Mage Spell Calculator shows numbers behind the casting
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 18th 2007 at 2:28PM
From a forum post by Jonaleth, we find this nifty little tool that will tell you everything you ever needed to know (ever) and even some things you didn't about how your mage spells push out damage.It takes a while to load, and the site seems pretty rickety (I really hope posting it here doesn't bring it down), but once it loads up, you can realize just how powerful a tool it is. Put your mage talents in, use the checkboxes at the top to fill out info about your gear and situation, and then the tool will show you average hit calculations,damage per mana spent total, and even all of the damage coefficients (up to 2.0.1, so Arctic Winds hasn't changed here yet) on each one of your spells.
Pretty incredible tool for mages, especially for those who want to squeeze every possible bit out of their class and spec. Jonaleth uses the guide as proof that frost mages don't get to churn out nearly as much damage as fire mages do. Well, umm, yeah. What else is new?
But Jonaleth is right-- this kind of tool does provide a really clear look at what we already know to be true. Now you can see in raw numbers just how crazy powerful Pyroblast is.
Filed under: Mage, Tips, Odds and ends, Classes
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Razhlok Jun 18th 2007 2:35PM
Meh... you should be able to import the inputs from the Armory.
Eaglelord01 Jun 18th 2007 2:57PM
Ok I think it WILL take it down. =P
Quoi Jun 18th 2007 3:03PM
Does it reliably include the water elemental? If not, it's a worthless indicator of frost mage damage output. Most people forget that the water elemental is a huge source of DPS. I use it on every fight that's worth the cooldown, Cold Snap and use it again if I really want to rip it up.
Znodis Jun 18th 2007 3:01PM
I had someone promoting his spell damage tool from my blog. Imports from armory so you just need name and server. Don't know him, so click with caution. http://www.spelldamage.com/
Blog if you're interested
http://znodis.wordpress.com
Nataku Jun 18th 2007 3:01PM
Anything like this out there for Locks?
MartinC Jun 18th 2007 3:01PM
Why use something like this when you get can much more relevant information (specific to not only your talent spec but your gear too) with in-game mods like Theorycraft or Dr. Damage??
djjoejoe Jun 18th 2007 3:05PM
Is this similar to how Theory Craft works? Cause it sounds basically the same except TC is in-game, takes into account the targets armor and resistances, and all your gear automatically... and you can actually swap out gear for other items to see what you will be doing with other sets of gear :)
Tiforix Jun 18th 2007 3:17PM
@6
QFT. I did a DPS test on Dr. Boom just last night. While my water elemental was casting, he was doing 27% of our combined DPS. I think non-frost Mages don't realize just how significant that is.
brent Jun 18th 2007 3:49PM
@6 @8 absolutely its amazing how much that pet adds, whilst soloing it makes those dreaded find kill that one guy/elite missions a few levels higher then you trivial. When you can single pull you can tear through 3-4 mobs = to +3 without blinking an eye, The utility of it when you oopsie pull a few more then expexcted and easily swing the odds baack in your favoris fantastic
waterboy FTW =)
annoula Jun 18th 2007 3:55PM
I think what a lot of people forget about the frost spec is DPS vs. mana output. I find that during long fights spamming my cheap frost bolt (with my water elemental by my side doing the same) can do some great damage and I rarely/almost never run out of mana during boss fights.
During the longer ones a quick evocation will definitely last the rest of the fight. The fire mages I've seen eat through mana insanely fast.
Delilah Jun 18th 2007 4:38PM
If it doesn't include the water elemental, and it doesn't include the new Arctic Winds, it doesn't tell you how much damage a frost mage is doing. Not even going to bother with that tool unless it gets updated to reflect these.
Groghe Jun 18th 2007 4:54PM
The Dr. Damage Mod does the same thing in game.
Quoi Jun 19th 2007 12:31AM
Yeah, just tried it out, and about the only thing it tells me is that fireball has a higher DPS than frostbolt. That would be useful, if I only used frostbolt, but since he doesn't include the water elemental, I'm afraid I'm not interested.
Laurens Holst Jun 19th 2007 1:25AM
Hmmm~~, guess I’ll have to start using Arcane Blast :). I didn’t know it was so mana-efficient, I had the impression that it was the opposite.
Repeating Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Fireball, Fireball seems to be more mana efficient and do more damage than my current boss-fight-mana-and-threat-efficiency-mode where I just cast Fireball continuously. Although it doesn’t mention threat, so I’m a little concerned about that. I’ll have to see.
Nice tool!
Laurens Holst Jun 19th 2007 1:38AM
@Quoi: You can still use fireball if you have a water elemental. I do that too, then you have the added damage of both. Frost-fire spec ftw!
It is best to base choice among fireball and frostbolt should be based on whether you want to do a lot of damage (useful in groups) or whether you want to snare (useful solo). Not to say using fireball solo isn’t useful, because it gets the enemy down faster, and if there’s two others running towards you, frostbolt’s snare isn’t going to be very helpful.
Also, the tool doesn’t seem to add the effect of Ignite to the average DoT. So my fireball actually does more damage than the tool makes it seem.
Fireball + ignite + water elemental = win! ;p
Quoi Jun 19th 2007 9:37AM
Frozen Shadoweave limits the utility of Fireball for me :)
SubjectV Jun 19th 2007 9:31AM
I was kind of disappointed to see you post that "fire mages can out DPS frost mages" in this post. Like many have pointed out, people seem to forget our water elemental. I constantly out-DPS fire mages during raids, and not only that, but I don't run out of mana half as fast as they do. Frost also offers a few extra levels of survivability.
Halicante Jun 19th 2007 2:27PM
If you are deep frost and out dps your deep fire mages, then your fire mages suck and need to L2P. No question about it.
I loved frost. Frost is great. Awesome for soloing, pvp, smaller scale raiding. Frost is not best dps in raids due to its inherently lower damage with the survivability tradeoff and binary resists. The math has been done. Threads like http://forums.subcreation.net/viewtopic.php?id=3705 and anything Lhivera/Irontygress make shows this.
Stick 3 fire mages with a shadow priest and an elemental shaman and make a lock throw up a CoE, and the frost mages will get blown away. Raid groups should be made for maximum dps, not mana conservation. Survivability in raids as a mage is a moot point - if you need ice block because you pull aggro, then you're horrible. If you think that ice barrier will help you when you get in the way of the boss and hit for 30k, then you need some serious rethinking. Fire mages in a raid group like this will keep up with or even surpass locks, depending on fights.
I know full well that frost is useful on some fights - why blizzard locks out whole trees on only mages pisses me off to no end. Al'ar and Illidan adds are fire immune and Hydrosses adds are frost immune. This is a whole other issue. All those mages who think Blizz should make a shadow immune boss so locks have to spec demo and dps priest have to go lolsmite spec, say aye. But never will happen...wishful thinking on my part.
In conclusion, I like spelldamage.com. It's fun to play with. There are also some nice calculators and tools here http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=202910352&sid=1
Arcannis Jun 21st 2007 7:29PM
Now updated for patch 2.1.2 with Arctic Winds. Thanks for the comments and suggestions, and I'll look into adding the Water Elemental soon.
Bikuri Jun 25th 2007 10:45AM
As the developer for www.spelldamage.com, I'm open to all suggestions.
I'm currently in the process of rewriting the calculation engine using some OOP techniques that will make the code more maintainable and easier to add/remove spell calculations. Once that's done, making changes becomes a WHOLE lot easier. (and make adding more classes much easier as well)
Anyway, feel free to send feedback to feedback[at]spelldamage[dot]com.
Thanks!