Grai

On the topic of frost leveling specs, I was looking today and thinking that it would be more appropriate to pickup Torment the Weak for a free +12% damage on all mobs you're frostbolting.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Resistances and a little extra spirit helps avoid downtime and keeps survivability even higher. All your really lose out on is Brain Freeze and Deep Freeze, which I find I didn't really need on Beta anyway, especially now that Deep Freeze does no damage. You actually gain damage, as Torment gives 12% extra damage while Chilled to the Bone only gives +5%.

*edit* copied the wrong talent spec. Fixed to include shatter.

 

hiisukun

You'd want to juggle that build to include shatter Grey. Doable at the top of the frost tree reasonably easily though. : )

12% damage to the targets while levelling is a lot - definitely worth thinking about. I guess it depends on how many frostbolts after the first are used (given the first applies the snare) - and how often it is an icelance instead. 6% ice lance damage may be better than spirit too - I often prefer to spend 1 second longer drinking if I killed 10 mobs 1 second quicker just previous.

Edit: Come to think of it - I'd almost certainly prefer permafrost + chilled to the bone.. simply for the 20% extra snare on frostbolt. Its very noticable when its gone, once you've been used to it. Plenty of extra time to dps mobs when you CoC accidental adds too.


My maths isnt great - but at level 80, assuming full frost + ignite (0/10/61 or similar), I came out with FFB being higher DPS than frostbolt during a FoF proc. This would break up the infinite frostbolt rotation a little bit. Can someone more skilled in theorycraft check the numbers for me? I'm ignoring debuffs on the mob and glyphs (because my maths is failbad enough as it is, and hopefully they'd affect both equally), and also ignoring the FFB DoT at this stage. Finally, I'm assuming every spell during the FoF proc is a crit (which will skew results a little, but I've heard will be the case with WoTLK gear):

1500 spell dmg, FFB is 166 dps increase.
a) Frostbolt: ((1500 * 0.915) + 830) * 2 / 2.5 = 1762
b) Frostfirebolt: ((1500 * 0.857) + 780) * 2 * 1.4 / 3 = 1928

2000 spell dmg, FFB is 200 dps increase.
a) Frostbolt: ((2000 * 0.915) + 830) * 2 / 2.5 = 2128
b) Frostfirebolt: ((2000 * 0.857) + 780) * 2 * 1.4 / 3 = 2328

This is using the 'average' hit values from Lhivera's WoTLK mage reference. If more spellpower pushes FFB further ahead (and the DoT would help a little too), and given FFB can proc FoF charges due to having a snare, wouldnt this permanently debunk the 'frostbolt nonstop' policy currently floating around? I know it doesnt help ice lance join the party, unless we're forced to move.. but at least its something.

NB: I'm totally open to having made a huge error here somewhere - I dont usually TC with maths.

 

Grai

Oops, when I was messing with it earlier today, I included shatter. Must have misclicked when preparing. Edited my above post to reflect the included shatter talents.

As for the extra snare, I find it doesn't matter that much, as the majority of mobs that you fight are dead before they get anywhere near you with or without Chill talents. And if they do get close, a quick nova/shatter is going to finish them off. CoC chilling extra adds is definitely nice as you mention though.

 

Gediablo

No
Yes

 

• Seonid

The closest I get to "levelling" at the moment are things like the SSO daily quests and as 40/0/21 I just run around in mage armour frostbolting everything. Pretty much nothing lasts more than 3 non-crit frostbolts and my mana bar hardly moves, ever. But I am in BT/MH gear and so over-gear the zone somewhat as I would expect to do so to a degree, in the WoTLK starter zones; given that I would expect them to be tuned for 70 greens/blues.

To that end, for levelling I will probably initially go with a 21/0/40 build and again run around in mage armour frostbolting everything.
(Student of the Mind might seem odd, but since I have spirit on most of my gear anyway as well as Arcane Meditation+Mage armour, may as well use it.)

Unlike min/max raiding specs, levelling specs are usually much more of a personal choice and most mages will be quite set/vocal/fanatical in their ways, but it's still interesting (to me at least) to see the thought processes behind the choices made.

 

tufy

Single target spec vs. AoE spec. The differences can be pretty huge between both builds, tbh.

Start with 0/43/18 and level up by putting more talents into fire, using Scorch-Pyro combination early on, then fire's aoe burst later. Pewpew elementalist <3

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

 

Kavan

Rawr 2.0 was released with updated Rawr.Mage module for WoW 3.0. Everything should work except sequence reconstruction for Cold Snap+Water Elemental. This comes as a result of changing Water Elemental to be finally treated as a cooldown so all stacking options are examined. I'm hoping I'll be able to sort that out, but for now it was more important to get the base functionality of all talents/specs working.

With many new dynamic talents a lot of the cycles became a lot more complex so it is possible that I made some mistakes somewhere. If you find anything that doesn't seem right let me know either here or on codeplex. For now I didn't implement any cycles that maintain snare, so if Slow is working on bosses after patch goes live I'll try to add that in. Also if there are any other cycles that you would like to see added I'll try my best if they're not too complex.

Another thing for which I could use some input is data for WotLK. In options you have a setting for player level so you can try things out at higher levels. Right now I only have base stats for gnomes in. If anyone has base (naked) stats for other races from 71-80 that would help. I'm also missing base health from 71-79 because it changed since I leveled up on beta. Also I don't have adjustments for fire talent spells as you level up, just base values when you learn them. And if anyone has any details on water elemental scaling from 71-80 or data on Mirror Image that would be useful also.

 

Chira

I'm downloading Rawr 2.0 now to see what it says about specs, but I've been toying with SimulationCraft using ravendude's configuration as a starting point. I updated the gear values for my personal gear, which is late SWP. The following are the values I used:

gear_stamina=471
gear_intellect=419
gear_spirit=255
gear_spell_power=1322
gear_crit_rating=323
gear_hit_rating=163
gear_haste_rating=402

For the two specs where EP was picked up, I dropped some hit for haste/damage (through regemming). Here is the basic output that I got:



I'm not sure whether I screwed something up, but my specs came out in almost the exact opposite order as ravendude's original numbers. The downtime, even with high haste values, were 0% across the board, save for 0/53/08, which had a mere 1%. Not sure what to make of this and the difference yet.

Edit: Back from the new (and awesome) Rawr. Here are the results I got, inserted into the same Google Chart format:


Overall, I'm still not sure what to say, but I think I will be going with the 11/50/0 spec to start out with, and we'll see how things go from there. Right now I'm still iffy on Living Bomb (helping on AoE fights, but possibly causing problems on M'uru with unwanted aggro), but it's not totally out of the question yet.

Edit 2: I completely forgot to regem when I took EP in Rawr, so the EP builds went up a lot. Now it looks like 0/50/11. Updated the chart.

 

stalah

Not sure how to put the graph but here was the numbers of the specs I got using my current end game gear.

gear_intellect=544
gear_spirit=241
gear_spell_power=1424
gear_crit_rating=246
gear_hit_rating=177
gear_haste_rating=515

or depending on if I had EP

gear_intellect=554
gear_spirit=241
gear_spell_power=1426
gear_crit_rating=223
gear_hit_rating=142
gear_haste_rating=549

(trinkets avg'd into stats. Couldnt get the action to work and also added 23 dmg food buff, Oh and 1 drum haste added as well)

3551 Mage_0/53/8
3549 Mage_0/50/11
3536 Mage_11/50/0

virtually even. When rerunning numbers the order would change each time with how close they were. Focus magic was applied to a non-mage as well to not artificially inflate another spec.

simulcraft ver 777

 

Seleen

I tried to follow the discussion, but somehow there are quite a lot of information and I still yet have to order all the information. Hence me posting here now. I hope some of you can answer me my questions and help me out.

With patch 3.0.2 I will most probably specc 11/50/0 with most single target dps spells (no Dragon's Breath, Firestarter, etc.). Currently, my guild is working on Brutallus so I gemmed most of my gear towards +haste. With the new talent (Hot Streak) it does seem like crit gets way more valuable then before. Do you guys think the new value for crit will be higher then the one for haste?

Then, I heard a lot of rumours about the 1% base resist chance getting removed. That would mean that the new spellhit cap is on 17%. Is this true? And if so, would you rather regem to get that last hitrating or put the 11 points from arcane into frost (for EP)?

And last but not least, the glyphs. Some of them are obviously quite enhancing. I've been thinking about taking the glyph of fireball, glyph of imp. scorch and glyph of molten armor into my spellbook. But Hot Streak seems like quite a mana hog. Would it be wise to get the mana gem glyph instead of one of the others? Or do you think the new changes to replenshiment and raid wide totems will make up for that one?
I heard the devs wanted to give the mana costs of the mage spells another polish. Do you know if this polish is already in the patch?

I would be very glad if some of you pros could help me out

 

stalah

For fire at lvl 70 the only choices available are scorch and mana gem. Molten armour and fireball require wolk mats.

 

Remitroll

I can't remember if that has been confirmed or not, but does the focus magic proc stack with the proc

i.e If two mages cast the buff on each other, they will receive both the constant buff effect and the additional proc effect when the other Mage crits?

 

banaj

Was playing about a bit with Rawr for 3.0
Crit seems to have taken a huge jump up in my charts compared to before.
It actually recommends me using Sextant of Unstable Currents over Hex Shrunken Head.
It also recommends taking the Hyjal rep ring over Ancient Knowledge or Loop of Forged Power.
Dmg/crit gems seem to be about as good as dmg/haste for me.
Can anyone comment on these results? read some posts before saying crit still isn't that great but Rawr seems to suggest something else.

This is based on going 0/50/11 which gives the highest dps output according to Rawr.

 

threep*

Nope, doesn't work on other mages. You gave the reason why.

 

Ulthwithian

Gray: Interesting leveling spec. May I ask why you took 10% more Spirit instead of, perhaps, Magic Attunement + Focus Magic? Perhaps it's just me, but when I run around solo on my Mage, I habitually put up Dampen Magic.

 

Pasture

Has anyone been able to answer this yet or run any numbers?

The rotation is Arcane Barrage and Frostfire Bolt with Missile Barrage on procs.

Glyphs are the frostfire glyph, the mage armour glyph and the arcane power glyph.

Talents are deep arcane picking up the 50% crit bonus in arcane, the 100% crit bonus in frost and the 40% crit bonus from fire through ignite.

------------------------

All said and done however I still hate the current arcane rotations. The way I see it arcane blast should be sustainable and damaging enough for a rotation along the lines of stacking arcane blast to 3 and then dropping it with arcane barrage, or alternatively if missile barrage procs use that to drop the debuff after a 3-stack.

I'm still hopeful this will somehow be fixed.

 

Pintofbrew

Risking ridicule, I'll say I'd much rather spec 3/3 Arcane Fortitude for levelling than either 10% spirit or even Magic Attunement. I found that levelling to around 64ish as arcane, I almost exclusively stopped for health replenishment rather than mana, making even more regen that bit less useful. Don't mock Arc Fort, it's now 15% and that's not to be sniffed at; you'll go from 14.4% mitigation to 17.8% in 3 points. Granted, it's not as good as Pris Cloak, but with Mind Mastery being largely subjective (I don't bother speccing it unless it reduces my spells-cast-per-mob, which in my case it pretty much didn't) isn't a bad idea. And you get instant invis to boot.

All in all, I'd say that given there's so many floaters in arcane, for levelling specs, taking a long hard look at tanking talents is definitely advisable.


Hiisukun: While FFB may indeed be something to consider for levelling, bear in mind it's only available at lvl 75 and as such you'll have 5 more talent points to spec, not just 61.

"Do not offend the chair leg of truth. It is wise and terrible. Continue."
-Spider Jerusalem

 

Ulthwithian

Pint: That's a very interesting idea. I'm almost tempted to take an Arcane spec that focuses on every single damage mitigation talent. It'd be 61/0/0, but I think you'd need to drink before you need to eat. :p

 

Roywyn

Thanks a lot Kavan for all your work on Rawr, it is really really appreciated.

What kind of pet info are you looking for?

I just checked t confirm that it gets 30% of your stamina and exactly 7.5 HP per stamina.

From casting all different ranks of AI onto it, it seems to gain exactly 4.95 mana per intellect.
And it also seems to gain exactly 30% of your intellect.

I ran some tests before, and the results were pretty odd. Tested again and numbers smoothened out.

It's been done time and again. Fireball has more base damage, a +6% damage talent and 17% better spell power scaling.
You'd need about 90% crit for Ice Shards to make up for that.

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.

 

Jonny_Monroe

I quite enjoyed Focus Magic for leveling. the person you buff doesn't have to be in your group or even remotely close to you. I was buffing random druids who were questing in the same area as me and having spontaneous FM procs come out of nowhere was quite amusing. Its only 1 point so its hardly a painful investment; and when you do step into a leveling instance its there as a solid talent as well.

OMNOMNOM.

 

Pasture

The new official patch notes up on MMO are entirely bizarre.

They update some of the newest changes, such as Missile Barrage final rank proc chance being 20% and evocation cooldown being reduced to 5 minutes, but they still list arcane blast as increasing damage by 75%.

What they have and haven't updated just seems entirely random.

 

Roywyn

Water Elemental at 80

They still don't get your +hit (not sure if we had a patch since our last tests).
Base crit chance (vs. level 80 dummies) seems to be 5%

Water Elemental naked: 601-673 (tested and tooltip).
Water Elemental at +1558 spell power: 1034-1105
With a +140 Totem of Wrath, the damage was 756-828

So, Water Elemental gets +439 damage from a master with +1558 spell power. (+/- 1), that's 28.177%
Water Elemental gets +155 damage from a +140 spell power totem.

Bear in mind that the Elemental double-dips from the totem: It get the benefit from the totem and the benefit from the increased spell damage on its master.

With these numbers, the scaling would be as follows:
The WE gets 34.14% if it's master's spell power, and Water Bolt scales with 82.54% of its spell power.
The numbers are pretty odd, so I'm all ears for other suggestions that fit my data.


Mirror Images at 80

They don't get our +hit either. Base crit chance (vs. level 80 dummies) seems to be 5%

Frostbolt: Naked 163-169 (av. 166); with 1558 SP 318-325 (av. 321)
That's 10% of your spell power. Frostbolt crits for +50% damage.

Fire Blast: Naked 92-103 (av. 97); with 1558 SP 174-185 (av. 180)
That's 5.32% of your spell power. Odd number, but 5% doesn't really fit.
Fire Blasts crit for +100% damage.

Tested with a +140 spell power Totem of Wrath:
Frostblt got +14 damage, Fire Blast +8 on average.

Mirror Images also don't get totem and aura buffs unlike Water Elementals or other proper pets.

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.

 

Quimly

Here's what rawr spat out for me with my current gear on armory +surefooted to land on the hit cap once things hit live.

Quite interesting the subtle differences in peoples gear making the different specs switch around.

 

Xentropy

To be exact, I'm fairly certain the water elemental gains 40% of the master's spellpower, and then waterbolt receives the expected 2.5/3.5 coefficient for its cast time, leading to a total spellpower-to-damage ratio of 28.57%. The 0.4% difference I write off to randomness in testing.

 

Lhivera

Yes, that's correct. (I actually got more consistently accurate damage predictions at 39.5% back at level 60, but 40% seems more likely.) It's an important distinction because the Water Elemental can receive spell power bonuses directly as well.

Master has 2000 spell power and 140 from totem for 2140: Water Elemental receives 2140 * 0.4 = 856 spell power.
Totem provides 140 spell power directly. Total bonus: 140 + 856 = 996.
Waterbolt damage increased by 2.5 / 3.5 * 996 = 711.

I got very good damage prediction with Mirror Image Frostbolts assuming that each Image received 1.5 / 3.5 / 3 = 14.29% of the master's spell power, and the Frostbolts had a 2.5 / 3.5 coefficient. However, it appears that the Frostbolts actually have a 3 second cast time...the accuracy of the prediction was uncanny, so I'm not sure what's up there. It didnt' have much value for predicting Fireblast damage, though.

At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.