+spell damage and instant spells

[Magicbag]

Hey there Lurkers.

I'm de-lurking to ask about a semi-oft covered topic: spell damage.
I know that full spell damage is related to the 3 second spell and there are deminishing returns for faster spells. However, I'm not familiar with how far the bar drops for instant spells. Furthermore, the game clearly differentiates between true instant spells and spells that can be made instant via talents. I say this because when I have an active curse of tounges debuff, my Arcane Explosion (formerly instant) takes cast time, where as my fireblast does not.

This whole thread is designed on end-game spec and I specifically looking at the viablility of my 13Fire/38Arcane build. I really like it for early lvl 60 instances, it seems great in core, and works fine for me in PvP.

I'm just not sure how to ramp it up. Do I add +damage gear or +regen? Right now, I'm in more of a stats build gear wise (full Tier 0 - Magisters). I never run out of mana even constantly missling Magmadar. I'd like to find a good build of +damage and stats, but I'm not sure if the benefits of +damage can be properly realized in the arcane build I have.

I welcome all comments/suggestions.
Thanks,
-MB

[TheWesson]

Hey there Lurkers.

I'm de-lurking to ask about a semi-oft covered topic: spell damage.
I know that full spell damage is related to the 3 second spell and there are deminishing returns for faster spells. However, I'm not familiar with how far the bar drops for instant spells.  Furthermore, the game clearly differentiates between true instant spells and spells that can be made instant via talents.  I say this because when I have an active curse of tounges debuff, my Arcane Explosion (formerly instant) takes cast time, where as my fireblast does not.

This whole thread is designed on end-game spec and I specifically looking at the viablility of my 13Fire/38Arcane build.  I really like it for early lvl 60 instances, it seems great in core, and works fine for me in PvP. 

I'm just not sure how to ramp it up.  Do I add +damage gear or +regen?  Right now, I'm in more of a stats build gear wise (full Tier 0 - Magisters).  I never run out of mana even constantly missling Magmadar. I'd like to find a good build of +damage and stats, but I'm not sure if the benefits of +damage can be properly realized in the arcane build I have.

I welcome all comments/suggestions.
Thanks,
-MB
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Instants are treated as 1.5 second spells (which is fair, since the global cooldown is 1.5 sec.) +Dam gets full benefit at 3.5 sec cast time, so instants get 1.5/3.5 of the damage, or 3/7, or 43%. Spells do not get extra benefit from having a very long cast time (> 3.5 sec)

Area effects are assumed to be hitting three targets, so get 1/3 of the damage boost a single-target spell would get. So Instant Arcane Explosion would get 43%/3 = 14.3% of the damage boost, all told.

I've been told that spells which can be made faster by talents (e.g. Nature's Wrath for Druids) still get the damage boost based on the original casting-time. Thus, even a talented Nature's Wrath (1.5 sec) would get the boost based on 2.0/3.5 = 57% of + dam. Spells made instant by a cooldown (PoM) still get the damage they would otherwise.

DoTs get 100% +damage spread out over their duration, assuming their duration is greater than 3.5 sec. I would guess the same to be usually true of channelled spells.

I've been told that some spells with an extra effect (like slowing for Mind Flay) get a diminished effect from +Dam. Can't recall if that's true for Frost Bolt.

Moonfire gets 43% for the instant part and the rest of the +Dam is spread out over the DoT. Something similar must be true for your fire spells that burn after impact.

edit:
People who know better than me say that spell ranks which are learned below lvl 20 get a sharply reduced benefit from +Dam/+Heal. Spell ranks learned above lvl 20 are said to always gain the full effect.

[Drasca]

Hi, if you are having zero trouble with mana, ramp up damage. If you have 'enough' mana and mana regen abilities, there's no point in adding more. I also wholly recommend having several 'alternate' pieces of equipment with you--both for repair reasons and versatility.

Sometimes, you'll need more stamina and resists, others you only need to ramp up damage. Use judgement, but on the Golemagg encounter, ranged firepower simply doesn't need any survivability stats. His damage spikes are is far too infrequent to be lethal for you. AoE'ing Magmadar's doggies however, needs a lot of stam to survive. 11k damage over 30 seconds hurts very much.

Don't forget, increased damage is increased mana efficiency. If you're squeezing out 10% more damage per mana, its like a having 10% larger mana pool and 10% better spirit regen. Additionally, enemies *die faster*, which is very signifigant on a raid level.

Beyond a certain threshold, health and mana are meaningless. You simply have 'enough', hence why casters go for other effects--improved healing, improved damage, crit, and occasionally resists.

[Concillian]

I believe instant cast spells are treated as 1.5 sec cast spells (1.5 sec / max bonus at 3.5 sec = 43%)

AoE spells get even less than that, but I'm not positive on the exact amount.

Curse of tongues acts on the time it takes to cast the spell, since that is increased by 50%, then the time reduction by talents no longer makes it instant. If you read the talent description, it reduces by x.x seconds, not by x%. So when you increase cast time by 50%, then reduce it by x seconds, it's no longer instant.

+dam doesn't take talents or debuffs into account at all, it acts as if your cast time is the untalented cast time. Neither talents that reduce the cast time nor Curse of Tongues have an effect on the +dam you get from gear, only the original cast time of the spell.

[Drasca]

The 3.5 second rule is really a rule of thumb. It doesn't always apply.

Instants are treated as 1.5 second spells

spells . . . made faster by talents  . . . still get the damage boost based on the original casting-time

DoTs get 100% +damage spread out over their duration
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Not always true. Some instants get no bonus, or a different bonus fraction.

True. Talents improving casting time do not affect +damage bonus.

Not true. The actual bonus varies spell to spell, and in previous patches, DoTs were completely ignored for +damage.

Immolate, a 2 second Burst then dot warlock fire spell, gets 20% of the bonus for its burst, and receives 57 percent of the bonus to its dot. Odd, no? IIRC, at one point, soul fire (6s cast) received zero bonus from +damage.

You must look for empirical +damage result charts or test these out for yourself. The 3.5 second formula simply doesn't always work, and there's a lot of balance changes done in patches both listed and unlisted.

[TheWesson]

The 3.5 second rule is really a rule of thumb. It doesn't always apply.
Not always true. Some instants get no bonus, or a different bonus fraction.

True.  Talents improving casting time do not affect +damage bonus.

Not true. The actual bonus varies spell to spell, and in previous patches, DoTs were completely ignored for +damage.

Immolate, a 2 second Burst then dot warlock fire spell, gets 20% of the bonus for its burst, and receives 57 percent of the bonus to its dot. Odd, no? IIRC, at one point, soul fire (6s cast) received zero bonus from +damage.

You must look for empirical +damage result charts or test these out for yourself. The 3.5 second formula simply doesn't always work, and there's a lot of balance changes done in patches both listed and unlisted.
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what pure instants (no buff/debuff) are you thinking of ?
what pure DoTs or HoTs (no DD) are you thinking of? (I know, Renew is broken, or was, on other-targets.)

I'd like to know how good the rules of thumb are.

Thanks ...

[savaughn]

I'd like to know how good the rules of thumb are.
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Actually, I you were dead to rights the first time, at least as far as every piece of +damage gear I've ever used or tested on my mage, warlock, druid, etc.

This is actually one of the most consistent pieces of WoW. There's some interesting logic behind how +damage is applied to channeled spells, DoT's/HoT's, and stuff like Moonfire and Immolate where there's an initial damage hit followed by a DoT. The general rule is that the entire amount gets applied, generally subdivided by the individual damage ticks. That said, I think there's still a few spells out there that are bugged in this regard.

You had this question earlier:

People who know better than me say that spell ranks which are learned below lvl 20 get a sharply reduced benefit from +Dam/+Heal. Spell ranks learned above lvl 20 are said to always gain the full effect.

So, this is actually a misunderstanding. Lets take shadowbolt as an example. Shadowbolt has a 3s cast, meaning it gets 3/3.5 or 86% of your +damage gear. As other folks have mentioned, this does not change if you have Bane reducing the casting time to 2.5s. The base timer is all that counts.

Now, when +damage gear was first looked at, people noticed that Rank 3 Shadowbolt does not get the 86% of the bonus damage. Rank 3 only gets 80%. Similarly, Rank 2 only gets 63%. This has nothing to do with the rank of the spell. This is because Rank 3 is a 2.8s cast and Rank 2 is a 2.2s cast. There's no weird hand coded diminishing returns, it's just a different casting time. Every spell that gets a longer casting time at higher levels (fireball, frostbolt, etc.) has this.

One other comment. I have not tested AoE outside of mages with +damage, but for Arcane Explosion at least, I have not seen any kind of "we assume 3 targets" thing. By my math, it's been a straight 43%. My AE hits for around 300 per hit and I have no where near the +327 damage gear that would be required if there were a 1/3 in there. I haven't really ever tested this for, say, Hellfire or Hurricane, though, so this may be an exception.

[TheWesson]

Actually, I you were dead to rights the first time, at least as far as every piece of +damage gear I've ever used or tested on my mage, warlock, druid, etc.

This is actually one of the most consistent pieces of WoW.  There's some interesting logic behind how +damage is applied to channeled spells, DoT's/HoT's, and stuff like Moonfire and Immolate where there's an initial damage hit followed by a DoT.  The general rule is that the entire amount gets applied, generally subdivided by the individual damage ticks.  That said, I think there's still a few spells out there that are bugged in this regard.

You had this question earlier:

People who know better than me say that spell ranks which are learned below lvl 20 get a sharply reduced benefit from +Dam/+Heal. Spell ranks learned above lvl 20 are said to always gain the full effect.

So, this is actually a misunderstanding.  Lets take shadowbolt as an example.  Shadowbolt has a 3s cast, meaning it gets 3/3.5 or 86% of your +damage gear.  As other folks have mentioned, this does not change if you have Bane reducing the casting time to 2.5s.  The base timer is all that counts.

Okay dammit I'm going to take my priest and cast Lesser Heal Rank 1 on myself and find out the truth (at least for that one spell at that one rank cast on self :) )

Lesser Heal (Rank 1) should get 43% of spellpower bonus (1.5 sec cast time). If so this might be a great way to keep healing when practically out of mana, since Lesser Heal (Rank 1) only costs 35 mana. I have a feeling it won't work too well.

Now, when +damage gear was first looked at, people noticed that Rank 3 Shadowbolt does not get the 86% of the bonus damage.  Rank 3 only gets 80%.  Similarly, Rank 2 only gets 63%.  This has nothing to do with the rank of the spell.  This is because Rank 3 is a 2.8s cast and Rank 2 is a 2.2s cast.  There's no weird hand coded diminishing returns, it's just a different casting time.  Every spell that gets a longer casting time at higher levels (fireball, frostbolt, etc.) has this.

One other comment.  I have not tested AoE outside of mages with +damage, but for Arcane Explosion at least, I have not seen any kind of "we assume 3 targets" thing.  By my math, it's been a straight 43%.  My AE hits for around 300 per hit and I have no where near the +327 damage gear that would be required if there were a 1/3 in there.  I haven't really ever tested this for, say, Hellfire or Hurricane, though, so this may be an exception.
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dang, AE was mentioned as specifically one of the spells with the 1/3 rule!! a little harder to test since I do not have significant +dam on my mage yet.

as previously mentioned this could even change from patch to patch I guess.

[Magicbag]

Thanks for the good discussion folks! I welcome futher test results and hope to be generating some of my own soon with my arcane damage gear mage.

Can you recommend any mods I could use to help test? Combat log parsers or damage trackers that would allow me to see my results over time?

Thanks,
-MB

[TheWesson]

Thanks for the good discussion folks!  I welcome futher test results and hope to be generating some of my own soon with my arcane damage gear mage.

Can you recommend any mods I could use to help test?  Combat log parsers or damage trackers that would allow me to see my results over time?

Thanks,
-MB
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I tested with my 54 priest who has about 50 +magic and Lesser Heal (Rank 1) got at most 9 extra points of healing over about 20-30 tries. It should get 43% of ~50 = ~20 ...

[Skandranon]

So, this is actually a misunderstanding.....

No, it isn't.

I took out my regular damage suit, +351 frost damage, for a spin. Rank one Frostbolts, properly 1.5 second casts, should be getting 43% of the bonus, or about 151 damage. The bonus it was actually receiving was +60, or roughly 17% of the bonus. There is no doubt that there's some penalty for lower ranked spells, though it does not apply to every spell. IIRC, Flash heal has no rank penalty.

One other comment.  I have not tested AoE outside of mages with +damage, but for Arcane Explosion at least, I have not seen any kind of "we assume 3 targets" thing.  By my math, it's been a straight 43%.  My AE hits for around 300 per hit and I have no where near the +327 damage gear that would be required if there were a 1/3 in there.  I haven't really ever tested this for, say, Hellfire or Hurricane, though, so this may be an exception.
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My Arcane Explosion (rank 6) has a listed damage of 249-270. The same damage set up is +284 to all spells. By the 43% calculation, each of my AEs should be receiving roughly a +122 damage increase. Empirical testing reveals that they hit, on average, for roughly 300 damage, which is a bonus of about a bonus of 40, which corresponds almost exactly with DamageBonus*0.43*1/3.

[Icebird]

Back a few months, people tried to use lower rank spells to determine whether there was a "cap" of +spell damage. The iniitial results seemed to indicate there was. However as people have accumulated more spell damage gear (the warlock forums have lists for builds with 600+ spell damage) further testing showed that there appeared to be no cap. However the effectiveness of spell damage on lower level spells seemed to be reduced sharply. Rank 1 Shadowbolt was getting about 15% of the spell damage bonus instead of the minimum 43% it should have been getting.

[MongoJerry]

Rank 1 Shadowbolt was getting about 15% of the spell damage bonus instead of the minimum 43% it should have been getting.

Rank 1 Flash Heal gets the same bonus as the highest rank Flash Heal. Since I have over +500 healing, an occational use of a lower rank Flash Heal (rank 2 usually) is helpful in conserving mana.

[TheWesson]

Rank 1 Flash Heal gets the same bonus as the highest rank Flash Heal.  Since I have over +500 healing, an occational use of a lower rank Flash Heal (rank 2 usually) is helpful in conserving mana.
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so the theory I've heard is that any spell [rank] learned below level 20 gets the "lower-rank" nerf to +spell dam/heal.

Rank 1 Flash Heal is learned at character level 20.

the way +spelldmg works, the relative goodness of spells can shift a lot as +dmg grows. Nature's Wrath (druid ranged attack) can be improved in casting time from 2.0 sec to 1.5 sec. That means it benefits 33% more from +spelldmg than spells where casting time can't be improved.

The Priest is in the odd situation of having Smite improved a lot more that Mind Flay. First, Smite can be improved in casting time, giving a bonus on +spelldmg DPS. Second, Mind Flay gets a reduced benefit from +spelldmg, supposedly because it is also a snare ...

[Drasca]

supposedly because it is also a snare ...
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All channeled spells I've played with receive a reduced +dmg bonus. They're also considered 'instant' in game terms, although whether they actually do damage on the first tick varies.

I stand ground at my statement that the bonus varies per spell, and it is folly to depend on the '3.5s rule'.

[Skandranon]

I stand ground at my statement that the bonus varies per spell, and it is folly to depend on the '3.5s rule'.
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As a matter of fact, Blizzard themselves has verified that this is how it works. For example, Shadowbolt and Frostbolt both are 3.0s casts that are 2.5s after talents, but shadowbolt gets 85.7% of the bonus and Frostbolt gets 81.4% of the bonus because Frostbolt has a snare attached.