Ok I will delete my post for now. I am confused. I doubt I would have had said such a statement. In any case I usually assume no JOW up.

A few detail to note:
1- If you do pure AM spam, due to arcane potency mechanics, you get +6% crit rather than +3% crit .
2- 4pc t6 changes numbers a lot. Lots of factors will come into play to favor one rotation over another.
3- the chosen talents and planned rotation will affect trinket choices as well as gearing decisions (ie: spell haste or not). It's not really immediate to compare [AM spam with 4pc t6 and ashtongue/TLC] to [2pc t5+2pc t6 with 3x AB AM scorch using crusade/TLC].

Yeah, I think I worded that poorly in my post and I certainly overstated crit rate on scorch. Thankfully I placed AB at 3% higher crit than AM which should be accurate, and the conclusion should hold up from there. (if anything it gets better due to damage loss from scorch resists, but not to a point of significance)

If anything you're more than correct to assume zero JoW uptime as that's probably where more raids lean toward. However, since JoW makes such a huge difference, it's something that every arcane mage should consider when choosing their higher dpm rotation.

For instance if you run in a low JoW uptime raid, AB cycling finishing with AB (or AM depending on MSD changes) spam is the way to go. If you're in a high uptime raid you might be better off with AM spam followed by AB spam (once again depending on MSD changes).

The other reason I have for advocating AM spam is that it's a hell of a lot easier, with an AB cycle (especially involving haste procs) if you screw up your rotation by either having too much filler (large loss in DPS) or too little filler (loss in dps due to having to cut ABs and a large loss in dpm).

Anyway

TLDR: Manly is correct, AB cycles are better dps (with MSD consume on AM), and better dpm, providing that JoW is not up.

At this point what really interests me is the scaling between the two cycle types.

Edit: Yeah pretty much Manly's point 3 from above. I also take too long to write up posts.

I suppose downranking AM to fish for procs looses a lot of its value now with the focus change as well.

After testing some stuff on the PTR, I've come to the conclusion that any proc based on spells casts/hits that uses "Apply Aura: Proc Trigger Spell" (as MSD does) can proc on each individual missile. This covers quite a bit more than just the MSD meta gem.

For instance:

The hyjal exalted caster ring (Band of the Eternal Sage - Items - World of Warcraft) Band of the Eternal Sage.

Each missile would have a 10% chance at proccing it. The buff lasts for 10 seconds, or 10 missiles, during which time there would be a .9^10 chance (34.8%) of no procs. From that, we can safely assume that AM spam, not factoring in double speed casts from MSD, should be able to keep this ring procced at least 66% of the time on average. If we take 66% of the 95 damage from the proc, we get 62.7, adding to the 34 damage already there, we can estimate that this ring will provide as much oomph with AM spam as a ring with +96.7 damage -- not to mention all the int/crit rating on the ring!

Using the same method to estimate "proc uptime":

The Robes from Nightbane become better than the Robes from Archimonde (85.3 damage and crit/spirit/int/stam!

Your dusty old Wrath of Cenarius (silithus quest reward) ring is suddenly worth +54.12 damage!

Spellstrike set bonus becomes worth ~36.9 damage (possibly making the spellstrike set better than higher ilvl alternatives)



Even more interesting to me, however, was the the effect of the new AM on some mana regenerating trinkets that function on spellcast. Specifically Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon (which may have an internal cooldown as Bangle of Endless Blessings does -- I couldn't find anyone who knew one way or the other) and Pendant of the Violet Eye (Pendant of the Violet Eye - Items - World of Warcraft) which could potentially be stacked up to 40 times with AM and meta gem!

Just from these few surprising bits, i think its somewhat likely that Blizzard will either reverse the AM change or give more procs internal cooldowns -- but I look forward to playing around with it etiher way.

Edit:
By the way, I did play around with Downranking on my PTR testing and found that Rank 3 (the first rank to have 5 missiles) was the sweet spot for me. By doing nothing but spamming rank 3 missiles with Full rank on clearcasts only I was able to sustain 500-600 DPS on Dr boom (and of course I was not raid buffed and he was not raid debuffed).

Obviously, even if buffs and raid debuffs pushed that up to 700 dps, that's not exactly *prime* raid dps -- but the significance was that with JoW up, it would have effecitively been "Free casts". That is, every scrap of regenned mana, everything from mana stream/BoW/shadow priest/potions/gems etc would have been mine to keep and only the mana from JoW would have been needed to sustain that casting indefinately. 600-700 dps sure beats the hell out of wanding (where you literally get whatever dps it says on the wand itself), although it would have been with only 45% mana regen instead of 100% that I'd get with wanding.

The robes from Nightbane have a hidden cooldown on them. Thus that will factor into it. However from what I've read the exalted hyjal ring, CC ring and Spellstrike don't so that will all be fine. However spellstrike means no mystical skyfire diamond, so one should take that into account.

Does anyone even have the exalted ring yet? :p

I can verify that it doesn't have a hidden cooldown, had it chainproc several times.

From earlier in the thread there was some tests on it. Would be interesting to know the veracity of said tests though, so if you can get it to proc more often than 50 seconds apart that would be good.

I did realise this, perhaps I worded it wrong ... I am putting out more them competitve DAMAGE compared to our Fire Mage (Fleamz) who does play his class well (though I probably out-gear him a little).

My arcane spec came out only slightly behind on Hydross, which is an AE fight which favours Fire Mages with stronger AE with BW+DB. Also, Hydross was immune to a great number of TLC proc's during half the fight (not that signifigant, but anyway).

On Lurker I was well ahead. I remember the last phase before we killed him I was the only one on my platform left alive so I sheeped the first one, stacked up my AB's then AP+PoM+Pyro and AB spammed. I killed both my adds, solo ... I don't think I could have done that with fire spec.

We have downed Al'ar three times now so I want to avoid the need to spend 100g per week on a respec which is why I want to try Arcane.


EDIT

Looking at the parses I wouldn't say he "crushed" you in damage. He was slighty higher but I think the spec is more then competitive and allows the freedom to not have to respec each week for Al'ar/Illidan etc (or sit out).

There is also something about the complexity of Arcane spec rotations that appeals to me over spamming fireball and the occasional scorch.

Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster.

I am looking forward to the changes in 2.2 with Arcane and got my Nightbane Robes all warmed up :-) Once I get 2t5 I am sure I will roll arcane.

However, currently I am 10/48/3 and I have a feeling I must be doing something wrong. I do the scorch x 5, fireball x 8 scorch spam, but it seems that my dps just cannot keep up with a lock that has about the same spell dmg, much lower crit and about the same +hit

Here is a recent wws parse that just amazes me

Wow Web Stats

I was 'quite' happy with my 967 dps, however, i then realize that I am almost 125k dmg behind the top dmg dealer. That is why i think I must be doing something wrong. The warlock has better gear no doubt, but not much at all. His sbolts hit for 3k+ and even full buffed with the +350 spl dmg spellsteal, my fireballs do not hit for 3000. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong here, cause it seems 3000 fireballs are very far away as I avg about 2100-2200 now while a lock can break 3000 easily.

Would I be better off as arcane to compete for that type of dps? or is waiting for 2t5 a must. I feel that I must be missing something... (besides +9 dmg gems!)

Thank you for your help

There are many many factors at work here - here are a few possibilities off the top of my head, after a very very quick scan of your WWS:

1) No CoE for you (-10% dmg) - although oddly CoS is only on one add? (if true you need to talk to your locks!)
2) 5 shadow damage dealers in the raid - 2 shadow priests giving an extra 10% shadow damage and 3 locks, at least one of whom was probably destro giving the extra 20% shadow damage on crit effect.
3) Given it's a multi-mob fight your locks can dot up multiple mobs at once.
4) If there is any significant movement required you will lose out to lock dots (I've never done the fight myself so I wouldn't know).

I imagine you are seeing 3k shadowbolts as a result of 2); Fireball and Shadowbolt have quite similar scaling for deep fire/destro builds so it's the extra priest and critical strike debuffs that will lead to that disparity.

Arcane before 2t5 is generally accepted to be significantly lower DPS than deep fire, as you can see by looking at some of the posts earlier in this thread.

I'll attempt to translate these into mp/5, apologies if my math here sucks: Pendant of the Violent Eye (ticks of 210+420+630+840)/120second use = 17.5 mp5. Darkmoon: Blue Dragon might do better but here's some guesstimation: 1000mana proc, 1 proc every 45s ~ 10 volleys w/ MSD (these seem like reasonable numbers) puts it at 22.2 mp/5; 30% less if using mage armor. I'd consider this lackluster from the perspective of a raiding mage =/.

I am very much looking forward to the changes comming down the pipe. Blizzard is actually going to give mages a way to start topping the damage meters the way I see it. However it will be for only 1 particular talent spec and you need to acquire certain pieces of gear to get the best results.

1. You will need to spec heavy arcane. Enough so you get empowered AM.
2. You will need to pick up as much haste gear as possible.
3. MSD with a 10 sec 50% cast will be OP and will get nerfed.
4. AM spamming mages will need to have adequate mana regen to sustain a heavy AM spam fight.


Think about a mage who has the MSD with the Ashtongue trinket, he/she will have amazing DPS. (Not to mention amazing mana burn) 50% cast speed coupled with 305 haste rating (Ashtongue proc + all haste gear possible) will be a 2 second AM cast of 5 ticks. (305/15.7 = 20%, 5 sec * .2 = 4 sec. 4 sec *.5 = 2 sec cast time) It will be possible to keep the procs up up a good percentage of the time as well. The trinket (5 sec proc time) and the MSD (10 sec proc time) will both have allow enough time to dish out 2 casts if you are on the ball with it.

So the real problem I see for a raiding mage with good haste rating and a MSD equiped is where do you get the mana return to sustain this awesome DPS? Do you swap out TLC for a mana returning trinket? From the calcualted mp/5 return rates, that doesn't look to promising or enough to make it viable. But what other options do we really have?

I actualy asked myself the same question, if this is sustainable? On this weeks Teron i did nothing but spammed AM (even on AP), due to some weird bug with my grp's shaman we had wrath and mana spring up ~50% of the time and Bloodlust just didnt work for us as seen in the parse(weirdest bug i've ever seen). JoW was up ~70% of the time.

Cecell - WWS

Having ~13k mana i never dropped below 11k. Zero mana pots used, zero gems, no evocation.

I feel (its just a feeling) that even if mana usage increased 100% on a 5-6min fight with pots and gems + evocation i wouldnt go oom.

So here is my vision for arcane post 2.2 - let me know if I am crazy

First of all, my basic premise is that standing at 30y trying to pull off an AB timing rotation that relies on split second casting windows is not really realistic on a great many fights. It looks great in a spreadsheet and kudos to anyone else that can pull it off, but its too fragile to me and not something I want my play based on.

Second, using a mix of arcane and fire seems counter-productive to me - those schools basically have a range/hit tradeoff between them and by mixing them you get the worst of both worlds. If I am arcane and casting fire spells, I might as well just go deep fire.

So we are really mostly left with abusing procs and AM as your primary nuke. Using the two spell rotation method...

DPM rotation: AM (Rank 3), AB
DPS rotation: AM (max rank), AB

The adaptive part is that anytime you receive a clearcast or focus proc in either rotation, you case a full rank AM. Thats it - nice and simple.

You will get the occasional "chained" ABs by default, but the rotation does not rely on these.

You can spam AB when Arcane Power is up, probably spam AM when heroism is up.

My equipment level is 2 piece T5, soon to be 4 piece. Trinkets are TLC + DMC. T6 level equipment is not available to me at this time.

Can someone confirm whether or not The Robes of the Elder Scribes have a hidden cooldown on the PTR?

I've read the 2 spell cycle theorem, and that just seems to prove that one should never use more than 2 spell cycles. It seems to me like in most cases, a single cycle is the best overall Damage per mana bar. In the case of one desiring to spam AM, would AM8 not offer the best balance, at:

11.49% less mana
2.86% less +dmg from gear (next rank is 63, so (62+6)/70)
30 less base damage per missile

Is this the correct math for downranking?

the tooltip says that only spells that cost mana will proc the trinket, when it is used, so would clearcasts negate the effect?

I'm not sure why everyone is kind of proclaiming that AM spam is the best thing ever. There's lots of misunderstanding here. Hell, I actually went and tested on the PTR, although the results are inconclusive due to bugs and 1000ms lag. 600 DPS with rank 3 AM ? Yeah, using 4pc t6 and pretty much optimum gear everywhere. I went in with my moderate gear (no 4pc t6) and its more like 450-500 on average if you count the fact that you don't get procs all that often. That was with 2pc t5 and 2pc t6, using minimal spell haste, and TLC/ashtongue. Maybe if you do something like switch to full rank AM on clearcast, then yes maybe you get those numbers, but regardless, I am saying 600dps is not very realistic or the norm.

I just don't understand why people make conclusions without even looking at the numbers. If you're gonna have perfect optimum AM spam gear, then compare with perfect optimum fire damage gear and you better be prepared for a huge jump in damage both sides.

Currently on the PTR, things aren't even working as they should. focus still lasts 4s, and AM still doesn't consume focus. The only thing that got fixed is that clearcast works, and spell haste ratios (which I have not confirmed, but I assume it works at 15.7). So yeah testing AM spam will give somewhat totally messed up results, not to speak that if you test with premade chars, you probably shouldn't expect to get that DPS (plus I really have no idea/interest in what the premade chars comes out with, but I assume there ain't much spell haste in there).

Since I can't even make sense of whether or not the DPS is good or not myself, despise having tried it firsthand and having ran simulations, I truly don't get how some people jump to conclusions. I'm not even sure if it's sustenable enough in an actual fight (ie: where you don't typically cast non-stop). Since the DPS seems to be there, and since I don't know for sure if the AM spam is somewhat decently sustenable or not, all I concluded was that you would do your normal AB rotations and then switch to AM spam rather than 1.5s AB spam. I didn't go further than that. It seems like where things should head towards, but things like AM consuming focus can really change those numbers.

As I said, I will give it a thorough and honest test when 2.2 comes out, and that we finally know how the hell MSD is meant to behave, and whether or not AM can/will proc 6 times MSD.

I think some should note that, whilst some of you are trying to conform to the "two cycle spell theorem" - that shouldn't always be the case.

The reason why is because the theorem takes certain variables to be static (such as the damage you can do with your spells, or the length of the fight, or the mana availiable to you). Whilst in most cases this does apply, there are some very notable cases where it does not.

For example, when you use arcane power, or any +damage trinket, all of a sudden the damage you can do with your spells increases, as well as the mana they cost (the same kind of variable as the mana availiable to you).
In which case, a bit of.. common sense and human intuition (I think) is used. So instead of using your regular spell cycle with arcane power, you instead switch to AB spamming and then PoM - Pyro at the end. Technically you could call this "AB + PoM pyro" as part of one of the cycles, but then youre talking about cycles which call for every spell to be known for lengths of 3 minutes or more.

Other examples are when you have to stop casting to move around, or when you receive certain buffs/debuffs which might change your casting speed, damage or mana cost (like bloodlust)

For the most part though, I don't think this is a particular problem with the ABx3 AM scorch rotations, because the only time you deviate is when you activate arcane power (for the most part.)

So remember that when AP or certain adaptive rotations come into play, the theorem no longer applies because the initial variables which are assumed to be static have changed.

As you said, this is pretty much common sense. Your best DPS cycle is CC -> AP -> pom/pyro -> AB spam, with the small problem that it has a 3min cooldown. I have never checked the DPM, but due to 2pc t5 and AP mechanics only increasing the base mana cost, I assume the DPM is not too bad. With this said, AP does not increase the DPM of any spells other than AB. It doesn't mean that despise the fact that the best way to use AP 'better DPM' is to use AB spam, it doesn't mean that you should always do pom/pyro -> AB spam when AP is up. The DPS theorem is done towards only one way - that is, maximizing DPM in such a way that at the end of the fight you have dealt optimum damage. If the DPM loss of AB spam with AP is too great then nothing in the theorem suggest you should do that. However, I doubt the total damage difference is big enough that it is worth seriously considering deviating from the norm, except in extreme mana strapped cases.

In any case, I don't really think it changes the theorem. The fact that it only applies every few seconds every 3 min makes it somewhat apart. It could* be your best 2nd cycle, if the rotation you normally use drains a lot of your mana, and all thats left is precise enough that AB spam fits optimally the curve, then it can be the best 2nd rotation.

Were you wedged up against the balcony? If the game can't "grow" your character, you won't get the bloodlust buff.

What really strikes me about your parse is just how massive a buff JoW is for AM spam.