◊ manly

Well I was about to post the updated spreadsheet yesterday, but I held out on it just to be sure numbers are more definite. If anything, the new 3.2 spreadsheet now directly displays LB for 1-5 targets.

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

 

Enthorn

My instinct says no, as it would be like taking the time you've spent casting and adding that to the global cooldown after your Pyroblast. Naturally, the farther in that you cancel the cast, the more you lose, but I think even a cancel a few hundred milliseconds in is too much, due to reaction speed (take your cast time, add reaction time, latency, etc. and you have a sort of 'minimum' cancellation time). This minimum cast time is the base cast time that you would be adding onto every Hot Streak Pyroblast that you're interrupting to cast. You can look at it then as not being an instant cast.

Another way to look at it would be to put every HS Pyroblast into one of two categories. The first category is each cast you should consume. The second is each cast that you cannot possibly use. In the latter case, you may have a situation where you have Hot Streaks proc one on top of the other. There is no way you could have possibly used that Hot Streak that you "lost." Would you really consider that a DPS loss then? I look at interrupting Fireball casting in the same way -- and I look at "waiting" around to recast Living Bomb in the same way too.

Fire is best viewed as a priority system in which your main goal is to never stop casting. Naturally you get more DPS the more DPCT spells you use. Since Living Bomb is the highest DPCT (after PB with 4 DoTs, but possibly even that has changed now), it's important to keep Living Bomb up. Second it's important to use Hot Streak procs. Third, it's important that when you aren't doing the first two steps, you are casting Fireball. All of these 'rules' can fall into a subset of rules where the main rule is that when you are following any of these sub-rules, you always maintain the rule they fall under: never stop casting.

Interrupting a spell (to cast another spell, or to move, unless you should be moving, obviously) means you've stopped casting. You could say never starting to cast has the same effect, so reaction time certainly has a part in this as well.

 

Zerstorung

True, the issue only really arises when you have two or more LBs up and the HS procs just keep coming.

At 502 haste, my Fireball is a 2.6s cast with my GCD being 1.3 (solo, no raid buffs). So 2.6-1.3= 1.3s. Factor in latency and such, lets say I would need 1.4s or more on my Fireball cast to make it worth clipping, assuming I get another HS during my following cast or even during my GCD.

 

Soul

This isn't a big surprise. The only way they could have decoupled the HS and mana gem cooldowns would have to put either HS in their own cooldown category or mana gems into their own category. At least Mages now have the option of choosing between HS and flame caps as consumables (like all other caster classes) whereas before, all Mages had to use mana gems instead of HS or flame caps.

 

◊ manly

Living Bomb has been hotfixed and its dot cannot proc HS anymore.

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

 

Andrin

Also seems to be a hidden counter on Fireball/Frostfire spamming. 2 crits (on those 2 spells) do not need to occur back to back to get a proc. A noncrit scorch will reset it, scorch crits still need to be back to back. Not sure about LB explosions.

 

◊ manly

Sounds like how it always behaved..?

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

 

Andrin

If so, I'll gladly remove. I recall not getting Hot streaks in the following conditions prepatch:

Fireball crit - Fireball noncrit - Fireball crit


Now, that gives me a hotstreak, even with 8 or 10 noncrits inbetween. Never recall it not resetting for just fireball and frostfire bolt.

 

◊ manly

As far as my understanding of HS goes, it always was a counter that went up whenever one of the named spells made a crit, and got reset to 0 when you get the counter to 2, or when one of the named spells did not crit. I'd be pretty shocked to learn that 'fireball crit, fireball nocrit, fireball crit' sequence generates a HS proc.

If what you say is true, it would basically mean that HS was changed into a non-resetting counter. In other words, any time one of the named spell would crit, add 1. If you reach 2, generate a HS proc, and reset to 0. This would be a net buff in every scenario over the other case.

But I'm pretty sure its not that because if that were the case, any LB explosion would pretty much garantee a HS, which definately isnt the case. If LB explosion were to crit twice, no matter the order, you would get a HS.

edit: then again, it seems people are claiming that fireball/ffb are now on a non-resetting counter, but the other spells are. Essentially this strikes me as a change, and possibly explains the odd behavior of fireball/ffb dots resetting HS.

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

 

Zelik

Confirmed.

Fireball Crit --> Fireball Non-Crit --> Fireball Crit procced Hot Streak.
Fireball Crit --> Scorch Non-Crit --> Fireball Crit did not.

There's going to be a small server maintenance in a few hours. Perhaps they are going to address this. I'd like to hear from Blizzard about what is intended and what's not.

 

◊ manly

Based on what you're saying, it seems like the bug is simple.

Fireball & FFB non-crit events do not reset the HS counter.

It is probably linked with fireball/ffb ticks stopping HS.

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

 

Hate Monkey

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [Bug]Living Bomb no longer proccing Hotstreak

Just posted a clarified issue on the bug forums.

The issue of FB and FFB dots reseting the HS counter are gone. Living Bomb's explosion, Scorch, and Fireblast are behaving normally in terms of what Hot Streak should be doing. Living Bomb seems to have been reverted back to a pre-patch state. Fireball and Frostfire Bolt now do not reset the Hot Streak counter on non crits. But getting a non crit Scorch, Fireblast, or LB explosion do reset the HS counter.

I guess we got a 'buff' after all, but its nothing like we expected.

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Jollyroger86

I for one am very confused as to the intent of these changes. First off, I didn't feel that our damage was out of control by any means on single target fights, but beyond that, why would they go ahead and nerf our damage through LB and then buff it up again through non consecutive fb/ffb's producing hot streak procs? I very much hope that this is just a bug, though it most certainly does not look that way.

I'm very curious now though, surely this is a nerf, though by just how much is the question that remains? The change to hot streak mechanics will vastly increase the number of pyro blasts shot off in one encounter compared to that of before 3.2. Without proper raid buffs and such it's hard to say. In either case, I'm eager to find out just what kind of a nerf we're looking at now.

 

Hate Monkey

Well when I think of what blizzard tried to due, I can only think that they somehow tried to fix the FB and FFB dots from interrupting the HS counter, and in some way, found another bug, so they reverted the change, and in turn, caused another bug.

And as it stands right now, no, it's not a nerf at all, it's for sure a dps gain, but not in the neighborhood the previous change gave us. When you look at it, the sole bug that FB/FFB non-crits don't reset the HS counter, we are left with more Hot Streaks proccing in the the end.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

 

Jollyroger86

Really? I would have thought that LB dot crits proccing HS would result in higher dps than the current state of things with the HS bug that is on live now. It's hard to be sure as I have no real way to model what is currently on live now, though I can certainly see how non consecutive fb/ffb crits proccing HS would produce more dps than LB dot crits proccing HS. In any case, I guess as long as our dps doesn't drop from what it was on single target, then I guess it's not so bad.

What is frustrating though, is that fact that LB dot crits producing HS added lots of depth to our class, it really made raiding enjoyable and increased the skill cap. The fact that you could manage keeping LB rolling on multiple targets on fights that allowed for it to increase dps was very fun. There was a post I read by Kyth from Fusion on the DD forums that outlined how I feel very well.

 

Maje

I wouldn't jump anyway before hearing clarification from blizzard, one bad thing about the LB dot proccing hot streak is that it made a single glyph provide 6+% of your dps which is somewhat over the board.

That said, I'm not sure what's a bug and what's intended, as GC did post pre 3.2 that LB dot proccing HS was intended.

 

diesel9

Just tested this on live after maintenance, Hotstreak working as described above. I also noted LB dot does not proc HS anymore and the LB dot does not reset the counter. The explosion on LB does affect the counter though.
Frb crit > HS explosion non crit > Frb crit = no HS.

 

Gediablo

Neither [Eye of the Broodmother] nor [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] works with Blizzard on live 3.2 realms, even though patch notes said otherwise (again). It seems, however, it now partly works with Rain of Fire now adding 1 stack pr spell (not wave).

Another thing I noticed is that Blink patch mechanic has changed somehow. So far I have only noticed it in Dire Maul where I'm able to blink through the Gordok Inner Door, which I'm 100% sure I wasn't able to blink through in 3.1, but I guess it should be noticable elsewhere too (I seriously doubt they changed Dire Maul in any way) - most likely in both good an bad ways.

 

Reihert

Assuming this isn't a bug, the changes may actually be a big buff in single target fights.

After all, if you are allowed to not get a crit with FB/FFB on a crit chain and you'd still proc HS, while other spells like LB/Fireblast/Scorch would interupt that chain, it is very good that HS dot crit doesnt proc HS anymore.

 

Laekoth

hot streak => "Any time you score 2 non-periodic spell criticals in a row using Fireball, Fire Blast, Scorch, Living Bomb, or Frostfire Bolt, you have a 100% chance the next Pyroblast spell cast within 10 sec will be instant cast."

As it's been stated, FFB and FB don't work as the tooltip describes. However, Fireblast, LB (explosion only), and scorch still require consecutive crits to proc hotstreak. The question is whether this is the intended behavior and the tooltip is wrong, or whether the mechanics haven't been updated. I can't see a logical reasoning for keeping the requirement for consecutive crits for those. Perhaps they feared a scorch spam/pyroblast dps rotation? perhaps someone could run numbers on that...

 

◊ Juravieal

If this is in fact the intended change, isnt that going to make casting scorch that much more of a dps loss, since non critting scorches will be resetting the counter, while non critting fireballs will not?

I noticed the difference in a big way tonight in coliseum. My girlfriend ended was getting so my hot streak procs she couldnt catch them all. I have roughly 3% more crit, using the same spec, and slightly superior gear, got roughly 1/3rd of the number of streaks. While I realize RNG always comes in to play a bit, being that I was casting scorch, and therfore resetting my timer, I would think this would be the reason behind the huge disparity.

 

EasirokThunderpants

I am not sure what to think right now. It is not clear at all what the intent is, much less whether the current mechanics are working correctly in any way at all with regard to that intent.

From what I have seen the last two nights (anecdotal of course), my "typical" behavior on any random fight has turned into a game of waiting on the GCD. Once I find as many LB targets as possible it becomes a matter of unloading HS Pyro after HS Pyro and then trying to get back to reapply those LBombs. I am finding that Fireball has become almost a "filler". This was while doing random heroics as well as the ToC encounters and Uld up until the LOLZ bugged adds on XT. On Gormok the RNG gods were especially favorable and thanks to 4pcT8 and all the LB crits on the monkeys I counted a streak of ten back-to-back HS Pyros at one point.

I really doubt this was Blizzard's intent to change us from a class that needs to worry about standing in place long enough to get casts off to a class that is just doing target switching and popping off instants until we OOM.

I look forward to my playstyle changing daily (or even a few times a day) as they continue to hotfix in even more untested changes in a desperate attempt to fix the situation.

 

Saruk

I think that before everyone gets carried away with this, please remember that making HS proc on non-consecutive FB/FFBs would be a significant change to the mechanics of the talent and not at all reflective of the tool-tip - which clearly states that these spells need to crit 'in a row'.

This smells much more like a bug.

 

Zelik

It could very well be a bug, but keep in mind that client-side tooltips cannot be modified via a hotfix. If Blizzard intended to change the functionality of the talent, they would not be able to change the tooltip unless they issued a client-side patch.

 

Soul

This looks like an over-correction to the "old" "FFB/FB DoT resets the hot streak counter" bug. To fix this bug , they would appear to have made it so that non-crits by spells named "Frostfire Bolt" and "Fireball" do not reset the Hot Streak counter. At the same time, they made it so that all fire DoTs (or, at least, the LB DoT) don't affect Hot streak at all. Whoops! I wonder what the coding practices at Blizzard are.

As long as this bug is in place, the ratio of Pyroblasts cast versus FB/FFB will approach half your buffed crit rate, making this a massive dps buff. Also, this bug makes Combustion viable again: use it a cast or two before refreshing scorch so you have fewer non-crit scorches resetting the HS counter.