Mynea

A curious thing - in a 0/33/38 or similar FFB build, now that Imp. Scorch and Winter's Chill are redundant, I think it's better to drop Winter's Chill than to drop Scorch.

The advantage of WC over Scorch is that you don't have to worry about maintaining it, FFB will do that on its own. However, taking the points out of Imp. Scorch (and flame throwing, which you were probably only using on Scorch anyway) nets just two points in Impact and three in World in Flames, not terribly useful. For the three points otherwise in WC, you have your choice of Ice Barrier, Arctic Reach (for Ice Lance at the end of FoF procs), Imp. Blizzard, Permafrost, or Frostbite. I think the benefit of three free points in low frost will outweigh the cost of having to scorch every 30 seconds.

 

◊ Vontre

www.magegraf.com/expansion has been updated with the new stacking rules

I also decided to make the simulations actually stop casting when they run out of mana and loosely simulate full spirit regen, so... have at it!

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

Given that Improved Scorch is no longer useful to a deep Frost Mage, it seems like it could be handy to switch to (or add) a full-bore 71-point Frost spec (or at least 56 points, to max its DPS talents).

Which, you know, if I weren't a lazy-ass mf, I'd be doing myself on the TCoM, but yours is just so much prettier.

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.

 

Roywyn

This post is now 3 weeks old. A few things have changed, a few things were confirmed, we finally got the level 80 base damage and mana cost numbers.

I was planning to remake that post once we got more info about the talents that aren't implemented and things stabilise a bit.
Good thing I waited for a few days to catch the complete overhaul of everything we believed to know.

I'll try to put a focus on the differences between what was when this post was made and what is likely to be soon.


1) Main Spell Scaling
Shamelessly stealing Muphrid's base/scaling coefficient:
Fireball: 1020.5 base, 115% scaling => 1020.5/115% = 887 base/100%; (21% base mana)
Frostfire Bolt: 780 base, 85.71% scaling => 780/85.71% = 910 base/100%; (16% base mana)
Frostbolt: 834.5 base, 81.43% scaling => 834.5/81.42% = 1025 base/100%; (15% base mana)

What does that mean? Fireball and Frostfire Bolt have nearly the same relative scaling with spell power.
If Fireball is 10% better than Frostfire Bolt at 200 spell power, then it'll also be around 10% better at 10 Billion spell power (or more like 8%, but the same ballpartk).
Frostbolt is much more base heavy, around 15% more.
If Fireball and Frostbolt are equal at 0 spell power, then Fireball will be around 15% ahead at very high spell power levels. Around 10-12% at 2-3k spell power levels.


That's why I found it odd that Fireball and Frostfire Bolt had similar crit damage in Manly's test.
Spell power doesn't have a noticable impact on the difference, only thing would have been the lack of Elemental Oath which would favour Frostfire. And seems to get culled in the next overhaul. Oh, well.


2) Impact of the Raid (De)Buff Unification
Most changed affect all mage spells/specs roughly equally. Scorch/Misery is the same percentage loss for all specs.
Things like 3% crit loss from ToW/HotC not stacking is slightly worse for Frostfire spec than for say Arcane.

But the differences really are not that big. I really just want to address the major changes.

10% Death Knight Frost Debuff
This is not mentioned in the raid buff normalisation post. Neither is Stormstrike, a nearer relative.
The old post has numbers with and without that debuff if you want to compare them.

I'd be very surprised if that debuff stayed in because it seems to go completey against their plan to require exotic off-spec combinations.
Go by your own judgements when planning ahead.

Mana Batteries
With the current itemisation, 20k mana raid buffed seems generous for later gear, but not impossible.
Having the regeneration effect constantly would then add 100 mana per second, or 500 mp5.
That's a bit more than we get now at 70 on Brutallus from VT+JoW, and definately less than what we were hoping to get at 70.
We also have no idea how other mana buffs end up contributing, like BoW, Mana Spring, Mana Tide.

Ignite
Ignite still bugs out like on like, and it likely will do so forever.
It seems that on Fire Blast combos, only the lower Fire Blast Ignite will get eaten.
So when it comes to Hot Streak variants, look at the numbers with a 50% chance of Ignite bugging for a good estimate.


Fireball
Glyph increases the damage by 5%. A very strong glyph, maybe too strong.
Adds around 5% damage to Fireball specs, and 4% to Fireball/Living Bomb specs.

Frostbolt
Glyph increases the damage by 5%. A very strong glyph with a very harsh penalty.
Adds 5% to Frostbolt specs, and around 4% to Frostbolt/Fireball/Deep Freeze proc cycles.

Frost specs now works pretty well as 0/10/61. You still have to sacrifice some utility to maximise Brain Freeze DPS via Ignites, but the need for Imp. Scorch is finally gone.


Water Bolt
Glyph increases cooldown by 20s, to 1:54 or 2:00 if taken before/after the talent.
It is a very good Glyph for 6 minute fights, increasing uptime for 53% to 66%, or a relative 25% increase.
It makes 6 minute fights go from a worst case to a best case for pet uptime.
It's a 2-3% increase in the mage's total DPS. The fate of the Mana Tide Elemental remains to be seen.

Now for the ugly part - I overestimated level 80 Waterbolt base damage. Lose about 8% pet damage, or about 1% total damage.
Also, I assumed hit-capped pets with raid (de)buffs and/or the mentioned planned +hit inheritance from the master.
If that gets scrapped, it'll hurt pet DPS quite a bit if we go back to 14% miss with Misery.

Also, in the previous list, I didn't account for the personal damage loss from spending 3-4 GCDs for summoning during a fight. This reduces personal DPS by another 1-1.5%.


Frostfire Bolt
Double-dipping has been fixed. Good. With the Fireball/Frostbolt glyphs, Frostfire Bolt is now only a second choice for pure infinite-mana DPS.
It is however very very mana-efficient for raids. And it gives Fire Mages a good opener for solo play to slow down mobs.

Frostfire Bolt spam with Living Bomb consumes about as much mana as Fireball spam without Living Bomb.
But at higher gear levels, that still doesn't seem to be enough to overtake a glyphed Fireball.
There may be a couple of borked calculations and some things are counterintuitive, so I'll reserve final judgement.
At least, it is a very close call.

Weaving Frostfire Bolts every 9/11/12 seconds to benefit from the scaling DoT ticks is a way to increase DPS and save mana. It might count as slowing effect for Torment.
It's all in a very fragile balance, and most options are "roughly equal DPS" there. There are no clear "better" or "worse" choices.

The bottom line would be:
Frostfire Bolt is a good and versatile spell, it's just not good when spammed mindlessly.
It does have scaling issues when several raid crit talents get removed and the other two main spells get 5% buff glyphs.


Arcane Specs
Arcane is the only spec with a relative loss because the 6% damage from Earth and Moon are gone.
Maybe Torment of the Weak will make up for it, we don't know yet.

There are also no glyphs that scale Arcane damage directly, but 2 glyphs increase the mana returns from gems/spirit for more Arcane Blast time.
Arcane Blast is currently pointless, hopefully the 40% base mana cost was just a typo.


3) That's it already?
Yes, I'm not going to redo all calculations with a patch incoming that changes about everything.
If someone just wants to pick up the small summarised list of specs and adjust them, they are free to repost that.
I'm going to wait for the all-changing patch however.

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.

 

Qbert

I attempted the exact same thing, with a much more raw approach (simply trying to satisfy all 33 "utilities") here; Massive Change to Buff and Debuff Stacking in WotLK / World of Warcraft / Subcreation.

Results are very similar;

"Moonkin
Feral Druid
Ret Paladin
Disc Priest
Mage (Frost or Fire spec)
Rogue (any spec)
Elemental Shaman
Frost DK
Arms Warrior"

DK replacing the Enhance Shaman's Windfury, Rogue providing Mind Numbing. The concerning result wasnt necessarily what classes were included, but rather how few it took to cover all utilities. That leaves 8-10 raid slots bringing little more than raw DPS, suggesting that all DPS specs should roughly deal the same damage to avoid single class DPS-stacking. Sounds like a balancing nightmare, which makes me think that the Devs will thin out the utility a bit to require more class/spec combos before having pure DPS slots to fill.

 

Ivorthemage

55 is easy. Beyond that, you are looking at pretty meager or highly situational raiding talents: ice barrier, shattered barrier, ice floes, imp blizzard, etc.

Arcane looks far better. 16 points gets you subtlety and focus for AE spam. concentration for 10% mana, focus mind, spell impact for better AE and lance damage, + 2 points, 1 probably in student of the mind or arcane absorption.

In fact, once you are 16 points in arcane, 4 more start looking very good. sacrifice 2 in frost channelling and 2 in chilled to the bone, and you can pick up 2/3 arcane mediation and 3/3 torment of the weak. Based on current beta observations, snare debuffs are plentiful, torment nets you 4% more damage, and mediation compensates for the loss of frost channelling.

My hunch is that a 20/0/51 build like this will be a common frost raiding build, barring any more major changes to the trees.

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

 

Lhivera

With Blizzard being able to crit, Improved Blizzard and Shatter result in a very high DPS, very high efficiency Blizzard. Ice Barrier translates directly into less stam gear on some minimum-health fights (hence more damage gear), Ice Floes translates into more Icy Veins, etc. The only talents I would leave out are Frost Warding, Shattered Barrier and Frozen Core. Frost really just doesn't need any of what's to be found in Arcane -- it doesn't need the efficiency, it doesn't need Arcane Explosion improvements. I'd put 71 into Frost without hesitation, myself -- it just doesn't need support from the other trees to perform, and the supplementary talents are very useful (and fun) when I'm not raiding.

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.

 

Celani

The biggest problem with the change to stacking, as I see it, is encounter design. Currently, some fights are easier for ranged than melee, and vice versa. Archimonde, Kalecgos, and even Narjento are very hard with too many melee (short ranged or chained AoE splash), while bosses with spell pushback/silences/mana drains are harder with too many ranged (RoS would be a joke with 10 rogues getting every buff). That means, we're going to see bland fights where both classes have equal chances/penalties, or raids will be stacking one way or the other for progression because they can do so quite easily. It's going to be a lot tougher for Blizzard to make encounters both varied and challenging without the top raid guilds stacking the most favorable classes per fight to steamroll them.

 

Lgs

ice barrier is a great talent for raiding (assuming you're already going to be deep frost)

Gnomes are creatures of destruction.

 

toth

I don't understand why you would drop two points from Frost Channeling for Acrane Meditation. Those two points in Frost Channeling also net you 6% threat reduction.

 

Jonny_Monroe

If the mage specs arcane/fire they can cover the spell cast slow effect and remove the 'need' for mind-numbing rogue. I don't think there are many people that would consider such a situation effect to be a major raid effect, though. That takes the coverage down to 8 classes.

OMNOMNOM.

 

Ivorthemage

1) Improved Blizzard/frostbite is situational. Hard to predict what the raiding fights are going to look like, but in BC improved blizzard would only be useful on a small proportion of them. Either there is no aoe (most fights), or aoe needs to be mobile (TK trash), pushback will wreck your mana (Illhoof if you are on imp duty, the birds in TK) or the mobs die before a Blizzard would complete channelling (Tidewalker). MH waves (where AE suffices now), phase two Kael, a few other trash fights, not much else (don't know deep BT and Sunwell). Most frost mages would respec for those particular fights if necessary, or make do with AE, or leech off of some other mage's improved blizzard shatters. Speccing 6 points for it? I doubt it.

2) ice floes is a very mild dps boost to icy veins. About .6% dps for all three points. That is junk.

3) In contrast, going 20 arcane (or 18 arcane, skipping mediation in favor of chilled to the bone) nets you 4-6% more damage. That isn't situational.

In practice, mages almost always choose pure dps to their nukes over situational buffs to their AOE, or mana efficiency.

If Blizzard is far more useful in LK I might consider it. Otherwise, its nuke damage all the way.

If you want at least 18 in arcane to max out torment, you have to drop 2 from either chilled to the bone (2% damage) or frost channelling (6% mana and threat). Personally, I have never had threat issues raiding frost, do a decent chunk of damage being done by the elemental. And there is usually a forced dps break that allows for invisibility if necessary.

But if you are sufficiently threat capped where 6% less threat nets you more 2% more damage from chilled to the bone, your choice would be clear.

Digging deeper.

The optimal frost nuke spec is 18/0/53. But some of the frost talents there are a bit meh, allowing for flexibility. The difference between a deep freeze and ice lance on an FoF proc won't be huge. Chilled to the Bone is only 1% per talent point, etc. If Mana efficiency or threat becomes an issue, frost has some flexibility.

I can easily see a variety of frost/arcane builds being popular, depending on where the Imp elemental buff lands. All of the frost talents after 41 points right now are mediocre, about 1% dps per talent point. But arcane after 18 is only slightly worse, and you gain a lot more mana efficiency. 30/0/41 only does a couple percent worse dps than 18/0/53 but has a lot more mana to spare.

All of that is meaningless if the elemental stays a mana battery, of course. But if it isnt a battery, frost mages may need other options.

 

PSGarak

That group composition is missing the +healing received buff, unless you expect the ret pally to be covering that, which takes a considerably investment in prot and may scrap one of the buffs (is that redundant with moonkin?). Also, with one warrior and one paladin (and no warlocks) you only have 2 out of 3 of +hp, BoK, and +AP, and your tank will want all 3. Adding a prot paladin can cover both the healing aura and the BoK without stretching anybody to sillyspecs, bringing the total back up to 9. In general you can cover it with 9 "normal" specs, or 8 if some of them spec something stupid. Someone was able to bring my list of 9 down to 8 with a blood/frost DK spec that probably sucks.

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

 

Lhivera

To each his own, I guess. Me, I think intangibles are important, and a build like that sucks all the life out of playing a Frost Mage for me. Going to 51 Frost without picking up the snares and utility talents and all that feels a lot like going to the symphony and then listening to top 40 on your iPod to drown out the orchestra.

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.

 

Jarlyn

I'm in agreement about Blizzard - the only reason it isn't used more commonly now is its talent placement relative to common raid specs and more importantly, poor damage. If it was comparable DPS to AE spam it becomes substantially more attractive.

 

toth

Right, but you suggested a 20/0/51 spec that dropped 2 points each from CttB and Frost Channeling for maxed out Torment and 2/3 Arcane Meditation. I think dropping the two points from Arcane Meditation for Frost Channeling is a pretty easy choice (18/0/53). After that it's situational/individual whether you move one or two points from Frost Channeling to CttB depending on whether or not you need the mana or threat headroom.

 

Ivorthemage

That's the beauty of respeccing. Walk on the way to the orchestra, spec iPod. When you get there, spec ears.

If Blizzard actually designed instances around frost utility talents, I might agree.

Not without substantial changes to fight design. Walk through the BC raid bosses, and tally up the ones (or key trash fights on the way) where AE is even relevant. Now, of those, ask yourself whether a permafrosted improved frostbitten blizzard would even be useful if damage was on par.

Like I said, I don't know the deep BT or any sunwell fights, but in T4, T5, MH, and early BT I can count the fights on one hand. Kara has no aoe to speak of except Illhoof, where Blizzard would suck. Gruul and Mag have no AOE. Hydross would let you Blizz on nature phase. Lurker, no aoe. TW, could aoe murlocs but they die in 3 AEs as is. KLK and Leo and Vashj, no AOE. Alar, VR, no AOE. Solarian has aoe but again its 3 AEs and dead. On Kael Blizz would come in handy. For MH, it would rock the easy trash waves, but they are cake anyway. Naj, Supremus, Shade, Gorefiend, BB? No aoe. That is 2 boss fights where blizzard would be useful out of ~30.

If it fits your sense of aesthetics, or you don't like to respec for solo farming, its your dime. But these threads have usually wanted to figure out what the highest dps options are, even if people don't want to use them for aesthetic reasons.

 

Jarlyn

Blizzard being viable DPS would fix two of the largest sources of complaint in regards to mages - M'uru and KJ. In both situations the biggest reason we lose raid spots to warlocks is because of our inability to provide ranged AoE.

 

Austin

The servers are going down for another round of updates, this should give us a better understanding of how they changed the talents/spells and possibly provide some further information to theory craft upon with the new buff/debuff rules.

I, as a raid leader, and very happy at the changes with all of the debuffs/buffs, now I don't have to reduce the raid's DPS level when I have 4 mages online, as opposed to taking specific classes for their buffs. I'm still withholding my final opinions on how this impacts the mages until the new build is available for review.

Austin, 80 Mage - Austyn, 80 Death Knight - Austen, 70 Rogue - Dormant account - 70 Resto Druid, 70 Feral Druid

 

Roywyn

Right now, Blizzard has two issues.
1) It cannot crit. That's a harsh DPS cost in itself. It also means that you cannot use extremely good AoE trinkets like TLC/AToI.
2) Blizzard has a terribly low AoE damage cap. Arcane Explosion has a very high AoE damage cap. Difference is nearly a factor two.

WotLK fixes 1). Blizzard is universally better and more efficient than AE for sustained AoE before caps.
Only unknown is 2) which can easily throw everything we know off.
Blizzard being capped at 3.6k/tick and AE at 10k/cast is a difference of night and day that can be seen on meters.

WotLK also increases Blizzard's base damage by ~50%, which might indicate a change in its AoE cap as well (otherwise the chang wouldn't do anything at all).
I guess it's time to visit Stockades soon to check!

AE still has it's uses: AoE on the run, 40% threat reduction, burst AoE to take out waves of low health mobs. Interruption/pushback free.

Blizzard would be the Hyjal/Kael'thas spell, while AE would be the Reliquary/Fankriss/Heigan Tunnel (oh how did we miss thee!) spell.
Also, Frost Nova scaled up from 20% to 75% might mean that nova'ing for shatter comobos might be beneficial too.


Little note: Thunder/Lightning Capacitor are bugged on beta right now.
You gain 1 charge and then nothing happens. you're stuck with one charge. Or one charge of each if you use both.
Could be that they actually want to fix the 2.5s cooldown between charges to work properly.

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.

 

Lhivera

Ugh! Filthy respeccers. Like rats, they are! (This "respecs are good/respecs are evil" argument has run its course ten times over, so rather than ever picking up the argument again, I'm going to just adopt the brogue of an elderly Scotsman and call respeccers rodents. This will save time.)

More importantly, though, we'll have to see whether Torment the Weak continues to function on unsnarable targets. I'm rather assuming that's a bug. If that talent doesn't pan out for boss fights, then the only reason to go into Arcane is really to boost Arcane Explosion, and why bother when I can boost Blizzard and not be some kind of yellow-bellied hybrid?

(Purity of Essence. Essence of Purity.)

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.

 

Aeryn

Frozen Rune Weapon was removed in the last patch I think. At least it's not in the talent tree any more, and it doesn't seem to be a base ability either.

 

PSGarak

Purity of Essence, Peace on Earth. I understand Lhiv, I'm keeping UA instead of ruin for as long as I can, and my position on corpse explosion is already someone's signature.

AoE hasn't been allowed to be a big deal in encounters because the AoE abilities if your raid would vary greatly based on composition. Now that more classes than just mages and warlocks have AoEs on cooldowns shorter than one minute, it's allowed for encounters to really push your AoE limits. I would be greatly amused if we start seeing three-target scenarios as standard, so that chain lightning/multishot/affliction use their multi-target abilities, and mages consider there enough targets for AoE to be worthwhile. It's not impossible for AoE talents to be more worthwhile, just difficult.

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

 

Roywyn

[Rune of Razorice - Spell - World of Warcraft]
They added it as runeforge and actually increased the extra weapon damage from 1% to 2%.

Fallen Crusader/Cinderglacier are still likely better choices for personal assuming that Frost gets tuned down again.

We'll just have to wait and see how things evolve there. Razorice staying like it is now is just the opposite of what current design attempts to achieve ("Need class X with spec Y or we call the raid!").

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.

 

Slander

Runeforging last I checked, which was last night, server is down at the moment though so I can't confirm it to you with a pic.