State of the Specs (Dec 8, pre-Mythic Highmaul)

[Krieger]

I didn't manage to log in today, so there goes my question. Komma said that the hotfixes were applied, but mmo champion states that "Please note that the following class tuning changes are still undergoing testing and will be implemented as soon as possible.".

I haven't logged in yet for today. Can anyone here confirm whether the changes are live in Europe ?

[Boomop]

I haven't paid much attention to Fire during the past 3 weeks. Now that I see these results, I may as well put down a few questions here so as to catch up:

1. How is the increased crit making UM more valuable? More Fireball crits means more chances for UM to do extra damage, but with more crit there will be more Pyro and less Fireball, which seems to diminish the value of UM.

2. Can the strength of Met be ascribed solely or largely to its adding to the Ignite pool for higher quality Combustion?

3. With extra crit, we should be able to see more Pyros shot onto the PC during the small time window. Has the damage composition in the "pet - prismatic_crystal" table seen any visible change due to this?

1) From messing around on Beta, more Pyros was a good thing for UM (and Fire DPS as a whole). The advantage of UM is that every GCD can be used to generate Ignite (Mastery). You are also only casting things that generate Pyro procs (rather than refreshing a DoT every 12 secs). Another good thing in favor of UM. Both of these things are dmg that can't be directly compared to its counterparts (LB and BW), as UM's dmg is more than ~its~ dmg.

UM also doesn't Crit independently -- which means it inherits both Critical Mass and Pyrotechnics.

2) Probably. On top of that, Meteor is really easy to use compared to say, PC.

3) I'm not sure this will change much in that respect. Particularly when the 2 and 4 pc gets involved.

Once again, Fire's AoE just looks gross, while single target is still lackluster. I'm really not sure what Blizzard is thinking.

Still thinking the 2pc should be baselined. And the 4pc is problematic. A RNG 100% Crit is not really what a class that stacks Crit wants. Especially when we can force Pyro procs with IB (and the 2pc). You might see some Min/Maxxers going heavy into secondaries other than Crit to play RNG lotto.

[gillon]

Are the changes live yet? My FB is doing tooltip damage.

[minimemage]

Hi Komma,

Thanks for the amazingly quick update. Do you know why there is a discrepancy between your numbers in the OP and the T17N sample output on simulationcraft.org? That arcane T17N is top with 34.7k vs. yours at 30.7k

edit: Thought about it more - is it the set bonuses?

[Failish]

Thank you Komma!

[Kasc]

According to SimC my DPS will be better as frost until I get more mastery/haste gear.

Report: http://simc.hostoi.com/mage_specs_10k_iterations.html" target="_blank

tl;dr:



I'm not really surprised by this. Most of my gear is MS/Crit

[Teri]

I am curious to know the mastery stat weight now with the buff to crit for fire I am sitting at 38% crit self buff no food.

Also I can understand arcane is better in static fight but when movement is involve fire is way better in my opinion.

[Dutchmagoz]

Comparisons between highmaul gear only:



Source: http://pastebin.com/g3BZ90v8" target="_blank

In no way is this 100% BiS or 100% optimal, but it's quite close for all 3 specs.

[Kasc]

Question:

Is it worth transitioning in to Arcane for progress if you already have good Frost gear?

[gillon]

Question:

Is it worth transitioning in to Arcane for progress if you already have good Frost gear?

All things considered, I'd probably say no. I think you'll find frost performing better in most actual encounters, with arcane outshining it in very stationary ones.

[Cid]

People keep throwing out the 'gearing for spec x' talk, but there really isn't much, if any, gear diversity in Highmaul. The most diversity you are going to get is through enchants and gems and I don't see too many people spending 10k+ on every raid to re-enchant their gear to do 800 more DPS on Butcher when hes probably already faceroll at that point anyway.

I suspect that unless your guild is truly stuck on Butcher or Tectus and the extra few DPS that Arcane or Fire might bring would give you the boost your guild needs to get the kill then there will be no reason to ever play anything but Frost in Highmaul.

[zhengma]

People keep throwing out the 'gearing for spec x' talk, but there really isn't much, if any, gear diversity in Highmaul. The most diversity you are going to get is through enchants and gems and I don't see too many people spending 10k+ on every raid to re-enchant their gear to do 800 more DPS on Butcher when hes probably already faceroll at that point anyway.

I suspect that unless your guild is truly stuck on Butcher or Tectus and the extra few DPS that Arcane or Fire might bring would give you the boost your guild needs to get the kill then there will be no reason to ever play anything but Frost in Highmaul.

As an off-topic sidenote, at my level of play and at the level my guild plays, here is the deal for Butcher (and actually many other encounters): let one who does 8000 less DPS than SimC predicts to do 4000 less is as effective as, but immensely easier than letting 8 raiders who does 500 less DPS than SimC predicts to do as much as SimC says.

Or, if the guild master/raid leader has either advanced diplomatic skill or the heart of stone and iron, persuading the one who does 8000 less DPS than SimC predicts to port out of the instance is also a valid idea.

However, these realistic subtleties in no way diminish the value of the data presented in this post. Until the next hotfix, Arcane has the potential to do more damage than Frost, given sufficient preparation in gearing (gemming, enchanting) and proficiency in minimizing the DPS loss due to movement. Even though I am too minmaxed towards Frost to return at this moment, some fresh 100 can still gear towards Arcane for Highmaul. Arcane, at least, has become a valid option.

[Resshin]

Do you think this will be the last balance patch before 6.1? I kind of want to swap some enchants/reroll some of my crafted gear, but I feel as if arcane might be toned down a little. I also feel fire is going to have a few more changes.

[Festen]

Good question Resshin, I think there will be one or two hotfixes but not so important.
Personally, I'd switch to arcane when BRF will open, what do you think about it guys?

[Komma]

Do you think this will be the last balance patch before 6.1? I kind of want to swap some enchants/reroll some of my crafted gear, but I feel as if arcane might be toned down a little. I also feel fire is going to have a few more changes.

I doubt that there will be any nerfs for the rest of Highmaul, for the same "don't nerf classes because guilds are relying on them for progression" reasoning they've mentioned.

[willemh]

Now that they nerfed the procrate on the cheap weapon enchant, is mark of the frostwolf clearly better again?

[Berlinia]

Small interesting thing, the mage from Scrubbusters played Fire for multiple kills!

[Idyar]

Hey Komma, is there somewhere I could get all the .simc you used to generate the talent comparisons? I would like to mess around with them and would be great if I didn't have to start from scratch. Maybe drop them in your http://downloads.simulationcraft.org/Komma/" target="_blank if they are somewhere else. Thanks!

[Garrod]

Fire definitely viable on Mythic Kargath haha: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/6 ... class=Mage" target="_blank

[Komma]

Hey Komma, is there somewhere I could get all the .simc you used to generate the talent comparisons? I would like to mess around with them and would be great if I didn't have to start from scratch. Maybe drop them in your http://downloads.simulationcraft.org/Komma/" target="_blank if they are somewhere else. Thanks!

Er...the simc files I used are kinda tailored to my folders, but essentially they just do 27 copies and adjust talents/glyphs. They're ugly and not really suited for public use.

Fire definitely viable on Mythic Kargath haha:

Upstairs LB cleave? I can see that work pretty nicely.