Jept

I know that Scorchio! tracks the shadowbolt debuff; and the lock is stopping shadowbolts at 25% in order to use drain soul ticks for something along the lines of 12k. Not sure about class timers, personally.

 

Lippala

Re cloak enchants, as an engineer I have access to the new Springy Arachnoweave chant (18 spell power). Rawr doesn't have this chant yet and I haven't seen any maths comparing it to the 23 Haste enchant. Can someone verify I'm calculating correctly?

1) Look at relative stat values in Rawr
(Spell power = 1.39, Haste = 1.12)

2) Calculate:
18x 1.39 = 25.02
23x 1.12 = 25.76

ergo, Haste enchant is still a bit better, especially since slow fall obviates the need for the /use

I understand that relative stat values change as gear does, but (please correct me if I'm wrong) as haste becomes more useful as spellpower increases, and given all gear has spellpower, it seems likely the 23 haste will always outperform the 18 sp.

(e) Sneaky part 2
I use the hyperspeed accelerators (340 haste for 10 seconds, 1min cd) macro'd to primary nuke so they're used every time they're up. I figure I'll get more dps out of them that way by manually using them every minute, but does any have a clue on the theoretical dps i'm missing out on by not stacking them with heroism/pots?

 

Lolorin

First I would like to thank all the contributors of this great forum. It helped me out alot with difficult WoW choices.

Then, my question:

I know that the new LB glyph is the best DPS glyph for mages, so I'm considering switching the Improved Scorch glyph for the LB glyph. In raids I won't have to Scorch 5x, because there's always a Warlock or Mage with the Improved Scorch glyph in my guildraid. In dungeons, however, that won't be the case. Is it, DPS-wise, still better to ignore the scorching and drop the Improved Scorch glyph then keeping it, replace the FFB/FB glyph with the LB glyph and scorch?

Thanks in advance!

 

Magelove

If you dont need to scorch in raids because you have a warlock or mage to apply the debuff for you then i would use the LB glyph instead of the scorch. Also, if you are at raiding level, then keep your focus on upping your damage in raids, they take priority over 5 mans imo. You could always use your second spec for a more 5 man friendly if you like, just dont comprimise your dps potential in raids for some extra dps in a 5 man.

 

Korey

Assuming that you are on scorch duty, which glyph would you drop for LB: Improved Scorch, FFB, or Molten Armor?

 

Doctordeath

A few responses and questions:

1. If you absolutely wanted to use Imp. Scorch Glyph since you're on scorch duty and have LB Glyph, I would say to swap out your Fireball/FFB Glyph. However, I believe you'll see higher dps using Glyph of MA/LB/FBorFFB over Imp. Scorch and instead just scorch x5 and once every rotation to reset it. Assuming you have LB and MA glyph, I think the FB or FFB glyph and 5x scorch yields higher dps than Imp. Scorch glyph in place of FB or FFB glyph.

2. I've been doing lots of reading tonight about Icewalker vs. Tuskarr's Vitality for boots enchant. The consensus is that if you spend more than 4 seconds per minute having to run (which is majority of fights), that you should have the speed enchant. However, I haven't been able to research compelling evidence that takes Blink into consideration. Obviously, you can Blink 20 yards faster than you can run. But blink may take you farther than you wanted to run, causing a dps loss if you need to run back, yet running those 20 may yield lower dps even with the speed enchant vs just blinking there with icewalker enchant. So what's the consensus? And I'm not interested in the random fight where you actually just stand still like Patchwerk. I'm interested solely in fights where you potentially have to run a lot, like Thorogarn. So given that you do run 4 seconds per minute on a fight, taking into consideration blink, which is the better enchant for dps, speed or icewalker?

3. Mirror Images - They are now on the gcd. I've read before (several patches ago) that Mirror Images weren't worth the gcd that came with them in terms of dps, which is the reason why they were off the gcd. Regardless if that reasoning is true or not, they are on the gcd now, and I have a question regarding their dps efficiency. Using a TTW/FB or FM/FFB spec, is it worth casting Mirror Images during a fight (I'm not inquiring about casting them before the fight starts or if you're not in range to cast any other spells). Meaning, if you have a boss at, say 40%, and your Mirror Images are off cooldown, is it a dps gain or loss if you cast Mirror Images? They now have AoE avoidance, but are still pretty fragile and often die before their full 30 second duration. So is it worth casting them instead of putting that 1.5s (gcd not including haste) to use on another Fireball or Frostfire Bolt?

4. Considering 2pc T7 (before we upgrade to 4pc T8), is it optimal to cast Mana Gem for the spell power increase (and mana, obviously) to get it back on its cooldown instead of waiting the extra minute to combine it with Combustion? I've often wondered this. I use my Combustion with Mana Gem for the spell power increase at around 70% mana or if there is only 15s of Bloodlust remaining towards the start of a fight (when we generally pop it). This, in turn, means that 2 minutes later my mana gem is off cd, but my combustion still has 60 seconds left. Is is optimal for me to cast my mana gem at that point for the dmg increase and mana (even if I'm not mana-starved), or wait the extra 60 seconds to combine it with combustion?

5. In a TTW/FB spec, at what point does haste start becoming more valuable than crit? RAWR advises me to gem with dmg/haste rather than dmg/crit. Fully raid buffed with imp. scorch and totem of wrath on the target, I have a ~57% chance to crit with fire spells (with Moonkin Aura and double FM buff), and 65% crit rate with Fireball (not including any other talents offered by other classes that I'm not thinking of right now) with 16.95% hit and around 11.41% self buffed haste. I understand haste is valuable for faster casts = more casts to crit, but whats the balance? Where's the cap to crit at the point where you start gearing/gemming haste?

That's all I can think of at this time. I apologize for the long post.

 

Enthorn

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).

 

TigaFin

If the images survive for the whole 30 second duration, they are a DPS increase. If they survive for about 15 seconds or less, they are a DPS loss. This of course depends on your personal DPS, but I think what I wrote will apply for the typical 5k DPS range.

 

Enthorn

It also requires mirror images to attack the correct target (thanks for attacking those zombies on Gluth, really helps), not run in melee range (once they get in melee range, they tend to just stay there), not pull the boss/add (still can happen), and so forth. Did you also take into account that their Fire Blast damage was halved (supposedly from 200 per to 100)?

 

norxlol

Hey I was wondering if I should start using one t8 part (and lose t7 4 set bonus) or wait for second t8 part and then use 2x t7 and 2x t8?

 

Enthorn

That's a question Rawr can answer, as you don't need to know the set bonus values of T8 to figure out whether 1 piece of T8 is better than the 4-piece set bonus of T7.

 

McGriddlez

I just got my hands on a Living Bomb Glyph on live and I can confirm it absolutely procs ignite when it crits BEFORE the AOE explosion. In a pervious post I thought I saw this was not the case.

I wonder if this is a DPS loss with all the ignite munching?

 

thunderstung

My guild is recommending adding improved blizzard to my FFB spec for the deconstructor fight. Is there a general opinion on this one way or another? I'm not convinced it even works on the adds since frost trap didn't appear to, but I won't be able to test this out for another couple of days.

 

epoh

Shouldn't be too hard to throw 2 points in there. Threat and mana aren't major issues for FFB, so skip frost channeling and throw those points into imp blizz.

 

Light4

I normally pop mirror images when I get the "High threat" warning on bosses or the "Aggro" warning on trash packs. 1) allows me to continue dps without the risk the boss might turn its head and 2) is way better than iceblocking, because, well, you can continue to blizzard ^^

 

Masaru

EDIT - Apologies, I missed that someone had asked my same basic question with actual math.

 

Insei

Despite Blizz supposedly 'fixing' some of mirror image's issues with threat, it's still a buggy ability that's barely worth the global and can/has wiped raids. I'm taking it off my bars and banishing it to spellbook only until something is done to improve it.

 

Enthorn

While I've never wiped a raid with images -- I have heard of a boss doing some odd things in the past, such as making its way across the room to one-shot an image (which could wipe the raid on a number of fights, like Malygos if he breathes at the wrong time).

But just because I've heard of it happening (and not recently) doesn't justify removing its potential use. Mirror Images work perfectly fine with their fade mechanic in that regard. My comment that you quoted was in reference to a comment saying that if they survive for their full duration, their DPS is worth the global cooldown. But I don't use MI for DPS -- I'm quite sure many are the same way.

I would have pulled aggro every time on Sarth 3D if I hadn't of used MI. And it's certainly a fun ability for trash and AoE. It's not so buggy that you should feel you need to remove it from your bar. That's like saying you aren't going to use blink ever because it sometimes doesn't work.

 

Insei

I dunno about your images, but mine are naughty and like to wipe raids. It's happened to me a couple times. They pull a boss, they pull an add off a tank, they DPS things they shouldn't and boom, someone's biting my head off on vent for some buggy clones' actions I had no control over. And on the opposite end, I can't think of a time when having them was especially beneficial. I'm glad you've found uses for it, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had rotten luck with it. And as far as blink is concerned, one bugged blink might result in one dead mage, but not very likely a wiped raid. It's a personal weigh of cost vs. benefit, your mileage may vary

 

Pheroz

Can you give specific examples on when they've pulled aggro? I havent seen mirror images pull threat since the fixed the issue of them spawning with 133% of the mages threat.

 

Enthorn

You'd have to have an absurd amount of threat lead over the tank for images to pull aggro. If your tank has 100k threat and you have 304k threat, then each image is receiving 100,320 threat, which won't pull aggro off the tank, as they aren't in melee range.

Then the question becomes: how did you get a 304% threat lead on your tank? If the answer is that you somehow had 100% crit rate for 15 seconds and your tank forgot to hit the target at all, then you should have used mirror images right from the start (and probably invis, hang out back, cuz you're going to wipe).

 

Duravi

There is absolutely zero reason you need imp blizzard in ulduar for anything. Frost trap, EB totem, frost nova, etc all work on those adds and they all die very fast.

 

Aeldaar

The Improved Scorch and Shadow Mastery debuffs can be up at the same time. Has anyone tested if they stack or overlap?

 

◊ manly

No its just yet another majorly annoying bug with scorchio2, if thats what you mean. And yes on scorchio it shows the shadow debuff as stacking to 5, which of course makes no sense. If only it would at least properly track living bomb.

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.

 

Aeldaar

I'm using power auras, but believe I saw the actual debuffs on the default UI