Frostie

Logun, I can just imagine someone doing that while everyone else is drinking/rezzing and getting a lag spike. Letting a missile off and getting every very mad. That would be quite the scene.

And, Manly, I still think you're underestimating AM. Focus still procs... A LOT. The only real difference between now and when focus was 4 seconds is that you're never tempted to recast AM early to ruin your DPM in favor of DPS. Every AM channel still has a 27% chance to proc focus. Even focused procs have a 27% chance to reproc.

With my gear, on test, I am seeing about 1100 dps average. With self buffs, no raid buffs, no raid debuffs. Casting exclusively AM. That's pretty damn good imo. Easily rivaling a 10/48/3 build with similar gear progression. Sure it's not 1800 unbuffed dps. But this is something I actually expect to sustain.

 

kadgar

I don't suggest it as dmg rotation, with just JOW up, mage armor, arcane meditation and some spirit it actually regenerates mana. Even JOW not up, it needs nearly no mana and regenerates mana with a shadow priest in group while possibly waiting for evocation, innervate, mana pot and/or gem cooldowns.

It's more a emergency rotation if you got killed right after evocating and get battle rezzed or got a extrem mana burn like in mana toms heroic.
And i didn't do the maths how much dmg you can do with wanding and using an very mana efficient rotation in comparison.

However, as long as you have some mana you should do a more dmg oriented rotation.

There is not a problem cancel AM, but you cannot recast it before 1,5sec global cd is over, so there is no reason to cancel it before the first bolt.
At wich target do you cast it between pulls btw?

 

◊ manly

Frostie, do you realize that 1100 dps is really bad? Its about the same as any regular AB rotation, only it has far worse DPM. yes, even with TLC and whatnot. With JOW you might compete in the DPM department, but the numbers are just far too close to any fireball spam / AB rotation to be worth considering for other purposes than having a non-interruptible nuke (ie: teron?).

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Frostie

Completely lacking raid buffs and raid debuffs? I don't consider 1100 dps bad in the least. We're talking 1400ish (estimated) sustained raid dps prior to tier 6. I don't know what you're talking about. Those are VERY competitive numbers. I rarely see any mages in any guild with any level of gearing breaking 1400 dps on any fight unless it's a gimmick dps fight like essence of anger.

 

◊ manly

The day you stop pulling numbers out of nowhere and start looking at actual parses you'll notice that 1400 is not something impossible. Mage dps depends a lot on player skills. Also, to have high figures like 1400 dps, you depend a lot on bloodlust, and the only way to make your bloodlust pump the most your numbers is quick kill times - ie: high rdps.

Yesterday on teron I got over 1450. The previous week I had 1575 on rage, and so did fire spec. I don't get those numbers on gruul because ultimately the mechanics of the fight will make it hard to get that. Sure, I do run 2pc t6, but most of my gear is still t5 stuff / crafted. I should get pretty much the same dps if I had 4pc t5, which unfortunately I don't have since we stopped doing T5 content a while ago.

DPS will vary depending on fights. If you ever get 1400 dps on supremus, grats. I highly doubt you will be able to push good numbers with AM spam, or if you do, it will be the same as arcane or fire spec, at the cost of much worse DPM than either.

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• Snowy

Not to mention, did you have CoE for Teron? I know a lot of times our mages don't even get CoE, it's CoS and Recklessness.

Paladin: Pyla
Mage: Pylah

 

◊ manly

No, I did not get COE on teron. But to be quite honest I was spamming AB for almost 70% of the fight, so it would not have had affected it a lot.

COE on arcane/fire spec is like +4% dps at most :/

EDIT: with this said, I was pretty happy with my DPS on teron, even if it isn't stellar. I ended up the fight almost perfectly with 0 mana

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Frostie

I'm pulling numbers directly off WWS. Pick the top DPS kills for any given boss. Look at their mages. That's what I am basing my numbers on. Which should be blatantly obvious as I'm not in more than one guild. The rough estimate of my AM dps is based on general percent increases I see unbuffed vs in a raid and what I see on live vs what I see on test.

I also never said breaking 1400 dps was impossible. I said it was not common. Which is very accurate. Thus making anything close to that or exceeding that extremely competitive.

I am sure you'll figure out that AM spam is really quite viable and ditch your hybrid build idea in a month or so when the patch goes live.

 

◊ manly

Seeing that what I see so far is that AM's best-case-scenario is slightly-worse DPS and worse DPM than any AB rotation or fireball spam, I don't see that happening.

In any case, the high-end 44/17 or 43/18 build I linked that has only +4% to hit on arcane spells is able to do any AB and AM rotations while being able to switch to AM spam if needed. If I do a fight with no movement, with lots of cast interruptions (ie: teron) then yes I'll consider AM spam. It wouldn't go that much further than that.

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Evene

Anyone else a bit sad that 1400dps for a one spell, with one spec, with certain gear and a what may be a bug that won't go live with a meta gem generates this much excitement. Looking over a few WWS parses it's pretty obvious in general the class needs a buff most ones I see have mages as midrange dps at around the level of hybrid classes. Bit of complaining I know but I'm hard pressed to find parses where mages ever are ahead of hunters/locks/dps warriors/rogues.

 

◊ manly

Fear not, we are DPS KINGS ! No way in hell we lose at DPSing.
I think we're supposed to look at arcane spec AOE dps with TLC and arcane power to understand what blizzard really means.

In any case, in TBC beta fire mages were really really solid dps. 6% elemental precision. no 10% imp. fireball nerf. 30% molten fury. 20% emp fireball. It is a sad state of affair when you need to turn yourself to a spec that relies on a set bonus. Long term, I think fire spec should always be the best DPS spec, at the cost of gimp survivability (ie: talents like play with fire). Arcane would be the winner for short-term burst. Frost being the survivability build.

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◊ Vontre

Arcane was well ahead of fire before the set bonus, the bonus was made as a bandaid fix to scaling issues so that it could keep up at higher gear levels, because Mind Mastery blows.

That's all. =p

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Faxmonkey

1100 DPS with no Misery, No curse of shadows, no wrath of air, no consumables is acually VERY good. That'll translate into 1300 in a raid if not 1400. With better gear, maybe higher.

That would make it probably the highest output mage spec -- *IF* It's sustainable. I still have doubts about it.

I'd really like to see you link up some parses with mages doing 1400+ DPS on a non-aoe fight. Obviously Teron won't count if you're ghosted at all.

I've looked at lots of parses and I've just never seen it. Mages beating 1300 DPS seem to be incredibly rare (and probably luck-based) looking at lots of the "top dps" wws parses.

Edit: I just went through the top 10 highest DPS teron parses and the highest mage dps I saw was about 1375. Personally, if there's any spec that lets me *consistantly* sustain above 1400 dps, I'm very interested in it. That said, I have my doubts that AM spam, even with the change to focus procs, is sustainable.

 

◊ manly

teron - 1475dps - 3x AB, 2x fireball - no COE - clean execution. 1-2 stopcasted spells were lost due to spell interruptions, ended with near-0 mana.
Loading...

rage winterchill - 1575 dps - 3x AB, AM, scorch - near perfect execution, AP was not used optimally tho
(also, the same parse features stion as fire mage doing 1575 dps with no COE)
Loading...

rage winterchill - 1400 dps - 3x AB, AM, scorch - very poor execution on my part, ended the fight with lots of mana to spare
Wow Web Stats

anetheron - 1400 dps - 3x AB, 2x fireball - decent execution
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Aldric

Gorefiend - 1566 dps

Very impressive, admittedly destruction potions and probably flamecaps were used, he also didn't maintain the scorch stack. Results like that one aren't common, but they're out there.

 

◊ manly

Well, teron can be a bitch to use for modeling DPS. The problem is cast interruptions, which can be partially mitigated by snake traps, but even so, it tends to mess up a lot more arcane spec (AB has no preventions), whereas firespec has innate 70% prevention.

What really kills a mage DPS on teron, assuming you don't use 2pc T4 bonus, is stopcasting just as you get an interruption which cancels your entire spells. Its essentially 1-2% of your total DPS that you lose each time you fail to cast a fireball in this way.

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Aldric

We usually just bring a paladin into the mage group to use concentration aura, works with scorch as well and you don't have to gimp yourself.

 

Faxmonkey

There's also the fact that he's doing fireblast every time he can (dumping mana, not unlike an arcane mage spamming arcane blast on Shade of Akama) and only manages to get off 36 fireballs the whole time. In other words, he's got a very small sample size there which, in this particular instance, skews the DPS because his crit rate becomes 41%. I'm sure if you go look him up on armory he doesn't actually have a 41% Crit rate with fireball.

I'm really very skeptical that under normal circumstances he could sustain 1500 or even 1400 dps. I don't think this is a typical result.

 

Axira

You shouldn't be tbh.

Gorefiend seems to be one of the fights on which most classes are able to reach their top DPS-numbers. As 10/48/3 mage I've regulary reached near 1600 DPS on Gorefiend (too bad our WWS db is so messy that i can't find the parses after 30 minutes of searching.) And this was without using anything but an adepts elixir and spelldmg food, and also without using fire blast in my damage rotations, just the usual 8x fireball 1x scorch rotation.

Then again, that number isn't as impressive as it seems, considering other classes like warlocks seem to be easily able to hit 1700 DPS in that encounter and not to mention rogues who almost go over the 2100 DPS.

 

Alvira

I think 1100 DPS without raid buffs is great personally. I tested my own gear on Dr boom. With stopcast, just spamming AB only gets me 1300 DPS without raid buffs. And that is with AP activated during the spam.

1100 DPS is lower, but certainly I think it is much more sustainable. I remember that with AM spam, I could keep it up for a very long time surprisingly. And this was without raid buffs.

Actually, it might end up being a mix of AB and AM spam eventually. Some lucky mageys that might end up being placed into a group with a shammy and 2 shdow priests could probably spam AB almost the entire fight.

Others, who might not get into a shadow priest group would then rely on AM spam, assuming its possible to keep it up even without a shadow priest. And in other situations in between, then it will be periods of AM spam, followed by burst of AB spam combined with AP when you have excess mana.

I think AB spam would still be a key part of an arcane mage's arsenal. The reason being that sometimes, you just need to zerg, or you have excess mana and just need to use it all up quickly. And that's where AB spam comes in. AM spam could replace the ABx3, AM, etc rotations that we are currently forced to do as our "normal" rotations.

If AM spam is competitive with fireball spam in terms of DPS while being sustainable Mana wise. Then it would be the new workhorse spell of arcane and reduce some of the complexities of our rotations.

A fight could be more like follows: Say no threat issues.

1)Start off with AP supoprted AB spam until no mana, then gem, pot, and evoc straight away.
2) Start your AM spam. use pots and gems as required.

3) Just before final zerg. Depending on how much mana you still have. Unload the rest of it all in AB spam in the last stages of a boss fight.

 

Alvira

I have to disagree about 1100 dps being the same as any regular AB rotation. Arcane's rotations in general, no matter how you mix it, are always worse in terms of DPS than fireball spam. Only AB spam comes out on top. Even the often mentioned 3xAB,AM,scorch comes out worse than Fireball spam in terms of DPS.

So, if AM spam is competitive with fireball spam and can be sustained mana wise. Then what this means is that an arcane mage spamming AM can match a fire mage spamming fireball in terms of DPS. But with the key exception being that given excess mana, the same arcane mage can unload his/her excess mana off as AB spam to give an overall DPS that will be higher than a fire mages.

The key part of this would be how much excess mana you have to burn. If you have infinite mana, then AB the whole fight. If you don't have any excess mana, then even by AM spamming the whole fight, at least you are competitive with a fire mage.

 

◊ manly

Just warning you guys, the linked parse is a merged parse (not mine, the one for the fire mage). I have seen many many wrong merged parses, and I would bet hard cold cash that this is probably the case as well.

EDIT: I did check the parse, everything seems fine as far as the mage is concerned, but just be wary of merged logs.

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Alvira

One more thought. Those of us with the luxury of two good helms with meta slots to swop might actually consider having one with relentless and another with mystical.

So, in a fight where you dun have shadow priest support, or the mechanics is such that you can't spam AB much, and would instead rely mostly on AM. Then use the mystical skydiamond slotted helm.

In a AOE heavy fight, or a short fight, or a fight with heavy SP support such that you can spam AB, then you would be better off with the relentless earthstorm diamond slotted helm. Because the mystical skyfire diamond does absolutely nothing for AB spam.

 

Alvira

Erm, for the two rage winterchill fights. I noted use of POM, and AP in both fights, and Arcane blast accounts for more than 76% and 78% of your damage in both fights respectively.

I think the rage winterchill fight is a relatively short one. So your AP powoered AB spam takes up a fair portion of your damage. You only had 3 scorches in one fight and 4 in another. 4 rotations doesn't really make a very big sample size of the kind of DPS 3xAB,AM,scorch can achieve especially when it is mixed into AP powered AB spam.

I have always thought that ABx3, AM, scorch as a rotation loses out to fireball spam in DPS. It is only AB spam that allows an arcane mage to pull ahead. So, if AM spam is competitive to fireball spam in terms of DPS, while being sustainable mana wise, then it may become the new workhorse spell for arcane mages alongside AB spam.

 

◊ manly

Well, as I said many times, only 1.9s and 1.5s AB's will do better DPS than firespec DPS. However, what I did not say is that an arcane build such as 40/18/3 will do 245% damage on fireball crits (+RED if you have it). If you have very high-end gear, with hit cap on your fire spells, as well as a very solid crit rate (ie: 39%+ raid buffed counting elemental shaman), then you can start to 'compete' on fireball spam just because of arcane spec absurd fire crit dps scaling. So if you do 3x AB, 2x fireball rotation, you should be, in fact, beating firespec, or being really close to. Of course now, the comparisons are very very hard to do since the gear used isn't the same in both specs, but the idea remains that the most absurd scaling the mage has is fireball crit DPS under arcane spec. The biggest problem being of course that arcane spec fireball non-crit dps is pretty bad.

And yes, while I do agree that 3x AB, AM, scorch is worse DPS than firespec DPS, the point of that rotation seems very very lost by many players. That's your high DPM rotation. It's not even intended to be a DPS rotation in the first place. Firespec has no DPM rotation simply because it can sustain its highest DPS rotation for a ridiculous time. What I want this to get to, is that usually when I do a fight, like rage or teron, at least 50% of my time is spent casting arcane blast. I spend a very considerable amount of time AB-spamming. So yeah, I'm not like disagreeing with you that on a spreadsheet, looking at numbers, that 3x AB, AM, scorch rotation is worse DPS than firespec, in practice though, things are very different. With this said, if you play against very top notch fire mages even full time AB spam will get a good run for its money. Yes, I am talking about non-easily calculated things like bloodlust/flamecap/icon/destruction potion/combustion. Yes, they do have a big impact overall. Also, proper stopcasting will make or break a mage dps. Lots of other details aren't in the spreadsheets that I have been seeing 'in the real world'. The only thing that gets properly handled by spreadsheets is consumables used by arcane spec (mana pots/gems) whereas a real firespec would be using (destruction pot/flamecap). Under both cases tho, I do believe that icon is being 'misrepresented' since it is typically coupled with other cooldowns (bloodlust/combustion/molten fury).

So yeah ok, to come back to your point, I believe your idea is flawed because you view AM spam like some magically good DPM rotation, whereas I am pretty confident that in my mind it doesn't come close to being one. At least we both agree that AM spam is the DPM rotation.

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