WotLK - Complete Mage Compendium (3.3 PTR) - Page 42

◊ Vontre · 09/04/08, 3:01 AM

Magegraf update posted and I basically finished the mana section of the detail output. You probably noticed it was missing. Funny story, it had a glitch where it wasn't counting any sources of mp5 at all. I guess that's really just the blessing and totem, but still there's a wee bit more mana to go around now.

Oh and that means frostfire bolt is obsolete again. So sorry.

◊ manly · 09/04/08, 3:24 AM

FFB was obsolete the day scorch and WC got merged. I think the sole definitive advantage of FFB is lower threat, and thats about it.

Darkmantle · 09/04/08, 4:01 AM

Originally Posted by manly

You do realise that a talent giving 8k dps would have to basically double the mage dps ? I'm sorry but its hard not to call BS on this. Extremely hard. Or maybe they used infinite mana, 2pcT5 and did some AB spamming (coupled with yet another talent for arcane spec). Who knows.

How about earth & moon, misery, malediction curse of elements, winter's chill, imp scorch, ebon plague and some other talent in a build where they all stacked and double dipped Frostfire bolt with some massive other group buff they were trying out.

We have no idea what kind of whacko bugs and/or talents they have tried out on their internal servers and discovered to be broken in some way. Just putting 1.13*1.13*1.13*1.13*1.05*1.05 together gives a 79.8% increase over current dps estimates which starts approaching that figure.

The only problem will come if they do some massive nerf to all mages based on that 8k figure, which doesn't seem to be the case.

◊ manly · 09/04/08, 4:05 AM

Originally Posted by Darkmantle

How about earth & moon, misery, malediction curse of elements, winter's chill, imp scorch, ebon plague and some other talent in a build where they all stacked and double dipped Frostfire bolt with some massive other group buff they were trying out.

We have no idea what kind of whacko bugs and/or talents they have tried out on their internal servers and discovered to be broken in some way. Just putting 1.13*1.13*1.13*1.13*1.05*1.05 together gives a 79.8% increase over current dps estimates which starts approaching that figure.

The only problem will come if they do some massive nerf to all mages based on that 8k figure, which doesn't seem to be the case.

No I'm sorry I'm not sure I made this clear enough, I was already assuming those, even if they do double dip theres like no way to get 8k dps without some massively overpowered talent. FFS were talking 24k fireballs on average ! Even if you use FFB numbers, FFB does really shitty dps until it crits, so you'd have to have some 80%+ crit rate, and even then you're a long long way off from 8k dps.

◊ Vontre · 09/04/08, 5:15 AM

It was probably the weird glitch in a previous build that caused FFB to hit for over 9000 (hahaha) damage with nothing but DKs in the group that I mentioned like 50 times now.

In case you missed it.

Skallewag · 09/04/08, 5:21 AM

I suspect blizzard might tweak the base numbers of FFB a bit before release. Or to be more precise I think FFB was thought up before they started overhauling raid buffs/debuffs. Its a concept that works if it gets to benifit from a lot of stuff but later they decided not to let such a lot of stuff stack. It would seem really lame to leave FFB as nothing more but a better DPS version of scorch. Some new numbers will probably pop up when we get to know what the other new magespell will be.

Prom · 09/04/08, 5:37 AM

Who cares about dps numbers at this stage anyways. Death Knights are doing 2k dps in greens and blues at 75 and they're all very happy; they won't be when the numbers get readjusted.

What worries me is that our new mage spell is turning into a useless bolt with a nice little graphic that noone will probably use at 80. Furthermore there's no sign of those "new" talents and abilities that Koraa referred to (WoW Forums -> *Kalgan says mages are doing too much damage*).

Searix · 09/04/08, 6:15 AM

I agree, i expected those new talents/abilities week(s) ago, wonder what happened to them :/

Stormhole · 09/04/08, 6:22 AM

The crit multiplier and frost talents have to compete against Improved Fireball, Empowered Fireball, and Glyph of Fireball and those are all rock solid talents to compete against.

It definately looks like FFB was balanced with Rune of Razorice - Spell - World of Warcraft included, excepting every DK will be using Rune of the Fallen Crusader - Spell - World of Warcraft .

Its really sad that a nuke with so much potential and so many good ideas behind it is probably going to end up being a gimmick.

One potential fix would be to let Improved Fireball - Spell - World of Warcraft also affect Frostfire bolt, thus its low enough that even Frost builds can pick it up en route to ignite for Brain Freeze and Fingers of Frost procs.

Valestra · 09/04/08, 6:41 AM

Originally Posted by Lhivera

Note that my review is based on my opinion of how Blizzard intends for the spec to be played when they've finished all their balancing and DPS adjustments. It looks to me as if Blizzard intends for the Arcane DPS process to involve a Barrage/Blast rotation with MBAM on procs, rather than Blast spam, and my assumption in the review is that they intend to balance the spells so that that's the way you'll want to play it. Roywyn's conclusions are based on how the spells behave in the most recent beta push. So his are more accurate based on what we can see right now, whereas mine are, I hope, more accurate based on where things are supposed to end up.

I must confess I'll never specc Deep Arcane and not get ArBarr. Yes I like it that much. 50/3/18 looks like a castrated arcane mage. But that's just me.
I wonder if we can get maybe 35% Haste and can at least weave in ArBarr properly into.

Originally Posted by manly

Have you ever played AM spam at all ? It is by far the most involving spec there is if you want to play it properly.

No, I have not. Please elaborate.

jula · 09/04/08, 6:47 AM

Anyone have some information on how int compares to spi in terms of mana regen (assuming a "mana battery" class is feeding you mana).

I fear int is going to be much more valuable (again) because int gives:
1. Crit
2. Some flat mana
3. Increases spi based regen (by sqrt of int)
4. Increases "mana battery" based regen (as it scales with size of mana pool)
5. Evocation scales with int
6. In arcane spec int also gives spell damage

Now spirit only increase mana regen and as a mage spamming damage you rarely have any out of 5sec rule regen ticks.

I don't want to hate the "waisted on spirit" item budget that we had on mage items again.

Pintofbrew · 09/04/08, 7:06 AM

This has been discussed to death since 2.4.

Mana regen is proportional to int square rooted and proportional to spirit.

During 2.4 arcane craze it was believed int was almost equal to damage, provided you'd evocate during the fight and finish OOM. In practice if you didn't do either of those two, you'd end up with less value from your int and thus more potential gain from +damage. This however, was comparing +12dmg to 10int, a ratio in gems which will be slightly tweaked with WotLK.

It also assumed that gaining socket bonus would counter the negative effects for gemming Spirit in blue sockets, compared to gemming pure int or damage.

The main issue with arcane as it's shaping up with respect to int/spi is Mind Mastery has been reduced from 25% to 15%, making int decidedly underpowered. On the plus side, arcane's glyph of +20% regen while casting off-sets it some ways.

This combined with unknown effects of mana management in arcane; because it's impossible to pin-down a functional arcane cycle/playestyle as it were, we can't evaluate how useful regen is over anything else.

In finishing, you correctly identify the benefits of Int, but that tells us nothing. Agility is nice for dodging, but dodging is irrelevant. Similarly we don't know how relatively useful regen is.

Aeryn · 09/04/08, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by manly

Well, personally I'd put my money down on everyone going arcane come wotlk because I'm pretty sure they won't remove 2pct5 (to clarify: because I'm sure they'll forget and sure enough nobody will report it in beta forums).

Yeah, that's probably what's going to happen. So. Could anyone with access to the beta forum make a post about that? And maybe some other issues too? I remember seeing a post like "please nerf the Tx-bonus" in one of the other class forums that got a blue reply, not sure though.

Issues that need to be adressed and should not be overlooked:

- Mage T5 set bonus: "Increases the damage and mana cost of Arcane Blast by 20%."
- Deathknight's Rune of Razorice: "Affixes your rune weapon with a rune that causes 2% extra weapon damage as Frost damage and has a chance to increase Frost vulnerability. (..)"
- ...

Rune of Razorice could easily be fixed by making frost vulnerability self-only, for instance.

Lhivera · 09/04/08, 11:22 AM

Xentropy, regarding your post on Frostbolt double resists here:

WoW Forums -> Frostbolt double penalized by resist

It would probably be useful to test Frostfire Bolt against the same mobs.

Edit: Except FFB is specifically intended to bypass such resistances, duh. Nevermind. I shouldn't post before I fully wake up.

Xentropy · 09/04/08, 12:49 PM

I'm 3 bars from level 75, when I'll be able to test this. It IS testable, but I will need to find a player close to level 75 with enough gear to reach about 115 frost and fire resist (preferably in the exact same amounts, to see how it handles "choosing" when resists are equal). Then I can see what happens to frostfire bolt, and whether FFB's snare also double-penalizes it the way frostbolts are.

alia · 09/04/08, 12:57 PM

Xen, Just find a level 75 mage and have him spec arcane, 2/2 MA and 2/2Arcane Shielding. With mage armor he'll then have 106 all resist, making him only need 1 or 2 pieces to reach 115 fire/frost resist. Perhaps someone could even burn a few void crystals to make the +4 resist gems. I'll do it (I've got alliance toons on both the beta servers that can make them -> Aliaa is my name on both) if you need someone to make them.

Faxmonkey · 09/04/08, 2:37 PM

Originally Posted by Xentropy

I'm 3 bars from level 75, when I'll be able to test this. It IS testable, but I will need to find a player close to level 75 with enough gear to reach about 115 frost and fire resist (preferably in the exact same amounts, to see how it handles "choosing" when resists are equal). Then I can see what happens to frostfire bolt, and whether FFB's snare also double-penalizes it the way frostbolts are.

Regarding this issue, the resists you experienced on water elementals is fully consistent with Blizzards explanation of how the resist system works. Blizzard has always (check the official explanation page on resists) said that 100% resists based on resists and not a chance to miss were possible. Only Manly has argued otherwise -- it would seem that this just seems to disprove his theory, more than anything else.

The official Blizzard explanation on resists is that they work by "table" meaning that there's one roll, and depending your gear, values are assigned to each slot, for instance, 1-50 might be "0% damage reduction", 50-70 might be "25% damage reduction", 70-80 might be 50% damage reduction, 85-94 might be 75% damage reduction and 93-100 would be 100% damage reduction (showing up as a full resist).

And that these tables are laid out in such a way so as to achieve a total overall damage mitigation whereby the maximum level of the resister times 5 = 75% mitigation. Thus if a 75 mob is resisting 41% (as in your description), 1 point of resist should equal exactly .2% mitigation -- so your numbers would be right on the mark if the mob has ~205 Frost resist and you have 0 spell penetration or any combination that equals 205 when penetration is subtracted from resists.

Manly argued rather passionately somewhere in this thread or its predecessor that the last entry on that table does not exist and that all "full resists" are actually misses and that +resists never cause anything but partial resists. I'm not quite certain this is correct and it seems you might have found a counterexample to disprove that.

Again, the best course of action, imo, is to simply find a fire resistant mob (or player) and see if, indeed, you can get it to resist your fireballs. If so, then that simply proves things are working fine -- as blizzard has always described. No doubt it shouldn't be too hard to have someone with MA cast mage armor and spam a few scorches to see how the resists actually pan out. Of course if you don't see a resist, it doesn't necessarily prove that the last table entry (the full resist one) doesn't exist, it might simply mean that it doesn't open up until a higher quantity of resists is in play. So to be 100% sure you'd need to find a fire resistant target with as much fire resist as your elemental would have had (210) -- although I'm sure some mage has got some FR gear lying around in his bank.

Lhivera · 09/04/08, 2:49 PM

Originally Posted by Faxmonkey

Regarding this issue, the resists you experienced on water elementals is fully consistent with Blizzards explanation of how the resist system works. Blizzard has always (check the official explanation page on resists) said that 100% resists based on resists and not a chance to miss were possible. Only Manly has argued otherwise -- it would seem that this just seems to disprove his theory, more than anything else.

This doesn't explain the significant difference between his results with Frostbolt and his results with Ice Lance. Ice Lance received zero 100% resists in his tests, while its partial resist rates were very similar to Frostbolt's. Both should be getting identical rates on all resist types. This could just be an issue of sample size, but he cast enough that it seems fairly improbable.

◊ manly · 09/04/08, 2:50 PM

Oh that was easy to test. Go visit illhoof. Use no FR gear. Record all the firebolt hits and their miss rate. Then try with max FR. The 'miss' rate doesn't change. If full partial resists existed, it would have had given significantly higher amount of misses. In practice it never happens.

PSGarak · 09/04/08, 2:53 PM

Would a full partial resist be recorded as a miss, or as a resist? Granted, the question doesn't make sense if full partials don't exist, but if the Illhoof test gives the same amount of misses and you start seeing "Resist" come up, I think you have also found full partials.

◊ manly · 09/04/08, 3:03 PM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

Would a full partial resist be recorded as a miss, or as a resist? Granted, the question doesn't make sense if full partials don't exist, but if the Illhoof test gives the same amount of misses and you start seeing "Resist" come up, I think you have also found full partials.

Oh I checked for that too. Put otherwise;

A miss is shown as : "Manly Fireball was fully resisted by Brutallus."
A partial resist is shown as: "Manly Fireball hits Brutallus for 3120 Fire. (Critical) (1520 Resisted)"

I have never seen a 'full partial resist' shown as either:
"Manly Fireball was fully resisted by Brutallus." *
"Manly Fireball hits Brutallus for 0 Fire. (4000 Resisted)"

* Yes, implying here that a miss and a full partial miss would be written in the same fashion in the combatlogs, precisely why I checked if the 'miss' rate changed with more resist gear.

Daydreamer · 09/04/08, 4:17 PM

I'm frankly still deeply concerned by the lack of a useful mechanic for Mages to make use of Spirit. If common caster gear is significantly itemized with Spirit, then that's a strike against Mage gear scaling since that portion of the item budget is wasted on them -- potentially leading to more balance problems at high gear levels. I don't think Mage Armor is going to cut it by itself either, even if we don't know how mana management will turn out in the end.

I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't been mentioned earlier in this thread, but I don't get the impression that this problem has any real traction with Blizzard and maybe it needs to be brought up again. Unless I missed something?

Akston · 09/04/08, 4:28 PM

please delete.

Xentropy · 09/04/08, 5:12 PM

Another reason I know these full resists were not table-based is that due to the new 10%-step partial resist tables the chances of a large partial resist are far smaller below the top end of resist anyway. I received a bell-curve of partial resists centered around 30%, with few 10% or 50% resists, and none I noticed over 60% other than the full resists on frostbolt. If there truly was a table with some small chance of a full resist, there should have been some amount of 80-90% resists as well trailing off toward them, and ice lance should have experienced them too. Ice lance was my "control", basically, a frost damaging spell without a binary component.

And it isn't simply a matter of binary spells getting compensated for their chance to full resist by getting reduced partial resists, since the amount of damage partially resisted by frostbolt and icelance was similar. Frostbolt simply gets an EXTRA penalty for being binary, at the moment. That's why I classified it as a bug and not just mentioned it as a quirk of the system. It seems to me an oversight.

Lhivera · 09/04/08, 6:42 PM

Originally Posted by archeron

- Clearcasting / Presence of Mind only gives +30% crit rate on the first spell cast. The spell crit rate increase is lost after the first cast even if Clearcast and Presence of Mind is still active. There's a new buff while CC/PoM is active "Arcane Potency: 30% increased spell criticial strike chance".

Quick clarification on this if somebody could: as of a couple of patches ago, Arcane Missiles was gaining +30% crit on the cast that procced clearcasting, and losing the crit bonus on the cast that consumed clearcasting (as opposed to current behavior where it gets +30% crit on both).

With this new buff, is Arcane Missiles still gaining the +30% crit chance when the buff appears? Or is it now behaving properly, and gaining the +30% crit for all five ticks on the cast that consumes the buff?