PVE Frost mage for Cata

[sparks]

I just can't understand this patch at all.
Like was said look for balance after a patch or 2 when people post logs.
WTF isn't buzzard doing this and figuring it out without 100.000 pissed off users???????????????
This is the way when most people who play this game look at blizz as some sort of GOD.
They don't have to do anything just goof off and watch the idiots pay to test their mess.
I guess overall it is just saying how lazy they are and how stupid most players (payers) are.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I just can't understand this patch at all.
Like was said look for balance after a patch or 2 when people post logs.
WTF isn't buzzard doing this and figuring it out without 100.000 pissed off users???????????????
This is the way when most people who play this game look at blizz as some sort of GOD.
They don't have to do anything just goof off and watch the idiots pay to test their mess.
I guess overall it is just saying how lazy they are and how stupid most players (payers) are.

Honestly? Because players are inventive bastards and find ways to break anything, explore options not considered, and generally screw things up in ways Blizz can't foresee. Kalgan on the front page today openly admitted that he expects people to get into the Cata zones when the servers come up, even though they're phased. Someone, somewhere, will find a loophole, share it with a friend or post it, and suddenly everyone knows. You just can't test for that internally while still developing the game.

Pre-4.0, brain freeze was determined to be a DPS loss before FFB was added to it. DPS-neutral before 4pT10. Ice lance not worthwhile at any level of gear pre-4.0. Early frost not worth the points early in beta. All of these were not intended design, and were found out by players. If it was just Blizz, they'd have gone with their design ideas the whole time and considered it a success, as there aren't enough developers to consider all the possibilities. Open testing up to thousands, and suddenly you have free feedback for all the weird and wonderful ways people can break the game, while still putting most of your own internal effort to developing the game.

[Lyren]

Does DF glyph have a place now?

[DeathDefier]

Yes, you will be using it as one of your three PvE frost glyphs along with Frostfire Bolt and Molten Armor if you are below shatter cap.

[Toriankel]

Yes, you will be using it as one of your three PvE frost glyphs along with Frostfire Bolt and Molten Armor if you are below shatter cap.

I generaly use more IL than BF in combat, on saurfang last wednesday I used 18 IL and 8 BF, wouldn't it be best to use IL glyph than the ffb one ?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

I generaly use more IL than BF in combat, on saurfang last wednesday I used 18 IL and 8 BF, wouldn't it be best to use IL glyph than the ffb one ?

Honestly that makes more sense, but the math on EJ has FFB beating lance's glyph.

[Deleted]

FFB is simply a more powerful spell - and even more so once I am able to spec into Ignite.

My glyphs are : Deep Freeze, FFB, Molten Armour. Anyone got different glyph ideas?

[takolin]

FFB is simply a more powerful spell - and even more so once I am able to spec into Ignite.

My glyphs are : Deep Freeze, FFB, Molten Armour. Anyone got different glyph ideas?

Use frostbolt instead of MA when you're over the soft crit cap. (23.3% prebuffs/debuffs)

[Deleted]

Use frostbolt instead of MA when you're over the soft crit cap. (23.3% prebuffs/debuffs)

Aye but that'll be way off when we just dinged 85 I believe

[Skarrd]

Honestly that makes more sense, but the math on EJ has FFB beating lance's glyph.

Seems like FFB sensibly beats it out if you think about it beyond just cast #'s. Using his numbers of 18 IL's and 8 FFB's, FFB glyph would need just over double the benefit. IL glyph is 5%, FFb glyph is 10%. FFB hits harder than IL, so the 10% will be more than double the 5% in terms of raw damage.

Not that I think you needed to know that, but it does make sense if you look a bit further into it.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Seems like FFB sensibly beats it out if you think about it beyond just cast #'s. Using his numbers of 18 IL's and 8 FFB's, FFB glyph would need just over double the benefit. IL glyph is 5%, FFb glyph is 10%. FFB hits harder than IL, so the 10% will be more than double the 5% in terms of raw damage.

Not that I think you needed to know that, but it does make sense if you look a bit further into it.

True enough. I hadn't really thought about the reasoning behind it honestly. I just played with all the spells for a few hours, checked the amount of damage done and average crits, figured FFB glyph would be better DPS, especially with ignite. EJ confirmed and I never gave it a second thought. Lance still seems logical based on how much more you cast to me though.

[Azyl]

Actually no it does not. I'd tell you where it does not, but you 'so may stupid reponses' bit was annoying, so I'll leave you to wallow in your ignorance.

Yes hit does. You are going to tell me that a complete missed cast is not terible? What if deepfreeze misses. Then look you lost your best cooldown for nothing. 1 rule for mages is NEVER stop casting and thats exactally what you do NEVER stop casting and to miss a spell is to stop casting for about 1.1 seconds.

---------- Post added 2010-12-15 at 04:36 PM ----------

On mana usage: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104774-...9/#post1786582

On stat values: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...Id=27607452929 Post 15. Although the haste is out of date, this was during the short time haste shortened DF's cooldown. The rest are solid though.

On hit/int break point: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t106009-...2/#post1793867 Meta discussion is out of date and re-done a couple posts down.

Edit: Hm. Can't find the post on the 9 minute mark. I'll take my statement back about OOMing until I can be sure it's under the right circumstances, despite Tyrian's numbers. I'd still prefer to not think about mana, as I always have as frost, but we'll see.

Edit 2: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104774-...8/#post1782819 but no mention of armour. Given the numbers above, this could be with molten. My own experience with molten on the beta has been almost entirely impossible to run for any sane length of time. I may have been missing a buff that might make all the difference, but as of current I'm going to stick with mage for frost. It seems fairly easy to soft cap crit by T11.

You sire. Are my hero. The guy you are arguing with is not very smart and i garentee you do about 5% more dps than he ever will with out his "useless" Hit cap

---------- Post added 2010-12-15 at 04:45 PM ----------

Kuni i have some questions for you if you could be kind enough to help me Tell me if this is right if not correct me please!

1) Mage armor > all
2) Stats: Hit 17.00% --> crit 33 --> mastery --> Int ---> Haste??
3)Do you lance with 2 stacks of FoF For the mastery buff to it?
4) Rotation priority order: Deep Freeze --> Orb --> FFB Proc +FoF up --> Lance with 2FoF? --> Frostbolt
5) Off start is it Deepfreeze orb IV Cold snap DF Orb? I thought this cause your cooldowns up your dps the most and faster off cooldown the better.
I just started playing my mage this expansion as my main so any other advice please help. it would be greatly appriciated!

[Kuni Zyrekai]

1) Mage armor > all
2) Stats: Hit 17.00% --> crit 33 --> mastery --> Int ---> Haste??
3)Do you lance with 2 stacks of FoF For the mastery buff to it?
4) Rotation priority order: Deep Freeze --> Orb --> FFB Proc +FoF up --> Lance with 2FoF? --> Frostbolt
5) Off start is it Deepfreeze orb IV Cold snap DF Orb? I thought this cause your cooldowns up your dps the most and faster off cooldown the better.

1. Correct

2. Point for single point, int is still better than hit simply because of how much hit it takes for 1%.
Int > hit 17% > crit 33.34% raid buffed > mastery >= haste > crit

3. Unsure of what you mean here. Having two stacks of FoF does no bonus over just one stack. Soon as you get FoF you should DF/BF-FFB/lance, depending on what cooldowns and procs are up. Should you manage to get two stacks, lance both of them away.

4. Orb > DF > FoF+BF FFB > FoF+lance > frostbolt

5. Yes, it's basically pop everything humanly possible off the bat. Mirror image before pull, pre-pot, all cooldowns on pull, FFO->elemental freeze->DF->Cold Snap->FFO->DF. Continue priority as normal afterwards, but be wary of the fact you will get a lot of FoF procs back to back due to two FFOs up at once. Pop icy veins again when the first expires.

You sire. Are my hero. The guy you are arguing with is not very smart and i garentee you do about 5% more dps than he ever will with out his "useless" Hit cap

I do agree with him to a point. 1 int is a better upgrade than 1 hit even if you aren't hit capped currently. It seems backwards but had the beta forums not gone down, I could post the results here.

The problem stems from the fact that hit needs 102 rating for a 1% DPS increase, or 1% more to hit. Int has cloth spec, gift of the kings, and any other int modifiers you might have at the time. Two of our spells gain over 200% SP to their damage. It's not even close to 100 int for 1% DPS increase, it's much lower. So from a raw, averaged out DPS standpoint, int is the better stat. Now of course RNG could hate your guts and you could lose a bunch of heavy hitting spells, like DF or a full proc FFB, but averaged out over many encounters, what has been said about int > hit is true.

For T11, crit capped, but not hit capped, mage; +250 of a stat, how much DPS gained in a simulator on average and how much of a DPS gain that works out to by percent:

+250 Int (+591.97 / +4.30%)
+250 Hit (+385.14 / +2.80%)
+250 Mastery (+225.31 / +1.64%)
+250 Haste (+199.15 / +1.45%)
+250 Crit (+101.4 / +0.74%)

Stolen from Lhivera here.

But of course, if you have say 4 hit upgrade vs 1 int, the weightings will of course say take the hit. But he is right, hit is not the be all and end all of stats anymore. Very important, yes, but not the king.

[Azyl]

thanks so much kuni

[Seefourdc]

So many stupid responses in this thread, especially this one. The only thing u did right was the specc.

Don't use mage armor as frost, use Fire. You won't go oom as Frost in PvE.


Then about stats;
Hit Cap ALWAYS trumps every other stat in PvE, period.
As someone with a clue pointed out earlier, getting crit to 33% is a waste due to 5% crit buff + 5% crit debuffs in raid environment.
Mastery is a REALLY nice stat that many underestimate.

so here it goes (numbers are approx);
17% hit cap > 23% crit "soft cap" > int > mastery > haste


And about burning soul, you can't really put the points anywhere anyway so go for it, even if cataclysm heroics+most of the raids isnt that full of pushbacks.

This is not all correct. Int is > hit when it comes to stat weights which means that hit isn't the highest priority stat. Int is worth about 3 points to hit being 2.7 in stat weighting. The reason this is important is that it means you should never, ever gem pure hit. 20 int/hit gems are better than 40 hit gems for example no matter how low your hit is.

[takolin]

1) Mage armor > all
2) Stats: Hit 17.00% --> crit 33 --> mastery --> Int ---> Haste??
3)Do you lance with 2 stacks of FoF For the mastery buff to it?
4) Rotation priority order: Deep Freeze --> Orb --> FFB Proc +FoF up --> Lance with 2FoF? --> Frostbolt
5) Off start is it Deepfreeze orb IV Cold snap DF Orb? I thought this cause your cooldowns up your dps the most and faster off cooldown the better.
I just started playing my mage this expansion as my main so any other advice please help. it would be greatly appriciated!

1: no. Sims have shown that you start with molten armour and around the 30% mana mark (not sure about the number, I should go check EJ), you switch to mage armour.

2: int > hit > Crit to 33% (raidbuffed=23.3333% on the char screen if you have the 5% crit buff and debuff) > haste > mastery.

3: Yes, as soon as you have 2 FoF stacks you IL in order to not waste procs.

4: Seems correct to me.

5: yes double orb+double DF (with pet freeze) is the best. Use your 2nd IV right after the 1st one ended.

[Deleted]

Can I just ask, why do all the talen trees insist on using 2 point in frostfire orb?
Would you rather not use 1 point in another talent?

[Imnick]

Can I just ask, why do all the talen trees insist on using 2 point in frostfire orb?
Would you rather not use 1 point in another talent?

The second point allows Frostfire Orb to grant a chill effect, therefore proccing fingers of frost and allowing you to cast your hard hitting spells more.
It's pretty much a no-brainer talent choice to put two points into it. When you have two orbs up it's a full 15 seconds of ice lance spam sometimes.

Also should I always cast when I have an FoF proc or hold onto them until I have two?
It seems to me that keeping one in reserve for a Brain Freeze proc would be more sensible than lancing it away whenever it appears and only using ice lance to stop myself wasting procs by going over two, as long as I don't leave it so long that it falls off.

[Spekter]

Epic thread. Thanks guys ^^

[daydayhyphy]

why motlen armor? its pointless. ffb and deepfreeze glpyh are a must. they're both already crit capped. and exchanging fb for ma is just stupid, no benefits at all in fact u lose useful stats. stop trolling