Preface : My other trinket is Neltharion’s Tear. This is me trying to figure out which should be my 2nd trinket. Right now I am carrying all 3 in my bags and switching in and out…
MQG is good but I feel it’s wasted on longer boss fights, and in general I feel I could get higher parses and more overall damage done on trash mobs and some bosses if I simply equip Briarwood reed for the +29 SP.
Is there any theorycrafting website or something I can go read, in which someone explains the ins and outs of all these mage items?
So my math is probably a bit off here, but even with a long CD, I’m pretty sure MQG is unbeatable for Mages.
Here’s what it comes down to: MQG allows you to cast extra frostbolts for a 20s window. The math comes out to I believe 4 or 3 extra bolts. Doesn’t seem like much right? After all BWR provides a constant 29 sp.
Frostbolt has a SP coefficient of 81.4 meaning that BWR adds on average 23.06 damage to your frostbolts. MQG adds none, but allows you to cast extra.
My FBs hit for around 1k, 1.3k when using Arcane Power (which should always be cast to line up with MQG). The way you can then look at it is that MQG adds a raw 3.9k-10.4k damage (depending on 3 vs4 frostbolts, and crit vs non crit). For BWR to be able to match that, you’d have to have the chance to cast, if my math is correct, 173 frostbolts in a fight.
And like I said several times, I’m not sure my math is 100% correct, but you can on principle see why MQG is so powerful.
EDIT: I got through queue so I logged into to check the exact cast time on a MQG’d Frostbolt, which comes out to 1.88 seconds, or equivalent to 10.63 casts. in a 20 second window. You can normally cast 8 Frostbolts in a 20 second window. Obviously you can’t cast .63 of a Frostbolt, but due to how buffs work and spells cast in WoW, you can get off a third FB during MQG.
I’m not big on math and didn’t commit too much time to this but wouldn’t that trinket give you basically 2 extra frostbolts in that 20 second window after GCDs? Not accounting for resists or crits that’s still a lot of extra damage. It would take a large amount of spells to be casted with the other +dmg trinket to close the gap in damage. I could be totally wrong though so take this whole thing with a grain of salt.
I also don’t think there’s anything stopping you from switching it out for 4 minutes after using it then back in again to reuse off cool down.
I just did the math for ZHC as well. When casting ZHC normally, you get 20 seconds to use the buff, but due to it ticking down, a mage won’t be able to get more than 8 spells buffed without either using PoM or an instant cast like Fireblast (or MQG).
When you do the math this comes out to a bonus 801 damage. BWR will do more damage on average (i.e. not accounting for crits/misses) in a fight where you can cast more than 34 frostbolts (801/23). So very strong on say Lucifron, but probably not as strong for Ragnaros (guild dependent of course).
Hey man don’t knock him for asking questions. It can be fun discussing stuff like this (though admittedly it’s basically been discussed to death already).
Did you factor in AP / PoM? I think thats one of the major reasons ZHC / ToEP will edge out BWR, also, if the boss is alive for 34 Frostbolts you would be able to use your on use trinket twice.
whats better, bloodlust / heroism or briarwood reed XD
I never used addons / discords for questions like this but to each their own
pretty sure I saw mages in The Burning Crusade still using mind gem back in 2008ish
Nah, at first it was 15% + 15%, then nerfed to 1500, 1500, which was still decent relevant to hitpoint pool sizes Then nerfed again so only 1500, no heal, and then nerfed again even further. Today in modern wow, it’s not even good at it’s own level anymore.