StratFu
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Well, the much-anticipated "benefit from spirit" is here. GC wasn't quite true to his word.
He said that the goal was that we wouldn't have a DPS loss by taking gear with spirit on it, but we also wouldn't see a dps gain. He's correct we don't see a dps gain...
But it's definitely still a loss to take any gear with spirit.
The changes are:
- Molten Armor now causes 170 Fire damage when hit for all ranks (Up from 75/130/170) and also increases your critical strike rating by 25% of your spirit.
- Molten Armor glyph increases that by 15% (to a total of 40%)
It requires about 380 unbuffed spirit for glyphed Molten Armor fully-raid-buffed to still provide 5% crit.
It's a good move from a gear-homogenization perspective (how good that design is I won't go into here.) It's a "...what?" move from a mage perspective, since it doesn't really address anything at all with the class, and just brings us closer to parity with what the other cloth classes have had with itemization up until now.
Most interesting is what isn't in this patch:
- Mage armor glyph still not touched (has zero effect if you have mage armor on and any normal mage build)
- Scorch still has no selfish benefit
- Scorch still requires 5 stacks, or a mage glyph slot plus two stacks
- Evocation and mage mana are untouched
So this brings us a bit more benefit from what before would've been terrible gear -- that's good.
It's a nerf to mage in 10-mans, 5-mans, and solo. It's a nerf to fire mage pvp (the only spec that used molten armor), which paradoxically is against their previously-stated 3.1 goals for mages. Yet molten armor still retains two pure pvp bonuses: causing fire damage when attacked, and -5% crit rate versus the mage.
We also now have an even bigger gap between our dps when we wear our regen armor and our DPS when we wear our DPS armor, making us still the only class suffering significantly on longer fights. Although on the flipside, this further cements Molten Armor as the only armor you'd ever wear in pve.
Hopefully Affliction remains a valid warlock build in 3.1, because mages having to cast scorch plus spend three talent points plus use a major glyph to provide what a warlock can provide with a single shadowbolt is a fairly big dps loss.
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vck0cZ0EcbR0IuVubhct plus 2 more points in Student of the Mind or Arcane Meditation will be my fire build (with arcane as my second build.)
I will likely start with Arcane Meditation, but switch to Student of the Mind if it seems viable. We get so little regen from in-combat regen talents anyways, that it may be better to take the DPS boost. If evocation gets interrupted, we're screwed anyways!
Nice post Kyth, was waiting for your thoughts on the recent notes ^^
One question though; why did u choose flame throwing over improved scorch? I would also skip the point in combustion and make improved scorch 3/3 ?
Or am I missing something here? :)
It requires about 574 spirit for glyphed Molten Armor provide 5% crit.
I think, when you use Mage Armor instead of Molten Armor and switch the MA glyph with AP glyph, you'll have more dps. With the new arcane meditation, you'll have 100% manareg infight. You'll have more than 700 mp/5 raid-buffed, from this follows that your dps will grow.
whats your opinion to this thought
Mage:
As written on the original post, warlocks will get imp. shadowbolt changed into "Increases the damage done by your shadow bolt spell by 5%, and your Shadow Bolt causes your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5%. Effect lasts 30 seconds". This means that any affliction lock will keep 5% crit up on the boss all the time without losing any dps while doing it. That's pretty much the opposite mages do as we need to stack up scorch (which has a lot lower dps compared to fireball).
Toschi:
That 380 spirit unbuffed means that you will need to have at least 380 before kings, spirit buff and imp. gift of the wild.
The spirit regen nerf reduce the mp5 by quite a lot. Haven't had full raid buffs in ptr, but on my mage my mp5 while casting went down by 100-150 unbuffed (got 450 or so spirit), so I don't think you will have 700 mp5 while casting, more likely something like 400-500. Also mana spring will not stack with wisdom anymore, so it's hurting a bit more.
ok thats right, mana reg suxx on 3.1, didnt think about it. molten armor or arcane barrage ? hmm, big big question
No stream, I'm sad :(
Tested it on the ptr out of raid the 2 points in Student of the Mind only give about 0.22% crit.
I hope that blizzard's post (I’ve read it some while ago) about that pure DPS classes (hunter, mage, lock, rouge) that don't have any option but only to DPS will have the best dps in 3.1 will be true.
So what kind of glyph to use instead of "scorch" ?
Personally I think the whole spirit think w/ the molten armor is a huge nerf in may ways. Locks, Booomkins and Shadow Priests get more than a weak ass MP5 or a lame amount of crit from spirit. So why did the mages get nerffed so bad to the point I want to retire the mage and play a Shadow Priest? Now that I look at it do I even want to continue playing?
A. There was a comment about making true DPS classes DPS more than hybrid classes prior to this expansion due to their lack of choice of a role in a raid and yet I don't see it.
I constantly see Shadow Priest, Death Knights, and Shammys, out DPSing several "true DPS classes".
B. They want people to have a sense of achievement.
So they remove all of the attuning to instances, hand out gear in Naxx after a severe nerffing of the recycled content which people now only have to AoE their way through while not using any tactics or skill at all. I guess "Who needs crowd control when there is AoE?" was the idea. The KT fight simply reminds players they have a crowd control feature but the casual player lets it run rampant anyways.
C. They want classes to be equal.
If Death Knights were any more over powered or if you just wanted to put the game out of its' misery why not make a new patch and rename the game to Death Knights? Simply give Death Knights new talents to conjure food, summon people, make portals to cities and heal raids. The Star Wars game did that and everyone was handed the Jedi title. No one plays it now. You would think Blizz would have learned from others' mistakes but they are traveling down the same path.
D. Bring the player not the class.
Our hard work playing a class for so long, reading forums, running calculations on stats and spells means nothing once we hop on a vehicle that has nothing of our character's talents abilities or attributes. Gotta love phase 3 in Malygos and Flame Leviathan in Ulduar for it.
E. We will bring you a lot of content with this expansion pack.
Some how that content was substituted with achievement points along the way which is earned fighting the same boss leaving adds up or enter variable here. I guess on the bright side the points are good for hmmmmm Nothing.
After constant empty promises, do you ever wonder why people sell their toons on ebay? I think mine will be there soon at this rate.
Assuming that you have locks in your raid that are using the Improved Shadow Bolt talent, Improved Scorch is superfluous. They both give the same buff now, and the lock one applies all 5% in one shot, assuming they have 5/5. Thus, in that situation, you wouldn't even need to spec into improved scorch. I would probably end up sinking the last 2 points in that spec into Student of the Mind to buff Molten Armor, but I haven't spent much time looking around at alternatives yet.
Of course, this all depends on how prevalent the ISB talent will be, your raid comp, etc.
Note, by the way, that Kyth actually addressed that in the 3rd to last paragraph. I'm not sure if it requires affliction to stay fine though, since an SB destro spec would also take that talent. Basically unless fire destro becomes the one viable lock spec, mages should not need to spec for improved scorch.
There is no such thing as a viable SB destro spec. That is history. Kyth is right by saying that affliction will need stay a good spec, or atleast hope for more meta/ruin locks without decimation.
Article author
That will go up with Ulduar gear.
But yes, there's really very few places to put the points. Then again, if down the road we don't need the regen, why not take the DPS? (this is a very basic point GC seems incapable of grasping in his latest posts where he insists that 10% of our regen coming from spirit is 'a lot' and we should therefore welcome more spirit.)
Sorry to sound mean... But a few wrong numbers in there... 100% mana regen is right, but we get a 40% nerf to spirit regen too. Unglyphed Mage armor will give the same benifits, Math:
3.0.9
30%+30%= 60% * 100% of my current regen (for comparison) = 60% of whatever number you have now.
3.1
50% + 50% = 100% * 60% of my current regen (since its being nerfed by 40%) = 60% (So blizzards statement that in combat regen should stay roughly the same are true... btw same math goes for if you just have Arcane meditation, and Molten armor)
Now lets see what happens to people that still used the glyph with Arcane specs
3.0.9
30% + 30% + 20% (glyph bonus) = 80% * 100% = 80% of current regen
3.1
50% + 50% + 20%.... = 100% since you can't go over 100% *60% = 60%
So in conclusion, Mage armor glyph goes dead. Doesnt mean Mage armor goes dead for long fights... but with the fact that you can slap on spirit itemized gear to get more regen and crit... and you can get AM and Pyromaniac with a fire build if mana regen shows to be alot of trouble (can get about 83% of max mana regen without mage armor and still be viable)... in the Long run, un-changed, Mage armor also goes dead as the gap in dps between the armors will grow larger.
Also 574 is if you want it for solo/most 5 mans, for Raids you can expect to have Spirit buff, and a kings, which means you actually need less to keep that same crit. (HUZZAH for mages needing raid buffs even more...)
Article author
Mage armor glyphed was a dps loss before for all specs of mages and only barely a dps increase on long fights. Even arcane.
Mage armor unglyphed is an even higher DPS loss for mages. You can mitigate it by using a different glyph, but now you're going back to Dalaran to switch glyphs just to switch armors.
And no, combat regen doesn't stay the same since previously if you didn't have the mana regen to sustain the 'good' arcane rotation, you could come close to the same dps with glyphed mage armor and pushing slightly heavier mps arcane rotations. Now we don't have that option, so you're better off just going with molten and downranking your arcane rotation.
It stays the same for everyone other than mages, however because they haven't done something like having mage armor glyph give straight up mp5, we have one of our builds/rotations with its mana nerfed and no way to recover from that.
(furthermore, we haven't been compensated as DPS for the BoW/MS merger, which is another 90 mp5. For comparison, the JoW change lost us 100 mp5.)
Article author
Living Bomb glyph when it's available.