sorry but that doesnt make sense to me. Fire nova has more base damage than frost shock, even more if you are talented into it.

they are changing the mace to have crit/haste, and dropping the mp5. Source

Just gonna note he posted that before they announced that. Otherwise its nice to have a weapon to pick up.

You aren't taking into consideration the coefficient. Frost Shock is a single target spell, Fire Nova is not, its going to get significantly less contribution from your spell power. I'll have to play around to get the coefficient numbers exactly, but Frost Shock should outpace it at any gear level that you could support the mana cost to use it in your rotation.

And no, you shouldn't glyph for Fire Nova.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> 3.3.0 PTR Patch Notes (Updated 11/17/09)


Elemental Mastery: This talent now increases spell haste by 15% instead of critical strike chance while active.

I think i favor this change >.>

Not on a single target, no. Even if you're using it when moving (and Frost Shock is on cooldown), the benefit isn't big enough to go for it, as Lava or ToW will easily make up for the difference when you stop moving. However, on an AoE-heavy fight, the glyph becomes considerably more powerful. What I'm trying to figure out is the exact breaking point (gear vs. number of mobs) where this glyph might overpower the upper trinity.

Originally, I've even been thinking of a specialized AoE build (complete with Thunder, Chain Lightning and Fire Nova glyphs), but the drawbacks (loss of mana when respeccing, time used respeccing) outweight the benefits. However, carrying a stack of Fire Nova and the glyph it's replacing is a much smaller cost, especially for a scribe.

On fights like the Festergut trash puppy (read: massive mob zerg), Fire Nova definitely holds its ground. In fact, I found myself pretty much popping up Flame Shock on targets and spamming Fire Nova + Chain Lightning, which would make Glyph of Lava fairly redundant in those cases. The downsides are pretty bad mana consumption and the fact that there are likely to be very, very few fights in game with such consistant zergs. However, if the treshold is low enough, it might warrant the use of Glyph of Fire Nova even on fights like heroic ANoob.

Again, let me remind you that the above is just a theory with a few rough calculations. More to come in the days ahead.

On another unrelated note: new Elemental Mastery is cool

Yes it's obviously a good change, however it is still pretty lacklustre compared to other classes' bonuses.

It's previously been calculated that the 2pc tier10 basically cuts EM cooldown in half, so that means we basically get an extra 15% haste for 15 sec every 3 minutes, which equals an additional uptime of 1/12. Thus, we roughly gain 15/12 = 1.25% haste + one extra instant LvB / LB, which should be worth roughly 0.3 sec / 180 sec (Actual Cast time - GCD).

Obviously it's also a buff to EM itself, which is now worth roughly 1.25% Haste instead of 1.25 % Crit; + 0.3 sec saved cast time / 180 sec (aka another ~0.16% haste).

With that periodic extra 15% haste it would be quite nice to see the Relic changed to Spell Power instead of haste, especially when you're a Troll.

It does make EM more valuable but not by a huge amount - with my stats old EM was worth about 70 DPS in ZAP, new EM is worth about 85. 2t10 goes from 78 DEP to 97 DEP. Glyph of EM with 2t10 goes from 73 to 97 (still far below other glyphs).

I'd like to know if it stacks with or is exclusive to PI/BL (and Berserking, I guess).

[e] ha, and I tried notching up to 1200 haste with one use during BL and it's immediately worth less DPS than old EM. Crit EM = 76 DPS and Haste EM = 58 DPS. Without using it during BL it's 72 DPS for crit version and 80 for haste version. I need to change the model a bit to see whether it's higher overall DPS to use the haste-EM outside of BL than to use the crit-EM with BL.

[e2] I should mention that ZAP models EM as 15 seconds of the full buff rather than averaging out the crit or haste to a flat constant value.

I'm not thrilled about the new elemental mastery. It seems like a nerf for pvp, and with all the haste buffs and haste on our gear these days, it just yet another ability that you don't get to use during bloodlust (y'know when using cooldowns is the most fun)! It also ends up costing you a little more mana, rather than saving you a little mana, and while this isn't a big problem I've started to notice being lower on mana these days than I used to be, with CL becoming part of the spells-to-use again, and getting to drop fire totems more often than every 5 minutes since we use demonology warlocks for that instead.

The thing I'm happy about with the new EM is that it Has more of an effect on LvB then what crit would have, even if its minor EM will benefit everything we do. So while its not huge its something I was hoping they'd do. *more in the way of changing EM*

Also in pvp you can consider it a nerf or buff, if you use it w/ BL *since in pvp you don't really have a lot of haste* You can pound out faster bolts overall. Its just a nerf to crits which isn't really too much of a problem from what i have.

Did you take into consideration that the effect of haste is calculated at the start of spell cast and the effect of crit at the completion of cast? Assuming an average cast time of 1.2 secs, this means (extremely roughly) that the haste effect of EM might actually affect 15.6 secs worth of casts while the current crit effect only affects 14.4 secs of casts. I know it makes the calcs more complicated but as it represents somewhere around an 8% difference in up time per usage and the differences you are coming up with are of that order of magnitude, it is significant.

This is of course very similar to one of the calcs that needed to be performed when comparing potions of speed and wild magic.

What's the source of that information? I was always under the impression that all "local" modifiers are calculated at cast-start and all "target" multipliers at cast-finish.

ZAP, however, works using a standard, repeatable "rotation" that always has one flame shock and 2 Lava Bursts (3 for 2t9), ending one GCD before the 3rd LvB cast. It then averages out the DPS of that rotation over the length of the fight, which smooths out the effect of fight length on DPS. Special temporary effects like Heroism, EM and potions are calculated by doing a complete single rotation with the modifiers in place for the whole rotation, then multiplying that DPS by the uptime of the effect. It's more accurate than just averaging out the values but less accurate than "simulating" each cast individually in sequence. So you end up with:

The sandbox does model each cast individually and could be used to more accurately compare the damage of effects like EM, so long as proper controls and comparisons are used.

Now, if what you're saying is true then I'm undervaluing the haste-flavoured EM compared to the crit-flavoured variety that we have now. However, we do know that the haste version is clearly superior than the crit version for sustained DPS when used outwith BL, and achieves the best performance when used outwith BL - so I don't think a more accurate model is necessary? We won't be able to choose whether to use the old crit version or the new haste version, we already know that using EM on CD every CD is going to be better than saving it for BL, and we already know that if we start to see GCD-capped LBs with EM+BL then we should be decoupling the effects. Precisely when the haste is applied won't affect those conclusions.

Incidentally I am toying with the idea of using a "cleverer" rotation formulator for ZAP, but it'd be a lot of work for very little return and would still have to depend on artificial standardizing to some extent. Caelwynar reworked SEIC using macros to simulate an entire fight (using the averaged out spell damage values) and found that the results were not significantly different to SEIC's normal formulation method. I think the sort of precision you're talking about would only be possible in SimulationCraft, which of course has its own factors to account for.

Don't have a source, but practice proves it:

1. Cast time is calculated at cast start. You don't have a 1.5 sec static cast bar and LvB just flies off at the middle of the cast. Observed in-game mechanics prove it.
2. If a hit is a critical strike check is made at cast end. If you have FS on the target at the start of the LvB cast, but it falls off during the cast and when LvB goes off there is not FS on your target, your LvB does not have 100% crit chance.

From my un-documented point of view, I think the reasons are these:
1. Cast time modifiers are never present in the form of target debuffs. They are always buffs.
2. Except for spell pushback, cast times cannot be altered once the cast started.
3. Critical strikes must take into account buffs and debuffs present on the target at the moment of the cast end. i.e. If you have FS (debuff) on a priest and during the LvB cast someone crits him and activates Blessed Resilience (buff), you will not crit him.

I know that target debuffs are taken into account at cast finish, that's what I meant by "target modifiers". However, I've definitely read elsewhere (on these forums, I think) a confident assertion that a player's stats and buffs are applied to a spellcast when it begins. Thinking about this in terms of crit does suddenly seem a bit odd, as you'd be rolling once for a crit (based on buffs/stats) at the start of a cast and then rolling again at the end (based on debuffs). Well, unless your local crit chance is "stored" at cast beginning then added to the target's debuffs at cast end in time for the roll, which is possible.

It'd be very easy to test for spellpower - get naked and start casting LB then have a friendly shaman drop FT/ToW halfway through the cast. I can't think of a non-laborious way to test the same for crit.

[e] Seems I missed the TTT article that covers this very issue. Thanks to those that pointed it out.

I think any/most haste buff would devalue if you stack it with BL due to over cap on LB, same reason of don't use potion of speed during BL, any haste buff/speed pot during BL will pretty much take LB below GCD.

While I am a Troll, I would rather use the new EM outside of BL and stacks it with Berkserking (if they stacks), that will give me a mini BL of 35% haste for 10 seconds (and they have the same CD until you have 2pc T10, by then I would probably use them separately). Overall I still think it is a good buff as it will benefit our LvB cast as well as our LB cast during the effect, and haste is just simply a better stat compared to crit. The use (or when to use) might have changed, but overall I would say is a good buff regardless.

It's worth mentioning that the gain from adding two haste buffs together is the same as stringing those two haste buffs one after the other. This means that even with the new T10 stats, you'll probably be better off using EM outside of Bloodlust (especially since EM + LB = 1.3 * 1.15 = 1.495 = 49.5% haste, which is 0.5% under the GCD haste cap)

yes but those are placeholder stats that look a lot like a mage set and might still change.

I put together a semi-BiS set before the 277 t10 was released. At that time, I couldn't find a decent set of bracers or a cloak, so I used the 258 Insanity 10m cloak from ToGC (Because my guild can get insanity on 10m, but still working on 25), and the Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers instead. Most everything else was 264, with a few 251s to fill in the blanks. Even with this set (which I'll be the first to admit is not optimal at all) had 1300 haste (including the totem proc) just over 1k crit rating, and hit cap with a spriest/moonkin.

Blizzard sure as hell knows that we'll hit GCD cap at 1270 haste with raid buffs, so I'm not surprised that the numbers are looking like this. I wouldn't expect the tier stats to change very dramatically.

Since we're already geared strictly for haste, we can only gain so much more since the increase is limited by the increase of item level. The important change is that since we get more hit on each piece of gear, we require fewer hit pieces to reach cap. That means more pieces will have SP/Haste/Crit rather than SP/Haste/Hit. Since our hit pieces would have already had haste on them, we're only going to gain a somewhat minimal increases in haste. However since several of our hit pieces won't be needed because we'll reach cap using fewer slots, those slots will have a strict increase in crit.

Sure, it doesn't help that 2 of our tier pieces have crit/hit, so we'll need to take one of those to get the 4-piece, but still, a drastic increase of crit shouldn't be surprising. Having a smaller increase in haste is expected, but at least it's happening at the point at which we receive a reduced benefit.

Edit: keep in mind haste will be even higher with ilevel 277 pieces!

Is the 4p T10 set bonus good enough to actually wear a hit/crit item over a haste/crit or haste/hit offset item ? I think yes, but I still wonder what would be the dps gain, given the set bonus is crappy.

On a more controversial point of view, did anyone read GC's answer for nerfing the 4p T9 set bonus ? I'm pretty shocked by his answer ("4pT9 too good so we nerf it so people will wear T10").

That's quite wrong. Haste benefit will not be reduced by more than 15-20% above the soft haste cap (see Bikenstein posts about it). That means haste is still WAY more usefull than crit.

I never said crit would be better than haste. Crit will simply be better than it currently is relative to haste.

That is, right now haste >>>>> crit. After soft cap, haste >> crit. This is because the value of Haste will go down in relation to spell power (especially with the new EM), not because crit is getting any better.

My post was descriptive, not prescriptive.

Elemental Mastery now gives you 15% spell haste for 15 sec instead of increasing your critical strike chance.