=(

I'm the only mage currently in my guild that raids. And that only occasionally, because my DK does better DPS.



Is arcane in 3.08 still competitive even without WC/Imp Scorch?

Keep in mind that once dual specs hit, many mages that prefer Arcane will likely pick up a non-Arcane spec as well, whether that's Fire/Frostfire for an alternative raid spec, or deep Frost for a better PvP spec. So guilds in this situation could simply have a mage respec for the night to keep Imp. Scorch/WC up. I know it's not great design to pigeonhole a particular class into taking a particular talent just for the sake of a debuff, but a dual-spec rotation amongst the mages could make the situation a little more bearable.

Don't forget that Ulduar will (presumably) have longer fights, not the 2-3 minute Naxx zergs we see currently. Molten Fury then won't be as easily brushed off, when bosses are under 35% hp for a significantly longer period. If there is a Kil'jaeden equivilant boss (in terms of hp for TBC gear) its more than 'nice' to have.

MolteFury basically reads as " I do 2% more damage for every point i spec into this one" - and on top of that you do that extra bit of damage when it really matters (enrage at low % of a bosses life).

I'd rather give up a point in Fire Power then in Molten Fury.

Nevertheless both wouldn't be that smart if you go into fire.

Besides, i can not see the point why you would have to free some points in Molten Fury, you can basically get everything from fire with 51' - even got one joker in WiF there.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000

I myself have followed the theorycrafting and discussion on the upcoming changes to the arcane tree with great interest. But there was one thing that always struck me as problematic: everyone seems to make up some calculations on his own, or using some rawr simulation while not actually providing any information on how they designed the encounter.

To clarify this for myself and for others, who might not have considered the whole picture, while undergoing their calculations I decided to summ up a bit of facts and information as well as my interpretations on mechanics.

I noticed, that a lot of people have statements like "12% more damage" or "the critrating I lose while trying to reach the hitcap makes up for the damage I might possibly gain". This shows in my opinion, that there is indeed need for a summary, because missinformation like that is resulting from someone only looking at the picture from one angle.

Let me start with summarizing the damage-enhancing changes to the fireball-spell in comparison to the Frostfirebolt.

1. Glyphs:

1.1 What many people seem to ignore is the fact, that the only thing changing with the glyphs we will use is at the same time the thing that makes up for the lost hitrating due to the lack of Precision in the 18/53/0 specc : We will use the Fireball Glyph, which will increase the critchance of the Fireball spell by 5%, opposing the 2% and 2% more base-damage to the FFB-spell of the Frostfirebolt-glyph.

Note: Fireball will have a 3% higher critchance than FFB due to the different Glyph.

2. Talents:

2.1 The FB and FFB share the same firetalents when it comes to DPS, although it should be noted, that the 18/53/0 build compromises the effective range of our firespells and one other talentpoint (where that would be is up to personal preference) in favor of 5/5 improved FB.

2.2 The really interesting differences start at "Spell impact" vs. "Piercing Ice". If I am not mistaken about the mechanics of these talents, they will actually increase the damage of FB and FFB by 6%. So whatever specc you should decide to use, your main-nuke will actually have its damage increased by 6%. Seeing how fireball does more base-damage,as well, as the better scaling with SP, while still having the same casttime, "Spell Impact" will give more DPS.

2.3 The next important talent that is going to be different is "Precision". We will have to make up for the 3% hitchance that we lose by speccing for 18/53/0 this is where people say "See? here it boils down to the same anyways", but as we will see, this is not true at all. If we assume, that we have to replace 3% hitchance, we will have to get about 79 hitrating more than before, because 1% hitchance is 26,23 hitrating.
If we now assume that we have to replace 79 critrating with 79 hitrating, that would only lower our critchance by 1.71%, due to the fact that 1% critchance equals a critical strike rating of 45,91.

Note: Fireball does by now still have a 1.29% higher critchance (3%-1.71%) than FFB, while having the same hitchance. This doesn't even consider the fact that you might have been slightly overcapped before anyways. As well as it has a higher Base-damage.

2.4 Eventhough "Icy veins" is a 20% damage boost on the average bossfight for about 40 seconds, it would indeed require a simulation, to define its actual boost on a certain fight, so I will leave it aside for now

2.5 The lack of "Frost channeling" hurts the mana-effectivity a lot, considering the higher base-manacost of fireball. "Arcane Concentration" on the other hand will make every 10th fireball free, so we have a little bit of mitigation there, as well as the fact, that no other spell in the FFB rotation actually benefits from "Frost Channeling", while every spell in the FB rotation does from "Arcane concentration". Bottom line is, that the mana-consumption of the FB specc won't be as inferior as predicted at all.

Note: The mana-cost of FFB is only 72% of the FB spell. 80% when considering clearcasts. Its not that bad after all though

2.6 "Focus Magic" Due to the huge benefit firemages get from crits it would be quite usual if there were 2 mages in a raid, that they'd buff each other with "Focus Magic". Considering the huge raid-buffed critchance of any mage, this would result in a nearly permanent 6% increased critchance.

Note: The FB-mage has by now 7.29%, or slightly higher, critchance more than a FFB mage to crit with his main nuke. This has direct effect on the DPS, along with indirectly by triggering "Hot Streak" more often than before.

2.7 The crit multipliers of FFB and FB are different (3,346 and 2.583 after the t7 setbonus and chaotic Meta) so in order for them to do the same crit damage FB needs to have round about 1.295 times the damage before the crit than FFB does. It does, due to "Torment the Weak" and the inferior SP-scaling of FFB up to a SP of 2056

f1(x)=(780+x*1.0071)*(1.1+0.02)*1.06*1.03= 953.8+1.23*x

780 is the base-damage of FFB and 1.06 along with 1.1 resemble "firepower" and "Piercing Ice" x is your SP and 1.0071 is the SP-coefficient for FFB the 1.03 "Playing with Fire" 0.02 is the FFB Glyph This gives a simplified calculation on how much damage FFB does at a certain amount of SP.

f2(x)=(1010+x*1.15)*(1.1+.06)*1.12*1.03= 1351.56+1.54*x

Same here, though 1.15 is the FB SP-coefficient and 1.12 is Ttw. This Is the damage for fireball.

You will notice, that up to a given amount of 2056 of SP f2(x) divided by f1(x) will never be as low as 1.295. So if I calculated the damage according to the actual game-mechanics, fireball with the enhancement of Ttw will always hit and as long as you have less than 2056 SP also crit higher than FFB. If you manage to go over 2056 SP your FFB will crit for more damage than the FB.


Summary:

-FB-specc's main nuke has a slightly higher critchance increase over FFB than 7.29%
-FB-specc's main nuke has a higher hitdamage, and competitive critdamage
-FB specc will be more mana consuming than FFB, but in a way, that shouldn't concern any high-end mage
-We have to keep in mind that we cannot only look at the main nuke to determine the total DPS-increase of the firespecc, but we can very well say, that the main nuke does far more DPS
-FB-specc's DPS-curve won't be as spiky as FFB-specc's, because of the lower dicrepancy between base-damage and crit-damage
-We lose Icy veins

*edit* horrible typos (I'm just not english )
*edit* Thanks to Manly for pointing out my flaweed calculation on The FFB Glyph and The main nukes, it should be ok now, and the basic statement hasn't changed.

There are so many mistakes in the above posts I won't dare try and point them all out. If you want the proper calculations, check the first post on http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t37364-f...e_bolt_thread/ . Theres a good reason I specifically updated the first post, its precisely to avoid people attempting to do TC to do the wrong calculations.

Haven't seen this mentioned yet, so: Just tested Blizzard with 2/2 Fingers of Frost, 3/3 Improved Blizzard, and 0/3 Frostbite on the PTR, and did successfully get FoF procs. That one point in Frostbite can now safely be dropped from PvE builds without sacrificing Blizzard DPS.

I'm surprised that they added a ground animation in that style for Blizzard... I would have thought they would have gone for something more thematic, similar to the Frost Trap animation.

Now, have they updated the Flamestrike animation? I know it's a petty consideration for a terrible spell that needs a wholesale redesign, but the Flamestrike animation strikes me as one of the worst effects in the entire game (along with Frostbolt and the casting animations).

Confirmed from a few weeks ago (http://elitistjerks.com/1027992-post391.html ):

I like the new animation for Blizzard. Hopefully it will make it easier for tanks to see the aoe-zone and keep mobs in the radius. Flamestrike on the other hand badly needs some love, in practically every way.

That's what happens when I search the thread for "Fingers"!

I've updated my list of Frost fixes/changes on my site to reflect this.

I actually made an intellect stick to swap after they changed it to 60% max mana *cough*

Mana is trivial right now. But imaging you lose the mana from 2T7, have 7 minute fights and AoE duties, then mana is likely going to be a totally different game.


That's what you get for not checking the first page on http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t30655-w..._0_8_part_two/ !

Seeing that you're back and kicking around on the PTR:
Can you spam Blizzard onto Dr. Boom and his cronies with 2/2 FoF, 3/3 ImpBlizz, 0/3 Frostbite?
I've heard that it won't proc FoF on targets that can't be slowed, which would be a bummer for Raid AoE.
Was only 1 report from someone spamming Blizzard onto Arazzius the Cruel, so I would love a confirmation or negation from another tester on another target on it before I add it to buggy game mechanics.

I have been scratching my head trying to be certain if the changes coming in 3.0.8 will indeed place a 18/51/0 +2 fireball build at higher DPS than 0/53/18 frostfire build for single target DPS. Using the current version of RAWR it clearly shows that at near optimal gearing from current content that fireball pulls ahead by an average of 2.2% in single target DPS if both specs are receiving Focus magic from another mage in the raid. However Roywyn posted in the RAWR.Mage thread, that it appears that Rune of Razorice is not being calculated.

If we apply an additional 5% damage to the total damage done by FFB, which is approximately a 3% DPS increase having about 65% of total damage done by FFB and subsequent ignite damage, we end up with Frostfire pulling ahead by a very small margin, about 20-30 DPS over Fireball.

I am curious if anyone has examined this closely and found similar results.

I had a dagger and off-hand "of Intellect," with the dagger enchanted with Int. Worked well, too!

What I did was very diligently open the "Search this thread" box and search on the word "fingers." Sadly, it didn't occur to me to search on "FoF" :P

I'll take a look tonight.

My results have always suggested that fb spec is roughly the same as ffb spec (assuming no rune of razorice). There is a minor difference in terms of 'one specs has IV, the other one has FM', which means ffb will win on short fights but lose on longer ones. However, one thing that was clear to me is that the extra 3% crit given to the other player is the main benefit from the spec. That part is like extraneous damage. In other words, fb = ffb spec, but fb gains a free 3% crit to another raid player, in exchange for poorer dpm. 3% more crit is definitely not a trivial amount, particularly given hot streak.

Now, would that 3% extra crit be better to another fb mage or to a ffb mage?

Ignoring whether or not Rune of Razorice is sound design, one thing to consider is that its use is going to be more prevalent with DK dual-wield specs coming into play*. For both DW DPS and tank specs, the preferred OH enchant is Razorice. It's basically a fixture of our 25-mans now, and I think at least for the near future, that isn't likely to change. Something further to think about when looking at FB v FFB.

* Our DPS DK tells me DW specs are still being tweaked, but at this point it seems likely that the mixed frost/unholy DW spec is going to remain top DPS for them, even after 3.0.8.

[e] grammars

While you are at it can you check if Ice Armor can proc FoF without at least 1 point in Frostbite to on the PTR? It can't on live realms.

I was unable to log into the PTR last night. Or rather, I was able to authenticate, but there were no servers to connect to.

Manly, I'd be really interested to know how you came up with such similar DPS results for the two specs, because I can't seem to duplicate them.

In my own tests, Rawr has been indicating a ~400 DPS lead for 18/53/0 fireball over 0/53/18 frostfire (~6200 vs. ~5800) assuming optimal gear and a 5-minute fight for both specs. Granted, those results exclude Rune of Razorice (Rawr badly needs an update to support Frost Vulnerability if we're to use it for spec comparisons post-3.0.8), but even if FFB were to account for 100% of frostfire's DPS (in other words, pure FFB spam), it would only achieve ~4400 DPS, so at most, Frost Vulnerability could only cut that 400 DPS lead in roughly half. Furthermore, shortening the simulated fight duration didn't shift the results much. With a 3-minute fight duration, the results were ~6390 vs. ~6030, still a gap of over 350 DPS.

In short, I'm yet to find a single-target scenario (short of not having a slow effect) where FFB can beat or even match FB.

Manly might be calculating based off a much shorter then 5 minute fight. Currently, there's really no fight that is taking any guild that's remotely well geared 5 minutes worth of DPS'ing. 3.5-4 is more likely. I saw a PTR EJ Patchwerk WWS that was I think 2 min 30 seconds.

Thats probably because you're counting FM twice. The results are close when you only count one FM. The 'major gain' is that someone else gains 3% crit, which I intentionally do not model as my own crit. If you did though, then yes you would get 400 more dps. My point is mostly that most of the extra dps comes from that extra 3% crit.