[Mage] Jan 12 Hotfixes. Thoughts?

[Polarthief]

- Haste is now 11.1% more effective: 90 Haste rating gives 1%, "down" from 100 rating per 1%.
- (Fire Attunement) Incineration now gives 15% bonus Critical Strike rating from gear, up from 5% bonus
- (Fire) Pyroblast's damage reduced by 5%

Thoughts? Do note that NONE of these changes are currently live, but were just posted about 20 minutes as of me posting this thread.

I personally like the change to Haste; makes it more valuable, especially for classes that really enjoyed it (should also possibly buff Haste to 3rd for most Frost talent builds now?). Dunno how I feel about Fire's changes though as that nerfs damage overall but buffs RNG massively, keeping in mind that Incineration gains CM bonuses (unless I'm wrong on that).

[mrgreenthump]

First thing that comes to mind.. it's the much needed scaling fix for Fire.. Though overall dps it should turn out to be a small nerf to all Fire Mages, would need to math/sim it up to be sure, but hoping this is the only nerf we would get for BRF.

[Polarthief]

First thing that comes to mind.. it's the much needed scaling fix for Fire.. Though overall dps it should turn out to be a small nerf to all Fire Mages, would need to math/sim it up to be sure, but hoping this is the only nerf we would get for BRF.

But what's weird is that they further increased scaling, which will make Fire out of control come BRF/T18. Kinda an odd design choice, unless they're just buffing Crit Casters across the board (though only Destro Lock seems to have gotten the same buff).

[Mcbenchpress]

They buffed all the specs that don't get much value out of their attuned stat. Even though Fire still favored crit, mastery was very close to crit overall. Now the gap has been widened.

[Polarthief]

They buffed all the specs that don't get much value out of their attuned stat. Even though Fire still favored crit, mastery was very close to crit overall. Now the gap has been widened.

Well this just increases the scaling further, though at some point, we'll simply have too much crit, despite not being capped. Would be neat if Crit also increased the damage of non-criticals, as weird as that sounds (I mean hell, Destro Locks do that!), just so we'll definitely want to keep getting Crit. Still though, this is weird to think about.

I am curious to know if the Haste buff pushes Haste above other stats for any of the specs. I imagine Frost being the only one, and most builds of it will now push Haste at 3rd, with MI/TV possibly (but not probably?) being second?

[mrgreenthump]

But what's weird is that they further increased scaling, which will make Fire out of control come BRF/T18. Kinda an odd design choice, unless they're just buffing Crit Casters across the board (though only Destro Lock seems to have gotten the same buff).

Nono, it was Pyro that was getting out of hand.

[nickseng]

With my current gear, I rarely go for more than 2-3 fireballs without critting, so I wonder how much this buff will help me (by my calculations on my gear, would add somewhere around 1.2% more crit for me). The 5% nerf to pyro will hurt, though.

Maybe the extra crits will help with Combustion or something else so It'll all work out.

[fearist]

we going fire boys...

[Polarthief]

Incoming potentially incorrect napkin math!

Assuming CM stacks with Incineration (feel free to tell me that it doesn't if it doesn't!)...

Live: 1.05 Incin * 1.3 CM = 1.365 Crit multiplier
New: 1.15 Incin * 1.3 CM = 1.495 Crit multiplier
The difference being a 13% increase in our Crit rating, which seems pretty nice. Every 1% from gear gives .495% bonus crit!




And I just realized I could have gotten by taking a 10% buff to Incin multiplying by CM's 1.3x multiplier... lol I'm a baddie!

[Frost1129]

Probably a very small change to current Fire (~1-2% in whatever direction).

Giving more crit is meh. Nerfing pyro is smart to reduce some of the insanity of fire scaling and T18 problems. It's not the "OMGWTFSCALING" in BRF that some people seem to have gotten into their heads. It's strong in BRF, but not any more strong than Frost (and Arcane is much higher)

Small movements in the right direction though. Would like to see T17 4pc changes, and more damage on fillers.

[Kanariya]

We'll just do what we did in Wrath, go for another stat once crit gets too high. I seem to remember BiS T10 Fire mages be at ~65% Crit (excluding raid buffs/debuffs) and over 40% Haste from gear alone. I don't expect to approach those numbers again, but it'd be nice to get to a point where Crit becomes less valuable than Haste/Mastery for us.

[Komman]

- Haste is now 11.1% more effective: 90 Haste rating gives 1%, "down" from 100 rating per 1%..

This change was live an hour ago, on Aerie Peak-US.

[Deleted]

Change went live while we were working on(and killed) Mythic Butcher. Noticed building large Ignites was a lot easier(regularly getting in the 14-16k range). My DPS at the end of the fight seemed like it took a nose dive though compared to earlier in the night(boned my last Combustion though so that's probably why haha)

[nickseng]

Incoming potentially incorrect napkin math!

Assuming CM stacks with Incineration (feel free to tell me that it doesn't if it doesn't!)...

Live: 1.05 Incin * 1.3 CM = 1.365 Crit multiplier
New: 1.15 Incin * 1.3 CM = 1.495 Crit multiplier
The difference being a 13% increase in our Crit rating, which seems pretty nice. Every 1% from gear gives .495% bonus crit!




And I just realized I could have gotten by taking a 10% buff to Incin multiplying by CM's 1.3x multiplier... lol I'm a baddie!

I don't think that's totally accurate.
Incineration only applies to crit rating on gear, while Critical Mass applies to your total crit. It's probably gonna be a smaller impact than that.

[Asmodian]

Another poor bandaid.
Fix talents first, dont try to compensate awful talents with numbers.

[Deleted]

I don't think that's totally accurate.
Incineration only applies to crit rating on gear, while Critical Mass applies to your total crit. It's probably gonna be a smaller impact than that.

Hmmm, not sure, but the tooltip says:
"You gain x% more of the Critical Strike stat from all sources."

This could be an easy test: If we buff Arcane Brillance, do we get 5% crit or 5%*1,05 = 5,25% crit of it? (Answer: No, just 5%.)
And I think CM-multiplier is just for the crit value displayed in the character info which already includes Incineration. (press C)

EDIT: Incineration buff went live on EU-Eredar (getting +177 crit rating from a belt with +154 crit rating), but haste buff didn't (Haste: 731 [7,31%]) ?

[Deleted]

Do we know if Mastery still surpasses Crit with 4t17?

[zoomgpally]

Hmmm, not sure, but the tooltip says:
"You gain x% more of the Critical Strike stat from all sources."

This could be an easy test: If we buff Arcane Brillance, do we get 5% crit or 5%*1,05 = 5,25% crit of it? (Answer: No, just 5%.)
And I think CM-multiplier is just for the crit value displayed in the character info which already includes Incineration. (press C)

EDIT: Incineration buff went live on EU-Eredar (getting +177 crit rating from a belt with +154 crit rating), but haste buff didn't (Haste: 731 [7,31%]) ?

Quite sure it says x% more crit RATING, which doesn't include base crit and crit raidbuff

[Deleted]

Quite sure it says x% more crit RATING, which doesn't include base crit and crit raidbuff

I copied the tooltip from wowhead, so...

Incineration
Requires Mage (Fire)
Requires level 90
You gain 5% more of the Critical Strike stat from all sources.

But if you look at the spell details (on wowhead.com), you can find the word 'rating', but not in the tooltip itself.

Apply Aura: Mod Secondary Stat % (Melee critical strike rating, Ranged critical strike rating, Spell critical strike rating)
Value: 5%

[Deztru]

With these changes fire will surely be on ~par with arcane in BRF. The pyro nerf hurts cleave though but I guess the 10% more critical strike counters it with ignite in the long run.

Fire will be nerfed during BRF, I could bet on that.