I should have pointed this out when I first described that solution: the reason I suggest it is that, while more complex than Manly's solution, it has the advantage of maintaining the freedom to choose which spell you follow up with. It prevents the latency exploitation, but it doesn't lock you into Missiles or Barrage, so you can select your boosted spell to suit the circumstance. And the Arcane Potency fix pretty well establishes a proof of concept for this type of fix, so it shouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.


You can take it as read that Arcane's damage output should be rebalanced as required to compensate for the bug fix.

While I do think that this bug "should" be fixed I find it very unlikely that it will be fixed. The arguments that people have made for fixing the bug are quite reasonable, from a game play standpoint.

However, from a business standpoint, why would I want to fix soemthing that's jsut going to cause me to have to fix something else. The Blaster Combo, while a bug, does provide a benefit in that it is bringing Arcane up to par with other specs. That's something I think both the player community and Blizzard have stated that they want. So to fix the blaster combo only to then have to retune arcane or the other mage specs to once again obtain those desired results does not make a lot of sense business wise. It's much more likely that those resources will be put to fixing other bugs that are not giving them what they want.

For this reason, bug or not, I intend to plan on using bugs like the blaster combo to thier fullest. If a fix comes out, so be it and I'll adjust, but sicne I feel that a fix is going to be a long time coming, if at all, I think it's best to work with what we have.

Arcane is parsing about 300 dps over fire specs. This is slightly overtuned for a tree whose relevant utility is superior in almost every way (better aoe, mobility, burst, threat).

Frost is about 100 dps behind fire. This is acceptable for a higher utility tree, this is about where arcane should be. Also a frost mage is more than worth it considering their mana regen and slight boost to other mage's dps if they keep up winter's chill.

Kel'sjet stop posting garbage, you say way too many things that are just flat stupidly fucking wrong.

[e] Also yes magegraf has been updated to all changes including the blast combo.

Do we actually have Frost parses at this point, or is that calculated? 100 DPS is identical for all intents and purposes when parses are in the 6000 range, I'm just curious whether it's really working out in practice. If it is, that's one more thing I can cross off my "suggested Frost changes" list, and a big one at that.

Ah Vontre just do like I did and put him on the ignore list.

The debuff actually used to be cleansable way back when TBC first launched. It was extremely annoying and eventually patched, hopefully this was just a similar oversight.

They said it would be changed to a buff and could be offensively dispelled.

Gonna have to stop you right there and point out that Arcane aoe is probably not better. And I'd be very surprised if Arcane Explosion calculates as better dps than Flamestrike -> Blizzard as FFB... I seriously doubt it is. I wasn't able to produce competitive aoe on anything in Naxx, my trash dps sucked and I got myself killed more than once trying to AE when I shouldn't have.

Regardless, having to run in and stand near mobs(half of which cleave... cool) to aoe SUCKS SO INCREDIBLY HARD now that I'm used to Blizzard I can't even express how awful this is. Going back to Arcane Explosion is NOT better aoe. It's much, much worse. Targeting a circle where you want to kill things is much, much less awkward than the crap that AE is.

I won't ever play Arcane like this because, unlike Manly, I strongly disagree that there's anything wrong with the Arcane shatter. Rather, regardless of whether it's a bug or not, I think it's good gameplay and should stay in because it's fun. Not everything needs to be "intended", a large variety of mechanics in the current game were never originally intended. Just because something is emergent, doesn't make it bad. It is far better for dps to require good timing than to be obtainable with a straightforward, easily repeatable rotation. I would rather play a spec that rewards you for good timing than one that doesn't.

If the dps is too high and it needs a nerf that's absolutely fine, but the nerf shouldn't be fixing a fun timing mechanic that's an enjoyable, skillful part of our dps regardless of whether it was originally intended or not.

If they do fix it and thereby nerf the dps, I'll just stop playing Arcane and go back to FFB. It has better AoE and doesn't require dumb contorted specs to get Scorch, anyway.

I actually completely agree. A page or so ago I actually made this point in my "first impressions with the new arcane post".

However I did not want to anger the mighty Vontre further. He has friends in high places. Ones that carry bansticks. So I just moved on.
There is numerous trash (especially in Military quarter and construct quarter) where melee range AoE is just not an option. I would think that even if in raw numerical dmg output, AE edges out more than a LB>Flamestrike>Blizzard combo from a frostfire mage, the sheer unsuitability of melee ranged AoEs will definitely not place AOE in the Arcane utility bucket.

For 57/3/11 (with 2 points in ice shards), Rawr seems to think that Blizzard spam is better dps than Arcane Explosion spam. The only talent that affects AE and not Blizzard is Spell Impact for 6% extra damage vs. Blizzard's extra crit damage.

I just tested trying to chain a couple of AM's together to get something like a 6 or 7-hit AM (de)buff and the debuff was canceled by the time the last tick of the first AM (whenever you clipped it) completed. I make no assumptions and leave this to those who understand the mechanics as they were intended, but it would seem that whatever the intent of the AB-combo "anomaly" it seems to be isolated to an instant cast immediately after the AM (you can include AE in this, although, that's obviously not a real-world scenario).

By the way, a PoM AB receives the debuff after AM in the combo but does not keep the AB buff up.

Yeah I kinda presumed blizzard spam thar. You can very easily pick up the same ice talents as an FFB build and still outdamage it in single target, and then outdo the blizzard damage too thanks to arcane modifiers and spell power. I was more thinking of boss AoE, however, which is a bit more relevant. Arcane Power is absolutely absurd for burning through a set of adds quickly.

Flamestrike is efficient if it crits. Instant fire spells are handy if you're in a spot for PBAoE. I think it could go either way, depending on situation and what build you use.

If you're talking about chain pulling trash, 2 minute evocation is really hard to argue with.

As you and others have mentioned below, Arcane Blizzard should be considerably stronger than Fire Blizzard (though not as strong as Frost Blizzard).

Of course the other situation is mobile AOE. Doesn't come up very often, of course, but if you're running a gauntlet that requires AOE on the move, Arcane-spec AE spam will be better than Fire or Frost AE spam.

Basically, the way I see it, Fire is the baseline. It has few advantages; it has a free DPS boost at the end of a fight, but we generally calculate that into the average and it usually isn't terribly important. It has high burst AOE damage, but when do we ever care about that? Its efficiency has plummeted since TBC, and it has 10% threat reduction, no more. So when trying to decide where each spec "should" be in the scheme of damage, we want to say, "does this spec have more non-DPS advantages than Fire?" If yes, it should be placing a little below Fire -- not far below, because DPS carries much more weight than anything else.

Regardless of the AOE situation, it's pretty much impossible to argue that Arcane, Frostfire, and Frost don't have some non-DPS advantages over Fire. It's easy to argue about where they stand in this regard relative to each other, but they're all ahead of Fire. For any of them to be above Fire except in specific situations that play to those advantages -- mobile fights, threat-sensitive fights, fights with AOE'd adds, fights with mana burns, whatever -- is not optimal.

No, but behavior in direct contradiction to tooltips is bad. It's bad because it confuses players, it results in erratic performance, it can suddenly go away as a result of a seemingly-unrelated bug fix (who wants to bet that the Blizzard FoF bug was accidentally fixed with the deliberate fix for Brain Freeze?), and it's just ugly and messy. If the spec is boring without the broken mechanic, then the broken mechanic should be replaced with an intentional mechanic that produces a similar amount of fun (don't ask me what units of measure we use for that).

Returning to FoF as an example: people have argued that cheating a third charge out of FoF is a fine thing, because it permits us to throw in pseudo-Shatter Combos. But it doesn't permit this for everyone -- some people can do it, some can't, and some can only do it when their latency is nice and stable. And it doesn't actually produce any measurable benefit. This is not OK: Frost shouldn't become more interesting to play simply because it's possible to exploit latency to make FoF behave in contradiction to its tooltip. Instead, changes should be made to encourage the use of Shatter combos in accordance with the tooltip. Fun is therefore maintained, while everything also works the way it's supposed to.

Welcome back Lhivera!

Or you know, change the tooltip. There's lots of things in the game where the tooltip doesn't tell you everything. Contrary to the FoF bug, everyone CAN do Arcane Shatter, it's not latency dependent at all. Although, latency dependence in and of itself isn't bad - being able to enjoy the game itself is very latency dependent, there's not a whole lot you can do about that. It's just a question whether something becomes TOO difficult with increased latency. Fortunately, latency really doesn't have anything to do with Arcane Shatter arguments.

The most repeated argument I've seen against "Arcane Shatter" is that it's "not intended, and doesn't match up with the tooltip". That's a fallacy to begin with. When judging the value of something, whether it was intended by developers we can't include in the discussion is pointless, because Blizzard's intentions are not a statement of value or lack thereof.

The real argument is whether it's a good and interesting mechanic or not -- and that has nothing to do with anybody's intentions. If you start arguing about dev intentions, then there's no longer any point in having a discussion at all.

You might as well just say "Blizzard will do what they want", which is, of course, plainly obvious.

Thanks! It's a bit grudging, but the CoH game world just doesn't stand up to the WoW world. So I'm leveling Lhiv to be sugarmomma to my new Warlock. If they make Frost not-boring, I'll switch back to her as my main.


Sure -- but also change the functionality so that it matches the tooltip without making people do stupid stuff like chop off 20% of their missile ticks. Like, say, "Increases the damage of your next Arcane Missiles cast and your next Arcane Barrage cast; lasts a maximum of 6 seconds." Now you've got your combo, you've got compliance with the tooltip, and you have a set mechanic that the spec can be balanced around.

I agree with your assessment. Arcane "shatter combos" are likely going to stay. However, the question then becomes how do you then balance arcane versus the other specs? Assume that the casual player doesn't use them but the uber skilled player does.

Can the casual player compete with other specs without the combo? If yes, then the skilled player is going to blow the doors off the other specs. For EJ-level guilds, arcane with combo is going to be the only choice except for the one mage required to keep scorch up.

Can arcane only compete with the combo? Well then the skilled player has a choice--arcane with the combo or FFB--based on personal preference or raid need. Well and good. But then the casual player who doesn't use the combo won't compete. Arcane will become this spec that only people who read EJ boards and learn about how to clip AM will use.

I tend to like Lhivera's idea--if the combos are fun, change the tooltip and the mechanics to explicitly support them. Don't make it a hidden feature.

Were I a betting man, I would not put money down on blissile combos being fixed, the way I would have with the potency bug. Because, yeah -- just as I don't believe the combo itself actually accounts for a significant portion of the spec's DPS ((avg buffed barrage minus avg buffed missile) minus (avg unbuffed barrage plus avg buffed missile) accounts for how much of the total?), that also means that it's not really a gamebreaking problem. It's ugly, it's sloppy, it's annoying, but if it gets fixed at all, it's not going to be high priority.

But a lot of what we talk about here is what we think the game should be, which isn't terribly fettered by such things as priority lists.


ETA: Zeldyrr has a good point, which I had in mind but forgot to write down: if a spec depends on a broken mechanic to perform well, then it becomes a mechanic that either only an elite minority can use, or that is completely unbalanced in the hands of said elite minority. If I'm right and the combos really don't make that big a difference, then this doesn't matter, but if I'm wrong, it does.

They don't make a big enough difference to be broken. Skill and knowledge leading to better performance is a natural part of gaming.

Speaking practically, if it doesn't make much difference, then it's not very important.

Speaking ideologically, knowing where to find the cracks in the game engine isn't the sort of knowledge that should lead to better performance; it differs from a teleport hack only in degree, not in kind.

That said, the game's too big ever to be perfect, and if the numbers work out OK, this should be way down the list.

Just to give some sense of scale to this, with good gear, using the blast combo only increases your DPS by ~200 (+-50 or so). This doesn't make or break the spec.

EDIT: To clarify, that's based on my wife's mage, which gets about 6200 dps with the blast combos, according to Rawr 2.1.8.

I probably can't start new threads yet, so while there's no "mage bugs in 3.0.8" thread, I'll just mention that as far as i could see, Blizzard wasn't really fixed in 3.0.8...

- Blizzard does nothing at all with Illustration of the Dragon Soul. No charges ever and your buff just drops off completely if you blizzard. Sad, but let's hope it can be fixed easily and in a timely fashion. Frost nova and cone of cold both build up charges, so it's not an AOE thing. Basically the trinket is now nearly useless for trash, so I should start using something else for trash.

- You still can't proc FoF on blizzard, if the targets are immune to frostbite. I don't know if the talent issue has been fixed, but this bug is still there.

- You still don't proc brain freeze, if blizzard targets are immune to frostbite.

- Ice block is on GCD, but other similar abilities other classes have no longer are on GCD.