Hail Lurkers,

lately, I was talking to a Frost Mage in my guild who was complaining about her damage output. She was decked out in pretty decent blues and some purple stuff, so it wasn't that she was significantly underequipped compared to other Mages in our Guild.

Anyway, the question that cropped up in my mind was, considering that Frost ist still victim to either scoring full damage or none at all, how much +Spell Hit and Penetration should a Frost or Arcane / Frost Mage go for? We are currently running Gruu'ls Lair and Karazhan, how much would one need for these bosses?

If anybody has some advice or some link concerning this, I'd be very grateful.

Thanks in advance and take care,

Lord_Olf

PS: Fire Mages may of course chime in as well!

In order to answer this properly, you need to understand the mechanics of spellhit and spell penetration.

The game labels all spells that do not have their intended effect as "resists", regardless of whether or not this is actually true. Just as with melee attacks, there is a miss chance with spells. Spellhit counters this (up to a cap). Actual resistances are different. X spell penetration essentially removes X resistance from the target.

This means that spellhit is always useful, but there is a cap on it, and spell penetration is only useful if the mob has actual resistances. I believe the cap is 4% for mobs of your own level, and 17% for bosses, though don't quote me on that.

And note that most mobs that actually have resistance have less than 88.

Another thing to be aware with for mages is they're the second-least forgiving on timing and lag (still far behind the least forgiving, hunters, though). First is to make sure you're spamming the Frostbolt (Fireball) key right as the current one ends its cast. If that's not enough, there's some mods (RapidCast @ wowace seems to be one) you can use to combine with a simple macro:



This can't be spammed, but timed properly (and the mods out there give you a visual representation) it allows you to account for lag and cast a Frostbolt when the server thinks you're ready for your next spell, but the client still thinks you're casting the previous spell.

Those numbers look right, for PvE. Here is the official reference (look under "Items: +Spell Hit Chance"): http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/spells.html

I can't remember if there is a minimum 1% resist rate, in which case you actually aim for 3%/16% to hit instead of 4%/17%.

And as far as I know, no one really likes spell penetration gear. If you have the relevant curse it's completely moot, and it has even been shown to have no effect on the +hit or duration of polymorph/shackle undead etc.

Although you can tell the difference between a spell miss ("Resist" in white text) and a spell resist ("Resist" in yellow text). If you're seeing a lot of white resists (usually just versus Boss mobs), you need more +spell hit. Penetration won't help, and as others have said, is generally a useless stat in PvE.

There is always a 1% chance to miss no matter what level of the mob you are fighting.

For equal level mobs you need 4% hit (5% chance to miss normally)
For level + 1 mobs you need 5% hit (6% chance to miss normally)
For level + 2 mobs you need 6% hit (7% chance to miss normally)
For level +3 mobs (Bosses) you need 16% hit (17% chance to miss normally)

The only time you need spell penetration is when you are dealing with a mob that has innate resistance, but few mobs have any resistance, so spell penetration is usually worthless.

The days of the frostbolt spammers in boss fights for mages has passed. The reason is the Arcane Blast spell. In any fight where you go out of mana you need to start mixing in this spell. It has the best dmg/mana in the mage's spell book at zero debuffs and the best dps and worst mana at three debuffs.

The basic trick of the spell is to stack it up to the desired level (as an arcane mage this is 3 for me but you can use less and still benefit). Then wait for the 8 second debuff to get to within one spell cast away from expiring. Then cast Arcane Blast again. This will give you the improved spell cast speed since the debuff counts at the start of the spell, but since the debuff goes away in the middle of the cast you are only charged the minimum mana for the spell when the spell finishes. This lets you get the best of both worlds, dps and mana usage.

Quark is right in that mage dps is a function of rapid casting. If you get 4 frostbolts off in 10secs that's great but if you have latency and it takes you 12secs, then you lost 20% dps. I use ecastbars w/ latency. It shows a red part at the end of my casting bar which is my latency (or in mage speak, lost dps). I can then try to time into that with a /stopcasting to shave off some of that latency. Sometimes I don't need it because the server is working fine but at other times ....very old MC where I was playing with a 800ms-1sec latency, it made a world of difference. I mostly see big improvements today on Friday and Saturday nights when the server is really full.

On the +hit, +penetration and +spell damage, I've read that people believe that the blizzard itemization is too high for +hit and +penetration stats and that you are better off with the +spell damage. I've lost the reference so take that with a grain of salt and do your own research. I've personally have put some extra +stam on my toon just because the stat is so cheap and keeps me alive in instances. Yes it doesn't make me the top dps mage, but I'm also not dead on the floor so I end up doing better in the long run.

Pure +dmg will destroy hit, and crit if you ignore that stats get more expensive the higher they go on a single piece (this is why you can get an item with either 9 of stat x, or a similar one with 5/5 of stats x/y). But with the way the system is, getting a piece of gear with a good balance of damage, hit, and crit will generally give you the best bang for your buck (off-hand from arcatraz is a good example). Hit is also cheaper than crit in the item budget (12 vs 22 rating for each 1%).

Penetration is junk in raiding if you have 2 locks, and slightly better in PvP, or when there aren't enough locks. I put 20 penetration on my cloak as there really isn't an alternative (-threat is ideal, but good luck finding it). This gets past racials, and most of motw in PvP, and helps when I don't use CoS.

Yes and no to the pure damage. Pure damage without getting any +hit is going to give you only a little DPS boost compared to going with a more moderate +damage and +hit. Once you start getting closer to the +16% hit cap for +3 level mobs +damage starts to win, but if you don't have much +hit, +hit is going to give you far more DPS point for point.

The only two specs that can really get away from needing a lot of +hit are the Affliction Warlocks (Suppression) and the Shadow Priests (Shadow Focus). Because these two talents gives about 2% hit per point spent in the Talent, these two specs can get by with lower amounts of +hit. (Especially the Shadow Priests as all their damage spells will take advantage of Shadow Focus while Suppression will only help the Warlock's Affliction based spells, but they are still flinging Shadow Bolts between the times they are not casting their DoTs and also putting up Immolate - Note, any Affliction Warlock not using Immolate is tossing out around 40 to 70 DPS depending on how much +hit and +all damage they have.)

Your best bet is to try and find a DPS spreadsheet for your class and try plugging in numbers that you have on the Armory. Good DPS spreadsheets will also have places to put in your talents so you can play around a little and try tweaking things here and there to see if you can improve your talent build as well.

I couldn't agree more with getting a spreadsheet. You learn about your class a lot faster by looking at "what if". For starters a mage spreadsheet put together by people on the Elitist Jerks Board: http://elitistjerks.com/showthread.php?t=10907 Its a bit complex and there are simpler ones out there but it has almost everything you need. If you read the thread that this points to, you will also find some of the many debate points of underlying mechanics. I personally don't worry too much about them since they are small differences that get swamped out by much more fundimental things like talents and gear. But many of the ideas such as spell rotations and types of builds really helped me tune my damage output.

Also since your friend is a frost mage, the pet is a large part of her dps. Macro it, and get it on the keyboard as a quick click. The pet's short life means that you need to get it attacking very quickly from when you bring it up. There are lots of macros out there for this (wowwiki has a bunch). Just like taking 4 frostbolts to 12sec is a 20% loss of dps. So too is not getting the pet attacking quickly and often.

Lastly, I've macro'ed my damage/use trinkets into my spell rotation ("/use 13;/use 14;/stopcasting;/cast Arcane Blast"). That way I know that they will fire everytime they come up in the place I want them. I do this with my rogue too. I have enough to worry about then pop'ing a dps trinket. If it isn't pop'ed everytime it is up, its just a wasted slot on my toon and I might as well get a static item for the slot. I also pick trinkets on a per fight bases (the trinketmenu addon makes this pretty easy; also comes with a built-in trinket auto-rotation for the times I'm being extra lazy).

All of this is small stuff, but it all adds up to a 10-20% boost in dps. A proper spell rotation (from the spreadsheet for my build) and macro'ing spells/trinkets has lead to very real changes in dps for me.

Hail Folks,

thanks for all your replies, you guys really came thorugh for me. It seems that I really got the Spell Penetration stuff completely wrong, but better to correct that mistake now than never.

Take care,

Lord_Olf

Those numbers are slightly off.

+0 levels: 96% to hit (+3% hit cap)
+1: 95% (+4% hit cap)
+2: 94% (+5% hit cap)
+3: 83% (+16% hit cap)
+4: 72% (+27% hit cap)
+5: 61% (+38% hit cap)
etc.

Of course you shouldn't ever have to worry about levels+4 or +5 or above, but still.

I value +hit higher than some do because I hate having non-damage spells resisted. It's annoying to have to throw a curse four times to get it to stick, and a resisted banish/enslave can really ruin your day in a tight spot.

Which is why I throw on some greens/blues with +hit when I'm on enslave duty for Maulgar.

Personally I wish there weren't that 99% hit cap... it almost makes no difference except to disorient you every now and then so you're like "WTH, why isn't corruption up there..."