Elitist Jerks - View Single Post

grayrest · 05/15/08, 9:54 AM

If you are using spellfire, the extra 172 damage on AM causes AM with a 50/0/11 build to outdamage Frostbolt from a 40/0/21 up till the t6 gear level when spellfire itself falls behind. Due to both the spellfire (7% int to damage) bonus and spare OOC regen ticks, this build heavily favors gemming straight +int gems in every socket, which isn't terribly appealing if you're unsure about being an arc mage.

The nuking pattern is AB spam till you get far enough down to pot+gem and fire off your IV/AP/trinket macro, spam until the IV has 1 second left and finish with an AM. From there, rotate AB/AM until your 3 minute cooldowns are almost up, evo, restack AB, and spam out your cooldowns. Why AB/AM? You don't normally want to drop the AB stack and AB/AM ensures your clearcasts go to a 700 mana spell. It takes advantage of the Arcane Potency bonus where an AM that procs clearcasting gets the bonus as well as the spell that consumes the clearcast. This rotation also gives you the option of AM on clearcast without ever losing cast time. Doing an AM on clearcast costs you dps (the time it takes you to restack AB) but is useful for extending your mana pool when you've overnuked with ABs. Finally, rotating AB/AM gets you ticks of OO5SR regen. You are OO5SR from when AM ends until you finish the next AB cast, which is normally enough to get a tick in.

So, the most common objection is that AM is expensive and doesn't scale. I won't debate the second, but AM's efficiency isn't bad if you have JoW on the target. JoW reduces the cost of AM an average of 2.5*74=185 mana and you get a tick of OOC regen if you're not chaining them. Using myself as an example, I'm 600/405 for regen when raid buffed, so that's another 78 mana. This pulls the cost down to 521 mana for the AM compared to the (345*.82-(74*.5))*2= 492 mana for 2 fully talented frostbolts.

Having played both a 50/0/11 and 40/0/21, I prefer 50/0/11 for grinding. The damage from AM is fairly predictable and a FrB->AM will drop more or less any mob if you have 1050 +dam or so. If you take full permafrost (no reason not to, you don't shoot frostbolts in a raid), the mob will die before it gets to you. 40/0/21, by contrast, varies wildly depending on whether the frostbolt crits or not, which makes it harder to zone out and just grind. I usually take one hit from a mob with 40/0/21, which means eating every so often.

05/15/08, 9:54 AM	#11 (permalink)
grayrest Piston Honda Grayshock Troll Shaman <Ars Brute Squad> Chromaggus	50/0/11 -- spellfire special If you are using spellfire, the extra 172 damage on AM causes AM with a 50/0/11 build to outdamage Frostbolt from a 40/0/21 up till the t6 gear level when spellfire itself falls behind. Due to both the spellfire (7% int to damage) bonus and spare OOC regen ticks, this build heavily favors gemming straight +int gems in every socket, which isn't terribly appealing if you're unsure about being an arc mage. The nuking pattern is AB spam till you get far enough down to pot+gem and fire off your IV/AP/trinket macro, spam until the IV has 1 second left and finish with an AM. From there, rotate AB/AM until your 3 minute cooldowns are almost up, evo, restack AB, and spam out your cooldowns. Why AB/AM? You don't normally want to drop the AB stack and AB/AM ensures your clearcasts go to a 700 mana spell. It takes advantage of the Arcane Potency bonus where an AM that procs clearcasting gets the bonus as well as the spell that consumes the clearcast. This rotation also gives you the option of AM on clearcast without ever losing cast time. Doing an AM on clearcast costs you dps (the time it takes you to restack AB) but is useful for extending your mana pool when you've overnuked with ABs. Finally, rotating AB/AM gets you ticks of OO5SR regen. You are OO5SR from when AM ends until you finish the next AB cast, which is normally enough to get a tick in. So, the most common objection is that AM is expensive and doesn't scale. I won't debate the second, but AM's efficiency isn't bad if you have JoW on the target. JoW reduces the cost of AM an average of 2.574=185 mana and you get a tick of OOC regen if you're not chaining them. Using myself as an example, I'm 600/405 for regen when raid buffed, so that's another 78 mana. This pulls the cost down to 521 mana for the AM compared to the (345.82-(74.5))2= 492 mana for 2 fully talented frostbolts. Having played both a 50/0/11 and 40/0/21, I prefer 50/0/11 for grinding. The damage from AM is fairly predictable and a FrB->AM will drop more or less any mob if you have 1050 +dam or so. If you take full permafrost (no reason not to, you don't shoot frostbolts in a raid), the mob will die before it gets to you. 40/0/21, by contrast, varies wildly depending on whether the frostbolt crits or not, which makes it harder to zone out and just grind. I usually take one hit from a mob with 40/0/21, which means eating every so often.