All Specs - How do Bombs Make you Feel?

[zomgDPS]

I'm arcane and 9/12N 10man on my mage. I raid full time on a frost dk as well, which is 2/13H 10man and I have put in a night of wipes on H Horridon, so I have seen the fight and know what is required.

You've missed his point. Quoting whisplike progression stats will not save you here. Rest assured, the mages here on these boards that you have just joined are far, far more progressed than you are. But that is beside the point, since you still missed his main one.

Example: You could do the tooltip analysis and determine that NT gives you the highest damage output on Horridon, then go ahead and dot everything up, spending perhaps 30-40% of your globals applying dots all over the place
OR
You could recognize that there are high priority targets that need to be killed ASAP and take frost bomb. Your overall damage output might be lower, but you're maintaining your single target rotation 100% of the time and all the aoe damage from the bomb becomes a side effect of your single target rotation. High priority targets die faster.

This part of yours is fundamentally wrong. That is what Stache is saying and I agree with him.

You can maximize DPS on priority targets while maximizing AoE, that is the point. Using Frost Bomb in this case is mathematically and realistically, wrong.


Now sure, in normal modes this does not matter much, but then again, not much does at that level. In normal modes, you can use pretty much whatever you wish.
And that is precisely where your argument breaks even further, with the simple fact that in normal modes, no matter which "bomb strategy" you wish to use, Horridon will die.
To that effect, as a DPS, your goal is to maximize DPS, which, in this case, will in fact be NT spam.. since the boss and priority targets will die anyway.


Now you can come back and say "sure.. but normal modes still count!", and you are entitled to your opinion for sure.

I think they don't really count, at least for the level of discussion we are having. If you are having trouble with Horridon normal modes, then I would hazard a guess that the numerical % theoretical differences between the bombs, heck, even the specs, is not what is holding you back.

I'm arcane and 9/12N 10man on my mage. I raid full time on a frost dk as well, which is 2/13H 10man and I have put in a night of wipes on H Horridon, so I have seen the fight and know what is required.

Wrong.

You have done the fight on normal with your mage and heroic with your DK. Don't try to BS your way into thinking that "cross toon experience" works. It especially doesn't in this case since we are talking about core DPS mechanisms of a fight. You cannot say "I know how to mage in H Horridon" unless you have actually done it.
We don't accept that kind of BS here, you're new, so learn it.

Neither you nor I can prove which strategy optimizes the raid's chance of a successful kill.

The strategy with more DPS usually wins. WoW raiding isn't exactly rocket science. If you have to pick between two strategies that accomplish the exact same thing, with one of them also doing more DPS, then you pick the one that does more DPS.

I don't need to prove that. Its common 'effing sense.

It's most definitely not trivial.

After reading your thoughts, I think it most certainly is extremely trivial.

You are creating complications and postulating scenarios that do not actually exist.

Be warned, this type of thinking is a direct product of the "I dont need to actually do it I can just hypothesize experience" mentality, one that many people in this game (the mage MvP included) suffer from. It is also the mentality mages as a community have fought against since the beggining of MoP when trying to get people to understand issues, e.g. the level 90 talents.

Many people across the gamespace come out with "yea... I haven't played with the level 90 talents, but they look good on paper so you mages must be bullsh!tting when you complain".

Fun fact: You cannot "experience" something hypothetically. By its very nature, you must experience it to actually state that you have, or know what it means to experience it when others who have experienced it talk about it.

[aoz]

Fun fact: You cannot "experience" something hypothetically. By its very nature, you must experience it to actually state that you have, or know what it means to experience it when others who have experienced it talk about it.

This sums it all up. You don't have my perspective on this issue because you haven't experienced the same things as me.

In general I'd agree with you that normal modes don't matter, and that you can get away with anything because in general, raids have enough DPS capability to meet whatever requirements there are without having to optimize heavily.

But this isn't always true. How much room you have to mess around depends on your raid's capabilities vs the content's demands. You can easily be in a heroic guild which has enough world-class DPS to carry you through despite very suboptimal choices, so long as your raid can meet the demands of the content. Or you can be in a normal mode guild with people who struggle to meet the DPS demands of normal mode content (how often do you hear about problems with Durumu's enrage?), in which case choosing the optimal strategy has a very real effect on how many wipes it takes to get a kill.

My mage's guild, as I've said, relies very heavily on me for my DPS. To the extent that if I ran NT on council, I would be unable to maintain it on all 4 targets because the empowered mob would wipe the raid if I didn't allocate enough globals to hitting it. At my raid's capability, my personal DPS has a very very significant impact on whether or not we can kill a boss. If I don't bother optimizing my DPS to targets that matter, we will spend that many more wipes until we kill the boss. This isn't even an issue specific to Council, Horridon, Tortos, or anything. If there's a DPS check, we will struggle to meet it.

And to talk of experience, I'd say the same things right back at you. Have you even tried using the other bombs? I've actually tried using every single one on most of the bosses in this tier, and I can say that based on my experience NT is not always the clear winner.

[Volitar]

I don't like what they did to bombs this expantion except living bomb and the only spec I like it on is fire, I guess I'm stubborn in my ways. Also having to use spells outside of your specialization really kills the Mage feel for me. I am a fire Mage I don't want to use these wimpy Arcane spells!

[Leviatron]

Can we go back to the main topic and just answer the questions that Akraen has provided us with. I do agree with ZomgDPS on his point...did it just get cold in here...but we are really starting to derail this thread.

[Henzington]

If someone could explain to me the logic of removing the spread part of inferno blast why would love to hear it. Living bomb was already highly situational before and now there is no point to use it over nether tempest or frost bomb if there happens to be 6 or more targets.

[Deleted]

If someone could explain to me the logic of removing the spread part of inferno blast why would love to hear it. Living bomb was already highly situational before and now there is no point to use it over nether tempest or frost bomb if there happens to be 6 or more targets.

As fire, it have make Living Bomb the by default as it spread with Inferno Blast. As IB is already used for spreading DOT as Fire, there's no change in rotation and NT/FB wasn't nearly used.

I don't feel it was the best change as LB was only used for 2-4 targets only because of it's easy spreading for Frost/Arca. It just empowered a little more NT dominance.

An easy fix would have been :
1-- A specific spell for spreading it, separated from Inferno Blast / Fire Blast
2-- include it in the spell like "launch a living bomb on your target and up to 2 next enemies" and add a 8s CD or something like that to skip abuse and let NT be better in some situation.

[Hasufer]

I love the bombs and I really dont hope they will remove them again for next expansion or so.
It's quite simple in my book. Who can, or want to complain over ekstra aspects to fit in and maximize in your gameplay?
The dot aspect just added yet another fun factor, which will make me keep loving my mage for even longer, than already the case.
Hope they come up with even more ideas to make the mage class more than just a "spam main spell out of cd period's" class, so to say

[Deleted]

If you look, we only have minor change since the start of MoP, even from the beta in fact.
I don't think they will do major change before next Xpac.
They have made a lot of change for a lot of class (Warlock being first in list). They have announce some graphical change for Rogue/War.
They also have stated mage's talent wasn't there best work. So we can expect some bigger change for 5.5 (6.0 pre-patch) and/or beta. It's all speculation based on the silence around mage.

[Henzington]

They have made a few bandage changes to mage 90 talents but they are still rather meh. If you compared to the one warlock 90 talent that allows 100% dps with a 15% movement penalty versus all of our spell power maintence talents its not even close.

[lettuce]

Removing the ability to spread Living Bomb was stupid. Don't mind bombs in general but they are virtually impossible to keep balanced.

[Henzington]

I say make them do vastly different job like burst aoe on frost bomb, single target with a small cleave like nether tempest, and more sustained aoe damage with living bomb is simply a matter of scaling the damage and also not limiting the targets of living bomb or its number of cleave targets. Right now I dont enjoy in the slightest having to go target by target to put nether tempest on each target last I checked mages were a direct damage not a dot class.

[Deleted]

Removing the ability to spread Living Bomb was stupid. Don't mind bombs in general but they are virtually impossible to keep balanced.

If they have kept their original role and not over-buffing them, it would have work perfectly.
In 5.2, bomb jjumps from 15%-20% to 25%-45%. A 20% delta for 15% of the DPS is only 3%. But now, it's more a 20% difference of 40% of the DPS, a good 8% loss. And I'm easy on number, on fight like Tortos, it can be a lot more than that. Cleaving LB from Tortos to the whirling turtles could have been so much fun.

[Hasufer]

Yer, NT/lb can be ya number 1 ability on several fight in tot. A bit stupid, but ofc it's determined by the large amount of haste in frost, as well as many multiple target fights
AND the buff from blizz ofc.

[Henzington]

The buff was a bandaid and the proof it was they had to put a nerf just for pvp on all of the bombs. I understand the issue with scaling crit hell the mages in guild were talking about it as back as the beta and this is why did the flat 10% nerf on pyroblast but the design has been rather terrible this xpack.

This reminds me of how mana straved fire was at the start of cata to the point where you had to weave in scorches or go oom well before the end of fights then the massive buff to arcane and finally the huge buff in fire damage just before dragon soul. Just poor design and forsight and I predict another crit nerf as I am basically at 69% for pyroblast.

[voltaa]

The way I see this issue is people just want to have their cake and eat it too. There is a best bomb choice, people use it then say it "feels out of place" because they are doing a little bit of arcane damage.

If NT feels "uncomfortable" for you to use because of some sort of OCD where you have to use only fire spells, then use living bomb. Now this is the point where zomg chimes in telling me that isn't optimal and you need to be absolutely optimal. No you really don't, not for normals and really not for heroics either. Because optimization only takes you the last 10%, player skill is far more important

[Akraen]

The way I see this issue is people just want to have their cake and eat it too. There is a best bomb choice, people use it then say it "feels out of place" because they are doing a little bit of arcane damage.

If NT feels "uncomfortable" for you to use because of some sort of OCD where you have to use only fire spells, then use living bomb. Now this is the point where zomg chimes in telling me that isn't optimal and you need to be absolutely optimal. No you really don't, not for normals and really not for heroics either. Because optimization only takes you the last 10%, player skill is far more important

Clearly you've never been the one who carries others.

Mid-level guilds working on normals or early heroics right now basically have a few people who do whatever it takes to carry those who don't and that's the only (albeit frustrating) way to kill bosses.

So if you're on a team strong enough to let you stop caring about how you play your mage... you're likely the one being carried. Which means you're the problem. And it means that gameplay isn't that fun for everyone. I don't understand the mentality behind people like you-- or even Ghostcrawler anymore. Nothing they have implemented since TBC has allowed mages to "do what they want" - it's always been a battle between what you like and what you're required to play. Why be in denial about a reality in a significant portion of the playerbase?

[Henzington]

If lfr is a good sample of the player base I sadly have to agree with Akraen.

[Akraen]

It's because our specs are not like other classes.

Each other class has a spec that dictates playstyle, just think of their names: Subtlety, Combat, Fury, Arms, Affliction, Demonology, Retribution, Holy, Balance, Guardian, Restoration, Beast Master, Blood, Enhancement, etc.

Specs can either be thematic or functional. Mages' specs are defined by the spell type, so why is it a surprise to Lhivera, GC, and others that people are upset when they are mixing their schools of magic?

What would it be like for a Marks hunter to have 50% of his damage come from his pet and be equal to the pet damage of a BM hunter? That's basically what mage bombs have done to us. I hate all 3 of the bombs and I don't think they add anything to the gameplay of mage other than simulate other classes and allow us to compete in a multi-dot dominated tier of encounters.

I'm not interested in giving suggestions to the dev team honestly. I will adjust to whatever happens with the class. My prime argument here is that they need to pick a design philosophy and stick to it:

Theme defines spec defines gameplay.
Gameplay defines spec defines theme.
Spec defines theme defines gameplay.

or any permutation therein. Until this is resolved and clearly communicated, there will be a great unrest in the mage community and we will continue to feel that everything "goes against being a mage." We weren't designed to go past level 60. We're a vanilla hero class

[Lobstarrr]

Because optimization only takes you the last 10%, player skill is far more important

Yeah yeah, no.

[Stache]

I'm starting to notice a trend here where people just throw out idioms or try to speak with authority on the subject; saying that we are just complaining or greedy about what we want as a class.

The way I see this issue is people just want to have their cake and eat it too.

We want to have three viable choices that are interesting and effective. In this current model of Warcraft, this is what the design strategy claims to be (three choices per tier).

Now this is the point where zomg chimes in telling me that isn't optimal and you need to be absolutely optimal. No you really don't, not for normals and really not for heroics either. Because optimization only takes you the last 10%, player skill is far more important

http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/stormrage/voltaa/ (This is you right?)

This tier your highest percentile was a 76th on Jin'rokh. I don't think you have as much authority on "player skill" as you think. It's fine that you have your opinion, but don't try to weigh in on the discussion like an expert just because you have a few heroic kills.