Mafwiz, remember that a strong 1H wep (2450 dps) and mojo (370-440 or so) is already equal to a +3K dps weapon. You're trading 750 weapon dps for 10% crit, skill damage etc.
I'm dissappointed though. While probably still stronger than the alternatives, a lot of them have gotten *A LOT* weaker. Halfing the poison dot on the toxic gem? *cry*.
Just bear in mind that, unless they change/fix it, you can't upgrade gems socketed in items worn by your merc. So you'll have to go through some irritating gear juggling if you want to rank up those gems.
Getting 3x main gems to level 50 will take awhile to start with, though. At that point you'll probably have multiple versions of the 3x good gems for followers, and can simply keep an unlevelled one in the gear while you level another one up for later use. Sure, it won't be immediate gradual rewards, but probably better than having to TP to town every time you want to upgrade a gem/not having one in at all.
Well then. Time to throw Bane of the trapped (20% dmg under CC / 30% slow), Teardrop (smite) and Wreath (conduit) on followers. Assuming the procs are inheriting our stats like they do with thunderfury etc, ofc.
If I have my sentry equipped with the spitfire turret rune (fire missles) and one of my hatred spenders is multishot with full broadside (physical) then multishot will be considered as fire damage?
It will scale with the actual ability. Not with the element of the turret. Your turrets normal attacks (bolts) will, however, scale with fire damage if it is a spitfire turret. Cluster arrow, Impale and Multishot doesn't give a fuck what element the turret is, though.
To add to this, increasing sentry damage will increase *all* damage you do - multi shot, cluster arrow, and bolts. Picking up cluster arrow dmg on boots will improve the cluster arrows from the sentry aswell.
No real reason they shouldn't be able to do T5 rather easily. You probably just need more practice mutliboxing them. Should get aughilds on the one that doesn't, and as Minon said, charged blast <.<?
well, in place of mm/conflag we now get something else with the new changes to epxlosive blast, this mean that a wiz with firebird and wand of woe can get this superdot up with like 2 casts. or mby even one when you take critical hits into account. (infact im wondering if we even need the woe to make the spec work. casting 3 explosive blasts without woe should be enough to get the dot up, and then we can run on to the next elitepack knowing the dot will kill this one eventually.
Kinda does suck that WoW is the rarest wizard weapon. Only ones beating it overall is Rimeheart, Little rogue, slander and Cam's rebuttal if the charts are to be believed.
Guys, Firebird was buffed, together with mm conflig its overall an buff. STOP crying, find something somewhere to whine about. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING, someone gets pissed about. Even if no nerfs, there will be something else. Get over it, go test yourself, its still AT LEAST as strong as it was before, only difference is, you'd now need Firebird set. So please, everyone who hasn't even TRIED IT OUT YET, just stop trash-talking.
Except it's not an overall buff. I've provided you with basic math that proves otherwise - it's a buff for the first nine seconds of an encounter, and a nerf thereafter. How you "feel" it's doing has nothing to do with actual math. Please provide factual evidence of your claims.
No math is needed. Now you only have to shoot a pack 2-5 times, then it will die from the permanent DOT. Meanwhile before this patch, you had to shoot a pack 10-30 times, before you could run to the next pack. This allow us to speed-farm way way faster, since we constantly can be on the move.
...Yea, that's not what I have been saying at all. It limits our upper dps, which is fairly shit compared to demonhunters, witch doctors, and even shotgun crusaders, because the dot no longer stacks infinitelly. It does give us more mobility due to the dot needing no upkeep. That doesn't make it an overall buff. It removes damage for the sake of utility.
Math clearly is needed, as anything but math is going to be a matter of opinion, and can thus not be proven nor disproven. That's like me arguing religion with someone from a different faith of mine (Yea, I believe the new firebirds set and missiles is stronger than your puny old conflagrate missiles, because it allows me to run around more and kite while stuff slowly dies ---- see? Doesn't work well. Numbers do).
Ok, I'm gonna stop quoting that because it's getting outrageously long lol. But anyway, I had the crimsons equipped because before I made the video, I was wearing all Vyr's / cooldown reduction gear. I didn't have anything else to equip and didn't feel like making cain's. Second, I just threw the unity on since it was an item being mentioned as superior to RoRG that you would lose out on if you wore Firebird's. Personally I almost always play in a group, so I would never be wearing it anyway.
In the end I still think my point stands though. You called this a major nerf, since you get locked out of Cindercoat, magefists, Aughild's, and unity if you use Firebirds. But I used Firebird's, didn't get locked out of Aughild's, and I still killed Ghom quicker than when I used those previously mentioned pieces. I fail to see how this is a major nerf. Another thing to mention is that in greater rifts lvl 30 and higher, you need to kite a hell of a lot more, and your MM stacks would constantly drop off enemies the way they are on live right now. With the new firebird set, you can kite and never lose that big DoT from ticking.
If you don't understand it, that's not equal to it not being correct. The fact that you always play in groups means you have no clue about how important unity is for solo play, which may be why you aren't overly fussed about this.
I also never said you got locked out of all of it - you can still get aughilds (through bracers+helm) if you wear a RoRG; but again, that's not an option if you want to wear a unity as you do in solo play. That you skimp on defences in order to get the fastest kill time to skew the result in your favor because Ghom doesn't actually hit you, doesn't make it a buff. It just means you sac about 10M toughness for more dps >.<.
And you completly neglect the fact that our skills on the PTR have been severely buffed compared to live. Familiar does more damage. Magic missile's initial hits does more damage. But you are choosing to ignore this altogether for some akward reason?
So to recap:
You're giving up unity, which to you, a group player, doesn't matter fuck all, and on Ghom, has no visible effect. In reality, that's half of your survivability for a solo player, and you're counting that as basicly not a loss.
You are wearing un-optimised magic missile gear (attack speed was one of the best stats you could have for live-conflag builds due to building stacks up faster) that gives absolutely zero benefit to your ghom kill speed, while much better options are around, and are changing it for items that are actually stronger comparable (due to 500 int from 2 set, wearing firebirds boots+pants would have been stronger on live than your crimsons).
You're comparing live-damage to PTR damage, completly neglecting the fact that the base spells have been severely buffed, causing you to achieve a faster kill despite of firebirds/change to how conflag works. If you'd tested it before the PTR patch, you'd have gotten a much quicker kill than on live aswell because *gasp* your abilities were buffed baseline.
Basicly, you're stacking the odds in your favor - you are changing things that are un-optimised for the build, for new "optimised" items for your current build (EG, firebirds as it is the only option).
I never said that firebirds isn't neat for kiting - it may very well be a quite good option. I said this is an overall throughput nerf because it caps our DPS potential - and a quite heavy one at that.
Last I can only say, if you're losing MM stacks due to kiting, your stutter stepping needs some work.
Guys, Firebird was buffed, together with mm conflig its overall an buff. STOP crying, find something somewhere to whine about. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMETHING, someone gets pissed about. Even if no nerfs, there will be something else. Get over it, go test yourself, its still AT LEAST as strong as it was before, only difference is, you'd now need Firebird set. So please, everyone who hasn't even TRIED IT OUT YET, just stop trash-talking.
Except it's not an overall buff. I've provided you with basic math that proves otherwise - it's a buff for the first nine seconds of an encounter, and a nerf thereafter. How you "feel" it's doing has nothing to do with actual math. Please provide factual evidence of your claims.
On the other hand, the sustained dmg went to crap. Sure, you can go for firebirds' 6 set bonus to get sort of the same affect (but then again, getting to 3000% burn damage = the same as 18 casts, or under 10 seconds of attacking) - but this leaves us extremely much weaker. Let's say we no longer need mirrorball in that case so you get a free piece. Here's the alternatives:
Firebirds boots - no major downside (apart from ice climbers).
Firebirds legs - no major downside with the changed depth diggers. - both together could be 8% IAS from cains in most cases.
So that's 3 of 6 pieces.
Firebirds shoulders. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds helm. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds chest. <--- locks you out of cindercoat.
Firebirds gloves. <--- locks you out of magefists.
Ring of royal grandeour. <--- locks you out of unity (if solo).
So all in all, this is a *major* nerf. Firebirds bonus seems strong on paper, but remember, it forces us out of multiple other extremely strong single-pieces.
I am with this guy. Firebird items are inferior, they need special affixes like the ones mentioned above. It is a set designed for "fire" yet does not even have any fire skill dmg other than the orb. When you replace your cindercoat with FB Chest you are already giving up lots of dmg, same goes for gloves, helmet, shoulder, damn everything.
3000% is a cool number when you first see it, but i don't think it is that good since you have to give up all of the items that makes fire element strong in this game.
So what if some of the individual set pieces are inferior? The marauder's pieces take up the slots of those strong individual items as well, but you don't see demon hunters complaining. You obviously haven't tried the Firebird set if you're saying this. The Firebird 6 piece bonus is way, way stronger than the little bit of fire damage cindercoat and magefists gives you.
It's possible, sure. Sadly ptr is too derpy ATM to test it for me. That said, "little bit" doesn't really cut it here - for a solo player, it'll remove shoulders, helm and gloves (as they'll want a unity+SoJ combo), along with feet/pants and source. It gives you more burst, as already stated, but your sustained damage severely gets gibbed, which sucks in greater rifts. Put it like this - to reach 3000% weapon damage as fire through magic missile with +2 mirrorball, with 2 attacks/second, you need to hit the target for about 2.5 seconds (510% per application, 2 applications per second, plus ticks of the dot).
To reach 3000% weapon dmg as fire through magic missile with +2 in the current patch, you need to hit for about 9 seconds (165% per application, 2 applications per second.
So in a scenario where the mob dies between 0-9 seconds, it is true that this is a buff. In a scenario where the mob lives for longer than nine seconds, it is a nerf.
Now add to the fact that you probably won't have a mirrorball (using firebirds source for the set bonus and +%dmg), so you're stacking it up with something weaker than 3xMM, and you can probably add another second or 1.5 to that. Still a buff in the 9 second timeframe. Still a nerf at +9 and counting.
Then, once again, we get to the point where removing aughilds, magefists etc comes at a pretty severe loss (which I guess is partially reimbursed from the firebirds eye) - both in survivability and damage.
So yea. We get burst on easy-to-kill elites and whites. Hurray. Just what we needed. As if we weren't already 1 shotting them.
It still looks to me like the MM conflag build is stronger on PTR than it was before now, as long as you have Firebird set. I made a video of myself killing Ghom on t6, using just MM. One kill on the live server with MM still stacking infinitely, and one on PTR using Firebirds. Counting the time when I start attacking until I kill ghom, on the live server the fight took 36 seconds. On the PTR using Firebird's, the fight took 26 seconds. The fight is longer than the 9 seconds you mentioned, yet the fight was a full 10 seconds quicker using Firebirds instead of the old gear.
I show my gear at the end of each kill, but for the normal server I had on 3 piece aughild's, cindercoat, magefists, SoJ, and unity. For the PTR kill, I had Firebird's and aughild's with RoRG.
The reason your ptr-firebirds kills him quicker is because MM itself was buffed heavily (from 170 to 210? weapon damage - or something in that ballpark), basicly making 3x hits feel like 4x on live. You also aren't really losing anything from switching out your crimsons (cool down reduction for a magic missile build?) compared to cains (8% IAS). And last but not least, you're giving up 100% toughness from your unity to get that 6 set, which on ghom doesn't matter (he won't hit you because lolGHOM). Can't read the exact stats due to 360p etc :/.
That doesn't matter like... At all. The issue isn't the initial damage of Magic missile. The issue is the nerf to the stacking damage component. It doesn't matter if missiles do 170%, 210%, or 315% damage per, when the damage they stack up is capped at 390% either way.
On the other hand, the sustained dmg went to crap. Sure, you can go for firebirds' 6 set bonus to get sort of the same affect (but then again, getting to 3000% burn damage = the same as 18 casts, or under 10 seconds of attacking) - but this leaves us extremely much weaker. Let's say we no longer need mirrorball in that case so you get a free piece. Here's the alternatives:
Firebirds boots - no major downside (apart from ice climbers).
Firebirds legs - no major downside with the changed depth diggers. - both together could be 8% IAS from cains in most cases.
So that's 3 of 6 pieces.
Firebirds shoulders. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds helm. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds chest. <--- locks you out of cindercoat.
Firebirds gloves. <--- locks you out of magefists.
Ring of royal grandeour. <--- locks you out of unity (if solo).
So all in all, this is a *major* nerf. Firebirds bonus seems strong on paper, but remember, it forces us out of multiple other extremely strong single-pieces.
I am with this guy. Firebird items are inferior, they need special affixes like the ones mentioned above. It is a set designed for "fire" yet does not even have any fire skill dmg other than the orb. When you replace your cindercoat with FB Chest you are already giving up lots of dmg, same goes for gloves, helmet, shoulder, damn everything.
3000% is a cool number when you first see it, but i don't think it is that good since you have to give up all of the items that makes fire element strong in this game.
So what if some of the individual set pieces are inferior? The marauder's pieces take up the slots of those strong individual items as well, but you don't see demon hunters complaining. You obviously haven't tried the Firebird set if you're saying this. The Firebird 6 piece bonus is way, way stronger than the little bit of fire damage cindercoat and magefists gives you.
It's possible, sure. Sadly ptr is too derpy ATM to test it for me. That said, "little bit" doesn't really cut it here - for a solo player, it'll remove shoulders, helm and gloves (as they'll want a unity+SoJ combo), along with feet/pants and source. It gives you more burst, as already stated, but your sustained damage severely gets gibbed, which sucks in greater rifts. Put it like this - to reach 3000% weapon damage as fire through magic missile with +2 mirrorball, with 2 attacks/second, you need to hit the target for about 2.5 seconds (510% per application, 2 applications per second, plus ticks of the dot).
To reach 3000% weapon dmg as fire through magic missile with +2 in the current patch, you need to hit for about 9 seconds (165% per application, 2 applications per second.
So in a scenario where the mob dies between 0-9 seconds, it is true that this is a buff. In a scenario where the mob lives for longer than nine seconds, it is a nerf.
Now add to the fact that you probably won't have a mirrorball (using firebirds source for the set bonus and +%dmg), so you're stacking it up with something weaker than 3xMM, and you can probably add another second or 1.5 to that. Still a buff in the 9 second timeframe. Still a nerf at +9 and counting.
Then, once again, we get to the point where removing aughilds, magefists etc comes at a pretty severe loss (which I guess is partially reimbursed from the firebirds eye) - both in survivability and damage.
So yea. We get burst on easy-to-kill elites and whites. Hurray. Just what we needed. As if we weren't already 1 shotting them.
Good changes imo, mm conflag + firebirds interaction is apparantly crazy
Not sure if serpent sparker & mirrorball are that powerful anymore though.
When the max firebirds+MM conflag can get is 3390% wep dmg, I can't see how it's "crazy". I mean, it'll stack the 3000% wep dmg up crazy fast for sure, not denying that (afterall, 3x ball hits = what, 465% wep dmg? plus the 390% stack). But it'll cap out, and that's it - dps done.
I play it since a while yes...
And had a time when it wasn't stacking up anymore... Just DoT was refresh...
If you displayed white damage, you would saw they DoT never went highter...
If it changed again since, my bad...
Still, it's not such a drama to cry about...
A up from 55% over 3 sec to 130% over 3 secs...
It mean that,roughly you need 3 MM to hit to do same damage of one DoT as it's buffed now...
Sure now it's capped, but it also mean that you will deal roughly same damage in one shot instead or three shot...
Add it to the firebird set as it stand now... It's just insane... IT was to be excepted...
It was never capped. You clearly haven't paid any attention to the skill if you think so. It hasn't been changed "again", as it was never changed the first time. You made a mistake - own up to it instead of going "well if they CHANGED it then sure, ok".
And it really, really, REALLY is something to be angry about. Consider the following -
It now stacks 3 times, and does 130% up from 55%. That means one hit with a 2 missile mirrorball will stack up to 390%, and keep it there. Previously, you got 55*3=165% per shot. So it gives us what Wizards have been asking for - more burst. But on the completly wrong thing (we want burst on our SPENDERS, not our signature spells). In 3 casts, the "old" conflag would start to out damage the new conflagrate. I can fire 3 spells in under 2 seconds, so it's not even a big amount of "burst", either.
On the other hand, the sustained dmg went to crap. Sure, you can go for firebirds' 6 set bonus to get sort of the same affect (but then again, getting to 3000% burn damage = the same as 18 casts, or under 10 seconds of attacking) - but this leaves us extremely much weaker. Let's say we no longer need mirrorball in that case so you get a free piece. Here's the alternatives:
Firebirds boots - no major downside (apart from ice climbers).
Firebirds legs - no major downside with the changed depth diggers. - both together could be 8% IAS from cains in most cases.
So that's 3 of 6 pieces.
Firebirds shoulders. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds helm. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds chest. <--- locks you out of cindercoat.
Firebirds gloves. <--- locks you out of magefists.
Ring of royal grandeour. <--- locks you out of unity (if solo).
You'd probably be using strongarm bracers and RoRG if in a team play, and aughilds bracer/helm/shoulder+unity in solo play. Let's assume solo play - you then lose the full aughild bonus (7% dmg reduc, 15% elite dmg reduc, 15% elite dmg) and can take strongarms, and you'd furthermore lose out on either 20% dmg from cindercoat/magefists, or 100% toughness from unity. Best choise is the magefists if you're using a fire-spender.
So all in all, this is a *major* nerf. Firebirds bonus seems strong on paper, but remember, it forces us out of multiple other extremely strong single-pieces.
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To add to this, increasing sentry damage will increase *all* damage you do - multi shot, cluster arrow, and bolts. Picking up cluster arrow dmg on boots will improve the cluster arrows from the sentry aswell.
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Math clearly is needed, as anything but math is going to be a matter of opinion, and can thus not be proven nor disproven. That's like me arguing religion with someone from a different faith of mine (Yea, I believe the new firebirds set and missiles is stronger than your puny old conflagrate missiles, because it allows me to run around more and kite while stuff slowly dies ---- see? Doesn't work well. Numbers do).
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I also never said you got locked out of all of it - you can still get aughilds (through bracers+helm) if you wear a RoRG; but again, that's not an option if you want to wear a unity as you do in solo play. That you skimp on defences in order to get the fastest kill time to skew the result in your favor because Ghom doesn't actually hit you, doesn't make it a buff. It just means you sac about 10M toughness for more dps >.<.
And you completly neglect the fact that our skills on the PTR have been severely buffed compared to live. Familiar does more damage. Magic missile's initial hits does more damage. But you are choosing to ignore this altogether for some akward reason?
So to recap:
You're giving up unity, which to you, a group player, doesn't matter fuck all, and on Ghom, has no visible effect. In reality, that's half of your survivability for a solo player, and you're counting that as basicly not a loss.
You are wearing un-optimised magic missile gear (attack speed was one of the best stats you could have for live-conflag builds due to building stacks up faster) that gives absolutely zero benefit to your ghom kill speed, while much better options are around, and are changing it for items that are actually stronger comparable (due to 500 int from 2 set, wearing firebirds boots+pants would have been stronger on live than your crimsons).
You're comparing live-damage to PTR damage, completly neglecting the fact that the base spells have been severely buffed, causing you to achieve a faster kill despite of firebirds/change to how conflag works. If you'd tested it before the PTR patch, you'd have gotten a much quicker kill than on live aswell because *gasp* your abilities were buffed baseline.
Basicly, you're stacking the odds in your favor - you are changing things that are un-optimised for the build, for new "optimised" items for your current build (EG, firebirds as it is the only option).
I never said that firebirds isn't neat for kiting - it may very well be a quite good option. I said this is an overall throughput nerf because it caps our DPS potential - and a quite heavy one at that.
Last I can only say, if you're losing MM stacks due to kiting, your stutter stepping needs some work.
Except it's not an overall buff. I've provided you with basic math that proves otherwise - it's a buff for the first nine seconds of an encounter, and a nerf thereafter. How you "feel" it's doing has nothing to do with actual math. Please provide factual evidence of your claims.
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To reach 3000% weapon dmg as fire through magic missile with +2 in the current patch, you need to hit for about 9 seconds (165% per application, 2 applications per second.
So in a scenario where the mob dies between 0-9 seconds, it is true that this is a buff. In a scenario where the mob lives for longer than nine seconds, it is a nerf.
Now add to the fact that you probably won't have a mirrorball (using firebirds source for the set bonus and +%dmg), so you're stacking it up with something weaker than 3xMM, and you can probably add another second or 1.5 to that. Still a buff in the 9 second timeframe. Still a nerf at +9 and counting.
Then, once again, we get to the point where removing aughilds, magefists etc comes at a pretty severe loss (which I guess is partially reimbursed from the firebirds eye) - both in survivability and damage.
So yea. We get burst on easy-to-kill elites and whites. Hurray. Just what we needed. As if we weren't already 1 shotting them.
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It was never capped. You clearly haven't paid any attention to the skill if you think so. It hasn't been changed "again", as it was never changed the first time. You made a mistake - own up to it instead of going "well if they CHANGED it then sure, ok".
And it really, really, REALLY is something to be angry about. Consider the following -
It now stacks 3 times, and does 130% up from 55%. That means one hit with a 2 missile mirrorball will stack up to 390%, and keep it there. Previously, you got 55*3=165% per shot. So it gives us what Wizards have been asking for - more burst. But on the completly wrong thing (we want burst on our SPENDERS, not our signature spells). In 3 casts, the "old" conflag would start to out damage the new conflagrate. I can fire 3 spells in under 2 seconds, so it's not even a big amount of "burst", either.
On the other hand, the sustained dmg went to crap. Sure, you can go for firebirds' 6 set bonus to get sort of the same affect (but then again, getting to 3000% burn damage = the same as 18 casts, or under 10 seconds of attacking) - but this leaves us extremely much weaker. Let's say we no longer need mirrorball in that case so you get a free piece. Here's the alternatives:
Firebirds boots - no major downside (apart from ice climbers).
Firebirds legs - no major downside with the changed depth diggers. - both together could be 8% IAS from cains in most cases.
So that's 3 of 6 pieces.
Firebirds shoulders. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds helm. <--- locks you out of aughilds.
Firebirds chest. <--- locks you out of cindercoat.
Firebirds gloves. <--- locks you out of magefists.
Ring of royal grandeour. <--- locks you out of unity (if solo).
You'd probably be using strongarm bracers and RoRG if in a team play, and aughilds bracer/helm/shoulder+unity in solo play. Let's assume solo play - you then lose the full aughild bonus (7% dmg reduc, 15% elite dmg reduc, 15% elite dmg) and can take strongarms, and you'd furthermore lose out on either 20% dmg from cindercoat/magefists, or 100% toughness from unity. Best choise is the magefists if you're using a fire-spender.
So all in all, this is a *major* nerf. Firebirds bonus seems strong on paper, but remember, it forces us out of multiple other extremely strong single-pieces.