Originally Posted by Doctordeath
1. Imp. Scorch Glyph
2. Icewalker vs. Tuskarr's Vitality
3. Mirror Images
4. Considering 2pc T7
5. In a TTW/FB spec . . . gem with dmg/haste rather than dmg/crit.
|
Glyph of Scorch is a convenience factor on a Patchwerk fight, and a DPS gain on a fight in which you'll be applying scorch to multiple targets or it is falling off outside of your control. As for which glyph to replace:
1% crit is 45.6 crit rating, which is 228 spirit @ 20% conversion rate (since Glyph is only 20% but Molten Armor itself is 35%). It then follows that in order to make up the 2% crit rate from Glyph of Molten Armor, you need at least 456 spirit. Base spirit on mages is ~179. Divine spirit gives another 80. Mark of the wild gives 51. This is 310, +7% Student of the Mind, +10% Kings gives 364.87, excluding all spirit from gear and enchants. As you can see, it's pretty easy to get back to the 2% crit rate. This may be a bit more difficult in a 10-man setting if you have no priests, druids, and paladins (it can happen...) but nonetheless. Now, how does this compare to 5% crit on Fireball? Off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure it's worse. But, if you factor in all of the spirit from gear, and you get into the 700-800 range, you start to see 3-3.5% crit rate for the Glyph, which is as good and slightly ahead, respectively, of Glyph of Fireball.
It's worth noting that Glyph of Scorch alleviates many rotation problems such as choosing between refreshing Scorch, reapplying Living Bomb, and using Hot Streak. This factor alone makes it somewhat difficult to pass over, and it's certainly not minimal when it comes to adds. Take the new Vault of Archavon boss for example. Emalon has adds that need to be burst down immediately. You have 20 seconds to kill them before they wipe the raid. You don't want to be spending 6.25-7.5 seconds ramping Scorch up during that window when your raid will benefit from the immediate 5 application stack.
Icewalker should be worth ~43-50 DPS. When your theoretical max DPS is over 7000, that's a drop in the bucket. Naturally, every little amount is how you got there in the first place, and if you don't move at all, Tuskarr's Vitality is useless (so Icewalker becomes free DPS almost). I already discussed a lot
here, but I'll add a few things:
I believe run speed is 6.33 yards/second, but I'm not sure where I originally got that number from, and I can only find experiments showing 6.73. Although that's significantly higher, I'll go with it. At 6.73 yards per second, it would take 2.97 seconds to run 20 yards. It goes without saying that it's always faster to blink. Now, 20/1.5 = 13.33 yards/second. Given the global cooldown then, Blink is 1.98x faster than running as far as returning to DPS is concerned (since if all you're doing is running in a straight line, then the GCD doesn't matter and Blink is 20 yards per second).
10.1 yards can be covered in 1.5 seconds of running. Thus, if you can spare the mana, and you need to run further than 10 yards, and going 20 isn't a problem, then you should always blink. If you need to move less than 10 yards, you should always run (and reapply Living Bomb, or Fire Blast, while doing so). But, since you can only do one Fire Blast every 8 seconds (or 6 sec with FFB), it still doesn't seem that it would be a DPS gain to run 20 yards, since blinking and spending the "saved" 1.5 seconds DPSing with Fireball/FFB is going to be much better (arguably though this wouldn't be true if the Fire Blast procced Hot Streak, in which case the 3 seconds running the same distance blink was taking you was spent on Fire Blast/Pyroblast).
Mirror Images is a pretty gimpy spell in regards to being "well-rounded." They don't do enough DPS in PvE to be worth their GCD, and their fade mechanic is useless in PvP. A few people made the decision a long time ago though that what mirror images do best in their respective roles (confusion, snaring, extra burst in PvP -- threat management in PvE that doesn't rely on their survivability) tremendously offsets any imposed negatives. In other words: save your mirror images for when threat could be a problem. If Mirror Images allow you to DPS an add immediately, or AoE a group without fear of pulling them all off the tank, then that's what it should be saved for.
My answer may be a bit biased regarding your question on
Combustion, because I hate Combustion, but this is one of the reasons why. Trying to line up your cooldowns so they all sync up becomes problematic. It's easy to use Combustion and Icy Veins (if you're FFB anyway) right off the bat (if you're raid bloodlusts immediately), but at the same time, there's no reason to use Mana Gem at that time, whether you have T2 T7 or not. The potential mana loss isn't worth whatever DPS gain (if any) that you would get (since practically speaking, you'd get the same gain later). Once that's over though, then your timers will really be off. Icy Veins will be on a 2:24 timer and Combustion will be on a 3-3:10 timer. Oddly enough, had they not added the talent to decrease the cooldown on Icy Veins, they would almost sync up. It used to take 10-20 seconds for Combustion to start its CD though, but
thankfully, it doesn't take nearly as long, thanks to everything eating its charges (Living Bomb, Pyroblast, that Scorch I didn't time around).
As for gemming, I'm pretty positive you'll always gem for haste over crit in Fireball, and crit over haste in Frostfire. Keep in mind though that it's a miniscule difference between the two (the difference between 1 gem over the other is bordering 1-3 DPS, sometimes lower).
04/17/09, 1:05 AM
Similar Threads
