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[WoW] [Mages] sheep moon

12346

Posts

  • XehalusXehalus Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    I was caught up between whether to stack haste or crit as a Fire mage, and have solidified that crit is the bees knees.

    Also, haste is so bad that I'd probably reforge it into mastery if you're already hit capped and can't reforge it into crit.

    Xehalus on
  • LykouraghLykouragh Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Having read through their recent dev q&a's, I suspect the real answer with Deep Freeze is that they've got a high level policy to minimize the extent to which spells are different in PVE and PVP. If you look at their commentary on Colossus Smash, it sounds like they have to pull teeth to differentiate spells at all, and if that's the case they're probably under pressure to find a way to buff PvE frost without buffing Deep Freeze's damage.

    Oh well I'll just keep making melee cry, I don't really have a problem with that.

    Lykouragh on
  • XynnXynn Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    Xehalus wrote: »
    I was caught up between whether to stack haste or crit as a Fire mage, and have solidified that crit is the bees knees.

    Also, haste is so bad that I'd probably reforge it into mastery if you're already hit capped and can't reforge it into crit.

    Did they flip flop again? Ive been out of the game for about a month or so, but last time I was playing EJ was saying Haste was just barely eeking out over Crit for fire mages.

    Xynn on
  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    I really can't imagine how haste works out to be "bad" for Fire.

    forty on
  • Steel-AngelSteel-Angel Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    haste is not bad now that fireball-only rotations are mana-sustainable

    mastery though is complete shit, reforge as much of that as possible off

    Steel-Angel on
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  • SabreMauSabreMau ネトゲしよう 판다리아Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    So I'd been leveling and instancing and raiding as Fire the whole time, finally decided to add dual-spec and see what else looked interesting. Tried a Frost rotation for a while, thought it was okay but wasn't getting quite as much damage out of it, then looked into Arcane. It's very somewhat different, in a fascinating way, but still trying to figure out what its pros and cons are compared with Fire.

    SabreMau on
  • Corp.ShephardCorp.Shephard Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    SabreMau wrote: »
    So I'd been leveling and instancing and raiding as Fire the whole time, finally decided to add dual-spec and see what else looked interesting. Tried a Frost rotation for a while, thought it was okay but wasn't getting quite as much damage out of it, then looked into Arcane. It's very somewhat different, in a fascinating way, but still trying to figure out what its pros and cons are compared with Fire.

    Well, there's the two raid buff differences:

    Focus magic ( a unique 3% crit for yourself and one other player in the raid ),
    Arcane Tactics ( 3% damage aura )

    Against fire's:

    5% spell crit against boss.

    Arcane is quite fascinating in that it boils the game down to almost pure mana management. A bit sparse in gameplay, but still sort of cool. I believe it can do potentially more single target damage than fire, as long as the fight requires minimal movement. Arcane really sucks on the move, and can't hold a candle to fire's AoE damage.

    Some of that might change with the coming patch. Arcane will gain more possible AoE damage (although probably a little clunky to set up), and even better single target damage. It will still flounder in fights that require sustained mobility though, I'll bet.

    I personally use fire for most raid encounters, but switch to Arcane on fights like Chimeron. My group does not have the 3% damage buff aura already accounted for, so it helps alot between boosting my damage and the raid's.

    I'm excited about the frost changes. I'm going to see if it's competitive with my fire DPS when that patch comes out.

    Corp.Shephard on
  • Steel-AngelSteel-Angel Registered User regular
    edited March 2011
    arcane is our highest single-target spec now post buffs

    i'm going to run it since never getting an impact proc when it counts is terrible

    Steel-Angel on
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  • XehalusXehalus Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Well Haste is obviously useful (not bad, I apologize) and I'm aware of addons like Rawr or Simulationcraft, but when I look at tooltips where 137 Haste (for example) decreases my Fireball cast by .2 seconds, and I see where Mastery can increases my DoTs up to 30/40/50%, it seems more logical to scale it Crit > Mastery > Haste. Especially, with Mastery boosting the Living Bomb+Pyroblast+Ignite+Combustion aspect of the DPS rotation and consecutive Crits being required to proc Hot Streak.

    There is the extra DoT tick you get from 12.5% Haste, but that shouldn't be much of an issue getting to with let's say Firelord Vestments (Heroic) adding up to 892 Haste (though most people only use 4/5 of the set for a better epic), other epics that come with a Hit/Haste, Crit/Haste or Mastery/Haste combo that you reforge, and raid buffs. At about 12-13% haste stops being very useful IMO since it only reduces your casting time by 0.01 or so.

    Also, I'm not entirely sure why people are so negative towards Mastery. I have seen some Mages stack it for Combustion, but you'll probably be turning all your Haste and Mastery into Hit so you can run with two DPS trinkets over a DPS/Hit trinket combo anyways.

    Xehalus on
  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    .2 seconds off of fireball is huge, though. Although I'm guessing you mean .02 if you're talking about the effect of 137 rating. But 137 points of any of the ratings just adds a tiny number on. Oh, now your crit chance is 40.8% instead of 40.2%. Or now your DoTs (which are still less than half of your damage output) do 33% more damage instead of 31.6% more damage. I made up those numbers, by the way, but they're representative of the sort of gain you get from 137 points of any rating.

    I guess I don't understand if this is all based on sims and/or recount parses in different gear, but your first paragraph makes it seem like you're just going by eyeball and "feel" as far as the value of the three stats.

    Hit trinkets are DPS trinkets, by the way.

    forty on
  • The Muffin ManThe Muffin Man Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Mastery is almost entirely worthless as a Fire mage. It is that bad.

    The Muffin Man on
  • LykouraghLykouragh Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Mastery is almost entirely worthless as a Fire mage. It is that bad.

    lb+ignite+pyrodot is around 45% of my damage, it's bad but not "entirely worthless"

    Lykouragh on
  • The Muffin ManThe Muffin Man Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    When it's eating up space that could be hit, crit, haste, or int?
    Yes it is.

    The Muffin Man on
  • Catalus110Catalus110 Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Ok, so I finally got a chance to copy my mage over to the Public Test Realm. Since my main spec is Arcane, I haven't paid any attention to the Fire or Frost changes yet.

    As you know from reading the patch notes, the +13% straight buff to Arcane Blast was replaced with a reduction of the cast time from 2.35 to 2.00 (correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not actually reading the notes as I write this, sorry). This comes with a reduction in AB's spellpower coefficient. My AB went from doing ~14K damage, self-buffed with 100% mana (first cast, no AB stacks), to ~10K under those circumstances. Since the AB "debuff" involves a stacking +13% buff to damage, this should have the effect of (probably) increasing our DPS while nerfing our damge per mana ratio since we'll be doing less damage per cast. This should make mana management more difficult, which is probably a good thing since it's kind of a no-brainer right now.

    The AB casting speed reduction should synergize well with the buffs to Arcane Explosion and the addition of AE to the AB stacking buff. This should even make Improved Arcane Explosion more desirable, if you intend to do any AOE whatsoever. My only gripe is that I find the duration of the Arcane Blast buff is too short to take advantage of the generous buff to Arcane Explosion. It's alot of work to stack up a buff that only lasts, what 6 seconds?

    I think the AB cast time reduction is a more elegant solution than a +13% straight buff. Have any of you been able to confirm that this is definitely an overall buff to arcane single-target DPS? Has anyone been able to confirm the previous post asserting that Arcane is the highest single-target DPS mage spec post-patch? Will the drop in AB's spellpower coefficient and nerfed damage/mana ratio make mastery rating more, or less, desirable compared with haste and crit?

    Catalus110 on
  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Catalus110 wrote: »
    My AB went from doing ~14K damage, self-buffed with 100% mana (first cast, no AB stacks), to ~10K under those circumstances.
    I don't get these numbers. How much was the coefficient on AB reduced? I would have thought it would change at the same ratio as the cast speed.

    forty on
  • Catalus110Catalus110 Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    forty wrote: »
    Catalus110 wrote: »
    My AB went from doing ~14K damage, self-buffed with 100% mana (first cast, no AB stacks), to ~10K under those circumstances.
    I don't get these numbers. How much was the coefficient on AB reduced? I would have thought it would change at the same ratio as the cast speed.

    I don't get them, either. I only messed around with the PTR for about 25 minutes. It was long enough to verify that I was at 100% mana with all my gear on, and arcane brilliance. No other buffs active.

    I have no clue what was done to the coefficient, in fact I only assumed that the coefficient was reduced because my AB damage was noticably lower. Also, I was looking for it because I hypothesized that the coefficent would be reduced if the casting-time was reduced.

    If anyone reading this is running an Arcane spec on both the PTR and live realms, it might be worth looking at that.

    I'll also try to take a minute to log back in today and double check it. I'll post my real damage numbers here, but I don't have recount or any other add-ons in the PTR. Not sure if they would even work. Haven't tried yet.

    Catalus110 on
  • Catalus110Catalus110 Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    Ok, my real AB numbers are 13,354 w/ 2.12 sec cast time in Live realms. 10,952 w/1.89 sec cast time in PTR.
    I'll leave it up to you guys to figure out if this seems right.

    Catalus110 on
  • -SPI--SPI- Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
    edited April 2011
    I appreciate that they're trying to do something about ignite munching, but the fix seems to have created as many if not more issues than it fixed. I seem to have a lot of trouble setting up combustion now, and aoe seems more problematic without dot ignites, not that fire aoe was entirely reliable anyway.

    Also anyone else having combustion and living bomb whiff? Not miss, but hit the button, it goes to cooldown and nothing happens. It's infuriating.

    I think I might give Arcane a go or something. I like the mobility of fire but it seems to problematic to make work.

    -SPI- on
  • XehalusXehalus Registered User regular
    edited April 2011
    They best way I set up Combustion at the beginning of a fight is to hardcast Pyroblast for the DoT, chain Living Bomb, and Fireball till Ignite procs. Usually, Pyro and Bomb are still up. During a fight if you chain a Fireball with your Hot Streak proc, and Bomb is already up, you can cast max amount of Fireballs while the Pyro dot is up. It's all about chaining casts with instant spells, and if you've got over 20% crit, Ignite should only take a couple Fireballs to proc.

    Xehalus on
  • Corp.ShephardCorp.Shephard Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Does Combustion calculate it's damage based on the current duration of every DoT on the target? I figured it worked off of the total damage for the DoT even if there was only a second or two left on the DoT.

    I was so bad at getting good Combustions off in the middle of fights. The first one was easy, line up all your trinkets and wait for the crit and watch your DPS spike.

    I'm so glad that they buffed frost. I have been really enjoying the return to it. The AoE damage still sucks really badly, but it's wonderful to see the 100k deep freeze crits again and have some control over how your damage will play out. I do miss the extreme mobility of fire. Some parts of fight are just really annoying for frost (IE: Al'akir third phase your water-elemental can't fly with you and so he just disappears into the vast nothingness below you), but I haven't had too many issues. I feel like my damage has improved, which I guess just means I was really bad at Combustion because theoretically I think fire still leads on frost.

    Corp.Shephard on
  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Phase 3 Al'akir is just all-around bad for all pet specs.

    forty on
  • -SPI--SPI- Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    ZA and ZG are great for spellsteal fun. The blazing speed buff on the ZA firecaster guys is absurd and I'm amused by doing 35k+ dps just meleeing guys with the stolen tectonic buff from the big zandalari guys in both instances, great way to pull aggro though.

    Also Halazzi is just stupid as Arcane, standing in the totem your mana regens so fast it never goes down so just AB forever for epic DPS.

    -SPI- on
  • XehalusXehalus Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Does Combustion calculate it's damage based on the current duration of every DoT on the target?
    It's based on how many DoTs you have up. It doesn't matter how much time is left on each.

    I've got max Combustion with both Pyro and Ignite almost ticking off.

    Xehalus on
  • -SPI--SPI- Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    I hope that with 2pc T12 and a stolen haste buff like the ZA one we just end up with a swarm of mirror images.

    -SPI- on
  • -SPI--SPI- Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    I sure do love losing pve utility because of pvp balancing. Yep, it's super fun.

    -SPI- on
  • LorahaloLorahalo Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    I really don't understand why the spells don't "This spell does x against enemies and y against other players". It just makes too much sense to happen or something?

    Lorahalo on
    I have a podcast about Digimon called the Digital Moncast, on Audio Entropy.
  • Corp.ShephardCorp.Shephard Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    It's a little dangerous because it can make your game twice as complicated. If you want to keep your game attractive to players you need to keep things simple enough that they can slowly immerse themselves into it.

    Already, to be any good at PvP you would need to know the abilities of ten classes, and sometimes the differences between their specializations. To be a good PvE player you need to understand the synergies between your classes. There's a whole lot to learn. I can't imagine how overwhelming the game could appear to a new player. I've played WoW since the beta on and off and have always used such ingrained experiences to guide my perception of the game.

    I can understand why one would be wary of such a method. Even though they are slowly creeping towards such tactics anyways.

    Corp.Shephard on
  • Steel-AngelSteel-Angel Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    i like how they nerfed mages when tournament realm is entirely dominated by dks, shamans, warlocks and warriors

    but hey gotta keep them melee strong or else we'll have another s8 with balanced representation

    Steel-Angel on
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  • juice for jesusjuice for jesus Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    What is the nerf? The cast time on Ring of Frost?

    juice for jesus on
  • -SPI--SPI- Osaka, JapanRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    That and 6 second cooldown on spellsteal.

    -SPI- on
  • Steel-AngelSteel-Angel Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    -SPI- wrote: »
    That and 6 second cooldown on spellsteal.

    resto shaman buffs are especially galling

    Steel-Angel on
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  • juice for jesusjuice for jesus Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Hmm cd on spellsteal does suck. I've found that I can rarely steal anything in PvP, anyway.

    juice for jesus on
  • OghulkOghulk Tinychat Janitor TinychatRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Is there a 6 second cd on other purges? If so it makes sense for the nerf

    If not it's a bit on the silly side

    Oghulk on
  • Steel-AngelSteel-Angel Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Oghulk wrote: »
    Is there a 6 second cd on other purges? If so it makes sense for the nerf

    If not it's a bit on the silly side

    nope

    Steel-Angel on
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  • The Muffin ManThe Muffin Man Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Xehalus wrote: »
    Does Combustion calculate it's damage based on the current duration of every DoT on the target?
    It's based on how many DoTs you have up. It doesn't matter how much time is left on each.

    I've got max Combustion with both Pyro and Ignite almost ticking off.

    It IS based on damage, however, so a big Ignite is always better.

    The Muffin Man on
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    why talk about fire when Arcane is all the rage on PvE right now. press 1 to win

    Stormwatcher on
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  • LorahaloLorahalo Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Because Arcane is boring.

    Lorahalo on
    I have a podcast about Digimon called the Digital Moncast, on Audio Entropy.
  • StormwatcherStormwatcher Blegh BlughRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    Lorahalo wrote: »
    Because Arcane is boring.

    well, it's a good short cut to gear up to 346 on heroics fast and then go do Zandalari and Raids.

    Stormwatcher on
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  • fortyforty Registered User regular
    edited May 2011
    why talk about fire when Arcane is all the rage on PvE right now. press 1 to win
    Welcome back to WotLK, mages!

    forty on
  • OghulkOghulk Tinychat Janitor TinychatRegistered User regular
    edited May 2011
    I enjoyed BC arcane, it was such a weird spec and the haste buff was a lot more fun to mess with than the damage buff is now.

    Oghulk on
This discussion has been closed.