RpgWizard

This sort of came up in our guild's vent last night, and was interested in the math behind Arcane blast. I definately think Arcane is a primary PVP tree, especially with Slow, Arcane Power, ICS, PoM, etc. However, the issue that came up is whether Arcane Blast is good for anything, much like Arcane missiles being worthless. Here is some math on the subject I just did.

Arcane Blast seems pretty lame from the description below, increase in mana cost? No thanks.

Requires Level 64
190 Mana30 yd range
2.5 sec cast
Blasts the target with energy, dealing 483 to 557 Arcane damage. Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the casting time is reduced while mana cost is increased. Effect stacks up to 5 times and lasts 8 sec.

Knowing that it stacks 5 times, effect is refreshed when casted again, and decreases cast time by .2 sec per cast and 40% increased mana per cast:

At 5 stacked, assuming +400 spell dmg (Our guild's mages average +dmg, just killed Nefarion a month ago and on Fankriss in AQ40)

1.5 sec cast with 570 mana for 2.5/3.5*400+((487+557)/2) = 807.7 dmg on average. Which equals 538.47 DPS and 1.415DPM

Doing the same math for Fireball rank 12:
3 sec cast for 410 mana for 3.5/3.5*400+((596+760)/2) = 1078 dmg avg. Which equals 359.33 DPS and 2.63DPM

And for Frostbolt rank 11:
2.5 sec cast for 290 mana for 3/3.5*.95*400+((515+555)/2) = 860.7 dmg avg. Which equals 344.3 DPS and 2.97 DPM.

And finally, the PVP spell, Scorch rank 7
1.5 sec cast for 150 mana for 1.5/3.5*400+(233+275)/2 = 346.3 dmg avg. Which equals 230.9 DPS and 2.31 DPM

Arcane Blast is DEFINATELY the burst DPS spell, better than scorch easily. How about over 5 casts?

Arcane Blast 1st:

2.5 sec cast with 190 mana for 2.5/3.5*400+((487+557)/2) = 807.7 dmg on average. Which equals 323.08DPS and 4.25DPM

2nd:

2.3 sec cast with 266 mana for 2.5/3.5*400+((487+557)/2) = 807.7
dmg on average. Which equals 351.17 DPS and 3.04 DPM

3rd: 2.1 sec cast - 384.6DPS, 2.36 DPM

4th: 1.9 sec cast - 425.1 DPS, 1.93 DPM

5th: 1.7 sec cast - 475.1 DPS, 1.64 DPM

6th: is the same as the 5 stack calculation above, which equals 538.47 DPS and 1.415DPM

This is in NO way a pro-arcane post, I am fire for life, but pvp and short battles where mana is no issue, arcane blast wins hands down. Once you get this rolling in PVP, you will have HUGE hits for only a 1.5 sec cast time.

Addendum:
I assume it rolls the timer back, much like ignite timers, since to get it stacked 5 times, you would need 2.5+2.3+2.1+1.9+1.7 = 10.5 sec until 5 stacked. This implies a continuous roll which allows for a continuous stream of 1.5 sec cast Arcane Blasts.

 

Maklar

You need to take into account the crit bonus of fire and frost vs arcane.

 

KalelScilla

IMO they just need to roll back the mana cost penalty a little, maybe... 25 or 30% per cast instead of 40. And when it hits 1.5 second cast time, it should be insta so it can be done on the run. Then heavy arcane would have a serious justification. Arcane power + this would drain your pool in no time flat - but you'd be guaranteed to flatten whomever you're targetting.

 

Falcon24

Also the +% damage modifiers that Frost and Fire get (and mana reduction talents/cast time reduction talents). A properly talented Frostbolt with only +400 damage is going to do something like 3.7 dpm and 364 dps. If you do a 30/21 Arc/Frost build and get Arcane Instability those numbers are higher still.

But yeah I agree with you, Arcane Blast is going to really be good for situations where you need quick burst dps and mana isn't an issue. Otherwise it's not worth using on a regular basis unless you're crazy. But it should still be a part of every mage's bag of tricks, and should reasonably replace Arcane Missiles (which I still think is a really crappy spell after levels 1-59, and the proposed Empowered AM is even dumber with an increased mana cost for increased damage).

EDIT: However in PvP I think that Ice Lance is a much better spell with its short cast time, cheap mana cost and large damage multiplier on frozen targets.

 

arch

Falcon, when you get paladins you will want to use AM on clearcasts since each wave of AM can proc Judgement of wisdom. It works great in encounters where maintaining mana while burning something down is important (phase 1 Thaddius for example).

I don't see myself using this with 50% critbonus and terrible DPM since I will have lots of crit by then and I rather use Scorch given this maths. We'll see how it end up.

 

Falcon24

True, I'm too used to running without Paladins. Raiding in the expansion will have a lot of interesting dynamics to it now.

 

Manabar

Woah, when did that change this or has it always been there and I'm just retarded? I had no idea that each tick of arcane missles proc'd judgment of wisdom. I guess maybe because the last time I used arcane missles in a raid I was still progressing on Sulfuron.. oh well.

 

Copernicus

Arcane Blast suffers greatly from any form of casting time delay. As a mage, you should know by now that there's always that little bit of delay from chaincasting. It comes because the order of operations of casting a spell is
Start Animation/Spell. Ssends message to server, lag here) Server starts casting spell. Server finishes casting spell. Sends message to caster, lag here. Player stops casting spell.

You can see this when the command to stop casting a spell by moving (to try to catch a clearcast) is missed even though the bar is still moving. Or when a player can start moving before a spell appears to finish, and then finishes the cast on the run. Because of this delay, Arcane Blast's burst potentiol compared to Fireball starts to diminish, to the point that a standard lag of 0.1 seconds will have Fireball equal to Arcane Blast's burst (assuming a deep fire spec).

I suspect Arcane will be mostly used for Frost builds which need the sudden burst in PvE. As others have said, Ice Lance has insane burst damage on anything that can be frozen. PvE, frost doesn't have much to ramp up their damage. Then again, there's the 9 seconds of ramping up to get to it and the prohibitive mana requirements... I suspect that Arcane Power and PoM is going to be the preferred way for Frost to burst.

BTW, some more numbers are at http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewt...hp?id=8155&p=5 for comparing specs.

 

• frmorrison

Each hit can proc it, however, you are losing dps over using your talented fire or frost spells, but do have that higher chance to gain more mana back. So there is a tradeoff to using AM.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

arch

The tradeoff doesn't matter in the scenario I mentioned.

It has not been around since launch, maybe 2-3 patches ago. It might even be mentioned in some of the patch notes.
Too bad that talent that gives 30% chance to crit on clearcast is out of reach for any viable single target fire build in expansion :(

 

Cagalli

You don't think this would be a viable single fire nuking build?

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=Ri0Vf0fzehotxgM0bzZ0h

Sure it's not upto the dps output of a 17/41/3 build mainly thanks to Molten Fury but it wouldn't get embrassed. If Slow was required for raiding and you wanted to try and keep rolling ignites going this wouldn't be too bad a build.

http://ctprofiles.net/37645

 

• frmorrison

Slow seems to be pretty powerful, but I wonder how it stacks with other slowing type spells. Your build seems to be decent enough, but maybe Arcane/Frost works better than Arcane/Fire.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Falcon24

The importance of Slow all depends on if it stacks with other such effects. With a 400ish mana cost I can't see constantly reapplying that every 15 seconds in a raid setting.

 

Jaerel

I think you divided the bonus from +dmg by 2 when you were doing your average damage for base scorch. 400 damage ought to add ~172 to your scorch, and with a 254 avg, you should be looking at ~426.

Also like you mentioned, getting a 5 stack on your arcane blast is no trivial timeframe. Unless you're sitting in the back lobbing bombs (which fireball is probably better suited for), I very much doubt that arcane blast is going to see much time in PvP, just because most fights are decided well before it's down to 1.5 second cast. Near as I can tell it's a high damage PvE option, for those whose specs don't kit out their fireball to serve that purpose better.

 

arch

I doubt I will ever use a PvE build that doesn't include Molten Fury.

I'll probably try this first: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent-bc=kf0VZxgMzrcIRgst0h for PvE, Blazing speed, burnout and Dragon's breath are optional but they can all (except burnout maybe) prove to be very useful in PvE aswell.

It's simply amazing to quickly burn down a boss when it reaches 20% with warriors and fire mages.

 

Sancus

Um.. you are aware that your crit rate will be LOWER at level 70 than at level 60, right? All crit% is changing to Crit Rating, and basically, it requires much more itemvalue on a level 70 item than it requires on a level 60 item to get 1% crit vs a level 70 mob.

1% crit on Naxx gear will turn to 14 Crit Rating, which will be worth much less than 1% crit on 70 mobs, maybe as low as 0.5% crit. Combine this with the fact that your Int requirement for crit% goes up as you level, and your crit% will spike downwards hard by level 70 until you gear up again.

And you can bet 100% that they are balancing level 70 gear so that it doesn't allow significantly higher crit rates than current gear, precisely to avoid anyone achieving high crit rates.

Sigh.. I really thought this board was above "dps math" posts that don't include crit rate, ESPECIALLY when you're dealing with 3 schools that have vastly different crit mechanisms. Come on. Your conclusions are improperly supported.

See Copernicus' referenced post above for how to do this properly.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

◊ Praetorian

It's still early -- I think that Arcane Blast should have the highest "sustained burst" potential over, say, 20 seconds, of any spell out there. If it doesn't due to crit rate or other factors, then I think the numbers should be tweaked until it does. If not, then it's hard to imagine what purpose a spell like this has. I like the idea of grossly inefficient mana dump that really does sacrifice DPM for DPS.

 

Tempestra

Arcane blast will be to frost mages as fireball is currently to fire mages - burst dps at the cost of lower DPM.

Problem is, fireball seems to be a lot better than arcane blast, and scorch seems to be similar to frostbolt.

Also, you have to take rolling ignites and crits into account (super-huge for fire - it's what takes a semi-frostbolt-equivilent scorch build and puts it over the top).

Personally I'll use something like 10/48/3 (depending on whether I'll want to take the +% vs. dazed in PvE) or 17/41/3 - 17/44/3 if I pvp for some odd reason.

 

KalelScilla

What does arcane missiles bring to the table? I agree the point of arcane blast seems to be a mana-inefficient burst nuke.. but it's not like there aren't virtually useless spells languishing already.

 

• Snowy

It remains to be seen if Slow will work on raid bosses too. If it does - yeah, the mana cost is daunting, but it's basically a "buy your own TF" in special situations. Think Maexxna before each web spray, and any boss that enrages. I can definitely see one or two mages being the "slow bitch" for that.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

Cagalli

Being the slow bitch wouldn't be to bad if the other 2 mages were also deep fire, will be able to help out with rolling ignites and keep up with them until molten fury comes into play.

http://ctprofiles.net/37645

 

Sancus

Trading crit for spell damage is inefficient, though. Due to the way the item formula works, additional spell damage is usually much more expensive than crit that is worth far more damage. So the problem is, it's not physically possible to trade crit for an equivalent amount of spell damage.

Crit simply gives you more bang for your buck at epic gear levels.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Sancus

Well the problem is the cap kills you there. And Fire/Frost benefit /equally/ from %hit, and all three cap at the same amount. So, you can trade off to %hit equally for each, and Fire/Frost still win because they get the additional benefit of %crit. Basically, the way the item formulas work, the more stats your gear spreads your damage potential over, the more damage you will do at the same item level. This is one of the reasons they're switching to Crit Rating btw, so that they can increase the cost of crit/hit at higher levels, as it will become too cheap and be completely broken.

As an extreme example, if you have an item with +80 damage on it, it is CHEAPER to add 1% crit and 1% hit than to add 8 more damage, even though that 1%crit and 1% hit probably add up to at least 20-30 damage worth. As an Arcane mage, you're going to be stuck with bad items like the Preceptor's Hat, an item with 51dmg on it, whereas the Fire/Frost mage is wearing stuff like Frostfire Circlet, with only 35 damage, but with 2% crit and 1% hit, each worth at least 10 damage to him.

Given that +dmg values will be even higher in the expansion, and thus(even considering crit rating), this problem will be even more pronounced, there is absolutely no feasible way to gear for pure +dmg. There's a reason that any decent min/maxer laughs at the morons who try to put together gear sets for the highest +dmg or the highest +crit. They are vastly outdamaged by well-rounded sets.

In any event, two damage stats(+dmg and %hit) cannot keep up with 3.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Copernicus

A fully ramped up Arcane Blast definently does more damage than pretty much anything. It's getting an effective bonus of 66.7% (2.5/1.5) over chaincasting a generic nuke. The issue is the mana cost and the ramp up.

The first step in Arcane Blast is casting the spell five times. It's obvious, but is something that needs to be taken into consideration. Over the initial ramp-up, the mage is getting an effective boost of 21.3% from the expected damage of chaincasting a spell. That compares very poorly with the boost that Improved Frostbolt plus Piercing Ice gives (20.8% before crits are counted). Improved Fireball by itself gives a 16.7% increase over expected damage. Fire Vulnerability, or even Ignite with a base crit of 10% or more, makes Fireball better than Arcane Blast's ramp up. So for the first 10.5 seconds of Arcane Blast spamming, the spell is doing worse than a typical mage's nuke.

Next, the largest problem with Arcane Blast is the mana cost. To get to the point where the spell is doing ridiculous damage, 1710 mana needs to be spent on the first five casts. After that, an additonal 570 mana is required for each cast. To use your example of bursting for 20 seconds, it will cost a mage 5130 mana. During more than half that time, the mage will be doing less damage than with their comparable favorite nuke.

As it is now, the mana cost just makes it so that I can't picture myself using the spell. If I ramp up before the burst damage phase, then my mana pool will be too small to maintain the actual burst for much longer than 15 seconds (5700 mana for 10 casts). If I rampup during the burst damage phase, then I'm spending 10.5 seconds doing worse damage than just chain Frostbolt or Fireball.

 

Aphyrax

The listed arcane blast is lvl 64. All the nukes we compare it to are 62. Thus, arcane blast is actually worse than all the math presented so far at equal spell levels.

I hope at least Blizzard learned and makes all nukes have a lvl 70 max rank.