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Blood will be the ONLY Tank SpecFollow

#52 Apr 12 2010 at 11:48 AM Rating: Good
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Always willing to lend a helping hand... if it gets people to try the best DK spec. ;)
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#53 Apr 12 2010 at 3:39 PM Rating: Decent
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Which would be Blood DPS or Frost Tanking =P

How much does Unholy DPS out do Blood DPS at higher gear levels?
#54 Apr 12 2010 at 4:03 PM Rating: Good
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WoL Marowgar H25 top rankings:

Blood- 12401
Frost- 13642
Unholy- 13673

So about 10% less DpS.

Lady Deathwhisper:

Blood- 10421
Frost- 12811
Unholy- 12981

So 20% lower on this encounter.

Saurfang:

Blood- 14183
Frost- 13999
Unholy- 14997

Competitive on this fight.

Unholy is overall best (and provides the only unique buff), but often JUST trailed by Frost.

I don NOT understand the Saurfang numbers though, as they Blood DKs need to stop using Heart Strike when Blood Beasts spawn, from what I understand. Though if they don't, and their HSs are connecting with a second target in that meantime (a target that is resistant to HB and disease damage), it may be the reason their meters are high.

Overall, I wouldn't raid as Blood atm. But if you don't mind doing 10-20% less DpS for most encounters, feel free.

[EDIT]

Just flipped through some other encounters. Unholy is almost always #1, Frost is usually second, but occasionally eclipsed by Blood. But it rarely drops to the same relative lows that Blood does--No clue why the variation for these two classes is so huge, not knowing much about these encounters specifically.

Edited, Apr 12th 2010 6:06pm by idiggory
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#55 Apr 12 2010 at 4:43 PM Rating: Decent
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I don NOT understand the Saurfang numbers though, as they Blood DKs need to stop using Heart Strike when Blood Beasts spawn, from what I understand. Though if they don't, and their HSs are connecting with a second target in that meantime (a target that is resistant to HB and disease damage), it may be the reason their meters are high.

Nah, that can't be it. If you hit an off-target with HS on Heroic Saurfang, you will get aggro and he will hit you and getting hit by a blood beast = wipe. Besides, they have -90% damage taken from ALL aoe damage, iirc. I wouldn't really know why Blood does better there - I know it's sometimes a better choice because the self heals come in handy (you get a mark that deals ********* of damage to you and on heroic healers basically have to heal through it the entire fight long), but as to why it's that high specifically, no clue. It would just suggest that on a pure tank&spank fight blood is pretty equal to unholy.
#56 Apr 13 2010 at 2:55 AM Rating: Good
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Tricks, Hysteria, etc... we don't know what buffs these numbers come with. It's also a single target that can be softened by ArPen. Why wouldn't Saurfang be great for Blood?

And not popping cleave mechanics is only really in the first couple of seconds that the adds are live. Proper timing removes this concern. If you're very cautious and with a solid raid you can hit them after that initial threat establishment without too much stress. I even talked to someone in a semi-pug last week that said they slow-snare the adds and let their 2 warriors cleave/whirlwind in their main raid. But I do not suggest anyone try that unless they have a well-established group of well skilled players.

Edit: Let me add that it's pretty pointless to look at today's numbers (esp. from top-end progression raids) and try to extrapolate what that means for the expansion. Sure all the coefficients are likely to change but, and I can't believe how many people are forgetting this, we will have access to talents mixes that we don't have now what with 5 new talent points and no new tier to put them in. Assuming the 21 and 51 point talents remain more or less where they are. These are the spec-defining talents and in my mind are the least likely to move without radical redefinition. This, above all else, will be the major game changer as far as I can tell.

That and mastery maybe.

Edited, Apr 13th 2010 2:04am by TherionSaysWhat
#57 Apr 13 2010 at 8:49 AM Rating: Decent
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I haven't been playing my Blood DPS DK much lately, not sure why exactly. Anyway picked him back up a few days ago after a few months of only being used to do dailys, so he still had T8 chest and head with a GS of 4823 and properly gemmed/ enchanted(just for reference really).

I was grouping with rogues, mages, other DK's of various specs, and basically every other kind of DPS out there (except feral druids....rare beast nowadays) and was destroying every single one of them on the DPS meters and they had GS higher than mine by a few hundred points sometimes.

I will say that I know how to play my spec, but I can't say whether the other members lack of skill, caring or intelligence left them behind on the meters, but it certainly wasn't gear (well I didn't inspect them I just saw their GS and assumed they might know what they were doing, and improper gearing goes with lack of caring).

I don't raid, and I don't really plan to, just don't have the time really at least I think I don't, how long do raids take usually from starting from zero and getting it together to disbanding at the end? Anyway, I like my spec and plan to keep it because it's how I do the best. I may change at some point but who knows.
#58 Apr 13 2010 at 9:34 AM Rating: Good
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I'm inclined to say that you topping the meters, Katch, had nothing to do with your spec. Or, rather, I think you would have topped them in any spec. People don't realize how huge the disparity of DpS is between the skilled and unskilled. When I just dinged 80 on my Mage, I could put out 5K DpS on bosses. Part of that was the class, and a large part was skill. I've been in groups with geared Arcane Mages that do 3K on stand-and-Pew-Pew fights.

If you are topping the charts in all your heroics, it's because you are playing with bad players. If you aren't topping the chart, either you are a bad player or you are playing with other skilled players who have a class selection in their favor.

One note, though, about the danger of comparing in heroics. Some classes come with CDs, like Mages and two of the DK specs. When the fight is only lasting a minute, tops, these CDs are active for a huge percentage of the time. And that RIDICULOUSLY inflates your DpS compared to what you'd do on a raid target on an extended fight. My Mage can pop a trinket, Arcane Power, Mirror Image and Icy Veins (and then use Arcane Potency for a HUGE chance to make one spell a 15-18K crit). In a normal fight, the uptime of these abilities is a much lower percent, so it evens out in that environment.

But when you can pop DRW for 12-17 seconds, which can easily be 50% of a boss nowadays, it isn't really surprising that you would seriously outperform, say, Frost. Unholy, of course, gets Garg, which can be superior or inferior, based on your gear and the length of the fight, not to mention which debuffs the target has.

So, in summation, ANY class topping the charts for a Heroic boss is representative of two things, generally--having skill and having CDs.
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#59 Apr 13 2010 at 1:52 PM Rating: Decent
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Point well made and well taken. That being said though, I really don't plan on Raiding much if at all so me being Blood will benefit me more than being Unholy because of how constant my damage will be compared to the ramp up of Unholy and therefore allow for faster Heroic dungeon runs. Besides I like the Blood playstyle, the rotation is simple which makes trash easy to dispatch and bosses are straight forward, and I can feel good about myself beating the crap out of others on the meters (everyone likes seeing their name at the top, be honest).

Once Cata comes out I may switch to something else, possibly Frost <shrug> will depend. I might try Frost out between now and then just to say I've tried all three DPS specs.

On this same note, I'd also like to say that I think you hit a chord regarding your spec/ cooldown comment. Skill is definitely a big part of your potential but a biger part I think is the spec you choose and your skill with it.

Druids for example have Moonkin and feral for DPS choices, and anyone who knows how to read can do great DPS as a Boomkin, very little skill involved with the spec, but you can still see a difference between those with skill and those without. Feral on the other hand is so skill dependant that regardless of how you're geared, unless you know wtf your doing as a cat, your DPS will blow, but if you are skilled your DPS will be pretty freakin sweet. and DK's are the same, but with a less steep learning curves for the spec you choose, it's really more of a flavor type thing, and I prefer the flavor of Blood...no I'm not a vampire.

#60 Apr 14 2010 at 2:46 AM Rating: Decent
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More like rolling a Holy Paladin, thinking you'd heal, only to have them roll the healing abilities into the Retribution tree and making Holy the new DPS tree. You could just go Ret and still be able to heal, but it just wouldn't be the same...


It would be helpful to your argument if 99% of successful tanks, and those individuals that heal them, didn't all agree that Blood was the preferred tanking spec. It's Blizzard's problem that they tried to make Frost the Tank spec when no one agreed.

Up until the last patch, Blood was the spec everyone took, regardless of their role. At least, it was extremely uncommon for me to find any DK that wasn't. Frost was the red-headed step-child of the class and only 'fools' or 'people who don't know their class' would take it for ANYTHING. The only people who rolled Unholy were PvPers. There's really not much room to argue this one. You may not like it, but if it sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, and tanks Onyxia/TotGC/ICC like a duck....chances are good it's a Blood specced duck. So, when the vast majority of the player base says they tank as Blood, and Blizzard gets it into their minds to consolidate all the tanking talents into one tree, it shouldn't shock you that Blood's the one they pick. If it's going to make you nerd!rage because your supposed playstyle is being infringed upon...try considering that if this game were actually your job and you ragequit over this, you would be terminated simply for being difficult to work with and being unable to adapt to change.

Frankly, if they forced Frost to be the tanking tree after putting so much effort into making DW viable, I would've been more shocked than to hear about the tank talent consolidation plans in the first place.
#61 Apr 14 2010 at 5:34 AM Rating: Good
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TallusRip wrote:
Up until the last patch, Blood was the spec everyone took, regardless of their role. At least, it was extremely uncommon for me to find any DK that wasn't. Frost was the red-headed step-child of the class and only 'fools' or 'people who don't know their class' would take it for ANYTHING. The only people who rolled Unholy were PvPers.


Ignorant or sarcastic?

TallusRip wrote:
There's really not much room to argue this one. You may not like it, but if it sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, and tanks Onyxia/TotGC/ICC like a duck....chances are good it's a Blood specced duck. So, when the vast majority of the player base says they tank as Blood, and Blizzard gets it into their minds to consolidate all the tanking talents into one tree, it shouldn't shock you that Blood's the one they pick.


It's not that they're making Blood the tank spec, it's that they're limiting the class and turning it into Warriors with spells, lolcrap. If they'd made Unholy the dedicated tank tree I would've been "nerd!raging" about that too. Clearly this is where you don't get it, considering your final line:

TallusRip wrote:
Frankly, if they forced Frost to be the tanking tree after putting so much effort into making DW viable, I would've been more shocked than to hear about the tank talent consolidation plans in the first place.


TallusRip wrote:
If it's going to make you nerd!rage because your supposed playstyle is being infringed upon...try considering that if this game were actually your job and you ragequit over this, you would be terminated simply for being difficult to work with and being unable to adapt to change.


Actually no. I don't live in America and ******** laws don't apply to me. Besides, if I "ragequit" over a stupid change in a company, they can't fire me since I just quit, albeit in a rage. Though more likely I would've sued the company for forcing changes upon me with the sole purpose of getting me fired. I'd probably win as well - and get some air time.

I guess some ******** laws apply to me after all. All the good ones.

Edited, Apr 14th 2010 1:52pm by Mazra
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#62 Apr 14 2010 at 6:28 AM Rating: Good
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Up until the last patch, Blood was the spec everyone took, regardless of their role. At least, it was extremely uncommon for me to find any DK that wasn't. Frost was the red-headed step-child of the class and only 'fools' or 'people who don't know their class' would take it for ANYTHING. The only people who rolled Unholy were PvPers.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH.....

Just a sec, I have to compose myself.

HAHAHAHAHAHAAA.... Oh man.. my sides....



Guess I should return my hard-mode proto drake then. I obviously don't know how to play my class since I was almost entirely frost through t9. Anyone know where I can buy one of those wind rider things?

But seriously, I think you're taking your perceptions and trying to play them off as fact. Each DK spec has decent representation through the current tier. Some for novelty/specific mechanics (Unholy tanks on Sarth3D for example), some for raid composition (esp. in 10-mans), and some for personal preference. After all, outside of heroic/hardmode it doesn't really matter much right now which spec you choose as long as you play it well.

With the move to "a tank tree", Blizzard is simply reducing their development time devoted to trying to balance 3 hybrid trees for both PvE and PvP. It's not difficult to imagine that going to Blood for their new tank tree is because of the inherent mechanics of the tree, not because of the supposed popularity of Blood over the other specs.

Side note: Looking over worldoflogs I'd say Unholy has more representation there in the top deeps charts.
#63 Apr 14 2010 at 9:00 AM Rating: Decent
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I was only really shocked that they chose Blood as the tree when, from the beginning, they had a vision or idea of frost = tank because of how the presences were laid out.

All of the tank specs can tank, some better than others in different situations, and people chose Blood mostly because it had higher effective health pools with the stamina buffs and the self healing mechanic so a 40k Health tank really had like 45+k because of how he could heal through some of the damage coming in. With the trend for higher level WotLK instances being More Health > More Defense, Blood seemed to win the battle. Each of the trees have a tank talent, Blood = Will of the Necropolis, Frost = Unbreakable Armor, Unholy = Bone Shield (although DPS specs take it too). Frost was an easier tanking spec to learn and use in Heroics, has good single target threat (not as good as blood) and superior AoE threat as well as the talent that improved your Frost presence....the tanking presence. Also on another note... the 51 point talents in Blood and Unholy, DRW and Gargoyle, are purely DPS talents, whereas the one from Frost, Howling Blast, is used very effectively as an AoE tanking talent as well as a good AoE DPS talent.

Making blood the tanking tree just doesn't make sense to me. If they can move talents around from one tree to another which they have discussed doing already, making Frost the tanking tree while adding the tanking talents from Blood and Unholy just seems more natural to me. Make Unholy the DW spec, put in ToT, and make Blood the 2H DPS spec.
#64 Apr 14 2010 at 12:33 PM Rating: Good
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You might actually divide the three talent trees up into separate, yet similar, categories. Each tree can successfully tank, but each tree also has heavy-point tanking talents unique to that tree.

Blood focuses more on health and has Vampiric Blood which increases the tank's health pool, Blood Worms, Mark of Blood and Death Strike which help regenerate the health pool and reactive health modified defensive abilities in terms of Will of the Necropolis which reduces damage taken below a certain threshold based on the Death Knight's health pool. Health, health and more health.

Frost and Unholy focus more on mitigation with each their specialization: Frost focuses on physical mitigation in Unbreakable Armor, giving a second defensive cooldown that, unlike Blood, works proactively, meaning regardless of the Death Knight's health pool. Unholy focuses on magic and gets mitigation in the form of Anti-Magic Zone.

One tree with each a specialization. Unfortunately the recent raids have required health over mitigation, rendering Frost and Unholy less wanted than Blood. If you change the raid damage to low, sustained damage, then Frost or Unholy would win, because then it wouldn't be about making sure healers could react fast enough, but rather making sure healers had enough mana for the encounter. I believe that's somewhat their goal with Cataclysm, making mana pools much more of a focus point for healers as well as somewhat normalizing health pools (meaning you won't see tanks with three times the health of a DPS, for instance).
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#65 Apr 15 2010 at 9:35 PM Rating: Good
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idiggory wrote:
I'm inclined to say that you topping the meters, Katch, had nothing to do with your spec. Or, rather, I think you would have topped them in any spec. People don't realize how huge the disparity of DpS is between the skilled and unskilled.


A point which cant be stated enough. I still have the Skada log from a Deconstructor 25 run where my DK came second on the charts with a gearscore of 4900. The person who beat me had 5900 so I wasnt ashamed.
At this time I was Frost Spec, before 3.3.3, when Frost was vastly inferior to the other trees.

And to the people who say "I dont like Blood Tanking so I wont play the next expansion" please realise that the next expansion will basically be a new game. The way blood plays could be completely changed. And the way healing is being changed there is a good chance that the self healing from Blood will be a huge part of the tanking. They say it will take roughly three of the Healers largest heals to completely refill a tank, so in that kind of a situation a tank who can heal himself for 20% every time runes are off cooldown is a huge advantage.
#66 Apr 15 2010 at 10:10 PM Rating: Good
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But if the game is changing as much as you say then surely the self-heals will be changed to not be more effective than a healer's greatest heal?

And I'm guessing they're not rolling Howling Blast into the Blood tree, in which case my main interest in Death Knight tanking still remains absent. Howling Blast and the snap aggro it gives is really the only reason I enjoy tanking with my DK. It adds a whole new level of aggro control to the game. I've tried tanking as Blood and while I guess it's okay for single targets (yay for mindless Heart Strike spam), it's absolutely horrible in heroics. I had to ask the DPS to sit on their hands for 2 seconds while I rolled out diseases and waited for my runes to come off cooldown so I could use Blood Boil.

Even with a DnD placed first, most DPS are so quick on the AOE button that they pull the stuff right off me and out of the DnD circle, adding fire to the fuel... no wait, fuel to the fire. Anyway, it's bad.

I'll hang tight and see what they'll present us with in Cataclysm. If it's just a slight modification of the Blood tree then I'll forever hate them for removing the flavor of the class.
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#67 Apr 16 2010 at 2:20 AM Rating: Excellent
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Mazra wrote:
But if the game is changing as much as you say then surely the self-heals will be changed to not be more effective than a healer's greatest heal?

Quick quibble.

If a healer heals someone to full with 3 greater heals, their heal is in fact more effective than a 20% self heal.
#68 Apr 16 2010 at 5:56 AM Rating: Decent
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The whole "not three, but ONE tanking spec!" sentiment makes sense to me. So does the fact that it's blood. Like pointed out earlier, the original sentiment was that frost = tanking, but that was only really true in... what, one phase of the beta? They've spent ages making frost the dual-wield tree and currently Blood is the only spec that has an area of play where it doesn't perform (PvP). Besides, self-heals fit in exactly with the idea of a larger health pool and a tanking tree based on them is more interesting than a tanking tree based on "mitigation" (ohai originality). Whether it's more interesting than a tanking tree based on anti-magic tanking is open for discussion, I suppose.
#69 Apr 16 2010 at 9:26 AM Rating: Good
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The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
Mazra wrote:
But if the game is changing as much as you say then surely the self-heals will be changed to not be more effective than a healer's greatest heal?

Quick quibble.

If a healer heals someone to full with 3 greater heals, their heal is in fact more effective than a 20% self heal.


Thank you, Amanda! And now back to Steve for the weather!

I actually thought about it as I typed it out, but figured I couldn't be bothered editing it. I still doubt they'll let a 20% self-heal exist if Priests only get 33% heals as their greatest heal. Basically you'd only need a Renew/Rejuvenation/Riptide on the tank and he'd fix the rest himself.

Moz, I understand their reasons for going with the Blood tree, but I reserve the right to not like it - not one bit! Smiley: motz

Edited, Apr 16th 2010 5:28pm by Mazra
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#70 Apr 16 2010 at 10:09 AM Rating: Decent
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The thing that people need to realize, is that self-healing was often quite worthless in this expansion. Even though Blood DKs would DS once every 10 seconds, for a 15% heal, it's effects weren't really noticeable, because most of the time it just added to a healer's overhealing bar (or you were at full health anyway and there was no effect). Since healers didn't have to worry about running out of mana, and tanks could only take 2-4 hits, depending on gear and content, before they folded, the tactic was generally to keep your MT at maximum health as much as possible.

Due to this, as well as some PvP balance, self-healing was realistically NOT an advantage of the Blood class. A 30% heal every 10 seconds wouldn't have been much better than a 15% one in the PvE environment. Rather it was their superior health pool and Will of the Necropolis that really made it popular (and for a long time they put out the best single-target threat).

But healing in Cata should be much different, from what I've gleamed from Blizzard's posts. Mana efficientcy will be an issue, so healers won't be able to afford to always have you topped off. So, instead of a raid wipe being determined by your healer's ability to spam, it will be determined by their ability to manage mana. Boss hits will likely take a smaller amount of health off of tanks. If this happens, and tanks are rarely at full health, then self-healing WOULD be an attractive feature of the tree. But, it also means that our abilities will be returning far less of it. A 15% heal every 10 seconds would be massive if we actually benefited fully from said heal, which means it wouldn't just translate into overhealing for someone.

That said, my problem with Blood was only partly the fact that SHing was a gimmick. It actually being an effective part of the class only makes it slightly more attractive. I just don't want to play as Blood if it is anything like what it is now. I don't play the DK to go for a melee DpS/Tank. I loved it because it was a magical warrior--mixing Necromancy and other dark Magicks with their martial prowess to be powerful contenders. Blood doesn't feel like a DK to me.

And, even if the aesthetics appealed to me (ignoring the fact that they are basically just Warriors with an enhanced Lifeward on their weapon), their current style doesn't at all. I don't like playing Blood because I don't like feeling taxed in the AoE department. If it is in any way similar to what it is now (DnD, HS and BB), I'm not going to like it. Frost's snap aggro was super awesome, and Unholy's DnD was strong enough I rarely lost a mob in the beginning and never lost one once my diseases were spread and they/WP were taking them down (and I almost never used BB).
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#71 Apr 16 2010 at 12:04 PM Rating: Good
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Having played around with my Death Knight for a couple of days now as tank, I just want to say this:

If they don't move Hungering Cold, Howling Blast and Lichborne into the Blood tree, I will kill someone. Seriously, those three spells are what make the game for me. Having so much control over an AOE situation makes heroics fun to tank - which is alpha and omega for me, otherwise I get fed up with it and it becomes a chore, causing me to eventually abandon the class in disgust.

Alone the fact that once you pop DnD, you're not out of AOE options is enough for me to love the tree. I can toss down a DnD and still have ranged AOE options available in the form of Howling Blast (glyphed). I can round up mobs and use Hungering Cold to either AOE interrupt (meaning I get two of those, since I'm a Blood Elf) or use it to incapacitate running mobs.

Also, Moz, you need to spec Frost for uber heroics farming, seriously. Hungering Cold ice blocks count as 'frozen' targets, meaning you get the Shatter effect on them. Huzzah!
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#72 Apr 16 2010 at 5:00 PM Rating: Good
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Also, Moz, you need to spec Frost for uber heroics farming, seriously. Hungering Cold ice blocks count as 'frozen' targets, meaning you get the Shatter effect on them. Huzzah!

Which would be awesome if the effect didn't break after one hit. One 2K Blizzard crit instead of one 1K hit isn't going to make much of a difference compared to the full AOE rotation fire has.

Quote:
If they don't move Hungering Cold, Howling Blast and Lichborne into the Blood tree, I will kill someone. Seriously, those three spells are what make the game for me.

To be honest, I don't think blood will work like that (and I know you probably don't literally mean "they need to move the skills from frost to blood"). If they literally wanted to move all tanking abilities, the blood tree would hold Rune Tap, Mark of Blood, Vampiric Blood, Heart Strike, Dancing Rune Weapon, Licheborne, Hungering Cold, Howling Blast, Unbreakable Armor, Bone Shield and Anti-Magic Zone as instant active talents. I'm thinking that if they'll keep the number of those tanking talents in the blood tree roughly similar, but either combine all those abilities or replace them altogether. I doubt we'll literally see Howling Blast in blood, but, for example, we might see a talent that gives your D&D a debuff that increases the damage done by Blood Boil on the target by 100% and makes D&D a FU ability rather than a BFU one. I still think we'll have to wait and see in that department.
#73 Apr 16 2010 at 6:57 PM Rating: Default
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Which would be awesome if the effect didn't break after one hit. One 2K Blizzard crit instead of one 1K hit isn't going to make much of a difference compared to the full AOE rotation fire has.


Fire's AoE is truly unimpressive in Heroics. Or, more specifically, it is only slightly more damage for a much higher mana cost. It's good on paper, but terrible in practice--things die too fast for it.

For the past week I've been Fire on my Mage. In heroics, I think I've had maybe 3 LBs actually explode on trash mobs. My AoE when trying to use them has been abyssmal.

And my DpS with 3 FS casts is lower than it was as Arcane in the same instances. The thing is, as Fire spec, your Flamestrikes aren't really more impressive.

Arcane buffs that go to FS: +3% Damage, +3% Spell Damage, +6% haste, 15% of Intellect as Spell Power, +3% crit damage. Add to that increased spirit which translates to crit from Molten Armor.

Now note that ALL of these buffs also buff Blizzard.

Fire buffs that go to FS: 40% damage/4 seconds from crits, +6% crit, +3% damage, +6% crit (again), +10% fire damage, +3% crit. Of these, only +3% crit and +3% damage apply to Blizzard (I may have missed one, to be fair).

Now, let's look at the abilities used in either (or both) rotations:

FS9 is 873 to 1067 damage with 780 over 8 seconds in a small area, with a cast time of 2 seconds. The initial burst gets 23.57% of spell power, and the DoT gets 48.8%.

FS8 is 688 to 842 damage with 620 over 8 seconds in a small area, with a cast time of 2 seconds. The initial burst gets 23.57% of spell power, and the DoT gets 48.8%.

FS 7 is 471 to 575 damage with 424 over 8 seconds in a small area, with a cast time of 2 seconds. The initial burst gets 23.57% of spell power, and the DoT gets 48.8%.

Blizzard is 3408 damage in a large area, channeled over 8 seconds. The entire spell gets 114.29% of spell power as damage.

For this (very simple) comparison, we will be using my Mage. I have 2200 SP in Fire with 20% chance to crit (both rounded down slightly), 1230 Intellect and 600 spirit.

That would give my spells the following values in Fire spec:
FS9 = [((970+519)+(780+1073.6))*1.13]/2 = 1888.23 DpS on a non crit. When it crits, it becomes: [1.4(((2*(970+519))+(780+1073.6))*1.13]/2 = 3402.882 DpS I do not recall if the tics can be criticals or not, but if they can, then we can add 600 to each value (non-crit is 2488.23 overall DpS and a crit is 4K overall DpS).

So, yes, it is decent.

However, take Arcane (same gear, but higher stats due to talents):
***Note, I AM factoring in the 3% from Arcane Empowerment, because we are considering Heroics so it is perfectly conceivably that you may have no one else in the party applying the buff.***

*Arcane's spell power for this comparison is 2385 due to the 15% Int->SP*

FS9 = [((970+562)+(780+1164))*1.06]/1.88 = 1959.9 on a non crit. If the DoTs can crit, we add 660 to this value. If the main strike is a crit, the damage is 2823.66 (with another 660 if the DoT effect can crit).

Even before I go on, it is clear that Fire's AoE is NOT that superior to Arcane's. Fire will only crit 4.x% more of the time than Arcane. My mage had 32% crit as Arcane. So, assuming 32% vs. 36% active crit on FS...

(1888.23)*.64 + (3402.882)*.36 = 1208.467 + 1225.04 = 2433.505 DpS expected from FS over an entire dungeon, if each casts's DoT can run it's course. If the DoT can crit, this is 3K.

With Arcane, it is:

1959.9 *.7 + 2823.66 *.3 = 1371.91 + 847.08 = 2219 DpS from Arcane for the whole run, assuming the Dot can run it's course. With DoT crits, it is 2879 DpS.

So, a whole spec change has only a 121 DpS difference between the two main spells (Fire will have a smaller DpS boost over Arcane as you downrank).

However, Arcane manages to get 1100 or so DpS out of Blizzard, when Fire could only get 960 DpS out of it.

So, we have two options. Fire can do FSx3 and then spam Fireballs or do FSx3 and use Blizzard. Living Bomb isn't an option as it will almost certainly not explode in anything but the Frozen Halls instances. If they choose the first one, Arcane ends up with SUPERIOR AoE DpS. If they choose the latter, they just SLIGHTLY edge out Arcane by being quite a bit more Mana inefficient.

In practice, Fire just isn't the better AoE spec *in heroics*. If you have raid encounters where you can place LB on adds, though, or the trash doesn't die in under 12 seconds, then Fire is superior.

Not to mention that you should see a 2-3K DpS drop from Arcane to Fire, minimum, on bosses due to the loss of CDs (as has been discussed in this thread, I believe, in relation to DKs). If you have a +magic damage buff from DKs, Druids or Locks, that can go up to 4K. Yes. I HAVE done 9K DpS on bosses in Heroics with my Arcane spec due to CDs lasting nearly the whole fight. Once I would have gotten 10K, but those skeleton adds on Prince whatever-his-name-is increased my fight time. :(

Best I've done with Fire is 5.5K so far. Oh, and I was hitting 9-10K BEFORE 2pc T10. I switched to Fire very shortly after getting it and hadn't really tested Arcane with it.

But this wasn't off topic at all--nor was I bored. >.<
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#74 Apr 16 2010 at 8:38 PM Rating: Excellent
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Mazra wrote:
The One and Only Poldaran wrote:
Mazra wrote:
But if the game is changing as much as you say then surely the self-heals will be changed to not be more effective than a healer's greatest heal?

Quick quibble.

If a healer heals someone to full with 3 greater heals, their heal is in fact more effective than a 20% self heal.


Thank you, Amanda! And now back to Steve for the weather!

I actually thought about it as I typed it out, but figured I couldn't be bothered editing it. I still doubt they'll let a 20% self-heal exist if Priests only get 33% heals as their greatest heal. Basically you'd only need a Renew/Rejuvenation/Riptide on the tank and he'd fix the rest himself.


You're missing the beauty though. With the change to the rune system, the self heal will be happening less often than now, so it can stay how it is! Smiley: tongue
#75 Apr 16 2010 at 8:51 PM Rating: Good
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Mozared wrote:
Quote:
Also, Moz, you need to spec Frost for uber heroics farming, seriously. Hungering Cold ice blocks count as 'frozen' targets, meaning you get the Shatter effect on them. Huzzah!

Which would be awesome if the effect didn't break after one hit. One 2K Blizzard crit instead of one 1K hit isn't going to make much of a difference compared to the full AOE rotation fire has.


Pfff, just spec Arcane, spam Arcane Explosion and pull in 4k like the Mage in Culling of Stratholme earlier.

And Poldaran, self-heals or not, I won't like it. Smiley: mad

Edited, Apr 17th 2010 4:52am by Mazra
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#76 Apr 17 2010 at 6:49 AM Rating: Decent
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*Wall of text*

Diggory, I'm sorry to hand it to you after that awesome wall of text, but you kind of missed my point.

That's some very nice calculations, but the thing is that I'm actually specifically specced for AOE (read: heroics) in fire. The fire cookie cutter differs about nine points from the AOE-instance farming build I came up with. My build trades in some ST and long-time damage (Torment the Weak, Molten Fury) for pure AOE. Which means my rotation is effectively;

-Living Bomb times X (where X=number of mobs in trash group)
-(Possibly Scorch times X too, depending on how strong the mobs and the other DPS are)
-Dragon's Breath > (Instant) Flamestrike > Blast Wave > (Instant) Flame Strike
-(Possible Cone of Cold)
-(Hot Streak) Pyroblast ad infinitum, until everything is dead.

And all this is A) way more mana efficient than frost (everything up to the possible Cone of Cold is more or less the same mana cost as one Blizzard on a group of 3 mobs) and B) more damage. The highest DPS I've pulled with this is about 7400 on a group of 4 trash mobs (in about 4600 GS).

The trade-off is the loss of some ST damage, but since nobody ever has problems with heroic bosses and 90% of a heroic is trash anyway, I find that this is still a more effective way of getting the highest amount of damage done.

That said, I'll let it rest past that point as we're in completely the wrong forum.
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