Dorvan

You're assuming that you take 1 point in MA. If you take 0 points in MA, you can't drop a point in AC for a point in AM.

Given that the base build being used in this thread takes 0 points in MA, I was working from the assumption that that is what we were talking about.

 

Hotan

Like Dorvan said....

Why are you taking Magic Absorption? What is it providing for you of tangible value?

The debate of free points should be focused around Student of the Mind vs Arcane Meditation.

To me there are two options:
(a) 5 Arcane Concentration, 3 Spell Impact, 2 Student of the Mind, 3 Torment the weak, 0 Arcane Meditation
(b) 5 Arcane Concentration, 3 Spell Impact, 1 Student of the Mind, 3 Torment the weak, 1 Arcane Meditation

If somebody is less lazy than me you could surely do the math for 3% spirit vs 17% mana regen. I currently am specced option (a) but am going to swap to (b) very soon, I'm just being cheap while I am not actively raiding.

 

Rugz

The tangible value gained from 1-2/2 Magic Absorption is in the form of survivability rather than a numerical DPS increase, much in the same way Tuskarr's Vitality does not provide the same tangible benefits as Icewalker as an enchant, but is preferable to use in certain fights.

It's mentioned a little more in the The Frostfire Bolt thread (updated 3.2.2)

 

Hotan

You are quite correct, 35 resistance (per point) is a tangible benefit.

However, if that is you are in the business of straight up sacrificing dps for survivability, a significant rng related damage reduction isn't the only option that should be brought up.

I still stand by my two previously mentioned specs as the only two options I would consider, but for argument's sake you could move a point out of Playing with Fire. This spec would be nice (note there are 2 missing points, bringing us back to the original discussion (and you could even go 0/3 Student of the Mind if you put 6 points between Magic Absorption and Arcane Concentration).

 

Enthorn

Hotan, criticizing the decision to take Magic Absorption (which is 0.5/1 resistance per level per point, thus 40 resistance per point at 80, not 35), because it isn't a "DPS talent," and then going on to suggest dropping Playing With Fire, is terribly hypocritical. One point in Playing With Fire for me is 66 DPS, for instance. That's nowhere near the amount of DPS I lose by dropping 1 or 2 points in Student of the Mind for Magic Absorption.

Amplify and Dampen Magic provide no DPS on there own, yet they have a time and place, even for picking up Magic Attunement over something else (Clearcasting, Magic Absorption, Student of the Mind). If I take 1000 damage, I'll take 1010 with 1 point in Playing With Fire. With 1 point in Magic Absorption, 40 resistance, I'll take 0-30% less damage, most often ~10% less. In other words: 1 point in PwF is 1% more damage, 1% more spell damage taken, and 1 point in Magic Absorption is ~10% less spell damage taken. They aren't really comparable, and Magic Absorption vs Student of the Mind is even easier.

17% regen vs 4% spirit (the first point is 4%, the second point is 3%) is simple logic: if you have enough spirit that 4% more of it actually matters, then 17% in-combat regen is even better (unless you're already at 100%, obviously).

The formula for mana regen:

((0.001+SQRT(INT)*I(SPI*BASE_REGEN[LEVEL]*0.6))*5)

((0.001+SQRT(1400)*(900*0.005575*0.6))*5) = 563

At 50% regen, this is 282 Mp5. At 67%, it's 377 Mp5. Student of the Mind first point increases spirit by 4% to 936, increasing 50% regen to 293, and 67% to 392. So 1 point in SotM is increasing regen from 282 to 293. One point in Arcane Meditation is increasing regen from 282 to 377.

 

epoh

Your 2 points in SotM is giving _you_ exactly 0.36% crit. There are clearly a good number of mages who would trade that little crit for +80 resist... on fights that require extra health or resist that's the equivalent (generally) of not having to swap one piece of gear. On those fights, that not needing to swap gear is going to result in more than +.36% crit.

The only real decision one has to make is whether or not your raiding team is just walking past fights with lots of raid magic dmg (like Hodir) like they are easy-mode, or if you are actually struggling, or working on hard mode.

 

TigaFin

Magic Absorption makes a significant difference on Mimiron as well. I'm tanking the ranged segment because we noticed that on average, I was taking 9.2K hits (magic absorption+mage armor+raid buffs) instead of 12K hits (warlock). The healers said it was noticeably easier to keep me alive even though I had 2k less health than the warlock.

 

Saoqu

ilvl 239. Guess it will tweak around in BiS gear a bit.

 

Enthorn

Yes, Cosmos is the offhand I've been waiting for. It easily puts Starshard Edge (and possibly Fusion Blade, although this won't be reflected in any list) ahead of Staff of Endless Winter. I'll update everything later. (Updating the weapon comparison page specifically takes quite a lot of time though, so I won't get around to that for a while.)

Also, the high amounts of hit found on items further trivializes 3% hit from Elemental Precision. That's not to say it can't be used effectively, but what it does mean is that when you have to downrank to a 226 item from a 239 item because the 239 pushes you over the hitcap, you probably don't need 3% hit from gear, because you won't be able to get rid of enough hit on your equipment to even use the talent.

I don't think we're at that point yet, and it obviously should be noted that there is no one with all best in slot, or even close, but as tiers increase, it will be interesting to see if hit follows suit and increases as well. Although, the next tier of gear should be item level 239, and the tier after that is 252. Since we've seen a snapshot of things to come with ilevel 239 gear (crit/haste/hit) through hard mode encounters, it's safe to say that "normal" 239 items will return to "normal 226 itemization: spirit/haste combinations, a few spirit/crit combinations, and so forth.

 

Saoqu

Quickly updated Rawr with new OH, that's the best I managed to get to (ofc for ally, with heroic presence):


Enchants:
Lightweave Embroidery / Greater Spellpower x2 (rings)/ +15 spirit on chest - other enchants as usual.

Spec: 20/51/0 - 3/3 Student of the Mind 1/2 Flame Throwing 0/1 Combustion


Stats:
1159 crit rating (55.65%)
350 hit rating (17.34%)
389 haste rating
2981 spell power
1008 spirit

Score: 7818.92
DPS: 7816.65

Swapped pendant of fiery havoc. A bit worried about amount of haste tbh but rawr doesn't suggest getting more.

 

Katakylsm

Anyone seem to squeeze out higher than 7803.77 dps with the new oh? Swapped out Ivy Sprig for the Heroic general wand.

 

◊ manly

Indeed, it does strikes me as strange as well. The formula originally comes from Combat Ratings at level 80 , which is a very extensive work to work out the mechanics of the game. For reference, the author of that thread is also the author of the mod ratingbuster, and you can see from the post how it was determined.

Now that I look back at it, I see that I indeed made a newbie math mistake when modifying his formula. I corrected the post accordingly, and this should yield the proper numbers now.

with 1400 int, 900 spi it would give 563.22 regen at 100% regen, as you noted.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Hotan

Whoops, my math at 1am is bad :/

I was playing the devil's advocate here. I would never actually advocate speccing thusly.

Sure, I agree 100%, but that isn't the debate going on.

Your numbers are off, but in any case you can't assume the base resist is 0, it won't be in most raiding situations.
I spent a little time doing the math for the benefit of each point in Magic Absorption. The following table is calculated with P(x) = 0.5 - 2.5*|x - AR| (see this thread for the reasoning behind the math)
If anybody wants, I can share the excel file, although I don't have a good way to host it.

Source	Resist	Mean	0%	10%	20%	30%	40%
Nothing	0	0.0250	0.5000	0.2500	-	-	-
1pt MA	40	0.0795	0.3182	0.4318	0.1818	-	-
2pt MA	80	0.1356	0.1610	0.4110	0.3390	0.0890	-
motw	76	0.1297	0.1758	0.4258	0.3242	0.0742	-
motw+1pt MA	116	0.1853	0.0367	0.2867	0.4633	0.2133	-
motw+2pt MA	156	0.2342	-	0.1644	0.4144	0.3356	0.0856
aura/totem	130	0.2031	-	0.2422	0.4922	0.2578	0.0078
aura/totem+1pt MA	170	0.2500	-	0.1250	0.3750	0.3750	0.1250
aura/totem+2pt MA	210	0.2917	-	0.0208	0.2708	0.4792	0.2292

	Benefit of first point	Benefit of second point
Nothing	5.45%	5.60%
W/MOTW	5.56%	4.89%
W/Totems	4.69%	4.17%

So the first point gives 4.69% in most cases, 5.58% with a druid and no aura/totem, and 5.45% without any outside sources.
The second point gives 4.17% in most cases, 4.91% with a druid and no aura/totem, and 5.60% without any outside sources.

I agree, hence this spec is the one I use, and unless survivability is a concern it is optimal.

 

Enthorn

As much as your calculations may make sense, actual raid logs say this is grossly misrepresenting what 80 resistance is actually mitigating. I've looked at enough logs since picking up Magic Absorption and comparing my damage mitigation versus others in the raid, and there is a clear difference (and no I'm not using Mage Armor).

I routinely mitigate (through resistance) 10-15% more magic damage (nature, shadow, frost, fire, arcane) than others in the same raid. We all have Imp. Mark of the Wild (76 resistance). I have an additional 80, for 156 resistance. (And on specific fights, frost (Hodir) and fire (mimiron) resistances from aura/totem are put up. This would give me 210 and them 130.)

On the thread I linked to. There is a table showing average resistance percent for amount of resistance. This table does correlate with the mitigation I've seen on WWS/WMO for logs of fights. By random example:

Iron Council
I resisted 26.9% of nature damage dealt. I would have had 156 resistance. On the table, 25% average resist requires 170 resistance against a level 83 boss.

Everyone else (Warlock, Shaman, Hunter, Warrior, Druid) resisted between 12 and 13% of that same damage and had 80 less resistance than I did. The damage being mitigated by everyone is so consistent across the board, and it's consistent across other fights, that I can't see it being anything but Magic Absorption, which would indicate that Magic Absorption is indeed providing far more than 5% mitigation.

Now, if the 5% you mentioned isn't in relation to mitigation, and is talking about something else (5% increased chance to resist anything at all? I don't know), then that's something else entirely...

 

Hotan

For your IC situation:

Source	Resist	Mean	0%	10%	20%	30%	40%
motw	76	0.1297	0.1758	0.4258	0.3242	0.0742	-
motw+1pt MA	116	0.1853	0.0367	0.2867	0.4633	0.2133	-
motw+2pt MA	156	0.2342	-	0.1644	0.4144	0.3356	0.0856

This actually meshes pretty well with your WWS. The raid as a whole had nearly the exact amount of mitigated damage. Your mitigation was slightly higher than to be expected, but slightly higher isn't anything unusual.
I said, ~5% per point, not 5% for both points.

 

Korrigan

I obviously dont have the exact same settings (slightly different dps with your spec and gear), but keep the Pendant of Fiery Havoc and swap the belt for Cord of the White Dawn and you get higher dps. Maybe still not optimized but closer.

Theorycrafting: "Which all sounds good, except that you're talking about playing excel and while I was playing world of warcraft I didn't see the results you got while playing excel."
regolith/Klaive

 

Saoqu

Yeah you are right there, I totally forgot about the belt. swapping that got me to 7824,93 dps with 17,46% hit.

 

Enthorn

Right. I interpreted it wrong, reading it in a cumulative way, instead of as individual mitigation amounts. I chalked it up to some freakish diminishing return effect going on and went with it. My original statement of 0-30% was merely in reference to the table I was quoting from, not to imply that I would resist 0% or 30%, consistently, if ever.

The next cloth item I'm anticipating from Algalon (and I really only anticipate one other cloth item) is either shoulders or waist. I don't anticipate an ilevel 239 wand, nor chestpiece. Naturally I could be completely wrong. Actually, I might expect chestpiece or shoulders more than waist. Anyway, those are the four slots that don't have ilevel 239 items. And actually, only the wands have 232 (due to weapons being 232).

 

Flinx

I am wondering taking one Point from MoE and putting ist in SotM would grand an additional 14 critrating. (BiS)

Using your Values for a 400 second fight we loose 85 MP5 for Master of Elements and gain ~10 mp5 trough spirit

If this change hurts our mana too much we can still take 2/3 MoE and one Arcane Meditation and would actually gain 9 Mp5 and loose nothing.

 

Maje

For all currently attainable amounts of spirit; every point of MoE is a lot stronger then SotM in terms of mana. Every point of MoE is (10% * C) reduction of mana cost of a spell that can crit (LB is a little different here), where C is the crit chance, for a crit rate of 55% the reduction is 5.5% per point.

Fireball costs 620.91 mana, 5.5% of it is 34.15 mana per cast, simplisticly if all you do is chain fireballs with no haste 5/6 * 34.15 = 28.458 mp5.

So no, dropping MoE for SotM and gaining mana is impossible.

 

Flinx

I am talking about taking 1 Arcane Meditation 2 MoE and winning MP5.

Sotm is a ~75mp5 loss but I gain 14 critraiting. Which is the optimum if mana is not a problem.

 

Enthorn

At 1300 intellect and 700 spirit...

1 point in Student of the Mind increases spirit by 4% to 728. This gives 8.442 Mp5 at 50% regen, 11.31 at 67%. It gives 9.8 crit with Molten Armor, and 15.4 crit with MA + Glyph. This is 15.68 and 24.64 DPS through crit, respectively, at 1.6 DPS per point.

2 points in Student of the Mind increases spirit by 7% to 749. This gives 14.77 Mp5 at 50% regen, 19.8 at 67%. It gives 17.15 crit with Molten Armor, and 26.95 crit with MA + Glyph. This is 27.44 and 43.12 DPS.

3 points in Student of the Mind increases spirit by 10% to 770. This gives 21.11 Mp5 at 50% regen and 24.5 crit at 35%, 38.5 at 55% - 39.2 and 61.6 DPS.

It's not possible to pick up 3/3 SotM and 1/3 Arcane Meditation - at most you can pick up 2/3 and 1/3 or 1/3 and 2/3. It's undoubtedly better to choose the latter if mana regen is the issue. Also, you would need to drop a point from the fire tree (down to 51 points, the minimum) to use this setup.

That last point in Student of the Mind (if going 3/3 and 0/3 Arcane Meditation) is increasing crit by an additional 7.35 at 35% and 11.55 at 55%, which is approx 11.76 and 18.48 DPS (these numbers are higher if you use different relative stat values for crit -- 1.6 is kind of low in some cases).

The last point in SotM is also increasing Mp5 by 6.33 at 50% regen, compared to 2/3. Naturally, you must decide if 6.33 Mp5 and 7.35/11.55 crit is actually worth dropping a point from Flame Throwing (or Master of Elements, which is, quite frankly, a terrible idea).

 

Flinx

Please step back and think about it.

Currently we use 19 / 52 / 0

If we Switch to 20 / 51 / 0 and Drop 1 Point in MoE we loose 85 Mp5, which is a lot.

If we put it in 1/3 Arcane Meditation we gain 94 Mp5 and loose 85 MP5 wich is a net gain in my book.
I based this on your calculations. as quotet above.

All of my Calculations are based on BiS

*edit* i am well aware that at current gear levels 19 /52 is the better choice, but as we close in on the 800 spirit Am becomes better then MoE

 

Enthorn

Master of Elements is entirely dependent on your crit rate in the fight. I'll use the same fight I did on the last page -- an Iron Council fight. I figured that Arcane Meditation would have regenned 4320 mana.

Pyroblast costs 718 mana (22% of 3268 base). Fireball is 19% - 621 mana. Living Bomb is also 22%. Scorch is 8% - 261. I had 41 Fireball crits, 9 Pyroblast crits, 10 Living Bomb crits, and 4 Scorch crits.

Fireball: 621*0.3 = 186*41 = 7,626 @ 46% crit rate
Pyroblast: 718*0.3 = 216*9 = 1,944 @ 45% crit rate
Living Bomb: 718*0.3 = 216*10 = 2,160@ 38.4% crit rate
Scorch: 261*0.3 = 78*4 = 312 @ 30.7% crit rate

12,023 mana returned at 3/3 (although WMO records 61 MoE events returning 11,613 mana instead of the 64 crits that occured). 12,023/3 = 4007 mana returned per point -- broken down:

621*0.1 = 62*41 = 2,542
718*0.1 = 72*19 = 1,368
261*0.1 = 26*4 = 104
Total: 4014 (a bit higher due to rounding)

Keep in mind, this is a log from a 10-man fight. I don't have a boomkin or elem shaman for increased crit rate (5% or 8%). I also use Scorch glyph over Molten Armor glyph. And yet, Arcane Meditation would have returned only 306 more mana than 1 less point in Master of Elements.

The difference is that mana returned through Arcane Meditation is completely static around my intellect/spirit. Would you honestly trade 1 point in MoE for 1 point AM on a fight like Loatheb? I realize there isn't a fight like that in Ulduar, but the point is still relevant. The scaling factor of crit rate and mana returned is much greater than the amount of mana returned through regen.

 

Flinx

On a Fight like Loatheb, no. But a static 95 MP5 Return 7600 Mana. The scaling might be worse but the total ist much higher für every fight exept Hodir.

When i have to choose between 7600 mana and 4000 ill take the 7k mana and when the better scaling catches up i will switch back.

To be fair in a 25 Man raid BiS MoE returns just 1000 mana less. Still 1000 Mana without any drawbacks, why not.