Glacial Spike - Updated

[Katsumi]

It wasn't reported on mmo-champ, but it's in the blue tracker. Timestamp: #160 - 2017/06/27 03:02:00 AM

Here's the full text:

#160 - 2017/06/27 03:02:00 AM

One other change that is currently in testing:

Frost Mage:
Glacial Spike: the stored Icicle damage component no longer benefits from %-damage buffs on the caster.
Glacial Spike damage increased by 50%.

This is to prevent Glacial Spike from "double-dipping" %-damage buffs. That is, since the Icicles have already been buffed by things like Versatility or Incanter's Flow, that portion of Glacial Spike's damage should not benefit again. This matches the behavior of regular Icicles, which do not benefit from those types of buffs.

This has been a live issue through the expansion, and we know it's slightly last-minute for a fix now, but we grew concerned about Glacial Spike's interaction with some very large encounter-based damage buffs in the new content. Since fixing the double-dip behavior is the correct long-term solution, it was best to do it now, and compensate Glacial's Spike's own damage to account for the loss of Icicle damage. The goal is not to meaningfully nerf Frost in any normal situation (if fact, Glacial Spike should get somewhat stronger in any setup that's not heavily built around it). We welcome any rigorous feedback on whether the above number correctly accomplishes that goal.

If you're wondering what "some very large encounter-based damage buffs in the new content" refers to I strongly suggest you take a look at this: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YZ ... e&source=2" target="_blank

In this fight (Maiden of Vigilance) the mage stacked all of our buffs (RoP, IV, Orb, etc.) during her orbs and hit a serious of insane Glacial Spikes. Aside from the record of 61,5 million there was another one with 60,7 and one with 58 million, leaping to a sick 1,8m DPS overall.

With an item level of only 918 you can see where this would be going without a fix. I suspect you could similarly cheese Mistress Sassz'ine if you manage to stack up the bufferfish. Meanwhile, could someone confirm whether or not GS crits like this are still possible on live?

[Xaximbo]

what the actual fuck... mythic starting in hours and they possibly ruin the best working spec¿ How can we sim this change?

why is nice that SP's can deal 1,X millions of dps but a mage can't under some conditions? I see that he is pretty far ahead from the other logs but some specs are dealing also 1,X million dps.

[Tobiee]

Alright, i was not sure what to play. TV with slightly worse gear but way better dmg-uptime due to less cast time. Or GS with better gear, better dps, but harder to play due to possible interrupted GS casts.
But now i know what to play :/

[Acris]

It will be live today right in NA servers ? So in a few hours.
Also I did mention de change in my post, the one person saying there were no mention of such a change, you probably didn't read my whole post, but that's okay.

And this is possibly not a nerf. It is on Maiden and Mythic Mistress, but we don't know yet for sure. Napkins maths on the #Research Discord seemed to show it could be a gain, or not, under certain assumptions...

[Katsumi]

You neither mentioned the source of your information nor the vintage. Without some background research your post is not clear at all, especially to those who can't constantly follow the mage discord.

[Xinder]

Sigh. A few sentences confuse me in Sigma's post. There's this one "This has been a live issue through the expansion, and we know it's slightly last-minute for a fix now, but we grew concerned about Glacial Spike's interaction with some very large encounter-based damage buffs in the new content". What encounter-based dmg buffs is he referring? I've done heroic and the only dmg buff fight I can remember is Maiden. So it's getting "fixed" because of its interaction in one fight? Maybe I'm not remembering another dmg buff fight but even if there's one more, it still hurts my brain to nerf it just because of outlier fights.

Second sentence that confuses me: "The goal is not to meaningfully nerf Frost in any normal situation (if fact, Glacial Spike should get somewhat stronger in any setup that's not heavily built around it)." So everyone who built GS around mastery is fucked now?

[Katsumi]

Well, being able to land crits of 60m (in one fight, if the stars align) actually sounds like fun. That couldn't have been intended...

I do see their concern though. After all we've made quite a habit of turning outliers into rotations. There is little doubt that GS would have broken the meters for all fights with damage modifiers.

What baffles me is the timing of the fix. Not only is the first week of mythic raiding misused for balancing (which was assumed to be at least temporarily fixed), it also throws at least some of our preparations out of the window. For example, we naturally adjusted the loot distribution during heroic week to avoid competing for the same pieces.

[Xinder]

Well, being able to land crits of 60m (in one fight, if the stars align) actually sounds like fun. That couldn't have been intended...

I do see their concern though. After all we've made quite a habit of turning outliers into rotations. There is little doubt that GS would have broken the meters for all fights with damage modifiers.

What baffles me is the timing of the fix. Not only is the first week of mythic raiding misused for balancing (which was assumed to be at least temporarily fixed), it also throws at least some of our preparations out of the window. For example, we naturally adjusted the loot distribution during heroic week to avoid competing for the same pieces.

At the same time though, intended or not, would it have REALLY been that big of a deal if you had a crazy parse on JUST maiden because you happened to get a 10 stack EVERY time you swapped and never had to change colors and never got the random bomb. It's like on Augur with 2xIL. Is it really that big of a deal that you could parse really well when not targeted by mechanics? Given that on average it won't happen? You still get a moment of awesome but on average over however many maiden attempts, you likely will have 1 or 2 kills that come out awesome with 60m GS crits.

This is all excluding the top 1% of mythic raiders who would likely be able to pull it off every time or be fed by their raid every time to parse and hit for that much dmg. I just hate the concept of balancing around very specific and I would argue rare scenarios. This is why people feel that Blizzard hates fun. They took away a potential moment of awesome and the reason I play the game is to have a moment of awesome. I remember the first time I was able to still have IV up when my IV came off CD, I felt like a god because I didn't have gloves and I wasn't as practiced as others. So it was a rare occurrence for me to pull it off. With that gone and them doing this to GS it just feels like they want to take away those moments of awesome for the sake of more consistent damage and I don't care for it.

[Krenth]

Its reasonable that we will still be able to hit GS crits that high even with the fix. I had a 45mil GS last night in +5 BRH after getting 4 frostbolt flurries in a row before a flurry GS.

[Xinder]

Its reasonable that we will still be able to hit GS crits that high even with the fix. I had a 45mil GS last night in +5 BRH after getting 4 frostbolt flurries in a row before a flurry GS.

What you just described goes against typical behavior with Flurry procs. 3 icicles and a flurry proc you shouldn't have casted that flurry until you had GS. So you got extremely lucky and ignored typical rotation behavior to achieve that GS crit. Which is cool, but goes along the same lines of what I was saying about maiden.

Us getting really lucky to not get mechanics should not be punished by changes in design just because there are times where we'll be untouchable. Especially if those moments over the course of a whole tier amount to 5% or less of the time. In my opinion. I'm obviously not blizzard or a game designer at all.

[Xaximbo]

what are the stat weights now? I switched to TV because all my mastery gear in 7.1.5 all of a sudden became useless, the spec was clunky an seemed unintented when i was above 60% mastery it started simming so poorly so i simmed TV and by replacing some mastery pieces with crit/haste i got like a 100k dps increase which was huge.

Im afraid of getting gear for GS and suddenly blizzard makes a change like today and the spec is broken.

[Eggochiggo]

what are the stat weights now? I switched to TV because all my mastery gear in 7.1.5 all of a sudden became useless, the spec was clunky an seemed unintented when i was above 60% mastery it started simming so poorly so i simmed TV and by replacing some mastery pieces with crit/haste i got like a 100k dps increase which was huge.

Im afraid of getting gear for GS and suddenly blizzard makes a change like today and the spec is broken.

Agreed, I'm thinking that we won't know stat weights until we know exactly how they are going to fix it. The blue post made it sound like they aren't even sure they know how to fix it. I'd imagine versatility will drop for sure though.

[thingy]

What's the deal with this GS change?
Link to blue post detailing the change: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/top ... 8#post-160" target="_blank

tldr:
GS icicles won't double-dip on versatility, talents, traits, or damage buffs. GS will still double-dip with crit and crit damage increasing effects (like the T20 2pc). Before the change, icicles for GS gained damage from those things. The GS spell coefficient will be buffed by 50% to compensate for the change. It appears that current GS gear setups that are mastery heavy will see lower DPS than before as this change brings down the value of mastery. It's looking like gearing for the shatter cap, vers, haste, and int (almost the same as TV gearing, but mastery is worth more for GS than TV) will bring GS back to about the same dps on normal fights as it was before the change. It's certainly a loss on fights like Maiden of Virtue where you gain a +dmg percentage buff and will most likely bring GS in line with other specs for those types of fights. That was the intended scaling change though.


More info:

Icicles are part of Frost's mastery. A percentage (which is increased with more mastery) of your frostbolt damage is stored in them. Since this damage is taken directly from a frostbolt's damage it already has damage modifiers (such as buffs, traits, talents) and other things such as vers and crit applied to it from that frostbolt damage. Glacial Spike takes 5 of these icicles when it is cast and adds them on top of the GS damage to roll them into one spell. GS then benefits from buffs, traits, talents, versatility, and crit.

The proposed change essentially removes everything that modifies the icicle damage in GS aside from crit. This prevents icicles "double-dipping" on damage modifiers and scaling out of control - mostly with percent damage buffs. To compensate for this change they are increasing Glacial Spike's spellpower coefficient BEFORE icicles are added on top of it. This, again, makes it so icicles are only modified once (from the frostbolt damage) and GS gets a slight buff to compensate for losing that double-dipped icicle damage. Please note that the Glacial Spike portion of GS still benefits from buffs, traits, talents, and vers, but the icicles portion of GS no longer will (since it already did once - from the frostbolt damage).

Think of it like this with imaginary numbers:
(I'm treating 20% as the amount stored from mastery purely as a made-up example)

1. I cast Frostbolt for 100 damage. 20% of that 100 damage (20) is stored as an icicle.
2. I cast Frostbolt for 250 damage. 20% of that 250 damage (50) is stored as a 2nd icicle.
3. I cast Frostbolt for 100 damage. 20% of that 100 damage (20) is stored as a 3rd icicle.
4. I cast Frostbolt for 100 damage. 20% of that 100 damage (20) is stored as a 4th icicle.
5. I cast Frostbolt for 250 damage. 20% of that 250 damage (50) is stored as a 5th icicle.
6. I cast Glacial Spike for 1,160 (1000 damage from the spell GS and 160 damage from icicles).

What does this end up looking like damage-wise? Under normal circumstances overall damage should remain about the same although you will see less burst using IV since GS icicles won't be effected by Chilled to the Core (+20% dmg buff for 20secs during IV) anymore. On fights where there is a damage buff (like Maiden of Vigilance) GS will not be doing crazy damage anymore and will be more like the other specs. GS's interaction with our T20 2pc (+20% crit damage) or anything related to crit will not be effected by this change.

Judging from the preliminary sims on my character my new gearing strategy will be something like:

Crit to shatter cap (33.34%) > Vers ~= Haste ~= Int > Mastery

Vers, Haste, and Int all seem to be very close in damage and will fluctuate, but they are clearly above Mastery. Crit of course loses value once the shatter cap is reached and will be worse than Mastery at that point.

Please let me know if you find anything incorrect in this.

[Xaximbo]

One question is if flurry still empowers the icicle. I am not sure about anything but if mastery is the worst stat then at least we can look for crit/vers crit/haste items which are good for both TV/GS, just in case blizzard messes up again.

They have a problem with scaling, Windwalker for example apparently scales so poorly from gear so every month they have to buff him to stay relevant, frost mage is like the opposite it scales so well with ilvl, the worst stat scales like the best stat from other specs, my sim for TV for example shows that after the achieved shatter cap vers~int~haste only mastery is a bit lower this is so good because means that even the tier pieces that are almost mandatory are a huge dps increase, take other specs and they might not enjoy having versa or haste, we scale from everything and we do it nicely.

This uncontrolled scaling is what leads to their decisions, GS is a balance problem for them, it either sucks or becomes too powerful over time, and is unsafe to gear for GS because you can expect nerfs. This change at least if you are right will always leave TV as an option but right now GS>TV the more gear you get.

[Falq]

Crit to shatter cap (33.34%) > Vers ~= Haste ~= Int > Mastery

I'd argue with that. Mastery weight will be reduced by ur scalling things so:

~7% Versa ratio (less versa you have, less mastery will loose value)
~3.3% Chilled to the core - (not sure here?)
~10% Frigidity of the Tirisgarde
and 20% * sum of rest 20% = 4% Ebonchill proc rate (no idea here lets say 20%)

so will be 24% weaker.

Instead we get better int scalling on GS (50% more dmg means 1500% spell power multiplier, means intellect is half more effective).

Let's take sim from here:
http://www.simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T20M.html" target="_blank

GS did 29% of damage, and intellect will be half more effective on this spell, means he will gain aprox 14.5% more Int value.

So basically Id say it will give us 24% less Mastery value and 14.5% more int value. Since we get way more Int with Ilvl than secondary stats it could be even buff with higher Ilvls.

Also correct my if i'm wrong or forgot about anything

[thingy]

Everyone who simmed using the new data and shared it on Discord is showing about the same general stat weights for their current gear. It does look like Int will scale well and valued higher than before. I spent a little time shifting some gear around to drop Mastery and Mastery's weight still remained very low.

[Osomo]

T20 2pc Rotation Optimizations

Glacial Spike, Ebonbolt, and Ice Lance Procs can now be held when Frozen Orb is coming off CD within 10 seconds.
This is due to the fact you want to start every Frozen Orb burn phase with glacial, to preferably fit as many procs/spells inside the T20 2pc buff. As well as Ebonbolt always critting due to the instant proc flurry

Can you "snapshot" the glacial spike and do GS > Orb, or do you need to do Orb > GS?

[Gosuu]

What's the deal with this GS change?
Link to blue post detailing the change: https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/top ... 8#post-160" target="_blank

tldr:
GS icicles won't double-dip on versatility, talents, traits, or damage buffs. GS will still double-dip with crit and crit damage increasing effects (like the T20 2pc). Before the change, icicles for GS gained damage from those things. The GS spell coefficient will be buffed by 50% to compensate for the change. It appears that current GS gear setups that are mastery heavy will see lower DPS than before as this change brings down the value of mastery. It's looking like gearing for the shatter cap, vers, haste, and int (almost the same as TV gearing, but mastery is worth more for GS than TV) will bring GS back to about the same dps on normal fights as it was before the change. It's certainly a loss on fights like Maiden of Virtue where you gain a +dmg percentage buff and will most likely bring GS in line with other specs for those types of fights. That was the intended scaling change though.


More info:

Icicles are part of Frost's mastery. A percentage (which is increased with more mastery) of your frostbolt damage is stored in them. Since this damage is taken directly from a frostbolt's damage it already has damage modifiers (such as buffs, traits, talents) and other things such as vers and crit applied to it from that frostbolt damage. Glacial Spike takes 5 of these icicles when it is cast and adds them on top of the GS damage to roll them into one spell. GS then benefits from buffs, traits, talents, versatility, and crit.

The proposed change essentially removes everything that modifies the icicle damage in GS aside from crit. This prevents icicles "double-dipping" on damage modifiers and scaling out of control - mostly with percent damage buffs. To compensate for this change they are increasing Glacial Spike's spellpower coefficient BEFORE icicles are added on top of it. This, again, makes it so icicles are only modified once (from the frostbolt damage) and GS gets a slight buff to compensate for losing that double-dipped icicle damage. Please note that the Glacial Spike portion of GS still benefits from buffs, traits, talents, and vers, but the icicles portion of GS no longer will (since it already did once - from the frostbolt damage).

Think of it like this with imaginary numbers:
(I'm treating 20% as the amount stored from mastery purely as a made-up example)

1. I cast Frostbolt for 100 damage. 20% of that 100 damage (20) is stored as an icicle.
2. I cast Frostbolt for 250 damage. 20% of that 250 damage (50) is stored as a 2nd icicle.
3. I cast Frostbolt for 100 damage. 20% of that 100 damage (20) is stored as a 3rd icicle.
4. I cast Frostbolt for 100 damage. 20% of that 100 damage (20) is stored as a 4th icicle.
5. I cast Frostbolt for 250 damage. 20% of that 250 damage (50) is stored as a 5th icicle.
6. I cast Glacial Spike for 1,160 (1000 damage from the spell GS and 160 damage from icicles).

What does this end up looking like damage-wise? Under normal circumstances overall damage should remain about the same although you will see less burst using IV since GS icicles won't be effected by Chilled to the Core (+20% dmg buff for 20secs during IV) anymore. On fights where there is a damage buff (like Maiden of Vigilance) GS will not be doing crazy damage anymore and will be more like the other specs. GS's interaction with our T20 2pc (+20% crit damage) or anything related to crit will not be effected by this change.

Judging from the preliminary sims on my character my new gearing strategy will be something like:

Crit to shatter cap (33.34%) > Vers ~= Haste ~= Int > Mastery

Vers, Haste, and Int all seem to be very close in damage and will fluctuate, but they are clearly above Mastery. Crit of course loses value once the shatter cap is reached and will be worse than Mastery at that point.

Please let me know if you find anything incorrect in this.

I think u all oversaw the Fact that they mean external buffs not ur own dmg multiplier.

This is to prevent Glacial Spike from "double-dipping" %-damage buffs. That is, since the Icicles have already been buffed by things like Versatility or Incanter's Flow, that portion of Glacial Spike's damage should not benefit again. This matches the behavior of regular Icicles, which do not benefit from those types of buffs.

Wich should mean ,the Icicles benefit from Vers, Mastery, IF, IV.....but not external buffs like the Buff at Maidens.
Thats atleast what i understand from it.

[Tobiee]

I think
"[...]Glacial Spike: the stored Icicle damage component no longer benefits from %-damage buffs on the caster.[...]"
and
"[...] That is, since the Icicles have already been buffed by things like Versatility or Incanter's Flow, that portion of Glacial Spike's damage should not benefit again.[...]"
clearly shows, that they do not mean external multipliers, but internal ones. Just like versatility or incarnater's flow, which is exactly what they wrote.

[Gosuu]

I think
"[...]Glacial Spike: the stored Icicle damage component no longer benefits from %-damage buffs on the caster.[...]"
and
"[...] That is, since the Icicles have already been buffed by things like Versatility or Incanter's Flow, that portion of Glacial Spike's damage should not benefit again.[...]"
clearly shows, that they do not mean external multipliers, but internal ones. Just like versatility or incarnater's flow, which is exactly what they wrote.

Since the post is about encounter %-Dmg buffs ?