◊ manly

That is weird I was getting 36% on the explosion. I tested many times too. I did avoid pwf and fire power for the obvious reasons, no buffs either.

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Raoke

Thanks Zaldinar, I knew that had to be too good to be true, but figured it didn't hurt to ask.

The other thing I am wondering, is if Frost Mages could possibly viewed as raid utility, something to the effect of current Aff Locks and Surv Hunters. Although I am very hopeful that they will have DPS in the ball park of other specs, I just don't see it happening. But with WC being very easy to maintain and the Pet mana regen, it seems like they will have more to offer than just straight DPS.

Of course this assumes that WC and ImpScorch will not be stackable, and the pressence of a Frost Mage would allow Fire specs and hybrids to spend those points elsewhere and not have to worry about keeping the stacks up.

 

Celani

Allow certainly, but I'd caution against it for progression. Redundant buffs look really good when your stacker suddenly dies -- losing 10% spell crit to the raid for 3-4 minutes could prevent that progression kill.

Respec raid min/max for farm content WWS peen parses.

quick edit and different train of thought: could someone with beta access please start/bump a thread on how bloated the arcane tree is? 80 talent points in a single tree is insane comparatively.

 

◊ manly

Well, they'll have to do something about torment of the weak. As it stands right now (12%), its the demonic sacrifice of mages. Its a talent so good you have no choice but to get it on your main or off tree. Sure, what triggers the talent on bosses will radically change things, but if druids can trigger it, then you pretty much rely on both elements.

-----
On a random note, a thought just occured to me as I was thinking about what affects TTW and how it affects builds.
What if Living Bomb was a snare ? I mean, for PVP purpose, wouldn't that help a lot fire spec ? Plus it would put the dispeller in a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' kind of case which I think is somewhat good. Whether or not that would work with TTW is somewhat unrelated (and probably too good too), but I'm curious what pvpers would think about it. After all, they removed the knock up so I figure they could put that back in now.

Log on with different model:
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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Zaldinar

I'll double check that one when I'm done with Spell Impact + Arcane Instability + PWF + Firepower, I need to recreate the combatlog anyway, the upload script that migrates them from my mac to my linux box seems to have eaten that particular log.

To truly model the game, we first must research it.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...icId=109841969
Proven TheoryCrafting Stuff, chain casting in a PTR near you soon.

 

solbergb

I find the FFB changes pretty interesting, as "fire with a splash of frost" has been most of what I'm playing with the "splash" getting up to 20 points at time, and as low as 3 points. From a roleplay and "what I like" standpoint that's pretty much the ideal setup for me. Deeper frost and pretty much anything arcane just doesn't seem right.

I find the idea of my primary nuke also doing a chill effect very appealing in solo or 5 man play, plus having elemental precision a natural part of the build. You could also have a "raid build" that goes the full 51/20 and a "fun build" that maybe only goes up to icy veins and puts the other 9 points into AOE or PVP talents, slightly degrading the frostfirebolt DPS for other utility without going as far as I had to in BC where I dumped the fireball talents entirely to make room for the extra PVP talent points.

I would assume there is some threat advantage to frostfire bolt if you take both the frost and fire 10% threat talents?

If it remains competitive with the 18/53/0 fire/arcane builds I'd probably go frostfire. I might also use the extra 3% hit rating I'm getting via talents to put 3% more crit on my gear, to get the hot streak procs up to similar levels as fireball.

 

Roywyn

Living Bomb
I was getting 4*18% + 36% for rank 1 at level 70. So 36% for rank 3 at 80 seems logical considering rank 2 and rank 3 of the explosions are considered level 70.

Level 70 test at exactly 1000 spell power, no damage talents, no buffs/debuffs, level 60 dummy.
Rank 1: 153 / 306 listed, 233 / 466 seen. 8% / 16%, that's 40% (-12 levels penalty) of 20% / 40%
Rank 2: 256 / 512 listed, 436 / 872 seen. 18% / 36%, that's 90% (-2 levels penalty) of 20% / 40%
Rank 3: 345 / 690 listed, 545 / 1050 seen. 20% / 36%.

That's 20% without a level penalty on the DoT, and 40% with a 90% penalty for 2 levels on the explosion because it's listed as a level 70 Spell.
It's pretty obvious if you look at the other ranks.

I have no idea how to file that as bug report so that anyone would read and understand it.

Threat is a total non-issue right now. Your tank can AFK after one minute and come back when the boss is dead.

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.

 

Thegoodman

Is this going to be changed at all? Has threat generation and threat reduction been essentially removed from PvE strategy? If threat is in fact irrelevant, it frees up some points in at least the Arcane tree and potentially points in the Frost tree as well if Mana is also irrelevant.

 

[DRF]Solmyr

I have a question about this recent statements (although, many had already presumed this to be the case):

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> GC: Are all 3 mage specs meant to be ...
WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> GC questions - big big list cuz we're scared
The differences in the three primary specs is "3% crit" for Arcane, "AoE" for Fire, and "Survivability" for Frost. And if Frost can afford at least 11pts into Arcane, then Arcane would bring nothing extra at all. Doesn't this mean that Frost spec is the only serious spec for both PvE and PvP?

 

Samuel

Two points that I'm not sure if you agree or disagree with:

1. Frost's "extra" survivability in raids is rarely of much use and when it is useful it does cost a significant amount of damage as shields and wards require a global cooldown so often you are just better off stacking some more stamina, let the healers heal you and forgetting about your survivability talents.
2. Talents for a PvE frost mage and a PvP frost mage are not so similar that you can get by without respeccing if you want to do both well.

I think Blizzard's goal is you can choose which ever talent tree you enjoy the most without compromising your ability to enjoy the game. This also goes for PvP as fire and arcane are much better for PvP after the expansion than they used to be although perhaps not for elite level arena.

 

Zaldinar

Hmm, redid it and got 36% on the kaboom this time around. I may have typo'ed something out of the combat log initially. So yes, 20% per tick on the DoT (80% total), and 36% on the kaboom.

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Proven TheoryCrafting Stuff, chain casting in a PTR near you soon.

 

◊ manly

You mean 80% ? Pretty sure you get a dot tick at the same time that you get the explosion.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

deadlyice

Any chance we can get some build links posted for Arc, Fire, Frost and Elementalist. I know they change frequently, but for consistancy of test numbers, I'd love to know what the consensus builds are at the moment.

Thanks again guys!

 

Zaldinar

I'm tired. I spent all morning spamming fireball for Spell impact, yes, 80%. I think its time for me to take a break for the day.

To truly model the game, we first must research it.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...icId=109841969
Proven TheoryCrafting Stuff, chain casting in a PTR near you soon.

 

Copernicus

With 3.0.2 being a few weeks away, any chance of getting level 70 information added to the first post?

Assuming Misery is up on the target (for hit rating purposes) what's the overall recommendation on talent builds? Is it 10/51 or 51/8, or is there a hidden gem?

Glyph-wise, the options are limited without Northrend herbs. They are Arcane Missiles, Arcane Power, Blink, Evocation, Improved Scorch, Mage Armor, and Mana Gem.

Only two major glyph slots available, so which two options would be recommended? Almost feels like it's Improved Scorch/Mage Armor due to the other options being so weak.

 

deadlyice

Agreed - posting builds on the first page of the most dps tuned raid specs would be helpful as well.

Thanks as always!

 

Roywyn

With every patch, think get more and more buggy and we don't know what the intended behaviour is.
Also, where intended and actual behaviour do not match, we don't know how or when they'll be fixed if at all.

Current spec recommendation for someone with great gear where the +hit costs virtually nothing:
18/43/0 - Focus, Impact, Torment, Hot Streak. Even with 6% Torment. Beats Bomb plus Burnout.
Assuming you have a Feral with Infected Wounds, and that debuff isn't overwritten by other stuff and that it actually works.

That's a lot of assumption that are a pain to test.
It works on dummies. We don't know about Dr. Boom. Even if it worked, would that guarantee it for raid bosses?
Why does Slow count as snare while the FFB DoT does not?

And how about the rumours that Ignite works a bit better in the last build?

It's honestly really annoying to TC in a minefield of bugs and unknown things right now.

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.

 

Raoke

Which point would you dump out of THIS to bring it to the 18/43?


Nah, you guys are doing great. You have most of us thinking and re-thinking possibilities that we never knew could be feasible.

 

JonIrenicus

There is a way to achieve that, but there is no way blizzard would change it in the way needed as it would be a pretty dramatic overhaul. And lets be honest, even IF deep freeze kept the damage it had, the dps boost would be small to nil after a certain point in gearing. It just did not fair well for pve damage.

Here is a sort of radical band aid fix to the mechanics I came up with, admittedly not very elegant, but would get the job done.

World of Warcraft (English) Forums -> Tweaking Deep Freeze

Basically allowing an ice lance type mechanic where the condition of extra damage is not "being frozen" but "being stun immune" i.e. most bosses.

That and BM hunters

/tissue



I suspect deep freeze is not set in stone though, on its face it is useless for pve, though that did not stop them from having slow as a 41 point talent...

 

Copernicus

Eh, that's good enough for me for now. Presumably there will be a final build shortly before the patch where things might actually work. And mana regen requirements might be known for glyph purposes.

 

Tempestra

I'd go with 2/3 MoE. Clearcasting should more than make up for the 10% less base on crits.

 

Myrdinn

As far as I understood, the scorch glyph makes 1/3 improved scorch viable.
I think I recall someone said World in Flames is better than Pyromaniac or Playing with Fire too.
Thus you can take 3/3 world in flames, which is a nice up, and you still got 18/43

 

frosty

Deleted for stupidity, and b/c its late!

 

Krysse

The problem with a level 70 FFB build is that FFB is a level 75 spell.

 

frosty

Hm, yeah. Thats indeed a serious problem