Mage bombs 5.3

[Oltier 471]

Hey Mages!

So, have you guys tried out the new change to Living bomb?

I actually found out, that for me, Living Bomb has became better for single target fights than Nether tempest, such as Jin-rokh, Durumu etc etc.

On 2 target fights, where the two bosses stay in cleave range, Nether tempest pulls ahead, but if they are spread Living bomb will most likely be better.

On 3 targets, the two bombs do kinda same damage. If you can get a 15th Nether tempest tick then, that pulls ahead a bit.

4 targets, Since Living bomb still has the 3 targets limit, Nether tempest is better here, like on council.

5 or more, Frost bomb, obviously :)

What is your experience? :)

[areanu 16]

Is it in-game testing or SimC? thank you for the info

[Oltier 471]

In game training dummies, and maths that approves my theory posted on mmo-champion by a user.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1300990-5-3-Do-we-have-an-official-verdict-on-Mage-Bombs?p=21194248&viewfull=1#post21194248

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1300990-5-3-Do-we-have-an-official-verdict-on-Mage-Bombs?p=21195041&viewfull=1#post21195041

[robertduke32 0]

I saw your post about Living Bomb still being restricted to only 3 targets, but the patch notes say that it hits all nearby targets....is that not the case? Thanks for the analysis!!

Living Bomb's periodic damage has been increased by 121%. Its explosion damage has been reduced by 78%, but now scales with additional periodic ticks added by haste, and hits all nearby targets (up from 3).

[slap 5]

In game training dummies, and maths that approves my theory posted on mmo-champion by a user.

http://www.mmo-champ...=1#post21194248

http://www.mmo-champ...=1#post21195041

Interesting. So LB seems better on single target based on most peoples findings. When do you refresh LB? do you need to wait for it to completely run off? or can you slightly overlap to keep 100% up time?

[Vladamyr 169]

I saw your post about Living Bomb still being restricted to only 3 targets, but the patch notes say that it hits all nearby targets....is that not the case? Thanks for the analysis!!

Living Bomb's periodic damage has been increased by 121%. Its explosion damage has been reduced by 78%, but now scales with additional periodic ticks added by haste, and hits all nearby targets (up from 3).

You can only have the actual bomb dot on 3 targets at once. When one of the bombs explodes (when the dot has run it's course) the explosion now hit's all nearby targets. That explosion used to be limited to 3.

[areanu 16]

So, after reading that topic on MMO, here's my humble assessment:

1) RPPM is arguable. Living bomb has x3 chance to activate a proc, but many players said trinks like hydra work better with NT.

2) Haste:

http://www.askmrrobo...haste/magefrost

LB additional ticks are +2 at 37.52% (9522 haste) and +3 at 62.47% (18960 haste).

Currently, 18960 is not really achievable, so 9522 haste is the soft cap then.

As a frost mage with haste gems, i'm currently sitting at 12804 haste.

For me, it scales better with NT, as I get a sixth additional tick at 12684 haste.

However (!), if we toss in lust or meta gem (both act the same way), there's +4 ticks to LB at 12043 haste (well, +11 ticks to NT at this value, but NT tick thresholds are much more frequent).

3) Length: LB lasts slightly longer, but wastes a GCD.

How much is a GCD worth in terms of DPS?

4) Explosion: that's a good thing about LB — at +2 it ticks every 2 seconds, so if a player can manage to refresh it after last tick but before explosion, it will still explode and stay at 100% uptime. Right?

Specifically dont mention anything about number of targets here: that's the most obvious part, no clarification needed there.

Anything else I miss?

Edited May 23, 2013 by areanu

[Oltier 471]

Interesting. So LB seems better on single target based on most peoples findings. When do you refresh LB? do you need to wait for it to completely run off? or can you slightly overlap to keep 100% up time?

I refresh it just before it expires, so kinda when you have 1 second remaining. So that it will explode.

So, after reading that topic on MMO, here's my humble assessment:

1) RPPM is arguable. Living bomb has x3 chance to activate a proc, but many players said trinks like hydra work better with NT.

2) Haste:

http://www.askmrrobo...haste/magefrost

LB additional ticks are +2 at 37.52% (9522 haste) and +3 at 62.47% (18960 haste).

Currently, 18960 is not really achievable, so 9522 haste is the soft cap then.

As a frost mage with haste gems, i'm currently sitting at 12804 haste.

For me, it scales better with NT, as I get a sixth additional tick at 12684 haste.

However (!), if we toss in lust or meta gem (both act the same way), there's +4 ticks to LB at 12043 haste (well, +11 ticks to NT at this value, but NT tick thresholds are much more frequent).

3) Length: LB lasts slightly longer, but wastes a GCD.

How much is a GCD worth in terms of DPS?

4) Explosion: that's a good thing about LB — at +2 it ticks every 2 seconds, so if a player can manage to refresh it after last tick but before explosion, it will still explode and stay at 100% uptime. Right?

Specifically dont mention anything about number of targets here: that's the most obvious part, no clarification needed there.

Anything else I miss?

1. Yes, RPPM is indeed arguable! I have to say you might want to simcraft yourself if you have an RPPM trinket to see which bomb results in higher number. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to try things out in the new patch. In my experience though, My only RPPM item is currently the meta gem, but I actually had 44% uptime with Living bomb and 37% uptime with Nether tempest on Magaera. Which is completely the opposite of what ppl say in MMO champ. I have to have more experience with this.

2. This is again something, that we cannot state in general because this is very very player dependant. but if you take into account that you sometimes get a haste boost on some bosses, or from any other resource you might as well break that 62%.

3. On single target fight it's not a difference at all. On multiple target fights, Nether tempest will pull ahead because of this GCD and the cleave effect.

4. Look above.

I don't think we're missing anything tbh. Once we have some more experience with the bombs and some simcrafts we'll see clearer.

[areanu 16]

I thought of one more thing:

everyone says LB scales better with SP, so it would essentialy favor full-int frost mages instead of haste frost mages. Not sure if that would result in any notable difference though.

Edited May 24, 2013 by areanu

[Oltier 471]

Simcrafts with my character: http://eu.battle.net...Oltier/advanced

iLvL 523, basically ToT normal BiS... Kinda... In fact trinket would not hurt but.. RNG with them...

Frost mage, Icy veins and Ice lance glyphs were applied.

Single target

Frost bomb: 168902

Nether tempest: 170573

Living bomb: 174497

This approves that for single target fights Living bomb is better, and 4k is a minor difference so it is worth picking this talent.

2 targets

Frost bomb: 192802

Living bomb: 213574

Nether tempest: 233573

3 targets

Frost bomb: 213281

Living bomb: 232037

Nether tempest: 269068

4 targets

Frost bomb: 233844

Living bomb: 243498

Nether tempest: 299277

From now on, Frost bomb (on 5 or more targets) pulls ahead of Living bomb and Nether tempest stays on top. However, it is very unlikely that you will be able to keep up Nether tempest on much more mobs, unless you are very very good player so I would just switch to Frost bomb.

In connection with RPPM, the metagem buff, Tempus repit had the following uptimes

Single target

Frost bomb: 56,81%

Living bomb: 56,62%

Nether tempest: 56,52%

Thus, the difference is negligible.

In connection with the spell power

The difference on single target fights was 1500-2000DPS with all bombs.

On 2 targets, the difference for Frost bomb and Living bomb stayed the same, while Nether tempest was almost the same as with haste gems. I'd say it is not much difference, and again, take into account that if you have to move on fights you will still prefer haste more.

[areanu 16]

When I get home from work, i'll run sims for my toon as well.

Planning to do 8 of them, 2 styles (patchwerk and light movement) * 2 bombs * 2 gemming strategies (full int / full haste)

[Oltier 471]

When I get home from work, i'll run sims for my toon as well.

Planning to do 8 of them, 2 styles (patchwerk and light movement) * 2 bombs * 2 gemming strategies (full int / full haste)

Cool! Make sure to add "cycle_targets=1" to the Nether tempest action when you are simming with Nether tempest.

And also, edit the flamestrike line to be used with number of enemies>=2 instead of 5 :)

[areanu 16]

So, if I got the math correctly, here's how it looks:

LB>NT, if NT's 50% cleave is wasted. Figures for my toon are 30.5k LB dps versus 27k-ish dps for NT, so around 13% more.

If we add 50% cleave to NT, it goes 27-ish +50% = ~40k dps, and LB dps basically stays the same — explosion damage is tiny. Cleave dps for LB is only 1k-ish.

Hence for 2 close targets LB (31k) < NT (40k).

I don't see a reason LB = NT for 3 targets though, as many on MMO have said.

If they are spread — LB, otherwise — NT.

Hence, imo:

1 target (or 2-3, but spread) — LB,

2-4 targets (with any two of them close to each other) — NT,

more — NT or Frost bomb. Bomb would be better mathematically, but no cast-on-move and (probably) less BF procs.

On a side note: picking LB did not change the value of haste for my toon, still >0.5 int

Edited May 25, 2013 by areanu

[Damien 1,514]

I've looked at logs and most mages in ToT Heroic are now using Living Bomb for single-target fights. Blatty confirmed this to me today. He also said that another lockout of testing will be needed to figure out other situations (cleaving, AoE, multiple-target, etc.).

[Oltier 471]

So, if I got the math correctly, here's how it looks:

LB>NT, if NT's 50% cleave is wasted. Figures for my toon are 30.5k LB dps versus 27k-ish dps for NT, so around 13% more.

If we add 50% cleave to NT, it goes 27-ish +50% = ~40k dps, and LB dps basically stays the same — explosion damage is tiny. Cleave dps for LB is only 1k-ish.

Hence for 2 close targets LB (31k) < NT (40k).

I don't see a reason LB = NT for 3 targets though, as many on MMO have said.

If they are spread — LB, otherwise — NT.

Hence, imo:

1 target (or 2-3, but spread) — LB,

2-4 targets (with any two of them close to each other) — NT,

more — NT or Frost bomb. Bomb would be better mathematically, but no cast-on-move and (probably) less BF procs.

On a side note: picking LB did not change the value of haste for my toon, still >0.5 int

On 2-3 targets, did you add "cycle_targets=1" to the action line of Nether tempest? This means basically "multidot everything up with Nether tempest" If you didn't add it, you basically had NT on only one target. (whilst Living bomb's action line contains it by default^^)

[areanu 16]

On 2-3 targets, did you add "cycle_targets=1" to the action line of Nether tempest? This means basically "multidot everything up with Nether tempest" If you didn't add it, you basically had NT on only one target. (whilst Living bomb's action line contains it by default^^)

Of course I did :P

[OnieousKT 2]

I'm curious about something I may have no reason to be concerned about, but it has to do with the verbiage used in Frost Bomb and Living Bomb. The tooltip for Frost Bomb says "all targets within 10 yards" while the Living Bomb tooltip says "all enemies within 10 yards". What's the difference, and does it matter?

[Oltier 471]

No-no, it is basically the same. :)

However, Living Bomb has become very bad for aoe damage recently in 5.3, so you would most likely use Frost bomb on high number of stacked enemies like Wind Lord anyway. Otherwise, Nether tempest will be the ideal choice. :)

[Blackmagia 1]

I have two questions based on this. First one is easy; what is RPPM? Second question is based on the icy-veins guide on frost mages. On this page, https://www.icy-veins.com/frost-mage-wow-pve-dps-spec-builds-talents-glyphs, Blatty recommends NT vs LB on all the ToT bosses. Why would NT be recommended over LB on Durumu? The adds, in my experience, don't usually spawn close together (sometimes they do, but not reliably). Thanks in advance!

[Oltier 471]

I have two questions based on this. First one is easy; what is RPPM? Second question is based on the icy-veins guide on frost mages. On this page, http://www.icy-veins...-talents-glyphs, Blatty recommends NT vs LB on all the ToT bosses. Why would NT be recommended over LB on Durumu? The adds, in my experience, don't usually spawn close together (sometimes they do, but not reliably). Thanks in advance!

RPPM is the new trinket and enchant proc system, you can read about it here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/8197741003

On Durumu HC, there are spawns of Ice walls, that has to be taken down quickly, or you wipe. There, NT's cleave is really good and should be used. on Durumu normal, you should stick to Living Bomb.

[Blackmagia 1]

RPPM is the new trinket and enchant proc system, you can read about it here: http://us.battle.net...opic/8197741003

Thanks.

On Durumu HC, there are spawns of Ice walls, that has to be taken down quickly, or you wipe. There, NT's cleave is really good and should be used. on Durumu normal, you should stick to Living Bomb.

Ok, I do remember reading about the Ice Walls, now that you mention it. I'm still trying to find a raiding guild with open spots that can fit my schedule, so I don't have much ToT experience. But I've read and watched videos. Thanks for the explanation!

Edited July 5, 2013 by Blackmagia

[KodyIoia 0]

I just finished reading over your suggestions for an opening rotation. For the part of the guide that discusses opening rotation, you only list a rotation for Nether Tempest and Frost Bomb. Is that a typo on your end or did someone just forget to include an opening rotation for living bomb?

 

I just found it peculiar that you would suggest using either Living Bomb or Nether Tempest for the single-target rotation (depending on the # of adds you're dealing with) and yet Living Bomb isn't even mentioned in the opening rotation. And, to the best of my knowledge, I cant change Nether Tempest/Frost Bomb back to Living Bomb once I am in combat.

 

At this point I am just really confused as to which bomb I'm leading in with for my opener and which one I'm sustaining during the fight.

 

Any explanations / help is greatly appreciated. Still trying to wrap my head around this Mage thing.

 

** I thought I posted this previously, but I think something went wrong because I never could locate my post afterwards. My sincerest apologies if there's a duplicate of this floating around somewhere**

[D4n13le 2]

I'm no mage expert, but i'd use the Nether Tempest version replacing it with Living Bomb.

Just remember to refresh it at the right time.

[Oltier 471]

I just finished reading over your suggestions for an opening rotation. For the part of the guide that discusses opening rotation, you only list a rotation for Nether Tempest and Frost Bomb. Is that a typo on your end or did someone just forget to include an opening rotation for living bomb?

 

I just found it peculiar that you would suggest using either Living Bomb or Nether Tempest for the single-target rotation (depending on the # of adds you're dealing with) and yet Living Bomb isn't even mentioned in the opening rotation. And, to the best of my knowledge, I cant change Nether Tempest/Frost Bomb back to Living Bomb once I am in combat.

 

At this point I am just really confused as to which bomb I'm leading in with for my opener and which one I'm sustaining during the fight.

 

Any explanations / help is greatly appreciated. Still trying to wrap my head around this Mage thing.

 

** I thought I posted this previously, but I think something went wrong because I never could locate my post afterwards. My sincerest apologies if there's a duplicate of this floating around somewhere**

 

Apparently Living bomb has been forgotten out of that list, but obviously in the opening rotation Living bomb has the same priority as NT/Frost Bomb.

 

Single target fight: Living Bomb

Multiple target, spread up mobs up to 3 mobs: Living bomb

Stacked up 2 to 5 mobs: Nether Tempest

6 or more stacked up: Frost bomb

6 or more Spread up: Nether tempest.