They HAVE had a while to change the way focus and channeled spells work. You're right. But until a couple days ago, focus was a 4 second buff. Barely worth changing IMO. Now it's a 10 second buff. Do you understand the reproccing synergy that AM causes with focus being a 10 second buff? I figured they'd let it slide when it was a 4 second buff. 10 second? No way.

And, Manly, do you understand HOW you blew through 12k mana in 40 seconds? It's because focus is bugged with channeled spells and they increased the buff duration to 10 seconds. That's the only reason. When they fix that, your 12k mana will extend another 50-60%. Coupled with the synergy you receive from group members and raid buffs/debuff, I am sure you can find a way to make it work without resorting to some crazy sub-optimal build.

I don't count on obvious and high profile bugs going live when they're beneficial. Only when they're detrimental. When it was 4 seconds, it wasn't very high profile imo. Now that it's 10 seconds, it is.


But, honestly, if I could turn my ENTIRE mana pool into one lump nuke (without pulling aggro) at, let's say, 8 dpm, I would. If I could run out of mana in 5 seconds that way, I'd do it. Why? Drop 100k damage, evocation, mana gem, pot, drop another 100k damage, wand outside of the FSR, drop another 100k damage, etc. People talk like running out of mana is a bad thing. It all depends on HOW you run out of mana. We're arcane mages. We're going to run out of mana. If we don't, we're doing something wrong. You just have to figure out how you're going to do it.

This might be an argument if there was no pvp in the game. I imagine that the combination of slow, counterspell, and AP during a MSD chain would be hard on a healer and they won't be happy about it.

I think you are overstating the DPM argument here a little though. You are burning through a lot of mana, but not necessarily at a low DPM rate - certainly not arcane blast type DPM. Currently on live, the DPM on AM is a bit lower than fireball, but not hugely so and with JOW up they are very close. With all the proc bonuses coming in 2.2, AM DPM will actually go up after the patch.

At the end of the fight though, if you finish with zero mana, then your total damage is going to be all about your DPM. Comparing AM to AB spam is not fair because the DPM is significantly different. Like you mentioned, haste then becomes less useful since it does not increase your DPM.

Mana management will be very important of course - there are some fights where it would make sense to ride a proc wave to very low mana mid-way through the fight and others where you would switch to higher DPM rotations to prevent that from happening. Not having direct control over your damage bursts is obviously a downside.

I still think it is questionable whether those rotations would be better DPM than downranked AM, but I admit the numbers supporting that are pretty shaky and would need to be proven once the patch goes live. Regardless of how that turns out, I think we both agree that a high DPM rotation will be needed in between procs and during stages of the fight where you cannot afford to run low on mana.

I know JOW uptime is very questionable at the moment, but if the benefits rise substantially post 2.2, then it will probably start being prioritized higher.

Quite a lot of fights are not that aggro sensitive though, or at least certain stages of them... you could really trivialize a lot of encounters.

Dumping all your mana in 1 second is good only if the DPM is good. Unfortunately, AM DPM is one of the worst possible. Do we really need to go in circle again here ? We both agree on the same thing. Problem is, you seem to think magically that AM DPM is sustenable while I keep saying over and over that its not. That's the only difference between us 2.

And yes, I assume that 10s MSD proc + AM not consuming focus will go live. I know currently AM spam is doable in 2.1, you can sustain the DPM simply because you will finish the fight without going OOM. Problem is, if you assume a permanent 2x casting speed, then you definately go OOM before you finish the fight under most cases, which goes directly against the 2 cycle theory.

EDIT: to astrik:
2.5s AB has unbeatable DPM. If you assume you go oom with 2.5s AM spam, then we both agree that only DPM matters. Given that 2.5s AB has unequivocally better DPM than AM, it means you have absolutely nothing to lose by using AB as part of your rotation. I don't think 2.5s AM spam is realistic as the only rotation to be used in a fight. If you think you can sustain the DPM in such a way that you don't go OOM before the fight is over, then yes its optimal. However, I assume that you won't do a lot more than 2min at most of 2.5s AM spam during any given fight (and this is even more crazy during bloodlust). This means that no matter how you cut it, since almost every fight lasts more than 2 min, you will inevitably need a 'high DPM' rotation at some point. Oh hey - we're back exactly at everything I said before. Again.

to anyone:
Prove me that you can sustain 2.5s AM spam. If you can, for how long? I don't care about how many arguments you want to throw at the problem. This is the only thing that matters. Can you sustain it for 3 min? If yes, if the fight for a boss lasts 3 min or less, it's optimal, we both agree there. If not, then I stand my point that 2.5s AM spam is not realistic as the only nuke, or in other words, is only to be used as mana dump over AB spam. Depending on how long you can sustain it, and depending on fight duration, the results will be the used trinkets/gear will change to optimize DPS at the cost of DPM. This means crusade->ashtongue on a 2min- fight for example.

The DPM is good, actually. I don't know what you're thinking. It's not 'THE BEST EVAR!@!!!!'. But it's not bad.

And sustainable or not is only a question of what bugs go live. That's it.

But honestly, I hope it does go live. I hope I burn my mana pool in 1 minute or whatever. I'd preffer it if enough bugs to live that it's NOT sustainable. That'll be pretty amazing. I'll even pick up wand spec for my regen time outside the FSR. Maybe I'll even get Bloodboil's wand for it.

I don't know why you're not excited about that prospect. I am.

Here are a couple of short clips I shot for people that arn't on the PTR.

Selfbuffed. Nothing fancy. Rank 10 spam, then Rank 3 with Rank 10 on CC.
AM2.wmv - FileFront.com

1st Part is me using Rank 3 with Rank 10 on CC, lucky procs.
For the 2nd part, I paided some retarded Paladins 4000g to try to keep JoW up. They managed it about 10% of the time. It's still neat to watch the procs when they do have it up. Got some Lucky back to back CC's here for some extreme DPS.
AM3.wmv - FileFront.com

Don't think I'm not excited on a 2000+ dps uninterruptible nuke, not to mention how crazy it is under bloodlust. Problem is, you're really overblowing this out of proportion. If you followed the thread you will notice I often called out arcane mage DPS because they assumed unrealistic things (ie: double innervates). I just want things to be estimated in a fair fashion; one that isn't an overblown theory cases that makes no sense whatsoever in the real world.

PS: I edited my previous post. You should read the edit. I think that the conversation is not heading up anywhere as long as we don't have any numbers to provide. Hard numbers or bust.

In terms of dueling surely, but in group PvP I still don't see this as a huge problem. Does anything scream "SILENCE OR INTERUPT ME NOW" more than a glowing rooted caster channeling spells at double speed that leave a trail back to their exact location?

I don't assume anything unrealistic. I assume things based on my experiences in raids. I don't expect innervates, I don't expect restro shamans to be rotated into my group for a mana tide chain or anything silly like that.

Looking at our Najentus kill yesterday, my AM was averaging about 7.9 dpm not counting TLC which would push that up further. That's not even counting JoW. JoW would have pushed that up to 10.3 DPM. And I'm still wearing t5. T6 would push that up even further.

On that same fight, a 4/5 t6 fire mage achieved 9.9 dpm with fireball. But that's not counting MoE. JoW would have pushed him up to 10.8 DPM.

That's about as specific as I can get. Clearly fireball wins the DPM contest but that was never in question.

I believe the length has been increased to 10s in 2.2, which would allow for a full AM channel.

I certainly can't do it, and this isn't a proof, more of a sketch but:

AM rank 8 (level 60, next rank level 63, .9714 downranking) 655 mana 1150 damage (losing 50 base dam off each missile vs max rank)

(655*1.06) * .9 - 185 = 440 mana (modeling clear cast as the .9 and JoW as the 185)
440/2.5 = 176 mana/sec

Two shadow priests doing 1100 dps:

1100 * .05 * 2 = 110 mana/sec

Chain super mana pots:

2400 / 120 = 20 mana/sec

For a total of:
176 - 110 - 20 = 46 mana/sec

11000/46 = 239 seconds or 3:59

It's a best case scenario as far as group composition and JoW but it's lacking stuff like BoW, gems, and evo, not to mention an alchemist's stone or the pendant trinket. Going down to rank 7 yields 382 mana per cast (formula as above), 153 mana/sec and .9285 on the +dam modifier. That's down into roughly the range of a 3AB->AM->S cycle which from memory is 750 m/5 or 150 mana/sec if you're getting no mana returns and no JoW.

The issue here is that good DPM does not simply translate into sustainability (because DPS has increased by such a large amount). For MSD + AM, the DPM is average, the DPS is very high, and obviously it is not sustainable. Just because it is not sustainable does not make it bad.

I understand the point you are trying to make when comparing it to AB spam, but I don't believe that is really the right way to think about it since the DPM of AM spam is higher over all and much more variable. You can use your procs to increase the effeciency of AM by a signficant amount. Clearcasts are the obvious example, but other +damage procs, TLC, etc also serve this purpose. Haste serves to increase your proc rates, you just have to balance it out with your DPM.

If you use AM as a mana dump at the end of the fight, you pass up on those opportunities to increase your DPM.

I do agree that you need a high DPM rotation in order to add sustainability... and I've always included AB in that.

Well it would seem that you really do need JoW up for this to work. Still, it may not be that bad because you dont need much JoW uptime before you can burn through your whole mana pool, and the times spent "wanding" don't neccesarily require JoW.

Would AM spam (and then AM3 when OOM or close to) be feasible with JoW up all the time then?

Not true due to +damage. Using no Regen, JoW, CC, or Crit modeling, and 1100 +dam:

Rank 10:
1320 + (1.86 * 1100) = 3366 damage, 784 mana (599), or 4.29 dpm (5.62)

Rank 9:
1200 + (1.86 * 1100) = 3246 damage, 726 mana (541), or 4.47 dpm (6.0)

Rank 8:
1150 + (1.86 * 1100) * (68/70) = 3137 damage, 694 mana (509), or 4.52 dpm (6.16)

Rank 7:
960 + (1.86 * 1100) * (65/70) = 2860 damage, 630 mana (445), or 4.54 dpm (6.43)

Obviously the real dpm will be higher due to debuffs/crits/etc, just pointing out the trend. If you start subtracting a fixed amount off (i.e. JoW) that amount becomes an increasingly large percent of the cost, causing a much more dramatic dpm boost, as shown in the numbers in parentheses which just have 185 subtracted off the cost.


Like I said, it's a rough sketch. I expect someone will make this work, but I really don't want to start doing more in depth analysis until this goes live.

Edit: add rough JoW estimation because just saying it'd make things better is a bit too hand-waving

Wanding is about the best DPM you can achieve. :p Just throwing that out there.

Wanding will get you over 300 dps. Now, I know 300 dps is laughable. BUT, not only does it cost you no mana, it actually gains you mana. You stay outside the FSR so you achieve full mana regen and actually generate a bit of mana if JoW is up. Further increasing the effective efficiency of your AM burns. Where it would really fail would be situations that you have to reactively cast spells. Like decursing or sheeping MCed people. Since you'll be on GCD perpetually while wanding.

Honestly, DPM is the only important statistic. Sustainability doesn't matter at all and AM spam being sustainable or not shouldn't even be a subject. DPS is good and more is better but we know the DPS is there so that's not an issue. DPM is the only really important thing. Everything else falls into place if the DPM is there. Which it is given a fairly normal raiding environment as I believe I've shown.

I hate wanding as much as the next guy. It makes me feel useless and feel like I've failed at managing my mana. But, seriously, this is a paradigm shift in mage raiding. Think big. Just because it's not what you've been training yourself to do doesn't mean it's bad.

I need to dig out this one post from one of the long time arcane mage that posted here comparing his rank 8 AM DPM to rank 10 AM DPM. It was essentially the same.

Maybe at level 80, [Wand of the Forgotten Star] is nowhere near that. In any case you'll probably want to switch to a faster wand. A 1.2 speed wand over a 1.5 wand will give you 30 more mp5 with JoW up.

Edit: for the highest dps wand you'd go with the bloodboil one, for a whopping 184 dps

Technically, a clearcast provides an oppurtunity to cast a rank 10 Arcane Missiles while spamming rank 8. Because of the timing of it, there's no penalty for choosing the next spell to cast based on the free mana cost during Arcane Missiles spam.

---

As far as expected cast time, with no other haste effects, Arcane Missiles' focus proc has about a 30% chance of falling off (0.95^24). Unfortunately, I have no idea how to figure out expected up time without a Motne Carlo test.

With 2 points for wand spec, curse of shadows, misery and your crit rate. Maybe sniping some improved shadow bolt charges. >_> But that's another discussion.

Here is what I assume.

I think 8k mana is a bit more in-line with 2pc t6. It is somewhere between 8k and 9k, I readily admit that. I know it won't really change numbers however.

However, if I learnt something about AM spam on PTR, its very very streaky, in a good way. Usually you do keep it rolling for a very very long time. I rarely had my focus proc 'roll off' with ashtongue. Maybe 15-20% of the time it would fall out on a 40s-ish spam duration. To be honest I count it mostly as a flat 2.5s flat AM spam, since thats pretty much what you get under most cases. I understand you gave it a 3.5s 'average' to take into account downtimes and times to 'get the ball rolling again'. I think if I had to give a good guesstimate number average it would be a bit below 3.5s average AM time (3.3s ?).

I think the next logical step is this:

Using the same numbers, how long in terms of seconds can you sustain it ? (give a case for both jow/no jow).
Then count the net effect that 2% passive spell haste will have on that (ie: 1 piece of passive spell haste with 15.7 haste rating = 1% would give approximately that much haste).
And finally, how much ashtongue (9.24%) would affect the DPS time ? I am unsure whether to model this as 9.24% or more like 8%. It is definately almost 100% up when you're under a focus proc.

I ask those questions because I believe they would best allow mages to model accurately what gear to wear on any given fight. If the fight lasts close to 3 min, you have no jow, you can see whether or not you're better off using ashtongue/tlc over crusade/tlc, since this is what it boils down to.

And for the truly dedicated: count the mana consumption / proc uptime of focus under bloodlust. The important question is: 'how much mana do I need to sustain AM spam for the duration of an entire bloodlust ?'

pendant of the violet eye adds another 6k mana. under the most pessimistic cost scenario this gives another 8.5 AM casts (28k dam), which out paces the 11k dam + wand dps you'd get with +80 dam from Crusade.

if you could get over 600 dps from your regen cycle, then they'd break even.

(not accounting for mana regen'd during the 30s of wanding)

I hope these are answers that we will get when the shadowpriest.com page is done.

re-link: SimulationCraft/Abusing Arcane Missles - Shadowpriest.com Wiki