Has anything changed with potions with the 3.2 changes? I use wild magic with my FFB spec and speed with my fb/ttw spec, but it seems like maybe wild magic might be better than speed with fireball spec now, but I don't have the TC type of brain to do any math. My dps has definitely gone up in general by increasing my crit on my gear a bit. My haste rating is at 473 right now for raiding (on the armory it probably has me at 557 haste, because I logged out with the haste trinket, which I use during 5mans).

TIA.

Hello, I'm a Mage in a guild that's currently trying to down Algalon in 25 man. I'm faced with a big problem at the moment as TtW/Fire where more often than not I'd get 2 shotted by an Arcane Barrage followed by a Collapsing Star within 1 second of each other.

Has any other Mages also encountered the same problems? Stacking stamina seems to be out of the question since it defeats the purpose of DPSing down Algalon, more Warlocks would just be brought in and they have better survivability and damage. Iceblock only be used once, while the 1 second time frame between the damage spikes isn't enough for me to react to popping a healthstone.

What are my options? I know that the guild is bending over backwards to justify bringing more than one Mage. I'm out of ideas at the moment and frustrated at both the prospect of not being able to be a part of guild first downing as well as being a liability to the guild. Any insight on this matter is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

There is not much you can do other then wisely using your iceblock, healthstone or health potion. Your health might be a bit low, (I sit at almost 16.4k unbuffed and I see you are at 15.7k) but you are correct that you shouldn't be gearing for stam. However you could sacrifice a very small portion of dps and used glowing dreadstones over purified, and tuskarr's on your boots.

Generally speaking spells that doesn't do any direct damage doesn't require you to face the target.

For example:

Polymorph, Remove Curse, Dispel Poison, all healing spells etc etc: These doesn't do any damage at all and doesn't require you to face your target.
Living Bomb, Corruption, Curse of Agony, etc: These does no initial damage, so they don't require you to face the target either.
Immolate: A combined direct damage spell and a dot. This requires you to face the target like normal direct target spells.


Maybe a bit off-topic but, hey it's a simple answers thread. :>

You might want to consider taking 2 points in magic absorption, ever since we started hardmodes I had it in my standard raiding spec and it's definately a decrease in damage taken and thus an increase in survivability, it might not save your life every time but it's definately worth having.
This should put you at 210 shadowresistance raidbuffed, you might want to consider getting 1 item with shadowresistance so you are over the 219 cap which guarantees at least a 20% resisted of any shadow attack which would eliminate the chance of getting two shot by collapsing star + arcane barrage if your HP is maxed.

Edit: You could also try and get a second headpiece and enchant it with the 25sr/30sta enchant from argent crusade just for Algalon.

Agree 1000%

Also, remember HS/Mana Gem shared cd is gone. Eat those pez!

When I dumped 2 points from SOTM in favor of MA the basic result was spending more time focusing on DPS and less time on survival. In fights like Hodir it meant being able to take more biting colds before having to move, which means more time spamming fireballs in moonbeams.

If you have 1000 spirit, 10% more will just be another 50 crit rating, or 65(?) with tier 9. When you're already at 45-50% crit the extra rating isn't that much of a buff. It just seemed much more worthwhile to take 10-15% less raid damage than gain a marginal level of crit.

Has anyone done any math recently (3.1 - 3.2) regarding the RDPS gain for FM targets?

There has been lots of controversy within my guild concerning all the new class changes and who should get it.

I only have the previous list posted from here but couldn't find the math to support those posts so I really don't have anything to argue with or support either way.

If anyone can point me in the direction or let me know that would be greatly appreciated.

Alright... the deal with Mirror Images. In Icecrown there are mobs called Converted Heroes. I put Living Bomb on several of these NPCs and waited for a few ticks of damage to go off to build up threat. I then used Mirror Images. The converted heroes immediately turned to the Mirror Images, but then turned back to me after the next tick of damage happened, as I wasn't attacking them further except for the LB DoT.

Every time my MIs would use Frostbolt against these mobs, they would turn and start attacking the MI, but then they would turn back on me. This would happen back and forth with mirror images "pulling aggro" off of me, as if acting like a few seconds of taunting, but then losing that aggro. Even if my LB DoT was ticking damage, I should be far below the threat level of my MIs.

I'm not sure if this is unique to this NPC, but the same thing has happened with some other NPCs as well. This is most certainly not how it used to be. NPCs used to continually attack the Mirror Images -- you could pop MIs and invis without fear of being hit. However, I haven't noticed anything different inside raids -- notably on General Vezax and Hodir, where I haven't had any issues with Mirror Images fading my threat for the 30 sec duration. The boss hasn't come over and 1-shot my mirror images or anything, and I've been at threat levels significantly higher than the tank.

The problem is either isolated to unique NPCs, or something was changed in 3.2 with using MI while solo, or I'm imagining things. It just doesn't make sense why NPCs would drop aggro from me to attack my mirror images, then once they attack them, they would retarget me.

The easiest source is probably the scaling factors at SampleOutputT8 - simulationcraft - Project Hosting on Google Code. Skipping melee, it's

Class	Crit Scaling Factor
Mage (Fire)	1.74
Mage (FFB)	1.59
Moonkin	1.14
Shadow Priest (SWD)	1.04
Elemental Shaman (No ToW)	1.04
Shadow Priest (No SWD)	0.97
Elemental Shaman (ToW)	0.95
Warlock(Destruction)	0.91
Mage (Arcane)	0.89
Other Warlock Specs	Even Less

Note that these are assuming that the player you're giving it to is playing perfectly. The general conclusion is that it is significantly better for hot streak specced mages than any other class. I'm not sure why warlocks are so low, can a lot of their damage not crit or something?

Sounds like a lot more testing is in order. I also have not seen any issues inside Ulduar or the new 5 & 25man instance. I rarely if ever cast it outside instances, but I will play with it tonight and see if anything funky can be replicated.

I'm pretty sure the mirror image change happened in 3.1. My theory is that if only you + the mirrors have any threat on the target, you are all equal and aggro bounces around (possibly based on which attack landed last or just randomly). If there's anyone (or a pet) that has threat on the mob, then you and the images have negative threat and there's no funny behavior.

Before 3.1, the mirror images had higher threat than you (they could even "taunt" off the tank), so you would never gain aggro from them while they were up. I think the "equal threat" behavior is more natural, but it of course puts the mage at risk in a solo situation.

Not to mention the 'equal threat' scenario goes against what the devs have previously stated and what folks here at EJ were able to determine. You are supposed to gain negative 4mill or so threat while your MIs each get 33% of your threat. It shouldn't be remotely equal. But clearly something funny is going on.

Hm, time to update the compendium, Shaman have become really viable now on their own, and guarantee 100% uptime with Lava Burst auto-crits. Actually, they seem to stop being good once you get T9 gear, they are only held up by set bonuses I fear.

As for warlocks - they aren't really low, they're just in the middle of the whole caster pack for DPS/crit scaling. Now, given that they are the top DPS casters, they are a bit on the low side of relative scaling. Most of their damage can crit, for the usual 209% with CSD. Their pet damage however usually does not scale with crit, and only badly with a deep Demonology talent. Life Tap doesn't scale with crit either. But if you think about corrently, it shouldn't matter for the DPS/crit value (but for crit/SP and such). Pyroclasm is another crit scaling talent, but it doesn't scale very well when your crit with Conflagration is 70% already.

Checking the Details on the Detail Page, Destruction has Firebolt (Imp), Curse of Doom and Immolate ticks unaffected by crit rating and another 10% of your cast are auto-crits due to Empowered Imp, so that's 15-25% unaffected by crit rating. For Demonology, it's Corruption, Immolation Aura, Immolate ticks and Curse of Doom that are unaffected, around 15%. And the pet is another 25% with weak scaling. For Affliction, it's Curse of Agony, Drain Soul and the Succubus that are unaffected, that's about 32% of their total damage.

So, that explains why they aren't as high on the crit scaling chart as one would expect. Shaman however have 20% of their damage unaffected by crit, Lava Burst. 2T8 allows Flame Shock ticks to crit, 4T8 is a 8% Ignite for Lightning Bolts. That explains why Shaman suddenly shot up compared to T7 gear and bonuses. And with T9 increasing Flame Shock time and Lava Burst damage, their crit scaling will plummet again.
Priests have everything scale normally with crit, except their 3% pet damage. Nothing else fancy, no set bonuses or glyphs that I found. Druids have Insect Swarm, Moonfire ticks and pet hits unaffected by crit rating, that's about 15%. They do however get a 0.5s cast time reduction after every crit, which brings their scaling back on top. I found no Glyph, no T8 bonuses, but T9 will even improve crit scaling with Moonfire ticks being able to crit.

Mages are the only caster class that really benefit a lot from crit, and only with 50+ points in the fire tree. Moonkin are the next best consistent Focus Magic Target after them.

As far as I know, it actually isn't the best idea to go Arcane from the start if you plan on going a flavour of Fire later. People go Arcane as the starter spec because of its low gear requirements, but Arcane needs different itemization. For example, Arcane focuses more on haste than FFB, which needs more crit. You're also going to be balancing around a far lower hit cap. If you start out as Arcane, you're going to gear yourself for Arcane, and take upgrades that benefit Arcane... which will make it harder to switch to Fire later, if that's what you want to do.

I would recommend starting out as FFB, as it's easier to switch to FB/TTW later if that's where you're going, while FFB is a mainstream raiding spec if you decide you want to stay as is.

That said, if you just want an ultimate threshold as to when you can go from Arcane to FFB/FB, I would say the higher hit caps are a good measure. If you can get high enough hit for cap in the better spec without having to gem for it then you should be set to try it out.

I apologize if this has already been addressed, I do try to keep up with the posts, but at time I miss things. I have had great success keeping FM on a holy paladin. I generally try to keep FM on another mage if at all possible, but at times I am the only mage (this usually only happens in a 10 man group.) So, rather than "waste" it on a warlock, I have been tossing it on our holy paladin who crits with FoL a LOT. It keeps the FM buff on me almost the entire encounter.

I haven't yet tried it on an elemental shaman yet, I will have to do that. I hadn't paid much attention to the t8 set bonus for shaman, but that certainly explains why our elemental shaman suddenly got such a boost in dps.

Again, my apologies if FM/Healadins has already been discussed.

Pretty much any other caster in the game will give you near 100% uptime on focus magic, so unless healing is actually a problem you should be putting it on a dps caster.

This might be viable for FoL paladins, but most paladins that I know of are casting holy light as their main heal, which usually overheals by a large amount. Causing it to crit will not really increase their effective HPS that much, and with the illumination changes in 3.2, it's really not going to make a huge mana difference to them either.

FM is pretty unique in that it provides a raid damage buff and a personal buff all in one. FoL palies do have insane crit rates, but then most mages will have 50%+ crit rates in a fb/ffb spec, so your uptime will be near 100% regardless. 3% extra crit on a paladin critting 90% of the time with FoL really isn't a huge buff, especially when paladins do insane amounts of overhealing anyway.

There's no such thing as over-damage though... always give it to a DPSer to boost raid damage.

remove please

I'm in the midst of some massive debugging wrt to scale factor generation and its use of "smooth" RNG packages, etc.

I may pull down the SampleOutput for 24hrs while I resolve this.

EDIT: I re-built the wiki data without doing any scale factor gen. I'll have the problem solved soon.

Hello Elitist Community,

I ve been doing quite some research on various mage mechanics, and regarding priority on LB Vs HS Pyro I usually see a statement saying something like "Living Bomb is almost always better to cast first".

I would like if someone explained to me, why this is the fact, because my common sense tells me that if I get a HS procc and a Living Bomb expiration up together, that if I cast Living Bomb, there is a real chance of my Pyro getting rewritten with new HS during that time which also sometimes happens. Why is having LB up 1 second sooner worth a chance of losing say 7000 average damage + possible ignite ? Even if that 1 second meant one more bomb is going to make it to the explosion untill the end of the fight. the final tick is still less dmg than that pyroblast, and you would need say average 6 of such saved seconds to help one bomb explode and you are guaranteed to lose a HS or two if u chose LB over HS in 6 situations.

I am not really good at these crafts so someone will probably prove me wrong but I would like to see it )

Also it is possible that when ppl say LB is prefered they only mean a situation when u get both events in a situation where another HS is not expected to happen (i.e last fireball did not crit), but in a situation, where HS procced at start of another fireball cast they rather use HS in order not to lose the procc.

When I watched raid videos of mages from good guilds it seemed very inconsistent or maybe it wasnt really clear to observe.

Thank you for help and explanation hopefully.

To Epoh:

Well if you look at it from the other point of view, you get 6k pyro (or 14k or 25k on some fights ..) which u can lose during that second if u dont cast it in time and it really does happen in quite few situations during each fight and if you think it doesn't try and watch out for it in next raid. Especially during fast casts (BL, Haste pot, Boss fight buffs ...) and thanks to tier 8 4pc bonus which makes the override even more likely. On the other hand, the LB only gets delayed by one second ... So you can't compare all dmg of LB u only lose one tick of it at the end of the fight if you delay it by a second. So it is possible pyro loss Vs 1 LB tick I'd say.

To Semata:

I don't know if you only skimmed through my post or if I didn't express myself well enough, but I obviously know that LB application doesn't effect HS proccs. I am talking about the other situation when u have previous FFB/FB critted and another one is about to fly in. How would losing the pyro not be a big deal ? You visit forum where people talk about how every single little point of caster stat is gonna matter to dps in raids and you don't care about several thousand if not tens of thousand instant damage couple times over the fight ?

I am sure I am not right if so good mages say otherwise and I would like to know why but these arguments didn't seem very convincing ..