Friday, May 23, 2008

Young Talent Time

10/0/51

^^ That's where I'm at people. According to my own figurings, this should be the best raid spec for me at this point in my career.

Now talents come and go, specs change, Blizzard changes the rules frequently, people whine, things get nerfed... people whine, things get buffed. It can be a bit much to keep up with sometimes.

It's fairly easy to go research the best spec for x and then just copy it and away you go. This of course doesn't take into account your playstyle, your skill level or your gear. So how do you know when you have it "right" ?

I don't think it's ever 100% right, the game is too varied for one spec to be ideal. Something that can help, however, is Lhierva's Theorycraft-o-Matic. This tool will actually give you a simulated DPS, DPM, etc for any particular spec, based on your current gear.

That is freaking awesome. Costing anything up to 50g, a respec isn't something you want to screw up. I should know, I'm on my 4th spec since I started playing again, and none of them have even been radically different from one another. Just a little tweak here and there.

Up until just recently, mana was not an issue. There is no fight in any 5 man that will put me all the way out of mana under reasonable circumstances. You know as long as someone else is doing some damage as well and I remembered to conjure a mana emerald and perhaps maybe I'll use evocation during a fight.

But never was I standing there fresh out of cooldowns and been forced to bust out [The Black Stalk] on some hard to kill mofo, until the other day in kara when I was a little bit slow on creating my gems and found myself wanding the boss for the final 5%. Dunno which boss. Some big dragon fella as I recall.

The point being I decided to respec for clear casting, hence the spec above. This means I lose frostbite and improved blizzard, some of the swappable talents I've been playing around with during my recent respecs. This is no big deal in a raid or instance situation, as you don't have much opportunity to bust shatter combos on frostbitten enemies because someone else usually breaks the snare before you can wind up a frostbolt. Also imp blizzard isn't really helpful unless you are AoE grinding or PvP grinding. Neither of which I am planning to do a lot of.

So I have clearcasting instead.

balls.

Frostbite and Improved Blizzard are totally useful talents at certain times, while clearcasting gives me a mana-free spell cast 10% of the time. Thats super awesome when I need to cast 10% more spells without a break, but super useless the rest of the time.

To be honest I don't like it, but will stick with it for now as I try to squeeze out every last smidgen of DPS when in raid situations with the new guild. One must do one's best when one is the new guy don't you agree?

At least the theorycraft-o-matic confirmed that I had indeed chosen the ideal raiding spec and nobody can tell me I need to respec until I'm bloody well ready. right?

right.

One thing that is interesting, and you should try this when you plug in your own mage and do some talent comparisons. Which is better brilliant wizard oil or superior wizard oil?

36dmg & 14crit vs 42dmg.

Well the simulator actually tells me that the less damage but more crit will yeild a higher return in terms of DPS over the course of a decent fight. Damn I have about 20 jars of Superior Wizard Oil. I think it's actually cheaper to make than the Brilliant stuff because Large Brilliant Shards are rather pricey these days.

So. Kara this weekend guys? maybe? kinda? perhaps? If you aren't all too busy on your mains in that big ass guild doing some end game 25 man content that I will one day maybe get a look at.

HMMMM having your main in an alt guild isn't always the greatest.

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