◊ manly

Its pretty easy to speculate that blizzard didn't want both talents stacking, much like the old combustion/pom not stacking.

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

 

arch

Why would they limit two passive conditional talents like that? Are there any examples of this being applied to any other class? Not like it's overpowered, or even compareable to PoM/Combustion...

 

Prandur

If that was the case, it would affect all ranks of the spell. Also, it has been documented that MF works fine with TtW if the slow effect is caused by "Slow". It's clearly a bug either way - they will make them completely non-stackable regardless of rank or slow effect (which is unlikely in my opinion) or completely stackable.

 

Ramsden

So, as of the current build, I guess 0/50/11 is looking the way to go until WotLK?

 

Lemming

I would say so. At least thats what I will most likely be doing. Even if a build with living bomb pulls ahead, as long as they are still close, I wouldn't bother putting living bomb into a level 70 build. First of all it requires a lot more attention (to have as close to 100% LB uptime as possible) and secondly because it hasn't been mention yet if one LB per target is a bug. If that stays in, you could only have one mage doing LB anyways.

But thats just all my personal opinion. DPS numbers that close are highly subject to RNG on every fight as far as I'm concerned, so go with the easiest playstyle that lets you watch other things (movement, position, whatever).

 

Sinless

Last night's 25-man Patchwerk kill. 5.2k dps sustained over about 4 minutes (a little lucky with crits, about ~5-6% higher than what it's supposed to be). A couple observations:

1) Frostfire spec (0/53/18) is fun fun fun. Huge crits and ignite ticks flying all around all the while with incredible mana efficiency.
2) We had 5 mages and I called dibs on Living Bomb for the hell of it (still bugged with 1 LB per target). It's impossible to go out of mana during a 4 minute fight even with molten armor while keeping Living Bomb up constantly (JoW still bugged?)
3) @Lemming: Living Bomb accounts for about 10% of my damage. I fail to see how 0/50/11 is a better spec as long as mana is not a problem. 10% increase in dps for a single talent point is very much irreplaceable.
4) Lightweave cloak enchant indeed sucks.
5) The amount of pyroblast damage pretty much guarantees points in World in Flames.
6) Hunter dps is OP. Fremantle had moderately worse gear than I had.
7) Will we see OVER NINE THOUSAND dps towards Arthas?

 

LiquidHAL

Living Bomb doing 10% of your damage does not equate to a 10% damage increase, you're using casting time applying it that could be used for other things. It may even be a decrease in DPS depending on how much actual damage it does on average in comparison with a frostfire bolt.

 

Lons

Ok well you got me, I have molten fury. Trying out the FFB spec. On world mobs 100% to 0% nether rank 2 or 3 works. So is this a bug with Ice lance or with Molten fury? Pretty disheartened to see this bug still in the game so close to release.

 

solbergb

Living bomb is instant cast with no GCD last I heard. Did this change?

Even if it has GCD now, 1.5 seconds every time the dot comes up is not 10% of your casting time.

 

Roywyn

0) 66.2% crits, with 10% Scorch, 5% MKA, 3% ToW, 9% Fire Talents, 2% Glyph means that
a) you have 37% crit just selfbuffed with Molten Armour (40% if you include 3% crit depression)
b) you got really really lucky to get on a crit spree with the best crit scaling spec in game (maybe except Arms Warriors).

2) There is lots of very odd stuff with JoW now. Recount has a "Mana Gained" tab, look at it if you still have it.
I had one raid as Frost, and I had to spam Blizzard to actually drop below 90% mana.

3) You also spent 17 seconds casting thpse 14 Bombs, that's 6.6% of your cast time.
Without the talent, you would have cast more FFBs, the actual gain is much less.

4) 5 procs for 8k damage - looks like they all crit and it's still just 0.8% damage

5) Same 0). With 50% crit (which would be more in line with the expected values), you would have seen 12 Pyros instead of 18.
But yes, since the addition of Pyroblast, World in Flames is your "Best Filler" now, and can be maxed out with 53 Fire I think.


And yes, FFB are very much fun! Lobbing 10k crits before Ignite definately contributes to that
Sadly, I didn't grab a stack of FFB Glyphs during the one day when the vendor was up.

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.

 

Xentropy

Well it was just stated fairly unambiguously during the class panel that Blizzard is happy with Fire and Frost's dps and have minimal plans to balance them further. Arcane needs help and they are going to work on bringing its dps up. Living Bomb is going to receive a damage increase to make it a more attractive talent. Arcane is meant to be a more mobile dps spec so Arcane Barrage is the cornerstone of that and they have no plans to really change it.

No one asked a thing about Frost, which makes me a sad panda. If they really are happy with Fire and Frost (which is what they said, both mentioned by name) then Frost PvE is effectively dead; if 3% behind in dps was enough to kill it in TBC, 10% behind for Wrath (and worse scaling to widen the gap even further as we progress beyond T7) will kill it even more effectively.

As a side note, they're seeing 4500dps out of mages in Naxx. Not sure if they were referring to internal testing or submitted dps parses/reports when mentioning that number, nor exactly what spec(s) were involved.

 

Occulta

So, if 3.0.2 goes live as is, will Reckless Pyrestones still be a better match for yellow sockets (assuming hit cap) than potent?

I'm just looking through my gear, trying to decide if I have to regem at all.

I figure I'll see at least somewhat of a gain switching from Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst to Purifieds for the blue gems I'll need for meta activation.

 

solbergb

Whether you want to regem may depend on what spec you choose.

The rotations I've been looking at for my mage (scorch/fire/pyroblast vs scorch/pyroblast vs scorch/fireblast/pyroblast vs scorch/frostfirebolt/pyroblast) don't give me any incentive to regem. Spell damage, crit and haste are all still good, and crit isn't > haste with the rest of my gear the way it is and with the talents I am going to take at L70. The only real change to my setup is that my "hit suit" will have to give up a bit of spell damage to cap that last 1% of hit, probably by swapping the scryer bloodgem in for icon of silver crescent. (even that's very marginal - I'm capping hit for more aesthetic reasons than for any meaningful DPS improvement)

After L70 - who cares what BC gems you've got in. You'll either be upgrading the equipment or the gems, and doing so in a way that your play has demonstrated is best for you.

 

Docjowles

Don't forget that if you have a shadow priest or moonkin in your raid, you'll be getting 3% spellhit from their debuffs. If anything I expect to have to drop some hit from my gear with 3.0.2.

 

Solisa

Well, look up on the page, there's a parse considerably above that.

 

Xentropy

I was making the assumption Blizzard was mentioning 4500dps as an average. The 5200dps parse above was with some incredible crit luck (about 10% above average), and things like that will cause individual parses to come out above or below the number.

I was just mentioning the number Blizzard mentioned, because if they feel mages are doing 4500dps and they're done balancing Fire and Frost, then 4500dps seems to be their target for Naxx gear dps. Since they want all dps classes in the same ballpark, other classes and specs should expect to run around that same target.

 

Sinless

Yes, this is very much true. Totally missed that, I was writing that post with the imminent aggro threat from family members.

Regarding crit, I have 24% self-buffed crit before fire talents (using glyphed molten armor and AI). You haven't included combustion in that list (even though I don't know how much of a contribution it makes @ very high level crit levels). Definitely a good luck on crits.

I was mistaken about living bomb. It certainly doesn't seem to be that much of a dps increase then I guess. Assuming @ 50% crit rate, average FFB hits for 7500 (crit+non_crit average), you are even looking at a dps loss at high haste levels? Hmm.

 

Jarlyn

Crit rates are totally absurd right now. We've done a number of Naxx25 runs where Vulk and I both have boss parses over 60% crit. Pretty sure Vulk broke 70% on Maexxna last night. I can't imagine what it's going to be like in Icecrown gear.

Edit: here, Link to Naxx25 SWS parse from last night. I was FFB spec, Vulk was Fire/Arcane, third mage was a pug I don't know. Vulk and I both have a lot of 25-man raid gear, although his gear is definitely better, so he was using LB.

 

grayrest

Is anybody seeing anything close to 4.5k for frost mages? I haven't seen a parse over 4k.

Also, I grabbed a full stack of most useful glyphs when the vendor was last up on Murmur. If you need a glyph, send a mail in game to greyrest.

 

Nastre

You would prefer 0/50/11 over 11/50/0?

 

diag

Its very strange that one can have 10% difference in "preformance" just because of the crit rate. I think dps calculators should include standard deviation in their new versions.

 

Faxmonkey

The same affect applies with your final charge of Combustion -- so you can get an extra fireblast crit. And with combustion, since you will have a high odds of having crit with 2 spells in a row by the time you get to your third charge (not always, but often), you can make that 4th crit be an instant pyro instead of a fireblast.


What interests me most about that is the fact that higher natural crit rates devalues crit on gear due to the natural diminishing returns on adding crit (also its diminishing value to your combustion). This amazes me because it was already pretty much the worst possible dps stat (aside from int, and int is not primarily a dps stat) in terms of damage per item value (lets call it DPIV). This, to me, makes crit rating on gear completely undesirable now. Your virtually guaranteed that any piece of gear that has lots of crit rating on it would be outdone by one that spends the same budget on dps stats but spends them on "anything but crit rating".

This just seems to reinforce and exacerbate the itemization problems mages already have. Mages and warlocks end up fighting over a very, very, tiny sub-section of all the available caster gear because so much of it just poorly itemized.
This is a genuine source of frustration, and is, quite simply, "not fun". Blizzard really needs to do address it.

 

Idyar

0/50/11 vs 11/50/0 is an interesting debate right now. The hit from elemental precision is going to be made up with misery so that isn't really a factor so it basically comes down to Focus Magic + Clearcast vs Icy Veins. There has been a lot of talk about the mana situation being fine in WOTLK but I haven't seen specific thoughts about how it would be in 3.0, I am inferring however that mana will still not be an issue. So assuming mana isn't an issue it seems to me that Icy veins will be superior to Focus Magic, and therefore 0/50/11 will be the spec to use. Unless of course I am missing something.

 

mkultra55

I'm still a little annoyed that a Frost heavy Frostfire spec is pretty much DOA. Maybe if Empowered Frostbolt effected Frostfire the same way Empowered Fireball does. I really wanted a Frost heavy/Water Elemental elementalist build. Oh well.

On a side note...has anyone talked about the issue of Fingers of Frost procs and what happens if you proc it again while using one of the charges? Do the charges reset or is it a waster proc?

 

Jarlyn

Yeah, I think they're going to have to rebalance things a good bit in the future. Crit is already back to being an incidental stat (you don't dislike it, but you generally ignore it in favor of sp/haste) and my gear on beta is still littered with Sunwell epics. By the time we're in full Ulduar gear crit is going to completely irrelevant, to say nothing of raid tiers beyond that.