Putts

This has been mentioned in the Arcane thread already, but MMO-Champion's 3.0.9 talent calculator still lists the CD reduction for Evo under Arcane Flows. It simply wasn't mentioned in the notes because that portion of the talent remained unchanged.

 

baldween

*editted due to above's post.*

Regarding the changes to Arcane Power, it's a slight nerf. Not too significant.

my napking maths show something like this:

Given 4k dps, during 2 minutes, with the AP glyph:
Now:
4000*(120-18) + 4000*1.3*18 = 501600 damage at the end of the 2 minutes.

Post Patch:
4000*(120-36) + 4000*1.1*36 = 494400 damage. The 36 accounts for the two AP we can now use during those two minutes.

This is 98.56%, or a 1.44% nerf, roughly.

Not too bad, but I'm not overjoyed either.

We'll see how it turns out.


edit, bis:

Unless I'm reading this wrong, Arcane Flow now reduces the new AP's cd down from 60sec to 42sec. If so, I gotta redo the maths. Someone confirm please

 

TigaFin

It's pretty simple:

- Frost used to get 0% partial resists on bosses with no special resistances.
- Frost now gets about 3-4% mitigation on a typical boss.

I stacked spell penetration on winterchill (and use some on Sapphiron), but that's a whole different issue, because AFAIK you can't stack penetration to get rid of that last 3-4% (which is a shame).

If you specced frost as nearly to pre-3.0 talents as you could now on a level 70 character, you would see maybe 6-7% DPS loss because of the lost "ghost hit" from elemental precision and the partial resists. The new talents mean that you actually do more DPS than before the mechanics were changed, but some of those points go into just catching up with what was lost.

 

Lhivera

Note that "nearly 100%" isn't really good enough. I worked it out more exactly a few months back, but roughly speaking, if you miss it one time in ten, you lost DPS rather than gaining DPS...and if you make it every time, the DPS gain is miniscule.


Since this scheme would not accomplish the stated objective, it makes sense to me to assume that popping POM will grey out AP until 1.5 seconds after you have consumed POM.


This increases AM crits (w/meta) from 181.75% to 195.375%. If your crit rate is 40%, the DPS increase of Arcane Missiles would be about 4.1%.


It actually resulted in about a 5.1% damage DPS gain (or rather, the lack of a 5.1% DPS loss). When Frost was hit capped, it lost only 1% of its damage to misses against most targets; other schools would lose that 1%, plus another ~5.1% to partial resists that could not be mitigated via spell penetration.

It's entirely possible that Blizzard didn't take this into account when they were looking at Frost DPS and declaring it to be very close to other specs; this change did effectively negate the 5% DPS gain from Chilled to the Bone. But it doesn't have to be reverted, they just need to rebalance around it. In the long run, consistent mechanics like this are usually for the best as long as they do the necessary rejiggering to make the final numbers work. They haven't succeeded in the rejiggering, but since they're working on Shatter Combos, adjusting DPS balance before they complete that work would be futile.

At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.

 

TigaFin

That's why I don't use the ghost charges for ice lances on raid bosses, but will use them for less critical stuff like the skeleton adds before Kel'thuzad (an ice lance crit will usually one-shot a skeleton) and other similar situations (especially PvP, where casting another frostbolt usually isn't an option, but DF or IL will do just fine on the ghost charge). Instant fireballs are safe to use on the ghost charge, because you only lose 50% crit chance if the timing fails.

If FoF gave you a 0.5 second window to fire an instant after the second charge, I don't think you would have an issue with the mechanic? (It would be a legitimate time window instead of a synchronization artifact.) It would be difficult to explain in a tooltip though.

 

Vallren

One thing that is strange is that if you use a Glyph of AP, you can kind of circumvent this change, giving you a 3 second window to still use PoM with AP Active.

Regardless though, preventing the burst from BOTH PoM and AP seems a bit excessive, but meh. Hopefully they won't notice this 3 second window.

Setting things on fire since Open Beta

 

Lhivera

I'd be OK with it, because it wouldn't be an exploit -- but it still wouldn't solve the problem. You'd still usually be better off using that GCD for a Frostbolt. Why develop such a clumsy and complicated mechanic if it still leaves you with the original problem of not having a motivation to cast another spell?

At Veridian Dynamics, we can even make radishes so spicy, people can't eat them. But we're not, because people can't eat them.

 

TigaFin

I don't think you can solve every single problem with one fix... The motivation to cast ice lance could come from a buff you get when you cast deep freeze on a boss type mob (like I suggested). Or the motivation could be that the fight requires movement, so you can use the GCD after the ice lance to move slightly (and I already do that, if I don't have a fireball up my sleeve).

In PvP, the motivation is that if you try to cast a frostbolt, you'll get counterspelled or killed before you finish the cast, whereas a deep freeze will buy you more time to DPS or an ice lance might just finish off the kill. I guess part of the motivation for making the ghost charge legitimate could come from PvP: if only 90% of the players can do it now reliably, then maybe it would be better to fix it so that 100% can.

 

Wart

just my 2 cents on the incorporation of Ice Lance into a Frost rotation.

Change Fingers of Frost buff so that Ice Lance does 100% more damage (or some x% more damage to make it worth more than casting 2 Frostbolts) but it consumes the buff.

 

Gormakr

I highly suspect that you're right.

However, one other factor that seems to be a significant nerf to me is that previously, AP was relatively easy to stack with IV. The combination of the 30% damage increase and the 20% decrease to casting had a dramatic effect (along with popping trinkets/ mana gem from T7 set bonus).

Now, the decreased AP bonus during IV/Trinket time appears to be a market decrease to overall dps.

Here's my napkin math on that, but obviously a bit rough:

Assumptions:

Baseline DPS with no trinkets/cooldowns = 4000.

Can increase DPS by 17.5% of baseline (to 4700) by popping trinkets/mana gem for 15 seconds every 2 minutes.

Both specs use IV every 2 min and get 25% boost to all DPS during its duration 1-(1/0.8).

Live: AP = 30% Damage increase for 18 seconds every 2 minutes.

Proposed: AP = 10% Damage increase for 18 seconds every 42 seconds.

So, DPS would be:

Live: 4000 * ((120-20)/ 120) + (4000 + 700) * (1.3) * (1/0.8) * (15)/120) + 4000 * 1.3 * (3/120) * (1/0.8) +
4000 * (2/120) * (1/0.8) = 4533.9

(In this 120 second period, there are 100 seconds of base-line dps, 15 seconds of AP+IV+Trinkets, 3 seconds of AP (glyphed) + IV and 2 seconds of IV only.)

Under the proposed framework, it gets a bit more complex as the AP cooldown no longer aligns with IV and trinkets/mana gems. Assuming it's available every 42 seconds and is used at the start of a fight, it'll be available at 0, 42, 84, 126, 168, etc. seconds. I will run my very simple math only through 120 seconds, so I won't have to get into whether it's better to wait the extra six seconds on IV/trinkets/gem to match AP or not. However, the value will depend on when a given fight ends with respect to the AP (and other) cycles.

Proposed: 4000 * ((120-20-18)/ 120) + 4000 * 1.1 * 18/120 + (4000 + 700) * (1.1) * (1/0.8) * (15)/120) + 4000 * 1.1 * (3/120) * (1/0.8) + 4000 * (2/120) * (1/0.8) = 4422.0

(In this 120 second period, there are 82 seconds of baseline DPS, 18 seconds with AP only, 15 seconds of AP+IV+Trinkets, 3 seconds of AP (glyphed) + IV and 2 seconds of IV only.))

This results in a dps decline of 2.47%. Not so hot, but very rough, I admit.

I suspect I'm giving too much credit for IV (unless it reduces GCD for ABar casts) as I give the entire 1/0.8 factor to all damage done during IV. Can anyone confirm if IV reduces the GCD for instants? I should know this but don't.

I need to do some more detailed math with the correct stats/coefficients/mechanics to fine tune this, but it does seem directionally correct.

Also seems like I need to think about if the glyph of Arc missles replaces one of the others (AB/MA or AP).

Thoughts?

 

◊ Lord BEEF

Can I close this thread since there's a thread for 3.1 changes?

 

Champploo

Well this thread could include 3.0.9 discussion, whereas the other is only for 3.1 really. Your decision, doesn't matter imo.

 

• Vulajin

I'm going to agree with Beef, you should use the 3.1 thread for discussion of both patches, since those are the relevant current events. Closing this.