stealthmoe

I've done a lot of reading on arcane blast and kinda sold on the PVE uses of it. I respec'd to 40/21/0 for some heroic 5mans and did notice that the spec is 'viable' but definitly not a ~10-20% above the other DPS. 3xAB/3xScorch spam is what i used and throwing fireblast occasionally when i have to move. The main question I have is when do I use arcane power? Should I use it during a set or set it aside for just scorch spam? Arcane power + arcane blast spam gg's my mana. OR Should i use the AP + Scorch spam + POM pyro at the end of AP?

 

◊ Kalman

All your questions and more are answered in the Mage Theorycrafting thread.

 

Phalanx

Depends on your playstyle, really. For trash mobs in Heroics, I like saving it for either 'Oh Shit' situations or when a certain mob needs to die quick. I don't ever cast AP by itself, it's always the AP/PoM/Crescent/Pyro macro, then I spam AB.

For 5-man bosses, I use it as an 'execute' mechanism. I dance around with AB/Scorch until it's time to dump my mana, hit the macro, then spam away. If I end up a boss fight with little to no mana as the mob dies, I feel I did my job.

For raid bosses, I like to get 2 or 3 uses of AP if I can. Depends on the length of the fight and aggro concerns in the beginning stages.

In general, I'd like to use it whenever it's up, but I always worry I won't have it for the 'Oh Shit' situations mentioned above.

YMMV.

 

Copernicus

1. I pop Arcane Power/Trinkets after two Arcane Blasts, so that I know I'll get through the rest of my rotation without any lag hurting my wrap-around Arcane Blast.

2. If you are only getting in three Scorches in for your rotation, your lag is probably too high for a solid AB rotation. Fireball spam suffers the least from lag, while Scorch/AB suffers the most.

3. The main advatange of an AB/Fire rotation that the 40/21 build uses is reduced aggro. The secondary advantage is the ability to really burst on certain fights (Heroics vs the super-hard hitters would be the best example). At medium levels of +dmg (500-800) it compares at a close level to a Fireball spam build (33/28 or 1?/4?/3). Past +800 damage, Fireball builds offer superior DPS plus the damage increase lets Fireball spam perform the same role for the hard hitting mobs or the DPS NOW fights.

 

• Maligne

On just about all trash I can sustain full AB spam. As long as you are on the ball about drinking ASAP after combat, you won't slow the group down. On pulls of 3 or more I switch to a ABx2 or 3, then Frostbolt twice.

On bosses it's really about looking at your mana and using what fits. If it's the beginning of the fight I'll use a ABx2/FrBx2 and keep that up for awhile. Once the fight starts wearing down you can afford to just spam AB for a little bit. It's very easy to adapt and that's where it really shines.

As for AP, I rarely use it on trash unless something needs to die fast. PoM I tend to save for when I forget about a sheep in a heroic and it's about to splatter me.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

Tempestra

Search functions are a beautiful thing.

If anything, you'll learn a lot in there aside from just arcane blast cycles.

 

stealthmoe

I definitly spent some time reading it. learning about arcane blast and cycles really opened my eyes to the "possibilities" of arcane blast and cycling, but ill be the judge when I use it next raid week. Definitly excited to see how it works out, but Im still very skeptic of the dmg vs. a 10/48/3'ish build since that seems to be the most popular build.

 

• Maligne

In his defense, the mage (or really any class) thread is very bloated and tends to go in circles. Yes, you can search and maybe find what you want, or you can ask a question on page 74; but having to read about the best leveling spec while you look for the response to your question about cycles is not ideal.

I think when it comes to the class mechanics forum people shouldn't feel hesitant to create new threads if the topic hasn't been discussed at length before. Even if it's been mentioned in an 80 page thread you can say "hey, that's a good topic and deserves it's own thread." It makes finding information easier with and without search.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

• Maligne

I don't think anyone is saying arcane is flat out better for "dmg vs. a 10/48/3ish build" because it's been proven otherwise time and again. Personally I'm a huge arcane fan because it allows me to remain competitive in both PVE and PVP. Frost is arguably the weakest in PVE, just as fire is in PVP. Arcane/Frost gives a little of both aspects, and it's a nice medium.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

Northerner

Although I am not personally a great fan of the AB cycles for other reasons (buried gleefully in the Mage thread) I do indeed love the dial-my-aggro aspect of having a -40% school available. Even with salvation I'm really very capable of lighting up the KTM on occasion and that's a bad thing.

 

◊ Vontre

Yeah the EJ board webmasters will cry at you for suggesting the search function =p.

Anyway, question 1, how the hell are you maintaining ABx3 Scorchx3? You should have to get 4 scorches in their, the only time I am able to use 3 scorches is for a 1x, super mana conservation cycle. You either have some seriously lag or you're not pressing buttons fast enough.

If it's the latter, that alone will make up the 10% loss of dps and then some.

I tend to use Arcane Power when I have AB ramped up. Why? Due to some funky math, AP only increases the mana cost of arcane blast by 30% of the base cost, which is around 65 mana. So arcane power dramatically increases efficiency of AB spam. Of course I finish off with a pom pyro when a clearcast comes up, or at the end.

I finally caved in to getting arcane potency as a "utility" aspect and I am LOVING this talent. As a flat dps modifier it sucks but it has so much potential for, among other things, mana conservation and crit-talent synergy. A few examples.

1. Fire Blast. I personally haven't theorycrafted this at all but it seems very powerful. If in my rotation I come upon a clearcast, I switch very quickly to zero-mana fireblast, that has a 55% chance to crit, with 245% additional damage on the crit. I think it makes up for the dps lost switching spells, and saves some mana in the process. I like this method for "ordinary" casting cycles on short bosses and trash.

2. Nightbane, the Nexus Horn, and Arcane Potency. Hrrrm. The way my guild does Nightbane (first kill last night, woot!), the fight takes about 10 minutes and involves spamming aoe on the skeletons during the flight parts. So basically, we are talking absolute, maximum, balls-to-the-walls mana conservation. Great. To top that off, I actually managed to pull agro on one attempt through burning soul and arcane subtlety, so I had to get switched to salvation instead of wisdom. I was told the tank was concentrating more on stance-dancing and surviving than a max-level agro lock (he was taking a fuckton of damage, so I believe it).

So here's what I did. JoW was up about half the time thanks to my awesome pally. During the times when JoW was up, I did arcane blastx1 scorchx3, but I stopped casting and used arcane missiles on clearcasts. With JoW proccing off every missile this was efficient enough to cause a net gain in mana used over time. Of course JoW was not up all the time, but mana pots/gems made up the difference there. Every aoe phase I was pretty much drained to nothing.

Ok, mana problem solved. Now the real beauty of it was that on those clearcasted missiles, each missile had about 45% chance to crit. Each individual missile crit also had a chance to proc the nexus horn. The proc was active an incredible amount of the fight.

Overall I finished with 470 dps (averaged over all previous wipes, so a bit low), finishing first in the group and beating out an affliction warlock. We had a dps warrior, but no rogue.

In this situation, being incredibly strapped for mana, I really felt the arcane build shine to its fullest. I only wish I'd had empowered arcane missiles, as that could've had a significant impact on the dps of my casting cycle.

But maybe we just suck, I dunno >.>

www.magegraf.com
www.magegraf.com/deathknight

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

Phalanx

We killed him for our first time last night, too. The fight is mana intensive for me, as well. I started out in the Shadow Priest's group which was great, but we made some group changes for the last two attempts so the healers could take advantage of Vampiric Touch (/sadface). So, I had an Alchemist make me up two Super Mana Potions.

I pretty much used my rotation the entire fight (3 AB/4 Scorch). Used my gems and both pots and ended the fight with 0 mana (popped my AP/PoM/Crescent/Pyro macro the last 25%). We assist-trained the skeletons, though. I wouldn't want to AoE there. But, that's probably different for each group.

 

Light4

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't ramping AB up with AB-AB-AB a total waste of mana due to the bug of debuff application? I mean, you get the debuff _after_ you start your next AB, thus you get _no_ cast-time reduction but are still charged the higher mana cost. _If_ you want/have to do AB-Sc cycles, you would be better off doing AB-Sc-AB-Sc-AB-Sc-Sc-Sc-Sc-AB-...
(replace the 4 Sc with 3 if you have really bad problems with lag and don't manage to hold the debuff stack up)
The advantages of different builds have been discussed at lenghts so I won't comment on your build or cast-sequence other than hinting you at the bug.

 

Pintofbrew

All this discussion is in the 2.4 thread. All possible fillers between AB have been discussed. Any theorycraft you're posing comparing 5mans to raids is particularly off-beat because Arcane more than any other spec is massively buff-dependent and extremely picky about time-frames. The longest boss on a 5-man is shorter than the shortest boss on a 35-man. Currently, there is no excuse to select a fire-based arcane spec rather than a frost-based one, because the effect of combining IV/AP/SCB/Hex/AB is so devastating it'll negate any puny benefit Pyro would grant. Not to mention frostbolt hit bug complements arcane much better and saves you talent points and semi-wasted gear points.

Ramping AB is irrelevant to it's debuff app: Kavan has proven that the lost time/mana gives such advantage that can be used later as more fully-ramped AB spam. If you gear for Int you'll find the question is utlimately futule anyhow, because this is only really a problem at the start of an encounter and at the start you'll be overflowing with mana quite badly until you ramp-up and dump a few max-debuff ABs.

The uniqueness of Arcane is that inaccuracies don't matter... They all can later be turned into more damage by more AB.

"Do no offend the chair leg of truth. It is wise and terrible. Continue."
-Spider Jerusalem

 

Alvira

Err, why is this thread being dug up? Its like more than one year old! (The OP was made in March 2007!) ... Arcane has changed so much since...

 

Light4

My bad... I just skimmed through the "similar threads" and didn't look at the post date, sorry for that.

Thanks Pintofbrew for clearing this up. I may have misunderstood the AB-ramp up quite a lot :/

 

• Relwin

Don't bump year old threads.