Ok, I missed the two fights that you posted where you broke 1600. But, are you agreeing with Qbert it's overpowered? Even though the hunter still beat you on your highest dps fight, and both rogues within a hair of you? Or a rogue still beating you on the other fight you broke 1600?
Also, has anyone hit 1800 like he's saying? You are in better gear then most anyone else is going to be using for awhile and you're still 100dps shy of 1800 on your highest total.

My whole point was he is exaggerating the whole thing to make it sound like we're slaughtering everyone on damage now, and we're not. We're just hanging around with the other dps classes now. Whether the mechanics are completely intended as it stands is up for debate, but I think most of us believe the end result IS intended on blizzards part. Vontre's numbers suggesting all three specs hitting close to the same dps figures is very telling. That's a very huge coincidence that all three specs are hovering around 1600 after 2.3 in a simulation, assuming it's not intended.

Yeah that bug is kind of unrelated lol.

As for the rest of the mob I apparently stirred up; you're looking at this issue the wrong way. Rather than arguing that the MSD is fine because now AM is where you think it should be, you should be asking yourself whether you think that a strange behavior from a single meta gem causing a 15%+ boost to one spell is how you want your 'balancing factor' to be instituted. I never said anything about whether or not AM needs a buff, I'm simply pointing out the fact that the benefit to AM from the MSD is way too high for a single meta gem and the mechanics causing it can rapidly cause DPS to spiral out of control resulting in a massive nerf to the mechanics bringing you back to square one with gimp AM. It's better to stop the bleeding now and get fixed the right way.

If some meta gem bug were instituted in a patch causing OMG ROLLING IGNITES to return but in the end mage damage results were finally brought in line with other classes... would you think that the bug was intended? I should hope not and neither would I.

I'm simply saying that the ends don't justify the means.

You suck Rounced, that was rude!

Edit: To say something actually constructive - I disagree, I don't see why a build shouldn't shine particularly with a meta gem of that magnitude, meta gems and MSD in particular is a bit gimmicky and I honestly don't see the problem with it shining for AM. However that doesn't mean arcane is "fine" it just means it's viable under those circumstances and we'll have to live with that untill they figure out what they want arcane to be.

I ran it w/o MF and it lowered the DPS down around 50dps. It's still 120 or so DPS higher than Frost.

Well, you need to take a few things into account here. First, as I admitted in that post, I had an extremely laidback approach on DPS. I was not trying to push numbers. I don't even run DMs since my machine is quite laggy, and as such, I only saw the results AFTER the raid, which greatly surprised me, to say the least. My AM stopcasting could be somewhat roughly described as 'not using stopcasting' since I made the intentional choice of making sure I wouldn't clip the last bolt.

Second, rage winterchill was literally the first time I even attempted AM spam on a boss. Sure, it is easy as hell to do. However, I had no real 'real-life expenrience' about its mana expanditures, so I was playing somewhat extremely conservatively. Those numbers really make no justice to the hunters I am competing with that have many months+ experience with precise stopcasting and such. I did not attempt to maximize my APs or POMs. I only wanted to just do the fights, and see after the raid what kind of numbers to expect from a totally dry-uncut AM spam spec. I wanted to see if it was pushing decent numbers. Now I know it sadly beats the quare out of everything else I tried (which I believe is attribuable to 100% uninterruptible + low latency tax). While I did appreciate the occasional uber 1.5s AB spam DPS, it came very rarely. And if you follow the threads around in this forum, you know that AB is possibly bugged so that you don't get the increased casting time all the time, coupled with the fact that on my machine I would pay an extreme latency tax, it made AB spam very very unattractive, to the point where in almost every fight I did I was getting better results with firespec, which definately shouldn't be the case given extensive use of 1.5s AB spam. I even tried ros phase 1-2-3 with AM spam, and it came out better than AB spam, save phase 3, for obvious reasons. But again, the numbers for phase 3 were good enough that I wouldn't bother with AB spam.

Now heres a few things. My numbers have quite a number of suboptimal things in them. I believe the AM playstyle is much much easier to manage, and optimise upon. A few things I will try next time, which would give the spec rightfully the DPS it can do:

1- AP rotations:
focus -> AP -> AM
if clearcast during AP, then: POM -> pyroblast
if AP is dying out and clearcast have not procced, then go for POM-pyro at the last second.
(also: do not cast AM when AP is dying out. only cast if 3+ bolts get the AP bonus)

2- start dpsing much earlier. AM crits won't possibly pull aggro anyway, couple that with travel distance and 'originally slow-paced dps', it gives the opportunity to begin dps before the other casters/dpsers.

3- molten armor almost exclusively. I did not run into mana problems. I didn't even need SMP for the most part, although I did use them to be safe.

4- ugh, screw crusade trinket. I'll take my ashtongue and wear it proudly.

5- more agressive use of stopcasting (this is more a personal note, but well I want to stress that those numbers include very lax casting)

6- given that 'overflowing mana' seems somewhat not rare as a whole, I can definately see myself using destruction potions on AP.

7- 1.5s AB spam to finish the fight ? (note: I am not wearing 2pc t5, this need to be verified, although I don't know if that would really help much the results - particularly with the many spell haste gear).

Can those small play changes make up the remaining 100 dps ? Hard to tell. I know I can get 100 more dps with some luck, since focus procs are really streaky. I wouldn't be surprised to see the occasional uber AM spamming mage WWS just because he got lucky on focus procs.

I wouldn't answer the question about 'beating rogues and hunters and everyone' until I actually have some decent play experience with the spec. I can easily picture myself gaining an extra 50 dps in all the parses I posted by doing my 'normal stopcasting' rather than safe stopcasting. Then in most of those parses I was using mage armor in fear of running oom. There are lots of things I can improve upon to bring those numbers up. I know for a fact that I won't hold a candle to an azzinoth rogue, and that is pretty much it. 2500-2700 figures from twin blades isnt uncommon. I am not going to get anywhere close of that. Not that this matters really. I'll try and give some more interesting results next week as I give a real attempt at topping meters.

sorry...

I was just trying to be funny since the thread was getting a bit over the top for a bit there.

Qburt to be blunt, I really see the way the MSD is currently functioning as being a very simple fix to a VERY complex issue. It also is a VERY VERY fun solution to the issue so I really hope that it is intentional. If it's not then I really have no clue how they will fix the Arcane tree except by a complete overhaul of all it's talents to bring AM up the dps of Fire (when the damage tax is removed). That would probably require changing Spellpower to 50% more crit damage and 100% more crit damage for Arcane Spells at the very least which would completely unbalance Arcane Blast with the 2 piece bonus and yadda yadda yadda.

Much more mathematically minded people have shown that with the changes to MSD in regards to AM it now will scale and do similar dps to Deep Fire and Deep Frost (again once the damage tax is removed). Also since it makes it so that 2T5 will not be required to be Arcane spec, it seems to me that this change to the MSD is exactly what Blizzard intended (and Kudos to them for coming up with such an amazingly elegant and simple solution).

The only issue that I see has nothing to do with the MSD and that is that the Lightning Capacitor is scaling too well for a trinket from Karazhan and since (unlike the MSD) it depends on a great deal of randomness to actually get (and since no one will want to have to go back and run Karazhan 9000 times once Wrath is released) and lacking it will certainly hurt anyone who wants to spec Deep Arcane, I really see that getting a bit of a nerf soon. Should be pretty easy to implement one that doesn't completely devalue the trinket though, since even giving it a 1 second cooldown between acquisition of charges would lower its scaling to a proper level without disrupting it's use for other specs and for AoE.

The TLC problem is not unique, any trinket that features no stats and a no-cooldown proc will be ludicrous with AM. The only solution there is to balance them around AM (so they will suck for every other spell/class), or stick to combination passive stats/proc trinkets ala Shiffar's, Sextant, Eye of Mag etc. Aka change Lightning Capacitor to 40 passive damage + half damage on the procs.

Go take a look at Manly's parses and then run the numbers for the damage from the capacitor and realize it did 122dps of his damage on the Teron kill all by itself. Name me one other trinket that can add 122dps at his gear level. Ashtongue might be close but that's comparing a T6 trinket to a T4 one and the T4 is probably coming out ahead (ashtongue also causes him to use up his mana faster in exchange for the dps while TLC's additional dps is completely free).

or just add a small cooldown to the acquisition of charges so that AM can't give TLC more charges then is possible from anything else due to the speed at while the missiles are cast. Then it is still very good for Deep Arcane but not so unbalanced as to be the ideal trinket for Deep Arcane till T8+. Just a one second cooldown would be enough to fix the issue and to allow other trinkets to scale better then the TLC even with the new AM functionality.

Looking through our WWS logs from the past 2 nights of raids, two things come to mind:

1) The MSD meta proc combined with the Exalted Ashtongue trinket are contributing to a great deal of Arcane Missiles DPS.

2) Judgment of Wisdom is amazing for AM spam. On fights where we had 100% uptime on JOW it returned as much mana as a Shadow Priest did.


The overall arcane changes have also had the effect of placing mages firmly into the #2 slot for DPS, right under rogues. Our mages were sustaining 1400+ DPS on most fights, 1600+ on stationary ones, with one of them reaching 1933 on Teron, behind the rogues.

I never said it wasn't good. I said it didn't scale very well. It's going to do like 100+ dps on a tank & spank fight for a mage in SSC gear too. Just because it's really good. Not because oh my god he has t6 gear and all this other BT/Hyjal gear to make the trinket that much better. That's the only point I was making.

My Quick and Dirty question is : How viable is MSD AM spam to a mage just entering SSC and TK ?

We dont have a shadow priest in our guild anymore, 50% I"ll have a shammy in my group and JoW is almost never up.

What I don't understand is how any posts regarding whether or not MSD is behaving the way the devs intended, whether or not MSD disrupts class balances, or whether or not something like a metagem should philosophically be allowed to account for such a large portion of a class's dps are anything other than a complete waste of time. I fail to see how any of these topics are relevent to what this thread is about: making arcane spec work (i.e. comparing a 40+ pt arcane build to its alternatives, and min/maxing there on.) Did the devs intended for MSD to synergize so completely with these two trinkets? Maybe, maybe not. For what its worth I think its absurd to think that the current functionality is the result of some sort of oversight, seeing as it made its way through the ptr and into live. But the point is that a discussion on this topic adds nothing of value to the thread. If it is going to get changed, then it will get changed down the road, but talking about ifs is silly when the item is insane here and now. Please contribute to the discussion of how best to approach a 40+ pt build, and stop wasting thread space.

Thank you

Post Script: As a newcomer to these forums, I'd like to apologize if I'm overstepping my bounds by being so declarative in this post, but this thread has been very helpful up until now, and I hated to see it distilled by unconstructive killjoys ranting that the sky is falling.

Post Post Script: Also, comments on how an item would be better if it were designed another way (the discussion on lightning cap comes to mind here) seem similarly silly. The design space surrounding trinkets is something that I'm not sure people other than the game developers need be concerned with. The items are the way they are. Correct me if im wrong...

I did some quick and dirty Boom tests of Spellstrike vs T4 helm with MSD. We are starting SSC/TK (downed lurker and VR but need to solidify those kills) so I am definitely interested in whether AM spam is viable *before* 2pT5 as well as *after*. In my raidgroup I have a SP, and about 50% of the time an elem. shammy. We have a ret pally in the guild and are learning to keep JoW up (currently about 20% of the time but working on it).

For all tests I was in mage armor, dumped a full mana bar + mana emerald (about 11100 mana) and used AP on focus proc. for T4 and clearcast for spellstrike. I was also running CWS for spellsurge procs. 51 spellhit, 331 spellcrit, 1166 arcane damage.

Spellstrike

Test 1: 851dps 1:16.5 sec 65.2K damage
Test 2: 784dps 1:41.2 sec 79.5K damage
Test 3: 885dps 1:39.3 sec 88.0K damage
Test 4: 901dps 1:34.9 sec 85.6K damage

T4 with MSD

Test 1: 1005dps 56.8 sec 57.1K damage
Test 2: 1041dps 1:09.6 sec 72.5K damage
Test 3: 1076dps 1:04.2 sec 69.2K damage
Test 4: 1057dps 1:15.3 sec 79.7K damage

Obviously need to test longer to really tell what unsupported AM is capable of. The numbers for AMx1 ABx1 or ABx1 AMx2 are probably much better. But what I see here just what is predicted from the gear itself. MSD can give a significant dps boost, but there is no change in DPM because each cast is the same damage as not having it. Spellstrike bonus is to both dps and dpm.

No, I completely agree, and believe you're within your bounds. The argument of legitimacy is indeed a silly one, since a change of this magnitude is unlikely to have slipped by unnoticed. I'm sure it was reported dozens upon dozens of times on the test realm, and considering that it continues to work the way it does, it probably was intended. Again, it's not making mages do mind-blowing damage, and in my opinion, the extra bit of damage gain is worth the inherent difficulties of playing arcane (little movement, small range). All in all, nerf talks might as well be held off til a later date, because if it's broken and unintended, we're sure to hear about it from Blizz eventually when they want to get around to it.

As for the trinket design talk, I think they can help a bit in understanding the direction of arcane in the future as we outgrow these trinkets and move on to new gear setups in the expansion.

Also there's 10 new talents incomming, don't think we'll have a problem replacing TLC.

Working wonders for me.

On another note, I think mages are the only class that I've seen propose nerfs on themselves or cry that such and such mage item is overpowered.

So, we don't really WWS things anymore cause the games on farm but.. I am wowed by these results.

On Supremus, I beat the next closest person by over 90,000 damage. It was amazing. Everyone was like wtf? 1380 DPS.

On Gurtogg with zero JoW uptime I took 3rd just under 2 rogues. 1204 DPS.

On Teron I took 3 just under 2 rogues. 1756 DPS.

Then I got subbed out for RoS, but I can only imagine the absolute retardation that P2 will be with rune shield and 50k hp absorb with an uninterpretable nuke.

As I currently do not have The Lightning Capacitor, I was wondering what the best trinket would be for an Arcane spec (48/13/0) mage between:

Icon
Crusade
Sextant
Eye of Magtheridon
Ashtongue

Gear is 5/5 T5 and haste bracers.

I always wear the Sextant+Crusade but seem to think that I should be wearing Crusade+Eye for maximum +damage? Should I wear the ashtongue+crusade as I only have the haste bracers?

I'm not really sure

Thankyou in advance

As usual, on A'lar in fire-spec but last night I used TLC/Crusade for the first time and was amazed to see how much it upped my otherwise sucky dmg there. Now I'll just have to cash out the almost 1k gold(1x Living Ruby = 60-70g :S) to re-gem and re-enchant to try Arcane.
Seems others not at the top of the gear-chain also has it working more than "ok".

Looked you up Logun and it was like a mirror of myself gear-wise, that's really nice to see it's working for "us" aswell. Even better than full-fire perhaps(atm), and anything is welcome at this point.

Then I go read more here, just to make sure/convince myself this big cash-out and all this talk about bugs, TLC-nerf, Crusade just stopped me in my tracks and that this road is a sure way of shooting yourself in the foot. A hotfix tonight might screw up all of the items Arcane rests heavily upon now, and it really feels like going out on a limb with this. With Fire I'm "secure", Arcane will be something new and therefore uncharted territory where anything might happen.

The only reason I'd go this way is to top my own dmg-output in raids, and I'm more than willing to do as much as possible to improve myself, but atm I'm still abit in limbo due to all the factors (read gold) to consider :/

I also have near identical gear to Logun & company, and am now poised to jump on the bandwagon just to see the magic in action hehe. One thing that gives me pause, however, is the cut in stamina I'd be taking with the switch. I roughly calculated that subbing in Fathom Stone and the T4 headpiece instead of Flametongue and Spellstrike would result in a netloss of 32 stamina after regemming, which worries me a bit, especially since I'd be forced into closer combat with AM. Appreciative if anyone else can comment on their experience with the stamina loss, and how much of an impact it made. I know the answer is probably "depends", but some general anecdotal evidence would be interesting to hear about.

Wow Web Stats

(I were not in this raid)
Seriously - 200dps gain in this patch. Very noice.

Surely that's an increase in stamina of 32 by swapping in those pieces?