The Mafiascum World of Warcraft Thread

[tanstalas]

To be fair, mages needed a Nerf. Warlocks as well.

[Flameaxe]

I'm currently level 78. Perhaps melting isn't the correct word.

I'm prioritising Agility and Critical Strike...to be honest I'm just blundering through.

Well, what spec/talents did you go with? Rogues have boatloads of defensive cooldowns in almost any spec anyway. Make sure you run glyph of deadly momentum and keep SnD/recuperate up 100% of the time+leeching poison, you should really never drop too far under 90% HP.

Subtlety

Nightstalker, Combat Readiness, Cheat Death, Shadowstep and Prey on the Weak.

I have no idea if any of this is good, I just did what I figured would work the best.

I haven't got any glyphs. Need to go buy some.

Sub is fine for leveling, especially at 70+. I'd swap Cheat Death for Leeching poison though, realistically you never want to be getting to a hp% that cheat death needs to turn on. Prey on the weak is fine, but if you're still having problems staying alive and you feel like getting a bit more mechanic-y, dirty tricks is pretty good.

For glyphs, definitely deadly momentum. Glyph of cloak of shadows is really good for soloing. Blurred speed/safe fall/poisons for minors never fail.

[AGar]

They getting nerfed?

I won't believe it until it legitimately happens.

We won't have Scorch anymore. This is specifically a nerf to Arcane Mages, whose Mastery relies on having a lot of mana. So the old idea was "spam your Arcane Blast to get stacks of Arcane Charge, then when you drop below 90% mana spam Scorch to keep DPS up while you regen". Now, we don't have Scorch, so we have no filler spell to let us regen mana. I have no clue what's going to happen -- I imagine it'll be "stack up to max charges, then dump everything with a Arcane Barrage, then Evocate, then stack again" but it's definitely gonna hard nerf overall DPS for all mage specs.

Or... learn a rotation?

[xRECKONERx]

I mean there is a rotation/priority list now.

[Flameaxe]

Arcane mages and aff locks need a nerf, or every other dps class in the game needs a buff. Its pretty obvious what the easier option here is. The fact of the matter is, both of those specs are parcing 20-25% higher than the 3rd highest dps spec. That isn't working as intended. I don't really see the mage changes hurting any other mage specs in a significant way though (especially since I've never seen a fire mage actually use scorch, and don't anticipate that to change now that its a fire-only spell).

Everyone, get ready for the reign of the windwalker monk next patch. That mastery change is going to be stupid good. Resto druid buffs across the board make me a happy camper.

[JDodge]

i used scorch back in cata when i was leveling

[xRECKONERx]

I know they

need

a nerf but I think it's going to hit Arcane Mages way harder than they're thinking, it wouldn't shock me for them to not even scrape the top 10 anymore

[JDodge]

I know they

need

a nerf but I think it's going to hit Arcane Mages way harder than they're thinking, it wouldn't shock me for them to not even scrape the top 10 anymore

marksman hunter nerf PTSD says hi

[xRECKONERx]

yep

[Flameaxe]

I think the gameplay will get a lot more technical, but I'd be shocked if they dropped from top 10 at this point.

[xRECKONERx]

Arcane
For Arcane Mages, Evocation now restores 40% (was 60%) of total mana over 6 seconds, and consumes all Arcane Charges. For each Arcane Charge consumed, the total amount of mana regenerated is increased by 10%, up to a maximum of 80% over 6 seconds. Evocation remains the same for Fire and Frost.
Arcane Blast's damage has been reduced by 22.2% and mana cost has been increased to 1.66667% of base mana (was 1.5%).
Arcane Missile's damage has been reduced by 22.2%.
Arcane Barrage's damage has been reduced by 13.6%.
Arcane Charges now stacks up to 4 times (was 6), increases damage by 50% (was 25%), and increases mana cost by 150% (was 75%).

LOL RIP ARCANE MAGES

seriously, these nerfs are over the top. I know they were doing good DPS before but this kills the class, ESPECIALLY without scorch. These nerfs while keeping us scorch would be fine.

[AGar]

Just wait and see how it hits live on top players before we declare a class dead?

[xRECKONERx]

Those damage nerfs are

insane

man. No way this doesn't kill Arcane dps by at least 20%.

[Flameaxe]

Those damage nerfs are

insane

man. No way this doesn't kill Arcane dps by at least 20%.

Which puts them in line with...the rest of the dps classes? The thing is, arcane numbers are waaaaay out of control right now (by, funny enough, 20-25%).

[xRECKONERx]

It completely depends on which encounter you're talking about

[tanstalas]

Lol ^

[xRECKONERx]

Like our DPS is "insane" if all we do is stand still for a full 5-10 minute boss fight, but how many bosses let us do that? Our main sources of damage, Arcane Blast & Arcane Missiles, can't be cast on the run, so we have to be stationary. Rune of Power is a huge DPS buff for us, but we can only cast two at a time, they last for 60 seconds, and we have a tiny radius that we have to stand completely still inside of in order to take full benefit.

[Flameaxe]

I honestly can't think of any fights in this tier where movement is a major dps loss. Maybe stone guard on a bad combo 10/any 25, kind of tsulong, I can give you vizier but every time he casts attenuation everyone takes a dps hit because frogger, lei shi you will take a hit along with every other non-melee class, (to a far lesser extent because you aren't there, phase 2 of heroic sha is a lot of movement, but parses are still really strong for it because everyone is moving again). You can't balance a class based on "sometimes our dps is less because movement" because everyone else is moving too. On heavy movement fights, arc mages are leading the main pack (usually with some melee and aff locks still out in front), but low movement fights have arc mages and aff locks way out of proportion. If you look at normalized charts, both aff/arcane are far in front of every class in every type of raiding. By definition, a caster shouldn't beat a melee class on a heavy movement fight, and its not something to complain about, its just class mechanics.

On a separate note, if you balance a class based on only heavy movement fights and fights that spec does poorly, you massively unbalance every other fight. If anything, this is the biggest reason you can't make a "well some fights i do real bad in" argument, because the people balancing it don't look at that. If the numbers on the nerf really are that bad, they will get hotfixed within a week. What everyone should be up in arms about is how (as far as I can see) affliction came out of the patch largely unscathed, and marksman is still the laughing joke of dps classes with arms warriors.

[AGar]

and marksman is still the laughing joke of dps classes with

arms warriors.

[xRECKONERx]

Yeah, it's weird that Aff didn't get a nerf. Sad that Arms & MM are still bad

That being said, I'm really not seeing where Arcane is 20-25% higher DPS than the next closest class. Noxxic (which uses Simcraft not actual numbers) has Arcane at 117k max/100k realistic, and the next closest classes are only about 3-4k behind. WoL has way more fire mages, afflication locks, and prot pallies above us on DPS for most of the fights. The only fight I see where Arcane Mages are #1 is the first encounter in HoF.

[Flameaxe]

Are you looking at a specific raid difficulty? 117k is really, really low for the numbers that matter.

[JDodge]

Yeah, it's weird that Aff didn't get a nerf. Sad that Arms & MM are still bad

That being said, I'm really not seeing where Arcane is 20-25% higher DPS than the next closest class. Noxxic (which uses Simcraft

not actual numbers

) has Arcane at 117k max/100k realistic, and the next closest classes are only about 3-4k behind. WoL has way more fire mages, afflication locks, and prot pallies above us on DPS for most of the fights. The only fight I see where Arcane Mages are #1 is the first encounter in HoF.

bolded important part

There are several real-world issues that a simulation can't account for - one is class difficulty and thus room for human error. I use Raidbots for all of my info because it normalizes DPS across all encounters by scaling them all off of each other (scoring on a curve) instead of averaging it across all fights (where fights with naturally lower DPS poison the statistics, so to speak). The data I have off of that states quite clearly that in 25M Heroic, both Arcane mage and Aff lock are

way

higher than all other specs normalized across all fights. I would argue that based off of the data (and taking the lower standard deviation on Aff locks to mean that they're more consistent and/or generally easier to play), Aff lock was the more broken class but both need a toning down.

A 20% reduction in DPS off of the 14-day moving median DPS from top 100 parses I have would put Arcane mages at 129,196 from 161,495. This would put them on the low end of the spectrum but still viable (the only arguably unviable DPS specs at the moment are Unholy DK, sub rogue, Frost mage, arms warrior, and mm hunter), although they would be the weakest of the viable DPS classes by about 300-700 dps under Ele shaman and Demon lock.

The same pattern for the most part holds true for 25 man normals and 10 man heroics. 25 man LFR tracks them as still among the top 10. 10 man normals track a bit higher than 25 normals.

tl;dr arcane mages and aff locks both need to be brought into line as they're consistently about 15-20k dps above all other classes in the data I have; a 20% nerf is not completely eviscerating the class by any means but is putting them as probably weaker than Fire mages (which I don't see as being stronger through any overall tracking; saying that a class isn't broken because there are better classes in one fight is like saying that a Ferrari isn't faster than a dump truck because a Ferrari can't perform well in the "while carrying a few tons of rocks" category due to being slightly crushed to death).

[JDodge]

In other news I recently moved my Hunter from our old PvP server (Lightning's Blade) to a new PvE server (Aggramar) due to the fact that LB is now pretty heavily Alliance in terms of active members who like to hang out outside the inn in Halfhill for 3 fucking hours.

LOOK AT ALL THE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T VIOLENTLY MURDERING ME

[xRECKONERx]

I'm just saying a lot of the top DPS gets their damage and can cast while moving. It makes sense, IMO, that Arcane Mages can put out sick DPS in certain boss fights where they're

allowed

to stay still.

I'll probably be respeccing into Fire anyway after 5.2 drops.

Thinking of leveling an alt...probably a Druid/Monk. I just want to get the most bang for my buck if I buy Heirloom gear, and Plate heirloom gear seems dumb since most classes don't get it until 40

[Flameaxe]

I'm just saying a lot of the top DPS gets their damage and can cast while moving. It makes sense, IMO, that Arcane Mages can put out sick DPS in certain boss fights where they're

allowed

to stay still.

I'll probably be respeccing into Fire anyway after 5.2 drops.

Thinking of leveling an alt...probably a Druid/Monk. I just want to get the most bang for my buck if I buy Heirloom gear, and Plate heirloom gear seems dumb since most classes don't get it until 40

Plate heirloom gear scales down to mail pre-40. The more you know.

Edit: If anything changes for arcane mages, the level 90 talent will be switched to invocation. Every caster DPS takes a decent hit on a movement phase (again, affliction is probably the exception). While, in theory, it will definitely hit arcane more than other specs, there simply isn't anything movement heavy enough to get to that level of damage reduction. Most movement fights are really stop and go, which will give arcane fairly negligible losses over the course of the fight.