For wand phase should by good consider fact, that you wear spirit staff with/without spirit wand and you can regenerate mana a bit more quicky.

I've been running tests for a couple of hours last night when the server went down for another hotpatch.

In the new patchnotes: Mystical Skyfire Diamond proc will now be consumed by channeled spells.

So I logged on and confirmed it.
The focus proc is now consumed at the start of an AM cast.

too bad

Ah thats a shame there, but sort of to be expected. After all with JoW burn/wand/burn would have been quite sickening.

So is anything of the sort still viable (after all, all the change does is make it a bit longer before you can burn off your mana)?

Also in the case of using AM as a mana dumper instead of AB in the standard ABx3/AM/scorch build, how are you meant to swap out your headgear for the metagem once you want to burn your mana?

well, before the hotfix I could basically do up to 1000-1400dps (clearcast does the trick) rotations with rank6 AM + rank10 on clearcast while maintaining decent DPM. Good enough to use permanently.

After this hotfix this is no longer viable due to the lowered dps. Gonna try some AB/AM rotations to see what the new sweetspot could be for normal rotations.
ABx3 AM Scorch is a bitch to play with focus procs. Timing the proc is hard and often ends up in me wasting it on a scorch or breaking the rotation so I lose casting time.

Well, since overlapping procs while casting arcane missiles are more or less sure to be wasted, you're looking at a ~26.5% chance to proc MSD *at least once* Per wave assuming 6 chances per cast. So even though you probably won't be chaining it as much, you're still going to be casting ~1/4th of your Arcane missile casts at double speed. I would argue that since MSD is effectively 100% haste, that having it on 1/4th of your casts will translate almost directly to (on the average), a 25% increase in DPS and DPM. So you can probably just figure out your regular DPM/DPS with arcane missiles, increase that by 25% and call ask yourself if that's something you can sustain (and on the DPS front, is it worth doing if you can -- i.e. better than fire or better than a more traditional approach to arcane).

That isn't true for DPS, you forgot that the focused AM is cast twice as fast, so it only lasts half as long.
Napkin math for 1k/tick AM: 3 normal volleys and 1 hasted missile volley (25% hasted) makes 3*5s+1*2.5s= 17.5 cast time for 4 volleys, i.e. 4*5*1k damage in 17.5s = 1.143 DPS.
So, it's about a 14-15% DPS increase, not a 25% increase.

Still a great meta gem for a spell with low base stats.

rotation i'm planning to try. If i get a proc on an AM, i'll follow-up with another AM...otherwise:

AB1 AM AB2 AM AB3 AM Scorch restart

Anyone know if it's practical to fit a 5sAM 2.5sAM within the AB debuff? If so, one might end up with rotations like the following:

AB1 AM AB2 AM 2.5sAM AB3(ab1cost) ...

I'm afraid i'd need some passive haste to make it work.

The Clips I posted weren't with outstanding gear. Ex. Spellfire, Spellstrike legs, Gruul's sword, Season 2 helm. Cursades Deck. Didn't have anything out of SCC and above on and the LC still hasn't dropped.

Edit: Just found out about the nerf.

Gnome arcane mage in my guild has +15k I believe.

Hi All,

I'm a Mage on Stormreaver EU Alliance Called Nickolina. I originally considered an arcane spec when our guild Dark Ritual started to farm Al'ar and Hydromancer. I wanted a spec that would cater for all, do good dps and save me cash from constantly respec'ing.

After a bit of investigation I decided to go for 49/12/0, suss out a good spell rotation macro and learn Arcane. I'd previously been put off by anti Arcane posts on the Mage forums by other Mages pretty much righting it off.. But, I gave it a go and I was very impressed.

The main thing I really liked about it was complete control and manipulation of my mana bar. With previous specs my burst was restricted to just trinkets or Arcane Power, but with my new build I was able to dump excellent dps at the last minute, or dump early in longer encounters and evocate twice.

The good dps comes at a price though, and it's heavily reliant on having T5 set bonuses and grouped shadow priests / shamans in your party.. which is fair enough, most good raid leaders will be happy to consider the power of Arcane and place you in their party.. If they don't then convince them otherwise! If not your going to need to sink a lot of mana potions from the start.. and pray that your going to take a boss down first try! That said I've been ungrouped before without a Shadow Priest on Lurker and still come top on the dps metre.

Speaking of the damage metres I've managed to record quite a few wins; Karazhan (full run), Lurker, Leo the Blind, Astromancer, Sunstrider, Rage Winterchill and the boss after him I can't remember the name of hehe..

There's many bosses I can't win on and that's fine.. I haven't done much BT yet, but I assume there's a couple in there also. I generally hold back until I'm confident we are going to 1 shot a boss before I start knocking back the best mana pots as well, other wise I just gingerly knock back major mana pots instead.

I'm also quite sneaky with our druids.. and this is a good tip, chat to them and suss out whether or not they are happy to give you an early innervate. Early innervates often go untapped since normally people wont need them until well into an encounter.. popping early innervates is an excellent dps ramp. As soon as you have the 3 Arcane Blast debuffs pop your Arcane Power, Trinkets and your druid macro 'can I please have an innervate' and watch your dps fly! - Oh and don't tell the other Mages your getting them or they will all want one

All in all I've been very impressed with Arcane to be honest, disappointed with Fire and Frost, and I'm currently looking into the prospect or adding some spell haste to my gear template. I just hope Arcane remains strong in the future ^^

I don't have a problem with JoW being up 100% of the time with my guild on our current content in SSC. We have 2 Prot paly tanks and 1 retaradin that we let raid. This being said, wouldn't it be more efficient for me to use Rank 1 AM till I proc focus, then use Rank 3 and of course use Rank 10 if I CC? It seems to me that Rank 1 + Hasted Rank 3 would return more mana via JoW than wanding OFSR.

I can confirm that the 6 checks are still in.

I don't think that will work though because the check is run on the mana being used up?

Logun: Rank 1 Am has only 3 ticks, not 5. I suppose that makes it a lot less interestesting, although I have never checked out the DPM to be quite honest.

That's what the 6 checks are. 1 for the start of the cast where mana is used. And then 1 for each of the subsequent missiles. So, 6 checks per cast.

No Dedmon was suggesting that you try and cancel AM straight after the first check to fish for procs. Which will either not work, or consume all your mana (and defeat the point of fishing for procs in this way)

I am confused as to what you see the problem being. It works fine. You can cancel AM prior to the first bolt going off and fish for procs to make sure the extra check is still there. Maybe you don't understand what he's asking.

I think the disconnect here is that BrTarolg is assuming the "start casting, stop before the 1st missile, and cast again looking for procs" tactic is meant for use in real situations.
The idea behind it it to just TEST the theory that there's a chance to proc on the initial cast, in addition to missile hits. It's not being proposed as an actual combat tactic.

Woah woah woah

Ok my bad sorry. :P

Kadgar's idea is interesting though

It might be interesting, but now you have the problem of having abysmally bad DPS with AM. High DPM AM spam rotations are not needed when you probably won't go OOM anyway.

I was there testing it with Frostie. It still gets 6 checks.

There are no problems with casting rank 1 and jumping to cancel. It's a nice way to stack up Crusades Deck and fish for Focus and CC procs. Gives you something to do between pulls / attempts.