Celtic Heroes

Wooo a nice topic.

I actually did this in my video version of my mage guide.

Both fire and ice aren't the best dps. Hybrid is, hands down.

But lets say between fire and ice...

Short - Fire is better, by alot

Long - In 2013, fire was slightly better then ice, but it was close enough that you could have debates on it. Then after some unknown patch that made attunes instant and firebolt instant, ice became worse through an indirect nerf(firebolt instant, while ice got nothing for that).

Cooldown reduction is better for FIRE.

Lets say this, 50% more dps on 50 or 100 is still 50% right? Good.
But cooldown reduction is only COOLDOWN. So the side with less cast time(fire) has a larger dps gain.

Heres the equation - 1 - (([Original Skill Cooldown * (1-Percent Reduction)] + Cast Time)) / (Original Skill Cooldown+Cast Time))
This will give you the actual reduction number, compare that to what you have on your gear.

Example with Ice Shards - 40% reduction
1 - (([15*(1-0.4)]+1))/(15+1))
1- ((9+1)/15+1)
1- 0.625
0.375
37.5% DPS gain on ice shards

Agreed. However in real situations, even the best fire mages can't keep casting firebolt and all the other skills just as they finished cooling down. Thus they will be losing dps for every second they waste when firebolt is off cooldown. Compared to ice mages, there's a bit more leeway. Am I right?

Wooo a nice topic.

I actually did this in my video version of my mage guide.

Both fire and ice aren't the best dps. Hybrid is, hands down.

But lets say between fire and ice...

Short - Fire is better, by alot

Long - In 2013, fire was slightly better then ice, but it was close enough that you could have debates on it. Then after some unknown patch that made attunes instant and firebolt instant, ice became worse through an indirect nerf(firebolt instant, while ice got nothing for that).

Cooldown reduction is better for FIRE.

Lets say this, 50% more dps on 50 or 100 is still 50% right? Good.
But cooldown reduction is only COOLDOWN. So the side with less cast time(fire) has a larger dps gain.

Heres the equation - 1 - (([Original Skill Cooldown * (1-Percent Reduction)] + Cast Time)) / (Original Skill Cooldown+Cast Time))
This will give you the actual reduction number, compare that to what you have on your gear.

Example with Ice Shards - 40% reduction
1 - (([15*(1-0.4)]+1))/(15+1))
1- ((9+1)/15+1)
1- 0.625
0.375
37.5% DPS gain on ice shards

Agreed. However in real situations, even the best fire mages can't keep casting firebolt and all the other skills just as they finished cooling down. Thus they will be losing dps for every second they waste when firebolt is off cooldown. Compared to ice mages, there's a bit more leeway. Am I right?

No.
And even in instances where firebolt and storm both cooldown at the same time mages know to cast bolt before storm.
If you were losing dps for using cooldown gear then no one would go near them, and as Fury stated in terms of mage do nothing comes close to hybrid so either builds will be ongoing damage

Wooo a nice topic.

I actually did this in my video version of my mage guide.

Both fire and ice aren't the best dps. Hybrid is, hands down.

But lets say between fire and ice...

Short - Fire is better, by alot

Long - In 2013, fire was slightly better then ice, but it was close enough that you could have debates on it. Then after some unknown patch that made attunes instant and firebolt instant, ice became worse through an indirect nerf(firebolt instant, while ice got nothing for that).

Cooldown reduction is better for FIRE.

Lets say this, 50% more dps on 50 or 100 is still 50% right? Good.
But cooldown reduction is only COOLDOWN. So the side with less cast time(fire) has a larger dps gain.

Heres the equation - 1 - (([Original Skill Cooldown * (1-Percent Reduction)] + Cast Time)) / (Original Skill Cooldown+Cast Time))
This will give you the actual reduction number, compare that to what you have on your gear.

Example with Ice Shards - 40% reduction
1 - (([15*(1-0.4)]+1))/(15+1))
1- ((9+1)/15+1)
1- 0.625
0.375
37.5% DPS gain on ice shards

Agreed. However in real situations, even the best fire mages can't keep casting firebolt and all the other skills just as they finished cooling down. Thus they will be losing dps for every second they waste when firebolt is off cooldown. Compared to ice mages, there's a bit more leeway. Am I right?

No.
And even in instances where firebolt and storm both cooldown at the same time mages know to cast bolt before storm.
If you were losing dps for using cooldown gear then no one would go near them, and as Fury stated in terms of mage do nothing comes close to hybrid so either builds will be ongoing damage

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my explanation but take a look at this video by Bobthemage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lT00gmySM8

You can see that the skills were not always casted the moment they are off cooldown. Having all these CDR gear is great but when you can't keep up with your skills, you end up losing the dps generated by CDR gear. This leads me to think that ice may actually be better than fire since their CDs are longer and there isn't so much skill overlap.

Agreed. However in real situations, even the best fire mages can't keep casting firebolt and all the other skills just as they finished cooling down. Thus they will be losing dps for every second they waste when firebolt is off cooldown. Compared to ice mages, there's a bit more leeway. Am I right?

No.
And even in instances where firebolt and storm both cooldown at the same time mages know to cast bolt before storm.
If you were losing dps for using cooldown gear then no one would go near them, and as Fury stated in terms of mage do nothing comes close to hybrid so either builds will be ongoing damage

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my explanation but take a look at this video by Bobthemage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lT00gmySM8

You can see that the skills were not always casted the moment they are off cooldown. Having all these CDR gear is great but when you can't keep up with your skills, you end up losing the dps generated by CDR gear. This leads me to think that ice may actually be better than fire since their CDs are longer and there isn't so much skill overlap.

Having the skills there and ready vs long cooldowns and waiting whilst standing I say that fire has more benefits, he can't consistently switch back n forth to keep in time with each skill but the fact that he never stops to make the next move is already what beats a hybrid Ice mage

Agreed. However in real situations, even the best fire mages can't keep casting firebolt and all the other skills just as they finished cooling down. Thus they will be losing dps for every second they waste when firebolt is off cooldown. Compared to ice mages, there's a bit more leeway. Am I right?

No.
And even in instances where firebolt and storm both cooldown at the same time mages know to cast bolt before storm.
If you were losing dps for using cooldown gear then no one would go near them, and as Fury stated in terms of mage do nothing comes close to hybrid so either builds will be ongoing damage

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my explanation but take a look at this video by Bobthemage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lT00gmySM8

You can see that the skills were not always casted the moment they are off cooldown. Having all these CDR gear is great but when you can't keep up with your skills, you end up losing the dps generated by CDR gear. This leads me to think that ice may actually be better than fire since their CDs are longer and there isn't so much skill overlap.

Ice isn't better, and has more skill overlap, because eventually ice shard and ice blast will sync up in cooldowns causing a 1-3 second overlap on the cast. With fire, you can just cast bolt first and have basically no downtime on overlap. Even if you are casting storm first and it overlaps bolt, thats not that bad of a situation.

In order of skill usefulness: firebolt > iceshard > firestorm > iceblast

So, yes, hybrids should "main" fire. Ice blast is not advised for its 3 second cast time.

The main reason bob couldnt cast fast enough was that he was using things that were extra(probably shouldnt use incinerate if you run hybrid, unless your cooldown reduction is low).
In addition, all the hotswaps seem somewhat detrimental to the number of attacks performed. You can see instances of the gear being chosen over the skill itself when it is ready. The question is if its worth it in that condition. If theres time to do it sure, but analyze the footage.

Ice blast is just awful versus firestorm, and most direct boosts on mage gear is inbalanced in favour of firestorm/firebolt. Best DPS other than the few (mostly irrelevant) bosses weak to ice is fire mage (firestorm, firebolt, fire attune, incinerate, ice shards, frostbite/fire lure)

I could write a book on this topic lol... but im not potentially motivated. Base statistical value fire has superior dps (for now). What OTM did was screw up the base damage formula coordination between fire and ice so that fire has a much higher proportional base damage. To compensate for this they skewed the proportional difference in direct damage heavily twords ice. What this essentially means is that because VR has reached their limit on gear progression due to their formulas plateauing if they wish to introduce new gear they have two options. (1) add gear that literally does nothing, or (2) make all gear direct damage based in which case ices base dps will continually grow over fires.

The introduction of gele gear was when ice based builds really became relevant in a dps role.

summary

Fire is more impacted by base damage, ice is more impacted by direct damage.

Base damage is limited by poorly structured formulas, Direct damage isnt.

eventually the meta will switch from fire to ice

Side note
When I say ice and fire im referring to the 2 primary elemental dps skills in a true dps build (if you are running a pure elemental build you are about 4 years behind the meta and will never be a competitive dpser on endgame raids)

Every ice mage should have bolt and every fire mage shards in a dps build non negotiable.