Let's look at it this way: If TLC=True -> Emp Arc Missiles, if TLC=False -> Ele Precise?
I'm almost positive I'd rather have emp missiles over ele precision if I can pick up a LC Thursday night ;D


On a slightly off-topic side note, does anyone else catch any: "You're arcane?! LOL Nub l2spec fire kthx"?

I was about to call BS on this, but then I tried it. Indeed, the GCD seens to be handled server-side. Although, you have to note that there is a lag between when you stop your first spell and the time you see that your spells enable back. It could be client-side lag, or server-side handled GCD.

Although I can understand people complaining about the GCD nerf; with that nerf you can't frostnova and silence since frostnova puts you in the GCD. or fireblast -> silence.

I have to admit I am kind of baffled, I am pretty sure it was working that way, although in retrospective I can easily remember doing kael'thas and cancelling a fireball to fireblast if thaladred switches target.

I've been deep arcane spec for raids lately and I've made a few observations.

- Damage is decent, but nothing spectacular. This is certainly due in part to the lack of Tier 5 for my mage, but it's certainly not far and away better than deep fire.

- While the new playstyle is sort of engaging at first, I found myself pretty bored on Al'ar today. AB a couple times, AM, move a bit if needed, pop AP AB Spam, PoM last AB for AP, back to rotation

I'm probably just going to go back to deep fire and respec arcane for Al'ar, it was fun for awhile, but got boring just like any other raid dps spec (Spam frostbolt, fireball or AB/AM, pick one).

Yes, I still think the greatest weakness of Arcane is its obvious dependence on the 2pc t5 bonus, and to create bonuses *so good* that they temporarily make specs worthwhile when they wouldn't normally be is very bad item design in general.

If Blizzard wants Arcane to be a viable raid spec, they should make a talent to increase AB damage and change the t5 2pc, not make a temporary set that is just going to have to be discarded eventually.

In fact, Empowered Arcane Missiles might be an interesting Talent to add a 7/14/20% bonus to Arcane Blast damage to.. either that or kill Prismatic Cloak.

The reason /stopcasting doesn't work is due to a well-known bug (at least for me as I notice it every other cast when using /stopcasting ;p): Whenever you stop casting a spell and start casting a new spell "fast enough" (I believe "fast enough" is any interval lower than your ping but not sure about that), your client will not show casting animation for that spell (although a bugged castbar WILL show so it still helps you time your next /stopcasting). Since your client doesn't think you're really casting anything, when you click /stopcasting it ignores it and doesn't bother telling the server to /stopcasting even though on the server you're casting. Trying to use /stopcasting in the middle of a "bugged" spell cast will not cancel the spell and will trigger a client-side global cooldown. The only way to cancel a "bugged" spell is to move, as it forces the server to cancel regardless of what your client thinks your character is doing. Note that this bug also has absolutely no effect on pure sustained DPS when your /stopcasting is timed properly.

I guess should probably map all my spells to "/stopcasting/cast spell (wait 0.1) /cast spell (wait 0.1) /cast spell" on my g15 and make that bug somewhat disappear. Or better yet, instead of doing /stopcasting i could replace it with a move forward. Gotta love the G15.

I've thought about doing something like this with my G15, but I'm 99% sure that putting waits into a macro is something that Blizzard heartily disapproves of and I'm willing to bet that Warden has no problem detecting the G15's loadout manager. I've refrained from stuff like this just because it would really suck to get banned for botting because I'm trying to overcome a flaw in Blizzard's game design.

Not that I have any solid info about it, but don't bliz catch/ban botters by trying to talk to them and seeing if they're there?
I know a couple people who AFKed in AV and had a GM whisper them but they just happened to be around and answered, and then he talked about something that was obviously not worth a GM's time unless he was really trying to "catch him botting".

But again I dunno what bliz really uses to catch botters etc or if it can get you banned for using G15...

As I pointed out many times, unattended play is what is worthy of ban. That means, if you do a macro that will make you level by essentially doing something like turning in circles while tab targetting and shooting mobs can very much get you banned.

If you do a google search on the matter you will see that it really is unattended play that they take offense at, not the g15 itself. As for 'macroing up' an anti-afk macro, I don't know if that fits their definition of unattended 'play' since typically unattended play includes some form of logic and automated play. If anything, I would have been banned months ago if the g15 was a bannable offense.
Google for 'Warden wow', and you shall be enlightened :P

I've been using a G15 for close to a year now, so the keyboard itself isn't offensive to Blizzard (hell, they coded support for the LCD into WoW after all) but the keyboard is abuseable. They've stated in the past that the lack of a wait command in the macro system and API is very intentional, so using something like the G15 or n52 to get around that is obviously not something they intend.... I'm not trying to be all doomsaying and stuff, but just saying that, for me at least, it's enough of a grey area that I'm not really willing to risk it.

Interesting, but doesn't seem to point at anything that can get you banned using a G-15 unless you automatically get banned for using one for anything, which we already know you don't. So it looks like it's safe to use any macros and not get banned.

However you can still get banned for AFKing in AV with no macro and no hack of any kind - proof being people that get GMs talk to them for no reason when they do it, answer the GMs, and both move on like nothing happened. I'm pretty sure that if they would've been AFK at the moment when the GM sent the whisper, they would get banned for AFK-botting even when it's not really a bot avoiding AFK, but a simple alarm cloak and a lazy player ;p

If only AV wasn't so frustrating...

While what you say is true, and I did try it a long time ago, what I was referring to is not what you are referring to. If you do a repeating macro that will do stopcasting/scorch every 1.56s, then yes, as I found out, works out poorly in practice. But if your macro is not a repeating macro, but rather, a macro that only does /stopcasting/cast/cast/cast, then you dont run into the problem you described.

Wow Web Stats

or

Wow Web Stats

18 Minute fight.

Without looking at the math I'm assuming that is correct since it feels right. But I do think you may find more utility in a build that has 3/3 Ele Precision as switching to fireballs for range/mana conservation tends to happen fairly often. But for me a lot of the appeal of an Arcane-heavy build is the fact that you're constantly re-evaluating the boss fight and your mana usage and switching your rotations around.


Not really. Occasionally from fire mages sporting terrible +spell hit with no threat management ability.

I was wondering though, how much worth it is -12 mana per cast? Considering we haven't gone past Magtheridon yet, the fights aren't that long, and I know how to conserve mana based on fight progress. The hit isn't an issue.

I don't get it, none of your parses show 18 min fights.... The longest is 12 min.

Ah yeah my bad I was looking at the DPS time, which shows 12min. Still, the difference is enormous between a 18min fight with 100% dps time and one with 70% dps time. I know as fire I typically finish kael with 30%+ mana left, evocation never used, and pot timers up. Needless to say, this is somewhat what irks me of fire. If only I could make good use of that extra mana.

Waaaay back in about March, when I was raiding with another guild for a while, I got a similar kind of response from the guild's top rogue. I then proceeded to stomp everyone on Gruul meters .

Mon 16 July, from 07:05 to 07:23
Split Kael'thas Sunstrider death (~10M dmg)

My dps time is 70% because I babysit the Sanguinar tank with the Mental Buff and I spam click it cause I dont want my guild master to yell at me hes scary

Man, I would take babysitting Sanguinar any day after the hell that was chasing Thaladred around. It's my first week switched over from arcane for most fights, and my presence is pretty damn abysmal at this point, so hopefully that will improve with time.

Arcane Logs
--------
Naj'entus, Solarian, VR, Kael
First 3 Hyjal
Al'ar

Fire on those bosses for comparison (except for Kaz'rogal)
----------
First 2 Hyjal
Al'ar, VR, Solarian
Kael
Naj'entus

As a side note, I'm freaking aweful at Naj'entus. Although I was pretty happy with this week doing it arcane without a shadow priest.

We've got a thread going on our realm forums where people "rate" your toon on the armory, based on gear/ spec.

I get this all the time, "I hope that's not your pve spec!" and "I bet they're not letting you raid" etc etc.

On rotations...

I currently normally use AB X 3, AM, Scorch, but on some extremely long fights and without a shadowpriest I'd have to resort to either AB X 2, AM, Scorch, or AB X 2, AM rank8, Scorch.

What's conventional wisdom on what rotation would be better DPS and DPM wise? is downranking AM ever a good idea? (AM rank 8 has vastly superior DPM)