ninor

Thanks, I was afraid I had misunderstood completely what pushback was!

Can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace?

 

aznxk3vi17

Incorrect. The pushback indeed occurs after spell hit. I don't see how you would think this doesn't push back your next spell cast. The hit doesn't occur instantly. While casting AB, you will still receive pushback, unless you don't /stopcast or are casting REALLY slowly.

 

Kavii

Yes - obviously using stopcasting would cause pushback since you are in fact starting your next cast before your client knows that the prior spell has hit.

However are you better off aggressively stopcasting and taking the pushback or not doing that and avoiding the pushback?

 

aznxk3vi17

In the end, it's going to take the same amount of time - even less if you are Fire or casting Arcane Missiles.

 

Frenzi

I personally don't bother using stopcasting, my latency is so low I can barely see the red latency section 95% of the time and I don't find using it increases my DPS at all and in some cases just lowers it. Using Frostbolt though your travel time makes a big difference as the further you get into your next cast the more pushback you will get.

I plan to just get my T5 out the bank and AB alot during P2.

 

galzohar

(just an FYI I hadn't done the fight, but...)
I don't see why you would get pushback with AB, at least server side (I can see how client could possibly show incorrect pushback but that's nothing new). There will *always* be time between your AB finish cast to the start of the next AB no matter how well you do it, and your AB will always deal its damage during that time. If the damage is reflected immidiately when you damage the target it'll hit you during that period when you're not casting anything and cause no pushback. Even with /stopcasting I find it hard to believe you would see pushback.
Of course if the damaging isn't instant it changes everything completely.

Not seeing the red latency section doesn't mean you won't get a huge benefit of /stopcasting. In fact no matter what your ping is you can benefit from /stopcasting as long as it never hits 0. Of course when the ping is very close to 0 it gets harder and harder to benefit anything from /stopcasting but there's always a benefit if you get the timing properly as nobody ever gets 0 ping not even temporarily.

Even with varying ping of 50-150 perfect timing of /stopcasting will change your cast time from 3.15s to 3.1s. And I don't think people with 100 ping have such a big variance, if your ping is 90-110 you reduce your cast time from 3.11 to 3.02. If your ping is 370-420 (still not red) you reduce your cast time from 3.42 to 3.05. (you never reach 3s cast time unless your ping is a constant value as you have to play as if your ping is at its highest possible to avoid canceling your spells)

 

◊ manly

Sadly, currently on ptr if you cast a spell while youre on the GCD, you trigger a new GCD. This means if you spam your keys, every single spell will have an added 1.5s of nothing at the end of it. This means you can't even do stopcasting or not do stopcasting, both ways are suboptimal. You need to cast your spell and either wait for the spell to be complete before casting the new one (remember: you can't spam your key), or you take a risk and cast a new fireball on the red bar.

I thought it was just really laggish, but then I tried on PVE and it was obviously the behavior.

They better fix this.

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

galzohar

figures, you get the same as /stopcasting only without needing to actually make a /stopcasting macro... You even get the same issue when you click too early (client-side GCD). I really hope it's just an error and they'll actually let you spam the server (or give up and go with the que).

 

Pintofbrew

manly: earlier in the week Blue made a post on PTR forums (I believe it was Hortus?) noting that they were aware the new spellcasting system wasn't WAI for 1.5sec spells and were looking into it.

 

Torrn

I noticed this as well last night, seems to have been broken with the friday patch. Additionally, if you spam the cast during the "red bar" portion of the cast, you can trigger a global cooldown as the spell launches.

This new (almost certainly broken) functionality is like trying to stopcast without Quartz- you have to guess where to start a new cast or wait for the bar to complete, else risking a second GCD. Very annoying. If you are on the PTRs be sure to test it out and submit a feedback ticket so this gets resolved quickly.

Edit: Pintofbrew, the issue with the GCD leading a 1.5 second cast is separate from this new, multiple GCD issue.

 

Roywyn

Arcane Blast cycles at T6 level gear:
- Assuming molten armour (not going to happen with AB cycles, but still)
- 13% CoS, 10% CoE, Imp. Scorch, and the common raid buffs/debuff
- No meta gems (AB cycles and FB spam have similar benefit from CSD, and MSD is pointless for AB cycles and it's not certain yet if it's any good for FB spam)
- Using T5 shoulders and leggings for the T5 bonus (they seem rather okay)

With that setup, AB cycles need an 8*AB/2*FB rotation to beat FB spam in dream gear.
With mage armour for AB rotations, one needs 10*AB or more in a rotation.

Fireball spam has come within 10% of AB spam with AB spam gear (2*T5) and spec.

Transforming the AB cycle looks as follows:
8*AB/2*FB, average AB is 3229 damage, average FB is 4171 damage.
If you do the maths, that means 76% of your damage comes from Arcane Blast.

You can also split the cycle into doing 3*AB/2*FB for some time and straight AB spam for the rest of the time.
8*AB/2*FB splits into equal amounts of 3*AB/2*FB (takes (2*(3+0.15)+3*(1.83+0.15))=12.24s) and 5*AB cycles (takes 5*(1.83+0.15)=9.9s).
That means you'd have to have the mana to spam AB straight for 45% of the fight, and rotate 3*AB/2*FB for the rest of the fight.

So, to remain competitive, you'd have to be able to spam AB for half the fight. Or have AB do 3/4 of your total damage.
Doesn't look like it could be even remotely useful, does it?


Rest in peace, arcane spec. I'll miss you

 

Northerner

Worse yet, AB has no perks outside of the AP/AB cycle and even that is only a less loss cycle.

AB is a dead spell without a 20% perk. Even then, it is a lossy spell and frankly, best suited to trash (where again, I would debate it's real value). It can be a nice burst spell but frankly, whenever burst is actually needed in any fights that exist, you can kludge it with combustion and/or natively from MF.

AB and AM seem to be either "perfect! range issues be damned!" or complete crap. This isn't new though, I've seen it through all of EQ, except we don't have that extra layer of lure spells, rains and funky stuff. Instead we get "A", "B" or "C" and it's frankly obvious which choices you'll make at each point.

Unless you are speccing for parasites or whatever of course. Or perhaps you PvP. Or you got sick of the whole dance and your guild doesn't care anymore of course.

 

Pintofbrew

Torrn: thanks for correcting me

Roywyn: I was aware that AB was getting worse but if we start talking more than 5xAB cycles the game is clearly lost. The mana drain is enormously excessive and the gain is so small that, once again, we seem to be in a "arcane is dead" scenario. Bizzarely, it feels like Arcane has come full circle; First useless, then some people doing T5 rotations (because nobody had T6 yet), then the glorified MSD Overpoweredness, and now back to "utterly hopeless".

As was said above, by better mages than myself: Goodbye arcane spec. Your absence will fill our hearts.

 

Vhad

What I don't get is why it's just being accepted and why there have never been a word on how Blizzard feels Arcane spec is/where it should be.

I perfectly fine understand why they deemed MSD overpowered, I think Manly crunched it to be worth almsot 600 spell dmg or something like that. But when the change is that an entire spec is deemed useless and the alternative specs gets buffed without any compensation it just seems like they didnt even realize the state of the spec.

The entire Arcane Tree needs an overhaul of some sort so it won't be this gimmicky situational spec you can pick up if you have X Y or Z items that are 100% needed.

What!?

 

◊ manly

Well, I've never liked AB rotations in the first place, even though I was arcane spec for at least 2 (or 3-4 ?) months (until 2.2). As I came to conclude back in the day, I was getting far too punished by latency to make it workable, for me. Not being aware of GCD and bloodlust sure didn't helps the matters much (yay AB spam during bloodlust :P ).

But if anything, I don't like firespec either. I prefer it, much more than AB rotations. But stacking scorch really sucks. Hoping to have 3 warlocks can be a stretch at times (since for us we seem to favor COR over COE, it really depends on the bosses). I don't think its COE that really disappoints me the most, its really stacking scorch that sucks. It would be a start if you could see the time left on other mages imp scorch if you didn't start it (I've yet to see a working* mod that does it without requiring the other mages to install it).

I think in that respect AM spam was ideal at almost everything. You could work out the system by forcing procs. You could take advantage of procs. Better yet, no ramp-up and 100% pushback prevention. With this said, I can definately understand that MSD was too good. I doubt they had in mind that a metagem could increase a spell dps by 12-15%. Maybe 3-4% at best. I doubt they ever wish more than that. The sad thing now is that that was the only thing that made AM spam (truly?) conpetitive. AM as a spell still sucks pretty hard DPS wise. If anything, the only thing I can imagine to bring things back in line and give arcane spec some competitiveness would be to increase much further improved AM towards something along the lines of 25/50/75. I doubt they ever will. This implies indirectly that I doubt they'll ever see arcane used much as a pure raiding tree. Sure, it will still be usable in 2.3. But you won't really have much incentive to go for it, despise maybe dodging the coe tax. Even so, you'll be somewhat on par with firespec.

And coe, how I hate thee. It could be renamed to curse of mages it would be the same. Its a curse made to solely increase mage dps. Nobody else realistically gains anything from it. Much like imp scorch. Or winter's chill. Is there any reasons really that there's a separate curse of elements and curse of shadows ? Why can't blizzard just make one damned curse and be done with it? Would that really be too much to ask?

With all this said, I am not sad they nerf MSD. I've never bitched about it. But I also know that means AM spam will probably not be competing, and that arcane will be dead. Long live AM spam.

Log on with different model:
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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

jaske

Yeh seriously, AM Spam was probably the most "fun" i had playing a raiding mage, it was fun getting 5 focus's in a row with Clearcasting thrown in and watching my SCTD go crazy. Fire really is the most boring spec i have ever played in WoW, you not only spam 1 spell but have to anoyingly use another to make the spammed spell better.
Pushback + stopcasting anoyed the crap out of me and i would miss casts because i would get pushbacked right as i released my button to cast, atleast now i can just spam one button.
The CoE thing is stupid 100% agree.

 

galzohar

To their defense when they designed the game CoS was the "curse of warlocks" too since nobody was expected to raid with a shadow priest. But at least back then you had 40 people in a raid.

I find it wierd they made MSD proc like that instead of proccing per spellcast (like clearcasting procs) just to nerf again the only thing this change actually buffed. (not counting mindflay and drain life procs as that doesn't really count... and I can't think of anything else where the 2.2 change was an actual buff to the MSD).

MSD is still the highest DPS increase meta afaik even with fireball spamming, it's the requirements that make it suck, especially since they introduced +spell hit yellow gems with them being the most efficient DPS per itemization cost. To me it seems the MSD will still be the #1 meta for mages that are anywhere near the hit cap without using hit gems.

AB rotations - they weren't ever really nerfed, it's just other things got buffed via the removal of the damage tax (which makes fireball spam and AB/fireball or AB/AM almost same DPS with a significant mana cost difference, with only advantage for AB specs being AB spamming) as well as BT/hyjal.

 

Rouncer

If they were to change the talent Spellpower to be 50% more critical damage to spells and 100% more critical damage with Arcane spells would that overpower the Arcane Tree past Deep Fire in 2.3?

I'm guessing that it would definitely be an issue with the current 2T5 but if that was given a different bonus would 100% crit damage be enough to fix the Arcane Tree or would that go too far?

 

galzohar

With 30% buffed crit and 2X crits you will do 130% of your non-crit DPS.
With 30% buffed crit and 1.75X crits you will do 122.5% of your non-crit DPS.
130/122.5=1.06 so 6% DPS increase from changing the talent as you suggested. Oc cuorse different crit rates would change this a little bit but not much.
If that would be balanced or not depends on how close the specs are before that...

 

Rouncer

Thank you, so basically if they changed spell power to give 100% crit bonus for Arcane Spells it would balance the 2 specs even with the 45 second cooldown to the MSD.

Only issues would then be Arcane Explosion and 2T5. Arcane Explosion shouldn't be much of an issue due to the AoE caps but they could always just change it to 100% bonus on Arcane Direct Damage spells. 2T5 could be resolved by reducing the bonus to 15% which should keep the dps roughly the same.

If that would be enough to balance the tree without requiring "gimmicks" like the current interaction between the MSD and AM I really don't see what the issue would be with implementing a change along those lines.

 

Faxmonkey

But he is correct that being close REDUCES the pushback. You get 1 second of pushback, if it happens LESS than one second into your next cast, you suffer less reduction. For instance, if your'e only .5 seconds into your cast, you only lose .5 seconds. If it happens 1 second into your cast, then you lose 1 second.

Thus with missile based spells on RoS Phase 2, being closer will *reduce* pushback -- but not eliminate it of course. It can't be eliminated even with non-missile spells.

Of course you could just be the guy doing spellsteal and you won't have to worry about pushback at all, as the shield will absorb all your damage.

 

Frenzi

I was wrong about AB receiving no pushback though, I have to admit I was theorycrafting but I tried it out last night and I still received as much push back as if I stayed close and frostbolted.

Its quite a concern because it has a massive effect on my DPS and I disenchanted all but one piece of T4 when we were struggling for void crystals for the guild. This seems to be the only option to be able to stay as frost on this boss.

I think I will have to respec to fire when we get to the point where we have some serious attempts. Not so bad really as I wouldn't mind respeccing to fire in 2.3 anyway. I am just waiting till we start to kill Archi comfortably before I respec though for now.

 

carnage2006

Hi there , im currently raiding hyjal and BT 4/5 in hyjal and 3 bosses down in BT. Currently working on archimonde. Since i got my tier 5 2 piece i have been arcane and recently got tier 5 headpiece and decided i had to get MSD meta gem in it. But i have been having some trouble understanding some of the concepts of AM spam. do you think it is me not doing very good or else?

Here is the WWS for 4/5 hyjal ; Wow Web Stats

I would greatly appreciate any help / advice you could give my to help improve my raiding

Thanks in advance , Carnage

PS ; I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this , just gathered as im struggling with arcane spec an arcane TC post is the place to be :P.

 

Vhad

For starters you could just read this thread and or search a little more on the subject, this is not the WWS thread.

What!?

 

vahu

Manly, im very agree with everything you have said.
Coe is just silly, because basically coa is better for raid than coe(if there is even 2 mages). I just couldnt agree more about coe.

As you mentioned before blizzard didnt thought thad MSD will increase AM damage over 10% , but what i heard the reason they are nerfing MSD is because of arena, some classes get too much buff of MSD in arena and i agree about it, cause MSD is so much better now compared to some other gem, but as for PvE MSD should remain as it is today, but blizzard didnt intend to make so powerful MSD with AM in the first place, i wouldnt be suprised if sove devs of them still doesnt know how much MSD and AM is powerful in 2.2

sorry for grammar mistakes