[Discussion] Patch 6.2 PTR

[Kasc]

Im late to the party - has there been any discussion in what we should be playing for each boss? Are we going to be using all 3 specs? My gut feeling is mainly arcane/frost, but maybe someone paying closer attention than me can correct me?

[Smaiki]

You guys should update that gear sheet!

What's wrong with the sheet? Ofc I didn't check all the items, but I picked some samples and they are ok. Instead of just saying something is out-of-date an example would be helpful for an update.

Sorry if I'm accidentally making the math geeks vomit, but can't you just multiply the stat weights of crit(/ms/mastery) with 1.15 to account for that?

The stat weights from Simcraft already include the increase by the attunement stat. No need to multiply anything.

[Frosted]

You guys should update that gear sheet!

What's wrong with the sheet? Ofc I didn't check all the items, but I picked some samples and they are ok. Instead of just saying something is out-of-date an example would be helpful for an update.

Sorry if I'm accidentally making the math geeks vomit, but can't you just multiply the stat weights of crit(/ms/mastery) with 1.15 to account for that?

The stat weights from Simcraft already include the increase by the attunement stat. No need to multiply anything.

I was not aware it had been updated at all for 6.2, meaning it had nothing from HFC. Maybe I just missed a post about someone updating it?

[Mortiferus]

Im late to the party - has there been any discussion in what we should be playing for each boss? Are we going to be using all 3 specs? My gut feeling is mainly arcane/frost, but maybe someone paying closer attention than me can correct me?

On paper, I've been flirting with the notion of Arcane/Frost as well—especially since there seems to be little need for sustained AoE (i.e. Fire) in HFC. But the incompatible gear profiles for those two specs is a problem, in practice. You would need, at the very least, two weapons, four rings, two necklaces, two cloaks and three or four trinkets—and that's not even accounting for optimizing secondaries in all other slots. Even with the changes, Mastery isn't simming as an attractive stat for Frost (in my opinion, at least).

I think if you look at it even deeper, though, the need for Frost is greatly diminished as well. Frost would seem to be superior to Arcane on Council, for example, but consider that the real meat of the fight will be the purely ST burns on each boss sub-30%, in which window Arcane will clearly be superior. This was true of BRF, to an extent, as well—for the majority of the fights, even if Fire was better for rankings/padding, Arcane was generally better for the purpose of progression (Thogar is the only exception, in my opinion).

I'm not sure there's a consensus yet, ultimately. But unless the movement-heavy fights tax Arcane in greater ways than I currently anticipate, I am of the opinion that Arcane will be primary progression spec. And given the gear profile compatibility with Fire, I think Fire remains the obvious—although perhaps useless—off spec.

To examine the HFC fights more closely (focusing on Heroic, for now):

• Assault appears to be an AoE fight, although there is almost always a ST priority—especially as a ranged DPS. You could probably make a strong case that Fire is best here, but I think Arcane could be equally justified.
• Reaver very clearly single target.
• Kormrok very clearly single target.
• Council slightly cleave, but single target damage is clearly the key.
• Kilrogg very clearly single target.
• Gorefiend very clearly single target.
• Iskar primarily single target, with a small AoE phase.
• Socrethar another fight with some AoE masking high-priority ST, although this is clearly more ST than Assault.
• Zakuun very clearly single target.
• Xhul I have not experienced this fight, so I don't want to speak to it.
• Tyrant very clearly single target.
• Mannoroth A complex fight, much like Blast Furnance, so I suppose an argument can be made either way.
• Archimonde I have not experienced this fight, so I don't want to speak to it.

I'm sure other, better mages will have different takes, but in my opinion, you can make a strong case that Arcane is best in nearly every encounter.

[Frosted]

To examine the HFC fights more closely (focusing on Heroic, for now):

• Iskar primarily single target, with a small AoE phase.
• Socrethar another fight with some AoE masking high-priority ST, although this is clearly more ST than Assault.
• Xhul I have not experienced this fight, so I don't want to speak to it.
• Mannoroth A complex fight, much like Blast Furnance, so I suppose an argument can be made either way.

I agree with everything you've said in your post, but would like to expand on these few fights from some of my own experiences.

Iskar - Personally I've been thinking of going Fire for this. The adds seems like the meat of the fight, but I believe this will be similar to Blast Furnace in that your raid comp will heavily influence your decision. There is no need to be Fire if you have a bunch of DKs/Enhacnement shamans / other strong cleave+AoE classes.

Socrethar - 100% agree with a single target fight hiding behind the guise of an AoE one, that's a very good description of it. I believe Arcane is further empowered over Frost/Fire here due to AO abuse on the ghosts. One AO on a ghost pack is basically insta-3xAM every cast, which is a lot more boss damage + pet summons. Very similar to darmac in this way, I believe.

Xhul - This fight I'm not so sure about. On one hand, controlling the wild imps is pretty huge, and consistently dealing damage to the big add + the boss is great, so something like Fire performs VERY well here. On the other hand, you can similarly abuse AO on the adds to dump massive amounts of damage into the boss and rely on UM/Mark of Doom to help a bit with cleaving onto the adds. Really torn here. There is also the 20% burn phase, which was BRUTAL during testing and very quickly goes from 0 -> 100. Arcane would handle that better than Fire.

Mannoroth - Mannorth I tried Fire on, and hated it. I also tried Frost, and hated it. The imps basically implode from every other non-DoT cleave class blowing their load on them, and the infernals cannot be grouped up on the boss like traditional adds - and therefore are often out of IB-cleave and Fbomb/Ice Lance range. For this reason I was considering just running Arcane for this fight and, again, using adds as a way to proc lots more AMs to dump into the boss.

[recom]

Edit : answered above.

[Mortiferus]

Mannoroth - Mannorth I tried Fire on, and hated it. I also tried Frost, and hated it. The imps basically implode from every other non-DoT cleave class blowing their load on them, and the infernals cannot be grouped up on the boss like traditional adds - and therefore are often out of IB-cleave and Fbomb/Ice Lance range. For this reason I was considering just running Arcane for this fight and, again, using adds as a way to proc lots more AMs to dump into the boss.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who had a hard time wrapping my head around this fight. I tried Fire, thinking it would shine, but I was having all kinds of frustrating problems, just as you described. I didn't try Arcane, but I think I'll follow your lead and give it a go.

Thanks for the info on Xhul—with this, Fire will perhaps be best on 3/13 fights, so it's certainly not something we can ignore. And I think it's clear that Frost would not be best on any of those 3, so that perhaps settles the argument.

Although, with regards to Fire possibly being best on Assault, I think that's a bit of a disambiguation—you could probably do the fight without selecting a spec or talents, that's how silly the encounter is. Mythic makes the fight more interesting, but assuming your group has suitable melee cleave, I think single target becomes more important.

[Fleks]

I feel like its gonna be mostly Arcane honestly going for the Hastebuild(if they dont nerf it to the ground ofc) and focus on singletarget and prioritytarget damage,might change my mind after doing the heroic week.

I probably will play Fire for Shadowlord tho but mostly because we wont have a heavy aoe setup.

[Caimion]

I feel like we had this same conclusion before BRF ("wow, all the fights are single target fights in disguise!"), but we all ended up Fire for 6-7 out of 10 fights

E.g., in Sugge's (stickied) guide thread, right before we started doing Mythic progression:

... Much like @Vatti stated some posts above here. Arcane is going to be the go-to spec for alot of Mythic encounters (atleast 7), now I know this is a Heroic guide and Fire will do just fine for alot of these bosses. But Heroic is only a gateway into Mythic progression and when we finally get there, we are still set as Arcane and that is to this date, the main reason to opt. for it.

[Jebbage]

On the topic of specs per fight, this is what I've found based on our normal mode testing the last couple of weeks, I think arcane is the go to spec for pretty much everything. I played arcane on every fight with our other mage playing fire on fights that it could work on.

Assault the adds didn't live nearly long enough for fire to take over. This may change in mythic with more health, but since it's the first boss, I don't really expect it. I'm going arcane with AOrb + SN or NT.
Reaver 100% single target. The flying phase makes timing PC kind of awkward, so I'm not sure on talents here.
Kormrok arcane lends itself very well to short term aoe and single target burst on hands that spawn.
Council fire was okay, but arcane will likely just be the best class on single target and leave the cleave bosses to other people. If you're not on the lone boss, I haven't seen frost, but I think all three would do reasonably well.
Kilrogg need lots of target switching, so arcane clearly wins.
Gorefiend if anything, it'd be a contest between frost and arcane, but it's most likely an arcane fight. I'll go PC + SN for vulnerability phase.
Iskar fire and arcane pulled similar numbers here simply because so much was single target, so what fire gained on the adds, arcane gained back on the boss.
Socrethar just go arcane with AOrb and NT and call it good. Pop NT and AOrb on ghosts when they spawn and switch back to other adds.
Zakuun 100% single target, go arcane.
Xhul'horac this could be close between fire and arcane, but I liked arcane more with AOrb + NT for constant add cleave with high boss damage.
Tyrant arcane won here with AOrb + NT again since you get the add spawns every once in a while, but otherwise it's single target.
Mannoroth getting the adds stacked on the boss was difficult, so fire was fairly weak. Arcane with AOrb + SN will likely win out here for burst aoe on imps with the added bonuses of AOrb. I used AOrb + NT and our other mage ended up using PC + SN, and we ended up with similar numbers, so my guess of AOrb + SN is based on that.

[Mortiferus]

I feel like we had this same conclusion before BRF ("wow, all the fights are single target fights in disguise!"), but we all ended up Fire for 6-7 out of 10 fights

E.g., in Sugge's (stickied) guide thread, right before we started doing Mythic progression:

... Much like @Vatti stated some posts above here. Arcane is going to be the go-to spec for alot of Mythic encounters (atleast 7), now I know this is a Heroic guide and Fire will do just fine for alot of these bosses. But Heroic is only a gateway into Mythic progression and when we finally get there, we are still set as Arcane and that is to this date, the main reason to opt. for it.

I certainly dispute the notion that we all went Fire for 6–7 fights. I know this touches on a long-running debate, which was compounded by the T17 Fire bonus "trick" and, in my opinion, by people's bias towards one spec or another. In my experience, I found Fire to be best on only 2 of the 10 fights, and I believe I may have been wrong on 1 of those. Admittedly, this does vary with raid composition.

There will always be the argument that whatever tops the meters is the best spec. If you take that position, then I imagine you'll find Fire best on a little less than half of the HFC fights. For me, and for many other Mages, I think, the decision is a bit more nuanced than that. So for me, personally, I'm confident in the analysis and satisfied that Arcane will be best way to contribute to my guild on the majority of the fights, but as always, your mileage may vary.

[Festen]

There's no way to be good with frost?

[Mortiferus]

There's no way to be good with frost?

I tried to make it work, primary as my Off Spec, but wasn't satisfied. You can absolutely be good with it, though. You can even be great with it. Especially on Normal/Heroic. I think there's one fight where it will even eclipse Arcane and Fire, meters-wise. The changes make it far more competitive. It looks to be better single target and 2 target cleave than Fire, which certainly wasn't the case in T17.

If that's enough, run with it and have fun.

In Mythic—or if your guild is failing a DPS check at any point during progression—that's where it gets a bit hairier, I think.

[Mortiferus]

Reaver 100% single target. The flying phase makes timing PC kind of awkward, so I'm not sure on talents here.

Good stuff. I agree with a lot of your insight, and it's reassuring to see other Mages come to similar conclusions on these bosses.

As to Reaver, I was able to use PC twice every ground phase, which should still be best, especially once the Legendary Ring is in play.

[Equio]

That's the sheet you guys were talking about, right? https://www.dropbox.com/s/teuysxy21cj2e ... .xlsm?dl=0

Maybe I'm missing something there but it looks like it isn't updated for 6.2. I'd like to use the warlock-sheet so I'm looking for arcane stat priorities considering the haste breakpoints for the T18 2pc which Frosted mentioned. Are there already any numbers floating around in this thread?

[Frosted]

There's no way to be good with frost?

I think Frost will be much, much better than it is right now. Especially if they don't fix the doom nova/icicle interaction.

That's the sheet you guys were talking about, right? https://www.dropbox.com/s/teuysxy21cj2e ... .xlsm?dl=0

Maybe I'm missing something there but it looks like it isn't updated for 6.2. I'd like to use the warlock-sheet so I'm looking for arcane stat priorities considering the haste breakpoints for the T18 2pc which Frosted mentioned. Are there already any numbers floating around in this thread?

That was the spreadsheet I was referring to when I said I didn't think it was updated, yeah.

I'll see if I can get in touch with Berl and figure out his plans for it. If he isn't going to maintain it for us, I will.

[Jhesian]

On the topic of specs per fight, this is what I've found based on our normal mode testing the last couple of weeks, I think arcane is the go to spec for pretty much everything. I played arcane on every fight with our other mage playing fire on fights that it could work on.

Assault the adds didn't live nearly long enough for fire to take over. This may change in mythic with more health, but since it's the first boss, I don't really expect it. I'm going arcane with AOrb + SN or NT.
Reaver 100% single target. The flying phase makes timing PC kind of awkward, so I'm not sure on talents here.
Kormrok arcane lends itself very well to short term aoe and single target burst on hands that spawn.
Council fire was okay, but arcane will likely just be the best class on single target and leave the cleave bosses to other people. If you're not on the lone boss, I haven't seen frost, but I think all three would do reasonably well.
Kilrogg need lots of target switching, so arcane clearly wins.
Gorefiend if anything, it'd be a contest between frost and arcane, but it's most likely an arcane fight. I'll go PC + SN for vulnerability phase.
Iskar fire and arcane pulled similar numbers here simply because so much was single target, so what fire gained on the adds, arcane gained back on the boss.
Socrethar just go arcane with AOrb and NT and call it good. Pop NT and AOrb on ghosts when they spawn and switch back to other adds.
Zakuun 100% single target, go arcane.
Xhul'horac this could be close between fire and arcane, but I liked arcane more with AOrb + NT for constant add cleave with high boss damage.
Tyrant arcane won here with AOrb + NT again since you get the add spawns every once in a while, but otherwise it's single target.
Mannoroth getting the adds stacked on the boss was difficult, so fire was fairly weak. Arcane with AOrb + SN will likely win out here for burst aoe on imps with the added bonuses of AOrb. I used AOrb + NT and our other mage ended up using PC + SN, and we ended up with similar numbers, so my guess of AOrb + SN is based on that.

so pure ST same as brf talents arcane:SN PC ROP/(if for movement)
AOE or partial aoe fights AO NT ROP/IF (ao =more AM= more pet procs seems what you are going for)

does this aoe spec apply even if we don't have the new t18 bonus pets during our gearing up phase?
i.e if i still have t17 and no t18, i won't be proccing pets with AM, is arcane orb+nt still the best choice here if i am playing arcane?

[Komma]

Some hotfixes have gone live on PTR, without tooltip changes. One of them has been applied to the 4T18 Frost set bonus, increasing Water Jet not by 4 seconds, but 10 seconds:
http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic ... 212#p15212" target="_blank

We can use more volunteers testing things tests on PTR. Please keep an eye out for hotfixes. Report them within the testing thread here:
http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic ... 14&p=15212" target="_blank

[Searix]

Frost needs to be significantly better in 6.2 than fire/arcane. I did fire/arcane through mythic blackhand like most of you guys before trying frost in challenge modes, and my goodness are you guys underestimating just how bad frost is and how lucky we were to avoid it this last tier.

A few issues that aren't fixed in current 6.2 (much of this old and intentional):
-Frozen Orb sucks. It slows down the second it hits an add running in (every time you cast this spell you have to think about this), clips on terrain, clips corners, requires tanks to not move the boss
-Cooldowns are still messed up. 25s/1m/1.5m? Really?
-Water Elementals suck. Range issues, LoS issues. Occasionally dies, pulls extra mobs
-Splitting ice glyph sometimes doesn't cleave to a nearby target (it's fickle)
-Requires 2 glyphs (Splitting Ice, glyph of icy veins), and often a 3rd if you want to aoe (Cone of Cold), meaning no room for rapid displacement

Not saying frost wont be playable, but the QoL for frost mages will still be poor in 6.2, especially compared to fire/arcane

[Malon]

So the latest changes to set bonuses (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic ... age=18#343" target="_blank) nerfed 2-piece Arcane's pet damage by 40%. This seems to have been justified, but it does bring up the topic of breakpoints again: specifically, is the haste (26%) > mastery build still worth shooting for?