PSGarak

Partial resists are all over the place. As far as we can tell, it's not partial resists that can be gotten rid of via penetration. It's not conclusively proven yet, but it looks like the level-related stuff is still unremovable. It's basically glancing blows for casters. So, penetration is still useless, and be glad you don't get any.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Celani

Why not change the frostbolt glyph to read "gains 5% frostbolt damage, but loses the snare unless you are wearing ice armor? If this could be implemented practically, most of the frostbolt glyph QQ would disappear. You still make a trade off (i.e. no crit or regen bonus if you want the snare), but it isn't nearly as terrible as it stands now.

 

Lileith

This is actually a very good idea and should be posted on the official board. They already have this kind of mechanism working (such as threat reduction only in Blood/Unholy presence for DK) or threat decreased only when not under the effect of Righteous Fury for paladin. This would allow the use of snare for some pve kiting (like Gluth or Vashj).But it wouldn't solve the pvp issues because of the new Mage Armor which will be used a lot more in pvp vs caster, and even if snaring isn't as necessary vs caster it is vs melee I doubt anyone will use that glyph for arena.

An other solution I have been thinking of, could be : Your frostbolt damage is increased by 5% but your rank X frostbolt(X beeing max rank) doesn't snare anymore.
That way rank X-1 does roughly the same damage rank X would do without the glyph but still snare, and rank X does more damage but doesn't.

 

Lambi

I think the major question with the frostbolt glyph is if the removal of the slow also will remove the coefficient penalty from the slow too. This will especially be interesting for mind flay since it's too heavily penalized.

 

kadgar

There are 3 major questions about the frostbolt glyph:

1: Is the coefficient penalty removed too?
2: How easily / costly can glyphs be exchanged?
3: Are there good alternatives for the frostbolt glyph?

All of theese things are unclear at the moment but the answers to the questions define the value of this glyph.

If glyphs can be exchanged without costs or cooldowns before and after every boss, the removal of the slowing effect is not really a problem.
If the coefficient penalty gets not removed (and ist not easy to exchange glyphs), the glyph wouldn't even be worth a minor one.
If the coefficient gets removed and it's easy to exchange them, this will be an extremely good glyph.
If there are enough good other glyphs (4 for inscribers) for frost mages, it's not a problem if we have a crappy one.

 

maxi

Putting aside the issue of frostbolt glyph for a moment

I recently stumbled across this Hot Streak / Combustion model by Lhiv. It basically states how much extra crit% both hot streak and combustion account for at various base crit% levels. I took the liberty of adding a "delta' column, which shows the difference between the current and previous value of total crit% bonus for some values of base crit

As we see Combustion and Hot Streak provide increasing returns for extra crit all the way up to 40% mark, and after that begin a steep fall in returns from crit.

I am curious about where exactly is the cutoff point, and is it before - or after - the average crit levels a raiding mage in WotLK should expect to have.

 

Slander

If there will be glyph combinations superior to the one including the frostbolt glyph it is a problem since they would then have implemented an item to the game with no gain or purpose. However if there are alternatives to the frostbolt glyph that better satisfies the all around playstyle of ice mages it isn't a problem since the min/maxers will min/max while the ones just enjoying the game will have a glyph that satisfies them as well.

I don't think anything constructive can come out of this glyph discussion though seeing as it's doubtful they've implemented and tweaked all the mage glyphs yet which makes it very hard to get an overall view of it.

 

Maje

There is really no point, since even when the increase get's lower more crit is always better for your dps, every point of it will make the two tallents worse off but they will always add dps.

 

kadgar

True, but you often have the choice to get equipment / enchants / gems with more crit or haste or dmg or ... .
So it IS important to know how useful the additional (or less) crit is when choosing between different items / gems / etc.
When you have 20% crit, an item with much crit might be worse than an item with haste, but when you have 50% crit the same item with crit might be better than the same other item with haste. (The difference isn't that huge there is one)


About the table: I'm not sure if it calculates nested effects.

Case1: crit, Combustion, crit, crit, [Hot streak proccs], crit
In this case, the 3rd Combustion charge is lost because Hot streak proccs and guarantees a crit anyway.
(sure, the 2 fireball crits aren't gurarnteed)

Case2: crit, crit, crit, [Hot streak], Combustion, crit
You should never ever activate Combustion after Hot streak procced. Because in this case 1 Combustion charge is definitively lost.

Case3: non crit, Combustion, crit, crit, crit, [Hot streak], crit

So general advise would be to use Combustion only after non crits, since this is the only way to be sure that Combustion charges are not lost because of Hot streak.

 

Ezu

I have searched and haven't been able to find it yet in this thread and really can't be bothered reading every page, basically has anyone worked out a new fire 61 point talent spec for the new content patch coming in a few weeks for 3.0.2.

Wondering if it would include ice floes 3/3 with icy veins c/d on 20% lower cd, that would be pretty annoying as fire with combustion/skull/iv macro.

Best I could come up with 61 points is......50/11

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

Basically dropped Blastwave & arcane subtly and picked up 3/3 hot streak and 5/5 burnout.

 

Lileith

The main question is : will Living Bomb stay the same, currently the dot deals a lot of damage resulting in a very very high DPCT , meaning Living Bomb would be better than IV even on single target. But by design living bomb is supposed to be an aoe and they will probably make sure we don't use it that way.

Concerning your spec, i would put 2 points in Frost warding instead of either your 2/5 improved frostbolt or Ice Shards. Frost warding may end up beeing very strong if you negate a 3 charges meteor slash on Brutallus (may actually boost arcane/frost spec an unexpected way on some specific fights).

 

Tyrian

I really hope its not what you said: intended to be an AOE only, with the current DOT power and applications some unexpected oversight.

I was under the impression Living Bomb was, by design, supposed to be an AOE + strong single target dot which can be utilised as a mana dump in one. I am quite satisfied Blizzard designed the talent with this flexibility.

 

Lhivera

While technically true, it would be pretty weird to have a spec with four glyphs that are better for general-purpose use than the one which affects the spec's primary nuke, wouldn't it?


One important thing to bear in mind is that this is assuming a fairly mindless rotation. It doesn't include any efforts the player can make to milk the buff with Fire Blast, for example. This is basically a minimum increase, designed to show that even without any such effort, Hot Streak isn't a bad investment of 3 talent points. You really want your Fireball crit to be somewhere in the 43% or higher range, but with a Winter's Chill Mage, that's not going to be difficult to achieve.


The simulator does account for all three of those cases. It's smart enough not to cast Combustion if the Hot Streak buff is active, and in cases 1 and 3, it just counts crits. The simulator doesn't really know whether a crit is attributable to Hot Streak or Combustion -- all it does is count crits. The expected crit rate is known, and the expected crit increase attributable to Combustion is calculated using Zaldinar's formula. Excess crit is attributed to Hot Streak.


I disagree, actually. They've been pretty consistently trying to make every talent useful for both raiding and PvP. Even Deep Freeze, which to most people looks like a pure PvP talent, is in part the Frost equivalent of a Fire Blast that will be the spell of choice to cast at the end of a Fingers of Frost proc in a boss fight. I think the powerful single-target DOT aspect of Living Bomb is entirely intended to make it a solid dual-purpose talent.

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.

 

solbergb

Molten armor scales with spelldamage and increases in spell base damage (bigger crits mean more impact for 3% more crit). The damage it inflicts also scales with spelldamage and crit ratings. Mage armor mana regen scales with spirit/int.

Only ice armor really doesn't scale.

 

Salmon

Molten Armor scales with base spell damage.
Mage Armor scales with mana regen.
Fel Armor scales with damage and mana regen.

Mages have to choose. Warlocks do not.

 

Raglu

And frankly, it's not that bad design. I like having a PvE and PvP effect on each armor, it gives them a flavor rather than simply one armor to be used in PvE situations and one in PvP. As has been said before, just because warlock armor spells are stronger than mage armor spells does not mean that it's unfair to the mages if the mage turns out to do inherently more damage than warlocks when disregarding armor spells.

It might be strange, but just because someone has something which you have but is better, doesn't mean you need it.

My father wears very strong glasses to help him see, while mine barely have any power. I don't, however, yearn to have his glasses because they have lenses with more magnification than mine.

 

Salmon

I guess I should clarify my possition slightly. I could really care less about the warlock's armor. My point was only to counter the previous post which said that it doesn't matter that the warlock armor scales because so do the mage armors. My point was merely to indicate that the warlock armor scales twice where mages have (instead) two armor that each scale and cannot be used together.

My major issue is still with the implementation of spirit as a useful stat for mages. Spirit has always been mostly useless to mages (for all but arcane spec) and it has always been on our gear. Spirit has always been useless to warlocks and it has never been on any of their gear.

In the future spirit is being homogenized across the cloth casting classes and suddenly warlocks have been given a spell that makes it useful to them 100% of the time. Spirit continues to be forced on mages in the future yet our state is exactly the same as it has always been. Fel Armor is not the problem, it is merely the latest manifestation of this long standing problem.

Ignore the warlock issue for the time being. The fact remains that spirit is looking to be a very significant stat in WotLK. With the exception of arcane spec mages, we are being forced to sacrifice damage or stack a useless stat.

You don't see strength or agility on caster shaman gear do you? They could go hit something in the face with one of their weapons if they wanted to. They could spec into the enhancement tree to make their attack power count towards spell power. But they aren't going to because it will end in a net loss in their effectiveness at their primary role. Why then are mages forced to sacrifice damage to support a stat that is otherwise useless to us?

 

hypetech

For the content patch I was looking at a deep frost spec like:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

The extra 5% frostbolt damage from Chilled to the Bone, on top of the extra crits from Fingers of Frost/Shatter and the Improved Water Elemental seems like it would be more damage overall than sticking with deep fire at 70. I'm not sure of the math on Burnout vs. these frost talents though.

 

Roywyn

Spirit was useful at level 60 when there was only Mage Armour, and Evocation was spirit based.

It wasn't a great stat, but it was far from useless in some fights, like Patchwerk, some prolonged evading Anub'rekan fights, or Loatheb (no mana pots).

It only became useless in BC because
1) Molten Armour + Mana Pots was sustainable and always better than Mage Armour + Destro Pots
2) Evocation turned out as not competitive for min-maxing (too high time cost), and the spirit dependency was removed as well in some patch
3) Mages required a shadow priest for competitive play which trivialised made most mana issues.



* Deep Fire works at 70. Current Living Bomb blows Icy Veins away.
Spec suggestions would be 0/53/8, 2/51/8, 2/59/0.
This depends on whether you need AE threat reduction, and whether you need Elemental Precision.
Also, we don't know how mana ends up. VT raidwide, JoW scaling, Mana Tide rework, Frost Pet Tide are all being discussed/rebalanced.

Fire past 51 offers 6% crit on Living Bomb, Scorch, and 1.5s Pyroblasts when injured.
If you have a only limited amout of spell hit, then dropping Precision and gearing/gemming to pick up Fire Talents is probably a loss.


* Deep Frost works at 70. You won't get Imp. Scorch, and you won't get 5/5 Ignite for Brain Freeze.
Spec suggestion is 2/0/59 as generic base. Getting 5/5 Ignite can be done in 0/10/51, but you lose too much in frost.
Frost has many good fillers, and some sub-10 talents in arcane/fire are nice as well. Combine as you like, Frost ones are likely better though.

Also there is 0/18/43. If you're the sole mage, you should bring both raid debuffs.
Yes, it sucks, but it has to be mentioned as the "Affliction Mage" spec. You drop Ice Floes, Frost Channeling (or Precision or Cold as Ice, but that's likely a worse option) and the kiting stuff and get 2/3 Imp. WE.

* Deep Arcane can also works at 70. You cannot reach Imp. Scorch, so it should only be considered if you have Imp. Scorch/Winter's Chill in the raid already.
Deep Arcane also requires a Moonkin (6% damage buff) which is currently not a standard in most guilds (unlike Ret which became standard after 2.3/when 2.4 hit).

Also, non-stacking raid debuff are being discussed right now, which could change a lot of things.

Blast spam will likely work as 50/3/0+7 if it doesn't stay at 40% base mana cost. No 10% cost reduction from Frost though.
Cornerstones are mana, mana cost, 2T5. We just don't know how those will look like in 3.0.

Barrage Rotations will likely work, but are not outstanding considering the lack of debuffs. Limiting the off-tree to 10 points hurts frost more than fire.


Back on topic :
I added that to the first post because the mechanics were changed, but I don't remember where I read, what the exact details where and how trustworthy the source was.

Frost Nova/Roots/Fear/etc. are now said to break after a certain percentage of target HP done. Details in the first post.

Any additional information/feedback/testing on this would be very appreciated.

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.

 

Bibdy

I threw out an idea on the Mage WotLK forums, before they went tits up:

Then Mystwynd suggested

Which is in the ballpark of what I was thinking of, although I would rather it occured more often and regenned for less, so that it helps the Arena longevity situation (which is what the thread was about in the first place).

That would make Spirit at least have some tangible use to Mages.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Salmon

This is still fully dependant on using Mage Armor or having points in Arcane Meditation. Both of which are especially unlikely in arena.

 

Thegoodman

Not exactly. There are a handful of arcane talents that make it much more viable in arena. A passive 140 Spell Resist would be ideal when facing casters. Combine that with an improved dampen magic and you have the equivalent to a Prot Warrior to a melee class against casters.

 

Bibdy

Well what if it was basically Innervate, and gave 100% mana regen while casting during that time, too?

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

solbergb

Yeah, what I'm going to do is dump icy veins and explore the deep fire talents at 70. Icy veins is 11 talent points for (currently) about a 13% damage increase...better than playing with fire but possibly not better than 11 points spent on new talents.

If the 8 frost in the above is for winters chill I'm curious as to the rotation you have in mind. I find the idea of maintaining winter chill pretty unappealing for a fire spec, and there isn't a scorch-glyph that reduces the setup to one spell.

Plus....I'm going to want to experiment with the new talents in both PVP and PVE. Tying down 11 in icy veins and 2 in arcane subtlety isn't the way to do that. You can get all the fire DPS talents+elemental precision for < 61 points, leaving some left over to play with the PVP or AOE stuff.

 

◊ manly

I was more thinking of 10/51/0 to be quite honest. Use felmyst staff to pad up for the hit rating.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.