It's the New Year, and Nighthold is around the corner. And with it, 7.1.5 and all the changes it brings. Many a player has been asking, "What spec do I play in 7.1.5? What should I set my loot spec to? What's the new OP? How can I best contribute to my raid?"
Well fellow players, with Nighthold right around the bend, now is probably the best time to reveal some simulations I've been running. I only need to ask you to do two things:
DON'T PANIC. READ CAREFULLY.
That's it. Just those two things. There'll be a lot of text explaining what happened (and why) so before you post asking "But why is XYZ so low and ABC so high!?"... it'll most likely be answered in the post already.
Now without further ado, let's get into some information!
PTR Notes
Compilation of 7.1.5 PTR changes (the unofficial patch notes)
This link is for reviewing just what's changed and what hasn't. This post would be long enough if I detailed all of that, and thankfully someone's done it already, so feel free to read what Wowhead has compiled instead.
There are some other... well, they aren't changes in the code, but rather natural side effects of the times we're going into that we have to keep in consideration. Those things involve Artifact Knowledge. That's right, we're hitting AK25, people are starting to max out their chosen weapons.
As a side-effect of maxing out your weapon (getting all 54 points into it) however, Potion of Prolonged Power closes in on Deadly Grace. For situations where it's not purely ST, Prolonged Power edges out Deadly Grace. For situations where it's purely ST, Prolonged Power is still beating Deadly Grace for Frost and Fire, when Fire is using Mirror Image.
To put it a little clearer,
Multiple Adds: PP.
Frost & Fire(MI): PP.
Fire(RoP) & Arcane: DG
In addition, stat sticks (i.e. trinkets that have no damage proc, but only have flat stats on them) are very often more damage than damage proc trinkets. This may change however, as I can't imagine Blizzard really wanting most of their trinkets to be trash just because you have 15% more damage in your chosen element.
Last but not least, Mark of the Hidden Satyr may not be the best dps enchant for necklace. Test out the different enchants for yourselves, because I personally haven't yet, and whatever is the best all depends on many many factors.
Simulations
Now I'm going to put up some simulations. Before you click on any of those spoiler buttons, I want you to keep in mind that simulations are not perfect. But even though they're not 100%, I think it's still useful to look at what it spits out because it might be on to something.
Remember, simulations are not the final word, they are just a good beginning.
Now, unless stated otherwise, every sim is using the 4-set bonus from Nighthold, and roughly 890 item level. (I know, I know, NH gear starts at 900, but I wanted to give people a sense of what their dps should look going into Nighthold)
Single Target with Paired Legendaries
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Loot Council and GMs, this one's for you.
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TL;DR:
There's no clear-cut answer. Sims are never 100% accurate, BUT it's looking like each spec has their niche. So if you have really nice legendaries for your favorite spec, keep playing it!
And until 7.1.5 comes, keep every decent ilevel piece of gear you come across, no matter the secondaries, and don't bother hoarding AP until AK24.
And a fellow theorycrafter noted: "tl;dr OP legendary items make fire/frost strong. Nothing new there. FO/Blizzard interaction made frost an AoE juggernaut - extent of DPS gain is interesting, but not surprising."
FAQ (read first before posting)
Q: Does this mean the talents you use are the best?
A: No. I picked talents that are, as far as I could math out, the best for both ST and AoE. You can get some more ST damage or AoE damage if you build differently, but the other side would suffer for it.
Q: Why'd you post stuff if you think the APL is wrong?
A: Because I don't think it's massively wrong. And because a bajillion people keep asking what's the new OP and I'm tired of it. So this is a start. Hopefully we'll get better, more accurate APLs from people smarter than me.
Q: I have an improvement on Arcane/Fire/Frost
A: That's nice. Unless it's an improvement on the APL, I'm not likely to change anything. There's a reason for this: You can't realistically change relics fight to fight, and you can't change talents in m+. So I tried to stick with stuff that was best for both AoE AND ST. To be fair, some of the secondaries could be swapped around between ST and AoE for Fire to simulate swapping gear, but the net dps gain was only something like 9k for ST on fire.
Q: I have an improvement on the Arcane/Fire/Frost APL!
A: Oh... sweet. I'll run it and if it's better, I'll update the post with it.
Q: Does this mean Frost is the new OP??
A: Sweet Baby Ray's, did you read nothing? No, it's not the new OP. It's just simming very well. Arcane probably ought to do quite a bit higher because the APL looks like it's doing odd stuff, but Fire isn't /gkick terrible ST either with the right legendaries, and it's still very solid for AoE. Remember, Fire AoE is exponential thanks to Living Bomb, so the more there is, the more Fire will do!
A fellow theorycrafter notes: "Playing TV frost is fucking hard. I would strongly consider how good you actually are at the game before you go down that road."
Remember, the sim is playing it "perfectly". If you mess up TV, you get punished pretty hard, and that can be really difficult when you're learning a new fight, and if there are significant breaks in the fight then dps drops pretty quick. Don't be fooled by big numbers in a sim.
Q: I thought Arcane was the new OP...
A: Yeah, so did I. It's probably still really strong, it's just really awkward to model the right way to handle mana given all the various different amount of mana regen people have. We're working on it, there's something odd with it.
Q: Is Fire dead?
A: Kindling certainly looks that way. So now you need to start aiming Cinderstorm or Meteor. If you have pretty solid legendaries your ST is still looking respectable.
Q: I don't have any of the good legendaries for Fire. Should I switch?
A: Depends. This winds up being a personal question. Do you need this for raiding, for questing, or for m+? Fire AoE is still good in m+ especially at lower levels where you can pull massively. And in raiding, a lot of the fights reportedly have lots of adds, so Fire will do well on those as well. The ST fights, however... with all the testing that's been done, without the really good legendaries Fire falls behind Frost and Arcane on ST.
I'm not going to tell you yes or no to switching, because ultimately the choice is up to you and what you enjoy playing. That said, because people won't accept that answer, I'll just say that personally if I were in the situation of having no legendaries for fire and stuck between arcane/fire, I'd go arcane until at least 4 piece NH set and set my loot spec on fire unless I found out I really enjoyed playing Arcane. But currently I like Frost and I'm going with it, so it's a moot point.
As for what to spend your AP on, with AK25 you're going to be swimming in AP so getting to level 54 on your weapon won't be that hard.
Q: I have (some dps legendary like Shard) and (some utility legendary like Prydaz). What do?
A: Assume your utilitary legendary doesn't exist, then look at every other sim besides the paired legendary sim. Then maybe inflate the dps up maybe a thousand for the increased item level from the utility legendary. There you go, now you know.
Q: I meant what do I do about my spec, you lousy jerk!
A: The same thing as I typed before with the guy who has no good legendaries for fire.
Q: TV or GS for Frost in 7.1.5?
A: TV sims higher especially with legendaries, but GS probably will be easier. And if you mess up TV your dps will plummet. But GS isn't going to do near that much damage without 54 in your weapon. So make of it what you will.
Q: Why isn't Flame Patch + Flamestrike talked about more?
A: Because it'll probably get nerfed super hard and disappear. If it's not nerfed super hard in the first couple of weeks, enjoy pulling some ridiculous damage if you spend the time farming 3 flamestrike relics and if the tank keeps the mobs in the patch.
Q: Are you that famous mage, Rikh?
A: No.
Special thanks to Frosted, Potaetoe, Shmahha, Norrinir and Deathdefier for their help
Changelog:
Code: Select all
v1.1.1 (4 Jan 2017) - Fixed info on PP vs DG. Previously claimed PP was superior in every situation, and I was wrong!
v1.1.0 (1 Jan 2017) - Flattened intellect and secondary stats on legendary pairwise sim, and forced every sim to 30k int and 24k secondaries. Removed Wish and Zann'esu from sims as they're bugged.
v1.0.5 (1 Jan 2017) - Changed Fire talents to RoP/CiS, fixed AoE sims.
v1.0.4 (1 Jan 2017) - Fixed some text, removed legendaries from set piece comparison, fixed stuff.
v1.0.3 (1 Jan 2017) - Added some text, re-ran some sims
v1.0.2 (1 Jan 2017) - Additional FAQ answer (a pertinent question)
v1.0.1 (1 Jan 2017) - Fixed picture on 10 enemy AoE sim.
v1.0 (1 Jan 2017) - Initial version
