willem11

I dont agree with the fact that amplify would make penetrating cold more lethal. Fact is, you NEED to be healed for a certain amount before the first tick when you get PC in phase 3. The positive benefit amplify has on the healing you receive before the first tick outweights the extra damage that you would receive. So keeping people with penetrating cold alive is easier with amplify on them.

 

dr0nzer

sometimes a healer might not be able to catch you in time for the first tick, which is why frost potions/ healthstones etc are used (even then it's only to protect against the first tick), if you aren't fast enough to catch in some pre-healing within seconds of a friendly with PC with amplify magic active, then that friendly is pretty much dead as the original means of protecting against the first tick becomes obsolete.


edit: grammar/syntax.

 

Darian_TruBlade

It shouldn't be too difficult to get the shield to pop from raid damage as well, granting the mage the 50% damage buff. At the very least, the shield can allow you to remain in a Rune of Power when Molgeim inevitably places a Rune of Death on top of it. With or without Incanter's Absorption that's a DPS increase.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

dr0nzer

I disagree, sometimes it's quite hard to pick the shield up before DPS burns through it, whilst it was easier when Ulduar was first released, now a days if you're in a top guild with players filled with pretty much full ilvl245/ 258 like mine, the shield goes before you even notice, in all honestly unless you're struggling to mount the necessary dps for the encounter it's hardly worth it.

 

Darian_TruBlade

If you have enemy cast bars on you can see it coming. The shield isn't an instant cast, it has a cast time of 1.5 seconds. Also, if you aren't killing Molgeim first then it's not too difficult to tank him near to either Steelbreaker or Brundir (which should arguably be done anyway so that any Runes of Power he throws under himself are in range of your DPS target), close enough for spellsteal.

Obviously none of this is strictly necessary at this point, particularly for a guild like yours, but it's an edge that's available to mages should they so choose.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

Pasture

I can safely say, from experience, that it's near impossible to take that shield with today's level of dps. As an Arcane Mage, stood in a rune, I can crit for upwards of 28k in that fight. Now imagine the entire raid doing that. I've waited for the cast bar many times, spammed my spellsteal button, actually got a successful spellsteal animation but received no shield. At the level of gear we have now if the shield isn't getting burned through before you get chance to spellsteal your dps is probably low.

 

Todomeda

I can say, from my experience, that its not impossible to steal that shield quiet often, not even near. It does not really depends on raidperformance but on my own that day. If i only log on for the raid on an evening i must admit, that i do not steal that shield very often because it's gone before I end the spellsteal.
But if I play some PvP or do some heroic dungeons for warming up before the raid I get a nice feeling for the timing on that evening for things like latency and lags so that i know WHEN I have to start cast spellsteal and this works fine for me.

 

puupi

I have been leveling a mage and I spent some time on the PTR testing all kinds of specs out.
I got an idea of scorchfire-spec, and I tested it out.
The spec 17/54/0: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...GLpJ,Jtb,10747

Atleast on the dummy, I did more dps on this spec than what i did as standard fireball spec, or frostfire spec.
Ignite stacking is so much easier with scorch spamming, living bomb uptime is greater, more Hot Streak procs+more Pyroblasts casted in general and all of the aoe talents that firemages have. Plus faster casts are great for quick target switching!
Has anyone simulated this kind of spec yet? Could it be viable in 3.3?
My rotation was prioritized like this: Hot Streak(Pyroblast) -> Living Bomb -> Scorch
Cheers!

 

Hidden

It won't be viable for the simple reason that Scorch gets way less DPS from talents than FB while also being haste capped far too easily.
A simple talent/glyph comparison:
Scorch:
Glyph 20% Damage
Incineration 6% Crit


Fireball:
Glyph 5% Crit
TtW 12% Damage
Imp. FB 20% Haste
Empowered Fire 15% +SP scaling

As you can easily see, Scorch gets far weaker unique glyph/talent bonuses than FB. The additional Hot Streak procs won't be able to make up for Scorch doing at least ~20% less DPS.