[VIDEO] Want to be the best mage you can be?

[Sugarfluff 0]

Foreword (What this video is and why I made it)

In my excitement for the fresh realm release I was, as I'm sure many others were, drawn to the many content creators on youtube. It was a lot of fun looking through videos and feeling the nostalgia, even though as a long time veteran I found little new information. I mostly looked through videos about the classes I haven't played much (hunter, paladin, etc) but thought I would check on my favorite class as well, mage, to see how some of these content creators chose to introduce beginners to the wonderful world of mageness. 

One of the popular themes in these videos is what race you should pick, based on what racials are best for PvE or PvP respectively; and this is where my gripe comes in. Because they were spreading misinformation. Specifically about which race would be best for an Alliance mage to play in PvE (Hint: they think it's Gnome, and it's not.) I guess it bugged me because raiding as a mage was the one thing I put a lot of work into when I played WoW, and I get that I'm not the target audience in these videos, and they are going to keep them simple so beginners don't get alienated, but keeping it simple isn't an excuse for wrong information.  I wasn't going to do anything at first, until I saw people on the forum spouting the same nonsense, again without backing it up with any solid argument. So I decided to make this video explaining why what they are saying is wrong. Not because I dislike them, I love content creators; they are an important part of growing a community and I want them to keep creating content, but I also think it's important to call them out when they are wrong.

This video will prove with proper theory crafting that Gnomes do not gain an advantage over Humans with their racials; atleast for mages in a raiding enviroment. It won't be overly complicated, but it is made with the assumption that you care enough about being the best you can be to put some amount of work into it (in this case putting in the work required to understanding which race is better.) I have in the remainder of the thread, posted after the video, outlined other topics I could make videos about, all aimed at making you the best raiding mage you can be, setting you apart from the casual masses. Should people be interested.

[ I also plan to stream the launch of the fresh server: Stream Thread ]

 

Video. 1 Which Race Should I Pick?

Video. 2 Gear: Before Raids and After.

This video would go deeper into what stats you are prioritizing and why, where to get the gear and what to hold on to (even after you upgrade), what should you aim for in raids, etc. 

 

Video. 3 Fantastic Buffs and Where to Find Them.

This video will explain what buffs are best to prioritze, which potions you'll want to stock up on, and where to find some more rare buffs to set you apart from the other mages in your guild.

 

Video. 4 Calculating Trinkets.

This one will be heavy on the theory crafting, but should not only show you which of the common trinkets are best, but how to calculate other trinkets yourself.

 

Video. 5 Macros and Spell Rotations (lol frostbolt)

More of a compilation than a guide I guess, just because finding good vanilla Macros can be a девушка легкого поведения since they altered the core and made Macros in later expansion be capable of much more. Most macros you find with google will therefore not work on vanilla servers.

[Ram 11]

Your assumptions about the gnome talent being crap is wrong. Like >90% of all boss fights are very short and there the long term advantage of the extra spirit does not come in. If you are really minmaxing and playing in the super uber raiding guild, even the few long boss encounters will be trivialized so much that you either get breaks where you can reg while not casting OR bosses die before you get mana problems. The only reason to pick a human mage is being lazy with rep farms. As you have shown correctly, the gain from 5% more int is in fact very small, but it is more then humans have. The extra mana is also handy, because it takes you a fucking long time to regenerate that amount from 5% extra spirit. Only for evocation the 5% spirit COULD be taken as a valid argument, but it is getting canceled out by the fact that you should not run OOM at any time.

 

About the t2 you have mentioned in the first video: t2 looks like it was really bad. Your frost bolts do less damage, you have less hit and crit. The proc does not bring 10% more damage, it brings 10%*(2/5) for frost bolts and 10%*(3/6) for fire. But: on many private servers bosses' spell resistance gets nullified (except for some amount you can not nullify) by COE and at the latest in AQ when you play fire and get access to more hit items, t2 is nearly equally strong as the much harder to gain off set items. Further more t2 has the aoe range extend bonus, which is superior in most aoe situations, since you hit more targets.

Overall t2 is NOT BIS, but it is very close to it and super easy to obtain.

[Sugarfluff 0]

13 minutes ago, Ram said:

 fact that you should not run OOM at any time.

Exactly, no human, or gnome, should ever go OOM. So the tiny bit of extra mana does not translate into an advantage. 

The rest of your post seems to be about defending T2. I have no grievances with the set, just merely wanted to point out that you will only keeping a few pieces of it (legs, gloves) while the other slots have better possible gear, although usually with less intellect: which was my point, I only brought up that gear because it has a high amount of intellect and I didn't want to lowball the amount unfairly while proving just how useless 5% extra int actually is.

[Ram 11]

No, my post is not about t2, it was just an additional info. The main point is that for raiding the 5% gnome int bring more DPS increase than no int increase at all and spirit is useless unless you chain pull without ans breaks. I should have pointed it out better. Best regards!

[Sugarfluff 0]

13 hours ago, Ram said:

No, my post is not about t2, it was just an additional info. The main point is that for raiding the 5% gnome int bring more DPS increase than no int increase at all and spirit is useless unless you chain pull without ans breaks. I should have pointed it out better. Best regards!

Care to explain where exactly 5% extra in grants you extra DPS? Because I certainly don't see it...

[Ram 11]

You explained it yourself in your video. In your example it was like 0.33% crit, which humans do not have. Just read my posts again before spreading more false information.

[Sugarfluff 0]

16 minutes ago, Ram said:

You explained it yourself in your video. In your example it was like 0.33% crit, which humans do not have. Just read my posts again before spreading more false information.

I am spreading no false information. Everything I have claimed is backed up with a sound argument, which is more than can be said for you and your assumptions. That 0.33% isn't enough to translate into a single extra critial during any boss fight you will encounter in Vanilla: unless you can show me a boss fight where a mage casts over 300 frostbolts?

Between a human mage and a gnome mage with equal gear/buffs whoever crits more does so completely at the hands of the RNG gods. Gnomes DO NOT gain an advantage over humans in terms of a mages raiding DPS. So championing Gnome as the "obvious PvE choice" for mages is wrong and completely deceitful towards new players who trust that you know what you are talking about.

[Ram 11]

You should go take a maths lecture. 0.33% crit is not much, but in typical boss fight with ~20-50 frost bolts one crit CAN come from the 0.33%. That's called RNG. Of course the chance for it is ridiculously low, but it is there for gnomes and it isn't for humans. So for frost 1% crit is roughly 1% damage increase if you are hit capped and 0.33% crit therefore is roughly 0.33% more damage, which humans do N O T have.

I give you credit for pointing out that these 0.33% crit do not make a big difference, but it's not true that it has no effect. I would personally also give a shit on it and play human because I'm too lazy to farm all rep for the 20th time on private servers.

[quasexort 4]

I don't understand how you proved that gnome is not better than human for pve.  You basically show that gnomes get 0.33% crit while humans get like 10 spirit.  How does this prove that gnomes are not objectively better than humans?  Hypothetically say Elysium made a new belt enchant and you had two choices for the enchants, +10 spirit or + 0.33% spell crit.  You're telling me you would not pick the 0.33% spell crit?  I think what you are trying say with the video and with this thread is that gnomes are only slightly better than humans and the difference is hardly noticeable, but there is a difference which favors gnomes.

[DamirH 3]

A 0.33% crit increase chance falls within the margin of error... At best it's 1 extra crit, which won't even make a dent in any statistical analysis. But I assume if you people want to be pedantic, the correct term would be that Humans and Gnomes are same within a margin of error. In any real world situation there would be absolutely no difference between the two, all else being equal.

Edited January 9, 2017 by DamirH

[Ram 11]

RNG will even the difference between Gnomes and Human mages, but still 0.33% crit are 0.33% crit.

[DamirH 3]

3 hours ago, Ram said:

RNG will even the difference between Gnomes and Human mages, but still 0.33% crit are 0.33% crit.

Statistically, that's 1 in 300 spells critting. There is no fight in the game that has you fire 300 spells. It may as well be 0.

[Ram 11]

As already stated before: If you can choose between a 10 spirit and a 0.33% crit enchant, which one would you take?

P.S. in a typical nef fight, you should geht several hundred damaging spells hit a target. 

[quasexort 4]

Ok then by that logic 1% crit is useless as well since none of the current boss fights last long enough for you to cast 100 frostbolts.  2% crit is useless in all fights except nef because all the other bosses die before you can cast 50 frostbolts.  However if instead of looking at a single boss fight you combine the number of casts in ALL boss fights you start to see that even 0.33% crit can occur. 

[Ram 11]

@quasexort: Thanks god RNG does not work that way with so few casts. Imagine you have 20% crit and do 30 casts. One time you do your 30 casts, you crit 4 times, the other time 6 times and next time 12 times. What you guys are talking about is a test size of at least 1000, better 100k or 1M casts to get almost the same results as in theory.

 

No more need to explain this mechanism any further. There are still some people, who believe the world was flat and can not be helped.

Edited January 10, 2017 by Ram

[breesy 1]

This "guide" is absolutely terrible already. You took 10 minutes to explain what are the best classes and couldn't even come up with the right ones.