I respecced Magic Absorbtion for the Mother Shahraz fight and was terribly disappointed. Even with cap resist, rarely do you get a complete resist that allows for Magic Absorption to proc. I think in 5 hours of attempts it procced something like 6 times and this was with 365 Shadow Resist.
That's six times ~600 Mana in one fight which is equal to two Super Mana Potions. How can this possibly disappoint you? The passive 10 resistance are nice to have as well.
I enjoyed the talent already on Kaz'Rogal and Azgalor. You're going to resist the Mark/Silence quite often with Mage Armor, Shadow Protection, MotW and maybe [Medallion of Karabor] making your mana management so much easier.
Another thing you forgot to mention, Manly:
How good Arcane will do compared to Fire is also a question of what the raid can offer to you. Our Warlocks for example tend to skip or "forget" Curse of Elements a lot while Curse of Shadows can be found on every trashmob. Deep Fire will also work a lot better the more Mages with Improved Scorch you have - another problem within my raid.
That's six times ~600 Mana in one fight which is equal to two Super Mana Potions. How can this possibly disappoint you? The passive 10 resistance are nice to have as well.
I enjoyed the talent already on Kaz'Rogal and Azgalor. You're going to resist the Mark/Silence quite often with Mage Armor, Shadow Protection, MotW and maybe [Medallion of Karabor] making your mana management so much easier.
Another thing you forgot to mention, Manly:
How good Arcane will do compared to Fire is also a question of what the raid can offer to you. Our Warlocks for example tend to skip or "forget" Curse of Elements a lot while Curse of Shadows can be found on every trashmob. Deep Fire will also work a lot better the more Mages with Improved Scorch you have - another problem within my raid.
Well to be honest for trash it does not matter (most of the time) and if your warlocks do so on boss encounters, they need the [Booterang].
I respecced deep arcane yesterday (43/18/0) and I must say, I'm pretty pleased with it. I only have 1 T5 item tho but it's really really fun to play at least. Ok, because it was my first raid day with this spec I ended up pretty low on dps, just above some hunters but I used the mid dps rotation: ab-ab-am-sc. In the end I had 80% mana left without any SP or shaman in my group or jow on the boss (void reaver) so the last 5% I could spam AB getting some nice crits
I really like my LTC because it's just guaranteed to proc 3 times on am when I get a clearcast.
While fire was boring me (spamming fireballs is boring yes) arcane seems very cool to me because you have to rotate and actually think about mana.
But wihtout 2/5 T5 you're not really getting anything out of being arcane...
As for full resists on non-binary, if you look at the official wow website, you can see that you need pretty high resistance to have a reasonable chance to fully resist. Yes it gives you more partial resists, but at very high resistance levels (aka cap) you have a reasonable chance to fully resist as well. Don't remember exactly how much off the top of my head though, but with capped resistance your damage gets reduced by 75% on average - sometimes 100% sometimes 50% and I think you still have some chance for 25% and like 1% to resist nothing.
As for full resists on non-binary, if you look at the official wow website, you can see that you need pretty high resistance to have a reasonable chance to fully resist. Yes it gives you more partial resists, but at very high resistance levels (aka cap) you have a reasonable chance to fully resist as well. Don't remember exactly how much off the top of my head though, but with capped resistance your damage gets reduced by 75% on average - sometimes 100% sometimes 50% and I think you still have some chance for 25% and like 1% to resist nothing.
If you don't have experimental results to back this statement it has zero value as existing reports indicate it is invalid.
It is widely accepted that the resistance needed to hit the same kinds of resistance against level 50 is 7/5 as much resistance. So the 250 there is like 350 against a 70 or 365 against 73. So with maxed resist as you can see there you have 25% chance of 100%/full resist, 55% chance of 75% damage, 16% chance for 50% damage, 3% chance of 25% damage and 1% chance of full damage. 0.55X0.25+0.16X0.5+0.03X0.75+0.01X1 = exactly 0.25, which means 75% damage is being reduced, which btw is also the cap for armor damage reduction afaik (although it doesn't really have anything to do with it other than blizzard liking capping damage reductions at 75%?).
While I don't have enough experimental data to prove anything, any kind of experience I've had both pre-BC (aka ragnaros, broodlord (with my rogue resisting blastwaves), vael and firemaw) and after BC (shadow resistance tanks tanking the pre-nerf first bosses of heroic arcatraz and mana tombs) aren't showing anything to make me thing it's not right.
You're welcome to test and tell me if you get something different, but I find blizzard's table plus what we already know of max resistances etc almost solid enough. And it's not like it's that hard to test it out if you're already doing a resistance encounter with capped resistance.
You're welcome to test and tell me if you get something different, but I find blizzard's table plus what we already know of max resistances etc almost solid enough. And it's not like it's that hard to test it out if you're already doing a resistance encounter with capped resistance.
As long as you are 10 48 3 you should just spam your fireball (9:1 fb:sc). Exception to the rule is, when you have mana left at the end of the fight, then you could spam AB....
That's six times ~600 Mana in one fight which is equal to two Super Mana Potions. How can this possibly disappoint you? The passive 10 resistance are nice to have as well.
Hmm, you have to try the fight. If you wear 365 sr (buffed), your spell damage is terribly low, so is your int (and hit, coincidentally). I am not sure you would get 600 mana with an extremely gimp mana pool. Not that it matters really.
I though you would get more full resist on her binary spells than that. I still think that objectively it doesnt gets any better than 40/18/3 for shahraz, although probably without magic absorption.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
That's six times ~600 Mana in one fight which is equal to two Super Mana Potions. How can this possibly disappoint you? The passive 10 resistance are nice to have as well.
You misunderstood me. 6 times over the course of 5 hours of attempts. Over the course of the night it saved me 2 Super Mana Potions. It definitely would be excellent for Kaz'rogal, but beyond that it doesn't have many uses.
Also for Mother Shahraz I would think that 33/28 would be better than 40/18/3 simply because you will never go into AB spam on that fight and your intellect is already rather low in craftables.
Well, to be quite honest, we had a frustrating 1% wipe on shahraz last night, and I think anything besides 10/48/3 would fare better for that fight (besides full frost specs, they would fare worse). Plus if I plan for illidan, I'll have to respec regardless.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Now that my guild has progressed a bit more extensively into 25mans, it's definately time for a respec out of 40/0/21. I was thinking along the lines of 44/17/0 since I can mooch Imp Scorch stacks off of the two 10/48/3 mages. My rotation would be: ABx(2/3) FBx2, AM on clearcast obviously. Does anything look immediately wrong with this build? I admit, I'm still learning arcane (I suppose we all are, to some extent.)
I had another question:
I'm using the following macro to cast AM on clearcasts,
I noticed that if clearcast procs and I've just begun to cast another spell, the GCD is still processing, and when I hit the macro, it stops the GCD but doesn't cast the AM volley, similar to a macro like this would:
/cast Arcane Power
/stopcasting
/use Icon of the Silver Crescent
Is there a way around this?
(Wasn't sure if there was a forum for Arcane Mage macros, search yielded nothing, should there be one? ^^)
You cannot casts spells (besides counterspell I believe, not sure on that one) if you're currently waiting on the GCD. No matter how you write your stopcast macro it will never begin to cast your spells as long as you live within the GCD.
Besides, as a side comment. "/stopcasting" does nothing on Arcane missiles. Try this for fun:
- 0.0s - /cast Arcane Missiles
- 0.0s - <1.5s GCD begins>
- 0.5s - "/stopcasting /cast scorch". Macro fails, spell is not ready.
- 1.5s - <GCD ends>
- 2.0s - "/stopcasting /cast scorch". Macro 'runs', but /stopcasting is never done. Neither is scorch. Arcane Missiles will continue to channel as normal.
I am not sure how you are supposed to 'stop' an Arcane Missile besides moving, or besides doing only /cast Arcane Missiles without preceding it with a /stopcasting, which should 'refresh' your Arcane Missile.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I was thinking along the lines of 44/17/0 since I can mooch Imp Scorch stacks off of the two 10/48/3 mages. My rotation would be: ABx(2/3) FBx2, AM on clearcast obviously. Does anything look immediately wrong with this build?
I'm not going to go over the math so I may be incorrect but just looking at your gear I would imagine you would get more utility out of putting the 3 points in Empowered Arc Missiles into Elemental Precision. You may be hiding a Lightning Capacitor someplace but without a Cap I can't recommend adding Arcane Missiles to your rotation and would suggest beefing up your fire damage a bit with the +hit from Ele Precision.
@Manly:
This is my quick example, and my problem,
- 0.0s My first Arcane Blast hits
- 0.5s I've begun casting another Arcane Blast, but I notice Clearcasting has procced
- 0.5s <GCD begins>
- 1.0s I hit my AM macro which is intending to stop my casting of the second AB, BUT the GCD is still ticking, AM fails
Do I need to wait for the GCD no matter what? That seems like 0.5s of twiddling my thumbs, and therefore a (if somewhat negligible) dps loss.
@Rudi:
No, sadly no TLC here :\ I have some hit gear I could scrounge up though (2pc mana etched). With my mana pool (~12k raid buffed) perhaps the -3% mana cost would help as well.
@Manly:
This is my quick example, and my problem,
- 0.0s My first Arcane Blast hits
- 0.5s I've begun casting another Arcane Blast, but I notice Clearcasting has procced
- 0.5s <GCD begins>
- 1.0s I hit my AM macro which is intending to stop my casting of the second AB, BUT the GCD is still ticking, AM fails
Do I need to wait for the GCD no matter what? That seems like 0.5s of twiddling my thumbs, and therefore a (if somewhat negligible) dps loss.
/facepalm
I don't know what to say. You answered your own question. As soon as you begin casting a spell, your GCD will start, on the client-side. From that point on, for 1.5 seconds, every single one of the next spells you cast within that 1.5s window will fail and give you 'spell is not ready'. It has no relation whether or not you stop your current spell. Beginning a spell cast will make your client side unable to cast spells for 1.5s. The only way you could work around it, barring playing with the memory of wow (hi softice users), is increasing the clock speed of windows, so that the game will 'allow' you to cast before a real 1.5s is done casting. If you do play with your windows dlls to change the speed at which the time is being returned by windows, you can expect to get in trouble. But I gave that as an example of how it is done internally.
/stopcasting will not make you 'dodge' the GCD. All it will do is stop the spell youre casting. The following cast in your macro will still be subject to how the GCD works.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Do I need to wait for the GCD no matter what? That seems like 0.5s of twiddling my thumbs, and therefore a (if somewhat negligible) dps loss.
Yepp, that's why reaction on procs (AM on clearcasts, Pyroblast on Netherwind proc, etc.) isn't suitable if you're maximising your DPS in DPS race situation.
You'll always lose that one GCD from the spell you interrupted.
AM on clearcasts is nearly DPS neutral and a mana saver (+30% crit chance on it, and it takes 30% longer to cast (5s cast + 1.5s GDC lost). Okay, it's a damage loss since the spell you interruptep would have had the +30% crit anyway, but AM is a long cast and gets more damage from that crit bonus in one case. But that#s splitting hairs, it's an immediate DPS loss, but you save mana, so you can burn more mana in the end.
@Rudi:
No, sadly no TLC here :\ I have some hit gear I could scrounge up though (2pc mana etched). With my mana pool (~12k raid buffed) perhaps the -3% mana cost would help as well.
Well you're basically only going to be worrying about rotating AB and Fireball on boss fights and Fireball will constitute a significant amount of your damage so I think it's a very good idea. Balancing how much +hit you take to help out your fire damage is kind of up to you.
Part of me thinks it might be worthwhile to only take 2/5 Arcane Focus along with the 3/3 Ele Precision so that when you stack +hit you get benefit for both fire and arcane... but I cringe at the thought of taking Improved Magic Missiles. I suppose 3/5 Arc Focus and 2/5 Magic Absorption would be more reasonable, though you're still 'wasting' 1.5 talent points in Arc Focus (assuming that you +hit cap for fire).
@Manly:
I understand what you're saying in your post, my question was: Can I dodge the GCD in any way? The answer to this is no. I didn't know if there was any way around this, being none, I have to redo my macro. Roywyn said it best: "That's why reaction on procs isn't suitable if you're maximising your DPS in DPS race situation." In I.W.I.N. macros I've always seen /stopcasting after Arcane Power/PoM/etc, which I assumed was to cheat the GCD and get the instant cast spell off (via PoM). I was under the misconception that this applied to spell casts that physically invoked the GCD. My bad.
@Manly:
I understand what you're saying in your post, my question was: Can I dodge the GCD in any way? The answer to this is no. I didn't know if there was any way around this, being none, I have to redo my macro. Roywyn said it best: "That's why reaction on procs isn't suitable if you're maximising your DPS in DPS race situation." In I.W.I.N. macros I've always seen /stopcasting after Arcane Power/PoM/etc, which I assumed was to cheat the GCD and get the instant cast spell off (via PoM). I was under the misconception that this applied to spell casts that physically invoked the GCD. My bad.
I'm learning :\
Admitedly it did came off as rude, crappy day at work.
Well, if you're a proud owner of a G15 keyboard (I sure am), then you would be pleased to learn that you can do a g15 macro that can do essentially
which would 'dodge' the GCD by forcing your spell to be casted.
Furthermore, I hearthily recommend you enable the option in quartz to display the GCD. It could avoid stopcasting at the wrong time
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Crappy day at work: We've all been there.
And some of my statements were pretty dumbass :P
I'm not great at the hardcore numbers part of theorycrafting, hence my coming here for discussion.
I'm going to go tweak with Quartz, I haven't picked it up since patch, and I know there's no reason not to, I had been using the cast bars on AG_UF.
I also just got a g15 2 weeks ago, and didn't know it had that much functionality O.o
Yay technology.
As soon as you begin casting a spell, your GCD will start, on the client-side. From that point on, for 1.5 seconds, every single one of the next spells you cast within that 1.5s window will fail and give you 'spell is not ready'. It has no relation whether or not you stop your current spell.
As far as I can tell, this is absolutely false. Try it. I just did, 5 seconds ago. Start casting Flame Strike, see the GCD -- move. Spell stops casting and gcd indicator disappears from all buttons.
Try doing this and immediately casting Arcane Explosion. It seems to work just fine. This is why I always felt the "CS is now on GCD" nerf from way back was never as big of a deal as people thought, because if you are casting a spell and then cancel it, GCD is cleared as well.
<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl
07/17/07, 7:00 AM
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