A Little change

This started out as a Frost Mage Blog, which I can now see was a very futile effort.

In the past month, my Mage has been repec'd more times than in her intire wow career.

She is now Arcane.

I had to try it out. And it is fun. I think i say that about every spec, but as far as this one goes, very exciting rotations. You have to stay on top of your mana, and regen, and all your regen mechanics, as well as your procs, of which i have 7, counting my trinkets.

Some spells get used only when certain procs are up. Some get used only when I am above a percentage of mana.

It's very different.

The thing that is appealing the most so far?

They are all very fast casts.

We'll see how raiding goes the next time I get into one.

The Outcome...

So.

I did my testing yesterday. FFB versus Frost.

Here's the talent trees.

FFB
and
Frost

The results?

On a Boss Training Dummy, self buffed, with the appropriate Glyphs for each spec. I did six runs in each spec. All twelve run were the length of one mana pool, no pots or gems. Three for FFB, no CD's and three with FFB with all CD's. Same for Frost.

FFB, single target, with no CD's pulled 2.23k DPS Vs Frosts 1.6K. Pretty big difference.

However....

Frost, single target, with all CD's pulled 2.6K DPS Vs FFB's 2.1K DPS. Very small difference.

What does this all mean? It most likely mean that for single target, in a situation where you can keep up the most ideal rotation, and your summoned pets wont take truck loads of damage, Frost might still be the better spec. Keep in mind that I am not yet geared for FFB, still low on crit, which I'm not willing to give up hit for yet. The mana pool lasted nearly a minute and a half longer while Frost also. The Ele's regen kept me going much better then MoE did.

So I think I might try the next raid as Frost. If nothing else, I'll be bringing another source of replenishment for bosses, and that's always welcome. :)

On the subject of sucking...

They're getting more frequent.

/cheer

Been raiding pretty regularly last couple days, being on leave really helps that.

Been doing Naxx (10 and 25) and an OS run with the guild. And what did I get from this besides Gloves, A trinket, and some shoulders?

Might I add that two raids ending in T7, a really nice trinket, and some shoulders is nothing to scoff at?

I learned that my dps is really really sucking. I don't know if it's just lack of better gear. I know I'm very close to that o' so rediculous hit cap. Maybe I'm forgetting really often about the re-application of certian things. MaybeI just deep down inside really don't like the whole FFB rotation, and am subconcously fighting it.

Oh yeah. I kinda re-spec'd FFB to see how it works out, and what the big hype was. It's fun. Some big crits. Lots of big crits. But the rotation is a little much for my liking. Scorch > Scorch> LB > FFB > FFB (then the LB's and Scorches when they need to be refreshed. And you have to work in the random Instant Pyro when ever it procs. It's kind of a pain. Specially when you compare it to...

Frostbolt >Frostbolt > Frostbolt....Frostbolt > Frostbolt With the random fireball tossed in.

So, whats on the plate for today? Some target dummies. Some target dummies, and a couple different spec's.

That's what I'll be doing.

If your on Guru, don't mind the Mage in Org on the Heroic dummy for hours at a time.

It's Been Awhile...

I really don't like Nickleback that much, the title just seems to fit.

So, little while from the last time I posted.

What's been new?

Quite a bit!

Gruul and Mag are officially on farm for Bada Bing, and we have step foot into TK!

Void Rever, is of course, cake, Solarian gave us some troubles.

PAY ATTENTION!!!

Best advice I can give you for TK is pay attention. If your not aware of whats around you, or on you, you can easily kill yourself or the whole raid.

Did we kill our raid? Of course not! We knows what we're doin!! Did a few Bada Bing'ers kill the raid? One or two.

But that progression, and it happens. Tier five shoulders went out to a few including our MT and MH. Gratz to them.

We even tried fire for a while.

GASP!!! Fire you say? Teh Sunrath going back to fire?

NO!

We tried it, it sucked. Still doing good damage, but just didn't seem as much fun. And fireball is a very long cast. I don't remember it being that long. But it was. We did hit pretty hard with those Pyro's though. About 4k non crit, and well into 5.5-6k crits. That was fun. And we crit ALOT!!!!! switched out our frost gear, and we we're promptly at 36% unbuffed, with 980 fire damage.

Not the best, but damn fun.

Not fun enough though.

The Verdict on Haste

Ran Kara with the guild a couple nights ago, and finally got to put my new haste set to the true test. By the "true test" I mean that I was in there with three of the best dps the guild has. So I was comparing my self to some decently geared people.

Over all my DPS was higher, but my damage out was lower.

So the verdict:

Haste for DPS
+ Spell damage for damage out.

Me thinks I'll swtich to damage gems this weekend for Gruuls, which we finally have enough people sighned up for.

Wewt!!!

Saturday Sucked.....

The internet was down, couldn't go, missed an easy 23 badges, and another chance at the T4 Gloves, as well as a chance to see how much my damage increased in a raid setting.

Damnit all the fucking hell....

Damn yous T4!!!!!!

Full Kara clear this morning, 'cept Illhoof, we had no locks, and I was the only ranged DPS. Not a great make up for Kara, but it worked.

Had horrible luck with the Inferno's on Prince, they completely cut us off from our tank 3 times on the second attempt, including landing on Prince and the melle twice.

Curator still refuses to drop my T4 glove token, but I did get the head off of Prince. Not better than what I have, but I'll take it, you never know right?

No mind blade either....grrrr.

Did get enough badges for the new back though. Cloak of Arcane Alacrity. Yes it has resilience, but show me a better dps back with haste and decent stats...I dare you.

Up to 1010 frost unbuffed, and our dps went up alot from the last run.

Lessons Learned

A few lessons learned last night in Kara.

Make sure you don't start AOE'ing during Nightbane's flight phase, until you are positive that some one has taunted them. Those mobs went through my Ice Barrier, Mana Shield, and Evea's Power Word: Shield, then my health. All before I knew i was taking damage.

Accidentally running three instances of Vent just might make you freeze up every time you do something more than take one or two steps.

Going into a boss fight with no Mana Gems is a big no no.

And last but not least, every time you go in there, and you need 3 or less pieces, you will never see them drop.

Ever.

All I want is my T4 Hands, T4 Head, and the Mind Blade. That is not too much to ask. Specially when three melle dps in the guild have the dagger, and all the Mages so far have seen the token 8 times each.

A Little Bit on Spell Hit...

Spell hit is a very important thing for a PvE Mage. It is the single best way to increase your dps and mana efficiency. Take this with a grain of salt however. I say it this way because no matter how much spell damage, haste, or crit you stack, if you’re not capped on hit, you’re going to miss. And when you see resist across your screen, you might as well count that as a big, huge, fat, stinking zero.

So how is spell hit calculated? Quite simply in fact. Let’s try a couple scenarios real quick, shall we?

Scenario A:

You’re 70, and you’re grinding the blood elves on top of Black Temple, trying to get some more Scryer Rep. So you and your mob are both 70, and you have a base of 96% to hit that mob. How much plus to hit do you need to be capped against this mob? You need 3% more hit, or 37.8 spell hit rating. For those of you who just did the math, yes, that’s only 99% to hit. Well, that’s the way it is. Blizzard has implemented a cap on hit, so you always have, at the very least, 1% chance to miss. It does not matter how much plus hit you stack, you will never have greater than 99%.

Scenario B:

You’re 70, and enjoying your first Kara raid with your guild. They’ve stressed that as a Frost Mage, you need to get at least 164 spell hit rating before you can start getting epic loots with them. For most trash in Kara, you won’t need to be hit capped. You might need a little as some of the trash is a level higher than you, but it’s only 4% (or 50.4) more. However, you clear you first bit of trash, and you come to your first Kara boss, Attumen the Huntsmen. Now, if you check the link there, you’ll notice that he is level ??. This means he is a raid boss, and for all intensive purposes, he is mathematically 3 levels higher than the highest level person in the raid, and in this case, level 73.

This means that you will have to have enough spell hit to not miss a mob 3 levels higher than you. That is a total of 16% spell hit (or 202 spell hit rating), which must be attained through gear and talents.

However, I did specify Frost Mage didn’t I? Yes I did. As a frost mage, there is a talent that reduces how much plus to hit you need to acquire to reach your cap. Elemental Precision is one of the first talents as a Frost Mage, and it’s not uncommon for PvE Fire Mages (or PvP Mages, as you only need 3% to not miss a player the same level as you) to have the talent too. It reduces the mana cost and chance your target has to resist your fire and frost spells by 3%. So by having this talent, you’ve already taken care of 3% spell hit, or 37.8 spell hit rating.

So how is spell hit calculated? For a level 70 Mage, 12.6 spell hit rating is 1%. So, as stated above, to cap your hit rating against a level 73 mob (Raid Boss), with no talents pertaining to spell hit, you need 16%, or 202 hit rating.

So now that you are a little more educated on spell hit, wether you'r looking into PvP or PvE, you have a reason to get at least 3% spell hit.