7.1.5 Spell Changes UPDATED 30/11

[Vagar]

Can someone check and see if Everywhere at Once is reducing the displacement cooldown yet?

It still doesn't work. Already reported it, along with the Prydaz bubble looking worse than on live, Prismatic Barrier bubble being too small and clipping through my characters head, and Human male faces all sharing the same mesh since 7.1. I'd be surprised if any of those will be addressed.

[Xanato]

I read over the 7.1.5 datamined spell changes a couple times and haven't seen anything on this yet, so I thought I'd put it here.

Live:
Mage Armor - Passive - Increases your Mastery by -1250- The duration of all harmful Magic effects against you by 25%.
Ice Barrier - Shields you for 1 min, absorbing (x) damage. While the shield holds, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage.

PTR:
Mage Armor removed
Prismatic Shield - Shields you for 30 sec, absorbing (x) damage, reducing magical damage taken by 15%, and reducing the duration of all harmful Magic effects against you by 25%.


So it seems we end up losing -1250- Mastery rating with the change in spells.

[Icthas]

Can someone check and see if Everywhere at Once is reducing the displacement cooldown yet?

It still doesn't work. Already reported it, along with the Prydaz bubble looking worse than on live, Prismatic Barrier bubble being too small and clipping through my characters head, and Human male faces all sharing the same mesh since 7.1. I'd be surprised if any of those will be addressed.

Just got onto the PTR. Everywhere at Once is now properly reducing displacement cooldown on PTR as of the present build!

...the other changes are pretty great too.

[Mikeskies]

It would be 16 seconds total, correct.

The problem with your statement Jhazz is this:

To maximize damage with OP, you want to burn as much as possible in the AP window, to do this effectively you want a lot of haste (to a point). The infinite burn is more about haste:mastery ratio than anything. There will be a ratio that allows you to burn infinitely assuming minimal AM procs. This ratio will NOT be best for maximizing burst in AP window. I mean sure, at 60% mastery and 8% haste or w/e it might be, you can inifitely burn, but my stats atm on the PTR are as follows

32% crit
26% mastery
8% vers
25% haste

Not only can I get a ton more crits with more vers than you'd probably have with a ton of mastery, but ontop of that I'm hoenstly only barraging like 2 or 3 times during conserve. I'm also getting through that burn/conserve phase casting quicker and this has the completely underestimated benefit of having slightly quicker casts for the entire fight which can sometimes be the difference between even getting some casts off.

Also the more haste you have the more on use trinkets, damage buffs, etc are going to benefit you during the AP window. With Gnawed Ring's 5% buff, RoP buff, OP buff, and heroism will all favor being able to do as much damage as possible in AP window.

I conducted some tests on the PTR training dummy unbuffed, no lust compared to live. On live, I was able to sustain around 370k DPS (881 ilvl, cord of infinity/shard of the exodar). 40k Intellect, 39% mastery, 13% haste, 4% versatility, 28% crit.

On the PTR, I chose the follow talents: Temporal Flux, Presence of Mind, Resonance, Erosion, Overpowered.

Rotation: ABX4, RoP, AB/AM til ROP expires, AB until under 40% to proc belt, MoA, RoP, AP/POM (macro), AB for 14 seconds, AB/AM w/ ROP til OOM. Evocation. Burn to under 40%, Arcane Barrage. ABx4/AM/Barrage until AP was off CD.

I was able to sustain 450k DPS. Rotation felt strong, consistent and fluid.

[Forminasage]

Didn't Blizzard at one point say that if a talent was selected the vast majority of the time over other talents in that row, that they'd make it baseline and replace that talent slot?

So why oh why is Ice Floes, arguably the most selected talent for each spec for the last 2 (3?) expacs being outright removed for 2 out of 3 specs and being kept as a talent for the third? It makes no sense.

Blink / Shimmer are great, but there are situations where a 20yd teleport is objectively worse than being able to move and cast for 1-2 seconds (Nythendra's Heart of the Swarm, Ursoc's charge and miasma, Dragons of Nightmares' everything, etc.)

[Tipsey]

Didn't Blizzard at one point say that if a talent was selected the vast majority of the time over other talents in that row, that they'd make it baseline and replace that talent slot?

So why oh why is Ice Floes, arguably the most selected talent for each spec for the last 2 (3?) expacs being outright removed for 2 out of 3 specs and being kept as a talent for the third? It makes no sense.

That was my thoughts exactly. When I saw the revamped talent trees, I remembered hearing that and thinking they must have made Ice Flows baseline.

I would be happy enough if they gave each spec their own "flows". Ice flows could be as it is right now. Then they could have Arcane Flows. Lets say 1 charge that allows your next spell to be cast while moving and gain 20% haste.

And then they could have a cinder flows as well.

[kaywiz]

Has the stat priority of arcane changed in 7.1.5? Is mastery king, or does the introduction of talents like overpowered change things up significantly?

[Mikeskies]

Has the stat priority of arcane changed in 7.1.5? Is mastery king, or does the introduction of talents like overpowered change things up significantly?

I don't think the stat priority will change too much, but there may be a certain amount of haste necessary to fit in an extra Arcane Blast under Arcane Power.

[a0kalittlema0n]

@Mikeskies

That's awesome info to have. You know how many times roughly you're arcane barraging? a 3:1 ratio of mastery:haste would be a great starting point. Finding the perfect balance will be a thing we can sim after the patch goes live/when Sim is build for PTR.

@kaywiz

Stat priority for Arcane has always been a bit wonky. Mastery is great to a point, and then because of diminishing returns each point of vers/crit gives you more damage than each point of mastery.

On a personal note, I think haste is ridiculously undervalued in simcraft (due to most sims being for patchwerk, which never includes moving, recasting when you didn't finish a cast due to it being longer, etc.), and exponentially more if we don't have ice floes.

Regarding specifics of OP, I think there will be haste breakpoints that we'll want to hit similar to fire atm with how many casts they can get in Combustion, it will be similar for us in Arcane Power when running Overpowered as a lvl 100 talent.

[Solidpat]

It would be nice to have some PTR testing evidence about the Arcane changes. I have done a lot of tests myself lately and I would love to compare my findings with others. Here is where i stand:

Live:

Fire Mage:
Fire Helm and Fire Belt legendaries.
Lvl 30 artifact weapon, ilevel 908.
Gear ilevel = 877: 60% crit, 14% haste, 4% mastery

Arcane:
No legendaries
Lvl 26 artifact, ilevel 878
Gear ilevel: 872, using the same gear as Fire

Single Target Dummy tests: Single target, no food, no pots, no bloodlust, 4 min fiht length

Fire live: Average of 310k DPS
Fire PTR: Average of 265k DPS

Arcane live: Average 290k DPS
Arcane PTR: Average 350k DPS

The Fire spec used is the standard: 2-1-2-2-1-2-1

For Arcane, the live vs PTR spec is very different. The NT+Quickening spec seems very weak on the PTR.

Arcane live spec used: 1-1-2-1-1-3-2

Arcane PTR: 2-2-2-1-1-3-1 This spec is where i yielded the best results. I noticed that my DPS seemed to be heavily affected by AB spam crits. Seeing how a fully geared arcane mage with proper buffs could most likely AB for 2-2.5MIL/ crit hits on the burst windows, its understandable.

Has anyone else been able to come up with a proper Arcane spec on the PTR?

[Solidpat]

It would be 16 seconds total, correct.

The problem with your statement Jhazz is this:

To maximize damage with OP, you want to burn as much as possible in the AP window, to do this effectively you want a lot of haste (to a point). The infinite burn is more about haste:mastery ratio than anything. There will be a ratio that allows you to burn infinitely assuming minimal AM procs. This ratio will NOT be best for maximizing burst in AP window. I mean sure, at 60% mastery and 8% haste or w/e it might be, you can inifitely burn, but my stats atm on the PTR are as follows

32% crit
26% mastery
8% vers
25% haste

Not only can I get a ton more crits with more vers than you'd probably have with a ton of mastery, but ontop of that I'm hoenstly only barraging like 2 or 3 times during conserve. I'm also getting through that burn/conserve phase casting quicker and this has the completely underestimated benefit of having slightly quicker casts for the entire fight which can sometimes be the difference between even getting some casts off.

Also the more haste you have the more on use trinkets, damage buffs, etc are going to benefit you during the AP window. With Gnawed Ring's 5% buff, RoP buff, OP buff, and heroism will all favor being able to do as much damage as possible in AP window.

I conducted some tests on the PTR training dummy unbuffed, no lust compared to live. On live, I was able to sustain around 370k DPS (881 ilvl, cord of infinity/shard of the exodar). 40k Intellect, 39% mastery, 13% haste, 4% versatility, 28% crit.

On the PTR, I chose the follow talents: Temporal Flux, Presence of Mind, Resonance, Erosion, Overpowered.

Rotation: ABX4, RoP, AB/AM til ROP expires, AB until under 40% to proc belt, MoA, RoP, AP/POM (macro), AB for 14 seconds, AB/AM w/ ROP til OOM. Evocation. Burn to under 40%, Arcane Barrage. ABx4/AM/Barrage until AP was off CD.

I was able to sustain 450k DPS. Rotation felt strong, consistent and fluid.

Thx for the info. You noticed a 21% DPS increase with your tests, and I calculated 20% with mines (+60k, from 290k to 350k). What is the % of the damage done by Ab in your parse? Mine stands around 55%.

[Audio88]

Seems really counter intuitive that Arcane missles is not used inside of arcane power. Because AM is a powerful spell and you'd think that you would want to cast all your powerful spells inside of your burst phase. If that's really how it is at the moment on PTR. I'm kind of expecting them to change that, probably by reducing the mana reduction from OP.

[Mikeskies]

Thx for the info. You noticed a 21% DPS increase with your tests, and I calculated 20% with mines (+60k, from 290k to 350k). What is the % of the damage done by Ab in your parse? Mine stands around 55%.

I don't recall % damage done by AB, but it was likely around there. Arcane Blast was critting for 2m-2.5m under AP, RoP.

[Skuzz]

How is MI compred to RoP now? Considering RoP took a 10% hit, and MI should go very well with APs duration (though its CD less so sadly..)

[Solidpat]

How is MI compred to RoP now? Considering RoP took a 10% hit, and MI should go very well with APs duration (though its CD less so sadly..)

I really doubt that. Even at 40% it seems even more important than it was with Fire + combustion. On the PTR it feels like we are bursting using AP + ROP + AB spam quite often. 1 ROP for AP and 1 ROP for MOA, I don't use them outside of that.

As for AM during AP, it's definitely a no go. AB with 4 charges hits way too hard, it is also faster to cast given temporal flux, and it procs the Magi buff. I've had some parses where Magi would do as much as MOA, but in most cases, about 50% of MOA. We are back to our standard Arcane rotation with AB spam, and honestly it feels good and reliable.

I did have a few situations where I was confused as to what was the best approach. For instance, if there are 4 secs left on AP, do you guys bother casting a 2nd ROP or not? Also, it doesn't feel right to use MOA at the expense of am AB during AP+ROP. So unless it was casted before AP+ROP for sure, MOA should wait until the next ROP maybe?

And finally, do we have any inputs on the new quickening build? I have not been able to come up with a proper build.

[Joban]

How is MI compred to RoP now? Considering RoP took a 10% hit, and MI should go very well with APs duration (though its CD less so sadly..)

Are images affected by the new overpowered?

[kaywiz]

Seems really counter intuitive that Arcane missles is not used inside of arcane power. Because AM is a powerful spell and you'd think that you would want to cast all your powerful spells inside of your burst phase. If that's really how it is at the moment on PTR. I'm kind of expecting them to change that, probably by reducing the mana reduction from OP.

Well, Arcane missiles deals more damage but costs no mana. Spamming arcane blasts with AP up and overpowered talent will save you ton of mana and you can always cast your free missiles outside of your AP burst window. This is under the assumption that it's not near the end of the fight when you wouldn't care about the value of mana.

Haven't had the chance to play around with arcane on the ptr yet, but the wording on temporal flux reads "cast time reduced by 5% per arcane charge." Does this mean that at four stacks the math for calculating AB base cast time would be 2.25 * .8, giving it a base cast of 1.8?

[Mikeskies]

Seems really counter intuitive that Arcane missles is not used inside of arcane power. Because AM is a powerful spell and you'd think that you would want to cast all your powerful spells inside of your burst phase. If that's really how it is at the moment on PTR. I'm kind of expecting them to change that, probably by reducing the mana reduction from OP.

Well, Arcane missiles deals more damage but costs no mana. Spamming arcane blasts with AP up and overpowered talent will save you ton of mana and you can always cast your free missiles outside of your AP burst window. This is under the assumption that it's not near the end of the fight when you wouldn't care about the value of mana.

Haven't had the chance to play around with arcane on the ptr yet, but the wording on temporal flux reads "cast time reduced by 5% per arcane charge." Does this mean that at four stacks the math for calculating AB base cast time would be 2.25 * .8, giving it a base cast of 1.8?

Arcane Missiles still does more DPS than Arcane Blast after you factor in Rule of Threes procs. It is probably optimal to use Arcane Missiles when under the effects of Arcane Power when you have 3 charges in order to maximize mana longevity and DPS at the very least. The key will be to have a certain amount of Haste to get in an additional cast of AB/AM based on how many AB/AM that are castable within the 13-16 s AP window.

[aznxk3vi17]

Seems really counter intuitive that Arcane missles is not used inside of arcane power. Because AM is a powerful spell and you'd think that you would want to cast all your powerful spells inside of your burst phase. If that's really how it is at the moment on PTR. I'm kind of expecting them to change that, probably by reducing the mana reduction from OP.

Well, Arcane missiles deals more damage but costs no mana. Spamming arcane blasts with AP up and overpowered talent will save you ton of mana and you can always cast your free missiles outside of your AP burst window. This is under the assumption that it's not near the end of the fight when you wouldn't care about the value of mana.

Haven't had the chance to play around with arcane on the ptr yet, but the wording on temporal flux reads "cast time reduced by 5% per arcane charge." Does this mean that at four stacks the math for calculating AB base cast time would be 2.25 * .8, giving it a base cast of 1.8?

Arcane Missiles still does more DPS than Arcane Blast after you factor in Rule of Threes procs. It is probably optimal to use Arcane Missiles when under the effects of Arcane Power when you have 3 charges in order to maximize mana longevity and DPS at the very least. The key will be to have a certain amount of Haste to get in an additional cast of AB/AM based on how many AB/AM that are castable within the 13-16 s AP window.

The mana longevity argument makes no sense when you consider that Overpowered makes AB free during AP. With how expensive AB is at 4 charges, I imagine that overall, if you had to choose fitting in one more AB during AP versus potentially munching an AM proc, AB would be the better choice. Of course, I hadn't done the math so I can't say for sure.

[a0kalittlema0n]

Arcane Missiles still does more DPS than Arcane Blast after you factor in Rule of Threes procs. It is probably optimal to use Arcane Missiles when under the effects of Arcane Power when you have 3 charges in order to maximize mana longevity and DPS at the very least. The key will be to have a certain amount of Haste to get in an additional cast of AB/AM based on how many AB/AM that are castable within the 13-16 s AP window.

Negative ghostrider. This contradicts what you said. "maximizing mana longevity" in a perfect vaccuum would be having exactly 3 procs when you come out of AP to ensure you have 6 additionaly seconds to regain mana.

Casting AM vs AB in AP is easily solved by talking about how AB procs ToTM, has reduced cast time (not to mention if you have 25% haste, or heroism, the cast is even less to get even MORE casts in), and AM procs RoT only 33% of the time.

You're also forgetting that if you cast AM at all in AP, you're betting that you'll get another proc (up to 3) before you come OUT of AP otherwise, you've wasted another 2 seconds of mana regen outside of AP.