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Old 09/21/08, 9:41 PM   #1901
grayrest
Piston Honda
 
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Troll Shaman
 
Chromaggus
Originally Posted by Faxmonkey View Post
Unless they changed it, aren't the mana cost increases per stack recursive? Meaning say, a 3 stack of AB, costs 1.75^3 x 200 mana instead of (1 + .75*3)x 200 mana. At least that's the way I was thinking it worked . . .
On live each debuff costs a fixed amount (.75*C) and the total cost is (C*mana_modifiers)+3*(.75*C). On the beta it's (1+3.00*3)*C*mana_modifiers.

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Old 09/22/08, 3:26 AM   #1902
Faxmonkey
Piston Honda
 
Troll Mage
 
Blackrock
Originally Posted by grayrest View Post
On live each debuff costs a fixed amount (.75*C) and the total cost is (C*mana_modifiers)+3*(.75*C). On the beta it's (1+3.00*3)*C*mana_modifiers.

I see, the major difference being that Live was a haste mechanic (a 60% damage increase) which meant that there was a consequential increase in mana usage of the same percentage which stacked multiplicatively with the mana cost. This seems to be where the disconnect occurred when blizzard was redesigning it to be a flat damage% increase. They completely forgot that extra 60% mana cost increase and ended up making the spell significantly more mana efficient than it had been on live and thus they ended up having to nerf it. Well, that and the the extra 15% damage increase which was basically a replacement for the 2 piece T5 bonus which also, traditionally, increased mana usage by the same amount.

In other words, its DPS output was relatively unchanged, they simply made sweeping changes to AB's mana effeciency. First making it far more efficient than it had been, by a factor of 1.6x1.2 (assuming that 2pT5 was being used) and then making it FAR LESS efficient than it was on live. The whole thing really stinks of just having not thought things through -- though I suppose they have quite a bit on their plate atm so oversights are bound to happen.

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Old 09/22/08, 3:54 AM   #1903
sornok
Von Kaiser
 
Human Mage
 
Stormscale (EU)
The best way to fix ignite, is to make it work like the Lightning Capacitor.

The new ignite should, whenever we crit, auto fire a new "firebolt" to cause an amount of fire damage equal to the amount damage the "ignite dot" would cause.

If we wanted to make it even more complex, we could have it gather "charges" and use them on demand, that could be too much tho :P

That way we never mix ignites and dots, we stop being a damage class, we stop being bugged.

Unless I see a fixed ignite, I am not sure I wanna spec fire, I didn't spec fire at all during tbc because of ignite, I hope it gets fixed soon.

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Old 09/22/08, 5:15 AM   #1904
grayrest
Piston Honda
 
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Troll Shaman
 
Chromaggus
Originally Posted by Faxmonkey View Post
Well, that and the the extra 15% damage increase which was basically a replacement for the 2 piece T5 bonus which also, traditionally, increased mana usage by the same amount...The whole thing really stinks of just having not thought things through -- though I suppose they have quite a bit on their plate atm so oversights are bound to happen.
You've got the basic idea but there are a few more wrinkles.

The 2t5 bonus is better than you think. Notice where the mana_modifiers is in the live equation. The bulk of the cost of a fully stacked AB is unaffected by the 20%, but all of the damage is. As a result, you get a significant DPM gain when stacked by simply having the set bonus. AP provides similar benefits, which is part of why the cooldowns are such an important part of the overall damage for the spec (haste buffs let you get more high DPM ABs out under AP).

Also, the shift from haste to damage reduced not only the mana per second cost but the increase in damage helps offset the DPM loss. Since Arcane is mana limited when AB is acting as a dump, the DPM does matter so the penalty has to be over the 1.2-1.6x you estimate if the intent is to keep it similarly balanced.

If they don't want to change the spell, getting it right is just deciding how much damage AB should be putting out (it has to be more than ABr rotations or there's no reason to stack it) and how much spamming they want. The cost is reasonably easy to backwards calculate from there, they just didn't bother to do the theorycraft for these changes.

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Old 09/22/08, 5:46 AM   #1905
maxi
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Goblin Priest
 
Argent Dawn (EU)
As far as i see it, the problem with AB is that it - when all is said and done - does less total dps than fireball spam with living bomb.

Mana dumps need to have the clear-cut highest dps, otherwise they just stop being viable.

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Old 09/22/08, 6:17 AM   #1906
Frenzi
King Hippo
 
Frenzy
Troll Druid
 
No WoW Account (EU)
Originally Posted by Xentropy View Post
The idea of FoF is to be able to use frozen mechanics (Shatter, Deep Freeze) on targets immune to snares, such as boss mobs. A 27.75% chance to apply one or the other would be rather powerful, so this proc stacking was assumed to be an intentional game mechanic.
I am not sure I agree with the solution if the fix is like this. Effectively they are making a mage spend talent points to duplicate an existing talent. Either that or we have a PvE and a PvP version of the same talent. With the way it is I don't see the point in having them separated, it may as well be "Frostbite applies FoF effect when target is immune." I agree having both effects would be too powerful on separate rolls, I am just not sure I agree with keeping the two talents separated now?

The only advantage to having them separated that I can see if you plan to do alot of AoE grinding as frost where Frostbite has always been a hindrance.


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Old 09/22/08, 6:27 AM   #1907
Northerner
Great Tiger
 
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Troll Mage
 
Mal'Ganis
Originally Posted by maxi View Post
As far as i see it, the problem with AB is that it - when all is said and done - does less total dps than fireball spam with living bomb.

Mana dumps need to have the clear-cut highest dps, otherwise they just stop being viable.
This is, of course, the issue with almost all competitive DDs. In any scenario you can imagine there will be one (with a complement spec) that is ideal or at worst a rotation that is ideal. Compounding this of course is the problem that mana is not even remotely equal in importance across classes and that the whole concept of mana is archaic and broken. I mean that, it really is outdated and it really, really is broken outside of arenas.

It is what makes FFB an abortion of a concept. This is what makes Mage talent specs always painful to balance. If it is less dps then it is ancillary. If it is not sustainable then either you make it so or you discard it. In the new world of static(ish) buffs, you can even plan for it.

The only real way to deal with such issues is to have A with less dps but more utility or B with constantly used tricks/raid buffs that maintain dps+rdps as static but depend on layout or something along those lines. The day you make raids where A can live through them and also do better dps than B, we are done. If not, then B wins or C or X. 'Flavor'? Really now? If flavor counted Warlocks would have had green fire two years back. Oh yeah and 'A' needs to be able to live through that raid by the way or just reversed it for the other spec. Neat games.

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Old 09/22/08, 6:52 AM   #1908
Zaldinar
Don Flamenco
 
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Human Mage
 
Arygos
Does anyone happen to know if the supposed 50% increase in blizzard base damage has happened yet? (er, for that matter, did anyone else see some sort of post over the last day or so indicating that it was? Or did I have a dream that it was?)

Current in game values have it at 3408 per cast, I did some graphs up ( WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> SoC dethroned, Fire on top, Frost in trouble. dynamic versions to follow in a few days) to show the relative levels of DPS and capped outputs of our spells and SoC. Basically the long and short of it assuming my modeling is correct is that Fire will overtake SoC with Flamestrike and living bomb at somewhere around 1500 +damage for raw DPS (assuming the targets dont move out of the reticule etc). But frost lags behind TERRIBLY.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...aphs/DPS_2.jpg

If we include a 50% increase of blizzards base damage from 3408, the graph looks like this.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...aphs/DPS_3.jpg

Which is much more amiable, without this change its better for a frost mage to spam untalented flamestrike than use Blizzard.

Last edited by Zaldinar : 09/22/08 at 8:03 AM.

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.

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Old 09/22/08, 7:38 AM   #1909
Toejam
Glass Joe
 
Goblin Mage
 
Defias Brotherhood (EU)
I managed to stop lagging for long enough to get into a couple of instance groups on the EU server this weekend. Bear in mind that I'm only in the low 70s so I have no solid number work here, but there were a few things I noticed from the runs;

1. Living Bomb: The explosion was odd. If I was stood close enough when the explosion ticked (around 10 yards away), the mobs around the target I had cast LB on were thrown up into the air. If I was out of range, it seemed to... fizzle out - there was no explosion animation and the surrounding mobs remained firmly grounded.

2. Molton Armor vs Mage Armor: Obviously I can't comment for a raid situation but, through The Nexus, Utgarde Keep and Azjol Nerub, I kept Molton on for 99% of the time - only switching to Mage Armor for the last fight in Azjol. I was running in a group consisting of Prot Warrior/Holy Paladin/Combat Rogue/Demonology Warlock and was specced 0/51/11. The only times I needed to pot or use a mana gem were when Hot Streak procced a few times in a row.

3. Hot Streak: Our groups DPS was fairly high, and for the most part things died very quickly. Due to this I spent most of my time casting Scorch rather than Fireball, and throwing in LB when it was up and Pyro whenever Hot Streak procced. And it did proc. Alot. At one point I strung together 4 hot streaks in a row through scorch spamming - my Mage is currently sat at 31% fire crit without points in Incineration.

Like I say, I'm only sitting at level 72 at the moment so can't comment on how things will be at 80, but a number of fights in the early instances require a fair amount of movement so instant or short cast spells are going to be useful whilst levelling

Last edited by Toejam : 09/22/08 at 7:49 AM. Reason: Clarification

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Old 09/22/08, 8:05 AM   #1910
Roywyn
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Roywyn
Gnome Mage
 
No WoW Account (EU)
Originally Posted by Zaldinar View Post
Does anyone happen to know if the supposed 50% increase in blizzard base damage has happened yet?

Which is much more amiable, without this change its better for a frost mage to spam untalented flamestrike than use Blizzard.
Yeah, that increase on Blizzard and Rain of Fire has been in for a while now:
Live Blizzard - Spell - World of Warcraft
Beta Blizzard - Spell - World of Warcraft

Bear in mind that Blizzard has slowing utility, can use its own Frostbite and FoF procs for a higher crit rate and more important stacks 10% raidwide spellcrit on the mobs to be AoEed.

The spec that's actually limping behind is Arcane, the former "King of Hyjal".
I would have expected Blizzard to be more noticable above Arcane.

Anedotically, The Battle For The Undercity - Quest - World of Warcraft may be quite useful for reaching AoE caps with less hassle.
Not sure why you picked Deadmines over Stockades though.

Chaotic Meta Gems in Cataclysm: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t106009-...2/#post1794256

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput
The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

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Old 09/22/08, 8:09 AM   #1911
Zaldinar
Don Flamenco
 
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Human Mage
 
Arygos
Originally Posted by Roywyn View Post
Yeah, that increase on Blizzard and Rain of Fire has been in for a while now:
Live Blizzard - Spell - World of Warcraft
Beta Blizzard - Spell - World of Warcraft

Bear in mind that Blizzard has slowing utility, can use its own Frostbite and FoF procs for a higher crit rate and more important stacks 10% raidwide spellcrit on the mobs to be AoEed.

The spec that's actually limping behind is Arcane, the former "King of Hyjal".
I would have expected Blizzard to be more noticable above Arcane.
Yuck.

The issue being that right now for fires AoE to be viable you have to spam Flamestrike, which is mana intensive. If you could flamestrike->blizzard it would very easily mitigate the mana issues, and if Blizzards DPS wasn't so far behind it wouldnt potentially hurt your DPS in any incredible way. The only concern would be not exceeding the haste required to take the 10 second rotation to 8 seconds (25%) so you don't stomp the flamestrike DoT.

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.

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Old 09/22/08, 8:11 AM   #1912
Organigami
Glass Joe
 
Undead Mage
 
Aggramar (EU)
Originally Posted by Zaldinar View Post
Does anyone happen to know if the supposed 50% increase in blizzard base damage has happened yet?
In the current PTR build, Blizzard is proccing FoF everytime a Blizzard hit also procs Frostbite.
This happens virtually every tick with a sufficient number of targets.

I didn't record my experiments, but judging from the crit spam on screen I strongly feel FoF charges were then being consumed and applied to each wave (and being renewed constantly).

Without Frostbite, FoF never procs from Blizzard.

Doesn't sound like normal behavior but if Blizzard does end up with the ability to proc and benefit per wave from FoF then the incredibly high resulting crit chance can give it an edge over other aoe spells.

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Old 09/22/08, 8:47 AM   #1913
Zaldinar
Don Flamenco
 
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Human Mage
 
Arygos
Originally Posted by Organigami View Post
In the current PTR build, Blizzard is proccing FoF everytime a Blizzard hit also procs Frostbite.
This happens virtually every tick with a sufficient number of targets.

I didn't record my experiments, but judging from the crit spam on screen I strongly feel FoF charges were then being consumed and applied to each wave (and being renewed constantly).

Without Frostbite, FoF never procs from Blizzard.

Doesn't sound like normal behavior but if Blizzard does end up with the ability to proc and benefit per wave from FoF then the incredibly high resulting crit chance can give it an edge over other aoe spells.
If you encounter this again might I request a /combatlog of it to pick through? I'm planning on doing some controlled tests now that this has been pointed out a few times, but having mass data to compare my model against to see if it seems to hold up would be very nice.

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.

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Old 09/22/08, 9:18 AM   #1914
Lhivera
Bald Bull
 
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Human Mage
 
Aggramar
Originally Posted by Roywyn View Post
Yeah, that increase on Blizzard and Rain of Fire has been in for a while now:
Live Blizzard - Spell - World of Warcraft
Beta Blizzard - Spell - World of Warcraft

Bear in mind that Blizzard has slowing utility, can use its own Frostbite and FoF procs for a higher crit rate and more important stacks 10% raidwide spellcrit on the mobs to be AoEed.
In my tests the other night, I didn't notice Blizzard had started working with Winter's Chill -- are you sure it has?

And in those same tests. I determined (and reported as a bug) that if you're not specced for Frostbite, Blizzard will not proc Fingers of Frost. So you're looking at spending a minimum of four talent points (3/3 Frostbite plus 1/3 Improved Blizzard) to get that high crit rate on Blizzard, unless and until they fix that.

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.

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Old 09/22/08, 10:49 AM   #1915
dralarn
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Mage
 
Thrall
I've been doing some theorycrafting on what it would take to keep the AB debuff up, when casting POM-AB. With the following talents:

- Netherwind Presence (NP) - 6%
- Icy Veins (IV) - 20%

It looks like you'll need 113 haste rating to get a GCD & an AB cast in in under 3 seconds, assuming .05 lag time.

113 haste rating, would leave you with a GCD of 1.10 and a AB cast time of 1.84.

Here is my math. Can someone verify if this is correct?

=1.5 sec GCD / ((1+(([Haste Rating]/15.7)+(94.2 (NP) /15.7))/100)*1.2 (IV))

Per wowwiki (Spell haste): - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
- IV is multiplicative
- 1% spell haste = 15.7 spell haste rating
- Casting Time = (Base Casting Time)/(1 + (% Spell Haste / 100))

Also, does anyone know if Netherwind Presence is multiplicative (like IV), or if it is additive?

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Old 09/22/08, 11:33 AM   #1916
Roywyn
Bald Bull
 
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Roywyn
Gnome Mage
 
No WoW Account (EU)
Originally Posted by Lhivera View Post
In my tests the other night, I didn't notice Blizzard had started working with Winter's Chill -- are you sure it has?

And in those same tests. I determined (and reported as a bug) that if you're not specced for Frostbite, Blizzard will not proc Fingers of Frost. So you're looking at spending a minimum of four talent points (3/3 Frostbite plus 1/3 Improved Blizzard) to get that high crit rate on Blizzard, unless and until they fix that.
Just checked again, have Improved Blizzard, Permafrost, Chilled to the Bone, Frostbite, Fingers of Frost, Winter's Chill fully specced.
I have the Frost Nova, Mage Armour and Arcane Power Glyph. No, don't ask.

Best place to test it is Theramore, there are 6 dummies in 1 spot in front of the keep.

Winter's Chill definately goes up every wave, full stack after 5 seconds.
Fingers of Frost comes up about every other wave and is consumed immediately.
Frostbite procs too, triggering Fringers. On the dummies, Frostbite breaks after about 3 ticks I'd guess.


I can also confirm what Organigani said about FoF+FB spam proccing with Blizzard.

I managed to find some data in my Recount:
Spamming Blizzard a but in Theramore and a bit in Undercity (Varian Wrynn's quest).
In 1086 Blizzard hits, the crit rate was 59.9%.
I also had a huge amount of Arcane Explosion spam, 1914 hits with a crit rate of 18.0%.

My character screen crit rate is 16.9% with AI/Molten.

Last edited by Roywyn : 09/22/08 at 11:44 AM.

Chaotic Meta Gems in Cataclysm: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t106009-...2/#post1794256

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput
The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

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Old 09/22/08, 11:59 AM   #1917
Lhivera
Bald Bull
 
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Human Mage
 
Aggramar
Originally Posted by Roywyn View Post
Just checked again, have Improved Blizzard, Permafrost, Chilled to the Bone, Frostbite, Fingers of Frost, Winter's Chill fully specced.
I have the Frost Nova, Mage Armour and Arcane Power Glyph. No, don't ask.

Best place to test it is Theramore, there are 6 dummies in 1 spot in front of the keep.

Winter's Chill definately goes up every wave, full stack after 5 seconds.
Fingers of Frost comes up about every other wave and is consumed immediately.
Frostbite procs too, triggering Fringers. On the dummies, Frostbite breaks after about 3 ticks I'd guess.
That's good news.

My tests did show Frostbite + Fingers of Frost proccing. What happened was that when I removed Frostbite from my build, Fingers of Frost no longer procced on Blizzard. If they fix that issue, then it becomes pretty attractive to leave Frostbite out of PvE builds, since FoF should do enough to boost Blizzard crit on its own.

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.

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Old 09/22/08, 12:16 PM   #1918
spyroware
Glass Joe
 
Blood Elf Mage
 
Bloodfeather (EU)
Originally Posted by sornok View Post
The best way to fix ignite, is to make it work like the Lightning Capacitor.

The new ignite should, whenever we crit, auto fire a new "firebolt" to cause an amount of fire damage equal to the amount damage the "ignite dot" would cause.

If we wanted to make it even more complex, we could have it gather "charges" and use them on demand, that could be too much tho :P

That way we never mix ignites and dots, we stop being a damage class, we stop being bugged.

Unless I see a fixed ignite, I am not sure I wanna spec fire, I didn't spec fire at all during tbc because of ignite, I hope it gets fixed soon.
Ignite owes its 10% extra crit bonus dmg to the fact that it's a dot, changing the dot and it wouldn't figure to be 60% instead of 50% like it is for everyone else.

My thought of fixing ignite is having every spell having its own ignite slot. In PvE a fire mage would only use Fireball, Scorch and Pyroblast. Scorch is now a raid debuff so it shouldn't be considered a mage-specific debuff slot. PvE mages will have the glyph to remove the dot anyway so it all goes down to one extra 'personal' debuff slot per mage. That way we might have the once in a blue moon fireball + specific haste ignite overwriting, but scorch and pyroblast won't interfere. In PvP where a mage would use DB/BS (2 extra ignite slots) there won't be any problem for the client since the debuffs are too few. Plus Arc Sub + mutliple Ignites will make us a dispelling pain, another card to play for fire PvP.

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Old 09/22/08, 1:25 PM   #1919
manly
Soda Popinski
 
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Troll Mage
 
Mal'Ganis
As much as I loathe ignite munching, particularly since hot streak and living bomb exacerbates the situation considerably, I was thinking we could maybe fight fire with fire.

As everyone knows by now, fireball+pyroblast is likely to cause ignite losses due to that fabled ignite bug. However, as I pointed out in the past, you can also get the adverse effect of the bug and get free ignite ticks. Before now, that meant carefully timing your cast towards 2.09s fireballs. It was messy and mostly a curiositae, not much else. However, now we have Hot Streak.

Enters the first fire spec instant cast with travel time.

If you were to carefully time your hot streak / pyroblast casts in such a way that you always get a free ignite tick, maybe the dps gains could offset the dps loss caused by not dpsing to wait for things to sync up. At first I dismissed the idea because it would require a messy set up. But then, I realized that the very fact that you have hot streak means you did 2 crits -- it means you already have a considerable ignite on the target. Surely, theres something to do out of that.

So lets take entry level gear. A fireball crit with 11/52/8 (note: not counting here +6% from a certain talent that doesnt work) hits for roughly 6k damage without any totems/debuffs. Lets consider the 'standard case'. Fireball crit, fireball crit, hot streak. Problem here: the hot streak buff isnt up immediately, it needs to wait for travel time. So we need to wait for 1 more cast. At this point, 2 separate possibilities exists (assuming hitcap):

case 1 (last fireball doesn't crit)
6k fireball crit
1200 ignite
6k fireball crit
(hot streak)
1800 ignite
fireball
pyroblast

case 2 (last fireball crits)
6k fireball crit
1200 ignite
6k fireball crit
(hot streak)
1800 ignite
6k fireball crit
pyroblast

Were specifically looking only at pyroblast here. Theres a 1800 ignite tick left on the mob. At that point in time, we do not know whether or not that last fireball is going to crit or not (ie: case 1 or case 2 is undetermined).

Image here that we were to gamble that last ignite tick and wait to cast our pyroblast so that we could get a free ignite tick. I mean, think about it, you wait 1s of non-dps time, but you gain 1800 free damage from doing so. Of course, the numbers would differ more in reality, since distance/travel time affect the gamble-time, as well as your haste. But travel time can be used to our advantage since pyroblast also has a travel time, so we can negate most of that part. This reminds me, if anyone knows the pyroblast travel speed, that would also factor in. I am pretty sure its slower or equal to fireball. But anyway, here comes the thorny problem: If you have to wait 1s of no dps time to get 1800 free ignite damage, it can be a dps loss if the last fireball happens to crit, which you don't know until travel time has elapsed. If case 1 happens (last fireball doesnt crit), then its 1800 free damage at the cost of 1s of no dps time. If case 2 happens, then you lost 1s of dps time.

I know in this example it doesn't seems like something very interesting. However, keep in mind that there are multiple variables here. I didn't take debuffs or anything into account, which means a 'normal' ignite would be bigger, not to mention if there were ignites previous to that. There has to be a set amount of ignite value where this becomes the 'better play'. Also, its very interesting in extremely mana strapped situations (read: premade gear). Depending on the amount of haste you can really lower that 1s into either a bigger number, or a lower one. If you get close to 1.5s, then you could also cast living bomb to fill the 'dead time' (specifically because unlike scorch it can't refresh the ignite stack, which prevents you from getting a free ignite tick).

<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

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Old 09/22/08, 1:38 PM   #1920
solbergb
Don Flamenco
 
Gnome Mage
 
Earthen Ring
Originally Posted by Mizkultrahs View Post
The most common firerotations are based on LB Fireball and Hotstreaked Pyro. ( and keeping imp scorch activated ) I was actually wondering if there will be place for fireball in a firerotation. Talentwise scorch and fireblast can get 6% more crit. Scorch and fireblast can be casted more often. This would mean that hotstreak would proq more in a scorch fireblast LB rotation. It is the idea that the extra pyroblast damage will compensate for the use of scorch and fireblast instead of fireball.
The problem with this logic is the way scorch and fireblast scale. Haste and crit helps them in a way similar to fireball when scaling, but spell damage scales extremely poorly because they have short cast times. Already on "live" my fireballs are doing 3x damage of a scorch, while only taking 2x the time to cast. This will only get worse on level 80, especially if you add things like the 5% fireball glyph and spell power.

You don't have to take my word for it, the math is fairly straightforward, and can be found on wowwiki and the talent tooltips. Convert your crit chance into a proc % for pyroblast, see how many extra you get and see what the DPS is for the entire rotation. I would be extremely shocked if it was even remotely competetive with a rotation that included fireball and the expected fireball enhancing talents using NAX10 gear (and spellpower)

The kind of rotation you describe would be useful in PVP if combined with impact - for the stun proc and because fireballs take too long to cast in PVP. But it won't help you kill Patchwerk before he rages.

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Old 09/22/08, 2:30 PM   #1921
dralarn
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Mage
 
Thrall
Originally Posted by manly View Post
There has to be a set amount of ignite value where this becomes the 'better play'.
Assuming that we are talking about 1 second, it seems like you could make a pretty quick decision regarding this based on if your DPS is greatly than your ignite value.

Are there any good ignite addons? It would be great to see the value and possible ticks of pending ignites during play.

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Old 09/22/08, 2:34 PM   #1922
Elut
Von Kaiser
 
Troll Mage
 
Hyjal
FoF has felt wrong to me for quite some time. I think I finally understand why. It is just not the right way to meet the desired goal - to make freeze bonuses useful on unrootable mobs.

I think this is the talent they actually wanted:

1 point - Your shatter, deep freeze, and ice lance consider targets 'frozen' if they have recently resisted or escaped your freeze effects.

The numbers could be something like 4 sec on a resist (including immune mobs) and 1 sec after an early escape. Alternately it could be 2 points, with a 50% chance at the 1 point level. It still needs to apply to *your* freeze affects to avoid raid stacking issues.

This would work with Frostbite, not against it, and would also work Frost Nova and possibly Freeze. It would have some small benefits against freezable mobs and pvp escapes.

Last edited by Elut : 09/22/08 at 2:39 PM.

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Old 09/22/08, 3:05 PM   #1923
Roywyn
Bald Bull
 
Roywyn's Avatar
 
Roywyn
Gnome Mage
 
No WoW Account (EU)
1) Damage cap on Living Bomb?
Has anyone checked that one? I still have the Battle for Undercity open, so I can try to check it later on if nobody has checked that one yet.
I have a screenie of 62.116 damage from 4 crits, that means at least 34177 damage non-crit (CSD+Burnout).

2) Which Glyphs are currently functional?

Unknown

Ice Lance: ?
Remove Curse: ?
Fire Blast: ?

Frostfire Bolt: ? Is that even in? Is that found by research/discovery?


Likely known (appreciate confirmation)

Fireball: Yes?
Frost Nova: Yes? (Also affects Frostbite I heard)
Ice Block: Yes?


Known and confirmed

Arcane Explosion: Yes
Arcane Missiles: Yes
Arcane Power: Yes
Blink: Yes
Evocation: Yes
Frostbolt: Yes
Ice Armour: Yes
Improves Scorch: Yes
Invisibility: Yes
Mage Armour: Yes
Mana Gem: Yes
Molten Armour: Yes
Polymorph: Yes
Summon Water Elemental: Yes


3) Blizzard issues
With 1/3 Frostbite and 2/2 Fingers (and 1+/3 Imp. Blizzard), do you get 0%, 5% or 15% FoF procs on Blizzard?

Also, does it proc on non-slowable, non-rootables mob? (Test rank 1 blizzard on .... lowbie bosses/mobs?)
Most AoE trash so far has been rootable, but just in case.

Last edited by Roywyn : 09/22/08 at 5:32 PM.

Chaotic Meta Gems in Cataclysm: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t106009-...2/#post1794256

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput
The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

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Old 09/22/08, 3:14 PM   #1924
dralarn
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Mage
 
Thrall
Duplicate post.

Last edited by dralarn : 09/22/08 at 3:16 PM. Reason: Duplicate post.

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Old 09/22/08, 3:15 PM   #1925
dralarn
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Mage
 
Thrall
Originally Posted by Roywyn View Post
Which Glyphs are currently functional?[/b]
I've tested the following glyphs:

Improves Scorch: Works
Arcane Missiles: Works
Blink:Works
Evocation: Works
Frostbolt: Works
Arcane Power: Works
Summon Water Elemental: Works

Frostfire Bolt: You learn Rank 1 at level 75.

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