Amp Magic is a wash. You dont need to increase the healing done by totems or VE, you should be getting enough healing to survive the swarm. Amp magic will up healing but also PC.
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.
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.
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.
While spellstealing Molgeim's shield won't make or break the fight, it does increase your damage output if specced into Incanter's Absorption. As long as you're not spending seconds trying to spellsteal it you'll see a net gain in damage output. On top of that you'll reduce the need for healing on both you and the tank, as Molgeim won't get his 50% damage increase, which helps out your healers.
The only situation where it would be a DPS loss to interrupt your rotation and try and spellsteal, would be if you're consistently unsure if you can spellsteal the shield before the DPS burns through it. That's something you need to look at at a per-raid basis however.
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.
Last edited by Montegomery : 11/10/09 at 1:30 PM.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What I lack in intelligence I make up for in verbosity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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
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.
I checked up with rawr on trinkets and it's telling me that the intellect trinket that you can buy for badges is the 3rd best trinket for arcane mages, just leaving the normal and hm anub trinkets ahead. Does anyone else Get this on rawr that can confirm it?
I checked up with rawr on trinkets and it's telling me that the intellect trinket that you can buy for badges is the 3rd best trinket for arcane mages, just leaving the normal and hm anub trinkets ahead. Does anyone else Get this on rawr that can confirm it?
I have that same result myself for quite a while now. The additional mana plus the on use +SP is great for sustaining rotations as well as burst phases.
Keep in mind that Rawr will show different items as BiS, or in your case 3rd BiS depending on what all of your other gear is and depending on the fight settings and buffs you are using. As an example I can say that as I have geared up as arcane from the last patch to now, from minimal ToC gear to close to all BiS now, the 3rd BiS trinket behind both Reigns has changed multiple times.
If you are low on intellect then the badge intellect trinket definitely may be better than others. If you are low on crit but really high on SP or Haste then Flare might look the best. If you were really low on haste then Abyssal Rune might look the best. Especially for trinkets (since there are usually just one, at most two raw stats) the best available will depend on all of your other stats.
So there is alot of info to wade through and i'm struggling to get an answer from reading through threads..
I'm specced arcane atm and doing dps that i'm quite happy with.
However, love fire. Love the rotation. Love the spec. Finally at a stage where I have the gear available to me to get the 16% hit (draenei) from gear if i go buy the hit trimph trinket.
However, fireball-ttw thread has dissapeared completely from the mage mechanics forum, does this mean it's really unpopular and no good now? I'd like to be the only mage in my guild who can apply the scorch debuff to the boss. And i'd still get FM.
Assuming it is still good to go, is using this trinket an acceptable way of gaining that hit, or am I stunting my dps?
So there is alot of info to wade through and i'm struggling to get an answer from reading through threads..
I'm specced arcane atm and doing dps that i'm quite happy with.
However, love fire. Love the rotation. Love the spec. Finally at a stage where I have the gear available to me to get the 16% hit (draenei) from gear if i go buy the hit trimph trinket.
However, fireball-ttw thread has dissapeared completely from the mage mechanics forum, does this mean it's really unpopular and no good now? I'd like to be the only mage in my guild who can apply the scorch debuff to the boss. And i'd still get FM.
Assuming it is still good to go, is using this trinket an acceptable way of gaining that hit, or am I stunting my dps?
Not sure where the thread has gone but you shouldn't take that as a reflection of the capabilities of TTW Fire. It's a very viable spec still, and while slightly behind Arcane you're not going to be gimping the dps of your raid by speccing it. With the 3.3 changes meaning each Scorch applies the full 5% crit debuff without the need for a Scorch glyph TTW Fire will be in a slightly better position.
The badges hit trinket isn't great, and generally picking up that much hit on a trinket (unless it has a great proc) isn't a great idea. That said it will do until you can pick up the hit on gear instead. Don't forget however, if you have a shadowpriest or boomkin in the raid with you that they provide 3% hit, lowering the hit requirements you need from gear.
Ignite: Now correctly benefits from the dispel resistance granted by the Arcane Subtlety talent. In addition, this talent will now properly include in its damage calculation any damage of the initial fire critical strike that was absorbed.
So Ignite bug fixed? Or should I hold on constructing that shrine to Blizzard?
So Ignite bug fixed? Or should I hold on constructing that shrine to Blizzard?
If they took a look at ignite and tweaked it considerably then it's possible. If they just fixed the two issues mentioned then the old problems remain. Both those fixes seem to be strictly pvp oriented.
I have Hot Streak notify me in SCT Custom Events with an "electrocution" sound so I don't have to see the icon or text to cast it. I also use an addon Burnout that tracks it. Neither are working and I have looked in my combat logs and notice that Hotstreak isn't registering in them. Before the patch Tuesday, all was fine. I scorched until I got two in a row. Hotstreak registers in SCT with a message but it isn't in the combat log.
Has anyone else had this problem?
Does anyone know how to fix this problem or any suggestions?
I have no way of copying my combat log, otherwise I would.
Currently neither Hot Streak nor Missile Barrage are being reported in the combat log so all the addons that tracked the procs based on the combat log parses are currently broken. You can, however, still track it based on the actual buff gained by the player using a buff tracking addon such as Elk Buff Bars or Power Auras Classic.
I think we need to report it as a bug. In the recent fixes I think they mentioned something about Eclipse procs not showing up in the combat log as well. Either that or the wording on the buff in the combat log was changed. At work can't really check logs from here to see.
Since the buffs for hotstreak and Mbar still show up as buffs using an addon such as power auras or elkanos buff bars you can create a custom event to show the proc. The other addons use combat log information to produce the notification's and since the buffs have been removed from the combat log they will no longer work unless the addons are reqorked ti oncorperate buff tracking for the specific procs.
I personally used elkanos buffbar to correct the issue. Use the trench bar and in its setting enable filtering and set it to buffs. In the buff list (if Mbar is not there go cast ab till you get mbar and it will show up the list only shows buffs that you have had since you loged in) and select Mbar. Now place the bar wherever you like and Tada you now have a visual que when the proc goes off.
I also used this option to add "Black Magic" procs so that I can Min/Max the usefullness of it's up time and not "over haste" on CD dumps.
I've been playing around with rawr to solve the "how to get from T9(,x) to T10(,x) seamlessly?" issue (with a casual, but active raiding background).
As most arcane mages seem to wear 4pcT9,x + non-set robe and given the changed upgrade process, I think getting the [Bloodmage Robe] for 95 emblems of frost might be a reasonable first step. The next emblems (60) could be spent on [Bloodmage Shoulderpads] -- this will most likely include enough raid-time for a reasonable chance to obtain upgrade tokens.
I have no idea on how to move on from there, but going for "robe first, shoulderpads next" seems to make sense.
Any thoughts so far?
11/09/09, 2:01 PM
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