World of Warcraft General Discussion

The Game Room
4081

The cast time is pretty much it. Apparently that 1.5 seconds is the fastest casting time of any Fire spell, and if you have talents that proc on a Fire hit, faster casting means more proc chances. Also, it is a little more mana efficient, giving you 1.29-1.58 damage per mana point versus Fireball’s 1.06-1.41 per.

Sort of.

  • Healing Touch, learned at level 1, is an instant heal. It’s your average healing spell with a couple seconds of casting time.
  • Rejuvenation at level 4 is a Heal-over-Time. It heals for about 1/3 to 1/2 of Healing Touch and does so gradually, but it’s about half the cost and is instant cast, so it’s a decent combat heal.
  • Regrowth at 12 is an instant heal plus HoT. Quicker cast time than Healing Touch, costs a little less, and delivers less of an upfront boost, but the total health healed is greater than either of the other two. Very mana efficient.

There’s others, but I suspect those are the ones you’re talking about, Healing Touch and Rejuvenation in particular. Healing Touch is good for when you need health now, Rejuv is good for when you just need a small boost in combat or to top off, and Regrowth is a good all-around efficient heal.

Really, since spells get stronger by ranks, the question to ask generally isn’t “How is this spell more powerful than that one?” but “What situations does this spell excel in that that one doesn’t?” There are some abilities that simply obsolete others, but they’re pretty few.

Why yes, I’m in a theorycrafting mood. Why do you ask?

4082

Well, as long as you’re in the mood, see if you can figure out how Hellfire is better* than Rain of Fire for Warlocks. Both AoE fire spells doing about the same damage and using about the same Mana, except Hellfire does damage to yourself. The only thing I can think of is Hellfire is the area immediately around you, whereas Rain of Fire is targeted, and so takes a little longer to actually cast. I mean, if you’re really into self-injury, that’s what Lifetap is for.

*not necessarily better, but if there’s any possible way it would excel in a situation where Rain of Fire wouldn’t.

4083

That’s sort of what I figured it must be - thanks :slight_smile:

4084

I’m just tossing out WAGs here based on briefly looking at it. I have the least amount of experience with Warlocks than any other class. Hellfire does more DPS than Rain of Fire (Hellfire is 451 DPS, RoF is about 337 DPS). The need to target an area does hurt RoF, although you can get around that with clever macroing. I’m not sure if Hellfire hurts you just once for 451 or if you take the same amount of damage as enemies, but it seems to be the latter. In that case, Nether Protection can mitigate the damage and tilt the odds in Hellfire’s favor.

Honestly, I don’t know. It looks like a typical tradeoff spell, more damage with a drawback, but that’s a pretty big drawback. If I were designing the spell, I’d deal a one-time hit to the caster and have it be something like 20% of the total damage, so it would deal 902 damage to the Warlock once and then continue burning everything around.

Maybe someone with experience playing a Warlock can give a better answer. Personally, were I to use it, it would be in a situation where I knew I was going to die. At least with Hellfire I could go out laughing maniacally. “BURN! BURRRRRRRN AHAHAHArrrgh”

ETA: And now I sleep, so if you have a follow-up I won’t see it until the morning. :slight_smile:

4085

Damn, I forgot one important point. Hellfire not only has higher DPS, but it lasts longer. Assuming you can channel it without interruption, you get 6765 damage for 64% base mana on Hellfire (106 damage/1%), while you only get 2700 damage for 58% on Rain of Fire (47 damage/1%). That’s a huge difference.

Of course, that doesn’t mitigate the fact that you take all 6765 damage yourself too, which is just too big a drawback IMO unless you’re seriously geared for Stamina and Fire Resist. Although, isn’t that survivable at 80? I know my friend’s 80 Mage, who was decked out in Naxx 25 gear, had 15k HP, and I imagine a Warlock would have even more +Stamina than a Mage. If you’ve got a tank running interference, Hellfire might be a safe and efficient choice.

Again, this is all just speculation, as I don’t have direct experience. Off to bed…

4086

At my level?

If I see a post from Mister Rik with a buncha question marks?

I get scairt!:eek:

'Cause him and the rest of y’all are so far above me in skill, that I’d rather just not know!:slight_smile:

Even for future reference!:slight_smile:

Done told y’all: Somebody needs to compile all of this friendly information, and make an on-line reference site!

Y’all are better than WoWhead, Wiki, Sticky or Dicky!

And I do appreciate your patience with this demented DWEEB! :smiley:

Q

4087

Well, the vast majority of my playing time has been spent playing paladins, and somewhat less time playing hunters. By comparison, I’m a complete noob at playing a mage, and this mage is only level 22. Every class is completely different, and you have to start learning all over again when you start playing a new class. It’s a bit easier overall because I already know where just about everything is. But a mage’s abilities are vastly different from a paladin’s, and so I’m essentially learning all over again how to fight different enemies. For example, I’ve recently discovered that most, if not all water elementals are immune to Frost damage. That’s something I never had to think about as a paladin.

4088

The difference isn’t that great when you factor in spell power coefficients; according to the tooltip on Dr. Damage*, my Hellfire does 490 DPS, while Rain of Fire does 438 DPS. Rain of Fire can also crit, which can be a significant chunk of damage, depending on your stats. From the little I’ve read, Hellfire really isn’t worth it - the damage output is only slightly better, while the cost is much, much higher. I’d recommend the Warlock’s Den for further insight on the class and spell mechanics, specifically this thread for discussion on Hellfire v. RoF.

  • I haven’t seriously played my 'lock since late-BC, so it’s level 70 with 1047 spellpower unbuffed Affliction spec, looking at rank 4 Hellfire, rank 5 RoF, but the base damage increases by about the same percentage for the max rank spells, I believe.
4089

So my sister loaned me her DVDs of the first season of The Big Bang Theory, and I spent the first six episodes listening to the Penny character talk and thinking, “My god, she sounds like a dryad!” :smiley:

I guess that means I’m part of that show’s target demographic …

4090

This must be it as I have recently started using Chatter, thanks!

4091

A late congratulations to Quasimodem for reaching level 40 :slight_smile:
I was thinking, now that you’re level 40+ maybe we should do something about your spec, because believe me when I say, you want to have either Mortal Strike or Bloodthirst. Since you like your twohanders I think speccing arms would be a good idea. I haven’t played anything with my warrior since Wrath and I only spent a couple of minutes on it so it might be good if someone with more experience with warriors looked at it but this is the spec I came up with for now.

Also, I don’t recall you having mentioned it, have you done the Berserker Stance-quest yet? You should’ve gotten the quest from the trainer at level 30, it also has a follow up that gives you a good weapon as a reward.

The self damage also scale with spellpower, with 2.5k my warlock takes 791 damage per tick, and you need to be in melee range increasing the chance of getting aggro. So while in theory Hellfire might do more damage than Rain of Fire it’s simply too risky most of the time. The only really practical use for Hellfire is committing suicide to avoid repair costs :slight_smile:

4092

Is the Blizzard customer support in the US as bad as it is in Europe? I had a problem which required me to contact billing support by phone. I started trying at 10am on a Tuesday morning, gave up at 1pm. I kept getting the message (paraphrased): ‘We are currently experiencing congested lines and very long wait times, due to this we are no longer accepting any new calls, sorry for the inconvenience, please try again later.’.

In the end I gave up. They permanently banned my brother’s new account because the upgrade from a trial account failed (Wrong CC info? Not sure.). His character was only level 18 though, with recruit a friend, so 3 hours waiting was my limit.

I still love WoW though, it was just a very frustrating experience.

4093

that is why ghu invented clerics/pallys - for the heal

It is sort of a last resort pop spell, if you are mobbed by lots of little somethings and need them dead and cant take the time to pop them individually. Assign a cleric, get a health gem and healing pot ready, pop the spell, and use healing as you can. You might even survive, though I tend to use a soul gem on myself if I need to use the spell.

It really sucks that mages get all the good AE DPS spells …

Though people don’t run it as much any more, BRD is a wicked good lock instance in areas, combining banish and other aspects of demonology on the areas with populations of fire elementals is great. Scholo is also a killer warlock instance. There is nothing like a group that has its shit together burning through BRD!

4094

Ya’ know?

If you look at him just right, he looks like he’s wearing Bert from Sesame Street on his chest.

:smiley:

Q

4095

So, I need to acquire a bunch of cheese for a cooking quest. (I forget the name exactly – the quest is in Tanaris and involves zesty clam meat and giant eggs). I’m fairly sure the cheese shop in Stormwind won’t sell to a Forsaken even if I do manage to get in there alive; so where is a Horde-accessible cheese shop?

4096

What level are you? I think the cheese you need is Dalaran Sharp…the funny thing is that I don’t know if it’s available in neutral Dalaran or not. Of course, if you’re not going back to do cooking after reaching high level, you won’t be able to go to Dalaran, anyway.

I think your best bet is to look up the cheese on thottbot or alla and see what mobs drop it, then go farm. I remember doing that cooking quest on my orc shammy (before BC came out) but I don’t remember exactly where I got the cheese.

4097

Alterac Swiss, for Clamlette Surprise? It can be bought at some of the innkeepers. Closest to Tanaris that sell it are in Thunder Bluff and Shadowprey Village in Desolace.

4098

Ah, excellent. My bank alt even lives in Thunder Bluff, so I won’t even have to go out of my way.

4099

Hellfire works better for suicide, though, since you can’t actually kill yourself only using Lifetap. :slight_smile:

I did actually use Hellfire to get into the “back door” of Dire Maul once. (Lariss Pavilion, I think?) Stand next to the door, Lifetap yourself down until you can’t go further, then Hellfire until dead. Release, run back from the graveyard, then go through the door and rez there. Presto, who needs a stupid key, anyway?

4100

Then she needs to not run instances or raids where she needs to be able to see things on the ground. Sucks for her, but if she doesn’t like it, she can spend the $5 to upgrade her computer. Being in a group means you come prepared to be a help and not a hindrance, and that includes meeting minimal hardware requirements.

Underneath each socket is an additional, grayed-out stat. If you put in a gem of the listed socket color, that stat becomes active. If you don’t match the socket, you don’t get the bonus.

My Scribe has Herb as her second profession, so I leveled both together. For more economical leveling, I strongly urge you to get an auction-tracking addon such as Auctioneer, do a few scans over the course of a week, then keep the database updated with scans every few days. This will allow you to check the going rate of all of the glyphs etc. you can make to level, so that you can choose the most popular and expensive ones.

Always, always, always belt buckle. Gbanks are often stocked with ones you can request (or just take), there’s probably at least one BS in your guild who can make one, or worst-case you can get the mats and advertise for a combine in trade (even with a tip, this will end up cheaper than buying one).

I’m curious why you say +AP instead of +Agi. For Hunters (this is a Hunter, right?), doesn’t Agi → AP? And Agi scales with things like Kings; AP doesn’t.

I don’t play any toons high enough to use either mod, but FWIW the healers I know love Decursive and dislike HealBot.

One example is the Warrior Protection tree talent Devastate: it does the exact same thing as Sunder Armor, plus damage.

Very survivable at 80. 7k HP is well below the minimum you should be raiding with, even as a cloth DPS, because of raid AoE damage.

I was actually going to suggest a Fury spec for Wolkie, mostly so that he wouldn’t be stuck either having to use a single kind of weapon or respec every time he picked up a new one.

That doesn’t sound like a reason someone gets permanently banned. I’m guessing there’s something your brother isn’t telling you.

:smack: Now I can’t stop staring at it…

Random fact: that used to be a required quest to train the next level of Cooking. (Master, I think, but it’s been so long I don’t recall for sure.)