A Chinese Mage in US Realm: Self-Intro and Questions

[zhengma]

As this is my first post on Altered-Time (and on any English-language WoW forum, actually), and I'm not completely sure whether it fits the forum regulation or etiquette. Feel free to mod, edit or remove the post should there be any violation.

I. Self-Introduction

As mentioned in the title, I was born, and spent most of my life, in mainland China. I started playing WoW after 5.4 was released. Before this, however, I've read quite a bit about WoW due to the immense popularity of this game in China (where WoW has become an integral part of the Internet culture), and I thought I had adequate English skill to adapt to a US realm, so the learning curve is not all that steep for me. I killed Normal Garrosh a few weeks back, 7 months after I started playing the game, which is likely as far as I can get before WoD is online. Though it's later than almost everyone, I got an AotC FoS after all, and more importantly, it convinced me that I've chosen the right class, one that I'm moderately talented at and have sincere passion on. I think I'll stick to this class in WoD.

My Armory can be accessed by clicking on my signature picture. I've been sticking with the same two specs since my first week in WoW. Maybe I'm not quite brilliant or merely scared off by some guides, but I've never figured out how to keep track of Ignite to construct a proper astronomical Combustion, which sounds like too much split-second decision and RNG to me (though I've never re-specced and practiced ). Nevertheless, it allows me to use the same set of gear for both specs, with minimal reforging and re-gemming when I switch, and it satisfied most of my needs (except a few soloing of old-content bosses that are too hard without the mobility of Scorch). At the earliest stage of my self-teaching, I relied mostly on domestic guides, but gradually switched to US/EU guides in English language such as Akraen's.

Now I'm still suffering from some common problems of noobish players, such as <80% Bomb uptime, shooting 3-5 Lances without FoF in almost every boss fight, or allow my mana to drop below the 85% "absolute bottom line" by losing concentration and cast one too many Arcane Blast. It seems that I need a whole lot more practice to become a competent raider. But a little extra theory and discussion always refresh my mind, which is why I registered immediately I saw Akraen advertised this site on MMO-champion.

II. Mage Community & Mage Theorycraft in CWoW

CWoW (Chinese World of Warcraft) is an MMORPG that is developed and supervised, but not ran, by Blizzard Entertainment. It is largely identical to the game played in US or EU, but the few minor modifications renders almost anything accomplished in CWoW being treated skeptically in the Western (e.g. 25-man drops are 8 ilvl higher than corresponding 10-man drops, but bosses in the former has higher HP and damage than their US/EU counterparts to compensate). Besides, the atmosphere and culture of CWoW is so drastically different from that of WoW, that it's plausible in some ways to treat them as two separate games. Many differences can be ascribed to the fact that CWoW is paid by minute of gaming time, in contrast to monthly/yearly subscription. However, all the theorycraftings and strategy discussions can apply to both games without modification. CWoW has a long and proud history of theorycrafting, but unfortunately, these works remain largely obscure in the WoW player community due to the language barrier, which I hope will change soon. When I was writing this, I found that Komma in this post mentioned that he's been visiting the "Chinese mage forum", which is most likely the mage board of NGA (National Geography of Azeroth), the mmo-champion.com of CWoW, which make me glad as well as curious.

The CWoW player community generally refer to mage as "the biological son of Blizzard Entertainment" (while other classes are "foster sons"), believing that Blizzard has been favoring mage, having never truly nerfed it throughout the history of the game. (As a side note, many Chinese believe that Blizzard Entertainment has never published a major product in which spellcasters are clearly underpower, if not overpower-- remember Corpse Explosion and Psionic Storm?). From the limited literatures I've read through (correct me if you have evidence otherwise), mages have never been scarece in CWoW, being a most over-populated class by Patch 4.3. During Cata and most of MoP, many took it for granted that a mage should always top in addons like Recount and websites like WoL. This starts to change in Patch 5.4, when there's much fewer reasons than before to bring a mage to a raid if a warlock is available, for both DPS and utility considerations. However, mage is still regarded in CWoW player community as a class with "great damage and extremely strong fire-shifting ability" in PvE (note: I'm not sure of the correct English term for "fire-shifting", basically it means controllably deliver huge damage spikes to quickly put down key adds such as Nazgrim's shaman and Garrosh's engineer).

CWoW mage theorycrafters seldomly ever cite western works (for instance, there has only been 7 posts on NGA that ever mentioned the name "Vykyna", 3 posts mentioning "Blatty" and 0 post mentioning "Akraen"), but there has been an abundance of original theorycrafting works published. Most of the conclusions coincide with the western ones, with a few exceptions (like Frost Armor is always preferrable for Arcane mages, mastery builds for Frost mage is "silly", to name a few). Most of the works are based on SimC (such as this) or actual tests on a train dummy (such as this), with fewer on theoretical/mathematical modeling.

Needless to say, virtually none of the class theorycrafting or encounter strategy research in China is presented in English. CWoW is very well localized, enabling one with zero knowledge in English to play it without obstacle. CWoW player community has also developed their own terminologies and jargons (heavily utilizing pinyin acronyms) that are almost indecipherable by those who are proficient in Chinese as a second language in general.

In CWoW, Frost is regarded as a spec that's "inferior in all enounters and at all gear levels, welcomed by none but casual, junior players, and should be discarded by anyone who wish to DPS like a true mage" (source). Part of the reason lies the definition of "casual" or "junior" in CWoW. It's claimed (not verified by me) that on some CN realms, 2/3 of the entire population has killed Heroic Garrosh Hellscream, and 575 is the typical item level of a "casual, half-quitting" player. On NGA, most of the theorycrafters of various classes has 20+ Heroic Garrosh kills and 590+ ilvl on their mains as of now. Therefore, how valid and applicable this statement is to US/EU realms is still debatable.

I can discuss more on what I know about CWoW mage theorycrafting, once you ask me specific questions by replying this post.

III. My Questions

I thought about putting them to Q&A board, but few of them are on specific details of mage theory or gameplay, and some are relevant to the rest of the post. Hope it's okay.

1. For the various statements I made about CWoW in section II, which ones fit WoW (in US/EU) as well, and which ones does not?

2. Do you think original works by Chinese mage theorycrafters is worthy to learn about? Do you think language is a major barrior keeping you from learning about their works?

3. Why is Arcane considered as an "easy to learn" spec? I've seen such statement once on Icy-Veins, and again by a shammy on Youtube. Icy-Veins also claims that "the penalty for casting spells at low mana is not that extraordinary", which greatly surprises me: what's the point of stacking Mastery then? Most Chinese mages believe 85% is the bottom line of mana, allowing it to drop below this line is generally a "grave mistake in the rotation". Chinese theorycrafters believe the mana of an Arcane mage should be fluctuating around 92% or so. Cycobi also proposes that a Barrage can be fired if mana is dropped below 95%. Regenerating mana to make use of hight Mastery is believed to be so crucial, that some Chinese Arcane mages, when fighting Spoils of Pandaria, would rather Ice Block than leaving the Rune to dispose the bombs. Control the mana so that it neither drop below 90% nor hit 100% for too long, while keeping track of Bomb and cooldowns, is no easy feat (surely more mentally consuming than spamming Chain Lightning and Lava Burst). So, how is this "Arcane is easy" thing originated? Why are there people who apparently know better buying it?

Let me stop here for now. I may post more if something comes to my mind. Finally, as a gift, I present a Chinese video where a mage (ilvl 588) did 590k+ sustained DPS on an isolated dummy. The demonstrator is the Guild Master of Style@CN-Rhonin, which got the world 3rd kill of 25-man Heroic Garrosh Hellscream. Even if you don't read Chinese, you can see his casting sequence, procs, cooldowns, etc. from the video since all icons are exactly the same as in the western.

[Akraen]

I'll give a good reply in the morning, as I'm raiding now. But wow this is an incredible post, and exactly what I wanted to see with Altered Time

[Komma]

When I was writing this, I found that Komma in this post mentioned that he's been visiting the "Chinese mage forum", which is most likely the mage board of NGA (National Geography of Azeroth), the mmo-champion.com of CWoW, which make me glad as well as curious.

I would like to confirm that I have indeed been reading NGA forums. I studied in Hong Kong for most of my life, so I have no problem reading either Simplified or Traditional Chinese.

1. For the various statements I made about CWoW in section II, which ones fit WoW (in US/EU) as well, and which ones does not?

2. Do you think original works by Chinese mage theorycrafters is worthy to learn about? Do you think language is a major barrior keeping you from learning about their works?

1. While there has been a number of vocal people on forums who often complain how Mage is the "favored" class by Blizzard, I don't think it is anywhere near what you said.

2. The biggest concern I have from reading NGA mage forums is how their theory is dominated by Simc. Conclusions such as "Frost Armor > Mage Armor always" and "Barrage when <95% mana" seem to be heavily influenced by Simc, instead of detailed analysis. The problem with this is that Simc has many flaws - and as the person who has been making the most changes to Simc Arcane APL during the last few weeks, this worries me a lot. Before May, there were many bugs and errors in simc, especially with the Arcane module. There were bugs such as the mastery-legendary cloak interaction, APL problems such as the <90% Living Bomb uptime, failure to react to trinket procs, problems with higher haste because of hardcoded timings - it's a long list. Not realizing that these problems existed, meant that many mistaken conclusions might have been made.

The only reasonable justifications of "Frost Armor > Mage Armor" that I could find on NGA were "Frost Armor is multiplicative, and therefore gives more than 3000 rating, vs Mage armor giving flat 3000 rating" and "Simc says Frost Armor > Mage Armor (On a single target fight)". In this specific instance, I feel that the Western TC community has done a better job, by giving more rigorous and thorough analysis.

It is my hope that as Altered-Time grows, it will transcend not only the NA/EU regional borders, but also help diffuse these results across the language barrier, and try to make the best out of two worlds of theorycrafting.

[zhengma]

I've also spent 4 months as an exchange student in HKUST, which lies at the eastern edge of Kowloon, a most beautiful place.

A parameter that SimC has provided but most studies based on SimC has neglected is "player skill". In my humble experience (do correct me if I'm wrong!), MoP is an xpac in which procs, and RNG in general, play a more crucial role than ever before, and the term "rotation" has lost all but historical meaning. This calls for many literally split-second decisions, since many classes and specs nowadays can achieve 1-second GCD. Let's take the proc we're most familiar with, FoF, as an example, the conditional reflection arc works like: eyes receive the visual sign of FoF proc from the screen -> brain cancels the muscle command to fire another FB -> brain commands a different finger to shoot a lance. Neurologically, this arc takes average human about 0.1 sec, 10% of a GCD. Of course, the margin of error is greatly expanded by the fact that FoF has a second charge as a buffer, but the point is: when there is a certain probability of a certain type of mistakes (such as firing FB at 2 charges of FoF or refresh LB with 2 ticks left) to occur, will that change our conclusion of gearing and building? Does there exist a certain threshold of the said probability that a different build is actually preferable by being less sensitive to error? These are interesting questions to ask as well.

As for the "biological son" part of my post, if you do visit the many WoW websites in China, you should know I didn't make this phrase up. It's true that this phrase is used more or less jokingly, but the fact remains that mages are regarded highly in CWoW player community, and mage players in China tend to be statistically more... arrogant. You might have heard of the scandal a few weeks back: 19 mages attempted Heroic SoO together, one of them ninja'ed a +Str ring, and the rest of them showed rudeness and indifference when the warrior tank protested to reclaim this piece of loot. Of course, you apparently have stayed on NGA for longer that I do, so if you can convince me otherwise, I'm willing to correct my statements.

[Komma]

I've also spent 4 months as an exchange student in HKUST, which lies at the eastern edge of Kowloon, a most beautiful place.

A parameter that SimC has provided but most studies based on SimC has neglected is "player skill". In my humble experience (do correct me if I'm wrong!), MoP is an xpac in which procs, and RNG in general, play a more crucial role than ever before, and the term "rotation" has lost all but historical meaning. This calls for many literally split-second decisions, since many classes and specs nowadays can achieve 1-second GCD. Let's take the proc we're most familiar with, FoF, as an example, the conditional reflection arc works like: eyes receive the visual sign of FoF proc from the screen -> brain cancels the muscle command to fire another FB -> brain commands a different finger to shoot a lance. Neurologically, this arc takes average human about 0.1 sec, 10% of a GCD. Of course, the margin of error is greatly expanded by the fact that FoF has a second charge as a buffer, but the point is: when there is a certain probability of a certain type of mistakes (such as firing FB at 2 charges of FoF or refresh LB with 2 ticks left) to occur, will that change our conclusion of gearing and building? Does there exist a certain threshold of the said probability that a different build is actually preferable by being less sensitive to error? These are interesting questions to ask as well.

As for the "biological son" part of my post, if you do visit the many WoW websites in China, you should know I didn't make this phrase up. It's true that this phrase is used more or less jokingly, but the fact remains that mages are regarded highly in CWoW player community, and mage players in China tend to be statistically more... arrogant. You might have heard of the scandal a few weeks back: 19 mages attempted Heroic SoO together, one of them ninja'ed a +Str ring, and the rest of them showed rudeness and indifference when the warrior tank protested to reclaim this piece of loot. Of course, you apparently have stayed on NGA for longer that I do, so if you can convince me otherwise, I'm willing to correct my statements.

I'm sorry, I should have made it more clear. I wasn't saying that NGA forums didn't have the "mage is king" mentality, I was saying Western forums such as US and EU battle.net forums, do not have such a strong "mage is king" mentality as you described. I am not that familiar with NGA forums.

Simc has in fact taken player skill and reaction times into account. The Action Priority List (APL), which is used to dictate what spell is used at each point in time, includes different functions such as "buff.up" and "buff.react", to distinguish between whether a event happening can be reacted to. For example, while a computer may be able to immediately use a FoF charge generated by Frostbolt, "buff.fingers_of_frost.react" will keep in mind that the player has a human reaction time, and not allow the computer to do this.

The problems in simc are much deeper than that. There has been nobody maintaining simc for mages for almost a year, before we got involved. If you wish to understand this problem further, in each of our Fire, Frost and Arcane forums, you will see a "[TC] Simc APL" thread where we discuss the problems, and how to improve it.

[Dutchmagoz]

Hello, and welcome to AT. It's great to see such an insightful post about something I've had very little knowledge of due to my lack of knowledge of the chinese language(s).

1. For the various statements I made about CWoW in section II, which ones fit WoW (in US/EU) as well, and which ones does not?

The son of blizzard thing used to be much more true than it is now. There used to be sayings like "ghostcrawler mains a mage". (Ghostcrawler used to be the lead developer)

It's really since mists of pandaria where this has lessened, and in the EU/US scene mages are actually one of the less popular classes now, many people blame the level 90 talents for that.

2. Do you think original works by Chinese mage theorycrafters is worthy to learn about? Do you think language is a major barrior keeping you from learning about their works?

I think it'd be very interesting to read about the theorycrafting, and yes, for me personally language barrier is the issue.

3. Why is Arcane considered as an "easy to learn" spec? I've seen such statement once on Icy-Veins, and again by a shammy on Youtube. Icy-Veins also claims that "the penalty for casting spells at low mana is not that extraordinary", which greatly surprises me: what's the point of stacking Mastery then? Most Chinese mages believe 85% is the bottom line of mana, allowing it to drop below this line is generally a "grave mistake in the rotation". Chinese theorycrafters believe the mana of an Arcane mage should be fluctuating around 92% or so. Cycobi also proposes that a Barrage can be fired if mana is dropped below 95%. Regenerating mana to make use of hight Mastery is believed to be so crucial, that some Chinese Arcane mages, when fighting Spoils of Pandaria, would rather Ice Block than leaving the Rune to dispose the bombs. Control the mana so that it neither drop below 90% nor hit 100% for too long, while keeping track of Bomb and cooldowns, is no easy feat (surely more mentally consuming than spamming Chain Lightning and Lava Burst). So, how is this "Arcane is easy" thing originated? Why are there people who apparently know better buying it?

Arcane used/is considered an easy spec by non mages and bad mages. It's really mostly the mages/non mages that never played arcane, or never at a high level, that call it easy. Due to only having "1" (arcane blast) "main" buttons in their rotation.

The 85% line is pretty much what we consider acceptable as well. I personally, and many other high end raiders, consider it extremely punishing if you drop below like 80% mana, because you gimp your dps for the next ~10 seconds or so pretty hard.

I think it mostly comes from the dragonsoul/firelands era, where we had a "burn" phase to like 40% mana only spamming 1 button, and every non mage looked at logs, saw 80% of damage from arcane blast, and called it 1 button spec.

[zhengma]

Yes, I remember when Ghostcrawler added himself into Vashj'ir as a mob with the ability "nerfbat", people commented on wowhead "frost mage is immune to it".

However, I do hope that mage in WoD will eventually evolve into a class that scales well with player skill, allowing casual player to dish out moderate damage and those willing to optimize each detail of their rotations to do insane damage. I feel that Balance is a caster spec that scales relatively well with player skill in MoP, though Blizzard intends to greatly simplify its rotation in WoD. For similar reason, I kind of support what Ghostcrawler did to Retribution.

In my humble experience of 5.4, Frost not only scales with ilvl relatively badly, but doesn't scales with player skill very well either: large cooldowns aside, there are 2 procs and 1 DoT to monitor. Arcane scales better with player skill, with 2 resources, 1 proc and 1 DoT to monitor.

Still, it's claimed by several friends of mine that the ultimate demonstration of a mage's skill is to put out an optimal Combustion, which takes patient stacking, quick calculation, flawless timing and muscle reflexes. I may challenge myself on it if I can get a whole different set of BiS.

[Oltier]

I am on phone now, so I unfortunately can't react to everything what you wrote and I want to. So a short reaction for now: As I am the moderator of the mage forums on Icy-Veins for more than a year now, it is most likely that you read the "arcane mage is easy" statement by me. I still think it is easy to learn, as it still requires 4 buttons or so.. However, while it is easy to learn it is indeed very hard to master (for the reasons explained above).

I though this clarification was really needed. I don't want IV's mage section to have a bad reputation here.. (don't forget that beer Akraen)

[ZomgDPS]

mage players in China tend to be statistically more... arrogant. You might have heard of the scandal a few weeks back: 19 mages attempted Heroic SoO together, one of them ninja'ed a +Str ring, and the rest of them showed rudeness and indifference when the warrior tank protested to reclaim this piece of loot.

I'm not certain how accurate this inference is.

From my experience, douchebaggery knows no class boundaries. To this effect, it would be quite excellent to take a look at this statistical evidence of mage dominant douchbaggerry that you speak of. I would be far more inclined to label the behaviour you describe as more to do with the arrogance of players who play at a high level, and less of it being some function of whether or not they play the mage class. I do not see that being any different whether the player is Chinese, or "Western".

As far as why Arcane was somewhat singled out for being the "bad players" spec and/or the "faceroll" spec, that is nothing more than misinformation mixed in with a little dash of ignorance, as well as the (false) notion that somehow the # of buttons a class has access to is somehow directly correlates to the 'skill' required in playing the class. As many high level players (even of other classes) know, this is not the case. However, the general mass of uninformed luddites that frequent the official forums are, naturally, oblivious to all this.

As far as why this stigma didn't carry over to our Chinese brethren, the answer to that is something you already mentioned; that being, that outside very specific cases, the two communities (due to language and/or other factors) do not mix very often.
In that way, Chinese players never get to experience the ebb and flow of forum drama, or get to see all the silly videos of Arcane mages binding their entire keyboard to AB and doing DPS (in jest for sure, but still). So in that way, the culture of the two communities never mixed, and that part is important.

Important because when we move beyond the 'culture' and more into the world of actual facts (which is where most of the 'western' theorycrafting community lives) you will see a distinct change in what is being said.
Even back during Arcane's "1 button spam" phase of Cataclysm, theorycrafters never actually considered the spec "easy" or "faceroll". In fact, they completley understood the complexity involved (even with just a few buttons) in playing the spec, and never actually supported the claims of "Arcane is faceroll" that many uninformed players presented.
To this date, no real, worthwhile theorycrafter that I know of (or heard of) has ever truly held to the belief that Arcane was completely easy/faceroll etc Sure, many have said it maybe can be considered the "simpler" or "blander" spec, but most acknowledge that there is still something going on.

So in the end, the western theorycrafting community is actually a lot more attuned with the chinese theorycrafting community. Sure there are still debates about what spec is better for what, but the drastic differences that you have observed aren't really the case.

What I think is really the case, is just one of perspective. Perspective in the sense that when being somewhat disconnected from the 'western' communities, the Chinese communities would probably only really be able to look at what the mass of western players (i.e. the non-theorycrafting, somewhat ignorant) community has to say, especially since there are just more of them saying it.
Basically, from the outside looking in I am not surprised you think what you do, since that really is what the average western (uninformed) WoW player is saying, and there is just a lot more of them compared to the western players who 'know' what's what.

As a mirror, I wound't be surprised if one of the 'western' theorycrafters thought what the average Chinese WoW player is saying is complete bunk or nonsensical. The general mass is usually (and sometimes by definition) uninformed and incorrect. Doesn't matter if you are Chinese, American, or European.

[zhengma]

I am on phone now, so I unfortunately can't react to everything what you wrote and I want to. So a short reaction for now: As I am the moderator of the mage forums on Icy-Veins for more than a year now, it is most likely that you read the "arcane mage is easy" statement by me. I still think it is easy to learn, as it still requires 4 buttons or so.. However, while it is easy to learn it is indeed very hard to master (for the reasons explained above).

I though this clarification was really needed. I don't want IV's mage section to have a bad reputation here.. (don't forget that beer Akraen)

/shrug "FB + FFB + Lance + Bomb" is also 4 buttons.

Of course, spamming Arcane Blast is more than enough to kill the eagles and virmens in my Halfhill farm (in which case I actually just let my Water Elemental do it for me, same when I'm fishing or gathering herbs), but I doubt anyone who spends his or her time digesting an IV spec guide aims at that.

In my raiding environment, a pure DPS class with few utilities (with the introduction of noodle cart and better mana regen of healers, I can't remember the last time I'm asked for a table) has comparatively larger peer pressure: some I've encountered in PuGs expect me to top a Recount ranking and will complain when I drop out of top 20%. As one of them said and I quote, "Otherwise, why don't we bring an owlbear that can /dance to amuse us between pulls?" That's why I believe mages should spontaneously set higher bars to themselves, both in theoretical study and in raiding practice.

Besides, I've studied ~20 IV spec guides, and I noticed each of them contains a line in the "Rotation" chapter that goes like "following the previous session will already yield very good result". I'm doubting how well that applies to all these specs. I personally define "very good" for a DPS as "doing 90% of the damage SimC does on a dummy". Despite all the flaws and drawbacks of SimC as discussed by Komma, the error is not enough to invalidate this rule of thumb. I think it's more accurate to say "having the previous session on the balls is a very good first step to learn this spec".

Just a disclaimer: I have absolutely no intention to understate the quality of IV guides or the immense contribution IV did to WoW community. I didn't read IV when I started my mage main, but I've been following IV to learn each of my alts, and IV is where I went when I was commissioned as the guild RL and need to get a rough idea of all the classes my subordinating raiders play.

[zhengma]

Thank you very much for your long, sincere and detailed discussion.

From my experience, douchebaggery knows no class boundaries. To this effect, it would be quite excellent to take a look at this statistical evidence of mage dominant douchbaggerry that you speak of. I would be far more inclined to label the behaviour you describe as more to do with the arrogance of players who play at a high level, and less of it being some function of whether or not they play the mage class. I do not see that being any different whether the player is Chinese, or "Western".

As a matter of fact, all 11 classes have organized such "Pure <class> in Heroic SoO" event on NGA, most went smoothly and demonstrated the power and/or versatility of a class, only the mage one sees something as low as ninja looting. Ninja happens, and the offender is usually penalized quickly and everyone move on, but there was an atypically large number of players that denounce this incident, and unnaturally many flamers/trolls that point their fingers at the mage community as a whole, making me think whether they've harbored some prejudice against mages since long before. I'd like to cite evidence, but the last thing I want to do is to introduce the typical drama of my home nation, tiresome on which has been preventing me from playing on a CN realm in the first place, to alterd-time.com.

As far as why Arcane was somewhat singled out for being the "bad players" spec and/or the "faceroll" spec, that is nothing more than misinformation mixed in with a little dash of ignorance, as well as the (false) notion that somehow the # of buttons a class has access to is somehow directly correlates to the 'skill' required in playing the class. As many high level players (even of other classes) know, this is not the case. However, the general mass of uninformed luddites that frequent the official forums are, naturally, oblivious to all this.

Then it's only fair to make an objective statement of the learning curve of Arcane at various skill levels. That sentence in the IV guide, albeit not quite wrong per se, only enhances the existing prejudice.

As far as why this stigma didn't carry over to our Chinese brethren, the answer to that is something you already mentioned; that being, that outside very specific cases, the two communities (due to language and/or other factors) do not mix very often.
In that way, Chinese players never get to experience the ebb and flow of forum drama, or get to see all the silly videos of Arcane mages binding their entire keyboard to AB and doing DPS (in jest for sure, but still). So in that way, the culture of the two communities never mixed, and that part is important.

I'm deeply astonished to see the "ebb and flow of forum drama" part, because I always believed that NGA has the largest amount of drama, trolling, ad hominem and showers-off of all the major WoW forums on this planet. If you can prove that battle.net forum, or mmo-champion, have all the stupidity I witnessed on NGA, I'm really curious to see a few solid examples.

The fact is: 1. my opinion is biased before I do enough homework on the atmosphere and culture of western WoW player community; 2. my English skill is inadequate to read through all the recent posts on mmo-champion within an affordable amount of time. Therefore, such direct communications between the two communities like what we're doing here, sharing what we know, is way more efficient.

Important because when we move beyond the 'culture' and more into the world of actual facts (which is where most of the 'western' theorycrafting community lives) you will see a distinct change in what is being said.
Even back during Arcane's "1 button spam" phase of Cataclysm, theorycrafters never actually considered the spec "easy" or "faceroll". In fact, they completley understood the complexity involved (even with just a few buttons) in playing the spec, and never actually supported the claims of "Arcane is faceroll" that many uninformed players presented.
To this date, no real, worthwhile theorycrafter that I know of (or heard of) has ever truly held to the belief that Arcane was completely easy/faceroll etc Sure, many have said it maybe can be considered the "simpler" or "blander" spec, but most acknowledge that there is still something going on.

So in the end, the western theorycrafting community is actually a lot more attuned with the chinese theorycrafting community. Sure there are still debates about what spec is better for what, but the drastic differences that you have observed aren't really the case.

Thank you for your detailed explanation. Now one part of my question, regarding how western WoW players appreciate the sophistication of Arcane, has a satisfactory answer. However, I'd like to ask more regarding another part of my original post, the prejudice against Frost users I witness in CWoW mage community. I admit the fact: if we had to name one spec that's "lagging" in PvE in Patch 5.4, it would most likely be Frost. I know some prominent western mages (like Vykina and Cycobi) also admit it to some extent. I have never, however, seen anyone on US realm saying "Wow dude you have a Water Elemental by your side wtf? How noobish lol! (source)" A few weeks back, a Chinese mage theorycrafter published an entire long essay just to argue "there's not a single fight in SoO where you should spec in Frost, which is for beginners". I'm curious whether there is anything similar in the western mage community?

What I think is really the case, is just one of perspective. Perspective in the sense that when being somewhat disconnected from the 'western' communities, the Chinese communities would probably only really be able to look at what the mass of western players (i.e. the non-theorycrafting, somewhat ignorant) community has to say, especially since there are just more of them saying it.
Basically, from the outside looking in I am not surprised you think what you do, since that really is what the average western (uninformed) WoW player is saying, and there is just a lot more of them compared to the western players who 'know' what's what.

As a mirror, I wound't be surprised if one of the 'western' theorycrafters thought what the average Chinese WoW player is saying is complete bunk or nonsensical. The general mass is usually (and sometimes by definition) uninformed and incorrect. Doesn't matter if you are Chinese, American, or European.

Quite to the contrary, most CWoW players, to my knowledge, only care about western players that can be found on the first ranking page of two websites: wowprogress and worldoflogs. Even for these players they don't memorize their names, they just want to exceed them and spill the "CN" profix all over the ranking page, for nothing but glory and honor.

[Akraen]

Sounds like I would just love China... so does "fun" have any value whatsoever over there?

[Malon]

Thank you for your detailed explanation. Now one part of my question, regarding how western WoW players appreciate the sophistication of Arcane, has a satisfactory answer. However, I'd like to ask more regarding another part of my original post, the prejudice against Frost users I witness in CWoW mage community. I admit the fact: if we had to name one spec that's "lagging" in PvE in Patch 5.4, it would most likely be Frost. I know some prominent western mages (like Vykina and Cycobi) also admit it to some extent. I have never, however, seen anyone on US realm saying "Wow dude you have a Water Elemental by your side wtf? How noobish lol! (source)" A few weeks back, a Chinese mage theorycrafter published an entire long essay just to argue "there's not a single fight in SoO where you should spec in Frost, which is for beginners". I'm curious whether there is anything similar in the western mage community?

That tends not to happen in the West, at least among the informed players. We know that, at this point in time, all three specs are close enough in damage that it's best to choose the spec that you want to play, not the spec that theorycraft says is superior. For instance, I'm just bad at using Combustion; I deal more damage as Frost.

[Komma]

Thank you for your detailed explanation. Now one part of my question, regarding how western WoW players appreciate the sophistication of Arcane, has a satisfactory answer. However, I'd like to ask more regarding another part of my original post, the prejudice against Frost users I witness in CWoW mage community. I admit the fact: if we had to name one spec that's "lagging" in PvE in Patch 5.4, it would most likely be Frost. I know some prominent western mages (like Vykina and Cycobi) also admit it to some extent. I have never, however, seen anyone on US realm saying "Wow dude you have a Water Elemental by your side wtf? How noobish lol! (source)" A few weeks back, a Chinese mage theorycrafter published an entire long essay just to argue "there's not a single fight in SoO where you should spec in Frost, which is for beginners". I'm curious whether there is anything similar in the western mage community?

After looking at that thread, it looks exactly like a thread stereotype in many popular mage forums: Frost mage joins raid, gets laughed at for playing frost, goes to forums and complains about it with a "I was still top 3 dps in the group" message. The next 20-40 replies are all "Frost is fine, maybe Arcane has slightly better maximum DPS at high dps". This isn't unique to Chinese forums, and happens even in raiding guilds in US and EU where certain Raid or Guild leaders pressure mages to stop playing frost because they think it's a weak spec.

[ZomgDPS]

Thank you very much for your long, sincere and detailed discussion.

Your welcome.
From what I have been told, one of the express purposes of this forum is to transcend regional boundaries for the Mage class. To this effect, definitely get your other Chinese mage friends to come on over and join in the discussions and (healthy) debates.
Perspective really is the key to success, irrespective of what it is you are actually trying to accomplish.

but there was an atypically large number of players that denounce this incident, and unnaturally many flamers/trolls that point their fingers at the mage community as a whole,

There are bad apples in every bunch, that said, there are still people who blame ALL Germans for what happened all that long time ago (does this count as me Godwining this thread? ). In my experience, very rarely (if ever) do the actions of a few accurately reflect the nature of the whole.

I always believed that NGA has the largest amount of drama, trolling, ad hominem and showers-off of all the major WoW forums on this planet. If you can prove that battle.net forum, or mmo-champion, have all the stupidity I witnessed on NGA, I'm really curious to see a few solid examples.

Just a few examples? Haha! I could get you soo, soo many.
Now that you are intent on spending some time taking a look at the 'western' communities, I will tell you this old chap, you will most definitely not have a hard time finding examples of these things. Lord (Zom) knows just how complete and absolute the ignorance on those forums can be.

2. my English skill is inadequate to read through all the recent posts on mmo-champion within an affordable amount of time.

Your English is holding up just fine so far I would say that your inability to understand the drivel over at MMO-C and/or the official forums has little to do with your language skills, but more to do with the lack of language skills of the folks who you are trying to read. My command over the English language is quite adequate, and even I find it borderline impossible to understand some of the nonsense over there.

I have been reading forums for ages now, and your few posts here have already convinced me that you have a better grasp of communication than 95% of the blubberers that frequent those forums.

[zhengma]

Sounds like I would just love China... so does "fun" have any value whatsoever over there?

I believe most of the players in the world ultimately play a game for fun, regardless of region. What could vary, however, is the source of "fun".

According to my limited observation, the definition of "fun" for a significant portion of CWoW community is to prove and to demonstrate and to brag publicly that oneself is superior to fellow players, either in terms of gear, or in terms of DPS, or number of Heroic Garrosh kill, etc.

It results in something very interesting: on one hand, many CWoW players are somewhat obsessive with meters; on the other hand, these same players usually don't sit down and conduct research via mathematical models or simulations, and have little interest in reading about other's theory. Some tend to get into an instance, start the rotation on a boss hoping RNG is in their favor. Some submit screen-captures to public forum, saying "See how much damage I pumped. Anyone who can't do this number with the same gear is too dumb to be a raider" withOUT detailing and reasoning how he managed his rotation. In this sense, the CWoW player community is a best place for TC research, since many people actually care about doing optimal damage and are sparing no effort to improve their damage; the CWoW player community is also a worst place for TC, since few people prefer turning off the game, establishing a model to optimize, and sharing the conclusions to the community.

On the Chinese forum Komma and I visit, there are so many elitist jerks. Unlike the guild/forum by that name, however, most of them are just jerks and no more.

[Akraen]

I feel like I would confuse people there. I know my Frost Guide made it over there but I still see a lot of Frost Mages in China not quite follow it (they are below 14242 haste).

I have tried very hard to get people to try frost, even for fun. I knew full well that frost is "weaker" than Fire and Arcane but I found in the US/EU it was very hard still to convince people to give it a try. I am a very, and I mean very, competitive player. However, I am competitive within context. I had no problem skipping Fire and Arcane this tier because I knew Frost did well.

So I chose to play what I enjoy and I have been very successful at it, so I took it one step further: Now I do strange, experimental builds during farm content. This is a new type of fun. I have not seen evidence of any other mage try to reach the highest LB breakpoint of 28406. I am fortunate enough to have most gear, but I still am waiting for one item-- however so far I've seen some very interesting results. Once I get a Black Blood from H.Garrosh I will try it again and share my results.

Anyway I think we deal with the same problems you do but we have enough people to form a great community as well. My name is synonymous with Frost at this point, but I really want to be known as the fringe mage who tries to break the game

[zhengma]

I feel like I would confuse people there. I know my Frost Guide made it over there but I still see a lot of Frost Mages in China not quite follow it (they are below 14242 haste).

I have tried very hard to get people to try frost, even for fun. I knew full well that frost is "weaker" than Fire and Arcane but I found in the US/EU it was very hard still to convince people to give it a try. I am a very, and I mean very, competitive player. However, I am competitive within context. I had no problem skipping Fire and Arcane this tier because I knew Frost did well.

So I chose to play what I enjoy and I have been very successful at it, so I took it one step further: Now I do strange, experimental builds during farm content. This is a new type of fun. I have not seen evidence of any other mage try to reach the highest LB breakpoint of 28406. I am fortunate enough to have most gear, but I still am waiting for one item-- however so far I've seen some very interesting results. Once I get a Black Blood from H.Garrosh I will try it again and share my results.

Anyway I think we deal with the same problems you do but we have enough people to form a great community as well. My name is synonymous with Frost at this point, but I really want to be known as the fringe mage who tries to break the game

You have the spirit of a physicist, sir, exploring extreme/exotic cases and return to report what happens.

With almost full normal warforged gear at this moment, I'm sticking with 12684 and stacking mastery, it'll allow me to switch to arcane in times of need more easily. I aimed at 9522 with Flex gear, at 12684 with Normal gear and plan to reach 14242 when I get some gears in Heroic.

In your experiment, with +4 ticks of LB and +11 ticks of NT (did I remember the numbers right? will check later), it'll be really, really hard to refresh them at the right moment. The interval between LB ticks is comparable to the 1-sec GCD, meaning you only have 1 correct GCD for each bomb refreshing; and that for NT is surely shorter than GCD, meaning you have to either skip a tick now and then, or forfeit 100% bomb coverage. Please put up some videos and screen-captures when you put this to the field test

[Akraen]

Actually you can refresh any DoT within 1.5 sec of it expiring and you will not waste a tick! So with a good addon (I use MageBombTracker) I rarely miss any ticks.

Also with this high haste, bomb DPET is influenced most strongly by buffs because as you add more ticks, each tick is increased by whichever buffs you have. In high haste builds, this is more significant because more of your damage comes from bombs relative to other spells.

This is what allows haste builds to work (many mages love 15832, 18974, or 19347 haste for fights like Blackfuse and Garrosh heroic). So many times you refresh a bomb with ~6 sec if a trinket, meta gem, or something else procs. Your newly refreshed DoT does enough more damage in its duration that the sum of the damage gained exceeds how much you would have dealt if you spent your GCD on another spell (DPET gain).

Anyway I've gone off topic, sorry! Yes I have far more enjoyment from testing, experimenting, and theorycrafting than I do just finding what is "best." Sadly, even in the west, this is not normal-- most people just want the answer.

[zhengma]

Uh...I knew I would soon speak something noobish in front of you, Mr. Stasik. I'm so utterly embarrassed now. Still, it's better to know late than not to know, and now I won't have as much pressure to refresh my bombs.

I did some very quick mental calculation just now, though. I believe bombs also benefit from Mana Adept. A extra tick of LB is a little more than 9450 haste, and adds 25% of base (0 haste) damage. The same amount of Mastery would give me 31.5% of total (after haste modification) damage. Is this argument plausible? If it is, does it indicate to enhance bomb damage, an arcane mage should stack mastery in place of haste?