How accurate is Warcrafter Sandbox and Man out of time?Follow

The reason I ask is because when I put in my current spec as 10/51/0, it tells me the dps of my fireball is 511 and some change. When I go full frost, it tells me my frost bolt is at 564.1. So, I'm confused. . .isn't full fire/arcane supposed to be the best dps raid build? I am a very competitive person and I want to make sure I can do the very best dps possible. I would really appreciate some input on what people think the best dps build for my current gear would be.

Any help is very much appreciated, thank you in advance.

PS: My armory link
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mug%27thol&n=Eftinthea
Warcrafter sandbox link:
http://mugthol-us.warcrafter.net/Eftinthea

Looking at the 0/0/49 +12 build on manoutoftime:

689.21 Frostbolt w/Waterbolt + IV Avg'd

Looking at the 10/47/3 +1 build on manoutoftime(51 points in fire is unnecessary, and you really need 3 in elemental precision):

672.80 Fireball x8 / Scorch x1 w/MF avg'd


This is actually something I expected. You see, deep fire really needs more gear to pull ahead. It scales better, but you don't currently have the gear to support it.

Warcrafter isn't working for me at the moment(my work comp doesn't like it, I think). However, are you making sure Imp Scorch is factored in?

Finally, I have to assume this is something you're doing for raids? Because if not, manoutoftime at least may not be the strongest tool for you, as raid conditions don't always apply to 5 mans, and certainly not to raids.

Here's my personal advice(I'm assuming you're a raider, tell me if that's not the case as my advice won't exactly apply):

Try out either a 40/21/0 or a 40/0/21(I'd actually suggest the latter unless you can pick up some serious hit rating soon, more on that later). The reason is that both of those builds give you a leg up when you're not quite epicced out.

Now, why would I suggest the Arcane/Frost, you may ask? As you may or may not know, +hit is the strongest raid stat in the game for mages until it's capped out. As I've mentioned, yours is low. Now, what you probably don't know is that a while back, a bunch of theorycrafters spending a lot of time parsing data discovered a peculiar behavior. What these theorycrafters found is that frost seemed to have a higher hit chance than fire, and they set out to discover why. It took time, but eventually, they discovered the cause.

Something else you may not know is that the previous incarnation of elemental precision was a 6% +hit, not a 3% with the 3% mana cost reduction. Blizzard changed it a while back, but it seems they made an error in coding.

It still gives frost the full 6%.

This is known as the "Precision Ghost Hit". It's huge for entry level raiding. And I mean HUGE. It's basically a 38 hit rating bonus to frosties. And that just can't be ignored.

Try plugging the information into Warcrafter based on those builds and see what you get. You may just like the results.

Spell/Rotation
18,602.70 Arc Blast x3/Frostbolt x3 w/AP+IV avg'd (26.00 seconds)

So, this is telling me that I should first Arc blast three times, then frost bolt three times, cool downs or no, I believe thats the spell rotation.

Any experienced raiders think that is accurate? :P

Also, according to Man out of time, 2/47/11+1 build produces about 29 more damage in 1.22 seconds less time I might add. :P
18,631.90 Fireball x8 / Scorch x1 w/MF+IV avg'd (24.88 seconds)

as compared to the 40/0/21 build. . .
18,602.70 Arc Blast x3/Frostbolt x3 w/AP+IV avg'd (26.00 seconds)(With Precision ghost hit factored in)

Now obviously that 29 damage is relatively negligible; but it IS more DPS none the less. (And also it is a little more flexible in terms of being able to do more than just raid! :P)

However, using the 2/47/11+1 build, my fire ball's dps according to sand box, is only 512.7(Imp scorch does not seem to be computed in the calculations).

While using the 40/0/21 build, the dps of my frost bolt is at roughly 604.7DPS. That's a very significant boost in dps from one spell to the next, from one build to the next.

Still though, the numbers from Man out of time do not lie (well, they are a relative truth I understand this :P)and the damage from the 2/47/11+1 build show a very slightly higher output in damage.

So, I guess my question is, considering the numbers shown, do you still feel that a 40/0/21 build would be more appropriate for me to max my dps out?

Yes, I did. At first I didn't, haha. When I did it made it a 29 damage difference instead of about a 300 damage difference.

edit: Sorry for the long response times from me, I'm kinda sick didn't sleep well so I keep passing out after I post, haha. I should be awake for a while now. :P

Edited, Feb 7th 2008 10:50am by PerpetualSeanX

Will do, I will give them both a shot on run through kara and see how things go. I appreciate your insight. Good night. :P