Kyreles

Quick question... Frost Ward is affected by spell power right? If so does it gain a benefit as an instant (42.86%). That makes this on par with Flash Heal or so for efficency right, and would therefore save mana (raid wide) to spam it during Sapphiron. Also is it true that the frost aura isn't affected by dampen/amplify magic?

 

Genoo

I have a simple question... Do Mages have any viable raiding spec that isn't frostfire? All of them are Frostfire now, I have yet to see a level 80 raiding mage who isn't yet.

 

Kelfar

Here is the simulation of 3.0.8 specs.

SampleOutput - simulationcraft - Google Code

There are going to be a few new viable specs such as arcane and torment the weak/fire.

Also I am pretty sure that simulation is a few weeks old and the new PTR patch may have changed a few things.

 

Phianri

I may have skipped over the information I am asking about but am pretty sure I didn't read about it. I raid as deep frost and am curious as to how significant haste is to raiding as frost? I was able to win a new ring in Naxx 2 nights ago in the guild raid and it has crit, sp and mp5 on it. The one im wearing has SP and 50 haste.

Just thinking to myself crit is more important but thought id try and get a simple answer to a simple question. 'Is haste more important than crit to a frost mage?'

 

Knik

Since you're raiding Frost, you're more concerned with control / being able to play what you want. So any minor differences between your dps output with crit or haste is really trivial. Both will increase your dps by some. Spell Power will increase it by more then either. Mp5 is basically wasted itemization points for you.

 

Knik

Yes & yes. But only bother with it IF your healers are having mana issues. Or during periods when you have nothing else to do with your GCD.

Also, Amp Magic has no effect on Sapphiron's aura for some reason.

 

Toshimo

Short answer: Use rawr to compare gear.

Long answer: Mana regen is quite useless to Frost mages in all but the highest levels of stacked haste as they will almost never go oom on any currently available content. Crit is generally worth less than haste due to the fact that with FoF up you are almost at 100% crit anyway.

 

Shaewyn

While raiding, you should not be casting slow on bosses. Period. In fact, I would go so far as to recommend that you take that talent point and put it elsewhere so you're not tempted. The slow effect will be applied by other classes, and casting slow every 15 seconds is a very large damage/mana cost.

Math time:
Keeping slow up is 1 gcd for every 15 seconds. At (non-hasted) 1.5 seconds per GCD, that works out nicely to 10% of your time wasted to casting something that is unnecessary, as the effect is already present. This works out to 10% damage lost, meaning that you are now way below what you should be doing for damage.

 

Choccobo

So i have 3 decent 200+ rings, Titanium Spell shock ring (runed scarlet ruby), Ring of Northern Tears (I have one of my jc prismatics in it now because its a blue so ill prolly take it out regardless, and Ring of the Fated.

Here is my armory link.
The World of Warcraft Armory

Thanks

 

• Seonid

Raid boss effects ignore amplify/dampen magic and have done for quite a while. Amplify you use to help your healers and the only current use I can think of are the MC'd Razuvious adds.

The Mage theme song.

 

Phianri

Thanks for the information. Rawr it is.

 

Plankel

Can you be kind enough to clarify on this a bit?

If raid boss attacks ignore amp magic then it would be a very nice buff on everybody in every encounter, which is sort of contradictionary with the second statement.

 

Batar

Kelfar, perhaps you could explain a few things to me. I didnt see a 57/3/11 spec on the DPS Ranking. Am i to assume that it fell short of the list? Also, for the 52/19/0 spec haste is valued at .43 per unit. With ArcBar being the highest raid damage per execute time wouldnt it be advantageous to return back to that spell as quickly as possible, thus increasing the value of haste. Also winters chill is set to a 99% uptime, which renders 16 talent points in fire useless,master of elements being moderately useful. It seems that those points would be better spent in frost for a dps increase, or arcane for more utility.



Edit: I see you also said the data was a few weeks old. Perhaps my questions will be addressed in newer releases.

 

Pasture

^

For some reason these mage dps tables never use the 57/3/11 spec, despite the fact this is the spec that all arcane mages will be speccing. I don't know anyone speccing into improved scorch. That dps list also doesn't reflect that the arcane blast glyph actually increases damage by 20/40/60%, nor does it reflect the undocumented arcane blast base damage increase.

 

Toshimo

I have not seen anything to indicate that 57/3/11 is so far ahead of a spec with Improved Scorch that at least one mage (and it will be you if you are the only mage) will not need to have it to prevent reducing raid dps by a significant amount.

 

homet

Most 25-man situations will have at least two mages in the group. If you are doing mostly 10-man and absolutely need the 10% crit buff, then maybe spec for improved scorch. You will be giving up 3% hit, IV and maybe some utility talents (chill uptime, etc.).

 

Batar

Toshimo, i see your point, however lets see what the spec can actually do before we try to incorporate raid utility into the mix. Fireball/Frostfire/Frostbolt builds reap a much greater reward from the buff itself. Let them cast it. While i may be the only mage in the raid, it is entirely possible that im also the only caster(damage on boss) in the raid. I see no reason to mix raid make-up(inconstant) with hard numbers(constant).

 

Pasture

I'd agree with this. Let's just try some 57/3/11 numbers out, Speccing 11 into frost gives 2xIcy Veins on most boss fights which is a straight dps increase in it's own right. Not to mention the -3% mana for more dps up-time and the 3% hit that allows us to favour gear with haste or crit over hit. Regardless of raid utility I'd like to see that TC for the dps of a 57/3/11 spec.

Chances are there will be another mage in the raid who is either fire, frostfire or frost. I know in my guild there always is. So let them apply the 10% crit debuff. Arcane mages are just wasting points speccing into fire for improved scorch in this situation. We can spec 57/3/11 and still have the benefit of the 10% crit debuff from another mage.

 

Shaewyn

I'm working on some numbers for mana usage for a couple different Arcane Specs, but so far the difficulty is that a 57/3/11 spec is just not sustainable for any length of time. In a "blow-all-cooldowns" scenario, 57/3/11 burns almost 600 mana per SECOND. That's net, including returning mana from replenishment and JoW, as well as using glyphed mage armor. That means that a 57/3/11 spec ends down over 11600 mana from where it started at the beginning of that burn cycle.

As it's looking now, you simply need a spec that includes either frost channeling and precision or Master of Elements to last longer than about 2 minutes, even using evocation, mage armor and mana gems.

I'll post more detailed information when I get it worked up, but suffice it to say, arcane can burn mana at an incredible rate.

 

gerryq

I think so, definitely. Let's say you are a frost mage at early Naxx level, and your frostbolt does 2500 damage non-crit. Half of your spells crit (the actual figure will be a bit less but it doesn't really matter) so your average damage per frostbolt will be 3750).

Now let's compare the effect of adding 100 spellpower, haste or crit:

100 spellpower = 95 extra damage (I think that correctly allows for cast time and empowered frostbolt) to a non-crit frostbolt, or 142 damage to an average one. That's 3.8% extra damage output. (At this level, nearly as good as uncapped spell hit, even on bosses!)

100 haste rating = About 3% extra casting speed, which is obviously 3% extra damage.

100 crit rating = Just under 2.2% extra crits, which is 1.5% extra damage.

The value of crit goes up if you crit less than 50% of the time, but even if you don't crit at all apart from the 100 crit rating you added, it's still worth a *lot* less than haste. Unless you go OOM a lot, in which case haste is not good for you. Everyone goes OOM sometimes, though, so we must reduce the value of haste a little.

As a general rule, I would evaluate early frost mage gear based on the following valuations:
1 spellpower = 1.0
1 haste = 0.7
1 crit = 0.4

The equation is different for fire mages, who get a mana return from crits, and even more for frostfire mages who get a bigger crit bonus. For frostfire I'd guess that crit is as good as haste. I'm not going to guess what the situation is right now for arcane.

Also note that as your spellpower rises, be it from gear or raid buffs, the value of both haste and crit relative to spellpower rises with it. If your non-crit frostbolts did 5000 damage, then 100 spellpower would increase your damage by 1.9%, while the percentage effects of crit and haste would be unchanged. It might be worth taking this into account on gear you will be keeping for a long time.

 

gerryq

I'm frost, and far from the only one on our server. I know a couple of raiding arcane mages as well. Old style fire seems to have mostly died a death, though, probably because frostfire is so similar in mechanics.

Probably depends on the sort of guild you have, though.

 

gerryq

First, the difference between crit and haste is not trivial for frost.

Second, the fact that you are sacrificing a bit of damage output which is probably not fully compensated by raid utility, focus magic and survivability should IMO make you try harder to get the most out of frost even in situations where it is inferior.

Third, my top tip for frost mages has always been to take the suggestions of fire mages with a big grain of salt. They don't understand that you want to be a kickass frost mage rather than a perversely specced or slacking fire mage!

 

manapaws

Is there any mathematical benefit (or difference for that matter) in using haste potion and IV during bloodlust? Are they best used together or separate?

 

Shaewyn

Absolutely a benefit.

Think of it this way: without any haste buffs, if I pop my trinket (15 seconds), and just cast FFB, I get 5 casts off. That's 5 casts with the trinket's benefit.

With bloodlust/heroism/speed potion/IV, my FFB casts are down to 1.5ish seconds, and I get 10 (9 actually) casts off with the trinket's benefit. By stacking the cooldowns, I've doubled the relative value of that trinket.

 

Maje

Did a Kael'thas run today with some guildies and had two wierd things happen to me.

First the trash mobs somehow cleansed? LB and when they did, it exploded, not sure what happened I'm just certain it exploded before the duration was up.

Second I actually missed with scorch and pyro while having 290 hit rating and EP, and that's against Kael's advisors, and they are level 73 not boss, which shouldn't happen as far I know, I missed at least several times.

--regretfully I didn't have the log running