Now that much of the simc implementation for patch 8.3 is completed, here are some initial comparisons for Mages using the new gear with no corruption. The gear lists, talents, and consumables used for these simulations may not be optimal yet, but they are a good point to start from and to use as a baseline for evaluating the new trinkets and corruption effects.
The following simulations consider single target Patchwerk scenarios only and use the default simc average fight length of five minutes. The full details of the base profiles used in these simulations can be downloaded and viewed in this simc report: Tier25.html. All of these profiles use no corrupted items, a Rank 15 https://www.wowhead.com/item=169223/ash ... of-resolve, and a Level 80 https://www.wowhead.com/item=158075/heart-of-azeroth to allow for one major Essence and three minor Essences. Despite the lack of corruption on the gear, the https://www.wowhead.com/spell=317137/heart-of-darkness Azerite trait is enabled, as having 25 corruption does not seem difficult to manage.
To begin, here is a comparison between the different specializations. Arcane continues to be the strongest single target Mage spec on five minute Patchwerk by a significant margin, although this is at the cost of having limited opportunities to deal cleave damage. The https://www.wowhead.com/azerite-essence ... e-force-55 option for Fire Mages is no longer shown in this comparison, as the nerfs have caused it to fall significantly behind the https://www.wowhead.com/azerite-essence ... dreams-104 even on single target. Despite the 20% buff to the coefficient of https://www.wowhead.com/spell=30455/ice-lance coming in 8.3, the Frozen Orb build is still behind No Ice Lance on single target due to No Ice Lance's better scaling and the superior itemization available to No Ice Lance in 8.3 so far.
Damage per Second Comparison
Stat Weights
Trinkets
The following comparison of trinkets includes all trinkets from the new Ny'alotha raid as well as many popular trinkets from Azshara's Eternal Palace and Mythic dungeons. This comparison considers having one trinket equipped at a time and does not consider any synergy obtained through equipping a specific combination of two trinkets. Common obtainable item levels are shown for each trinket. There may still some APL improvements that can be made for some of these trinkets.
For Arcane and the two Frost builds, https://www.wowhead.com/item=174103/man ... of-madness and https://www.wowhead.com/item=174060/psyche-shredder are likely to be two of the best trinkets for raiding in 8.3. https://www.wowhead.com/item=173944/for ... =4822:1487 also looks good in some cases. Arcane in particular has very good synergy with https://www.wowhead.com/item=174103/man ... of-madness, which provides a large amount of critical strike rating during https://www.wowhead.com/spell=12042/arcane-power. https://www.wowhead.com/item=174060/psyche-shredder is primarily a single target trinket, but single target damage is often the most desired type of content for raiding. For Fire, it appears that it will still be important to have at least one powerful on-use trinket to buff your https://www.wowhead.com/spell=190319/combustion. Specifically, this will either be https://www.wowhead.com/item=169314/azs ... t-of-power or a https://www.wowhead.com/item=172669/cor ... tors-badge. https://www.wowhead.com/item=174060/psyche-shredder is likely to be the second trinket for Fire Mages, but using both https://www.wowhead.com/item=169314/azs ... t-of-power and https://www.wowhead.com/item=172669/cor ... tors-badge together will still be a strong option, especially early on and for extra AoE damage.
One important note about these results is that https://www.wowhead.com/item=174060/psyche-shredder has a 0.5 second internal cooldown (ICD) between triggering each instance of damage. This means that builds like Frozen Orb are able to get more value out of the debuff than those like No Ice Lance because more frequent hits are occurring during the debuff. However, in PTR testing there were some instances where the ICD was longer than 0.5 seconds. This behavior is not currently modeled in simc, meaning that this trinket may be slightly weaker in practice than this comparison indicates.
Corruption Effects - Damage per Effect
This comparison considers having one corruption effect equipped at a time and also shows how the effects increase as a higher tier of the corruption effect is equipped. Keep in mind that different effects come with potentially varying amounts of corruption and it will be important to manage the damage you gain per point of corruption, not the damage you gain per corrupted effect. For https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318212/surging-vitality, these simulations consider the case where ticking damage hits the player every second.
Two of these effects, https://www.wowhead.com/spell=316799/ineffable-truth and https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318488/infinite-stars, will be obtainable from https://www.wowhead.com/item=172189/eye ... f-ilgynoth and https://www.wowhead.com/item=174108/shg ... -malignity in the raid, respectively.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=316799/ineffable-truth will likely require some APL updates to perform optimally in simulations, but generally seems to be a weaker corruption effect on single target. For Fire, this effect can be very useful if it activates during https://www.wowhead.com/spell=190319/combustion, but its overall impact on large cooldowns is not very significant, especially because Fire will still want to wait a full two minutes so that https://www.wowhead.com/spell=190319/combustion can be used with trinkets and https://www.wowhead.com/azerite-essence ... dreams-104. This effect is actually extremely good for Frost on AoE because it also increases the amount of cooldown reduction that https://www.wowhead.com/spell=190356/blizzard grants to https://www.wowhead.com/spell=84714/frozen-orb.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318488/infinite-stars is a strong single target effect, especially when you are able to get ten stacks of its debuff on a priority target. Note that when fighting multiple enemies, https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318488/infinite-stars will be hitting random targets and will be unable to quickly stack its debuff. This effect does have the advantage where it is often good in fights where execute matters, which are generally common in raids.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=315574/glimpse-of-clarity ranges from a very weak effect to an average effect depending on spec. For Fire, this will almost always reduce the cooldown of your https://www.wowhead.com/spell=108853/fire-blast, which is generally useful. For Frost, this can reduce the cooldown of https://www.wowhead.com/spell=190356/blizzard, which provides okay value for the Frozen Orb build and in general for Frost on AoE. For Arcane, there isn't really anything useful for this effect to reduce. In fact, the effect can even be wasted if it is consumed by https://www.wowhead.com/spell=205025/presence-of-mind, as https://www.wowhead.com/spell=205025/presence-of-mind does not trigger its cooldown until https://www.wowhead.com/spell=30451/arcane-blast has been cast twice.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318179/gushing-wound is a strong single target effect, although it is only available with a low amount of corruption. The huge advantage of this effect over https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318488/infinite-stars is that it should only proc on targets you are dealing damage to. When there are a large number of irrelevant targets, this effect could be very good for single target.
The following effects are guaranteed to drop on weapons in the raid that are not available to mages. However, these effects are also obtainable for mages as random corruptions on other items.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318486/echoing-void is very powerful on single target, but scales with maximum health and requires you to be in melee range to deal damage with its effect. This effect splits its damage on AoE, so it won't be a huge outlier in AoE situations like it was initially on the PTR.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318478/tw ... evastation is a very strong AoE effect, but it can be difficult to aim because it randomly triggers a forward moving projectile based on where your character is facing.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318479/void-ritual seems to be an average effect when no additional allies are using it. I have not yet looked into how this effect performs when you are near multiple allies that are using it.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318481/twisted-appendage is an average single target effect.
Otherwise, the general secondary stat corruption effects generally seem strong based on the desired stats of each of the specs. For example, No Ice Lance has very high mastery scaling and is looking to scale extremely well late into this patch when a large amount of corruption becomes available. The value of these effects will vary significantly with your gear, so it will be important to run simulations for your character to determine the best items to equip from what you have available.
Corruption Effects - Damage per Point of Corruption
The damage gained per corruption effect above may be relevant later in the patch when a large amount of corruption resistance is available or when you do not have much corruption available early in the patch, but damage gained per point of corruption will generally be much more important. These charts consider the amount of DPS gained per point of corruption provided by each of the tiered effects.
This comparison shows that for each effect, damage gained per point of corruption is balanced among different tiers of the effects. The specific order of the tiers here are determined by error margins and secondary stat breakpoints that are specific to the base profiles. Here, https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318488/infinite-stars is still an outlier despite the 75 corruption provided by its tier 3 effect, but https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318179/gushing-wound is also very efficient.
Change Log
Jan. 6, 2020: Updated Fire trinket comparison to account for new APL changes.
Jan. 7, 2020: Updated comparisons to account for PTR hotfixes and a simulation bug fix for https://www.wowhead.com/item=174060/psyche-shredder.
Jan. 7, 2020: Added comparisons for DPS per point of corruption.
Jan. 7, 2020: Updated https://www.wowhead.com/item=158075/heart-of-azeroth to level 80.
Jan. 9, 2020: Added additional corruption effects.
Jan. 9, 2020: Updated comparisons for new PTR hotfixes.
Jan. 18, 2020: Added https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318481/twisted-appendage to comparisons.
Jan. 18, 2020: Updated corruption comparisons for new Live changes and hotfixes (https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318488/infinite-stars nerfed and https://www.wowhead.com/spell=318486/echoing-void nerfed)
