Incoming Marquee bindings nerf..

[subtlexgaming]

I don't think its out of the realm of possibility that fire gets buff to the class overall and they nerf the bracers so that mages w/o are not gimped in damage. Its also possible they are ok with mages slightly under performing for ST in raids and over performing for Mythic + dungeons because of AOE/BURST. They are obviously going to be making changes to fire w/ the crit change etc so we will all have to wait and see what happens...fingers crossed.

~Subtlex

[Kaidien]

Marquee Bindings of the Sun King

Looks like its back down to what it originally was, 200%. Heres the ptr build one.

[EverySingleDay]

Marquee Bindings of the Sun King

Looks like its back down to what it originally was, 200%. Heres the ptr build one.

And here I was hoping for a 50% nerf.

Spoiler:

Not that I have the bracers yet

[Zherrow]

With a legendary item you would think it should be amazing, which they were at 300%, now they are just eh, especially without icy flows, good luck getting that shitty 200% pyro off when you gotta stand still that long.

[EverySingleDay]

With a legendary item you would think it should be amazing, which they were at 300%, now they are just eh, especially without icy flows, good luck getting that shitty 200% pyro off when you gotta stand still that long.

Makes you wonder if it's still worth the hardcast

[lowska]

Here's some quick napkin math with no haste:

(EDIT)

In 4.5 sec a pyro is castable. In the same time, you can cast a fireball + pyro (2.25s+1.5s GCD) in 3.75 sec, and start casting another fireball. So, we get a ratio of 5/6 - if you hardcast 5 pyros - 22.5 seconds, which is the same as 6 fireball+pyro combos.

Fireball is 175% SP, pyro is 376% SP. A fb+pb combo is therefore 551% SP, and takes 3.75 sec. That is 147% SP/s.

A 200% pyro is 376%x3=1128% SP and takes 4.5 sec. This amounts to 250% SP/s.
At 300% this was 334% SP/s.

IMHO a rune of power is irrelevant here, since you can get 3 fb+pb combos out during one with at least a little haste, while you can only get out one pyro and maybe 2 fb+pb out during the same rune, netting an increase of 577%SP (x 1.5 RoP) mod damage done gain, 1653%SP x 1.5 = 2479% SP vs 3345% SP = 1.5 x 2230% SP. Compare this to 300% bracers 2479% vs 3909%. where the difference was 953%SP (x 1.5 RoP).

If done in perfect conditions, with 5xPi, RoP, artifact trait lvl 5 (+5% damage on crits) and a crit, we are looking at a difference of 577% x 1.5 x 1.25 x 1.05 x 2 vs 953% x 1.5 x 1.25 x 1.05 x 2, which is 2271% SP vs 3752% SP, being a 1481% SP loss due to the nerf. That of course is napkin math, and by no means truly representative.

So 200% is still an increase, but at this point it's marginal.
One can get lucky and not drop out of insta hot streak fb+pb for 20 casts, or you get unlucky and drop to 0 crits after 3, and due to this RNG you can easily overtake someone with bracers, or lag behind, as is expected of a spec with a DPS delta of +- 10%.

With the removal of ice floes, and 4.5s of standing still being a deathwish on most legion encounters, the bracers are absolutely useless.

EDIT: Fixed napkin math, CBA to fix it again if it's wrong, as simming would give much better results anyway.

[Breit]

So 200% is still an increase, but at this point it's marginal. With the removal of ice floes, and 4.5s of standing still being a deathwish on most legion encounters, the bracers are absolutely useless.

I guess bracers would be replaced with Koralons as BiS then, if they keep the change of a guaranteed crit from Scorch instead of a 350% damage Scorch.
Not a bad thing playstyle-wise if you ask me. Standing still for 4.5s to hard-cast a Pyro only to abort the cast just before it finishes due to movement issues isn't fun at all (assuming they keep removing Ice Floes).

[lowska]

Well, in 7.1.5 we will have: head, neck, chest, bracers, gloves, belt, boots, two rings, and a trinket.

I'd wager the new best to worst list, according to the current changes, is something along the lines of:

Gloves > TW ring > Helmet = Belt > Sephuz's ring > new trinket > bracers > chest > neck > Norgannon's infuriating manure dredgers.

Gloves for the 20 sec lower combustion cd - 60 sec CD with kindling (off the top of my head),

TW ring cos timewarp,

Helmet for 100% damage increase and potential synergy with the hot streak talent might be better than Fire on! for shorter fights,

Otherwise belt seems ok, but it can't be called an execute without having increased damage as well as guaranteed crit, seeing how you still have to scorch scorch pyro scorch (scorch) pyro, thereby lowering the cast time between pyros but losing out on damage from fireball. CBA to do the math, but it's not an OMG increase, and scorch contributes nothing to kindling,

Reworked sephuz looks very nice, but it should just be changed to 'attempted CC' instead of cc and counterspell success. Otherwise it's almost a TW 1/3 of the time,

If the new trinket works like maddening whispers (RoP and combustion synergy) great, since that would make it just a slight bit better than the il'gynoth on ST, and loads better on cleave/a ludicrous amount of adds,

Bracers are now a statstick or maybe a 1% dps increase. More likely a DPS loss with current fight mechanics,

Chest contributes nothing but stats to DPS, and the same goes for the neck. They are wonderful in M+ though, speaking from experience,

Norgannons should be removed from the game, or reworked to something like 15 seconds of casting while moving on use, with a 1.5 min CD to be even remotely worth considering with its current stats, secondary stat rebalance or not.



Still, this is early PTR, we might still see some mechanics changes or at least number balancing. I'm just hoping they make ice floes built-in to mage instead of making it frost only. That way bracers wil at least grant 4s of walking about while making the big pyro, so they're nto completely useless.

[Xentropy]

It's a 200% increase in damage, so 3x (vs the current 300% increase's 4x), so treating it as 2x is off. It also represents fewer opportunities to proc hotstreaks per time spent, though. Functionally it's 3 hostreaks that have to be chained together and can't be cast while moving. 3x pyro damage in 3x instant pyro cast time, but only one opportunity to crit instead of 3. Probably easier to compare via sim than math.

[Jereko]

I guess bracers would be replaced with Koralons as BiS then, if they keep the change of a guaranteed crit from Scorch instead of a 350% damage Scorch.

What I've found on the PTR so far is that you'll do more damage continuing your regular sustain rotation (fireball, fire blast, pyro) with the Flame On talent than you would by switching to Scorch-Scorch-Pyro under 25%. Even with 100% crit, Scorch just doesn't do enough damage. If you spam your Fire Blasts during Scorch casts (purely for damage and Blast Furnace dot, and not to push Hot Streaks), you'll do more than your regular sustain rotation, but not by much at all (think 10k dps more TOPS), and Scorch doesn't contribute to Kindling.

[Arkon the Noble]

If they're going this route... keep the damage at 200%, adjust the proc rate for balance and make the proc apply to instant pyros as well. It keeps the bracers as a solid legendary without screwing up our rotation / reduces the sting of removing ice flows.

[kaywiz]

So even if 200% bracers makes it live, that's still a 3x pyroblast which would be the same as chaining 3 instant cast pyros in a row, correct? Meaning it would still be worth casting (ignoring fight mechanics that would make it impossible to stand in place for 4.5s)?

[TeskR]

"Hey all,

As a quick example of the "in flux" status of 7.1.5, we are currently testing a change to the Marquee Bindings that would bring the damage down to 250% instead of 200% (down from 300% on live).

Keep in mind that the PTR is NOT FINAL and we are still testing numerous changes to various specs and items."

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topi ... 6#post-105" target="_blank

Looks like they are considering changing it to 250% now, seems more reasonable at least.

[Rabona]

I wonder if they realize that taking away Ice Floes already nerfs the bracers significantly, especially for progress fights.

[Xekno]

So even if 200% bracers makes it live, that's still a 3x pyroblast which would be the same as chaining 3 instant cast pyros in a row, correct? Meaning it would still be worth casting (ignoring fight mechanics that would make it impossible to stand in place for 4.5s)?

No. The instant pyros would be stronger because an instant pyro gets 2x ignite damage. It strikes me that this is a bit trickier to napkin math than it first looks, because you have to compare a hardcast pyro to 4.5 seconds of normal rotation, even taking into account that you'll get the hardcast pyro some special treatment w.r.t. to when to cast it (e.g. trying to only hardcast it when you have high stacks of PI).

Also keep in mind that without ice floes there is a good chance that you will have to cancel a few hardcasts during a fight due to mechanics.

[Xenost]

So even if 200% bracers makes it live, that's still a 3x pyroblast which would be the same as chaining 3 instant cast pyros in a row, correct? Meaning it would still be worth casting (ignoring fight mechanics that would make it impossible to stand in place for 4.5s)?

No. The instant pyros would be stronger because an instant pyro gets 2x ignite damage. It strikes me that this is a bit trickier to napkin math than it first looks, because you have to compare a hardcast pyro to 4.5 seconds of normal rotation, even taking into account that you'll get the hardcast pyro some special treatment w.r.t. to when to cast it (e.g. trying to only hardcast it when you have high stacks of PI).

Also keep in mind that without ice floes there is a good chance that you will have to cancel a few hardcasts during a fight due to mechanics.

It will mostly affect Combu And/or RoP use though, as of now hardcasted pyro is our best DPET so it's worth casting in Combu and RoP (it's better than 3insta pyro under 50% mastery), but after the nerf it will probably be worse and won't be worth casting during combu (it's already pretty close, the highest benefit for now is to keep more PF stacks out of combu) and may or may not be worth during RoP.

It's easy to know if it's worth during combu because hardcast pyro takes exactly 3 GCD which mean you can compare 1 hardcasted pyro against 3 insta pyro (because in combu every GCD is optimaly spent for an insta pyro), but for RoP you don't always instacast pyro you sometimes cast Fireball because you're out of Fireblast or PF which means it might be worth hardcasting the new pyro if you don't have anymore guaranteed Hot Streak.

[Rinoa]

Pruned the topic of unproductive posts.

[subtlexgaming]

I hope the belt buff is actually substantial enough to make the belt BiS w/ the Hero Ring. I have neither, but I have the bracers and I'm done dealing with them to be honest. I'm tired of hard casting 3.5-4.5 sec pyro's..I'm tired of the fire rotation and the crappy ST dmg. I feel the bracers make a crappy, not fun rotation even more boring.

P.S. Bracers are now 275% on PTR. Why even nerf them at all at that point.