How does the changes to the MSD affect fire builds?

The changes to the MSD are only really a significant buff in regards to AM. For Fire spec raid spam it has exactly the same effect after the patch as it does currently. Wasted if it occurs on the Fireball before a Scorch (since with /stopcasting you just wasted the proc) and a really nice dps boost if it occurs anywhere else in the cycle.

Sure will be nice not to be forced to use the proc instantly or lose it, especially if movement is involved in the encounter but I don't know how that would qualify as an insane buff for fire builds.

That is correct, multiple people have confirmed this on PTR. There was no significant buff included regarding fire or ice mages, except that the buff takes a little more time to expire so you can run around if you need to.

I need some advice. My guild has Lurker & VR on farm. We just started working on Hydross.
Until very recently I was full frost. I recently switched to 10/48/3. I have a set of Frozen Shadoweave and Spellfire. I was recently informed we are soon to start on A'lar. Other than the raiding I do, I do not have much time to farm instances for gear or badges, or arenas. I am a father and do not play until after my daughter is in bed for the evening. So limit possible gear advice around that. I am working on getting the darkmoon crusade trinkett. If you look at my gear I could be wearing different things. I wear Scryers Bloodgem and the Lightning Capacitor on bosses. I have both necklaces from Kara, belt of divine inspiration, and T4 gloves at my disposal as well as what I wear. I am willing to change any of my gems or enchants. Sunfire enchant goes on weapon tomorrow. I will always have s shadow priest(we have many) and a Paladin(wife is a Paladin who raids with me) judging wisdom. Now my questions.

Can Arcane spec(48/13) work for me without 2 piece T5 and my Spellifre set if I redo my gems to compensate for lack of stats?

If yes, what should I do with my gems and what should my boss spell rotation be?

If our guild is at this level of progression will fail miserably on A'lar( can we do this?) anyway and should I just wait for 2 piece T5?

I know I am asking for much effort. I can't really get Vontre's sheet to work for me( maybe my excel is too old) I am currently working on reading this entire thread. I am hoping someone very proficient in Arcane could help out. Thank you in advance from a busy father who wants to do the best he can for his fellow raiders with his limited resources.

Arcane is fine, spam arcane missiles and dump your remaining mana into blast spam at the end of the fight. Yes I'm serious. Don't bother with Darkmoon, just get an Icon of the Silver Crescent with heroic badges. Redo all your gems for spell damage, get a helm with a meta socket and put in Mystical Skyfire Diamond.

There, the short version. =p

If you mean putting red damage-gems everywhere I beg to differ. I don't think that's the way to go in endgame. You don't want a critrate below 25% - 30% with trinkets like [The Lightning Capacitor] and [Ashtongue Talisman of Insight]. Thus I'm trying to balance orange and purple gems as much as possible. Having in mind that most socket bonuses are ~5 spelldamage you won't lose a lot of spelldamage while keeping a decent amount of spellcrit. If I got that right the double-dipping of Arcane Potency for Arcane Missiles will be removed as well so it's even more important.

Only channeled spells will consume the 10 sec buff. Doesn't that mean that you can nuke with 3-4 fireballs for 10 secs, while the old MSD it only affected one spell and didn't give you the 10 sec buff?



Shawn,

You shouldn't focus on any other stats than spell dmg as we know the ratio at end lvl is aprox 1 spell = 1,8 crit rating.

And I would never ever stack crit rating around TLC when your main nuke as an arcane mage is AB (70%+ of your spells should be AB on an average fight). TLC is in my eyes HIGHLY overrated and most calculations made are created around the illusion that you stick to your 2(3) AB, AM, Scorch, which you never ever do-.-

In an average fight you will spam that AB keeping AMs to a minimum, which will severely diminish the effectiveness of your TLC.

The only way of doing real theorycrafting around TLC is analyzing WWS files, not basing the analysis of theoretical rotations which seems to be the case very often.

This is a common misconception regarding TLC.

I think rather it means channelled spells will also consume the debuff where currently this is not the case.

As of the 2.2.2 PTR the double dipping is working exactly as it used to. Doing rank 3 AM for about 1500 missiles I got a crit rate of 34%, 6% over my character sheet. So I would say that double dipping still works.

nope...what the guy above said, one proc=one spell cast whether it's channeled or cast. The buff to the gem is that Arcane Missiles gives 6 chances to proc it every 5 seconds and that if you get a proc on the initial start of an Arcane Missile channel you can allow it to complete now and still utilize the proc as opposed to being forced to interrupt your current channel to make use of it.

For Deep Fire the MSD is worth about 40dps. For Arcane Missile Spam it's looking to be worth about 150dps. That's why I'm looking at a 1AB 2AM rotation for a low mana consumption rotation and straight AB spam for the high consumption cycle.



I don't think that is going to be correct next patch. With or without 2T5, if you are using a MSD and a deep Arcane Spec, AM will be your primary nuke and AB will serve as either a mana burn or a mana conservation spell. I blew up Dr Boom a lot while the PTR was up and my dps from a 3AB AM Scorch was a lot lower then what I was seeing with a 1AB 2AM rotation and my DpM was a lot higher with the 1AB 2AM cycle as well.

Straight AB spam was still significantly higher dps then either rotation and even then straight AM spam but that really isn't sustainable over a normal fight. So it will end up being 1AB 2AM with AB spam when the mana is available to sustain it until the completion of the fight.

That presupposes 2T5, without 2T5 or with 4T6 you will be better of using straight AM spam if JoW is present and only using the 1AB 2AM rotation if JoW is not present. With JoW present straight AM spam is equal to the DpM seen with Fireball rotations (using mage armor on the arcane mage and molten on the fire mage) so it should be completely sustainable. With 2T5 you still use the 1AB 2AM rotation, even if JoW is present, so you have more mana available for AB spam as you get closer to the end of the fight since 2T5 gives unstacked AB the same dps as the Arcane Missiles.

Just to clarify the 1AB 2AM rotation is based on using AM for all procs/clearcasting and the AB is there just for it's DpM. So if you get a clearcast or a focus proc on the second AM you use a 3rd AM and then cast the AB after.

Sounds like an interesting theory. Have you tested it out on any specific bosses? "Boom" is the reason why so many analyzes are flawed, as no bosses in game work like that. However, it will be very interesting to find out if this may be the way to go (Will get a chance to test tomorrow

Only haste gear I have is one of the rings from BT. I was wearing my capacitor as well but those are the results I was getting. Well guess we shall all see what happens once people are able to try out all the rotations tonight under real raiding conditions.