Assuming the mirrors do gain from raid and party regen then i would assume they would also gain mana from Imp WE when soloing and pvping? I suppose that is only relevant in pvp assuming frost spec, as there would be enough mana regen in raids to support it anyway without the WE.
On the downside, if replenish-like things were applicable to the images, some replenish charges may be wasted. Say if the images get low on mana after 25 seconds and count as the three lowest mana bars in the raid. If I understand replenish mechanics right, replenish will then choose your images. When they despawn, the replenish is lost. I don't know much about replenish mechanics (ie how long to the buffs stay on a target, how often will it re-evaluate the lowest mana bar), but I see this as a potential downside if the images were applicable for raid/party regen.
Going to do some model tuning once more Naxxramas gear becomes known.
1) It looks like a Naxx kit reaches the threshold where capping spell hit is the best way to increase DPS.
Thank god, I'd hate running around and not being able to avoid resists.
2) There is more enough spell hit around on gear to get 14.3% spell hit on gear.
So, enough to cap with 3% hit from either talents or iFF/Misery. You'll want to find a way to lose 3%/4% for 25man raids.
But what does it matter really ? We already have a 3min invis, which honestly I think is simply far too good. Not to mention, its only 3s 'cast time'. I don't really think you'd need far more than that. If theres a fight where aggro matters, tranquil air will be put down, and be considerably more effective than it is now.
Somewhere along the line, I missed the 3s cast/3min CD change to Invis, which made me look at Prismatic Cloak again. Is this talent position really silly or what? Going that deep into Arcane gives you an instant threat dump, but in a tree that hardly has threat issues at all, given Arcane Subtlety. Seems like bad design to me. Unless it's meant for PVP more than PVE, and Arcane PVP certainly is looking more viable than previous.
If it's a fade (on Mirror Images) that's just really odd.
I noticed the same thing though. I wonder if it's to prevent you from using them while soloing? (Since that's the effect if you pop them while killing anything that doesn't subsequently get one-shot.) Or maybe to reduce their value? Since the mob does kill them off one by one, all the time while you're hitting it.
As someone else stated, the fade on mirror image works two ways. First it does a threat dump on you, then your mirror images 'taunt' your enemy. This makes perfect sense. It's a mirror image spell -- they are supposed to be distracting. It reminds me of the phantasmal image spells in some RPGs. They are there to absorb the hits from your attacker. Unfortunately, it's easier to reproduce this effect on a text-based game. When they attack, they simply hit an image instead. On WoW, however, they mimic this effect with the location swapping.
Thus, using this while soloing makes perfect sense. The mechanics of the spell shouldn't prevent you from using it while soloing at all, that would just be silly. It does however give the glass cannon a few more glass cannons.
Somewhere along the line, I missed the 3s cast/3min CD change to Invis, which made me look at Prismatic Cloak again. Is this talent position really silly or what? Going that deep into Arcane gives you an instant threat dump, but in a tree that hardly has threat issues at all, given Arcane Subtlety. Seems like bad design to me. Unless it's meant for PVP more than PVE, and Arcane PVP certainly is looking more viable than previous.
It's really meant for PvP. Instant Invis is godsend to get out of focus fire. Current Invis is horrible to accomplish that.
I don't think it's bad design since Invis is an arcane spell it simply wouldn't make sense finding an appropiate talent in fire or frost.
If I remember correctly, it can give you negative threat temporarily.
The important part is that your threat doesn't matter when you cast Fade, so you can cast it proactively to prevent getting high threat.
Mirror Image is listed as a 90 million threat reduction buff just like fade.
What I'm thinking is that it may make you immune to threat spikes at the start of a fight:
0:00 - Cast Mirror Images, you're at -90.000.000 threat.
0:01 - Scorch, blow Trinket/Combustion/IV/whatever cooldowns.
0:29 - You're at -89.900.000 threat now. Then Mirror Image fades.
0:30 - You're now at 100.000 threat.
The only way you could pull aggro now is if your tank together with Hunter and Rogue Misdirects and couldn't produce more threat than you in 30 seconds, which is quite unlikely unless their threat is generally bad.
If things are close, you can also just use invisibility at 0:27.
Can anyone test if it works like that? It should, unless I'm remembering Fade wrong. It's been changed pretty often now.
Fade can't bring you down to negative agro, but I believe that if reduce more agro than you have with fade it won't bring you back up above where you were at. Ie, if you were at 500 agro and faded for 700, you would be at 0 (or 1) for the duration of fade, not -200, but after it wore off you would be at 500 again, not 700. I'm unsure how it works if you perform agroing actions during that time, but it sounds to me like you just get a buff of a flat 700 off, rather than a take-off/put-on sort of mechanic. Note also, that when fade ends, regardless of how much threat you have, you will not pull agro until you perform a threatful action. You have to attact the mob's attention to the fact that your agro is higher, they won't notice on their own.
My info may be as much as an expansion out of date, but I haven't heard of fade mechanics changing since then.
Question: Is the agro reduction tied to the Mirror Image buff that you can click off to stop the shuffling? If it's truely a Fade sort of thing, then I assume it's tied to a buff like Fade is. Try getting tons of agro on something, doing MI, clicking off the buff, and poking it for 1 damage.
I don't know if I'd get too excited/concerned/puzzled about the -90 million threat value. If you look at the wowhead, effect #2 (after the threat reduction) of Mirror Image is to create 9e+007 copies of the caster. 9e+007 = 90 million. Granted, it doesn't create 90 million copies, but I think it's plausible to suggest that the number of copies and the threat reduction are supposed to be tied in some way that they aren't just yet.
Is this talent position really silly or what? Going that deep into Arcane gives you an instant threat dump, but in a tree that hardly has threat issues at all, given Arcane Subtlety. Seems like bad design to me. Unless it's meant for PVP more than PVE, and Arcane PVP certainly is looking more viable than previous.
It's a pvp talent. PvE builds don't have the spare talent points to pick it up unless they're doing ABr->AB rotations and leeching scorch.
But what does it matter really ? We already have a 3min invis, which honestly I think is simply far too good. Not to mention, its only 3s 'cast time'. I don't really think you'd need far more than that. If theres a fight where aggro matters, tranquil air will be put down, and be considerably more effective than it is now.
The way I view it, the major advantage of MI (threat-wise) is that it stalls short your aggro for a solid 30s, and also makes it impossible to pull for that duration, without causing any dps loss. Thats the upside of it. However, even if it didn't play with threat at all, invis is still a ridiculously strong spell as it is.
If we are, like Chilton says, doing too much damage then Invisibility and Mirrors should help our threat by a factor of 2.
This is a little too early to conclude anything, but if you guys have seen the stats on Naxx10 items, you will notice a trend: Every Cloth piece that does not contain Spirit, usually contain mp5. Examples:
Exceptions: (Pieces that contain neither spirit nor mp5) Gown of Blaumeux
I was thinking if taking these gears for Fire mage is in fact intended, since we benefit so little from Spirit other than mana regeneration IF we are wearing Mage Armor in the first place. Since having zero Spirit on an item improves the item for our purposes, since the item budget is being used for the more beneficial stats, I wonder if Fire and Frost mages would in the end opt for these mp5 items that have zero Spirit.
At the same time it alleviates the mana problems of Fire mages without forcing him/her into Mage Armor. It's rather early to assume that this is the direction Blizzard had intended, but from the way things are currently, I would actually prefer taking those mp5 gears to Spirit gears for my Fire mage.
Blizzard just gave us more insight on how they test damage values and such (Source):
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
We have spreadsheets -- huge ones. We have values for characters in greens and raid buffed with epic gear. We have estimates of mob damage and health, character downtime, the benefits from enchants, gems and glyphs. We have conversion rates of mana to runic power to energy to rage. We look at damage per second, efficiency, button presses per second, typical rotations, movement vs. standing still, mobs vs. players and every other variable we can think of (and there are a LOT of them).
In the end we come up with an estimate for what an attack should do. We come up with a budget for talents and spells just like we have a budget for items at a given level. Sometimes those estimates are wrong because we forgot to take something into account, or because there's a bug in a talent or spell somewhere that messes up the calculation.
And then we do lots of testing, and to get a reality check on our tests, we compare them to the numbers people are reporting from the beta. Repeat as necessary.
I've said this in a few posts: that our numbers can sometimes be wrong (as is the case almost any time you deal with numbers), but the methods we use to arrive at them are absolutely not sloppy.
Pretty interesting to read them finally reveal their methods, it seems reasonably thorough, only the 'typical rotations' part makes me wonder if they truly test most dps rotations or not. I hope they mean they test everything except the truly wacky and useless rotations.
Those players in Beta, how are you finding your dps relative to other classes? I have viewed some parses through forums and the like, but have yet to hear the opinions of any members in this thread who have experienced Naxxramas at level 80.
Any specific firsthand accounts to report back (analysis comparing us to other classes is just as useful). Are there any elements that in a practical sense are returning different numbers than those that have been theorycrafted so far in previous posts?
I still find it odd that they don't ask some of the top mages and mage-theorycrafters to atleast do some trialruns and dps-tests for them, they'd have nothing to lose.
Not quite understanding blizzard's incistance on stacking us with crit and spi either, there should really be more options for us, just let us choose between crit and haste on our tierset like a priest can choose holy or shadow.
Those players in Beta, how are you finding your dps relative to other classes? I have viewed some parses through forums and the like, but have yet to hear the opinions of any members in this thread who have experienced Naxxramas at level 80.
Any specific firsthand accounts to report back (analysis comparing us to other classes is just as useful). Are there any elements that in a practical sense are returning different numbers than those that have been theorycrafted so far in previous posts?
Edited for Grammar.
And did anyone compare the fire and frost spec in raid stiuation's dps already ? any conclusion?
There's very little conclusions to draw at this point. I know a lot of people have seen the Premo/VM Naxx parses floating around, but examining those numbers the only thing that's clear to me is that we're still a long way from a finished product.
If I remember correctly, it can give you negative threat temporarily.
The important part is that your threat doesn't matter when you cast Fade, so you can cast it proactively to prevent getting high threat.
Mirror Image is listed as a 90 million threat reduction buff just like fade.
What I'm thinking is that it may make you immune to threat spikes at the start of a fight:
0:00 - Cast Mirror Images, you're at -90.000.000 threat.
0:01 - Scorch, blow Trinket/Combustion/IV/whatever cooldowns.
0:29 - You're at -89.900.000 threat now. Then Mirror Image fades.
0:30 - You're now at 100.000 threat.
The only way you could pull aggro now is if your tank together with Hunter and Rogue Misdirects and couldn't produce more threat than you in 30 seconds, which is quite unlikely unless their threat is generally bad.
If things are close, you can also just use invisibility at 0:27.
Can anyone test if it works like that? It should, unless I'm remembering Fade wrong. It's been changed pretty often now.
Fade can in fact give you negative threat if you start at less than its threat reduction (I believe the number is 1580) when you activate it.
In instances, sometimes I pull with VE (which generates 1 threat on a single mob or something, or just enough of 0 to put me on the threat table for all mobs). I then Fade and the tank who is pulling just a single target with improved faerie fire has ALL the mobs go to him! The ones he didn't cast anything on during the pull would come to me if Fade didn't allow negative threat, because they would have come to me if my threat was 0 and so was his, since I pulled first and they're aware of me.
I can even wand one or 2 shots and they won't come for me in that state.
EDIT: I just thought of something else. Even if +spellpower was worth more point for point than hit until the 2200 mark, Arcane mages would still want to be hitcappped. The debuff falling off due to a spell miss is likely a larger DPS loss than the mage would gain for gemming for +spellpower.
A few posts above it was said that hit gives damage benefit identical to +dam for WotLK firemage.
I personally find it rather hard to believe.
Getting resists on higher cost spells like Living Bomb strikes me as something catastrophic for a firemage performance. You lose 31% mana, one GCD of casting time, also all your subsequent Living Bombs get delayed by 1.5 seconds. Losing a Pyroblast is not quite as bad, but also costs you a good chunk of mana and a GCD. Losing a fireball to resist, on top of costing you mana and casttime, can also cost you a crit, which might have procced Hot Streak or MoE. Running a rmore significant isk of losing a 10% crit raidbuff has to account for something as well.
Could you please go a bit deeper in how we arrived to conclusion that dam=hit for WotLK firemage?
Another question - i am a bit lost as to current status of mana regeneration mechanics. Is there a good place to read up on them?
Specific questions i am interested in: What's the ultimate fate of BoW, Mana Spring and Tide totems and also how exactly does replenfishment work.
Here's the infamous Patchwerk parse. Patchwerk
Focus on interesting stuff and cry elsewhere.
1) Cheesy spammed AB through the whole fight (3:38). Had replenishment, used pot/gems, evocation.
Had mana spring/tide, but no JoW.
No idea of mage or molten armour was used, or 2/5 T5.
Looks very sustainable, especially if a raid has JoW up.
Pulls a good ~20% ahead of the other mages.
2) Fire and Frost are pretty close.
Fire used 2 gems, 1 pot, 1 Evo tick, Frost used only 1 gem.
Fire used Living Bomb, but didn't stand next to Patchwerk. Hence not hitting the Explosion that is still centred on the caster. That's about 5% DPS lost.
3) If you check other fights, Arcane drops down to Frost/Fire levels on more mobile fights.
Patchwerk is kind of the Epitome of a Blast Spam fight.
On some fights, it drops even noticably below Frost.
4) Noth required 16 decurses in 4 minutes. Sapphiron requires 89 decurses in 8 minutes.
It's fine, gives your Frost mages something to do on an immunity fight. *cough*
5) Kel'thuzad seems to have ... some frost resistance? Frostbolts against him hit 10/15% lower than against the other bosses.
It seems that he retained some of his Frost Resistance at least.
6) Imp. WE issue?
Improved Water Elemental: Patchwerk : Improved Water Elemental
The mana returns are pretty ... odd. Only affecting a few people with very different amounts of mana returned.
Maybe the aura range is broken?
Originally Posted by Dekkar
Fade can in fact give you negative threat if you start at less than its threat reduction (I believe the number is 1580) when you activate it.
<Explanation of Fade>
EDIT: I just thought of something else. Even if +spellpower was worth more point for point than hit until the 2200 mark, Arcane mages would still want to be hitcappped. The debuff falling off due to a spell miss is likely a larger DPS loss than the mage would gain for gemming for +spellpower.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. Seems pretty handy then to have the Fade effect,
On Arcane Blast: It has a high base damage but low scaling. Hence its the point where hit becomes better is a few hundred spell power lower. With Mind Mastery, you'd need even less spell power on gear, around 1.700 with raid buffs.
As for the debuff, I *think* it's applied on cast and not on hit.
But either way, you'll want to hit cap for Blast spam anyway unless your is really terrible.
Originally Posted by maxi
Could you please go a bit deeper in how we arrived to conclusion that dam=hit for WotLK firemage?
Specific questions i am interested in: What's the ultimate fate of BoW, Mana Spring and Tide totems and also how exactly does replenfishment work.
1) Because ratings are expensive and base damage scales badly. Muphrid's post http://elitistjerks.com/883595-post1197.html has is covered more scientifically.
Make an Excel sheet and compare the gains of a hit gem and a damage gem.
2) BoW/MST/MTT are in, MST is raid-wide I think. MTT seems party-only from the Patchwerk parse.
Replenishment grants a 15s buff giving 0.5% of your max mana every second.
It triggered on HP/JotW/VT and cast on the 10 players with the lowest mana.
It has not exactly been determined when the 10 players are re-evaluated, nor whether 2 players can Replenish 20 players (or if they would overlap).
Spell damage is not scaling in price/effect as ratings are.
At 60 we had 1 spell dmg cost x amount of ilvl budget.
At 60 1% hit was ~8 spell hit rating for y amount of ilvl budget.
At 70 we still have 1 spell dmg cost x amount of ilvl budget.
At 70 1% hit is ~12,5 hit rating, y amount of ilvl budget doesnt change, simply the return of the budget use increases.
Now at 80 we have 1 dmg still costing the same amount of ilvl budget, while for some reason the hit ratings from 70->80 are almost twice as high compared to 60-70. ~56% increase in value out of total budget for the same 1% hit return from 60->70 (12,5-8 = 4,5, 4,5/8 = 0,5625). From 70->80 we have ~84% increase in value from the combatratings post somewhere we have 1% hit = ~23 rating (23-12,5 = 10,5, 10,5/12,5 = 0,84).
I feel like I'm either not understanding this at all, or there is going to be some fundamental problems with spell power not being a rating as the rest are. Is this not another reason why we see spell dmg as being alot more attractive than the combat ratings? Granted we have a much larger budget to spend itemization points on, we would still prefer them to be massively stacked towards spell dmg because 1 spell power is constant in price?
Edit: Just an aside to the guy up post who said arcane mages want to be hit capped for the debuff. It doesn't work like that unless changed on beta, the debuff on you still stacks even though you resist since you DID cast the spell it just didn't land or was partially resisted.
Spell damage is not scaling in price/effect as ratings are.
At 60 we had 1 spell dmg cost x amount of ilvl budget.
At 60 1% hit was ~8 spell hit rating for y amount of ilvl budget.
At 70 we still have 1 spell dmg cost x amount of ilvl budget.
At 70 1% hit is ~12,5 hit rating, y amount of ilvl budget doesnt change, simply the return of the budget use increases.
Now at 80 we have 1 dmg still costing the same amount of ilvl budget, while for some reason the hit ratings from 70->80 are almost twice as high compared to 60-70. ~56% increase in value out of total budget for the same 1% hit return from 60->70 (12,5-8 = 4,5, 4,5/8 = 0,5625). From 70->80 we have ~84% increase in value from the combatratings post somewhere we have 1% hit = ~23 rating (23-12,5 = 10,5, 10,5/12,5 = 0,84).
I feel like I'm either not understanding this at all, or there is going to be some fundamental problems with spell power not being a rating as the rest are. Is this not another reason why we see spell dmg as being alot more attractive than the combat ratings? Granted we have a much larger budget to spend itemization points on, we would still prefer them to be massively stacked towards spell dmg because 1 spell power is constant in price?
Edit: Just an aside to the guy up post who said arcane mages want to be hit capped for the debuff. It doesn't work like that unless changed on beta, the debuff on you still stacks even though you resist since you DID cast the spell it just didn't land or was partially resisted.
The thing you miss is that your spell damage and your base damage scale with levels and expansions.
At level 60, you did 500 DPS. 1% hit increased your DPS by 5, 10 spell damage increased your DPS by 10.
At level 70, you did 2000 DPS. 1% hit increased your DPS by 20, 10 spell damage increased your DPS by 10.
At level 80, you do 8000 DPS. 1% hit increase your DPS by 80, 10 spell damage increase your DPS by 10.
That's the simplified idea why hit/crit/haste costs have to scale up with expansions, while spell power does not.
Melee have the same thing with ratings and attack power.
The more spell/attack power you have, the more DPS you get from ratings.
That's why they have to be underpowered in greens, or they'd be overpowered in high-end gear.
Was going over the front post by Roy and his contrast of Incanter's Absorption with rolling ignites got me to thinking: Forgetting for a second that Ignite does not (on live at least) remember damage amounts the same way IA does, is it possible to bug out the amount remembered with 2+ simultaneous hits on an absorbing target a la ignite bug? Apologies if this has been tested and answered already.
09/07/08, 9:57 AM
