Monday, July 28, 2008

Actual Damage = Spell Damage + (Spell Coefficient x Bonus Damage)


Whoa, slow down egg-head!

But srsly. That's how it works, and while you don't need to know the hows and whys, it can't hurt to get a handle on the whats, and so here is everything you need to know, and nothing you don't, about Improved Frostbolt.

Yes! That's what this is really all about! There is a Spell Slingin' Stand-off happening here after all, also known as The Big Battle of the Mages !

See... Once upon a time, back in the days of WoW 2.0.suck, this Tier 1 talent got pwned by the nerfbat. (Ouchies)
As of Patch 2.0.6 each rank of "Improved Frostbolt" now reduces Frostbolt's spell damage coefficient by 2%.
Now in these days of post 2.3.win there is no such issue! (Winrar)
Patch 2.3.0 removed this "damage tax".
Which makes Improved Frostbolt 100% worth getting for any Arcane Frost, Elemental Frost or Deep frost build. Pretty much anyone who is going to fire more than 3 of these babies in a row should have this talent.

Now I'm all about practicality, in a "what does it mean to me, and it better be good or I'm not interested" kind of way.

So lets say I have 1000 spell damage....

... I go down to the altar of shadows one day and theres this fire elemental giving me dirty looks see... now I don't take to kindly to their type to begin with, so mebbe I started it and mebbe I didn't, but one thing led to another and this fire elemental... well lets just say he was very apologetic in the end, but in the middle part, well he was downright vicious, and I was forced... I say -forced- to blast him all the way to netherstorm and back with a storm of frostbolts.



And then it was all over, just as quickly as it started. Now lets have a look at why he got so sorry so quickly, without getting too deep in to scary mathematicals that don't belong in an automagical world.

Each spell in WoW has a co-efficient. Rather get caught up in the how and the why, lets look at the what. Rank 13 frostbolt has a coefficient of 81.43, which means each frostbolt receives 81.43% of your bonus spell damage.

Just trust me. Srsly. Would I lie to you?

I know it isn't a nice round number like fireball with its nice easy-to-calculate coefficient of 100, but well... it just isn't. its 81.43 and thats final. (Actually it's only final until we get Empowered Frostbolt, however, that's a discussion for a later stage - scared yet gnomes?)

So why did the Enraged Fire Spirit die so easily? He had about 6600Hp before his unwise decision to get smart with me, and 3 or 4 frostbolts later he's goneski. Lets look a bit closer.

First of all Frostbolt:

rank 13 frostbolt - 3.0 seconds cast time, 597 - 643dmg (620 average dmg)

So we have 1000 spell damage, therefore an average frostbolt hit is 1434dmg.

damage = 620 + (1000 x 0.8143) = 1434.3

crit damage = {620 + (1000 x 0.8143)} x 200% = 2868.6 thanks to Ice Shards of course.

Looks like our firey friend copped a bit of a critical hit! No wonder he only lasted for 4 frostbolts. Of course in that time he put up a wee bit of a fight, and perhaps I used counterspell, perhaps I used fire ward, perhaps I just stood there and took it like a zombie... Same result.

Zupa 1 - Enraged Fire Spirit 0

So, without further ado, let me introduce
Improved Frostbolt.

Each point spent reduces the cast time of frostbolt by 0.1 seconds up to a maximum of 0.5 seconds.

Don't forget that it keeps the same spell damage coefficient even though the cast time is reduced!

To illustrate how important those tenths of seconds are, lets consider a slightly longer fight, lasting for 1 minute. Without improved frostbolt, zero lag and no interruptions, we could cast 20 frostbolts in 1 minute.

With improved frostbolt we are looking at 24 frostbolts in the same minute!

Looks good already doesn't it! But wait, we have approx 25% crit chance... so chances are one of those 4 free frostbolts is going to crit... and with 1000 bonus spell damage we are now looking at an additional 7172 damage in a 1 minute fight! (3 normal frostbolt hits and 1 critical frostbolt hit)

Not bad for a Tier 1 talent ay?

Lets see what the Gnomes have to say about that!



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

OK, I am back to being just plain scared...

You two are slinging Arcane Bolts and Frost Bolts way too fast... and in only one direction....

What is worse, is after writing my thanks post yesterday, it occurred to me that there are way more Mage blogs (or Mages that are thinking of coming out from behind their big Hunter mate's skirts) that I originally thought... and the worst bit...

I think I am the lone Fire Mage.

I actually had this vision last night, like in the movies, where the hero is standing in the smokey blasted out building, with hundreds of enemies rushing in at them.

Me (the hero of course...) firing of blasts left right and centre... everyone connecting for an instant death of course...
You guys (the nasty villains) coming in waves - and not one (or maybe the occasional one) of you blasts hitting me...

And then... < click >... < click >... uuuhhhh Ohhhh. /OOM

Then I wake momentarily, roll over and enter my fitful dreamstate again.

krizzlybear said...

@gnomeageddon: you have the cookie cutter raid build. If EJ can settle on such a build and defend it to the death, you can too!

And Zupa, don't forget about ghost hit! There's rumors and speculation flying about that these frostbolt talents have something to do about it. Spicy mentioned in one of his past articles that Imp. Frostbolt may contribute to +1% overall spell hit with regards to frostbolt.

Darkhorse said...

oh I know, one of the reasons I decided to dabble in fire is I had plenty of spell hit available so I could afford to lose my ghost hit.

of course im over that now, respecced to classic arena frost last night for... well... arena, and we had our most successful 2v2 ever.

Of course it helps that for the first time me and my warrior 2v2 partner are both specced correctly, and were both playing on our home PCs.

I think we went 11-3 before calling it a night =)

krizzlybear said...

zupa, i don't think i'll ever set foot in an arena, particularly with regards to any sort of small team. i simply do not have the twitch skills to pvp properly. if i did, i'd probably play some sort of fps or even an rts like classic warcraft. but yes, frost is the pvp spec, hands down.

LarĂ­sa said...

Oh, those calculations were a bit too much to my overheated brain to deal with, arcane brilliant or not (I blame the summer heat wave we've currently got in Sweden).

I just wanted to point out that the probability that I'd throw three frostbolts in a row as an arcane/frost mage is pretty small.

It's an act out of desperation if I get out of mana and get no support whatsovever from the raid. But apart from that I'd stick to AB as much as possible.

Hm... I guess it's my turn now to go and have another look at the Arcane tree. Wand specialization wasn't a big hit. I've got to come up with something better. Brb.