solbergb

incineration is a dps increase but not a very large one, especially compared to Torment of the Weak. It is similar to world in flames, except a scorch crit is significantly smaller than a pyroblast crit and the increased odds of a hot streak are fairly slight, so it's worse than world in flames for single target dps (and worse for aoe dps too)

What you are looking at really is incineration vs a mana talent.

Right now arc/fire is assumed to be a big mana hog, so people tend to assume spare points will go into high tier arcane mana talents. if you are 18 into arcane with full torment of the weak and you're fine on mana, than incineration might be where you go, but it competes with two good utility talents (flamethrowing, and burning soul's pushback protection) and one of those usually wins. To get those, or mana talents even world in flames is sometimes sacrificed.

 

• ash2ash

FYi I tried Arc/fire. I went oom in about half the time i would have with FFB and my dps was about 500dps lower. This is with a shaman keeping an earthbind totem near the dummies so they were constantly snared. I didn't have focus magic procs but I did glyph fireball and FB dps was still about 300-500 lower than FFB. I just got my 4pT7 bonus today and with the crit modifier of FFB I think the difference would be even greater.

Also, I don't think people give incineration/imp fireblast enough credit. They're awesome for mobility fights to keep your hot streaks rolling and maintain your dps even while moving (ie heigan)

 

Guintof

Actually burning soul is already included on the spec but you are right that it is a choice of putting 2 points on incineration or world in flames, the latter being the wiser choice in my opinion or putting 2 points in mana regen.

I'd only ever put those 2 points in mana regen ever if I really needed them which is what prompted my question. I haven't played Fire ever since the expansion came out (Been frostfire ever since lvl 75) but it did fine in TBC so I just assumed that the addition of burnout wasn't too much more of a problem now. Ofc I forgot that we have to keep up LB which is a mana hog and we have pyroblast added to our rotation.

Will be interesting to see.

 

Kelfar

How many times do we have to go over this, bosses aren't affected by movement slows, only casting and attack speed slows, the heroic dummy is considered a boss so earthbind has no effect. You need a warrior thunderclapping or a deathknight keeping up frostfever, or any of the other attack speed/cast speed slows each tank can provide.

 

Soulesss

Is the "SampleOutput- Simulationcraft" the updated version for Live Server DPS now? Because Arcane is higer then 20/51 and i'm actually quite surprised. I know there are bits and pieces of personal tests showing various results of arcane being higher, and 20/51 being a mana hog.

Would really like some confirmation from the elder elites of this community to condense it for us lesser mortals with regards to this because i would like to go 20/51, but keep hearing 57/3/11 is stronger. I'm quite used to topping charts cept for the past months in 3.03 i've been getting thrashed by our 3 HAT rogues >.< ... now that HAT's nerfed, i would like to do my best to make up for the dps loss.

Putting aside having a mage for 10% Spell Crit for the raid...

Which would be a good raiding spec for us Mages now? is 57/3/11 overall superior to 20/51?

 

LiquidHAL

Unclear right now, arcane is doing good damage but fire is the more proven spec. I'd like to see a few WWS reports to get a better idea how arcane does in real raid situations. I personally am leaning towards 20/51 for times when I'm the only mage and we need scorch up, though for that something like 51/20/0 is also an option. There's no hurry right now so wait and see is usually the best policy, and I have a feeling both specs will be tweaked before or concurrent with Ulduar anyways, when DPS will actually matter.

 

• ash2ash

I tested it on the nonheroic dummy. I know it's not an accurate dps comparison, but it's telling that my dps was significantly higher on the Heroic dummy WITH FFB spec than with a fire spec on a nonheroic. Combined with the increase in mana efficiency of frostfire as well as the "on demand" damage of combustion+IV, frostfire looks more appealing than ever.

 

Arastonachis

Just a few informations, still from the ptr:

- Rotation is ABx3/AM/ABarr

- You have to skill MB 5/5. it doesent(!) require to change the rotation! Its a 12 Sec. buff, so there is enough time to reach AM with the normal rotation without loosing MB buff.

Here you can find my talent calculation with max dps and max manareg talents http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...=031900000000#

Arkan is easy to play. You only have to spam the Rotation. You dont have to look on proccs like Hot Streak.

But if you look on the other side of the coin, an thats the bad one , i get into serious mana problems (I used Molten Armor cause the target is maximum DPS).

With the Talents posted above and Mage Armor i reached 60% manareg infight. Remember there is a glyph for Mage Armor (wich i dont use) with additional 20% manareg! 80% sounds a lot . After that, and if you are an alchemist, you can wear the alchemist stone + the mana gem glyph.

As you can see there are a lot of mana options.

BUT: My, our, target is max dps, you dont want to use all these mana features, cause you will loss a lot of DPS.

Today i'm going Naxx and i will try max dps. Will see what happen to my mana with Manareg Totem, blessing of wisdom and Pala/SP manareg.

(again please ignore my english. I'm not a native speaker )

 

Soulesss

Might want to reread Tooltip again:

"This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast."

 

Arastonachis

thx you are right. Ive edited my posting

 

merlinjo

First of all want to say hi to all of you guys, been watching mage section for a very long time now (1 year I think) and you're doing a great job.
Since patch 3.0.8 came I took some time to DL new Rawr and check how things are now since i read a lot that TTW is fixed, procs on all combat slow and works with MF. The thing is that Rawr is putting my current spec in almost all environments ahead of both FB specs 19/52/0 and 11/52/8, common parameters i use are correct glyphs and to eliminate mana issue i use unlimited mana, I include options maintain scorch and maintain snare and I manage to get that 19/52/0 spec is just about 60DPS better than FFB, if i disable unlimited mana option then it's nowhere near.
Can you tell me if I'm missing something? Oh btw the fight duration is 5 minutes.

 

Einhander

11/52/8 doesn't seem to have any even remotely comparable viablity at all, neither now or yesterday. No Icy veins, no TtW, no Spell Impact.. just plain weak Fireball with 3%hit and 3%*[0.nCr%] crit..

 

Swindley

Not sure if you missed it, but there's a rather well "hidden" setting to set 3.0.8 mode in there as well. I know that's what I first missed when I noticed TTW didn't give a DPS increase. I doubt you miss it with a 60 dps lead to FB spec though.

Allthough, with a non perfect level of gear, I think the dps increase of 19/52 is rather minor, than with best of the best. (also you might be crit heavy, and haste/crit scaling changes abit between the 2 specs)

Also note that 19/52 requires 3 more hit to hitcap, which also might change your gear slightly.

Had the same results when I played around with both specs with my current gear.

 

merlinjo

Not sure if you DL-ed new version of Rawr, if you'd do so you'd see that there is no "hidden" option to enable 3.0.8 mode, since new version is for 3.0.8. Patch is today -_-
So that's not it....
What I'm saying is that with SAME gear, but different spec and glyphs etc. rawr is showing what I just said and that would roughly be like less than 1% increase.
Oh forgot, to eliminate the extra HIT needed I've even put Target level to 70.... so..SAME gear, UNLIMITED mana and "hitcap" gives less than 1% difference... according to rawr 2.1.7 atleast, still didn't get the chance to try it live

 

merlinjo

Correction....loaded char again, no buffs, target level put to 70, unlimited mana, proper glyphs on 300sec fight i got following results:

0/53/18 (Frostfire) : 3086,11DPS
19/52/0 (Fireball) : 3248,25DPS

so it seems like 5% increase, is that correct?
must have been some bug or something...dunno why it didn't show like this before.
there is still a question if fireball spec is good regarding mana, since to make it better than frostfire I have to put unlimited mana option. Guess I'll have to test this live.

 

Veovis_

I realy wonder how big will be the different to arcane. I mean, as firemage since lvl 1 Im realy abit worried about ending as a support machine for Arcane mages. I hope some results will come up next days.

but back to the topic, it realy seems fb is max 300dps infront to ffb, but with a higher manakosts. So I would be interested in calculating the dps loss through using evocation.

 

solbergb

Some things to consider in your real life testing on dummies that are hard to match the simulations

1. Focus magic buff uptime. Raid buffed with a good crit-heavy target it'll be up most of the time and most simulations assume 100% uptime. Some also attempt to count the 3% extra crit you give someone else back into your own dps, so make sure you understand the focus magic assumptions before accepting a simulationcraft result (and have allowed for them when you're doing target dummy testing that won't give you the same uptime)

2. Torment of the Weak uptime. In a raid situation, somebody will be slowing the boss attack time...all tanks have some version of this as do many melee dps. In non-raid situations though, or even in a raid but not on a boss, the uptime for this talent could be much lower, even zero. So that 160 dps advantage you see above may be true on bosses in raids but take 12% or whatever fraction makes sense to you off it and you're doing worse anywhere else....

One thing I like about frostfire is that it's less dependent on raid buffs to get its performance and the performance is more consistent across types of mobs. It's better, say, with a moonkin buff everywhere, but that means on trash and on bosses etc. It's easier to test against the simulators for that reason. Of course the flipside of that is "consistent" with frostfire means "wild variations based on crit rates in a given fight", where the arc/fire is somewhat less variable in that respect.

Just use caution. Some stuff in simulators matches behaviors in 25 man raids on single bosses pretty well but may behave differently on a mildly unbalanced 10 man, or any fiveman stuff you might do. The better simulators let you add/remove buffs. I'd compare the various builds with different buffs so you understand how important torment of the weak is to arc/fire and the consequences of losing it, and likewise other assumed buffs and replenishment that may or may not be always there for you.

 

solbergb

I'm in what I consider to be the best of all worlds for this change...our raid's about to get somebody who prefers to play arcane, and I'm teamed with someone who already really prefers a deep-fire based build but probalby isn't too picky about arcane vs frostfire as to where the other 18 points go. So some raids I'll be teamed with one, some with the other and have the freedom to pick whichever spec I like or go a third way. None of us are going to be benched even if I do something strange and go into deep frost, as long as our performance is decent and we don't die or wipe the raid. A shift of between 3000dps and 3150 dps is less important than whether we're decursing our side on Saphh, doing the dance right on Thaddeus, picking up sparks on Malygos, etc. I'm not supposed to go in with a PVP spec and I'm expected to research my gear, enchants, etc but the difference between deep frost, frostfire, arc/fire and arcane raiding specs in 3.08 aren't different enough to matter given current difficulty of content. Each will bring something good to the raid.

For the moment, our raid is not really struggling on DPS checks anywhere but Sarth+2 or more drakes, and that's due to attrition more than rotations/gear. I think the raid is close to being capable of putting out the raw dps for the fight, if we could get our act together with all the environmental craziness of that fight.

So there is luxury to play around a bit in the Patchwerk type fights to experiment with specs, those fights aren't important to our progression. In actual play, the people at the top of the meters for the entire raid given roughly similar gear are the ones who have the best situational awareness, who can work the fight, stay alive, and remain somewhere close to their Patchwerk-output.

 

merlinjo

/agree totally.....

I tested it on a dummy with a friend also a mage so we managed to get Focus magic but no ttw, buffs were standard int,flask,foodbuff,molten armor.
I tested both on full mana pool + gem + potion to get a bit more time, on average I got ffb to be almost 10% infront fireball, but when you account the missing 12% from TTW that would make them almost the same even small advantage for fireball, but in real situations where the guy you give focus magic can die in raid or on a boss where tank cannot always keep combat slow (boss flying) or need to take distance from it I bet FFB will proove to be much better bcs of it's independancy and mana consumption wich is preety higher on fireball spec.
My conclusion is that moving to fireball spec is not worth it.

 

Sprintsz

For all those scared of going 20/51/0 or the likes because of mana it's really not an issue, did a naxx clear last night and was almost full mana at the end of KT and in regards to the DPS issue, did 5971 on patchwerk and my best before that as FFB was around 5600 so i'm pretty happy with it.

Wow Web Stats

WWS for patchy.

As long as you got replenishment and blessing of wisdom your golden with the new pyromaniac change, i'm probably gonna move the 2 points i put in arcane meditation over to dragon's breath and blast wave.

 

Roywyn

Updating the Original Post at the moment.

1) Have there been any exact news on how much threat Mirror Images now have when they are spawned?

2) Arcane Potency
Non-damage spells like Slow or Counterspell can also consume the crit buff.
The buff is also consumed at the beginning of Arcane Missile casts, but all 5 volley get the crit buff.

Can anyone check whether this is still the case in 3.0.8?

3) Is Judgement of Wisdom still a 25% proc chance?

4) Can [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] be stacked pre-combat, or maintained through phase switches?
And is Scorching still 4/5 stacks per cast, or is it down to 1/2 or even 1?

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

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

 

solbergb

[quote=Sprintsz;1065783]For all those scared of going 20/51/0 or the likes because of mana it's really not an issue, [/url]

It depends on your gear (spirit, 2t7 bonus) and whether you're getting all the 25 man mana buffs but my instinct is that yeah, you can do arcane/fire without mana issues on current content. I've been running frostfire without frost channelling and almost never have to use a mana pot. Arc/Fire isn't actually that much worse manawise than frostfire sans frost channeling. My instinct is that I'd need a few more mana pots to clear nax but that's about it. Malygos your DPS burn has to be pretty short or you hit hard enrage, and OS is also a "do it fast or lose" kind of fight.

Right now with my gear, I lose enough dps for losing the elemental precision that most of the gain of arc/fire is wiped out (and what gain there is assumes 100% focus magic and 100% torment of weak uptime, which my WWS logs show isn't a sure thing in the fights we're actually struggling with). So I'm staying frostfire for now.

Another gear upgrade with a wad more hit would probably change my mind, as I'm starting to be swimming in hit and am capped even with removing all hit gems and swapping in any pieces of gear without hit that are better than pieces with hit in raw dps stats.

 

Prom

Yes

It's down to 1.

They must find it difficult....
Those who have taken authority as the truth,
rather than truth as the authority.

 

Unclefu

It can no longer be stacked pre-combat, except maybe for classes that can have casts that will allow them to do effective healing. As of 3.0.8 the tooltip was changed to gaining stacks only from damage and healing spells.

On the first day of the patch it was stacking on each instance of damage done in your combat log, both DD and DOT ticks, but not directly from spellcasts. For example, you'd get no stack from applying LB until the first DOT tick, and applications of ignite wouldn't give a stack but each ignite tick would. Accordingly, applications of the imp scorch debuff no longer granted additional stacks in excess of the one from the scorch DD component. For FB/FFB specs the change wasn't too big a deal since it was still stacking to 10 charges fairly quickly via LB/ignite.

However, it was hotfixed after Tuesday, and now no longer gains stacks from DOT ticks - it seems to now gain stacks from damaging spellcasts rather than their DD components, as you gain one stack on applying LB but none from the terminal explosion. As best I can recall, before the hotfix, for spells with travel times, you wouldn't gain the stack until after they'd landed, whereas now you gain the stack as soon as the spell leaves your hands. The only spell I've encountered to which the "one cast, one stack" rule doesn't apply is AM, from which you gain one stack per pulse.

Edit: Also tested AOE - you only gain one stack per cast of AE/Flamestrike regardless of the number of targets hit (edit2: the cast even generates a charge if you hit no mobs at all, so like the poster below pointed out, this is a potential option for prestacking). You still gain nothing from blizzard.