[PvE] MM vs. CC

verilos · January 2014

Some people who do even more DPS than me have mentioned they don't use CC but rather MM making it obvious that the since they do more dps even though they have somewhat better gear it means MM is not inferior to CC by any means prompting me to give MM a try once more.

I have not found any DPS decrease, on the contrary MM hits for more overall (even counting CC's aoe) DPS than CC ever did and it increases shard/st damage by 15%. ST stun is also noticeably more effective.
This could of course be because at-wills always did little DPS compared to everything else.

Anyone has any hard numbers or ACT stats they would like to share on the subject?

The question sort of went away after the sing+shield+nocooldown combo was patched.
After the patch everyone just started saying CC is best, before no one even cared, too busy singing by a corner and bashing mobs to death with shield.

Edit:
If in a rare average DD pug you don't do at least double the damage of the next guy, please don't reply.

masterjewstar · January 2014

MM hits harder on one target only because of the 3,4,5 hits if 4,5 weren't there mm would suck way more than it does and cc hits on third cast in an aoe for just as much damage as 3,4,5 also in an aoe plus CC allows for more buffs to power and defense on some feats mm also doesn't affect chill the way CC does.

nathyiel · January 2014

This spell have differnt pyurpose and use.
MM is pure single target that put a buff/debuff with renegad but can be used with every spec.
CC do less single damage. It do AOE on the third strike making it very good in pack, espetially in Thaum.

The DPS of a single spell isn't all, you need to see how it work with the other spells.

focusman · January 2014

The reason I use CC is because of Frozen Power Transfer. Correct me if I am wrong but you get 5% damage increase for every target hit by its third strike, and the target cap of CC is 5. So this mean you get a 25% boost if doing it correctly (only cast it once on a pack or you will lose your 25%), so when a singularity is up: Steal Time > Chilling Cloud > Sudden Storm and watch your Sudden Storm reach crazy critical hits.

nathyiel · January 2014

As MOF with critical conflagration, it's just crazy casting CC into a pack. You're just flooded with number.
If mob don't died too quickly, you can CC for +25% then COI, Shard, etc. Normally, you don't need a second rotation ...

On MM part, don't forget that it stack Arcane Mastery and quickly. I really think it's a matter of game-play.

grimah · January 2014

i like MM alot, more than CC. the arcane stacks give nice bonuses for alot of arcane spells. Im just using CC now because of frozen power transfer, the proc rate of stormspell is higher on CC too making it similar to MM.

My reasons for using it is mainly because ive played my CW so long, using the same at-will forever gets dull.

verilos · January 2014

focusman wrote: »

The reason I use CC is because of Frozen Power Transfer. Correct me if I am wrong but you get 5% damage increase for every target hit by its third strike, and the target cap of CC is 5. So this mean you get a 25% boost if doing it correctly (only cast it once on a pack or you will lose your 25%), so when a singularity is up: Steal Time > Chilling Cloud > Sudden Storm and watch your Sudden Storm reach crazy critical hits.

Most people in this thread don't even know what I'm talking about it seems judging by their rather stupid replies.

But you nailed the main question. Yes CC gives you 25% dps increase if cast on 5 targets. But it's also situational and requires time.
Whereas MM will let you have a pretty much permanent uptime on 5 arcane mastery stacks which means 15% dps bonus to all arcane. And while SS is a pretty neat skill, experimenting with it on tab atm you will find that because it relies on a sing so much the shard does significantly more damage. So strengthening the shard by 15% appears to be much better than making the combo too long and unreliable with CC and gain only 25% more, it's probably less than 25% in most situations anyway.

So which is better? CC would in theory be slightly better but in practice I don't think anyone can be perfect enough to utilize it.

And that's not even considering that with a proper group mobs die from CW/GWF alpha almost every single time in any dungeon.

I am just not sure, too many variables here to just dream up an answer. That's why I started the topic.

vorphied · January 2014

verilos wrote: »

Most people in this thread don't even know what I'm talking about it seems judging by their rather stupid replies.

But you nailed the main question. Yes CC gives you 25% dps increase if cast on 5 targets. But it's also situational and requires time.
Whereas MM will let you have a pretty much permanent uptime on 5 arcane mastery stacks which means 15% dps bonus to all arcane. And while SS is a pretty neat skill, experimenting with it on tab atm you will find that because it relies on a sing so much the shard does significantly more damage. So strengthening the shard by 15% appears to be much better than making the combo too long and unreliable with CC and gain only 25% more, it's probably less than 25% in most situations anyway.

So which is better? CC would in theory be slightly better but in practice I don't think anyone can be perfect enough to utilize it.

And that's not even considering that with a proper group mobs die from CW/GWF alpha almost every single time in any dungeon.

I am just not sure, too many variables here to just dream up an answer. That's why I started the topic.

It's true that Frozen Power Transfer isn't quite as consistently amazing as it appears in the tooltip for the reasons you described, and it's not really suitable for beginning a rotation. It's also likely that, since Arcane stacks like to drop off as soon as fights are over, you don't even get to build a full 5 stacks before the average group of trash dies.

Because I still like Frozen Power Transfer for larger groups and for add waves during boss encounters, I just slot them both and use them as appropriate. CC when mobs are in a Singularity, otherwise I'll use MM to maintain Arcane stacks unless the mobs are hugging and I can refresh Transfer while encounters are on cooldown.

slushpsycho · January 2014

I like MM

It gives arcane stack... boost dmg for steal time and shard. Which I always use pve.

vnrenshi · January 2014

from my experience, the actual damage difference between the skills isn't large enough to make either of them a must. MM certainly helps to maintain arcane stacks, but more often than not, if you're not frontloading your dps on trash regardless of stacks, it'll be dead before you can max them anyways. in terms of CC, the same applies in a lot of situations.

i personally use chilling cloud because it has good synergy with GPF in terms of spreading debuffs while conduit on is cooldown, in addition to providing a fairly nice damage bonus for adds on boss encounters that tend to survive for a few rotations(with frozen power transfer of course)

i've considered doing as vorphied suggested above, and using both MM and CC on my at will slots, in the past, but honestly, i'm too lazy to keep swapping back and forth between storm pillar for building AP out of combat and MM all the time

niadan · January 2014

vorphied wrote: »

It's true that Frozen Power Transfer isn't quite as consistently amazing as it appears in the tooltip for the reasons you described, and it's not really suitable for beginning a rotation. It's also likely that, since Arcane stacks like to drop off as soon as fights are over, you don't even get to build a full 5 stacks before the average group of trash dies.

Because I still like Frozen Power Transfer for larger groups and for add waves during boss encounters, I just slot them both and use them as appropriate. CC when mobs are in a Singularity, otherwise I'll use MM to maintain Arcane stacks unless the mobs are hugging and I can refresh Transfer while encounters are on cooldown.

Ding...Ding...Ding you win the "I'm not as stupid as verilos thinks I am" award for CW excellence! Go retrieve your green armour piece from the sparkling chest.

verilos · January 2014

vorphied wrote: »

It's true that Frozen Power Transfer isn't quite as consistently amazing as it appears in the tooltip for the reasons you described, and it's not really suitable for beginning a rotation. It's also likely that, since Arcane stacks like to drop off as soon as fights are over, you don't even get to build a full 5 stacks before the average group of trash dies.

Because I still like Frozen Power Transfer for larger groups and for add waves during boss encounters, I just slot them both and use them as appropriate. CC when mobs are in a Singularity, otherwise I'll use MM to maintain Arcane stacks unless the mobs are hugging and I can refresh Transfer while encounters are on cooldown.

I suppose that would be a good deal. I can see CC coming in handy in the draco fight when mobs stay alive for quite a while and all bunched up right on draco, shard and SS getting a 25% boost there would be nice.

I always just sorta slotted storm pillar as a second skill for AP regeneration, and only now I realize I almost never use it anyway lol.

It says you keep the damage bonus until the next CC rotation in the tooltip, does it actually have a timeout? Otherwise you can just use it once on 5 mobs and never again during a dungeon. Haven't tested it that far.

chemboy613 · January 2014

I tend to agree with Oz here

While MM is more DPS i also use CC for FPT, which is a nice but not overwhelming feat.

Sure the MM arcane stats are great but the point is to CC first and damage second - so shard always prones and hits for a ton, and then steal time stuns nicely.

I track a lot of draco fight in ACT, and consistently, almost without exception, thaum out performs renegade, and not just on draco, who is getting the conduit debuff, but on the whole room. I think FPT is part of that.

However, renegades often win paingiver because they do way more damage on trash. The difference of the feats here might big a big reason why, but if you can kill draco quickly and reliably, who cares about the trash? Endgame parties can melt trash with little effort rending this difference pointless.

Needless to say, many renegades in my guild are switching to thaum b/c of this, and quite a few are switching to MoF, which performs very well in the draco fight (i got my DPS over 26k this morning).

As for the rotation, assuming you are fighting longer than a few seconds, when your encounters are on cooldown, or when you are timing your shard properly into a sing, or whatever, do a quick 3 strike rotation of chilling cloud, make sure the third one hits, then fire the next encounter. it takes a little training, but is not that hard.

Hope that helps,

verilos · January 2014

chemboy613 wrote: »

I tend to agree with Oz here

While MM is more DPS i also use CC for FPT, which is a nice but not overwhelming feat.

Sure the MM arcane stats are great but the point is to CC first and damage second - so shard always prones and hits for a ton, and then steal time stuns nicely.

I track a lot of draco fight in ACT, and consistently, almost without exception, thaum out performs renegade, and not just on draco, who is getting the conduit debuff, but on the whole room. I think FPT is part of that.

However, renegades often win paingiver because they do way more damage on trash. The difference of the feats here might big a big reason why, but if you can kill draco quickly and reliably, who cares about the trash? Endgame parties can melt trash with little effort rending this difference pointless.

Needless to say, many renegades in my guild are switching to thaum b/c of this, and quite a few are switching to MoF, which performs very well in the draco fight (i got my DPS over 26k this morning).

As for the rotation, assuming you are fighting longer than a few seconds, when your encounters are on cooldown, or when you are timing your shard properly into a sing, or whatever, do a quick 3 strike rotation of chilling cloud, make sure the third one hits, then fire the next encounter. it takes a little training, but is not that hard.

Hope that helps,

How does MM imply renegade? I have always been and still is Thaum if for nothing more than the CoI debuff. Although the shard feat is also awesome.

The question is MM vs. CC not Thaum vs. Renegade because for pve there is no contest between the two.

Guess it comes down to Power Transfer vs. Arcane Stacks + higher at-will dps.

And what do you even mean by "CC first and damage second" ? You are aware that CC is an at-will right? Not crowd control.

slushpsycho · January 2014

verilos wrote: »

How does MM imply renegade? I have always been and still is Thaum if for nothing more than the CoI debuff. Although the shard feat is also awesome.

The question is MM vs. CC not Thaum vs. Renegade because for pve there is no contest between the two.

Guess it comes down to Power Transfer vs. Arcane Stacks + higher at-will dps.

And what do you even mean by "CC first and damage second" ? You are aware that CC is an at-will right? Not crowd control.

Renegade does really respectable dmg in PVE... CC's biggest problem is that it requires you to hit 3 times before your rotation. You don't always get that kind of room as a cw, if you are doing the most dmg in group you often get the aggro as well which means you would spend lots of your time dodging. I think basically if you have a 3 cw group Thaum usually would do more dmg due to CC and massive control provided by 3 cws. But if we are talking about 2 cw then I believe renegade and thaum does same amount of DPS.

focusman · January 2014

I respecced, took MM and Snap Freeze instead of CC + FPT. I am so used for using CC that well I didn't like it. The boost which FPT gives (in my place almost always 15-25% since I use it in a singu). And I always have arcane stacks up due to shard or steal time, not 5 maxed but always some. Just don't cast 2x CC, cast it once shoot whatever encounters you have which will hit 5-25% harder + the arcane stacks (say 3) will give more damage then 5 arcane stacks imo.

I need either Snap Freeze or FPT to reach the 3 last feats which I take for the thaum build. Therefore FPT it is, because Snap Freeze is good but more then half the time mobs already have chill on them so Snap Freeze becomes useless for me. I would rather have the damage buff from CC then the little chance Snap Freeze gives me to proc (because I need to start rushing then to be the first to hit, which I don't like...I like fast but not 4 miles ahead).

For pure and only CC vs MM : MM wins, but this is such a small margin. As Grimah (it was Grimah right :P?) said: CC as main MM as second > best solution.

edit: i took some time to watch the arcane stacks (without mm) during boss fights. Its almost always up to 5 stacks.

vorphied · January 2014

verilos wrote: »

I suppose that would be a good deal. I can see CC coming in handy in the draco fight when mobs stay alive for quite a while and all bunched up right on draco, shard and SS getting a 25% boost there would be nice.

I always just sorta slotted storm pillar as a second skill for AP regeneration, and only now I realize I almost never use it anyway lol.

It says you keep the damage bonus until the next CC rotation in the tooltip, does it actually have a timeout? Otherwise you can just use it once on 5 mobs and never again during a dungeon. Haven't tested it that far.

FPT buff has an 8 second duration, so it will fall off if you don't refresh it. Still, 8 seconds is sufficient time to unload before needing to refresh. Some players spam CC without paying attention to how many targets they're hitting, though, and they lose their nice 4-5 stack buff right after they get it.

I've found that running with MM and CC both has been very nice for my overall performance. Having MM also prevents me from mindlessly spamming CC and accidentally overwriting my FPT since I have a second At-Will option that does respectable damage and helps maintain my Arcane stacks.

grimah · January 2014

Dont forget that frozen power transfer overrides.

meaning if you hit 5 (get x5 buff) then hit 3 the next time the buff goes down. So having both is most optimal if you do have frozen power transfer, so you can use it to apply buff then use magic missile otherwise. Theres a few wizards i play with who do this, i dont because, well I'm lazy and just keep storm pillar as my alternative all the time.

chemboy613 · January 2014

I think i was misunderstood, I mean that as a focus you should be thinking about controling the mobs and piling them up, freezing them and stunning them, then getting in a 3-rotation of chilling cloud to proc FPT.

I'm not surprised by the comparison Oz found, since in any difficult fight you are hitting the entire room, so building arcane stacks should be quite easy. It is somewhat what i expected.

A very small point, chilling cloud can refresh a smolder stack, add a chill stack, which could be useful if there is a MoF wiz, someone has chilling presence slotted, or someone has bitter cold feat.

Reason why MM tends to imply renegade is because most thaums use chilling cloud and most oppressors use ray of frost. that's all.

[PvE] MM vs. CC

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