Touch of the Magi is broken

Classes Mage
1

Decided to do some damage testing with a friend and we noticed something weird with Touch of the Magi, it was doing roughly ~18.75% of the accumulated damage, instead of 25%.

Soooo after a lot of tests and math, we figured out that TotM is reduced by damage reduction effects 3 TIMES, including Versatility, blood elf 1% arcane damage reduction, Mirror Images…everything.

Only couldn’t figure out how the damage works, whenever multiple damage reductions are stacked(tried versatility + mirror images 20% DR).

For example: 5000 arcane blast, no Magi’s Brand(aka 25% TotM) and enemy with 30% versatility(15% damage reduction).
Touch of the Magi > Arcane Blast > TotM explosion

How the math works out:

  1. Arcane Blast gets reduced by 15% from versa = 4250 damage
  2. Touch of the Magi accumulates 25% of 4250 = 1062 damage accumulated
  3. TotM’s accumulated damage gets reduced by 15% versa = 903 damage
  4. Then for some reason it gets reduced again by 15% = 768 damage finally, doing ~28% less damage of what it should’ve actually done.

So I have few questions:

  1. Why does TotM’s accumulated damage get reduced by versatility? If the damage you dealt into the target to stack TotM was already reduced, thus reducing the explosion damage in the first place?
  2. What is that 3rd reduction even coming from? Is the base damage reduced once, then the accumulated damage debuff 2nd time and then the explosion damage 3rd time?
  3. How does the math work out, whenever stacking multiple damage reductions?
6 Likes
2

There was a pve bug with it where on targets that were taking increase dmg it was doing crazy numbers. I bet this was caused by the hotfix to that.

1 Like
3

I would guess so too, but sadly I didn’t notice if it was a thing before that, to know for sure :thinking:. Either way, TotM is doing far less damage in any type of pvp now, because of this.

4

It is also broken in the sense that whenever a mob dies faster than 8 seconds, you will see the ToTM finishing animation but the damage won’t be dealt. This was not the case before the january hotfix.

2 Likes
5

I saw you mentioning that in another post and tried that too, it seems to be inconsistent? Sometimes deals, sometimes doesn’t…didn’t figure it out, but I have noticed it quite often in M+ runs.

6

Yes very inconsitent, especially in m+. Also before it used to register the damage on the primary mob itself as well (even when it was dead), although I CAN accept that as unintended.

7

Hello fellow mages,

The topic of touch of the magi being broken was brought up a month or so ago in the mage discord Altered Time, mostly related to random mobs in the shadowlands taking reduced damage. The report was mobs around the theater of pain area taking 33% less damage from TOTM than they should.

Me and another mage in there (Elvo) decided to do some testing. In the world we seemed to not find any consistency whatsoever, random mobs were taking random damages. If a mob was bugged they were generally taking around 33% less damage as originally found by the person reporting it to the mage discord, resulting in 20-25% explosions with magis brand, when it should be 33.4 with ilvl 200 brand, and 15-20% without magis brand, depending on the mob (the same named mob would always take the same % reduced damage). Not every mob was bugged, not every mob in an area was bugged. It seemed totally arbirtrary.

We then moved on to pvp, and figured out the same vers/damage reduction double dipping effect as you did, but this wouldnt explain why random mobs in the world took less damage.

After this we tried dungeons and raids. Castle nathria, both from logs on bosses and our testing on trash on every difficulty outside lfr yielded correct results, so no worries there. Old raids were bugged however, KJ for example was taking 21% from a magis brand TOTM.

When we moved on to dungeons things got a little more interesting. Mythic dungeons generally seemed not bugged, so thats a huge plus. Normal and heroic were absolute clownery though, with now mobs randomly taking MORE than they were intended to take from totm, when a mob was bugged in this way they would take 40% from TOTM instead of 33.4 with magis brand, a 25% increase, Without magis brand was a 25% increase as well. This did however not happen consistently, whereas if a mob took less damage from TOTM like the mobs in the wild, it would ALWAYS take reduced damage, these dungeon mobs were taking more damage but ONLY SOME TIMES. Other normal/heroic dungeon mobs were taking reduced damage consistently as well.

For your testing purposes: the only mobs we found in dungeons that randomly take more damage is the first pack in TOP, we doubt this is the only pack thought, because we found this relatively quickly with limited testing and they werent even consisntely taking more so we mightve missed others. Tthe easiest mobs to find in dungeons that take reduced damage are yellow entrace skeletons in plaguefall. but there are many many more. We tested more but its too much to just list, go hit some stuff and see the clownery.

Lets get this to blizzards attention so we can do our wqs easier :slight_smile:

4 Likes
8

I wonder how long will it take blizzard to actually fix some of these bugs. :thinking:
I’ve already found 20+ Arcane specific bugs and one third of them affect our damage negatively. Ofc, the biggest offenders being TotM bug and our potency conduits not working with our only damage PvP talent.

I’ve been generally getting 28% less damage, but that seems to further increase with multiple damage reductions up.
~24% down from 33.4% with TotM conduit 200ilvl.
~18% down from 25% without TotM conduit.

9

Well check PTR changes, we get a slight buff for Arcane Harmony, but i fail to see how that will help raids or if at all. I see it more as an alternatie to arcane bombardment in m+, a weak one that is.

The only other change i have seen is dampen magic’s effect is getting nerfed by 50% in pvp. The reason might be… have you heard about those arcane mages owning arenas? Oh wait I haven’t either.

by the way, make sure you raise your concerns about arcane here:

10

I really don’t think they’ll answer any spec specific questions in a Q&A.
So I just asked it in a different way:

1 Like
11

This is what i asked for arcane, without giving too much details. I was trying to make it “streaming” and as Q&A compatible as possible:

Arcane Mage: What is your plan for arcane mages? The design is a lackluster and it’s just generally not competitive outside m+. So many suggestions have been made, which ones are you going to go with ?

12

Now we also have Mirrors of Torment bugged for arcane :sweat_smile: blizz never fails to disappoint with this spec…

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