So, the past couple of months i am focusing on aquiring this trinket Balefire Branch from Waycrest Manor
I’m trying to get it on at least +10 key but since i’m a dps (and on top of that a frost mage) it can be hard to get picked. Since this trinket is BiS i’m also focusing on low keys (+5 and upwards). Since a +5/+6 version of the trinket will be 445 and my average ilvl is 465 atm, do you guys beleive that it still worth it? Should i also consider a 430ilvl version?
Are you seriously not taken for a +10 WM when you have +15 experience? that sounds really weird.
It’s probably still worth it over what you have, but an easier and better option is to get font of power from queen aszhara, and you also have the option to conquest cap 4 times to get glad trinket, both of which are miles better than balefire.
The pugging scene can be difficult to get into. Especially the mythic+ scene. You don’t have all dungeons completed on at least +15, so many leaders won’t want you in their +10s.
But unless i’m mistaken those trinkets you are reffering does not have mastery on the. The Font of Power from Queen Azshara is a crit trinket. I dont care much for the on use intellect buff. My primary goal is to get as much Mastery as i can. As i said i’m a frost mage.
Also as Coldshade said, in LFD there are some absolutely crazy requirements to get invited into groups. Although i dont blame them, because if you dont know the person you are invitting you can only trust on stereotypes like (being a fire mage, having 2k rio etc…)
Not for frost, actually. It seems that balefire sims really high for them, outperformed only by the vita trinket.
If you plan on staying frost I wouldn’t worry about trinkets too much. There’s not that much between them and ilvl is likely to be more important than actual trinket in most cases. Given that getting balefire at 475 is totally rng… it’s really not worth farming a lower ilvl version.
Also don’t forgot branch sims a bit better than its usual value as you lose buff stacks when you take dmg.
You can always just not take damage!
Lol you just made me realise that I should be using my shield before combustion with that (before lucid obvs).
There are mechanics of non avoidable damage, we currently progress nzoth and the damage over there is insane and ticking constantly without even players actually do something wrong.
Im pretty sure there this trinket looses its value to a big margin
What do you mean there is not much between them? Mastery value after a certain point is much more powerfull than raw intellect. Shouldnt i just stack as much mastery as i can?
It is generally up to the stat weights you have and a worth of a stat. Balefile might give you 300 mastery for example but the raw intellect you get from the on use, even if it is your weakest stat, outweights the damage you gain from the mastery portion.
Balefire branch gives 226 mastery and 3600 intellect on use. That intellect for me right now, on fire, on a 5 target fight is worth 15 DPS increase per intellect, so with 3600 I’d gain 54000 extra DPS from that. 226 mastery in comparison for me is worth a 11k DPS increase.
The point I wanted to make with this is to not undervalue the amount of raw primary stat you get from trinkets. They generally overvalue the static secondary stat boosts you get from a single trinket.
According to warcraftlogs right now the top trinkets that frost mages opt for are the ones that give haste, like the Vita trinket and the Wrathion trinket (Balefire is there as well as a third most popular option.)
In terms of trinket you don’t really care about their stat, but rather their effect since that’s the impactful part.
Didn’t see you put frost, most mages are fire so i just assumed, so you can sorta disregard what i said that related to fire i guess.
Hard to relate, but i have a hard time believing that there are a lot of people with better experience queueing for a 10.
Thought i must admit, i haven’t played more than a few key below 15, not even on alts, but when i took an alt, disconnected it from my raiderio account and went to pug i ended up doing a 10 with people who had no better experience that 12, so with 15 experience i see no way you wouldn’t get invites.
Yea didn’t see he was frost, last time i played it (2 months ago probably) balefire was not a viable option, and with the meta i just assumed he was playing the good spec.
still think vita + dragonscale is better for keys though, so why bother with balefire
Hey Marmaga do you use the raider. io addon? If you don’t I know why you aren’t getting invites. Mages actually have a decent time pugging compared to most classes.
Hey Minnji. Didnt say i dont gaet invited, i just said that its hard because i’m a dps and on top of that, a frost mage. So when party leaders whisper me “Are you a fire mage?” i tell them i’m a frost mage and i get the “sorry” respond 
And i really dont beleive that being a frost mage or fire mage or even arcane, matters in such low keys. When i sometimes end up in a group with a fire mage with similar ilvl as me, i always do more dps than the fire mage. The only case that a fire mage will do significally more damage than me, is inside a combustion window, but after that, his dps drops dramaticaly again.
No i dont use Raider addon, but that doesnt mean other people using the addon cant see my score. The score is there, the addon just shows that score ingame instead of having to go to the actual website.
Mastery for frost mage is extremelly important. I’ll give you an example on why Balefire is such a powerfull trinket for frost mages.
My Intellect without Balefire Branch is 13700 and my Mastery is 40% (taking into account a 465ilvl trinket). Equipping Balefire Branch (450ilvl) drops my int to 13000 but my mastery goes up by 3% (because of masterfull corruptions).
Without Balefire Branch every icicle would store 40% of 13700 = 5480 damage.
With the Balefire Branch every icicle would store 43% of 13000 = 5590 damage. Ofc its not much of a difference, but dont forget that i dropped arround 700 intellect.
Now if you take into account the on use ability of Balefire Branch. Using it inside a burst window (Icy Veins + Trinket). My intellect will go up to 19k so my 43% mastery will store 8170 damage in each icicle. Which is a huge burst making my Glacial Spike hitting my main target for up to 700k+ atm.
Many top frost mages, uses this trinket and i’ve seen them in action doing 1,5 million Glacial Spike hits. Thats crazy number i know, but all of them has over 85% mastery rating and arround 14k intellect.
That has happened to me around 15s, but around 10s it just shows the group leaders are clueless about fire mages. They’re rubbish in anything under at least 15s and as players are getting more and more powerful its more like 17s-18s now.
Gonna do some trinket sims…
There’s more to frost mage than how much your glacial spikes hit for. More haste makes you throw them out faster, every stat has a use.
On a macro level, frost mage has very consistent damage, meaning that total stats tend to matter more than on demand stats, to a certain degree.
That means that it is beneficial to evaluate how much total stats different trinkets give to determine which one you should go for.
With a dragonscale at 460, which has around 65% uptime, you get:
628 intellect
274 haste
And with balefire at 460 you get on average:
411 intellect
230 mastery
Now apply this to your stat weights if you don’t wanna sim and see what is better, i can’t tell you for sure, but 200 ish mainstat and 44 secondary stat, is something i guess, but you’ll have to apply the information yourself, it could be better, but idk.
Also i was mostly talking for M+, where haste ups in value and mastery goes down, even if you play noIL.
For raid i think N’zoth trinket is probably better than balefire, but i can check logs i guess.
Aight i’ll check it out.
Out of the top 10 log for every boss here is the trinket breakdown of the trinkets in question:
Balefire - 54
Dragonscale - 39
N’zoth trink - 38
And with how much harder it is to get N’zoth trinket, especially as frost mage, i think it goes to show how good it actually is, dragonscale for raid, not so much.
But it’s always hard to say, since frost is not in any way a competitive spec atm, so it also tends to be less optimized.
Good frost m+ data is hard to find, since all of the best frost mage keys, are fire mages playing frost for 1 pull in TD, which scews the data.
That being said, the most popular build i could find that was played in a realistic key level for frost was indeed, vita + dragonscale.
Then after that balefire + vita or balefire + dragonscale, and then the rest of the builds did not include balefire.
As i said this is all speculation, i don’t think there is an end all be all answer for this, but i hope it’s something you’ll think about, but in the end, just sim it, cause it is character dependant.
Also a random question, since i haven’t played frost mage in forever. Now that so many people are running lucid major, does that mean we have gotten to the point where we don’t wait for brain freeze before glacial?
So I haven’t simmed frost in a while but yeah the Branch is strong!
I haven’t got vita but simmed against other good trinkets at 475 and branch is comfortably the winner 1.4% ahead of wrathion trinket, manifesto being the second best.
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/5yxdotdMb3Y7NcsQyj3rKu
So I thought, getting it at 475 is just down to luck (I’m a lucky boy), so I ran the best combo without branch through a droptimizer sim and the 465 version comes out 1.1% ahead of Wrathion’s.
https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/4iSzcDvLUSo7iV9TtSJSpJ
I got up a full report and you use the trinkets on the flurry’s after a glacial to make super glacials not to line up with icy viens.
While you are correct on paper, you forget that mastery corruption completely changes how secondary stats (and in this case Mastery Rating) weights. On paper, intellect (procs or raw stat) is always better, but in reallity mastery, after a certain value on your intellect rating, becomes more important because icicle damage double dips on mastery.
Every GS must be followed by a brain freeze proc. Unless ofc you pet freeze your target(s). But thats not viable in a group run because novas can break on any damage from your party members.
I dont understand how you came to the conclusion that Lucid dreams will get you to a point where you can cast GS without BF.
Pretty sure that’s not true. Had this convo before and I thought it was but I was shown otherwise.
It’s very viable, it will always stay up for a second or two, just time it at the end of the glacial cast. It’s stronger than flurry in dungeons (on mobs that can be frozen) as it shatters your target and the split glacial on another mob.