Also, a related issue: I suspect that it is viable to "wait" for a very short time (like 0.1 or 0.2 seconds) if you finish your cast and there is like 0.1 seconds left on your LB timer. Maybe someone here is able to come up with math or a simulation.
The simple math is your personal living bomb DPS / nuke spell DPS. DPSC is irrelevant, and I can't calculate your LB DPS from DPSC without knowing how much haste your example DPSC values were based on.
Pretending there's no haste:
Spell
DPSC
DPS
FFB
4211
4211
LB
8389
1049 (over 12s)
Losing 4211 dps to refresh 1049 dps sooner is only viable if you lose the 4211 dps for 0.249 seconds or less (1049/4211)*. So your exact 0.1-0.2s of waiting question comes out to say yes, it's worth doing, but that's in a perfect world where you don't lose any time (no accidental early refresh and perfect reaction to refresh on the explosion) and have no lag, since you lose the ability to queue the next FFB by sitting and waiting as well.
If you have, say, 11.11% haste (for 1.35s LB and 2.7s FFB), the DPS of FFB is the same there since it's already accounted for in its DPSC, but LB's dps would be 944. That'd make the breakeven 0.224s.
Personally, I don't trust my reaction speed to be picture perfect on refreshing it ON explosion, so I choose never to wait. In fact, even when it explodes after I've queued a new fireball but before (or just as) the previous fireball cast really completes I let my queued fireball go before refreshing. When it comes down to split-second timings...well, even the "worst case" situation of LB exploding as the cast finishes and not refreshing it, your lost damage is about 1.81%* for that particular cycle of the fight, about the same as a 54ms lag in casting each 3s FFB already costs you. Not much to alter your gameplay over unless you really trust your timing.
* If you want a timeline-style "proof" of these calculations, toss me a PM (it makes this post rather long to include).
Whilst Arcane has the potential of 6% hit being available to it from talents, that doesn't mean it is mandatory to take them if your current gear means that you don't need to.
This is not really true aside from maybe 1/3 arcane focus since more then two points in stability is a waste and in the frost tree there is nothing useful to take instead of elemental precision. So at a bare minimum your stuck with 4% hit from talents and I'm not so sure you'd want to lose the 2% reduced mana from taking two points out of focus either.
since more then two points in stability is a waste
The ideal number of points depend on your raid environment, specifically the use of Concentration Aura as was discussed in depth here. What are effectively filler points are just that and their placement is subjective on your needs and requirements. Certainly those filler points can be assigned to Arcane Focus and Precision and I understand your reasoning, my point was simply that they don't have to be.
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<+icesurfer> this is the fucking security industry; if you want ethics, join the Red Cross
You can't refresh Living Bomb early, you get the "A more powerful spell is already active" error message if you try. (And no, this is not because I put it up during a trinket proc that is no longer active.)
Originally Posted by Crowl
If you have to control a robot dinosaur that fires lazers and there's a time when you shouldn't be shooting those lazers then the encounter is clearly flawed beyond hope of fixing.
Tried Vezax HM for the first time last night in 10 man. For you guys using a typical FFB spec for this are you using a standard rotation or dropping either (or both) LB and Pyro from your rotations? We only got 5 clean attempts and it was way to late so we called it. For all but the last attempt I was just going normal and we got to Animus and I still had mana but we wiped before ever getting him to 50%. One attempt I went OOM but it's cause I somehow fell a little bit through the world inside a shadow crash and didn't notice and was casting for a bit at full cost.
We had our 3 caster dps (me, lock, ele shaman) doing about 6.5k dps on average and 2 melee doing around 4, but it may have been skewed a tiny bit low from attempts we just wiped it.
Not sure I am at the point where I will be re-speccing a lot just for hard modes. We pretty much only try hard modes in 10's because we have a strong 15 player or so pool and sometimes have spotty attendance for 25's and don't always get the best group going. However if FFB just won't cut it given our Raid DPS I might re-spec.
Not sure I am at the point where I will be re-speccing a lot just for hard modes. We pretty much only try hard modes in 10's because we have a strong 15 player or so pool and sometimes have spotty attendance for 25's and don't always get the best group going. However if FFB just won't cut it given our Raid DPS I might re-spec.
If you do decide to respec for the fight, as I did, I would recommend the frost spec I currently have as my secondary. Water Elemental gives you a lot of damage for a low mana cost, Brain Freeze is pure, free damage and Frostbolt spam is extremely mana-friendly. As always, use your Invis at as close to 75% as you can and it's not a terrible idea to have Mirror Images available for the Animus.
We used a strategy where all of our ranged stand on top of each other and only really dps in Shadow Crashes. As a result, on our successful kill, I did about 8500 dps, according to Recount.
Edit: we kind of decided last-second that we would be attempting Vezax hard and I ported and set this spec up under rushed conditions. In retrospect, I would drop 1/2 from Magic Absorption and the 1 point in Frozen Core in favor of 2 points in Ice Floes. More Icy Veins ftw.
Edit: we kind of decided last-second that we would be attempting Vezax hard and I ported and set this spec up under rushed conditions. In retrospect, I would drop 1/2 from Magic Absorption and the 1 point in Frozen Core in favor of 2 points in Ice Floes. More Icy Veins ftw.
In my experience ice floes isn't that great a talent for that fight. I generally use IV, MI, WE in the first shadow crash I get since they will be up again for animus phase. During animus I usually MI > WE > IV > Coldsnap > IV > WE; In 10-man by the time you burn your cooldowns the animus should be dead, so ice floes doesn't really provide any additional dps for when you need it most.
On Vezax (hardmode or not), you are unlikely to be getting benefit from Icy Veins for your dps. I know that without any additional haste buffs my frostbolt is at .99sec cast time. That means I am clipping the impassable 1sec GCD.
Edit: we kind of decided last-second that we would be attempting Vezax hard and I ported and set this spec up under rushed conditions. In retrospect, I would drop 1/2 from Magic Absorption and the 1 point in Frozen Core in favor of 2 points in Ice Floes. More Icy Veins ftw.
The damage during Animus is partially resistable so I wouldn't suggest dropping MA. I didn't take any shadow crashes this week and with shadow prot + MA I resisted 33% of the shadow damage on the fight. Our warlock only resisted 20%.
Tried Vezax HM for the first time last night in 10 man. For you guys using a typical FFB spec for this are you using a standard rotation or dropping either (or both) LB and Pyro from your rotations? We only got 5 clean attempts and it was way to late so we called it. For all but the last attempt I was just going normal and we got to Animus and I still had mana but we wiped before ever getting him to 50%. One attempt I went OOM but it's cause I somehow fell a little bit through the world inside a shadow crash and didn't notice and was casting for a bit at full cost.
We had our 3 caster dps (me, lock, ele shaman) doing about 6.5k dps on average and 2 melee doing around 4, but it may have been skewed a tiny bit low from attempts we just wiped it.
Not sure I am at the point where I will be re-speccing a lot just for hard modes. We pretty much only try hard modes in 10's because we have a strong 15 player or so pool and sometimes have spotty attendance for 25's and don't always get the best group going. However if FFB just won't cut it given our Raid DPS I might re-spec.
Personally I run my usual FFB spec on both 10 and 25 vezax hard mode. Pure FFB spam, as underwhelming as that sounds, is the way to go. If you feel like you may have extra mana towards the end, try and cast one hs-pyro whenever the pyro dot is down. Or if you want to put your entire focus on animus then just FFB spam for all the fight, then go all out on animus / back to ffb afterwards. The real problem with going all out is threat on animus, and doing ffb spam kind of alleviates the issue.
<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
I have done Vezax Fire/Arc, Frost TTW and FFB. FFB is best although I could see frost being used for hard mode if your raid dps is a bit low for mana reasons. (Haven't done heroic hard mode yet.)
Mirror Images: Pardon me if this is somewhere else. For Vezax I try to MI as a crash is headed my way, knocking the images back and often they will move back into range and die to a second crash especially if you are using a grouping up method. Once the add is up on hard mode increased shadow damage usually one shots them from the increased damage debuff.
I have been meaning to search through the threads here for more specific information, but if all your images die you lose a huge amount of your threat, not as sure about the lose per image if one or two are remaining.
Mirror Images: Pardon me if this is somewhere else. For Vezax I try to MI as a crash is headed my way, knocking the images back and often they will move back into range and die to a second crash especially if you are using a grouping up method. Once the add is up on hard mode increased shadow damage usually one shots them from the increased damage debuff.
I have been meaning to search through the threads here for more specific information, but if all your images die you lose a huge amount of your threat, not as sure about the lose per image if one or two are remaining.
As the very first post in this thread mentions, your images don't matter. They can die .2 seconds after you summon them and you still have the same threat effect as if they last all 30 seconds, the only thing you miss out on is their very weak damage.
Again, them dying does nothing to the threat portion of the skill, you get your 30 seconds of negative threat so summon when you need them.
Personally I run my usual FFB spec on both 10 and 25 vezax hard mode. Pure FFB spam, as underwhelming as that sounds, is the way to go. If you feel like you may have extra mana towards the end, try and cast one hs-pyro whenever the pyro dot is down. Or if you want to put your entire focus on animus then just FFB spam for all the fight, then go all out on animus / back to ffb afterwards. The real problem with going all out is threat on animus, and doing ffb spam kind of alleviates the issue.
Maybe I'll try it this week. Much of the attraction of frost for me was survivability, since DPS wasn't ever a huge issue on the fight for us.
When we were learning the Ice Barrier was a nice crutch. FFb not having that or MA seems like a lot of extra damage, but it may be fine now that the fight is easy for us. (sort of like how arcane was a nice crutch while learning Firefighter.)
As the very first post in this thread mentions, your images don't matter. They can die .2 seconds after you summon them and you still have the same threat effect as if they last all 30 seconds, the only thing you miss out on is their very weak damage.
Again, them dying does nothing to the threat portion of the skill, you get your 30 seconds of negative threat so summon when you need them.
I know the threat reduction still works, but what I am questioning is whether the images being killed negates the return of threat that occurs normally when they time out.
I know the threat reduction still works, but what I am questioning is whether the images being killed negates the return of threat that occurs normally when they time out.
The return of threat does still occur from experience, and you still build up the threat that you normally do during that 30 seconds. The only real difference is a minor dps increase (and thereby a minor threat decrease) when the threat does return due to the images not attacking anymore (due to being dead).
Logic would say if you aren't going to use the 'conjured items' cooldown for mana gems the only reason not to use flame caps would be the need to use a healthstone.
I personally need to use the cooldown for mana gems to sustain my mana pool, although I haven't actually raided in a good synergistic group in quite a while (school is forcing a 25man sabbatical and I have been helping a secondary 10man which has no caster synergies).
If you no longer have 2p t7 and do not need the mana gems is it worth it to use flame caps?
This is probably only viable as frostfire, since both arcane and fire/ttw are very reliant on using mana gems to keep from running oom. For the two fights you may go to as frost (freya hard and general hard) you are better off using a healthstone.
Anyone doing freya25 hard without a frost mage in the raid ?
Makes me feel a bit useless in terms of damage so would rather avoid it (plus respecing for this one fight is no fun).
Anyone doing freya25 hard without a frost mage in the raid ?
Makes me feel a bit useless in terms of damage so would rather avoid it (plus respecing for this one fight is no fun).
I'm sure people are doing it now, especially those that have had it on farm for a while.
There are a lot of other ways to deal with the lashers other than frost nova / water ele frost nova, that's just one of the more obvious methods that people choose to use, plus mages are somewhat low on hp compared to other classes and glyphed ice-barrier does seem very appealing for Freya hard in that respect. Rest assured though, you will have no trouble living without it as long as you play correctly (use your healthstone, health pot, save iceblock for a bad combo when you have NF and an inc ground tremor for example, etc), and get heals.
For my guild, while learning it, having that Frost Mage for the max-slow blizz and ranged frost nova was very valuable. I went FFB with 3/3 perma and 3/3 imp blizz for backup aoe.
I'm sure people are doing it now, especially those that have had it on farm for a while.
There are a lot of other ways to deal with the lashers other than frost nova / water ele frost nova, that's just one of the more obvious methods that people choose to use, plus mages are somewhat low on hp compared to other classes and glyphed ice-barrier does seem very appealing for Freya hard in that respect. Rest assured though, you will have no trouble living without it as long as you play correctly (use your healthstone, health pot, save iceblock for a bad combo when you have NF and an inc ground tremor for example, etc), and get heals.
For my guild, while learning it, having that Frost Mage for the max-slow blizz and ranged frost nova was very valuable. I went FFB with 3/3 perma and 3/3 imp blizz for backup aoe.
Yeah, this. Once your guild gets better at the lashers phase, the only thing Frost is really providing is the perma-snare on the Snaplasher, which can be easily replicated by an FFB mage. I've been the token Frost mage for my guild on Freya, but it seems less and less needed as you start farming it.
I will say this though: if you're still learning Freya+3, yes, make sure you bring a Frost mage. Freya is a lot less about raw damage output and more about control and execution. The snares/pet novas/stuns can be hugely helpful, and don't overlook that with MA + glyphed Ice Barrier, you'll be taking significantly less damage than just about anyone else.
Frost grenades work just fine. I prefer Frost for the survivability however as DPS really doesn't matter that much. (You usually will be killing waves with time to waste anyways and once waves are down, the fight is over) Being able to IB NF or roots twice is also pretty nice.
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All noncrit DoTs (not Ignite) generate Combustion charges (Bug?)
I have some questions in theory about Arcane Blast. Seems in the last couple of weeks, I have noticed an increased cast time on my Arcane Blast rotation, it used to be I could cast 3 Arcane Blasts in 6.75 sec.
In the last week, I have noticed a significant increase in cast time and a significant drop off in crits associated with Arcane Blast and Arcane Barrage respectively.
If anyone has any insight on this matter, I would appreciate any suggestions or insight into this matter, due to the fact that no major gear changes have been made that would substantially decrease my overall dps by 800 points. The only change I have seen so far is that 3 Arcane Blasts take me a total of 9 sec. to cast rather then 6.75 sec before.
Your best bet is probably getting all the players to stack up close to freya for the small lashers.
Then aoe until 20% or so, and call a spread and single dps each on of them.
We always do it that way, without any major CC abilities.
Your best bet is probably getting all the players to stack up close to freya for the small lashers.
Then aoe until 20% or so, and call a spread and single dps each on of them.
We always do it that way, without any major CC abilities.
They are talking about hard mode, where the detonating lashers detonte for significantly more (8-9k ish). Although not enough to outright kill people, due to the massive amount of raid damage going on, it is much better to get them snared and kill them at range.
06/07/09, 12:03 PM
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