New Frost Mastery: Icicles!

[Vynestra]

The damage doesnt really matter as they havent done any damage parses or finalization. It is more the % damage. What % is icicles, how are they wworking, what do your other spells do compared to live etc. Just to see the changes in a visual representation. I'll say with some confidence that the numbers for everything will change quite a bit before live.

I wiped the data, with my mastery icicles were #2 dmg under frostbolt..I think I may have been doing the rotation slightly wrong..I forget >.>......Regardless. Frost is slightly better than arcane atm, HOWEVER im not sure if what I was running with stat wise was optimal. Need someone to do all the maths and see which is better. haste or mastery.

I am hoping frost gets some more buffs, and fire does get hit with the nerf bat so they're both on the same level.

[Zatetic]

I wiped the data, with my mastery icicles were #2 dmg under frostbolt..I think I may have been doing the rotation slightly wrong..I forget >.>......Regardless. Frost is slightly better than arcane atm, HOWEVER im not sure if what I was running with stat wise was optimal. Need someone to do all the maths and see which is better. haste or mastery.

I am hoping frost gets some more buffs, and fire does get hit with the nerf bat so they're both on the same level.

I think they should buff the damage of ffb (to like 90k) to compensate for the huge loss from this mastery change for that particular ability.

and yeh, I'm also looking forward to fire nerfs. praying for huge ones so i dont have to play fire at all on progression this xpac.

[Deleted]

Here's a video of the icicles effect:

[Deleted]

I think its his way of saying they still want frost to stack haste.

I'd say it's about shooting 5 projectiles in 5 seconds.

[justastrudel]

First off, the positive: The new effect is cute and paves the way for all sorts of silly glyphs to modify the icicles

Need someone to do all the maths and see which is better. haste or mastery.

I am hoping frost gets some more buffs, and fire does get hit with the nerf bat so they're both on the same level.

Based on initial napkin math, the new mastery is weaker than the old mastery, so haste is definitely still the priority. Shifting more damage to frostbolt/water ele from ice lance/ffb means that going over the crit soft cap is a little less problematic than before but still to be avoided. This really does nothing to adjust our scaling issues, so hopefully they buff the value of mastery. When the number tuning is finalized, if they don't increase mastery to at least 2% per point or make another fundamental change to mitigate frost's soft cap affinity, the only way it would be competitive is to increase base damage/sp scaling of everything. This would pretty much make frost the go-to spec at the start of the patch, as it would have to start higher to end competitive with the way arcane and fire scale right now. That's assuming they care about it as a PVE spec at all these days. They could have it just start mediocre and fall right off the cliff from there.

Frost has easily attainable soft/hard caps on hit, crit, haste, and even intellect (through shatter cap, though that is relatively negligible) and they nerfed mastery (though really not by that much). To say it's a placeholder is one thing, but they actively moved the scaling to 1.5% from 2% per point and nerfed the only stat that wasn't bumping up to a cap. I'd rather have a placeholder on the visual and know our concerns are actually being addressed.

P.S. QQ

[Deleted]

Gonna test dps on a dummy with heavy mastery gear, basically a copy and paste from my live gear.


http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...erlloyd/simple

Gonna use RoP since im used to it the most


Then gonna test with t16 gear, arcane and frost.



Gonna do a re-test....but very interesting results.

With frost spec, mastery gear + frost armor I got 32.5m dmg in 204 seconds HOWEVER I used lust.


With arcane in 197 seconds only 30.5m...Granted I didn't use lust...going to this time. I used lust after alter time by mistake with frost. so gonna do that again, alter time after.


In a re-test with arcane I was at 31.5m in 216 seconds with lust...Keep in mind for some reason my mana was not regenerating as fast in raids, well I know why but yeah. I had lower mana than normally. So that hurt my dps for sure.


Not perfect test, but if anything i'd say frost is pretty close to arcane, with my mastery and frost armour on. Gonna try with t16 2 and 4 set now, and the new trinkets.



With lust at the start as arcane I did 42.77m dmg over 195 seconds. Now I had the amp trinket proc twice and the tooshoolays proc once...and never simotaineously. I am using 4/5 set t16 and the 2 new trinkets. However definitely a huge jump in dmg with those alone. Also keep in mind I don't quite have the rotation with the 2 and 4 set quite down yet....that's a work in progress. But it's a rough idea.


Gonna do a frost one once TW debuff goes away.



Keep in mind this data really isn't amazingly useful, too many factors messing it up.

Also, using a part haste part mastery build for frost..not sure whats more viable full frost or mastery or a combo of both...Too many factors. This just is giving me a rough idea. lots of factors.


Okay frost test, MUCH bigger burst, I think it was because both trinkets proc'd at once..Amp procc'ed twice total and so did the other one. So arcanes burst a little lack luster due to only one trinket proc, and had 1 less total proc of the tooshoolays however.

In 197 seconds I had 45m dmg.

Blah forgot to do my shoulder enchant for both tests...oh well lol

So this data isn't super useful because of multiple factors, I think arcane still pulls head, but right now in frost in t16 I have 41.73% mastery and 24.31% haste. I have more mastery in t15 gear lol. 24.61% crit. Idk I didn't get the burst i've seen on the ptr..but it's only a few tests so.


Highest icicle was 397k xD.....

I am thinking mastery > haste because of the two new trinkets are going to give SUPER high dmging hits, yes haste would give you more...but mastery lets you take that SUPER high dmg, take a chunk of it and fling it at the opponent again. I think it has to be some sort of balance of the two...not sure Q_Q.

I'm sorry, but I do hope you know that these tests mean absolutely nothing. What you can do is calculate the damage of the spells when unchanged by buffs and run through simulators. Sims aren't out for the PTR though, so the best you can do is napkin math, not try tests like these.

Even if I did 100 tests with my fire mage, I'd still see some opening bursts of 250k and some of 400k due to RNG. Therefore, the right thing to do is to calculate the average damage without RNG factors, not test it on dummies and estimate a good result after 3 fights.

Flip a coin 10 times. There's a likely chance that it'll land on heads 3 times and tails 7 times. Flip a coin 10,000 times. The likelyhood for it to land on heads fewer than 3000 times (or fewer) is EXTREMELY unlikely. That's why testing something once or twice is generally a bad idea.

[Vynestra]

I think they should buff the damage of ffb (to like 90k) to compensate for the huge loss from this mastery change for that particular ability.

and yeh, I'm also looking forward to fire nerfs. praying for huge ones so i dont have to play fire at all on progression this xpac.

Fire mages would then use FFB. lol

- - - Updated - - -

I'm sorry, but I do hope you know that these tests mean absolutely nothing. What you can do is calculate the damage of the spells when unchanged by buffs and run through simulators. Sims aren't out for the PTR though, so the best you can do is napkin math, not try tests like these.

Even if I did 100 tests with my fire mage, I'd still see some opening bursts of 250k and some of 400k due to RNG. Therefore, the right thing to do is to calculate the average damage without RNG factors, not test it on dummies and estimate a good result after 3 fights.

Flip a coin 10 times. There's a likely chance that it'll land on heads 3 times and tails 7 times. Flip a coin 10,000 times. The likelyhood for it to land on heads fewer than 3000 times (or fewer) is EXTREMELY unlikely. That's why testing something once or twice is generally a bad idea.

I did a few more tests but didn't record because they came out about the same results. Frost slightly ahead of arcane. Either way fire still raped me with the other mage I was testing with.

I mean yeah the tests aren't 100% showing what frost/arcane do, but it's a slight indication of what to expect. I stopped testing because I really just want sims to come out and someone to do the math, I'm not going and reforging this stat to test this this and this..too much work D:

[Brister]

Icicles animation video from Lhivera for those that didn't catch it:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FvTvo_c...%3DFvTvo_cZdh8

[Vynestra]

First off, the positive: The new effect is cute and paves the way for all sorts of silly glyphs to modify the icicles




Based on initial napkin math, the new mastery is weaker than the old mastery, so haste is definitely still the priority. Shifting more damage to frostbolt/water ele from ice lance/ffb means that going over the crit soft cap is a little less problematic than before but still to be avoided. This really does nothing to adjust our scaling issues, so hopefully they buff the value of mastery. When the number tuning is finalized, if they don't increase mastery to at least 2% per point or make another fundamental change to mitigate frost's soft cap affinity, the only way it would be competitive is to increase base damage/sp scaling of everything. This would pretty much make frost the go-to spec at the start of the patch, as it would have to start higher to end competitive with the way arcane and fire scale right now. That's assuming they care about it as a PVE spec at all these days. They could have it just start mediocre and fall right off the cliff from there.

Frost has easily attainable soft/hard caps on hit, crit, haste, and even intellect (through shatter cap, though that is relatively negligible) and they nerfed mastery (though really not by that much). To say it's a placeholder is one thing, but they actively moved the scaling to 1.5% from 2% per point and nerfed the only stat that wasn't bumping up to a cap. I'd rather have a placeholder on the visual and know our concerns are actually being addressed.

P.S. QQ

Maybe I got lucky on the ptr...but the dmg I did on the ptr with my t15 gear was the same as my arcane damage..which I can tell you is NOT the case on live at all. So maybe I got good rng, maybe not but I don't see how it's a dps loss atm since I did pretty good lol. This was with a heavier mastery build with frost armour..However neither of our results really matter til we have our precious sims.

[Tiga]

I must have read the points / rating wrong somehow, so my calculations from yesterday were way optimistic. On the PTR, you need 400 mastery rating for 1% of Icicle damage. My assumption was that you needed 200 mastery for 1% (it's 300 mastery on live for Frostburn). It definitely needs a buff or it's going to be a PvE nerf in my opinion. Doing a really quick test on a dummy on the PTR shows that I only did 10% of my damage through Icicles. I should be around 20% to be viable.

[vaccine]

I feel Ice Lance should also generate them. Would be also cool to have a 1 Min CD spell that launched all your current icicles at all targets (so each one cleaved off to more missiles like Glyph of Ice Lance) to make up for them not affecting cleave/AoE/Bomb.

[Jin84]

**snip**

Um, Are you testing both the Icicles and the new trinkets? Because this doesn't imply anything other than "OMG the trinks are OP".

---------

Did a short test on the PTR, just moments ago. Stats are 15170 haste rating, 4137 crit (20.68%), 6581 mastery (38.45%). Spellpower at 31,755 if you want to know. No CDs, not using lvl 90 talent. Gear same as Live, obviously test without the OMGOPTRINKETS and T16 bonuses.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Saphira/simple

DPS-ed boss dummy till oom (until unable to cast frostbolt, obviously this varies because of BF and FoF procs). I wait a couple of minutes in between tests to reset the trinket PPMs. It is also worth noting that I hit a FoF proc instead of hitting Lance on 5 icicles.

Test 1:

Ended at 118,583 dps. Avg Icicle = 16063.69

Test 2:

Ended at 122,591 dps. Avg Icicle = 15905.81

Test 3:
I edited this out because I wanted to re-do the test, as I had too many FfBs and Lances in this test. Then, apparently when I went back to live values after crit test, I had LESS mastery % than above. Chances are that the Amp trink is buggy (I used it before this test). Too lazy to do a re-do.

Live:
1: 122,489 dps
2: 131,003 dps

The next 3 tests are done with Crit over Mastery, previous was Mastery > Crit. Same Gear. Therefore, 6334 crit rating (24.34%), 4384 mastery rating (22.96%). These tests were done to check stat priority (Obviously, Haste still tops).

Test 1:

Ended at 123,797 dps. Avg Icicle = 13485.67

Test 2:

Ended at 123,761 dps. Avg Icicle = 12670.55

Test 3:

Ended at 120,161 dps. Avg Icicle = 12983.66

This test may be more consistent without trinkets. It would be nice to have someone else to do it, as I don't have the time to do it at the moment. The next time I do tests I'll make sure the rating %s are similar to Live. And then test a pure Mastery build (Gem Mastery).

[Vynestra]

Not sure why my tests with heavy mastery with frost armour came out doing so well. Hm idk.

I tested in my live gear arcane and frost...and frost came out on top.

Then I tested with the t16 gear and op trinks.

[Jin84]

Not sure why my tests with heavy mastery with frost armour came out doing so well. Hm idk.

I tested in my live gear arcane and frost...and frost came out on top.

Then I tested with the t16 gear and op trinks.

This is an Icicle thread NOT a Frost VS Fire VS Arcane thread. Do tests like mine please.

[pyrostorm9001]

So official patch notes state

Casting Ice Lance launches all stored Icicles at the target

Is this perhaps the intended design? or did they change it just before current PTR build was pushed to the servers.

[Vynestra]

This is an Icicle thread NOT a Frost VS Fire VS Arcane thread. Do tests like mine please.

Not making it into that thread, I am providing a baseline of we know arcane this tier is equal to fire, if frost is beating it...then it means something. Maybe my tests are wrong. But don't jump down my god damned throat when I am only using it as an example. Jesus you people sometimes.

[Jin84]

Continuing from this post. Ok, I got off my butt and re-did the 3 tests.

Stats: 15170 Haste rating, 3795 crit rating (20.11%), 6923 Mastery rating (29.31%). I try to keep the tests consistent by keeping the spellcast counts close to each test.

Test 1:

Ended at 129,392 dps. Avg Icicle dmg = 16025.39

Test 2:

Ended at 137,301 dps. Avg Icicle dmg = 17588.62

Test 3:

Ended at 122,789 dps. Avg Icicle dmg = 16297.06

Live (taken from prev post):
1: 122,489 dps
2: 131,003 dps

Mastery build:
Stats: 9482 haste rating (22.31%), 3795 crit rating (20.11%), 15611 mastery rating (51.03%). Same gear, with pure Mastery gems, and Mastery > Haste > Crit priority and with Mastery armor(Mage Armor).
Purpose of this test is for pure mastery. I'm doing stat weighting without any sims. Bomb same as previous tests: NT.


Ended at 118,278 dps. Avg Icicle dmg = 27481.74

... I think this one test says a lot about it.

[Tiga]

For pure DPS tests, I prefer setting a time limit and then just doing damage for that duration instead of trying to go for a fixed number of casts. If you go for a fixed number of casts and you reforge all your haste into mastery, it's going to make the mastery damage look better, but it will have taken you a lot longer to do the same damage, so it's probably going to be a DPS loss.

Right now I feel I shouldn't have done any calculations yesterday based on (bad) guesses about how mastery rating would scale. I got it completely wrong and I might be partly to blame for some people thinking that it might actually make sense on the PTR to reforge or gem mastery over haste. As far as I can tell, mastery is worse than ever for PvE on the PTR.

[Zatetic]

I'm not sure there is any point doing tests like this yet. The whole frost spec will undoubtedly change a lot over the coming weeks. I wouldnt be surprised if the build blizzard is testing at the moment (usually 1-2 in front of the ptr build) has already changed the mastery somewhat.

I can't imagine them going live with mastery worse than it is for PVE currently, although look at what they did to fire from 4.3 to 5.x, so i guess anything is possible. Hopefully they read the threads in the PTR forum, the official mage forum and this forum and figure out how to tweak it to make it better.

[SodiumChloride]

Here's a video of the icicles effect:

Nice ...

Unlimited Blade Works!!!