That is quite cool. I'm sending the link around to my Mages to have them take a look at it. Thanks.

Vontre: I mentioned it briefly a bit ago, but I think it got lost. Have you at any point done any calculations of Scorch ramp-up, and when/how many it becomes worth it on shorter fights? It seems like this somewhat depends on, for instance, if you have multiple fire mages or not--but there has to be some point where the time it takes to ramp up is too long to be worth it. Sadly, I don't know the inner voodoo of your spreadsheet quite well enough to figure out where that is yet.

Hey, I was doing some thinking and some programming and have two things to contribute to the spreadsheet, if you haven't already applied or decided to fully ignore them.

First, the Mark of Defiance proc is effectively a 150 mana regen proc with a 15 second internal cooldown and 15% proc rate. Thus, the easiest way to model it on an extended fight is to apply it to the mp5 section. 150 mana regen per 15 seconds, plus proc time, which is 6.66 spell hits on average, which can be determined based on talents and/or cycles or whatever. For myself, as an arcane mage, it's 150 mana per 25 seconds. The 25 seconds comes from 15 seconds of internal cooldown plus 1 second of leeway plus 9 seconds of average proc time, calculated from a ABx2 AMx1 cycle ( (2.5s + 2.2s + 5s) / (1 hit + 1 hit + 5 hits) ). For a fireball spam, it'd be closer to 34 seconds per proc. I hope it's not too hard to add to the sheet, if you haven't already, because I'd think 30 mp5 would have a big impact on many fights. BTW, the 15 second internal cooldown is from examination of my combat logs after spamming rank 1 scorch on a friend for a while. That's the closest it got, and I've never seen it proc within 15 seconds of another proc. I don't have a mod to keep track of it over a long period of time, though, so that's the best I can give you.

Second, I was writing a quick and dirty simulation for Combustion for fun and figured I'd share my findings. The easiest way I can think of to add it in would be as a flat bonus, like what was done with Molten Fury. The cooldown for combustion makes it slightly harder to work with, given that it is 3 minutes plus the time combust lasts, which is based on your crit rate. I'm not sure if it's linear, but you might be able to come up with a good approximation of the line I have for data points. Below are some data points, hopefully enough. The base crit rate is what the normal crit rate is, including gear and talents. The adjusted crit rate is the observed crit rate during combustion's effect. The average time is how long combustion would last. And the average crit bonus is the crit rate gained from combust multiplied by the percent uptime.

The base Crit rate was 0.2 and the adjusted Crit rate is 0.48728.
The average time per combust is 18.4699 and the average crit bonus is 0.0267346
The base Crit rate was 0.25 and the adjusted Crit rate is 0.516378.
The average time per combust is 17.4291 and the average crit bonus is 0.0235159
The base Crit rate was 0.3 and the adjusted Crit rate is 0.548141.
The average time per combust is 16.4191 and the average crit bonus is 0.0207427
The base Crit rate was 0.35 and the adjusted Crit rate is 0.58006.
The average time per combust is 15.5156 and the average crit bonus is 0.018257
The base Crit rate was 0.4 and the adjusted Crit rate is 0.61434.
The average time per combust is 14.6499 and the average crit bonus is 0.0161318
The base Crit rate was 0.45 and the adjusted Crit rate is 0.649407.
The average time per combust is 13.8588 and the average crit bonus is 0.0142554

As you can see, that ranges from 2.6% crit to 1.4% crit between a base crit rate of 20% and 45%. Of other interest, and not shown there exactly, the crit rate gained from combust is about equal to 35% of your non-crit rate ( .35 * ( 1 - baseCrit) ). It's a bit more variable than that, but is close enough to 35% in the region of 20% and 45% crit that anyone who cares will be close enough, since it isn't important info for the spreadsheet. I can give you more figures, if needed, but I think that's enough. Also, I ran this for 10000 combusts (easy since it's a simple program) for each crit rate.

I hope this is useful info to you.

Version 2.6 is out. In addition to a few fixes I added calculations for several trinket proc abilities, such as nexus horn, lightning capacitor, etc. New url for the download, www.radiationnow.net/wow/mage_dps.zip

For meta you don't want to use 12 damage meta or all helms with a meta socket will simply suck (for their Ilvl and effort needed to obtain them). You should always use the 5% chance for next spell to be cast in 1/2 time meat or not use a helm with a meta socket. It means gimping gems, but usually not even close to what you gain from the meta. While it provides no efficiency, it's 2.5% faster fireball casting on average, which to me with my gear is slightly over 50 spell damage in terms of DPS. Much better than 12, although you do need to reduce a few points of spell damage (how much depends on your setup) due to meta requirements of more blue than yellow gems.

It really depends on your spell. If you're just spamming 1 spell and ignoring all others, it's easy as hell to model:
1 in every 20 spells is 1/2 cast time (or 1.5s cast if it's limited by the GCD). Time to cast 20 spells is 19*castime+newcastime and the time it would've taken you to cast 20 spells is 20*castime. Speed increase equals old time / new time. For fireball it's 2.56...% and for frostbolt it's 2.04...% speed increase. Of course if you're using multiple spells that some don't get as much effect, it'll proportionally be used on both (if they're not instant) as just like timing clearcasts, lagX2+response time makes it impractical to stop your spell to cast another that would benefit from it and you're better off just finishing casting the spell even if it's a 1.5s AB that goes to 0.75 but is limited by 1.5s GCD and therefore gets no benefit.
Turning it to effective spell damage points is more complicated - you'll have to actually know how much spell damage you need to increase your DPS by 1%. For me that's 20.5 spell damage when fully potted and buffed for fireball.

I think the modeling of the Icon is wrong. The gear selector has a value which includes the use effect, but you also model the use effect in the calculations tab. I believe the appropriate fix is just to have the gear selector use the passive value.

Your excel powers are very strong, I have no idea how half of this stuff happens.

For the meta gem, would it work to modify "Frostbolt Cast Time" in the "Game Stats" tab? What would be the new value? 2.95

Edit: Yes, that gave her 18 dps which is what she said it would be anyway. So, I think that's right, thanks.

Appreciate the update, the trinket feature is good, but it's missing a couple I'm interested in, namely Darkmoon Card: Crusade and Mark of Defiance. I can emulate the effects of the former by just adding 80 +dmg, I guess, but... yea.

Might also be nice to see a premade 33/28 or 34/27 scorch build.. maybe that's what 43/18 is supposed to be, but I've never seen that one before.

There is an option to account for the 2 piece Tirisfal bonus (20% damage and mana increase on Arcane Blast), but what about the 4 piece Tempest bonus (5% damage increase on Frostbolt, Fireball, and Arcane Missiles)?

I'm an excel noob, can I just type stuff in to make my own rotation, I've been using:
Scorchx5 to start (obviously)

Fireballx2
Fireblast

repeat 3 times, then once:

fireball
scorch (to reapply buff)
fireball
fireblast

This is an extremely mana efficient rotation, but raid buffed and with a shadow priest I'm able to keep it up and fireblast's DPS is higher than fireball by an amount noticeable enough to warrant adding it to a rotation.

That rotation is generally what I use on DPS heavy encounters in 25 mans, where I can count on atleast 1 other mage to help keep scorch up, since the rotation cuts it a little close, an unlucky resist + bad reaction time can mean having to reapply 5 in a single mage situation. The disadvantage ofcourse it its short range, but on encounters where that makes a difference I generally stay away from this rotation and go back to fireball spam.

EDIT: neveremind, I figured it out, but wouldn't mind discussing said rotation. According to the spreadsheet I'm gaining over 50 DPS with the gear you have there.

With the builds being so close in T5 gear, I doubt losing either the set bonus or the stats on T6 (by sticking with T5), on top of gaining extra 5% frostbolt/fireball DPS (!!) would leave any point debating arcane vs fire. Unless the effects of intelect/crit difference are a lot greater and different than I though (which is very unlikely but I'll look into it when I have the time to see the breakpoint where arcane can be clearly better than fire if ever), fire should hands down be better than arcane with T6 gear.

Is the Shiffar's Nexus Horn being modeled on the old 15 seconds duration, or the newly fixed 10 second duration on the proc?