WotLK-Mage has been added to SimulationCraft. Many, many thanks go out to the people of this forum who have been so generous (and detailed!) with their information.

A few important details to note:

(1) The only talent calculator link encoding it supports is the official blizzard site. Alternatively, talents can be specified individually via name=value.

(2) Fingers of Frost is supported as written in the talent description. The code also supports the old Winters Grasp, but since that cannot be specified via talent link you need to set it explicitly via winters_grasp=2.

(3) Improved Water Elemental is implemented as a non-stacking aura.

(4) FrostFire does not "double-dip" from talents and/or debuffs that affect BOTH frost and fire.

(5) Only spell casts or spell procs eat Focus Magic charges.

(6) Torment the Weak: I've interpreted "ensnared" as being "slowed", "frozen", or "virtually frozen" (as in Fingers of Frost and Winters Grasp).

(7) The spell priority lists contain conditionals based upon procs occuring. In order for the conditional to be satisfied, the proc must have occurred 0.5sec earlier to model lag and reaction time.

(8) Up-Time report: I define up-time as the percentage of actions for which the buff is present and NOT that actual time the buff is present. For example, if spell S is cast 10 times and buff B is present for 3 casts, then B has an up-time of 30%.

There is a SampleOutput wiki page as well as a Windows exec available for download.

It is a multi-player sim, so you can play games with various talent synergies.

Current classes supported: Druid (Balance only), Mage, Priest, Shaman (both Elemental and Enhancement)

Warlock or Hunter is next..... I haven't quite decided yet.

All evidence to this point suggests that Blizzard either A) does not do this at all or B) is simply awful at it. There are a zillion posts in this thread and the prior thread saying that this should be done, or will be done, but it will not be. It may turn out that Frost does 90% or 95% of the damage of a purely damage-focused spec, but it will be through coincidence only, not masterful balancing. The kind of theorycrafting that goes on here about what will our damage be with these specs and these gear levels and how does all this scale, only happens on these and similar forums. Blizzard does not do it, or if they do they totally suck at it.

I hope I didn't mix up the numbers, it's the build that has been up for about a week now.
Testing was done at level 75, with the max rank spells at that level.


Frostfire Bolt


1) It uses the maximum of your total +fire and your total +frost damage on your gear.

Testing naked as 0/0/0 - 20 damage per DoT tick.
With +60 fire damage - 23 damage per tick.
With +46 frost damage - 22/23 damage per ticks, mostly 22.
With +46 frost and +60 fire damage - 23 damage per tick.

Fire was a belt, frost were gloves, so they could be used together.


That means you can use specialised frost or fire gear/enchants.
But you have to be consequent, adding a frost item to a fire a gear set is completely useless.



2) It is linked to the Frost and Fire schools for lockout purposes.

Interrupting Frostfire Bolt locks Frost and Fire school.
Interrupting Fire School (Fireball) locks Frostfire Bolt.
Interrupting Frost School (Blizzard) locks Frostfire Bolt.


3) Scaling is 5% per tick on the DoT, 85.71% on the direct damage.

Base damage is 629-731. With +927 damage it was 1426-1525, so we got 794-797 damage from scaling.
That means 85.65-85.98% scaling from gear.

That is pretty much exactly 3/3.5 without a penalty.


4) Permafrost is a DPS talent.

Okay, it's not. At least not a seriously.
But it increases the time of the Frostfire Bolt DoT, which means that it gets a fourth tick if you spec 3/3 Permafrost.
I'm sure someone will find a way to minmax this somehow.


Frostbolt still has it's 5% penalty.

Tooltip damage was 702-758, with 927 +damage it was 1463-1507.
That means 749-761 from gear, which means 80.78-82.09% scaling.
So our 3/3.5*0.95 = 81.43% seems unchanged.


Shatter seems a bit odd.

The extra crit doesn't seem to apply to [The Lightning Capacitor].
When you toy around with Freeze effect and get a load of lightnings, you'll get a lot of lightnings on frozen targets.

The crit rate on them however doesn't seem to be 70/80% at all, it seems pretty much in line with 20/30%.
So, the crit rate might not apply to nature spells or just apply to arcane/frost/fire?

I thought if Shatter applies only to fire/frost/arcane, then Frostfire Bolt might double-dip from it too. It doesn't however.

Using 22% crit and 4/5 Shatter, the crit rate would be 62%+ normally and 102%+ with double dipping.
If you test it, you get many non-crits on frozen targets, so Frostfire Bolt doesn't seem to double-dip from Shatter.

Why did I write that? Maybe someone has an idea what else might work differently, or come up with another odditiy to build around or benefit from.


Trinket comments

[Timbal's Focusing Crystal]
With the changes to Blizzard, it doesn't count as a DoT anymore and thus won't proc Timbal's.

[Thunder Capacitor]
This one uses the exact same mechanics as TLC, just that it requires 4 charges instead of 3.
It's damage is much higher than listed though:
1184-1366 Lightning damage during testing, with 1284 average damage over 19 hits.
It doesn't scale with damage, it's just a wrong tooltip.

The attack in the log is a "Lightning Bolt" as well, and the counter is called "Thunder Charge".


The new Northrend proc trinkets all have a 45s cooldown.
Serrah's/Valonforth's proc can proc on each individual AoE hit.
They are still mostly useless outside of 20 second AoE fights.

[Serrah's Star] - 45% proc on spell crit.
[Valonforth's Remembrance] - 15% on spell hit.
[Death Knight's Anguish] - 10% proc on melee/ranged/wand hit, not on spell hits.
Basically useless, just if people were optimistic that it might maybe proc on spell hits.


Feel free to ask/comment.
Will update the original post once 8820 goes on the PTR and nothing changes.

Beta servers are down, new build incoming.

WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Server down. New update?

Edit: And it is ~700MB according to reports. Does that mean level 80? That's a pretty sizeable patch, isn't it?

That should really be reported as an inconsistency in the beta forums. If Frostbolt's penalty is due to the snare, then FFB should share the penalty; if it was due to being binary, then it isn't anymore, and the penalty should be removed. There's no logical reason for the two to be different.

The Shatter info you posted is certainly weird. Perhaps trinket procs are simply not going to benefit from talents at all anymore? It'd be interesting if you could test this with Timbal's.

The important distinction with Shatter is the wording in the talent. Winter's Chill, Curse of Elements and Imp Scorch all double dip and they all explicitly list each spell school. Shatter lists all spells and doesn't. To be more specific, if you look up the abilities they contain multiple mods the spell can apply to, whereas Shatter only has one.

Let us all hope that one of the changes in the patch is getting rid of the ridiculous new frostbolt animation.

Not unlike misery, which as far as I know does not double dip.

Depending on how things go, the Remove Curse glyph might see PvE applications (anyone else remember Shazz and Chomaggus? Malygos could end up like that), and the Polymorph glyph will see PvE sets if it is a minor one (stupid apps...). I can just picture someone close to death out questing in the world with his mage buddy with a powerful DoT on him, they duel, Poly, and all is well. I was surprised that Arcane Blast isn't represented on the list, too.

In all seriousness, though, the Water Elemental inscription could be anywhere from meaningless (15 second range) to insane (1 minute range) and still fall within "normal" design specs. Reducing windup time on Imp. Scorch is also a major kicker.

Timbal's and Shatter is a pretty messy to set up because it requires dotting during freezes. I'll see what I can do.

TLC/TTC works with PoM-Potency exploiting at least:
The lightning crit rates looked pretty much like 50% and not like 20%.
Then again, the extra crit appears on the character screen, so it can't exactly vanish.


Curse of Elements: [Apply Aura]: Mod Dmg % Taken (Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature, Shadow)
Shatter is listed as: [Apply Aura]: Override Class Scripts (913), Value: 1

I don't know much about scripting, but "Override Class Scripts" sounds like it could mean anything really.
I don't really see why it couldn't be the same as CoE and then allow double-dipping.

Anyway, I was just wondering and did that little test to clear it up and see.
I really hope that they cull or clarify double-dipping.

I'd guess Misery and Ebon Plague don't double-dip as they seem to be flat magic damage modifers. Don't think anyone tested that though.



Glyphs listed: Are they datamined from 8820 or just some wishlist?

Only on trash or on new target acquisition. It doesn't do anything for sustained dps. You still have to scorch every 30s.

OK, I know usually we want to comment on large blocks instead of breaking things up into small responses, but when replying to a list like this the small responses seems to be a lot more clear, so I hope I'll be forgiven this time.

No matter what the percentage is, the Fireball one is pure win. The Frostbolt one, however, is not as good. A Fireball without a DOT is still useful for every purpose except keeping Rogue from stealthing. A Frostbolt without a snare is useful only for raiding, and nothing else. Frankly, unless the % increase is significant, I probably wouldn't use this glyph.

That seems nice, but really how much of a difference does it make, considering the only time you need to cast more than one is at the very beginning of the fight?

Depending on the reduction/increase, those could be very worthwhile.

ETA:

15-second reduction would reduce a talented Water Elemental to 2 minutes, 9 seconds cooldown with 1 minute duration. It'd increase the minimum uptime from 41.67% to 46.51%; not too bad, really.

I would be inclined to think of this one as a PvP talent, since in PvE, all your Arcane spells (if you're specced Arcane) are already 36 yards; why would you want a longer range on AM?

And, heh, this one could really be considered a PvE talent if you're a little cynical.

The question is whether the removal of frostbolts slowing component also removes the coefficient penalty.

Imp. Scorch glyph strikes me as a buff for trash/PvP.

Also, remember the fireball glyph will save the raid a few debuff slots (!)

EDIT: Molten/Mage Armor glyhps adds to the whole armor design dilemma.

Not many good pve fire glyphs; but I suppose more will come out. Seeing there is one for AP and water elemental; they could possibly do one for Combustion as well making you get say 5 guaranteed crits instead of 3 for an example.

The Ice Veins, Frost Nova, and Remove Curse seem to be the only "PvP" glyphs with obvious potency. Not that others won't be useful, and tbh the Nova and Curse glyphs depending greatly on their values, I wouldn't say I'm too thrilled with those glyphs so far. Extra range on ice lance and missiles? Increased duration of Invisibility? Removing dots for when you poly? This stuff is pretty bonkers, but we'll see. ^^

This somewhat disturbs me, for the same reason it does Lhivera. Even in some raiding situations (Vashj, Illidan) the snare on frostbolt is required, and unless it will be possible to add/remove inscriptions easily and cheaply at will (treating them like pieces of equipment instead of gems), this glyph alone may make frost a difficult spec to raid with. No matter what the % increase is, it will likely be considered required glyphing for all raiding frost mages by min-maxing guild leaders, but it will mean paying for a new glyph after any fight where "respecing" back into having the slow is required and reducing soloing/5man capability by a large amount.

I'm also curious whether frostbolt would gain its 5% coefficient penalty back if the snare was removed by this glyph. I suspect not, but just one more reason to remove the penalty (since Frostfire Bolt is not currently penalized).

The armor glyphs also bother me, since fights are currently balanced to a point where one might use one armor for one fight and the other for the next. Spending two (major?) inscription slots to make sure you're playing at peak efficiency in each type of fight is quite a price to pay.

A lot of this depends on what values are behind the encoding, so we'll have to see if more information can be gleaned when the servers come back up. I just received a beta invitation yesterday, so I'll do what I can to contribute to the testing.

This could be very good in certain situations, specifically on a fight that involves adds that are/can not be AE'd. The amount of time saved by applying 2 or 3 scorches at once when killing Vashj Striders/Naga, Muru Mages/Zerkers, Anetheron's Towering Infernals, etc could stack up to be substantial over the course of the fights.

Of course, those fights aren't that common. If that's a major glyph going up against the Fireball +dmg/-dot it's a hard sell, but if my choices are between "Poly: Penguin" and this it could have a big benefit.

wotlkwiki.info lists all of the new inscriptions as Major except poly, curse, blink and evo. Not sure how likely that really is, though.

I'll be really interested to see what the % increases are for Fireball/Frostbolt. Given the impact Glyphs have on other classes, they could be tremendous increases and I wouldn't call it imba.

The Polymorph one is a bit bizarre, it doesn't apply much to PvP and it would seem like it encourages stupidity in PvE.

My hope on this is that we get low cost utility versions of frostbolt and cone of cold in the wake of the downranking changes. After all, shamans are getting rank 1 earth shock. This would allow for kiting where necessary (albeit at a small DPS loss, even with the glyph's added power) but increased sustained DPS elsewhere and without the need to re-glyph.

The polymorph glyph is slightly more flexible than you're giving it credit for: it allows you to change your mind about what you're polying, within the constraints of the heal effect. Probably not as good as a glyph that lowers the heal component itself, but I could see the value in switching poly targets while training someone depending on incoming heals and cooldown use. While I don't think it's physically possible, I would be interested to know if it could clear Flamestrike and Consecrate DoTs as well.

I am wryly amused that your Fireball and Frostbolt glyphs are changes that make the spells more boring. And that one of them is an improvement.

Sadly, I anticipate this will go nowhere. Fireball, Frostbolt, and Frostfire Bolt are simply way too close to each other in their talented base damage to coefficient ratios. If Frostbolt's penalty were to be removed, it would be the only major mage nuke to break the 900 base damage / coefficient barrier when Empowered.