At least part of me hopes it never works out though! Internet gold like Zumas' post only comes along so often after all.

We really do need a summary post.. Version 2.0 of the thread, with a summary post to begin, would be excellt.

Would someone kindly point me in the direction(page range) where you guys discuss 40/18/3 over 48/13/0? If this is an idiotic post, please disregard it.

A good new-version-update milestone might be major content patches. Major threads like this seem to put on 25-50 pages in between, and you can bet that's when the highest number of people are coming here going "OMG WTF CHANGED!?!" Of course, this is the search tool.

I can't link you to the page, I would think however that the 40 18 3 spec will be more viable in 2.3 with the coefficient changes, I could be wrong though. The biggest difference between those 2 builds as I see it is your focus on fireball spamming and AB with 2 set tier5 (the 40 18 3 spec) compared to the AM spamming PoM Pyro spec that is 48 13 or 50 11, so basically the difference between arc/fire with using AB or AM since you can't viably use AM in the 40 18 3 spec. Hope that helps.

Yes I know this. But when exactly(gear/progression wise) would it be optimal to switch to this spec, if it is at all better than 48/13/0.

Again, if this has already been covered, then my bad and I will search for the information.

There is nothing at our current point of progression that makes me confident in switching from deep fire to arcane except for versatility (aka not reading respecs and so forth) and mana-dump via AB. I have purposly avoided 2set T5 though I'm going to pickup a pair of t5 pants or gloves whenever they are almost free just to have it. Though haste-gear with MSD and in a future far, far away with 4p t6 looks like a whole lot of Arcane missile fun, I just don't see fire ever becoming the underdog. Might have to eat those words one day None the less from our raids the only time we've had arcane mages outdamage me is on trash so.

As long as you can get LHC and MSD up, you can run arcane missle spam at any gear level assuming you get the regen backup from JoW AND Shadow priests

I couldn't agree more. Looking at the date the thread started, it doesn't take a genius to realise that posts made 6 months back are perhaps a little irrelevant to the state of magery today. So many changes in talents, gear, encounters commonly faced, group setup and a lot more have changed in the last month alone.


Any mage starting to read from page one probably has lost the plot. The last 6-8 pages of either this post or the TBC theorycraft page are enough. Immature ignorant behaviour has no place in this haven of good discussion. Covering one's ignorance with emo behaviour like "I wish I could meet each and every one of you" etc etc is pretty pathetic. Particularly coming from a mage who 1) came to this forum to get information 2) ignored the rules 3) got it 4) was rude about it.

3 mages in our guild run full-out AM spam rotations.

The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory
The World of Warcraft Armory

Usually Terra and myself place top 2, depending on the fight. He always beats me though, cause I still don't have a damn TLC.

edit, yeah even without TLC I can still do very competitive damage.

Do you have any WWS so I can see what you're doing?

Edit; also, what kind of DPS do you put out typically?

Having less than perfect confidence in my math skills, I ran a simulation to determine Ashtongue (ATI) uptime. Here are the results:

CRIT%/ UPTIME%

15% 49.250%
20% 57.792%
25% 65.048%
30% 70.903%
35% 76.138%
40% 80.336%


A little explanation:

Crit is your crit rate before arcane potency. Arcane potency is assumed to increase the crit rate for both the AM that procced CC and the AM that used it. Back to back CCs are assumed to be able to "double dip" on arcane potency.

Uptime is the total number of AM casts hasted by ATI, divided by the total number of AM casts. It is not total time ATI is active or even total number of ATI procs. It takes into account the fact that ATI needs only be active during the moment an AM is cast.

Details on the simulator's model:

The model assumes AM spam, with every cast yielding 5 missiles.

For each interval of crit chance, the sim ran through 152880 AM casts.

Latency is assumed to add 0.2 seconds between every AM cast.

MSD is assumed; passive spell haste is assumed to be zero (interestingly, adding reasonable values of spell haste has a surprisingly minuscule effect on ATI uptime).

Crit rate is modified by arcane potency, as described above. Crit rate does not take into account the interaction of the inherent 1% miss rate and a two roll system.

TLC is assumed to not proc ATI (or rather, TLC is not taken into account due to me being a bone head). A quick and dirty way to add the value of TLC is to simply add (Crit Rate/3)*CritRate*(.83+SpellHit)/2, which is the probability of a given missile spawning a crit lightning bolt under a two roll system, divided by two since 50% of the time the crit that spawned your lightning bolt will proc ATI, making a reproc add nearly no uptime. So for a 30% crit rate, 6% spell hit, you would add 1.34% crit.

Missiles are assumed to hit when the next missile is cast. This is inaccurate, as MSD hasted missiles fly no faster than unhasted missiles, and the final missile of a cast doesn't travel slower based upon your latency. However, it was the closest I could get to reality given my limited skills.

Good info, Zure. And not taking TLC into account, while maybe an oversight, was a good oversight. Crit lightning bolts don't count as they're not spells. They're effects.

Interesting. I was under the impression that TLC bolts could proc shaman clearcasting. This lead me to believe the bolts might proc ATI.

But like you said, it shouldn't be a huge deal. If TLC doesn't proc ATI, the results stand. If it does, the net effect is small and predictable.

Can anyone post some data so we can back these theoretical numbers up with empirical confirmation?

I'd love to post data. But it's impossible to tell from log parses. And, honestly, I'm not always completely sure when I miss an AM with AToI and when I hit it if it's close. Since 9% spell haste isn't exactly super obvious. Maybe someone else has more patience and a quicker eye than me.

I believe mods can access spell cast time info. Is there a mod out there that shows the average cast time of your spells?

I've been reading and following this thread for a while, and after last night's Reliquary Attempts (and subsequent first kill for us, yay Cats Game), and I was intrigued by the new rotations that have been coming.

That being said, I just wasn't putting out DPS I was happy with. On our kill attempt, I believe I was 5th in damage, with another Arcane mage beating me out and hitting 3rd or something of the sort. 1 and 2 were Hunters I believe.

Me: The World of Warcraft Armory

Here are the different rotations I tried:

AM spam
AB, AM, AM (with AM on Clearcast or Focus)
ABx3, AM, AM (with AM on Clearcast or Focus)
ABx3, AM, Scorch (AM on CC or Focus)

None of these ever led me to nearly a top spot. We had a Shadow Priest and permanent JoW up, so mana is definitely not an issue. I know for a fact that the winning Arcane Mage (The World of Warcraft Armory) was using the traditional ABx3, AM, Scorch (with AM on CC or Focus) rotation, as I was watching his casts. He consistently beat me. While one might say he outgears me and that alone accounts for the difference, he would easily beat me, by a margin of at least .6%. That is significant in my eyes. At points, the Fire mage was beating me (I believe this was with AM spam).

What could I be doing wrong? I get fully raid buffed (+ flask, the armory link shows me when my flask had just run out and so I popped the elixir), food buffs, oils, etc. My latency is not bad, I use stopcasting macros, and certainly my gear isn't bad. How could a Fire mage (The World of Warcraft Armory) beat me on one of our attempts?

Also, I come to my next point, which is: What should I be doing when AP is up? I've read that one should spam AB when AP is up, and others where AM should be used until there's not enough time for all 5 volleys to be cast under its effect.

Do you keep WWS logs that we could look at? Maybe your fire mage was just getting very lucky with his crit rates at good times (deadens / late Anger)

You're geared perfectly fine for AM spam (although not as well as the arcane mage you linked) so don't worry about rotations. Also if you have TLC use it and toss the Icon back in the bag.

Your guild might also not be handing out hearts yet seeing that you just got to Mother, but once you have a surplus beg for hearts so you can get the bracers. Then press AM and don't look back until 2.3.

Unfortunately we have no WWS logs for perusal. And for the most part, I do believe it was luck for the Fire mage, as on all closely successful attempts, I wasn't in danger of being beaten.

I do not have TLC. The only mage in our guild who has it is said Fire mage, and he doesn't have the desire to go Arcane. GRRR

Yeah, I have the pattern for the haste bracers, but we are at least 40 hearts short of gearing the raid for Mother Shahraz... so that's not happening soon. I haven't even gotten a piece of SR gear yet.

One thing that i have been doing for RoS recently is switching between an AB rotation and AM spam based on the situation. For phase 2 i find AM spam to be quite a bit better dps than the normal AM rotation due to the large amount of pushback, so for this fight i throw on all my haste gear, and unload on him. Phase 3 i mainly AM spam, and because mana is not an issue here at all, i will cancel a AM mid cast in order to use my focus buff the instant it procs. I find this useful due to the fact that after about 40% your chance of dying any second can be pretty high.

Here is a WWS from our last kill, feel free to peruse it and ask any questions about what i did in certain situations.

Wow Web Stats

How do you guys do phase 2?

If you use a felhunter to steal the runeshield then I really have no clue how a Fire mage could beat you.

However if you have mages fighting to steal the shield that could easily lead to the discrepancies you are seeing. That runeshield is a very significant boost in dps. I would look more at fights like Gurtogg to really gauge your dps in comparison to the other mages.

During that attempt, I was spamming AM for both phase 1 and phase 2. It may have been a fluke (e.g. him getting more AOE off on the ghosts). We were more focused on the boss than meters, so they weren't getting reset in between phases.