dedmonwakeen

Regarding Torment the Weak:

I'm going to put out a new SimulationCraft build in a couple hours. Should I just take out the functionality that makes Torment the Weak work on bosses? So far I've left it in so that people have the option of playing with it if they so choose.

But......... While flexibility is nice, aiding in the proliferation of misinformation is most certainly not nice.

If you have an opinion post it here or send me a PM.... whatever you think appropriate.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Søndag

It is easy to make build that do not use Torment, and we still only can guess what is going to happen with it. So i'd day leave it in, and then people can choose. Slow/torment works on some bosses afaik, and the tooltip says 12%, and i'd say the simulation has to follow what the builds allow.

If you really want to change something then perhaps a general option where you could toggle between the behavior of Focus magic.. Something like Focus_Magic=0 gives the 3% and =1 gives 6% since there is some argument about what is right.

Paper is fine, nerf rock - Sincerely, scissors!

 

Cryic

I read upthread where tailoring is not looking very good at all for a profession come xpac (cept for the cool flying carpet). What's everybodies thoughts on which way they are leaning? I personally can not stand LW, so I'm looking forward to dropping it and picking up something more enjoyable.

Do you still get an extra active inscription as the bop perk of being an inscriber? Or was that tossed out when the bop offhands were introduced?

 

Zorkulon

JoW is anything but fixed. I did a quick test at the if dummys and here is what i got:







As you can see on the first picture, every Arcane Missle gets a JoW proc. One Missle also caused 2 Procs oO. While Scorch doesn´t get procs for a few seconds from time to time. (JoW was up all the time of course)


Maybe the took away the internal CD and put in a (very high) Proc Chanche?

 

Lemming

You no longer get an extra major glyph slot. They took that out awhile back. You do, however, get a more powerful shoulder enchant, something along the lines of 61 spellpower and some crit.

 

Conquistador

This was asked a mere two pages ago. About 4 different people responded with tons of information. And yes, currently Tailoring is bad, Inscribers no longer have an extra inscription, and almost all other professions are equal save for Jewelcrafters which are a decent amount ahead.

 

Cryic

My apologies, I somehow missed the one page that has tons of information on the professions for the xpac. The following post in the profession thread really sums everything up:

The WotLK profession thread

 

Sinless

I wouldn't necessarily call Tailoring a bad profession. Over a full clear of Naxx-10, the lightweave cloak enchant did about 2% of my overall damage. If we roughly convert this into a combat rating, such as +hit, it's around 2x26 ~ 52 hit rating compared to +38 spell damage for enchanting.

Of course, this is with a mixture of Naxx 10/25 gear, so as my gear gets better the cloak enchant will definitely get worse because it doesn't scale at all. I currently do about 4.5kish dps on Patchwerk, and I don't think I'll be doing 9k even with 25-man Icecrown citadel gear, so I'll go ahead and say that even though the approximate contribution of 52 hit rating of the cloak enchant will decrease over time, it will never go below 30ish hit rating which roughly equals what you get from enchanting which is considered to be the best profession for us mages.

 

solbergb

The knockback is a tool. It's a new tool. It is a utility tool, like frost nova.

Blast wave is no longer an AOE DPS spell to be included as part of an AOE spam rotation. Just as frost nova is normally a bad move but is sometimes the best move in raiding, so will blast wave be.

I'd rather have a frost nova and a blast wave than a second frost nova via cold snap on any spec without shatter. In general two different tools is better than more of the same tool.

Because frost nova is a DPS (shatter) tool for frost mages, they'd rather have two frost novas.

I was unaware of the shaman knockback effect, but it isn't the same kind of tool. That's a single target tool, this is an AOE tool. Both will be situationally superior to the other.

 

Jonny_Monroe

Just did another Archavon raid and JoW is giving even stranger results than previously. It seems the internal cooldown is coming up sporadically, and if a channeled spell starts on the target while its off cooldown, all volleys from that spell can proc it. So we get the result where where arcane missiles can give 5 (6?) procs and have 100% proc chance. It may be giving 6 as the actual channeled spell leashing you to the target procs it, plus 1 proc per volley. If I landed 2 spells at once both would proc JoW. If I landed 2 spells while the 4second cooldown was active however, neither would (as expected). There seems to be a short window for normal spells to proc JoW before the cooldown starts. If I was lagging after a fireball and threw an ABar ~1second too late, both spells would still proc the effect. What MIGHT be happening is that JoW procs calculate when the spell leaves your hand, but don't actually apply or cause cooldown until the spell lands. Much like some crit-based effects. I'll test more but I think they're just playing with different mechanics at blizz HQ right now to find something they like.

If any paladins on Colderra (EU) would like to help test this out with me, my mage is called Topgear and he's logged in theramore at the targetting dummies.


The shaman spell is a self-targeted AoE, same as blastwave.

OMNOMNOM.

 

Roywyn

If it did 2% of your damage, then that means:
a) You were not chain-pulling, so the cooldown could tick during drinking time, or
b) You were doing 1200-1800 DPS in general.

Check your boss fights in recount, the enchant should be a lot lower than 2% there.
On long fights, it's pretty much hard capped at 35-40 DPS.

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.

 

Ranch

Blizzard wants mages/warlocks/sp's to SOMETIMES use spirit gear, or else a chunk of their itemization is wasted. IE gear with spirit and +hit.

JOW is broken again(this time its OP), 100% proc chance every 8 seconds or 6 seems to be the middle ground. It was 4 earlier, but also the regen numbers were higher too.

I would consider it balanced if on short fights you could wear zero spirit gear but 10 minute fights you either had to

1) use mage armor
2) have some spirit peices
3) get some in arcane meditation

I am sure this is considered in the upcomming numbers pass. Options are good.

Fundamentally(but not fun) I thought it was fair to wear resist gear while learning Kazrogal and Azgalor, or stamina gear while learning Najentus. The gear choice of spirit should also be a factor depending on the fight.

 

dedmonwakeen

SimulationCraft r698 available for download.

Notes:
(1) I elected to leave the behavior of Torment-the-Weak alone for now. I'll revisit it every release.
(2) Improved Divine Spirit no longer stacks, so DPS across the board will see a small drop

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Jonny_Monroe

I'd honestly prefer a mechanic like lifetap or AotV; where you turn down your DPS when you need mana and turn it back up once you're ok for mana. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the design for mages; we get as much passive regen as we bring in before the fight and beyond that you have X mana to last you the whole fight. MPS usage would equal total MPS Minus Regen, then your total mana bar would equal (Manabar*1.6(evoc))+3gems+1pot... So what you end up with is finite mana but a malleable regen value to stretch that finite mana on a per-fight basis. This wouldn't matter too much if those options for stretching your regen were all in the form of base abilities; but 2 out of 3 of those regen options are talents/glyphs... not things that are easily changed on a fight-per-fight basis. And thats ignoring the need to carry a 2nd set of spirit gear. The nature of LifeTap means its hard to group warlocks up with mages in terms of mana mechanics. SPs and mages have a lot in common on mana mechanics but Warlocks are closer to hunters in terms of how they get mana.

OMNOMNOM.

 

Althor

I'd disagree with this. If casters are expected to wear regen gear on longer fights this means that they're wearing less DPS gear. It means that they're able to put out a certain level of DPS.

On a shorter fight they can wear more DPS gear. Then means they can put out a larger amount of DPS.

Non-mana users on the other hand don't need to change gear based upon fight duration. They wear gear with enough health to let them survive and then stack as much DPS stats as they can. This gives them a certain amount of DPS irrespective of fight length.

Now Blizzard have said that they want all the classes to do equal DPS within the margin of skill and gear level (by which I assume they mean a sort of average ilvl of gear).

So how exactly do Blizzard balance these 2 conflicting things?

If they peg the balance point (where mana users and non-mana users do the same DPS) at say a long fight, then the casters will beat the melee in the short fights. If they peg it for short fights then melee will dominate the longer fights.

The only possible counter-balance that comes to mind is that the encounter design of long fights will require melee (or to be more specific, non-mana users) to wear more survivability gear than the mana users. Maybe the boss has a pounding type mechanic like on Void Reaver or something. Something with enough spike damage that without enough +stam they'd be one shot, but maybe that doesn't require so much healing that the healers are too taxed by it.

Without such a counter-balance however, then forcing casters to stack regen for longer fights is a recipe for imbalance.

 

Stormhole

Alchemy is the best for min maxing. +50% effect of flask is +62SP. Also its better than burning a glyph slot for mage armor if you want to pop out a resto flask for regen.


JC, Enchanting, Blacksmithing are tied to be second ( ~46 extra damage each ), assuming you have drums coverage, otherwise LW is still second best. Inscription is shortly after.

JC becomes second best assuming a BOP epic DPS competitive trinket goes in ( current trinket is too healer centric ).

I'm retaining enchanting, will probably pickup alchemy.

 

Lemming

I'm pretty sure I've seen you on some of the better-geared nax25 dps parses, so I'm assuming you have used these flasks, but are you sure all flasks get +50% effect? Everywhere I'm reading (except a couple random posts with no real source of information) says that Mixology+Frost Wyrm Flask only gives an extra 37 SP. If its true that it gets 62SP, then that does make an easy choice for first profession.

 

Conquistador

As Lemming has stated, Mixology has been reported to give 37 extra spell power from top level wrath flask.

JC (+49 sp - including the "hidden" bonus to socket pure damage gems in blue sockets for metagem requirements, and possibly more if you can satisfy other equipment specific socket bonuses) is considered better than Enchanting (+38 sp) and blacksmithing (+46 sp). Drums are no longer usable @ level 80.

This was discussed about 10 posts up with a link to the (current) leading research post on this subject:
The WotLK profession thread

 

Vand1

I am not sure there is any clear answer as to how much extra effect Mixology gives. The wotlkwiki alchemy article says 50%, the EJ post says 25%.

I tried testing this by logging on to the PTR and drinking a Flask of Pure Death (after training Mixology). The buff tooltip showed a 4 hour duration, but said that it grants 80 spell power (not 100 or 120). I did not test to see the actual amount of damage gained by the flask, so either Mixology is bugged or the buff tooltip is bugged.

But even if it is only 25%, that puts it in line with other professions. And double-length flasks is a very nice non-DPS benefit that makes an excellent tie-breaker.

 

Teenee

Tooltips are infamous for not updating (apart from duration). Did you check your character panel?

 

Conquistador

According to the people testing on Beta/PTR, mixology gives varied benefits depending on the flask used. It's somewhere between 20-50%, its not a solid "extra x%" for all flasks.

 

Vand1

Aren't I the idiot? I didn't even think to do that.

Strangely enough, it gave me 103 shadow/fire/frost spell power, or 28.75% extra. If that percentage is consistent across different flasks, we'd be looking at an extra ~36 spell power with the new Wrath flasks.

edit: written before above reply. I guess we at least know the value for the lvl 70 flask. It would be great if somebody on beta could test with the Flask of the Frost Wyrm. That is the benchmark we need to use in order to compare alchemy with other professions.

Also, I am surprised that Pure Death has kept its school-specific effects, when pretty much all other school-specific things that I am aware of have been changed to generic spell power.

 

Vand1

I would not totally count out tailoring yet without knowing what pattens Blizzard is going to put in raid instances. I am pretty sure my Sunfire Robe gives me a greater benefit than I could get presently from enchanting or jewelcrafting.

And the Belt of Blasting lasted me very well until I replaced it with the T6 belt. Yes, I know that is BoE, but if you're in a guild that is amongst the leading guilds on your server progression-wise, then somebody in your raid needs to be able to make such things.

 

Conquistador

This was literally the discussion above your question:

 

Vand1

delete