PwNCAkEs

I just noticed today, the patch notes for the latest build on the PTR. The Frozen Core deal now affects (grants the 1 second cast time reduction) to Frostfire Bolt as well, which I hadn't heard of before. Is this new or am I just slow? How do the numbers add up for this, since one wouldn't have to deal with GCD cap with FFB?

 

Hidden

Most of the reasons Frost has sometimes been used back then have gone. Depending on what time you're talking about Frost didn't do a lot of DPS less than other specs, was the only spec to have a snare automatically applied (FFB does the same now) and/or the only spec to have IB.

And the problem is that you're talking about theoretical DPS in an ideal fight here, I don't really see a fight actually favoring Frost though, so even if it was theoretically 5% behind other specs, it'd in a real raid scenario still lack way more behind. Why?

• it has fewer burst cooldowns than other specs
• a good part of the damage is done through a pet that usually doesn't benefit from encounter specific buffs (see Empowered Darkness/Empowered Light)
• even though a good deal of the damage comes from a pet, it still probably doesn't have an advantage in movement encounters since the Mage can practically do no significant damage on the run
• its AoE DPS blows, so it'd still be unusable on encounters like Anub25HM

There's more about a spec than "survivability" and single target patchwerk DPS.

For example, thinking about Frost in TotC HM:
Northrend Beasts: I think I've never died prematurely (meaning before a wipe or death of the tanks) here, dying as a Mage is quite hard in this encounter. Thus I wouldn't really need the Frost survivability. However this fight favors Arcane because of the Burst phases and time to evocate inbetween.
Lord Jaraxxus: Even though I already find Mage survivability quite strong here, Frost could add a bit I guess. However again burst phases (to kill the portals) and the stealable buff that doesn't affect the pet would favor other specs again.
Faction Champions: This is a fight you could spec Frost for for your first kill, mostly because it favors specs that are strong in PvP as well.
Twin Valkyrs: While you could use some additional survivability here it'd also cost lots of DPS because of the pet not being affected by Empowered Darkness/Light, missing burst cooldowns to take the shields down and the missing synergy between ignite/incanter's absorption and the encounter.
Anub: Survivability is useful in P3 but the lacking AoE DPS makes Frost useless again.

So out of the 5 encounters I would've only gone Frost in one encounter for the first kill even if Frost did comparable theoretical DPS to the other specs.

Edit: Another reason why Frost was often used was that some encounters were simply immune to Fire damage.

 

Klatzy

Why are you stating that frost lacks in aoe dps? I haven't played frost in a long time in raids but afaik it was 2nd in aoe dps behind FFB.

With imp blizzard you could get fingers of frost procs constantly from the multiple targets and chance per blizzard hit. That means that you have a high crit rate for blizzard and not to mention the utility of chills.

Fire has living bomb but with the caveat that the mob has to last long enough for the explosion. Most aoe packs don't last long enough to really boost fire's aoe dps. The flamestrike changes are nice but you don't really chaincast flamestrike so the reduced cast time should provide minimal extra dps.

Arcane can spam arc explosion, with the clearcast procs you can get high crit rates as well. But you need to be pretty close to the mobs making it potentially dangerous.

 

Hidden

In the usual DPS specs Frost's Blizzard does ~18% less DPS than the Blizzard of Arcane or FFB while doing ~8% more DPS than the Blizzard of Fire. That's excluding LB/AE/DB/BW.

Imp. Blizzard + Frostbite, if usable in the encounter (it's often far too risky or Frostbite breaks far too early), can also be picked up by Arcane or FFB specs, for FFB even with less losses than for Frost.

 

Pasture

Patch notes updated:

The Frozen Core talent was obviously going to go, we knew that. It buffed PvP more than it buffed PvE which is the exact thing they're worried about with Frost.

Nice the Mirror Images got a health buff from a PvP perspective at least. Since they lost their AoE avoidance in PvP they were ridiculously easy to kill in a couple of fan of knives etc.

 

Lhivera

That of course is the chief difference: Frost gets those Shatter crits on Blizzard via Fingers of Frost, rather than Frostbite, which is both 100% safe and much more reliable. Given a significant number of targets, Blizzard's crit rate approaches 100% for Frost, with no risk of rooting the targets.


The Deep Freeze damage range is probably the level 60 value. I'm patching the client and will test ASAP.

Edit: Tooltip range at level 80 w/no multiplier talents: 2369 - 2641. +900 damage = +45 damage per level.

Shatter definitely still does not work. Haven't got a crit yet, so not sure about Ice Shards.

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.

 

Janice

Ice Shards seem to be working with Deep Freeze now, first crit hit for 20k.

 

◊ Vontre

Meh, it's gonna need more than this to nudge up on arcane's output. We're looking at -10% right now which is probably too much, and flatly inferior in categories of burst, mobility and situational output (which aside from incanter's absorption largely aren't that important anyway).

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

Lhivera

Weird. I was getting ~6200 hits, and crit for ~9600, so I was certain it wasn't working. Perhaps I got a partial resist, though that seems unlikely vs. Doctor Boom.

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.

 

Janice

04:28:06> [Janice's] [Deep Freeze] hits [Dr. Boom] for 20517 Frost.(Critical)
vs
[08:41:47.515] Janice Deep Freeze Dr. Boom *14488* (last ptr patch)


Also notice that Deep Freeze eats 2 FoF charges! which would explain why I'm having 50-60% critrate while testing.
24% paperdoll crit + wc

 

Lhivera

I was getting virtually zero crits, too, so I assumed Shatter was also not working! Perhaps I need to respec to reset the talents? Or are you on the PvP server? Perhaps it's fixed on one and not the other.

ETA: OK, resetting my talents fixed it. It does look like Shatter works, Ice Shards definitely works, and now it eats two FoF charges instead of one.

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.

 

Janice

What happend when I was fishing for FoF procs carefully, so all the DF's used 2 charges.
But that doesnt really work when chain casting in PvE.
Remulos EU PTR

Also the Glyph of Eternal Water is bugged, my WE despawn after 10sec or so.
edit: yup, it now stay permanent with 0/3 enduring winter

 

Lhivera

I believe you'll find that the Elemental despawns after (5 * number of points in Enduring Winter) seconds.

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.

 

Hidden

I guess I forgot that they fixed the Frostbite/FoF bug a while ago. If it works correctly (and by correctly I mean probably bugged in our favor) Frost's Blizzard could beat that of other specs with enough targets. However other specs would still have way stronger other AoE spells as well as stronger Blizzard if there are only ~5 targets (like for Anub).
Additionally, unlike Blizzard, Flamestrike allows to partly ignore the now very restrictive AoE cap if there are more than 10 targets.

Personally I'd love to have three viable raid specs, on my DK I respecced for nearly every fight. However even with the recent changes Frost is still lacking way too much to be viable.

 

TigaFin

Blizzard AOE with T10 Frost Mage:

You blizzard on your targets, which is almost guaranteed to give you a brain freeze proc. You can use the free fireball on the main target (say Anub) and it will give you 12% haste for your next blizzard. (Or, you could try flamestrike while you have the haste and then blizzard - this might help if you are capped on targets.)

For fewer targets, I would try a close range rotation that includes a cone of cold (good chance to proc FoF), then two frostbolts, deep freeze (or brain freeze fireball) etc. For 3 targets, your chance to proc FoF from a single CoC is 38.6%. For 5 targets, it goes up to 55.6%.

With blizzard, each hit can proc FoF, the proc is consumed by hit, but a whole wave benefits. So for a wave of blizzard on 5 targets, there's a 55.6% chance you have a FoF from the previous wave. That's an average 27.8% increase in crit chance for blizzard.

The main limiting factor for me as frost doing AOE has been threat. I either use mirror images to hide my threat levels or I rely on rogues feeding threat to the tank through tricks of the trade. Invisibility helps too, but then you take a 3 second break from DPS.

From a raid benefit point of view, frost is the only spec that increases the crit chance of all magic AOE for all targets by 5%.

 

Hidden

From my tests FoF seems to proc from every hit but if Blizzard hits 2 or more targets one wave also consumes both charges. Thus you'd only have a 55.6% chance to have FoF up which results in +27.8% crit. It'd be beating Arcane in AoE then, but still not FFB Fire. However I guess the AoE should be fine for most encounters then, when I said it wasn't I just forgot that they fixed FB/FoF.

 

TigaFin

There is a bug that affects blizzard AOE in certain boss fights. If the targets are immune to snares, blizzard doesn't proc FoF on them. I made a video demonstrating this, but the bug has existed for months and has been reported a number of times. If all the targets are immune to snares, the DPS is indeed quite bad, so it depends on more than just the number of targets. The video is from the current PTR.

http://wow.poista.net/films/FingersO...VsBlizzard.m4v

I'm intentionally using some rank 1 blizzard to start with, so I don't kill the targets too fast.

Hidden: Confirmed on PTR: FoF charges are consumed per hit, but one whole wave benefits. I'll edit my previous post to remove the incorrect information.

 

Xequecal

Has there ever been a boss fight where you have to AoE 3+ mobs that are immune to snares? Off-hand I sure can't think of one.

 

Belore

I did not quite understand why this enchant beats SP.

Black Magic has an icd of 45 seconds. So, 10s duration of 45s means Black Magic has an uptime of max 22,22%. So there´s an average added haste of 55,55.

55,55 haste vs 63 oder 81 SP??

Is there an error in my calculation or why have you written that Black Magic beats SP?

 

testthewest

Well, AFAIK 35 or less internal cooldown means a higher uptime than 22,2%, since the cooldown starts at proc, not at the end of it (just like any other ability).

 

NateB

I recall, but was unable to find, a discussion of Alchemy's value for arcane specs when arcane was in vogue in early wotlk.

The idea went - beyond the raw +sp, the mad Alch potions were great because of the value of added mana, and the fact that they'd generally proc the pot of speed or pot of wild magic effect. Are there hard numbers/testing on this anywhere?

 

Exodus-SG

Have anyone try out heroic Anub 25 with Frost Spec? Do you think the winter's chill debuff applying to all 4 adds + anub is worth the personal dps lost (with 7 other casters in the raid).

I seems to be doing 15-20% lesser personal dps than the 2 other mages in FFB spec. But it has been a long time i played frost spec, so my usage of cooldown and rotation may be rusty.

 

Tyrian

Need some more details on other aspects of your raid to answer that. How much of the AOE damage on the mobs in your raid is magical (ie are you a very heavy caster guild?) - for starters.

 

vbishop

Crazy Alchemist's Potion - Item - World of Warcraft

moozh84 did some extensive testing on the effects of the [Crazy Alchemist's Potion] and from my experiences, I can say they're pretty much dead on to what you'll experience.

 

Psyker_x

Interesting change in the latest patch notes. The FoF buff is now consumed on spellcast VS spellhit. As this completely removes any chance of executing "shatter combos" relating to the ghost third charge on FoF, I'm curious to see how that changes the current increase in frost pve dps.


Actually, after having re-read the note, the wordage is unclear. It could mean the charges are consumed on spellcast, or it could be implying that FoF goes active as a buff on cast rather than hit. An interesting change either way.

Quoted from mmo champion: "Fingers of Frost: This talent now triggers immediately on casting a spell rather than being delayed until the spell strikes the target."