WotLK - Complete Mage Compendium (3.3 PTR) - Page 63

Lhivera · 09/17/08, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by Pheroz

Frost starts a little behind fire (no arguments there) but gets less DPS from every single relevant stat. So isn't frost going to fall further and further behind as our gear improves from Naxx-10 and beyond?

Vontre's numbers still show Frost in a much more favorable light. Would be good to break down the spells and rotations everyone's using for Frost and see where the differences lie. Would probably be good for me to get off my butt and run numbers myself, but I feel my model is fairly obsolete at this point, plus I don't want to have to redo it all after the next patch.

Thegoodman · 09/17/08, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Lhivera

That wouldn't really fit, in my mind. They gave Frost Mages a pet, which is a warlocky sort of thing, in TBC. They're giving Fire Mages a DOT, which is also a warlocky sort of thing, in WotLK. They're giving Demonologists a DPS cooldown, which is a magey sort of thing, in WotLK. I don't think you'll see a similar off-class-flavor addition to two different trees in the same class. Could be wrong, but that's my instinct.

Think they just need to make sure that:

- Blast/Barrage/MBAM cycle puts out DPS competitive with Frost and Fire
- Blast Spam is a short-term mana-burning thing, not a sustainable thing
- The tree scales properly

...and Arcane is pretty much OK.

I think that idea of class "identities" went out the window when every "hybrid" class was capable of being the best or competitive at his or her chosen spec. The warlock class and the mage class are identical in my opinion, just brothers from another mother. We are ranged. We are AoE. We are casters. We want the same gear/stats. Give me what they have and give them what I have, keeping the classes separate only keeps us from being comparable. The lack of a significant DoT for Mages has been one of our largest hindrances in BC (Arena and Bosses where movement is necessary) and getting one could only help everyone involved.

Thegoodman · 09/17/08, 11:16 AM

Originally Posted by Axira

After playing around with a deep fire build a bit, it dawned up me that haste was actually gonna become a rather bad stat for future fire mages. Why?
1. It does not give any DPS increase at all to our hot streak pyroblasts or living bomb. Basically with the stats-distribution philosophy that exists in TBC, more haste in alot of cases just means less critrating or less spelldamage. However, both these stats are together of much more importance to a deep fire build than haste. Or at least that is how I perceive it.
2. It just causes us to burn our mana faster, and we do not really want that.

While it may not be a huge increase, a faster GCD is always a good thing. An instant pyroblast going from 1.5s to 1.3s is sill a percentage increase of 13%. Those percentages are what is important in the long run, not the .2s. Also, more haste will allow you to cast more fireballs between scorches and living bombs, which will in turn increase your dps. Mana usage is a mountain of a problem we are always climbing, not a wall that stops us from trying to increase our damage.

Roywyn · 09/17/08, 11:26 AM

Originally Posted by Axira

I) After playing around with a deep fire build a bit, it dawned up me that haste was actually gonna become a rather bad stat for future fire mages. Why?
1. It does not give any DPS increase at all to our hot streak pyroblasts or living bomb. Basically with the stats-distribution philosophy that exists in TBC, more haste in alot of cases just means less critrating or less spelldamage. However, both these stats are together of much more importance to a deep fire build than haste. Or at least that is how I perceive it.
2. It just causes us to burn our mana faster, and we do not really want that.

II) The philosophy behind a deep fire talentbuild at the moment in my opinion seems to be the following:
"Slow and big hits". Or to be more precise, favouring both spelldamage and critrating over anything else.

III) So what do deep fire builds need most ... spellpower, critrating and mana. And keeping this in mind I started to browse some of the available gear at L80 and my attention fell on gear like Bindings of Yearning, Wraps of the Persecuted, Cloak of Averted Crisis, Serene Echoes, .. etc. You can catch my drift. (You need to search the items yourself on Wowhead: OMG IT'S ALMOST HERE since I appearantly can't directly link them here.)

So I started wondering about how bad that mp5 -really- is, in contrast to what the sentiment of people is towards it at this very moment in TBC. Most likely it is rubbish yes, but it can't be worse than gear with +spirit and +haste rating on it instead, because spirit wouldn't give us anything at all. The following ofcourse already caught my attention and I'm happy to have such a source of numbers:

But I'd also like to know the numbers for:
Fire spec with mana limitation, spending mana on more Living Bombs (extremely mana-starved), while using molten armor

IV) Besides that, I also found it odd you were comparing 100 spelldmg with 100 of other stats.
As far as I know 1.167 spelldmg = 1 of every other stat in terms of stats value distribution, unless that has been changed somewhere along the line.

So you might wanna add "117 spellpower = ???" to the list as well to make it more correct and complete for an overview of stats comparison.

I do realize though that this is a bit of 'alternative' or unusual theorycrafting, since mp5 is generally frowned upon (and even imagining it might be a decent stat already is making me feel sick (because this will bring up other issues with how our L80 Tier sets are itemized)). But i'm just curious how good it'll really be now in mana starved situations. Which is how the new fire build should be played like; keeping Living Bomb up just as much as you can so you'd end the fight with 0 mana left the exact moment the raidboss is dead.

V) And I think that under these conditions we could be badly surprised, and keep in mind that I'm talking about itemstats here and not about gemslots. Ofcourse if you could pick an item with much more int instead of mp5 instead, that int would in all cases be better due to the replenishment scaling. But in terms of gear you never have such choices. Atm the main variation and choice we seem to have on non-set cloth items is: +haste/+spirit or +crit/+mp5 ?

I) Haste doesn't scale Living Bomb due to its 12s explosion timer, but it scales Pyroblast because it's woven with Fireball.

II) The is no philosophy. There is just damage done per fight. Nothing else matter and only narrows your mind.
The only "philosophy" I can think of was Arcane mages preaching that haste is such a terrible stat because it makes them spend mana faster. And how long it took to convince them that it's still their second or third best DPS stat.

III) DPM of mana converters like Living Bomb, Haste, Molten Armour is given right there.
Hence if you run OOM while spamming LB, you switch to Mage Armour. And change gems if necessary.

IV) I made it with 100/rating for simplicity. Most lootrank sites/tool work with direct values for 1/stat, whether they are cheap like AP or expensive like MP5.

A stat is better than spell damage per budget if it's worth more than 1.17 dmg.
There only thing where budget matters are gems, and there you cannot use it because of stat rounding.
Like +9 dmg rubies being under budget and +12 dmg spinels being over budget causing different gemming before and after getting epic gems.

So, most of the TC and item values are given. MP5 costs as much as 2.5 stats, so it's pretty terrible an any kind of thinkable way.

Reports of mages saying that they can spam LB through whole fights with Molten Armour and 1 Mana Gem used shows that mana right now is not an issue.
That may and probably will change though as long as the pretty much pointless and mostly useless concept of mana remains. It doesn't matter much right now for anyone with the current implementation of Replenishment.

Originally Posted by Lhivera

Vontre's numbers still show Frost in a much more favorable light. Would be good to break down the spells and rotations everyone's using for Frost and see where the differences lie. Would probably be good for me to get off my butt and run numbers myself, but I feel my model is fairly obsolete at this point, plus I don't want to have to redo it all after the next patch.

Not sure where the large differences come from either.

In my Naxx-10 kit plus raid buffs/debuffs, Frostbolt is running 44% crit, Fireball is running 49% crit (+combustion).
That's an extremely high amount of crit, mostly from raid buffs, which largely favours Fire specs.

Also, does Vontre still use the Death Knight Frost debuff? Because I don't.
It also was reduced to 5% last patch (stacks only 5 times, not 10), hasn't really been mentioned yet.

andastra · 09/17/08, 11:27 AM

Originally Posted by Thegoodman

I think that idea of class "identities" went out the window when every "hybrid" class was capable of being the best or competitive at his or her chosen spec. The warlock class and the mage class are identical in my opinion, just brothers from another mother. We are ranged. We are AoE. We are casters. We want the same gear/stats. Give me what they have and give them what I have, keeping the classes separate only keeps us from being comparable. The lack of a significant DoT for Mages has been one of our largest hindrances in BC (Arena and Bosses where movement is necessary) and getting one could only help everyone involved.

I agree. Blizzard might be trying to move away from it, but a destro warlock is basically a mage that has some warlock utility. Since warlocks have a mage tree, why not give mages a warlock tree? Have arcane be a combination DD/DoT tree in PvE with anti-caster utility in PvP. That's better than its current directionless state.

Axira · 09/17/08, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by Thegoodman

While it may not be a huge increase, a faster GCD is always a good thing. An instant pyroblast going from 1.5s to 1.3s is sill a percentage increase of 13%. Those percentages are what is important in the long run, not the .2s. Also, more haste will allow you to cast more fireballs between scorches and living bombs, which will in turn increase your dps. Mana usage is a mountain of a problem we are always climbing, not a wall that stops us from trying to increase our damage.

Aye, I know all these things, but the moment mana becomes an issue I'm not so certain anymore that spellhaste will become as good. Or to quote:

1 hit = 1.04 dmg, 1 crit = 0.70 dmg, 1 haste = 0.57 dmg, 1 int = 1.12 dmg, 1 mp5 = 0.77 dmg

On top of that the main variety of cloth gear at the moment seems to be either:
a) more +spirit/+haste
or
b) more +crit/+mp5

Where it needs no argument that spirit at the moment is completely useless. And haste an inferiour stat compared to crit or even mp5 (on mana starved fights).
Even outside mana starved fights we get these numbers:

1 hit = 1.04 dmg, 1 crit = 0.68 dmg, 1 haste = 0.68 dmg

So why would you as fire mage want to take the cloth pieces that give +spirit/+haste instead of the ones that would give +crit/+mp5 ?

For example compare "Gloves of Token Respect" with "Wraps of the Persecuted".
"+53 spirit/+43 haste" vs. "+49 critrating/+20 mp5"

And this is something you can find on all itemslots. Itemisation as far as I can see it at the moment is basically a choice between either more spirit+haste or more crit+mp5, with sometimes here and there an amount of stats traded away for hitrating.

Roywyn · 09/17/08, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by Axira

Aye, I know all these things, but the moment mana becomes an issue I'm not so certain anymore that spellhaste will become as good. Or to quote:

On top of that the main variety of cloth gear at the moment seems to be either:
a) more +spirit/+haste
or
b) more +crit/+mp5

Where it needs no argument that spirit at the moment is completely useless. And haste an inferiour stat compared to crit or even mp5 (on mana starved fights).
Even outside mana starved fights we get these numbers:

So why would you as fire mage want to take the cloth pieces that give +spirit/+haste instead of the ones that would give +crit/+mp5 ?

For example compare "Gloves of Token Respect" with "Wraps of the Persecuted".
"+53 spirit/+43 haste" vs. "+49 critrating/+20 mp5"

And this is something you can find on all itemslots. Itemisation as far as I can see it at the moment is basically a choice between either more spirit+haste or more crit+mp5, with sometimes here and there an amount of stats traded away for hitrating.

If mana becomes an issue with Evocation, Pot, Gems, then the first thing you do is casting (and glyphing) Mage Armour. That's where spirit comes in.

*Fire spec with mana limitation, spending mana on more Living Bombs (extremely mana-starved)
1 hit = 1.04 dmg, 1 crit = 0.70 dmg, 1 haste = 0.57 dmg, 1 int = 1.12 dmg, 1 mp5 = 0.77 dmg; *1 spi = 0.49 (with 50% Mage Armour)

For the budget of 1 rating, you get 0.4 mp5 = 0.31 dmg.

With the given weights, the listed spi/haste combo adds 50.5 dmg while the crit/mp5 combo adds 49.7 dmg.
So, they're pretty much even. The obvious solution would be picking up the Frostfire set gloves.

But, yes, for other slots it becomes much closer than before.
Generally, your best bet is still picking the item per tier that has 2 DPS stats on it.

When items are rather close, then it's entirely dependant on how the mana system will be tweaked (or not).

As for why pick the haste item, you quoted the wrong weights:

Fire spec without mana limitation
1 hit = 1.04 dmg, 1 crit = 0.67 dmg, 1 haste = 0.83 dmg, 1 int = 0.21 dmg

*Fire spec with mana limitation, spending mana on more Living Bombs (extremely mana-starved)
1 hit = 1.04 dmg, 1 crit = 0.70 dmg, 1 haste = 0.57 dmg, 1 int = 1.12 dmg, 1 mp5 = 0.77 dmg; *1 spi = 0.49 (with 50% Mage Armour)

*Fire spec with mana limitation, converting mana with haste and Molten Armour (enough mana for 100% LB uptime)
1 hit = 1.04 dmg, 1 crit = 0.68 dmg, 1 haste = 0.68 dmg, 1 int = 0.89 dmg, 1 mp5 = 0.44 dmg

If you're not mana-limited, then haste beats crit.

You quoted the second part, where you use Haste or Molten Armour to convert mana (both are equally good converters in this setting), while maintaing 100% Living Bomb uptime.
That means you're sitting exactly at the "haste = crit" threshold, so both stats are equally strong by definition.

Roe · 09/17/08, 12:21 PM

Originally Posted by andastra

I agree. Blizzard might be trying to move away from it, but a destro warlock is basically a mage that has some warlock utility. Since warlocks have a mage tree, why not give mages a warlock tree? Have arcane be a combination DD/DoT tree in PvE with anti-caster utility in PvP. That's better than its current directionless state.

Class identities in some sense I think came about as a result of the old, end game raiding design concept of time sinks. When Blizzard started out with WoW it was highly believed hard core raiders would burn through end game content much to quickly if the end game was not very difficult. Since content can't be produced at the rate players would want it, it was argued, designers relied on time sinks to give those players purpose. It was justified often by the concept of, "you have to earn your gear to appreciate it!" Consumables, difficulties with organizing large raids, fairly complex raid requirement designs, mind numbing faction grinding are all examples of raid design it can be argued, which fell into place as a direct result of this concept.

Blizzard doesn't appear to believe this time sink idea is as good an approach anymore, or as necessary to maintain a solid player base. They want to try to expose a lot more people to all of their content. Reducing the need for over diversity in a raid and complex interdependencies for each group is one example of how they are going about this. There is also the sense blizzard is giving a cross over of abilities between different classes.

In an effort to be consistent with Blizzard's vision of things, I have spent a bit of time trying to think of ways to still allow functional, individual class identity while still allowing fairly easy raid composition. Not that I have great or unique solutions. In terms of the Mage and ranged damage, Blizzard could mix it up more as others have suggested by allowing each class a fairly complex functionality to achieve their intended DPS. Instead of spamming one spell mindlessly, mix it up a bit more.

I also hope Blizzard won't move away from gimmick stuff like Warlock or Mage tanking, and those individual class duties which are fun too.

Duodecimal · 09/17/08, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Roywyn

Frostfire Bolt is always walking an extremely thin line.
1% too weak and nobody will use it. 1% too strong and it will completely replace Fireball/Frostbolt.

Frostfire Bolt weaving for Fire was a decent bonus until the 5% Glyph appeared.

[...] the improved/empowered Frostbolt talents are stronger than the Fireball counterparts, so Frostfire Bolt is even more at a relative disadvantage compared to Frostbolt.

For deep fire or deep frost, it's not a particularly useful spell except in immunity situations. If the spell benefits from talents in both Fire and Frost schools, then they should add a talent that requires an elementalist build.

They could add two tier five or six talents, one to the fire tree and one to frost. The fire talent would require 25 or so points in Frost, and the Frost talent would require 25 or so in Fire. Maybe the frost one would be the Empowered Frostfire Bolt talent, and the Fire would add the DoT or reduce cast time (with the base spell probably getting adjustments).

Frostfire bolts in this case would be better than Fireball or Frostbolt, but only for elementalists with builds that are something like 31/30. Frost mages would stick with Frostbolt, Fire mages would stick with Fireball.

Flitwik · 09/17/08, 12:57 PM

Well just an idea that pop up, couldn't a aggro scaling be put on the AB debuff ?
Would it be possible ?

The mage could be forced to switch between less agressive spells to keep up spamming ? it could make a use for the ABar spell.
The curent mana cost could be kept, and a threat value could be added and sum up with every cast.

Lgs · 09/17/08, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Duodecimal

For deep fire or deep frost, it's not a particularly useful spell except in immunity situations. If the spell benefits from talents in both Fire and Frost schools, then they should add a talent that requires an elementalist build.

They could add two tier five or six talents, one to the fire tree and one to frost. The fire talent would require 25 or so points in Frost, and the Frost talent would require 25 or so in Fire. Maybe the frost one would be the Empowered Frostfire Bolt talent, and the Fire would add the DoT or reduce cast time (with the base spell probably getting adjustments).

Frostfire bolts in this case would be better than Fireball or Frostbolt, but only for elementalists with builds that are something like 31/30. Frost mages would stick with Frostbolt, Fire mages would stick with Fireball.

Then they're balancing 4 specs, one of which is contained within 2 others. I don't see this happening when they can't get three well-defined specs in line. Like you quoted, the line is just too narrow for that spell to be useful.

Lhivera · 09/17/08, 1:10 PM

Originally Posted by Roywyn

Not sure where the large differences come from either.

In my Naxx-10 kit plus raid buffs/debuffs, Frostbolt is running 44% crit, Fireball is running 49% crit (+combustion).
That's an extremely high amount of crit, mostly from raid buffs, which largely favours Fire specs.

Also, does Vontre still use the Death Knight Frost debuff? Because I don't.
It also was reduced to 5% last patch (stacks only 5 times, not 10), hasn't really been mentioned yet.

He does not seem to be using the DK debuff (it's not even in the debuff options list anymore).

I don't have Excel, so I can't explore your spreadsheet closely. Can you provide the exact numbers you're using for the following, so I can make a direct comparison?

Int
Spi
Spell Power
Hit Rating
Crit Rating
Haste Rating
Meta gem
Consumables
Buffs/debuffs
regen
encounter duration

I'll plug the exact same numbers you're using into his form and report back with some results and maybe we can track down exactly where the two are diverging.

◊ manly · 09/17/08, 1:45 PM

I wonder if anyone took the time to test Living Bomb ignites being eaten by fireballs ? I expect most scenarios to do that. Living Bomb in all probabilities is 2 spells, one being the explosion. The explosion has no travel time fortunately, so that avoids those ignite bugs. However, if you have a Living Bomb on a target, finish casting a fireball, then during the fireball travel the living bomb explodes, I pretty much expect the living bomb ignite to go away.

andastra · 09/17/08, 1:56 PM

Is the living bomb explosion still centered around the caster? If it is, how much of a dps boost will it be to single target dps? I wonder if we'll get to some situations where we'll be standing with the rogues and trading more dps with having more threat.

Pheroz · 09/17/08, 2:28 PM

WotLK - Complete Mage Compendium (3.3 PTR)

According thos this thread, living bomb was fixed almost 2 weeks ago.

Enthorn · 09/17/08, 3:18 PM

PTR is running on an older build, and thus Living Bomb is still exploding from the caster, not the target. I've tested this extensively, and it never fails to detonate from the caster. Similarly, Metamorphosis is still in its older form, providing 360% armor instead of 600%. I'm not entirely sure why PTR is on an older build, but nonetheless.

arch · 09/17/08, 3:19 PM

And according to me it's still not fixed. Be it PTR or beta.

LB bug:
Standing far away: ImageShack - Hosting :: heheq2.jpg
Standing close: ImageShack - Hosting :: hehhrl9.jpg

Screenshots taken on Coldarra, EU beta realm.

Xentropy · 09/17/08, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Enthorn

PTR is running on an older build, and thus Living Bomb is still exploding from the caster, not the target. I've tested this extensively, and it never fails to detonate from the caster. Similarly, Metamorphosis is still in its older form, providing 360% armor instead of 600%. I'm not entirely sure why PTR is on an older build, but nonetheless.

Yes, it can be seen from the login screen. PTR is on build 8916. Beta is on build 8926. Since 8916 was never even released on beta (we went from 8905 to 8926) the PTR could theoretically have any number of differences or bugs that were produced and then fixed internally before beta ever saw them. This likely isn't very relevant in the longer term since any build that makes it to Live should have the most obvious of the bugs squashed, but we do have to keep in mind for the purposes of this thread that PTR folks may see different mechanics than Beta folks in some ways.

solbergb · 09/17/08, 5:05 PM

Edit: Comment covered better by other responses.

◊ Vontre · 09/17/08, 6:54 PM

For reference, my mage has 800 intellect in blue pvp gear at 80.

Magegraf does not use the DK aura anymore. I have significantly improved the magegraf detail outputs and they should be easy to examine. Important to note is cast sequence, spell detail and effect timing. Full debug output if you're feeling brave.

Mage armor is extremely powerful regen now, with the glyph, so fire mana is more than fine with it on. Frost is absurdly efficient, and the only reason it parses a tiny bit lower than fire is because I'm using mage armor on every spec.

Arcane Blast needs to be nuked from orbit. Triple its mana cost, or more, it's way too good.

www.magegraf.com/expansion

deadlyice · 09/17/08, 7:25 PM

Vontre, what am I missing?

Arcane is the lowest on your chart, but AB is way too good? Looks to me like Arcane has been nerfed into the ground.

All the lock specs beat Arcane too without breaking a sweat.

Warlock: 0/21/50: 3490 dps (+104dps if Curse of Doom is used)
Frost (0/20/51): 3143 dps
Fire/Frostfire Build (0/51/20): 3117 dps
Fire (2/58/11): 2935 dps
Elemental Mage (0/30/41): 2790 dps
Warlock: Affliction/UA: 2747 dps (+179dps if Curse of Doom is used)
Arcane/Arcane (51/20/0): 2531 dps

All based from default values:

Int 500
Spi 300
Spell Damage 2k
4 piece arcane Tirisfal Bonus included in these numbers

Found this on beta forums cross comparing class damage

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Comparison dps of all classes WOTLK

◊ Vontre · 09/17/08, 7:32 PM

Please link the magegraf page in your post so I can see what you're seeing, otherwise I have no idea what you did or didn't do to get those results.

deadlyice · 09/17/08, 7:38 PM

My bad, I just clicked http://www.magegraf.com/expansion and read the default numbers you had inputted. The default calculations are the ones I posted. I did go back and check "Curse of Doom" and then add those variables to the above post.

I can provide a screenshot if desired.

◊ Vontre · 09/17/08, 7:40 PM

Just copy the url of the page you were looking at. The default page is actually saved data based on ip address and will be different for every user. No screenshot is necessary.

Batar · 09/17/08, 7:54 PM

Why does the arcane rotation have so many scorches, yet the fire spec has none? And i cant seem to get the arcane spec higher either. I have my chump gear in there.

http://www.magegraf.com/expansion/in...6a993c88f5908a