Mage Mage AOE spells not receiving bonuses from spell damage gear.

[FayWrey]

I've tried reporting this under the BUG report twice now but it seems it's not taking for me. I first noticed it on K1 a day before K2 went live, equipping +frost spell damage gear made no difference in the damage my Blizzard was doing, which was an easy spot since Blizzard always ticks for the same amount. I then checked Arcane Explosion since I had some +arcane spell damage gear. It too, got no bonus. Now that K2 has gone live, I've managed to get some generic +spell damage gear and checked all of the mage aoe spells, Blizzard, Arcane Explosion, Flamestrike, Frost Nova (don't have CoC yet) and none of them received any buff from the +spell damage I had.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is this a known issue? If so has a bug report been made?

 

[Aieris]

Do you try it with highest ranks availible for your level? Because low ranks have +spell damage bonus penality.
Also, have you deleted your WDB folder before testing?

 

[Sillyfish]

Are you certain? AOE spells get damage added to the ENTIRE duration. If you have 50 spell damage total, your ticks wont hit for 50 damage more. The entire spell will do 50 more damage over every tick combined.

 

[kitkatz]

AoE spells scale differently with spellpower than for example Frostbolt (83%) and Fireball (100%).
with Arcane Explosion its 14.3%

Spell coefficients are complicated, you shouldn't worry about them

 

[gotmilk0112]

^Those two

AoE spells typically have lower spell damage coefficients, and the bonus damage is spread across the entire spell, not applied to every tick.

When I got about 35 bonus frost damage at level 25, my rank 1 blizzard went from 25 damage per tick to 26 damage per tick. :laugh:

 

[Zerve]

Spell coefficients are complicated, you shouldn't worry about them

This is terrible advice

 

[FayWrey]

/sigh...yes guys I'm not a complete *****. Yes I'm using the latest ranks and yes I know they only get a certain percentage of the spell damage per tick. Blizzard is the easiest one to test as it always ticks for one set amount since it doesn't have a 'damage range' that it deals. Arcane explosion is a bit more complicated as it deals a damage range, but you should still see damage numbers that would be higher than it's damage 'cap' on some hits and should never see the bottom of the damage range. This however, wasn't my experience. On K1 I was running about 19 ish +frost damage gear and +20 arcane spell damage gear and saw no effect from running without any. My testing on K2 has been tougher since the economy is crap and I don't have the cash to dump into spell gear, the very little of which is available on the ah tends to be a bit pricey. Still at +6 generic spell power gloves, not really quite enough to be conclusive, since the modifier is divided up between the damage 'ticks' for blizzard. I was just wondering if anyone else has noticed this or if anyone who's has a higher level mage with better gear can at least double check it.

And yes, you're right Zerve, that is terrible advice. Yes coefficients are complicated but you should still be able to see SOME form of increase. These 2 sites give a list of the spell coefficients and the algebrish that goes behind them.

http://forums.elitistjerks.com/forums/topic/9354-damage-coefficients/

http://wow.allakhazam.com/wiki/spell_coefficient_(wow)

 

[Smoker]

The sources you linked are not accurate vanilla coefficients. The first document was written in 2008, and the other one have a coefficient for Dragon's Breath in it, which means it is explaining the Burning Crusade values (even if posted before BC release)

Instead take a look here:

https://forum.twinstar.cz/showthread.php/57011-Big-TheoryCrafting-Thread?p=498320&viewfull=1#post498320

Blizzard - 3.5/3.5/3 - 33% - 4.125% per tick (8)

Which means you need 25 spellpower to see 1 point of difference per tick. You don't see any difference because as you said you have only 19 frost damage.

Working as intended

 

[FayWrey]

TYVVM. I knew those sites weren't vanilla specific, but they were as close as i could find on a simple google search.

Guess that's why I've also noticed that the single target nukes were getting the bonuses but not the AOEs. Guess I'll be stacking Int/Stam for Blizzard AOE grinding then till the 30s.

 

[Kanariya]

Fortunately we have a really good post on the forums about co-efficients for all classes that Smoker linked. But yeah, AoE scales terribly in Vanilla and it takes a lot of damage to notice any difference. That's why AoE-grind levelers stack Int and don't bother with spell damage at all.