Enthorn

Spec: 0.53.18 Frostfire

[]: [], [], []
[]: []
[]: [], []
[]: [], Greater Speed
[]: [], [], Powerful Stats
[]: Superior Spellpower
[]: [], Exceptional Spellpower
[]: [], []
[]: [], [], []
[]: Icewalker
[], []: Greater Spellpower
[], [] (200 SP)
[]: Mighty Spellpower
[], []

Spec: 18.53.0 Fireball

[]: [], [], []
[]: []
[]: [], []
[]: [], Greater Speed
[]: [], [], Powerful Stats
[]: Superior Spellpower
[]: [], Exceptional Spellpower
[]: [], []
[]: [], [], []
[]: Icewalker
[], []: Greater Spellpower
[], [] (200 SP)
[]: Mighty Spellpower
[], []

 

Sicc09

Nevermind, Fixed My Rawr and it answered itself.

 

Dustwhisper

Enthorn rawr is supposedly still over-evaluating 4p t7 thus giving inflated T7 piece values when you get the bonus. You have also listed shoulderpads twice.

 

◊ manly

I'm not sure I understand well your numbers. Its far far too much hit rating compared to what I'm used to see. Particularly dying curse. Although if you don't want to count in misery I may understand.

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.

 

Zephriel

Roywyn reported on the previous page that Rawr is now valuing 4T7 correctly (update 2.1.3).

 

Wizeowel

You can emulate the belt buckle by editing/duplicating whatever waist item you have and simply adding a gem slot.

 

Enthorn

Nod, I could go through every belt and add a socket, but it's trivial to do so since every item is getting the same socket (and it doesn't help meet the meta requirement because the cloak and necklace already do that). It also can mess up socket bonuses (if any are there) on the belt (plush sash, for instance). The shoulders were meant to be the gloves, thanks, I fixed that.

As far as hit goes, I see what you're saying Manly, and I know a lot of people have ran with less -- 8%? Rawr seems to be certain than crit is far superior over haste, so I'd simply replace Dying Curse with Sundial or Embrace, whichever one comes out on top.

Regardless of all of this, the "ideal" set isn't concrete, and it's hard to say for certain if there is ever a set without competition. It's important to keep that in mind, since by the time most players come close to obtaining every item listed here, the next tier will be out. That's not to say things aren't worth shooting for, but you have to take what drops, even if it's not the best in slot. Naturally, there are some items that can't be rivaled (main hand, ring, trinket, off hand, etc.), and the real question that I was trying to answer was what item to give up and keep the 4-piece T7 bonus.

 

Duravi

With that gear setup and raid buffs your dmg/hit/crit/haste weighting values come out to being around (obviously counting hit as not capped):

hit: ~2.1
dmg ~1.4
crit ~1.3
haste ~1.2

crit is catching up it

 

Joq

You should use it with a +spellpower trinket and molten fury as a priority, since the trinket and percentage increase will benefit from your crit modifiers. (Using it with only a haste trinket, IV or bloodlust just gives you the 3 crits faster so there's no significant benefit to using them together.) Ideally, you want to use it sub-35% with your cooldown stack, and if the fight is long enough you want to use it with your initial cooldown stack too.

[edit] bolding for clarity

 

◊ manly

No actually the error is mine. I misread your post and thought you were proposing to use veiled gems in addition to dying curse, which struck me as quite unconventional. You were talking about a fireball-based build, totally different story.

In any case, I wouldn't put too much stock on dying curse, but thats mostly a matter of personal opinion. It simply is far too easy to come up with the hit rating elsewhere while losing only stuff like spirit.

As far as optimal gear goes vs time to get the gear; yes definitely. I specifically planned in sunwell to go for whichever drops first over optimal gearset because I knew I wouldn't get it all in time, or if I did by the time I would wotlk would be out. That was fairly spot on. While I don't know when the next raid zone will be open, I much rather avoid dealing with the frustrations of rng drops and waiting for the few elusive drops.

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.

 

Zelyon

Long time reader, first time poster here.

I see a lot of posts talking about an IV/Combustion/Trinket macro, but none ever seem to explain it.
Could someone tell me what this macro needs to be?

 

Sarranti

I use a macro that looks like

/cast Combustion
/cast Icy Veins
/use 13
/cast Mirror Image

the use 13 will use whatever trinket is in the first slot, thats where i always keep my trinket with a use effect, can be changed to /use 14

 

Duravi

Unless your on use trinket is +spellpower I dont see how:
benefits combustion whatsoever.

 

Sarranti

It is a spell power trinket atm. thats why its in the macro

 

Duravi

I'm very curious as to why everyone seems to be capping hit for all fire spells in their optimal gear posts. For this level of gear FFB is going to be 70-75% of your dps (counting it's ignites) so as soon as you cap hit for FFB it loses alot of its effectiveness; your only capping for LB pyro and scorch at this point. I realize the concern is scorch will drop off but if either another mage is hit capped for fire or you cast it early enough to use twice (I realize this will be a dps loss but I am fairly certain not as much of one as valuing 3% worth of hit at full value that shouldnt even be close) you will not sacrifice raid dps except in the very rare case you double resist.

 

Xunwael

It feels pretty lame to abuse what is most likely a bug and while it's smartest to get yourself two gearsets for if/when they change the double dipping, I don't have perfectly itemized gear dropping into my lap (healers stealin' tha crit loots, yo) and choose to prioritize hit capping everything even though that may not be the smartest thing to do right now.

"Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice."
- Clark's Law

 

willem11

The sets dont contain that much hit because people want to cap all fire spells at all cost, but simply because there are no good replacements without hit. For most items you either loose hit to gain spirit, or loose hit to gain mp5, both of these stats are totally useless and thus even after frostfire is capped hit remains the most effective stat out of these 3.

You wont see any mage gemming hit after they reached the frostfire cap, because there are perfect gems available. And if there were items like this where you trade in 40 hit for 50 spell power it would be stupit to not choose the spell power item. But if lets say spell power/hit or spell power/spirit are the only gems available, the best choice would be to go for the spell power/hit.

 

Enthorn

In my post, listing optimal gear, gaining 3% hit back for Frostfire Bolt in the event that Elemental Precision is fixed merely consists of swapping out [] for []. For an 18.53.0 build, an additional 3% is needed, which consists of replacing [] with [], and/or replacing [] with [] and [] with []. But I haven't ran the numbers in Rawr nearly as well to find out a definitive answer for that.

Hunter DPS, specifically BM, has been looked at for quite some time, and Blizzard is now addressing its high single-target DPS (and in some cases its high AoE). I don't expect Frostfire to go unchecked at the same time. Suffice to say, if Blizzard is worried about Hunters pulling 5200 DPS, then surely they raise an eyebrow to Frostfire mages pulling 5500-6500 DPS.

At the same time, someone is saying, "Well, what about the Frostfire mage who doesn't get 70% crit rate and instead gets 40%." I would like to believe that's not how Blizzard balances classes, around a notion that sometimes you can do very low DPS, and other times very high DPS. And even when RNG is right in line with your stats (50% crit rate raid buffed, 50% crit rate on WWS), you still do substantially higher DPS than other classes and other specs.

 

Maledict

You can have a 50% crit rate and still do sub-par DPs, simply because your cirts are never next to each other. They need to remove the timing aspect to Hot Streak, and that will stabilise Mage DPs a lot more. No-one wants to be playing a class that might do 5000 DPs or 4000 DPS depenidng upon the RNg. (At least, no-one sane would... ).

 

Deac

Well I would, sure it is not fun to have that unlucky patchwerk wws to look at, but then a week later you do that same fight and blow everyone away.

RNG can be fun at times.

 

enthrop

A bit unrelated to what's being discussed above... but my guild just started 25-man Naxx this week after clearing 4 wings of 10-man Naxx in 2 separate groups of 10. We did not, however, clear Sapphiron. What people are wondering now is whether or not we should grab some frost resist gear, and if so, who should, and how much (so as not to "gimp" the rest of your stats by swapping out better gear for frost resist).

As a mage, I'm curious to know.. do most of you just use your normal gear? Or have many of you thrown together 3-4 pieces of frost resist? And if you have, do you gem the piece for damage, or for survival? I know all of this will depend on the guild and such... we are a new guild and only started 25-man this week, so that should give a rough idea. We're definitely not the "creame of the crop" type guild. WWS for last night's first 25-man Naxx (spider wing cleared only): Wow Web Stats

 

Dustwhisper

We killed 10man with 0-2 pieces. melee are the ones really wanting it to not gimp their dps, anyone wearing it helps healers. 25man was a joke with people wearing 2-3 pieces.

On 25man i think you'd do fine with an awake raid wearing 1-2 max pieces. As a caster you can pretty much go without.

 

Mutak

If you moved it from "2 back-to-back crits" to "after X number of crits", what value of X would produce acceptable results? My gut says 4, but i'm too lazy to do the math right now to answer that definitively. Gotta be careful with this, otherwise i imagine you could get to a situation where some scorch spam/pyro build would be top dps.

Not that it's especially relevant, but i imagine that this crit counter would have to be reset at the start of every arena match, quite possibly every time you leave combat.

 

◊ manly

As per the way the ilvl formula is designed, you should always expect to give up almost exclusively spirit in order to gain hit rating. Thus generally hit rating is 'free'.

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.

 

Saruk

I really wonder how much the spread has changed. It obviously has with HS and such, but in general, crit rates on FFB shouldn't vary much more than they did pre WotLK on FB. I remember doing Brut and getting around 2k dps on some attempts and 1.7k dps on others. It seemed it varied by about 300dps - mostly, if not all, due to different crit rates on given fights.

Well, 300dps variance on a 2kdps top end is about a 15% spread from your top performing outcome. If you are doing 4k dps low and 5k dps high in WotLK, that's a 1k dps spread and about 20% from your top performing outcome. So while the numbers have gotten larger, the relative difference is only a 5% more. Most of which I would imagine is HS variance anyway.

We get affected more than other classes because of the HS issue, but I would think other classes are also seeing larger number spreads in dps.