Just noticed something odd.

[Deleted]

Im sure you could read the title topic...

Im currently on the PTR playing around was checkin my recount data for ignites because i saw constant crits but yet, there was no ignite stacking..

Have i missed something? Because this doesnt feel fun at all.. I found the ignites to be the most exciting part about fire mages..

[Kagdar]

Ignite is not a specific entry in recount.

If you cast fireball, ignite will be showed as fireball DOT

[Deleted]

Ignite is not a specific entry in recount.

If you cast fireball, ignite will be showed as fireball DOT

'I don't really understand what your saying specially since theres a 6k ignite showing in recount and not as a fireball DOT and on retail it have been showing ignite stacks properly where it shows the maximum ignite tick and so on.

[Koumaru]

OP: What do you mean no "stacking"? Please post some numbers from your combat log or something; at present your post is entirely too vague.

[Deleted]

Lets put it this way, you cast a fireball you crit for 1000 and ignites starts to tick for 400. Then you crit again with fireball doing 1200 Damage and 40% out of 1200 is 480 so 480 damage is applied to the previous ignite so 400+480 = 880 ignite ticking instead. Thats currently how it works on LIVE.

And yea well basically when you crit on the PTR atm it only does 40% of the highest crit youve ever done during the encounter. It does not get higher or anything the ignite is just refreshed

[Koumaru]

Well, first of all, the way you describe it is not how it works on live. If you crit for 1000, an Ignite valued at 400 damage is applied and ticks twice over 4 seconds for 200 per tick. If you crit again for 1200 before any ticks, the new value is 880, and your Ignite will begin to tick for 440. If it's ticked once before that 1200 crit (meaning it has 200 damage left to deal), the new Ignite value is 680, so the next tick you see will be for 340.

What you're seeing on the PTR is that, with the new DoT mechanics, a string of crits no longer prevent Ignite from dealing its damage, so the stored damage value can't pile up without being allowed to tick as can happen on live if you crit at least once every 2 seconds.

You're still getting the full rolling damage from all of your crits, but a string of crits doesn't cause it to be delayed and spikey. You won't see any 100,000+ Ignite ticks following a massive critting streak anymore, just a consistent stream of 5,000- to 10,000-damage ticks.

Try this: Add up the damage numbers Recount gives for all of your fire spell crits. Multiply by 0.4. Compare to your total Ignite damage number. Should be the same or only slightly off due to a lost tick when an enemy dies within 4 seconds of a crit.

[Deleted]

Oh i see now

Cheers

[Koumaru]

Bingo. DoT mechanics in 4.0 prevent clipping and now allow a DoT (or HoT) to be refreshed without resetting its tick timer.

On live, if you chain crit, the tick timer is constantly being reset to 0 before it ever reaches 2, so the damage stacks until you stop critting so much. Then you get those ridiculously huge Ignite ticks for over 100,000 damage.

In 4.0, if you chain crit, Ignite keeps ticking regardless, resulting in a steady stream of damage instead of pooling. It's actually a good thing; a target is less likely to die with a massive pool of undelivered damage sitting on its debuff bar.

But you'll still get the full 40% of your total crit damage (excepting Ignite munching, or remaining Ignite damage when a mob dies). Just not in a bursty fashion.

So don't panic! Keep burnin' stuff!

[Deleted]

A bit sad tho i used to like those massive ignites, but i see what your saying now. Thanks for breaking it down for me

[Koumaru]

Yeah, the half-million-damage Ignite tick will be missed. Especially considering what Combustion could have done to it with precise timing.

[Swizzle]

As I said in another thread, ignite will deal more overall damage but the individual ticks won't be as large as they are now until our crits start getting high again.

[Kyocere]

As I said in another thread, ignite will deal more overall damage but the individual ticks won't be as large as they are now until our crits start getting high again.

Crit will never be what it was again. Blizzard already said crit went way too high and they plan it to be around 30-35% at max in Cata.

[Swizzle]

Crit will never be what it was again. Blizzard already said crit went way too high and they plan it to be around 30-35% at max in Cata.

"our CRITS", aka the damage our critical strikes do.

[enoesiiw]

As I said in another thread, ignite will deal more overall damage but the individual ticks won't be as large as they are now until our crits start getting high again.

Let's evaluate this claim going off of Koumaru's explanation! I'll put forth 3 simple cases for pre and post 4.0.1 and then compare. It's a bit math intensive (at least for live 3.3.5 case 2) so bear with me.

Some assumptions we will be using:

• You crit 100% of the time.
• Your crit ALWAYS comes after an ignite tick where applicable
• The damage is consistent
• The spell lands the instant it is cast (no flight time)
• You let your final ignite roll and the creature dies as the last ignite tick hits (last 4 seconds you don't cast)

These initial conditions will helps us simplify the system considerably so we can have a much easier time calculating things.

3.3.5 Case 1: You crit every 4 seconds for 40k during a 5min fight. This makes ignite damage 40000*.4=16000 per crit and 8000 per dot tick. For the full 5min duration you cast 74 times (5min * 60s/min = 300s; 300/4=75; -1 as the dot tick finishes the creature as the spell completes)

Your total damage is 40000*74 + 40000*.4*74 = 2.96mil + 1.184mil = 4.144mil damage.

The percentage of this as ignite damage is 1.184/4.144 = .287514 or 28.75%


3.3.5 Case 2: You crit every 2 seconds for 20k during a 5min fight. This makes ignite damage 8k per crit, but because there is some unspent before the next crit comes, it carries over to the new tick damage.

1. (0+8k)/2 = 4k
2. (4k+8k)/2 = 6k
3. (6k+8k)/2 = 7k

so on and so forth.

This creates a series expansion that we can define as Sum(i=1,N):[(1/2)^(N+1-i)]x_i, where i is the cast number, N is the number of casts, and x_i is the total ignite damage from the new crit. In this case N=149 (300/2 - 1 = 149). If we expanded this out completely it would give us each ignite tick for all 149 ignite ticks. However, after the 10th tick, we can assume the loss is negligible (at i=10, the ignite tick is over 7.99k) and that the ignite ticks from then on are 8k.
Given that, our first 10 ignite ticks are:

1. 4000
2. 6000
3. 7000
4. 7500
5. 7750
6. 7875
7. 7938
8. 7969
9. 7984
10. 7992

This makes our total ignite damage Sum(1,10) + 8000*139 = 1184008 or 1.184mil (we can assume the 8 has arisen from rounding errors and besides, 8 / 1.184mil < .001% error)

Our total damage comes out to be 20000*148 + 1184008 = 4.144mil Looks familiar, huh? Well we can say our ignite percentage is once again 28.75%


3.3.5 Case 3: You crit every second for 10000 damage. This makes your ignite damage 4k per cast. Since we crit every second before ignite can tick, the total ignite damage is conserved and carried over. This happens for the full 5min duration and we end up with one large ignite dot that out at the last 4 seconds. Our total damage is then:

10000*296 + 4000*296 = 2960000 + 1184000 = 4.144 mil.

Ignite damage is the same.


For Cataclysm, the ignite damage will work much the way the first one works except it will do that in all three cases (ie each ignite will tick off individually). Whether you crit again before the previous ignite wears off or not, the previous one will keep ticking (ie Ignite will tick twice as many times as you crit) and the ignite equations simplify to:

• 4.0.1 Case 1: (40000 + 16000) * 74 = 4.144mil
• or 40000*74 + 8000*148
• 4.0.1 Case 2: (20000 + 8000) * 148 = 4.144mil
• or 20000*148 + 4000*296
• 4.0.1 Case 3: (10000 + 4000) * 296 = 4.144mil
• or 10000*296 + 2000*592

We can see that the numbers come out the same in all cases.

For I do not believe this is how Ignite worked on 3.3.5 (or people wouldn't have complained about ignite munching), but w/e. Maybe ignite munching is much more visible using higher numbers.

What should you take away from all this? Ignite will do the same percentage of damage it always has, it will simply not stack to the point where you see massive ignite numbers.

[Swizzle]

Except you didn't include mastery which increases the damage ignite does.

[Koumaru]

For I do not believe this is how Ignite worked on 3.3.5 (or people wouldn't have complained about ignite munching), but w/e. Maybe ignite munching is much more visible using higher numbers.

Ignite munching occurs when two crits happen so close together as to be effectively simultaneous, and the server only triggers Ignite off of one of them. Usually caused by Living Bomb ticks. Not sure how it relates to the rest of your post...