My Raid Leader is asking for us mages to use Imp. Scorch for raids, I don't mind doing it at all. But, I was under the impression that having a warlock use Imp. Shadowbolt was the more effiecent way to gain this 5% crit buff. So i was wondering if anyone had the numbers for comparison such as DPS lost for having to cast scorch or any other reason we shouldn't make this move?
friskedsj: Warlocks don't get Imp. Shadowbolt in their best dps Destro spec. It is less of a loss for the Fire Mages to cast Scorch than the Warlocks to spec Affliction (the spec which givs them easy 100% uptime of Shadow Mastery).
Note: Even for a Warlock that would be Affliction, sub-25% it becomes a bigger dps loss for them to cast shadowbolt than for you to cast scorch (neglecting the transition time between the two debuffs).
I've got some questions regarding pushback and the value of Burning Soul.
So far in Ulduar, what attacks would actually cause pushback? Some direct hits from Sif on Thorim, a Storm Bolt/Sunbeam on Freya?
Seeing as how I already get threat capped and need to Invis, the 5% threat loss wouldn't be that bad for me and I could max out Flame Throwing again. I need to know if it will be a dps loss from pushback though.
Hotan: Thanks for the reply very much appreciated.
So then I guess my next question would be do i have one of my mages glyph for it or do we all chip in on the casts? My thought would be to just all share in casting scorch due to the loss in dps from not having LB glyph applied. Any thoughts or advice appreciated.
I've got some questions regarding pushback and the value of Burning Soul.
So far in Ulduar, what attacks would actually cause pushback? Some direct hits from Sif on Thorim, a Storm Bolt/Sunbeam on Freya?
Seeing as how I already get threat capped and need to Invis, the 5% threat loss wouldn't be that bad for me and I could max out Flame Throwing again. I need to know if it will be a dps loss from pushback though.
Attacks that cause pushback are in almost every fight. Some can/should be controlled by tanks, etc, but they still exist:
- Fireballs/adds/chain lightning on Razorscale
- uncontrolled molten adds on Ignis
- Light-bomb AOE from Deconstructor (only occasional, but still there)
- "OBLIVION" and eye-beam splash from Kologarn
- Aura damage fom Steelbreaker, lightning whirl from Stormcaller Brundir
- Auriaya's Sonic Screech, as well as the feral defender and swarming guardians
- Frozen blows from Hodir
- Chain Lightning from Thorim (Phase 2)
- Sunbeam/Swarmers/Storm Bolt/nature's fury/etc. from Freya
- Phase 1 Napalm, Phase 2 Rapid Burst, phase 4 hand-bolts from Mimiron..
And that's just the easy modes. There's so much AOE damage going on in Ulduar, I certainly wouldn't drop the pushback protection.
As for the threat reduction? Think of it this way: it's effectively 10% more damage you can do before wasting 3-5 seconds on invisibility. There are many fights where that's been the difference between having to invis or not.
To be quite honest, on a fight where you either have a threat limitation or there is AOE damage going on, Burning Soul is going to be one of the most effective DPS talents in the fire tree. Hodir's my favourite example, as there's a fair amount of pushback (Frozen Blows) and threat is constantly a challenge, while it is hard to get off an invisibility due to the raid damage.
Originally Posted by friskedsj
Hotan: Thanks for the reply very much appreciated.
So then I guess my next question would be do i have one of my mages glyph for it or do we all chip in on the casts? My thought would be to just all share in casting scorch due to the loss in dps from not having LB glyph applied. Any thoughts or advice appreciated.
I personally choose the glyph of imp. scorch, as there's enough target switching and movement and whatever that missing the refresh is unfortunately common. I'm the only one in the raid with that glyph, mind you. However, and I can't state this strongly enough, do not drop the Living Bomb glyph!. For me, Glyph of Fireball is the least DPS glyph, so I swap that out for Glyph of Improved Scorch. At low-spirit gear levels, Glyph of Molten Armor may be less DPS, use rawr to figure it out for yourself.
Arcane is my favourite spec to use on Yogg-Saron. Some notes:
- You should never be going dry for that long. Your either mismanaging your mana, have no replenishment, dont have appropriate gear etc
- On the entry pull, hit MI and blow all your cooldowns on the first ~3 guardians (many guilds spawn an extra one). Because you have 0 threat the whole time you can nuke freely and take advantage of Arcanes burst cooldowns. Any spec can do this, arcane just has great cooldowns to really milk it.
- Your first evocation, if needed, can be safely done during the P1->2 transition.
- Subsequent evocations during phase 2 can be safely during the Illusion Room Stun.
- Evocation in P3 should usually be done only if you have simultaneously popped Mirror Image. Evocation ticks are a non trivial amount of threat. A fresh spawned Immortal WILL be coming to kill you unless the tank pulls it off in time.
Is your brain team stunning Yogg before the new crusher spawned? Your time spent during a stun should be to finish off a partly-dead Crusher and some Corruptors. If you are running OOM and having mana problems because your Brain Team stuns him late and fresh Crushers spawn, and you struggle to get those extra ones down in time - thats not your fault.
The Brain Team is partly responsible for your performance up top. You use alot of mana to kill Crushers. If they routinely fail to Stun Yogg in time and extras spawn, it might not be your fault if mana is always a huge problem. Essentially, other people need to clean up their act to make it easier for you to do your job (aka less need to use mana/evocate etc)
Thanks for the useful information, I've timed my evocation at the end of the brain room sessions and haven't had any mana issues doing the fight. In fact, I was even a bit full on mana since I used Mage Armor (figured it's "safer" and assumed, yet didn't check, that it decreases the time I spend feared), so I will probably use Molten Armor next reset and make the best use of my gear.
To be honest, I feel a bit funny about coming here and asking about this, since it turned out that the problem was indeed our melee not getting to the brain fast enough, had no issues dealing sustained dps once they've stopped slacking.
Edit:
One question though; I can't see how there will be a need to evocate in phase 3, given how fast yogg goes down in it. our top two dps (myself and a hunter) were assigned on the guardians and while I did use one mana gem, I was able to freely burn cooldowns and throw in a few extra arcane blasts when things started getting a bit too hot. Why would anyone need to evocate in phase 3 if you have yogg as your focus frame and watch your mana alongside his health percentage?
As for the threat reduction? Think of it this way: it's effectively 10% more damage you can do before wasting 3-5 seconds on invisibility. There are many fights where that's been the difference between having to invis or not.
That is a common misconception. Its a lot more than what 10% might seem to suggest. Its a bit like how value and worth are 2 different concept; its exactly what we have here. Imagine you have no threat talents. If you generate constant threat equal to your tank, then really there is no point for any threat reduction talent. If you generate threat slower, then you will never pull aggro. If you generate it faster, barring taunts/MI/invis shenanigans, you are guaranteed to meet a point where aggro will be a problem. And generally, as long as you generate aggro faster than the tank you're pretty much guaranteed that the issue will show itself almost immediately.
Of course, those are hyperbolic examples that have no correlation with reality. However, it does pave the way to show that any threat reduction percentage, no matter the amount, allows you to get to that point where you generate on average less TPS than your tank, which in itself is a huge worth despise the fact the 10% value might otherwise seem not as good. Needless to say, RNG, crit streaks, and a lot of factors will come into play, but the general idea remains the same. If you have aggro issues without the threat reduction talents (hint: it should be the case), then the worth of the talent will be far greater than 'allowing you to do 10% more threat' -- it could very well allow you to flip into '(mostly) never having to worry about threat'.
If you want threat to matter in a game, you want dps(/healing?) classes to have opportunities to generate more threat than the tank. For the most part I doubt much player would disagree that threat in wow is barely balanced. It has many ramifications that I suppose make its balancing extremely hellish. I doubt much can be done about it, considering that priorities are elsewhere and that the odds of collateral damage are simply far too great to expect any major changes on threat mechanics. This has direct implications on mage design, and mage threat, since as far as my personal opinion goes, considering everything I have said above, blizzard is stuck in a case where they kind of have no choice to make threat mostly meaningless (ie: not something a player manages) since too many classes simply can't get even remotely close to the threat output of others. The difference is mostly too astute to ignore. This isn't about whether or not a mage does tremendously more threat than say an enhancement shaman, but mostly on the 'who can generate more threat than the tank'. Since barely any class gets to that point, and that anyone unable to reach that point has mostly totally meaningless threat generation, they have no choice to simply 'fix' whichever class can reach that point. While everyone agrees that the proper long term answer to this is to make all classes have the potential to reach the scenario, as I hinted, I strongly doubt you can expect anything close to that in the short-term. And please do not confuse the MI and invis changes as contradicting my views on the matter -- those are changes made towards the functionalities of said spells, done in response to mage complains about how poorly usable said spells are. I do not see any of the changes as anything done towards the 'lets fix mage threat' angle. Except maybe if they go back to their original design of MI causing you to generate less threat, but again that is very debatable.
Also FWIW, it seems like rawr double stacks the TPS for both talents.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
That is a common misconception. Its a lot more than what 10% might seem to suggest. Its a bit like how value and worth are 2 different concept
I feel you say something deep and subtle but I don't get it.
Taking your hyperbolic examples:
Without Shenanigans (mirror image, vigilance, invi, iceblocks, ...)
modeling threat generation as a simple linear function of time plus a random variable (spike value)
saying that going above tank value is instant game over
it seems that the optimal threath curve for the mage is to match the tank average threath value and start generate threath when the tank has generated a total threath of (MageSpikeValue+TankSpikeValue).
if the maximum threath generation per second of the mage is less than the tank generation, he will never have a problem.
If the mage is able to generate threath faster, he will try to approximate this optimal curve from the lower side, (for example in a stepwise manner, not dpsing then dpsing at his maximum threath), knowing that the maximum damage produced will anyway be matching the optimal curve the most closely (with the stepwise approach it would mean using the smallest steps/dpstime possible).
All other things being equals, the 10% threath reduction talent will enable in the best case to generate 10% more damage while staying on the optimal threath curve. Actually it will only be 10% damage increase if you have no other threath reduction talent active otherwise the damage gain would be lesser.
I don't see how the threath reduction will have other major effects, it doesn t change the optimal threath curve, nor enables to approximate it better if you are able to burst more threath than the tank.
The only minor effect I see is that the threat reduction talent will reduce the safety zone required between the total tank threath and yours as your spike random variable norm is reduced by the talent. But this flexibility is going to be negligible on the damage done over the fight duration.
Could you please elaborate?
Last edited by Charlyfox : 07/22/09 at 2:31 PM.
Reason: removed bad formula: threat reduction talents are multiplicative and not additive.
Threat reduction works simply by modifying the threat generated by your damage output. Thus no matter what your threat reduction is, it's all relative to your damage, which can obviously flucuate. If you have 5000 DPS and zero threat reduction, that is your threat output as a mage, but that's on average, because clearly if you look at any fight graph, threat generation is not on a nice line.
As Manly said, I wouldn't exaclty equate it to being able to do 10% more damage before pulling threat. The fact is, you aren't going to do 10% more damage and suddenly pull aggro. The mechanics of the game don't work like that -- your tank would have to stop DPSing for that to happen. While your threat level is relative to your damage output modified by your threat reduction talents, your aggro level is relative to the threat generation of your tank.
In other words, saying you can do 10% more damage until you put aggro because you have 10% threat reduction is innaccurate. You are, in fact, doing far more. Consider if your tank's TPS was 7k and yours was a consistent 9.17k. You would always be generating 131% more threat per second than your tank. With 10% threat reduction, you're always generating only 118% threat per second. Obviously it's not as clean as this, but the general idea is that threat reduction talents take you from: pulling aggro or eventually going to pull aggro to not pulling aggro and not going to pull aggro.
You're not "eventually" going to make up that 10% damage to pull aggro unless your tank stops fighting. There are mechanics at play that change this, of course -- things like having your own damage inflated when the tank's threat output stays the same.
Edit: The more I think about this, the more complicated (and simple, ironically) it seems. I guess in a way it could be looked at as 10% more damage being done... but it would have to be in a scenario where your threat gradually starts low and increases as the fight goes on, while the tank's threat level is always constant. In that case, threat reduction would reduce the time until you pull aggro.
So let's say you are generating 4000 threat per second, and every second it increases by 200. Your tank is always generating 5000 TPS. At first you're at 80% without threat reduction, 72% with. Now, after 14 seconds, you're up to 6600 TPS, and you've crossed from 128% to 132%. At the same time, with 10% threat reduction, you'd be at 5940 TPS at 118% threat. With threat reduction, it's not until 18 seconds in that you hit 6660 TPS and cross from 129.6% threat to 133.2% (sorry, the numbers aren't all neat).
Your damage output hasn't changed of course, so at 18 seconds in, you've done 102,600 damage, compared to 74,200 damage. That's 38% more damage dealt before you pull aggro.
It's a bit messy because I have to use that type of scenario; otherwise the obvious question arises, why aren't we pulling aggro immediately from the start? This scenario could theoretically happen in any type of fight where your damage output in the beginning is lower than later on, or where it flucuates heavily -- such as Hodir, General Vezax, getting strings of crits, rolling ignite damage on top of high crit damage, molten fury range, etc.
In hindsight, my original description was (extremely) simplistic. However, the point still stands: you are able to do more damage before pulling aggro with the talent than without.
In a averaged-out fight (unrealistic), if your tank is doing a constant 5000tps, than you could do a constant 5000 DPS without the talent, and 5555 DPS (10% less is 5k) with it. The relative value of the threat reduction, however, scales with gear - if you have poor gear, you won't be able to catch the tank in threat in any case, so the threat reduction is wasted. If you have great gear (or the tank has poor gear, etc.) than you may be able to do more DPS without passing the tank in threat.
Obviously in-game this is significantly different, as noted: RNG plays a huge role in your threat. I've been riding the tank's threat early in a Hodir fight, landed a fully-buffed FFB for 75k damage, which caused Hodir to wander over and splatter me all over the floor. Hardly predictable that I'd land an FFB for that much, at just the wrong time.
Regardless, however, the amount of raid-damage and pushback present in Ulduar makes the talent extremely valuable just for the 70% pushback reduction
Technically, if your tank is doing 5000 tps, then you should be able to do 5499 threat per second (if in melee) or 6499 threat per second if you are guaranteed to stay at range (just shy of 130%).
Naturally every sane mage will choose some limit below that to ensure they don't pull on a crit or other raid event that might push them over the tank.
My point is that you're already able to do a lot more tps than the tank. If you're taking advantage of that, then without the talent you'd be doing 6499 dps. With the talent you could pull 7221 dps. If you're at that limit (and admittedly not everyone is), I think you can agree that 722 dps for 2 talent points is useful. And it scales with gear/skill of your tank - the more threat they can put out, the more this talent effectively amplifies it.
What previous posts are saying, and I don't think people are catching on is that if you and the tank are close in the threat you generate, if you're just overthreating him slightly, then your 10% advantage may delay your need for HoS or invis to a much greater degree than 10%. And because invis is a total threat wipe, delaying its first use again compounds its effectiveness. Think about it - if you invis 1:30 min into General, you don't gain much - assuming all else remains scalar, you can then go to the 3 min mark before needing another threat reduction. If you can wait for 2 min to invis, then you can go to 4 minutes. That's a full minute improvement for an early 30 second delay. And in fact because not all factors are scalar, in practice it factors more favorably than that.
Technically, if your tank is doing 5000 tps, then you should be able to do 5499 threat per second (if in melee) or 6499 threat per second if you are guaranteed to stay at range (just shy of 130%)
I'd be careful with the 130% cap on bosses with a lot of movement. If for some reason (e.g. Hodir, Ignis) you have to walk or the boss is kited into 110% range, you will be onehit the moment the boss makes his next swing.
I'd be careful with the 130% cap on bosses with a lot of movement. If for some reason (e.g. Hodir, Ignis) you have to walk or the boss is kited into 110% range, you will be onehit the moment the boss makes his next swing.
Actually riding the edge of pulling on Hodir as fine since the tank is taunting regularly. Mages typically are very high in threat on Hodir especially so allowing the tank to taunt to get just above your own threat gives him a healthy lead over other DPS if/when you go Invis.
Actually riding the edge of pulling on Hodir as fine since the tank is taunting regularly. Mages typically are very high in threat on Hodir especially so allowing the tank to taunt to get just above your own threat gives him a healthy lead over other DPS if/when you go Invis.
You do not understand how the Taunt mechanic works. Taunt has no effect if the enemy is already attacking the tank. So unless you actually get aggro from the boss, Taunt will do nothing. So his point still stands, if you get within melee range while just below 130% threat, you will get one shotted.
You do not understand how the Taunt mechanic works. Taunt has no effect if the enemy is already attacking the tank. So unless you actually get aggro from the boss, Taunt will do nothing. So his point still stands, if you get within melee range while just below 130% threat, you will get one shotted.
what he was saying is that you can push the 130% mark as range, and if Hodir turns from the tank to you, if your tank is good, he can taunt at that point. Hodir goes back on tank and now has your threat lead (effectively 130%).
what he was saying is that you can push the 130% mark as range, and if Hodir turns from the tank to you, if your tank is good, he can taunt at that point. Hodir goes back on tank and now has your threat lead (effectively 130%).
Well if you are in melee range and hodir switches to you, depending on where he is in his swing time the tank may not get a chance to taunt, no matter how good/fast he is.
Actually riding the edge of pulling on Hodir as fine since the tank is taunting regularly. Mages typically are very high in threat on Hodir especially so allowing the tank to taunt to get just above your own threat gives him a healthy lead over other DPS if/when you go Invis.
One warrior I played with encouraged mages to attempt to pull aggro during his flash freeze cast, that way he could taunt it back for a huge threat boost. It seemed to work great when it happened.
If other casters have higher dps should we put Focus Magic on them instead of circle jerking it?
It depends. General rule of thumb is that mages (esp. Frostfire or Fireball spec) tend to scale better with crit than any other caster class, so therefore you get the biggest raid DPS gains from circling Focus Magic to the other mages.
That said, if your non-mages are really geared and your newbie mages are poorly geared, it's possible even weak crit-scaling classes would still gain more from Focus Magic. Probably even moreso if your non-mages can do optimal DPS because they really know the fights but your newbie mages do weak DPS because they're confused and tend to die in the first minute.
One warrior I played with encouraged mages to attempt to pull aggro during his flash freeze cast, that way he could taunt it back for a huge threat boost. It seemed to work great when it happened.
It is a very common strat. You get to 120% then pop MI. From there you can get to ~170%+ without pulling. As MI fades, the tank taunts to take the lead. Then you cast invis to wipe all threat. This should keep the tank at the top for the rest of the fight.
I was finally able to access the Taiwanese WoW Armory site last night and looked at the spec of a mage STARS brought to the Yogg+0 fight. (20/0/51 Frost)
Is this an unusual spec? Is this a considerable spec for Hard Mode Vezax?
On an unrelated matter, when casting Arcane Missiles or a Missile Barrage and increasing the stack of the buff from Eye of the Broodmother, does each iteration of the spell increase in damage as the counter increases? To clarify, is the last tick of the missiles affected by +125 Spell Power?
Last edited by JoeCool : 07/25/09 at 2:09 PM.
Reason: Forgot to add a question.
I was finally able to access the Taiwanese WoW Armory site last night and looked at the spec of a mage STARS brought to the Yogg+0 fight. (20/0/51 Frost)
Is this an unusual spec? Is this a considerable spec for Hard Mode Vezax?
Unless I'm horribly mistaken, that's a PvP spec. No precision? No piercing ice? No frost channeling? Taking Imp. Counterspell and Deep Freeze are the biggest giveaways, though.
It is most definitely a PvP-spec. He even got two points in Improved Magic Attunement, and that can only have the purpose of giving him some extra protection in fights against other casters. It wouldn't make much sense for raiding purposes, just like the other things you mentioned. It's definitely not the improved range for Arcane Spells that he's after, since he is obviously not an Arcane Mage with that spec.
"These psychouts are mostly media inspired."
"The media inspires boredom. Not waking up one morning and butchering your kids. That takes something else, man."
Give me a hand please. Considering next patch change where LB DoT crits will trigger HS, is it possible to be a stealthy nerf outside a lot of mobs?
After all, LB has a lower crit rate than FB, and those crits could break the "2 crit in a row" required for HS.
You're greatly underestimating the major limiting factor of HS -- its the amount of opportunities for it to proc. This change greatly increases the amount of opportunities, in addition to better allowing you to chain-proc hs-pyros -- particularly considering the last LB tick/crit are near simultaneous. As an easy way to prove/disprove it, just have a look at how often you get HS up when aoeing -- generally it will proc.
The crit% might be lower, but not nearly enough to make much of a difference. Its a bit like hodir and fireball vs ffb spec. Sure, ffb has the upperhand on crit multipliers, but the hard facts are that despise that somewhat slight advantage of ffb, the fact that it crits a lot less often than fireball in a fight where any crit will do a tremendous more amount of damage will have the advantage.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
07/21/09, 6:17 PM
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