro does it drop you at all? How much does it drop you?)
Spirit only on 2 pieces there, but 120 between those 2. it would appear they want it to be available but optional? you could get a 4-piece bonus with only 60spirit from your set, so it looks like there's some flexibility between set and off-piece for different specs who do/don't like spi. Need to see more none-set items.
The switching of targets I would presume to be intentional.
The interrupting of your current cast I would assume (and hope) to be unintentional. The nature of the spell seems to indicate to me that as you don't 'voluntarily' move or perform any action that cancels a spell under live circumstances, the swapping of targets with mirror images is not meant to interrupt casting. At least this is how I interpret it.
You can click off the Mirror Image buff and stop yourself from swapping between your images while they (and you) continue to nuke uninterrupted.
I'm a little concerned about having a very hard time getting hit capped at the moment. Those are 5 of the highest-statted slots and across the whole set, plus set bonus and full hit rating gems in every yellow socket, you get 1/4 to 1/3 of the hit you'll need to cap. And still far more crit than hit on the pieces. Feels like a waste of itemization budget given how expensive crit is. The way these are statted reminds me of Tier 5, which I specifically pretty much passed right over due to lack of hit and overabundance of crit, using mostly non-set pieces after T4.
I am pleasantly surprised to see spirit on only two of the five pieces, though. I was afraid it'd be forced down our throats despite being basically useless to frost mages and nearly so for fire mages (unless mage armor turns out to be necessary, which has yet to be seen definitively either way).
Spirit only on 2 pieces there, but 120 between those 2. it would appear they want it to be available but optional? you could get a 4-piece bonus with only 60spirit from your set, so it looks like there's some flexibility between set and off-piece for different specs who do/don't like spi. Need to see more none-set items.
edit:
oh, and no blue sockets :P
For comparison, the Warlock set also has 2 pieces with spirit, although less overall (64 and 46). Shadow priests have 3 pieces with spirit. Healing Priests and Moonkin and Tree Druids have spirit on all 5 pieces.
Seems like the designers aren't sure what the real value of spirit is going to end up being for dps casters. I'm glad to finally have some pieces of mage tier gear without spirit on them though.
Also of note is that these all have 5 stats on them, fitting in with what seems to be Blizzard's new rule (Greens get 3 stats, Blues 4, Purples 5 (and presumably more than that later)). Comparatively, T6 had 6 or 7 different stats on each piece of gear.
Edit: Also, yay Consolidated food & water means that I can save 1 space on my bar. (See Conjure Refreshment). What the heck is a Mana Pie though?
Will it be considered T7 and the 25-man version T8? or not even part of a tier and will maybe be called T6.9? or are both 10 and 25-man versions considered T7 with the 25-man having better stats?
On the warlock set, I noticed a pattern that all sets had 2 out of the four: spirit, hit, crit, haste. Yours follow the exact same pattern. Spirit is basically be itemized as an optional DPS stat, similar to any rating. It's treated as a bonus stat, rather than a mandatory one like int/stam/spellpower.
I never understood why Ignite hasn't yet been changed to deal 40% damage in one tick, 2 seconds after the crit. It salvages the anti-threat mechanism, it solves any timing related ignite bug issues... and it simultaneously boosts the fire tree's PvP viability by making Fire crits less of a punishing back-loaded PvP damage talent.
Revert all mechanics back to pre-TBC days and stack all ignites into one debuff.... there is simply no potential for rolling ignites with a single ignite tick and there is no shenanigans with latency bugs.
Having a 1 tick ignite would not fix either outstanding ignite issues we have currently. Fireball/fireblast would still have ignites eat up each other, and casting a fireball as ignite is up would still give free ignite ticks.
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/cast Mirror Image
/cancelaura Mirror Image
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this indeed works for keeping your mirror images yet not constantly swap positions.
Living bomb got fixed and now behaves as expected.
Also, mirror images are kind of dumb and will melee their target if theyre too close.
Last edited by manly : 09/06/08 at 5:48 AM.
<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
The swapping between images probably offers some opportunities in PvP as it lets you do things the images wouldn't and then get swapped around so your opponents don't know where you are anymore. It would be interesting to know if the timing is precise (in which case we could get timers to predict when it will happen) and if it swaps you out of things like stuns. For PvE I would assume you just cancel the buff and then it isn't an issue at all.