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Extending IV with non-FoF ILs?

Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 4:02 pm
by causevha
If frozen orb is about to come off cooldown, is it a dps gain if we spam some non-fof ice lances so we can have 30% multistrike during frostbomb + frozen orb :?:

Re: extending IV with non-FoF ILs

Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 5:57 pm
by martyr
So piggy backing off of this, and I'll ask someone with better experience in SimC to run this. I remember at the start of the expansion some discussion of running unglyphed IV and weaving IL's with TV to basically keep IV up 100% of the time.

Considering class trinket off Archimonde which should make even non-FoF IL hit harder I'm wondering if once you have it this could become a thing again. This is complete napkin math, and might be wrong, but the DPET of a non-FoF IL with the Archimonde trinket (normal) post-FrB would be around 4k for me. Frostbolt is roughly 6743. Would the additional 20% of constant haste be enough to offset the loss of the CD. Or would it become viable with a higher item level trinket.

Re: Extending IV with non-FoF ILs?

Posted: Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:46 pm
by Komma
Slightly modified the title so it can be made more of an open ended discussion.

As Martyr mentioned, this has been mentioned before during the start of the expansion. The key factor on whether this works is Ice Lance's strength relative to core spells, when casted without FoF. The stronger non-FoF-IL is, the less you lose casting it to prolong IV. It needs to reach a certain threshold before extending IV with non-FoF-IL is worth it. To prevent this, Ice Lance was nerfed by ~40% at the start of the expansion, and FoF was buffed to provide 100% additional damage, up from 25%. After that, it was clearly no longer worth it.

Now, consider what changed in 6.2:
1. Fingers of Frost further buffed to 140%, up from 100%.
2. Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt damage increased by 20%.
3. 2T18 increases Brain Freeze effect to 105%, up from 85%.
4. Shatterlance trinket allows buffing Ice Lances by ~60-100%, if preceded by a Frostbolt.

Items 1-3 clearly cause non-FoF Ice Lances to further fall behind relative to other core spells by a pretty big amount. Item 4 isn't as straight forward: it buffs non-FoF Ice Lances, but FoF Ice Lance can capitalize much more from the multiplicative effect. The bigger issue though, is execution: Frostbolt+Ice Lance cannot be brought under the 2 second extension duration of Thermal Void. You need 100% haste, 50% of which is wasted on Ice Lance, before you can GCD cap both Frostbolt and Ice Lance and break even with a 2 second execution time. Therefore, you cannot sustain Icy Veins while weaving Shatterlances indefinitely.

Infinite IV was already dead in 6.1. With these 4 changes, infinite IV is even more[i/] suboptimal, by a pretty big margin.

In addition to this, 4T18 causes such high FoF generation that in all honesty, you'll have a pretty big problem spending FoFs anyway. This means that I don't think intentionally extending Ice Lances is even worth spending time considering.

Re: Extending IV with non-FoF ILs?

Posted: Sun Jul 12, 2015 6:34 am
by Rueko
Komma,

What if we were to un-glyph Icy-Veins? with 4pc t18 + Archimonde Trinket, you actually effectively are able to maintain Icy Veins, and Icy-veins falls or almost falls off right as it comes back off cooldown. I am suggesting this simply as a hypothetical. Since we are mostly Arcane/Frost, in 4pc t18 we will primarily be haste gemmed/enchanted as well.

Re: Extending IV with non-FoF ILs?

Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 12:22 am
by mustreach
Just to complicate this a bit more, what about using FoF ILs with tome to extend IV without the intermediate FB's? If orb and/or WJ are off codlin, it seems like it may be worth it.