larousse

[quote=Enthorn;1274395]Fireball glyph is pretty static in DPS, varying between 200-250. Molten Armor glyph, however, varies wildly depending on your level of spirit. In that case, the DPS being "lost" by taking Scorch glyph is significantly less, if Fireball glyph is giving 225 DPS and Molten Armor glyph is at 150.=QUOTE]

I'm just curious, at what point does Glyph of Molton Armor become more dps than Glyph of Fireball? How much spirit do you need to have raid buffed in order to see a bigger advantage from Glyph of Molton Armor. I understand that this will depend a little bit on your haste and also on your over all spell power, but I'm curious if anybody out there has an approximate number? I am of course reffering to when you choose to use the scorch glyph and are tryign to decide on which glyph to drop.

Thanks in advance guys

 

Menestheus

If you are looking at Mimiron it's best to consider it as 4 seperate fights. For the first three assuming the phase is longer than T you are better with the Fireball Glyph. In phase 4 you have 4 targets all taking damage and needing to be scorched. In this case the penalty for stacking scorch slower will by multiplied by 3 so it may be that the Scorch Glyph is better in this phase.
Any time you have an entirely new target that needs scorching you can treat it as a seperate fight.

Enthorn, I don't think you quite understand the math here. The final conclusion gives a T, that's a fight time over which Fireball is better and under which Scorch is better. This means that you can clearly see that Scorch is better for XT's heart because T<63.

This is general math not made for specific situations. You aren't proving it wrong by finding a set of circumstances under which Scorch is better because as is acknowledged in the pdf there are situations where Scorch is better. What it does is allow a math capable mage to look at the result and make up their own mind as to whether they want to use Scorch or Fireball (probably in discussion with the other mages in the raid).

 

Enthorn

No, you're right. I don't understand a lot of the math. I am not am expert in any mathematical field, nor have I ever claimed to be, so treating me with a condescending attitude in regards to my assumed lack of understanding isn't going to help me understand it any better. I'm not addressing the math whatsoever, I'm sure it's all very well thought out.

But it doesn't help me, because I use Glyph of Fireball and Glyph of Scorch, substituting out Glyph of Molten Armor, as I simply do not have enough spirit for it to surpass FB, neither in 10-man (634) nor 25-man (651). And from the encounters that I've done/attempted, which doesn't include any hard modes, but includes all 10-man bosses except Algalon, and up through the keepers, minus mimiron, on 25-man, the utility of Glyph of Scorch seems to far outweigh the 195 DPS that Glyph of Molten Armor would be giving me.

For Freya, I scorch the water spirit, snaplasher, and storm lasher, and of course the ancient conservator. On Auriaya, I keep scorch up on her, and on each new feral defender. On mimiron in phase 4, I keep scorch up on every unit. On Kologarn, I keep scorch up on his main body and both arms. And of course you and I both mentioned the heart phase on deconstructor.

For Yogg-Saron, every corruptor and crusher tentacle (120k and 400k health each) can be scorched. For me, the question is, if I don't scorch it at all and I don't have the glyph, but have MA glyph instead, I gain 2.76% crit. If I do scorch it without the glyph, then I'm doing, let's say, 2800 DPS vs 4500 DPS. With Apathy up it could be especially brutal 5x scorching.

So I'm not arguing your math -- I'm just trying to look at the real raid encounters and the situations I've been in. I understand that from a mathematical point of view, having to cast 4 scorches instead of 2 fireballs, while being less damage, is far more damage over time given the extra crit. But it seems to me that there's far too many encounters where glyph of scorch is necessary or just useful, perhaps more so in 10-man setting, especially over a glyph like Molten Armor which is only giving me 161 DPS. Comparitively, Glyph of Fireball is at 189 DPS for me, and in best in slot gear, it would be completely the other way around: Molten Armor at 300+ and fireball down at 240.

 

• Seonid

Rawr can answer your question in a matter of seconds, it's the kind of question that the tool excels at.
With your own gear and what raid buffs you know you will have, it will give you the DPS equivalent of your various glyphs.
This is with my own [FB] gear and shows that for me, if I were to glyph for Scorch the FB glyph would be the one to go.

The Mage theme song.

 

Zelyon

Hey, here's a quick question.
Right now, I'm using Hereo's Frostfire Gloves in order to keep my 4-piece t7 bonus.
Last night, I won the t8.5 gloves in an Emalon.
Should I break my tier-7 bonus in order to use these?

 

Arcdragon

Enthorn, I noticed that you were not specced into Spell Impact with your frost spec. I was wondering the reasoning behind this. I understand that Spell Impact does not affect Frostbolt but it does buff Fireball and you are specced into Brain Freeze.

Do you find the benefit of Magic Absorption and or Magic Attunement to outweigh the buff to fireballs procced from Brain Freeze?

I was under the impression that your frost spec was for Vesax, I was considering using it for that fight.

 

Saphya

Fireballs usually are only contributing something like 5% of your damage, and if you use them only while moving in or out of Shadow Crashes it is even less. Therefore Spell Impact has only minimal impact on your DPS, but Brain Freeze itself is quite nice because it's a free spell to use in said situation. Magic Attunement on the other hand helps your healers, which is nice. I use a similar spec for both Vezax (and plan to use on Freya hard) 10 man, difference being that I specced all of the Blizzard Snare instead of Frostbite & Cold as Ice and I'm quite happy with it.

Interesting note: if I remove the points in Living Bomb and Pyroblast in Rawr for FFB spec (so it uses only Scorch & FFB) it comes out as almost identical DPS as my Frost spec, which makes me believe that Frost might be the superior spec for that fight even in normal mode, if you don't use Living Bomb and Pyroblast very much.

 

TigaFin

Fireball is typically about 9% of my damage, so that would make spell impact a 0.5% DPS increase for 3 points. I take it, but point for point, it is pretty weak.

 

Enthorn

My Frost spec is for General Vezax and any other fights I get bored on. Frost is actually very effective in the gauntlet on Thorim (well, in 25-man anyway, on 10-man the gauntlet is laughable). I don't really care about 25-man content; I'm in a very casual guild as far as 25-man content goes. For 10-man though, I'm the only mage, so, yes, Magic Attunement is a great investment. And I know trash doesn't matter, but I use Frost for mimiron trash pulls (especially the last two, if you don't have tanks, frost mage is godly for rooting and snaring).

Although Frostfire is theoretically higher DPS on Vezax, even hard mode, I'd rather go at it with Clearcasting, Brainfreeze, and 4P T8 first. I've done the fight with just FB/TTW, but you have to use a few saronite crystals, and you can basically only cast in shadow crash zones. Even losing shadow crash buff and casting a pyroblast on hotstreak can set you back a great deal of mana, relatively of course.

 

◊ nathanbp

Care to elaborate? Even on 25 man, most of the time in the gauntlet is spent on the 2 mini-bosses, where the increased dps from fire would seem to put it ahead of frost.

 

Hotan

Replace ffb with Fireball and there is your answer. (This is taken from The Frostfire Bolt Thread). Keep in mind FFB and FB are nearly identical except your main nuke and some itemization priorities.

 

Enthorn

I've only used FB/TTW in 10-man gauntlet, but on 25-man for about half of our Thorim attempts, I was Fire, and for the latter half I was frost. At first we were sheeping one of the adds in the gauntlet, but then we decided to just kill all three with burst. We're still working on balancing DPS in the gauntlet and arena. The gauntlet isn't the problem at the moment, it's surviving in the arena that is giving us problems. Our DPS in the arena simply isn't able to kill the Warbringers fast enough. We only have two priests, and both of them are having trouble mind controlling the Warbringers and/or Evokers.

Eventually we shifted enough DPS into the gauntlet (switched a DK and surv hunter out to the arena and brought a warlock/mage into the gauntlet) to reach Thorim by 3 minutes, but by the time we got there, our DPS in the gauntlet were being overrun.

Switching to frost didn't seem to decrease the DPS in the gauntlet. A lot of fire's DPS comes from long-term damage, things like rolling ignite, Living Bomb, Pyroblast DoT, Molten Fury time, etc. All of those things don't really mesh well against targets that only have 120k health. With Frost I don't have to worry about any of that; it's all front loaded damage.

I'm specced into Magic Attunement, so the Amplify Magic on the tank doesn't hurt either. It is less DPS against the mini-boss, that's true. I will probably swap back and forth until I settle on one. Frost can just be fun sometimes too.

Also, the first mini-boss, the Runic Colossus, has about 800k health. The second mini-boss, the Ancient Rune Giant, has about 900k health (according to WWS, or 800k from Wowhead...) They both die in under 40 seconds, which is about 44% of the 3 minute mark. There isn't much DPS downtime in the gauntlet, as we're pulling things as fast as they can die, so most of the time is spent on the adds.

 

Duravi

Well this is certainly true if you are trying to do hardmode your phase 2 dps is still very important since you need to kill thorim before he gets too many stacks. You will definitely lose substantial dps being frost in phase 2 so I wouldn't suggest this.

 

Enthorn

I'm aware of the DPS loss in phase 2 of being frost, but I can assure you my guild won't be attempting hard mode in 25-man; I use FB/TTW for 10-man -- we attempted hard mode the other night. Stacks weren't the problem, we're just absent minded and died to lightning. The healing and DPS required for hard mode doesn't seem to be that bad though.

The burst DPS of frost vs fire is about 1000-1500, and the overall DPS loss is upwards of 1500-2500, but it's significantly less on trash, and of course, General Vezax. I might try frost on Razorscale 25-man as well, just for kicks, to see how it compares. It's not a bad spec by any means, you just end up putting out a bit less damage. And I suppose if putting out less damage is more important than simply having a good time and finishing an encounter, than I guess Frost, in its present form, should be avoided.

 

Hotan

I didn't think you meant you were trying hardmode on 25man because I am familiar with your raiding setup, but you DID imply it.

The following quote is taken from your most recent post, and definitely appeared to be regarding 25man setups

 

Enthorn

Oh... you're looking at it backwards, or I typed it backwards. I meant that we needed to reach Thorim by the 3 minute mark, as opposed to reaching him much later (at first, it was taking us 4-5 minutes to get through the gauntlet, as we simply didn't have enough DPS, because it was needed in the arena... or so they said).

I realize that to activate hard mode you need to engage Thorim in less than 3 minutes, but we simply didn't have enough DPS to reach him by that time. The goal of course was to engage him just after Hard Mode option had passed. I'm not sure if the problem is lack of priests (since stacking warbringers would obviously boost our DPS in the arena), or just lack of DPS. We actually do fairly well in the DPS category, I suppose perhaps it's just focusing that DPS on one target at a time, since with AoE, you significantly drop in single target DPS and you're up against the HoTs on the targets. The longer it takes to burst down a target, the more chances are they will just be healed.

 

lunamoonraker

Just to say that any mind-control in P1 in arena is a nightmare because of the Dark Rune Commoner ability;

Pummel: Pummels an enemy for 15 damage and interrupts the spell being cast for 5 sec.

The constant interrupts, together with Deafening Thunder - Spell - World of Warcraft are not kind to any sustained MC. For P2 it's the time to MC them when Thorim comes down and use their buff/s then which can be very effective

Sorry to go ot just wanted to share that.

 

Gulab

Has anyone analyzed the usefulness of amplify magic on the tanks (and possibly the whole raid) in the various boss encounters in Ulduar? I'd like to understand this both qualitatively (for example: Mimiron does large magic spike damage to tanks) and quantitatively (boss ABC does xx% physical versus xx% magical damage versus appropriately-geared tanks).

As an arcane mage with some relatively limited raid utility, I think understanding this would be beneficial.

I searched but could not find this topic discussed in any detail elsewhere. If this has been addressed elsewhere before, could someone please link the discussion? Thanks.

 

Millerr

Simple question:

who do you specc 19/52/0 (With 'Flame Throwing') & not 20/51/0 ( 3/3 SotM & Combustion)?
I can't imagine what positive effect 'Flame Throwing' can have.
Yeah, believe, the range... but i thought that Combustion means more dps?

It isn't critic, it's just a simple question.
Maybe, i'm not up2date, really.

millerr

 

Jept

SotM has been shown to be a terrible dps talent, point for point, and combustion is often shown as worse, due to the high crit rates common to casters and the fact that the living bomb dot can use the charges. Flame throwing can allow the mage to take advantage of the fight encounter more - perhaps being able to use a moonbeam on hodir despite the boss being pulled far to the other side of the room, as an example.

 

LoTekk

I've only recently *blushes* stumbled across the stopcasting / latency clipping thingy and most of it sounded fairly reasonable to me. I tried to dig out more information on this and I believe I know what it's supposed to do and how it's supposed to work --- only most of the posts seemed rather outdated and quite some of the newer macro-related posts came with "you don't need to use /stopcasting anymore" bits in them.

So: Is it still worth a try to chain fireballs (or arcane blasts as I'm an arcane addict really) using /stopcasting macros or did something fundamentally change at some point of time?

 

◊ nathanbp

No. At some point (I think it was 2.3, but not positive), the casting system was changed so that at the point where previously you could use /stopcasting and send the next spell to the server, you can now just send the next spell to the server right away without having to use /stopcasting. The red bar in Quartz can help you estimate when you should start slamming the next spell or you can just start pressing the next button right away (mousewheels are great for this). This works for spells with casting times. For channeled spells, you have to wait for the cast to finish as pressing another button at any time will stop channeling. Quartz can still help estimate when channeling will be over.

 

Dorvan

Flame Throwing increases the area in which you can stand and still reach your target by about 30%. That's a lot more room to spread out for fights which require that, as well as less time spent moving because a target has gone out of range. Put that up against the minimal DPS contribution of Combustion and SotM, and Flame Throwing is easily the better option in all but the most stationary of fights (which is not something Ulduar has a lot of anyway).

 

Toabo

We've been getting to Yogg-Saron and just narrowly missing it on Phase 3. I'm wondering if being Fire for this fight is a mistake since there's unlikely to be a tank snare buff on Yogg and therefore nothing for Torment the Weak to proc off of. Thoughts?

 

Mynak

Warrior tanks will still use Thunderclap and at the very least a DK using Pestilence will spread his Frost Fever to Yogg-Saron so TtW is not a problem.