17/0/54, 18/0/53, 20/0/51 are bassically pvp builds since Torment the Weak is totally uselsess in a boss fight and if you want to argue that you use it on trash mobs i say that aoe blizzard is A LOT better then a single target spell with torment.
If I haven't missed out something big, which I don't belive I have. TtW is PERFECT for boss fights. 12% more damage to your frostbolt, why not? They made TtW to have a 100% uptime as long as your tank/DK friend snare/slow them. Spell impact affects your ice lance - a spell blizzard tries to make usefull in PvE in 3.1, so go for that one too.
Unless I'm missing something here, using Ice Lance whenever (on ghost charge or on a "legit" charge) no longer interferes with FoF uptime for Frostbolt.
Lhivera was merely observing that Ice Lance cannot proc FoF at all, and so it adversely affects FoF uptime to use it, regardless of the potential DPS increase.
Fingers of frost procs just like on live as far as I can tell. I'm at the training dummy in Stormwind and keeping maximum range from it. It's very easy to tell that FoF procs when the spell leaves my hands instead of when it hits the target.
Also, when I got a FoF proc on the second frostbolt and did an ice lance with it, it consumed both charges of the new FoF (as discussed above).
If the first frostbolt procs a new FoF, I have no problems switching my plan and doing an extra frostbolt before the "shatter combo". However, if the second frostbolt procs FoF, the proc will be lost if I cast an ice lance. So it looks like things are actually even worse than what Lhivera says above: the shatter ice lance has a 15% chance to consume two FoF charges and it's out of your control.
I think this is what happens when you do a shatter combo on the second charge of a FoF and proc a new FoF with the frostbolt:
- Frostbolt casts, consumes charge, but procs a new FoF, so charges get set to 2. (Read 1, write 2)
- Ice lance casts, but because it's a ghost charge from the old FoF, it only sees 1 charge and sets the charges to 0. (Read 1, write 0)
So the server is setting the charges to 2 and then immediately to 0. Because the frostbolt and ice lance get processed concurrently and FoF doesn't use atomic increment/decrement operations, you lose 2 charges instead of 1. If atomic operations were used, ghost charges wouldn't exist at all without some further mechanic (like a 0.5 second "overtime" addition to FoF after both charges are used).
I think on live, the FoF proc happens before the FoF charge is used, so the frostbolt operation is: write 2 (new proc), read 1 (old charges), write 0 (use up old charge). The reason for these effects seems to be that write operations are only queued and don't happen immediately, so if you write a new value and read immediately again, you get the old value instead of what you wrote. I bet the people coding the spells have nightmares about this sort of behavior.
Edit: for clarity - I was typing this as I was testing, so it didn't come out very clearly on the first write.
Hi I saw people here complaining about how “boring” frost is, that we don’t have anything else except a frostbolt spam, that we frost mages do little damage and basically everything has to be changed in order to make frost “interesting”. I have to disagree since I’ve always raided with frost except for a few occasions at level 70 and now at 80 when I tried most combinations of fire and arcane spec out of curiosity. For me frost is anything but boring since it has so many spells to use in a boss encounter: cast water elemental, icy veins frostbolt and fostbolt + icelance when fingers of frost proc, Cold Snap in order to get a second icy veins as soon as the first one ended and a second Water Elemental as well and of course the fireball from brain freeze.
You basically need to subtract all those cooldowns from your list; note that Blizzard, like (I believe) many of us, don't consider those part of the "rotation". Stuff you need to think about once every couple minutes is simply not as interesting as stuff you need to think about all the time:
We thought Affliction had too many spells to cast as part of their rotation (by which I mean spells they generally think about all the time, vs. cooldowns or more situational spells).
And of course making Ice Lance worth casting is exactly the problem they're currently trying to solve.
Originally Posted by akimsko
Just out of curiosity, and I'm not trying to step on any ones toes here...
But do we really need another high single target dps PvE spec?
Yes, we do. Remember, in Ghostcrawler's words: WoW is a role-playing game. It's all very well that Arcane, Fire and FFB Mages have good raid specs. I'm happy for them. It doesn't help us Frost Mages at all, though.
Simple as that. I realize many people don't give a damn about respeccing their characters as easily as they switch weapons in Quake, but many of us see that as an unreasonable requirement that destroys the very nature of an RPG. Blizzard is trying to cater to the shallow Quake playstyle by introducing the dual-spec feature; happily, they're also trying to cater to the deeper "spec is part of character concept" playstyle by making each tree viable in all major aspects of the game.
Originally Posted by Organigami
About FoF munching and Frostbolt crit rate:
Unless I'm missing something here, using Ice Lance whenever (on ghost charge or on a "legit" charge) no longer interferes with FoF uptime for Frostbolt.
This is because FoF now procs on spell hit, instead of spell cast.
Whether you're doing a latency shatter or not, using Frostbolt+Ice Lance will always consume whatever FoF charges you have left (and benefit from them) but when that Frostbolt hits you have a chance to gain FoF again, which will work on subsequent frostbolts.
Case 1: you are spamming Frostbolt. 100% of your casts have a chance to proc Fingers of Frost.
Case 2: you are casting a ratio of approximately 6.67 Frostbolts to every Ice Lance. 86.96% of your casts have a chance to proc Fingers of Frost.
If you're casting a spell that can't proc the effect, you're by definition reducing the percentage of your spellcasts that can proc the effect from 100% to a number less than 100%, which must reduce the uptime of the buff, as a percentage of your spellcasts.
Note that this is not inherently a problem -- it simply further increases the amount of damage the Ice Lance needs to do in order to be a beneficial cast.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
@Lhivera
I think I get it now and I was probably missing the dual-charge nature of the buff in my reasoning for uptime/crit rate.
Basically what you've said some months ago is still valid: Frosbolt spam gives a 28% chance of being cast under FoF for all frostbolts, but as soon as you use an Ice Lance in there you lower the next Frostbolt's chances to be under FoF to 15%. This in turn means a sacrifice in Frosbolt avg damage, which must be overcome by Ice Lance damage to justify its use.
@TigaFin
Given the time I spent spamming frostbolts in the PTR, I was perplexed that your findings were so much different.
I had a look at your spec and had a hunch that Frostbite could be the culprit here since it's tied to FoF when you fully spec both. I had a go with dual-speccing Frost in the PTR, with and without Frostbite:
With Frostbite, FoF procs on Frostbolt casts and munching still happens.
Without Frostbite, FoF procs on Frostbolt hits and munching cannot happen.
I captured some films using both specs. I think the situation with frostbite is actually more complicated than I thought. I think having the sounds and UI help see what is happening. The films are max 10MB each.
==========
Film #1: No frostbite specced - everything seems OK:
1 - Frostbolt procs FoF and frostbite
2 - Frostbolt lands (no FoF proc)
3 - Frostbolt would proc frostbite and FoF, but fails because of previous frostbite
4 - Ice lance benefits from FoF
==========
Film #3: Frostbite specced, but I wait until frostbite fades:
1 - Frostbolt procs FoF and frostbite
2 - I wait until frostbite fades
2 - Ice lance consumes 1 charge of FoF
3 - Frostbolt procs frostbite, but FoF is not gained even though the sound for it plays:
4 - Ice lance benefits from FoF
I used ice lance in the middle because I didn't want that spell to proc fingers of frost. Oddly, that case actually seems to work correctly and refreshes the FoF proc to two charges.
P.S. If you agree that there's something fishy going on with frostbite, I'll post this on the PTR forum in Europe.
PS2 I added one more film to show that proccing FoF and frostbite on the first FoF charge works OK:
Cressus - You need to go back to the beginning of this thread and start from there. This has been covered in detail already. I think you're a patch behind. At one point you'll see me suggesting some 11/0/61 builds in order to get more snare/stuns. But that was before the changes to TTW.
I'll agree that spell impact is a pretty worthless spell for us - the only gain we get is for fireballs on brain freeze (can't say I ever cast CoC) and yes, that's pretty worthless too. But what else are you ging to spend points on? In a 18/0/53 you have 9 points to spend between Arcane Concentration, Spell Impact and Magic Absorption - i.e. one of them is going to be a point short. Which one don't max is really up to you. None of them are really needed. I generally only do 4/5 in Concentration as I haven't had any mana issues since 2pc T7. But if you don't do Brain Freeze, then by all means - take a point of out spell impact. If you're smart enought not to stand around in the fire, then magic absorbtion may not be needed either
I'd always recommend at least 1 point in imp blizzard. I used to go for 3/3, but I don't really need that much snaring. One point in imp blizzard along with chilled to the bone and things are moving 35% slower. I'd like more, But you're pretty limited on points in the cold tree already. In the 18/0/53 build you have 5 points to spend between Icy Floes, Frostbite, Imp Blizzard and Brain Freeze. Depending on gear, you may be able to pull a point out of Precision or even Winter's Chill - but those would be arguable.
If you want to drop brain freeze to get 3/3 imp blizzard I wouldn't fault you for it. Skipping Icy Floes does actually hurt your DPS by getting few Icy Veins - although the change is small. I generally don't get more than 1 point into frostbite. I used to have it there for the imp blizzard problem and I suppose I've just left it there.
In the end its impossible to get a fully buffed blizzard without cutting into your single target DPS. If you have more issues with Gulth than you do with Thaddius then you can cut a few points without hurting your DPS that much, but TTW is pretty much required (it even helps your buffed blizzard for trash pulls too).
I'm also confused - you mention 11/0/60 then you talk about ignite. Did you mean 0/11/60? For the record, this is what I'm running now as a raiding frost mage - 18/0/53.
Except buffing Frostbolt would run completely counter to the objective of creating useful PvE Shatter Combos. It's somewhat more likely that they would (perhaps conditionally) nerf Frostbolt, (conditionally) buff Ice Lance, and then buff Frost school damage.
At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.
At the very least, I feel they should take Torment the Weak out and put the TtW effect into the Frostbolt glyph to a point - e.g., 'your Frostbolt spell does 6% more damage to snared and slowed targets.' Same with Fireball - remove TtW and make the glyph something along the lines of 'your Fireball spell no longer has a damage over time component, but does 6% more damage when your target is on fire.' Arcane can keep TtW effects, but hopefully, they could start scaling Frost and Fire without having to account for TtW.
I meant 11/8/52, with ignite for the BF. I don’t know a lot of things about warrior tanks so correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I know Thunder clap lasts for about 20 seconds and has a 2 min cooldown. For TtW to work at 50% uptime on a boss you will need to have 3 warrior tanks on the same boss to work in perfect sync each casting it after the previous one expired and after 1 minute of perfect sync you still have 1 minute of cooldown left, meaning as stated 50% uptime. Paladin tanks and druids are another factor in this picture and I’m not aware of them having something similar, although I know death knights do have a spell. Thinking about it I cant stop but wondering how efficient TtW really is so I came up with a list:
Advantages: 12 % more dmg to your frostbolt
6% more dmg to you ice lance if you have Spell impact which ( if you use fb + icelance and FoF) is a nice boon, but since icelance amounts for about 7% of my overall dmg, not amazing
Disadvantages: your increased frostbolt dmg depends on others
Even in perfect circumstances ( 100% uptime which, as I said, never happens) your single target dmg will be 5 % less then a Frostfire spec
You are losing a significant CC snare effects on mobs without 2/3 blizzard and frostbite.
Jak, as far as I’m concerned 1 point in blizzard for Gluth is not enough since 3/3 frostbite and 2/3 blizzard allows me to pretty much solo the adds in 10 man and even in 25 with some help from a hunter perhaps and make sure no mob reaches the boss; other encounters are similar. As I said in my first post, frost is all about utility and not single target dmg – although we do decent dmg on those occasions as well. CC, mana regeneration from your pet, and starting from the next patch replenishment for your raid members every time you use frostbolt! Summing up, while 18/0/53 and 11/8/52 provide a potential increase in single target dmg, this depends on external factors ( for the ignite build you depend on crit for your brain freeze fireball) those builds fell short of single target frostfire while losing the frost strong points: CC snare of blizzard + frostbite and of course also lose ice floes. It remains to be seen if Ulduar will bring more or less CC though snares and thus keeping the frost mages useful to the same extent. Therefore 11/0/60 remains my build of choice.
P.S. Do not be afraid to put focus magic on your frostfire buddy hehe.
So what you're advocating, is you'd rather have some larger control of snare over ~11% more single target DPS.
Pay attention to what's going on in raiding, you'll perhaps notice that the absolute majority of top mage output depends directly on TtW, and absolutely every one of them gets it working. You're not "depending on others" for TtW activation any more than you're depending on others to provide you with Master of Elements, Earth and Moon, Totem of Wrath or Focus Magic. The fact that TtW is a debuff on a mob rather than a buff on your bar is utterly and completely irrelevant.
You're absolutely free to subjectively prefer some modicum of utility to a monumentally large increase in Single Target DPS, but I think I represent the majority when I say we don't care about a ~11% DPS sacrifice in lieu of "some more control", whatever the reason may be.
I don’t know a lot of things about warrior tanks so correct me if I’m wrong but as far as I know Thunder clap lasts for about 20 seconds and has a 2 min cooldown.
Yes, you are very wrong. A simple search on wowhead would have provided you with this: Thunder Clap - Spell - World of Warcraft - 30 second duration, 6 second cooldown.
The Ttw discussion has been done to death in multiple threads here, maybe it's time for a sticky saying Ttw will work on any mob that is being tanked by any (properly) tank-specced class almost 100% of the time.
Thunderclap is an ability that lasts for 30 seconds with a 6 second cooldown. A tanking warrior should keep that up 100% of the time when needed, but it's certainly possible that they aren't. This keeps TtW active.
Frost fever is a disease provided by all death knights regardless of spec. Since all DKs (tanking or dpsing) keep their diseases up as part of their rotation (any diseaseless rotations are rare and being nerfed), any death knight should provided a debuff that keeps TtW active at or above 90% of the time.
Druid tanks can and should spec into infected wounds. I am unfamiliar with the exact druid tanking rotations, but its reasonable to assume that they use SHred or Maul or Mangle at least once every 12 seconds. A feral tank likely keeps TtW active 100% of the time.
A paladin tank who does not spec into Judgements of the Just is not a good paladin tank. Likewise, a paladin tank that is not judging as part of their rotation is playing poorly, and as such TtW has a high active time.
Please don't spread misinformation about TtW uptime.
As for Gluth, is that really what frost mages are pinning their hopes on? Really? Having done it as deep fire, I have beter tools for grabbing initial aggro on the chow (faster fire blast, living bomb, even hot streaked pyros) and can keep everything snared with cone of cold. Not that that makes mages a better choice than hunters for kiting. Also, if you want to really trivialize it, you have a prot warrior put vigilance on one of the main tanks, and taunt every single chow onto him. Heal him through it, and then right before the decimate, thunderclap shockwave and lead them to the back.
I will probably use a Frost Spec for my 2nd spec. Since I like the Blizzard snare I thought of this: 18/0/53
This build gives up very little DPS compared to a build that has all the frost DPS talent that I missed. I don't know if Ice Lance Glyph is better DPS than Water Elemental Glyph though.
Rawr shows for a 10 minute fight:
2 additional points in Arcane Concentration: 5 DPS
2 points in Cold as Ice: 18 DPS
3 points in Ice Floes: didn't affect DPS at all, at least not at this fight length (or am I doing something wrong?)
1 point improved Water Elemental (2/3 means at least 99% uptime for Replenishment according to my math) : 20 DPS
alternatively to Water Elemental: 1 Point in Brain Freeze is about 10 DPS for me
Last edited by Saphya : 03/03/09 at 10:28 AM.
Reason: Fixed URL
Ice floes should affect dps, with a full 3/3 ice floes you get an extra Icy Veins in your 10 minute fight. The lower cooldown on it, along with IceSnap complicates a tiny bit the cooldowns.
I have [quite possibly misplaced] faith that Tormenting the Brokenated will be reined in. As such, I'm looking hopefully at a build similar to what I had before: Mage Talents - World of Warcraft Talent Calculator - WoW Tools Assuming the actual issues with Frost and scaling are fixed, this should provide acceptable [not top, but above thresholds for getting into raids] DPS while providing power from Imp. Blizzard and other control mechanics. A bit of shuffling is certainly possible, such as Permafrost to Frostbite, Frost Warding can essentially be treated as '+2' points to go wherever [top off Floes, for example], and yes, that's spending points literally just to get Magic Absorption. Obviously, this can quickly be reworked into a TTW build or a Fire Splash [World in Flames is tempting], but I wanted a Frost build that goes back to the mainstay of acceptable raid performance with reasonable PvP ability. This is also assuming I use full arcane or a traditional fire/TTW or Frostfire build as my second...I may just say 'screw it' and do a full PvP frost and full PvE frost spec as my chosen two.
At the moment, I've been urging my fellow guild mages [who don't do Frost and never have, to my knowledge] to look into their second spec being a Frost spec to provide the benefits of Frost so we can do things like Sarth + drakes, but it's still hard to convince them when I can barely convince myself.
As a sidenote, I was thinking about how to make Ice Lance worth the Frostbolt casts lost and still provide a DPS boost for preforming Shatter Combos. Seeing both the new glyph [4x multiplier] and Liv's idea of +50% crit damage [against higher level targets, if necessary] as a passive benefit made me think 'wouldn't both be the perfect starting point for making Shatter Combos viable?' Even starting at 4x and an extra +15-25% crit would provide a testable point that can then be raised to where the devs want it because it can make a 3-5% DPS difference over a fight.
This is not the signature you're looking for. You are free to move along.
-Curse you, Raglu!
Generation 28:
The first time you see this, copy it into your signature on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.
You should remember that the current fire raiding build also relies on TTW, so changes to TTW would also change fire DPS, which could prompt changes to the fire tree. However, if the DPS from TTW in the arcane tree are diluted and placed somewhere within the first 15 talent points, frost and fire would have more options to balance flavor and DPS. If TTW is reduced to 6% from 12%, 3% DPS could be added in the first and second tiers each.
For instance, arcane focus is curiously close to precision already, so if it was made "all spells" (for both hit and cost), it would be an interesting option for a deep frost build... I think I would put the other 3% in the next tier, because the third tier already has focus magic.
Arcane loses 3% in this deal (it already gets the +hit), so if arcane is now hurting, some talent deeper in the arcane tree could be improved somehow to compensate (arcane mind, perhaps?).
This doesn't make frost catch up with other specs, but it makes the transition between full frost and frost/arcane a lot smoother.
The fixes for frost lagging behind could come from:
- a simple frostbolt coefficient change (higher) combined with a frostbolt base damage change (lower) along with a selfish benefit from winter's chill
- possibly some DPS benefits tied to talents like frozen core (pushback reduction, pretty please)
- a small buff of brain freeze (20% proc chance instead of 15%)
- a significant PvE buff of deep freeze, making ice lance shatters on boss fights viable and making deep freeze worth casting on raid bosses
Does anyone spec 3/3 improved cone of cold ever? That talent could use a revision too. (Something like: your cone of cold crits increase your spell haste by X/Y/Z for N seconds, making it a good spell in a blizzard rotation and more interesting in PvP too.)
And like a broken record, I'll repeat myself and say that the frostbolt glyph really needs to change.
These are some nice suggestions.
Although I would just like to see the imp coc removed and maybe replaced with improved ice lance, maybe with the same effect you're suggesting. It would make icelance worth casting on fof procs and would basically be a mechanic like slice and dice. It would make frost better and more interesting to play in pve. It should then be put higher up in the tree though since you only learn icelance at level 66
I don't know if this has been suggested before, but I got an idea wrt frostbolt glyph this morning while on my way to work.
- Glyph of frostbolt: X% of the damage caused by your frostbolt is caused over time. Effect stacks Y times.
In effect, the immediate (burst) damage would actually be reduced and the rest of the damage would a stacking dot that you would have interest in keeping rolling. Permafrost would become a slight DPS boost, because it would extend the duration of the dot by up to 3 seconds.
X and Y would have to be tuned so that it's an actual DPS increase in raiding.
It is sort of the reverse of how the fireball glyph currently works.
In PvP, you lose some burst (and part of your damage becomes dispellable/trinketable), but the frostbolt dot would break stealth. A single dispel should remove the whole stack, IMHO. The glyph becomes a matter of flavor for PvP, but would be a decent DPS boost in PvE.
If I understand correctly, Frost needs about a 10% boost in DPS to become competetive in a raid setting. 10% would not get it so it matches Fire or Arcane, but close enough to not be a reason to leave the Frost mage out. This is fair, since the Frost mage has benefits (survivability, AoE control, raid mana) that the other specs do not.
Many also believe that Frost needs a more complex dance. I differ on that opinion, but I'm not particularly opposed to the idea. Ice Lance combos are a very common theme, and it seems likely Blizzard is going that route, as noted by the 4x multiplier glyph seen on the PTR. Right now Ice Lance is a moderate DPM gain, for a notable DPS loss. Glyphed, it remains a moderate DPM gain and becomes approximately a wash for DPS, so Ice Lance shatters are not really useful for DPS, they are instead a mana efficiency issue... very similar to Brain Freeze procs, which are a very slight DPS gain (unless you're specced into Ignite, which makes it moderate DPS gain) but a significant DPM gain.
The problem is that Frost doesn't have mana issues... at all. It's one of the most efficient specs already, so giving us another DPM improvement is pointless. What we need is a DPS/DPM tradeoff. We need an expensive spell that does more damage, not procced shots that let us do the same damage with less mana. Alternately, Frostbolt could be made significantly less mana efficient (with a corresponding increase in damage), and Brain Freeze and Ice Lance become slight DPS losses with significant DPM gains.
The problem is that would mean Frost would get even MORE simple for short fights. Frost would become the 'farmed content' spec, able to do great DPS and AoE trash on short fights (when you overgear the content), but inferior on long fights. That's not particularly advantageous.
Another thing to try is altering Brain Freeze... create a Glyph to have it proc instant-cast, FULL COST Frostfire bolts. This changes the proc from being a DPS wash and a DPM gain to being a DPS gain and a DPM loss. If the gain is too large, then the proc can be a hasted FFB instead... 2 second cast rather than 3.
This alters the dynamic. It gives Frost interesting choices... glyphed Ice Lance remains a DPM gain, and glyphed Brain Freeze becomes a DPS gain. Downside being that I don't think talents can be Glyphed. Sigh.
Point of my post being that whe need a new dynamic. We need a spell (with a cooldown, or from a proc) that increases our DPS at the penalty of lower DPM. More mana efficient choices is not what we need for the tree that excels at mana efficiency. We need a wasteful, sinful, deliciously painful choice in our rotation that gives us a reason to need those mana efficiency talents.
Talents can be glyphed, Glyph of Improved Scorch, is an example of this. I have always thought Brainfreeze should proc Frostfire Bolts, and I would gladly pay full mana to do so.
I have a question though. Is the only reason Ice Lance is a dps loss when cast with Fingers of Frost because it does not proc Fingers? If so, would making the Ice Lance glyph have a chance to proc Fingers of Frost on higher level targets while also under the effect of Fingers, be enough to make it worth while at the regular 3x damage?
I have no clue if they could program such a thing, but ideally it would allow Ice Lance to proc fingers only if it were cast with a Fingers charge, and only on bosses.
I had to switch to my priest for Razuvious and had severe latency issues and LD'd on patchwerk and Grobbulus. Some fights I did rather well, other fights, not so much. I could definitely see a difference at Loatheb, obviously so since a crit increase is not a big deal and frost scales poorly.
03/01/09, 12:40 PM
Similar Threads
