Unless you're an imp, it's unlikely you cast firebolt. I'll assume you're refering to fireball in which case I'm curious as to how you plan to get IV and enough fire talents (ie. at least 10) to make fireball a better choice than 21pt frostbolt while retaining emp. AM.
As for the age-old "AM on CC" theory it's been proven since way back when in 2.2 that the CC indication will occur way way too late for you to successfully act on it. If you cancel whatever you were casting when CC shows up, you'll net a grand 1.5sec GCD worth of wasted time all in order to capitalize on a CC-AM which is questionable at best. This is not considered effective or efficient. Neither is it particularly impressive DPS-wise as dropping 1.5sec to gain a (very) roughly (30%*0.75) benefit on a 5sec spell isn't particularly impressive.
As for the age-old "AM on CC" theory it's been proven since way back when in 2.2 that the CC indication will occur way way too late for you to successfully act on it. If you cancel whatever you were casting when CC shows up, you'll net a grand 1.5sec GCD worth of wasted time all in order to capitalize on a CC-AM which is questionable at best. This is not considered effective or efficient. Neither is it particularly impressive DPS-wise as dropping 1.5sec to gain a (very) roughly (30%*0.75) benefit on a 5sec spell isn't particularly impressive.
Well this depends on the rotation and was the reason for some ratations like AB AM AB AM AB² AM AM or AB AB AB AM SC AB AM SC³ AB ...
Some rotations based on casting AM always after AB so when AB procs CC, AM always gets the proc. And when AM procs CC, you see the proc at the beginning of the cast and have 4,x sec. left to notice the CC and plan to cast another AM afterwards. This way AM always gets the CC proc no matter where it comes from and without the need to cancel spell casting.
(² ABs stack until 3 then AM AM resets it, ³ AB stacks never reset, the scorch can proc CC which is then wasted for AB)
The reason why AM was used as filler was also because of the little tricks with MSD, TLC, a CC AM has the crit bonus for all "ticks" guaranteing a TLC bolt and so on.
However, these arcane times are really age-old. The advantage of less need for spell hit is gone bacause of all the hit on T6 items, although this could become interesting again when you see the total lack of spell hit on 2.4 items, but we'll have to wait for the total 2.4 itemizaton there.
Yeah, meant Fireball. Imo both fireball and frostbolts are usable in a rotation which you choose is probably dependant if you got improved scorch and/or winters chill on the target.
The plan was to not get IV. The purpose of the build I'm toying about with is to have as much time as possible for AB spam and clearcasted AM. In my experience total dps as Arcane in a long fight is more dependent on mana than casting speed.
I know it was rejected before but with the changes in mana-regain in 2.4 it might be a usable strategy soon. As I said I haven't done the math on it yet but if you look at the raw numbers for me 1 tic of OOC regain is worth 73 mana now and 121 in 2.4. Using AM in the rotation gives me 1-2 tics on each rotation while Fireball/Frostbolt gives 0.
1,5 sec GCD? AB hits instantly and you should be able to react faster than that. But I'm also a bit doubtful of it's really worth it. Getting clearcast on an AM is very nice when it happens though.
It's also very dependant on the encounter. Fireball/Frostbolt gives higher aggro than AM and with longer time AB spaming and less rotation you might be able to make better use of vulnerable phases.
AB hits Instantly? Either I'm an idiot and don't get what you're saying or you're hell-drunk as your name suggests. AB is not an instant and it never was, except in the case of POM-AB perhaps. Every time you actuate a spell, irrespective of cast time, it instigates a GCD. You should try it some time, press scorch and before it lands try to use a /stopcasting /cast counterspell macro. You will interrupt the scorch but clearly not cast the counter because, lo and behold, all spell casting initiations, irrespective of channeled, cast or instant have a GCD built in.
"React faster than that"? If upon AB completion, you see the damage register on target and STILL have time to REACT, which has been proven that in the realm of sub-fighter-pilot reflexes (which should cover 99.95% of us) of faster than 0.15sec are impossible to have, then you're not casting fast enough. If this was 6 months ago, I'd point you in the direction of Quartz and Stopcasting macros alas nowadays all you need to do is mash a button and the game will do it for you.
So no, you can not force AM on clearcast unless you're in one of the following three scenaria:
1) You alternate AB and AM in an [(AB-AM)*n]Sc rotation, in which case as has been said, if the AM procs it there's plenty of time to cast a further AM after it, and in case an AB procs it, an AM is after it anyway
2) You spam AM only.
3) You leave at least 0.2sec after each AB cast ends to alow for server delay in relaying "you procced CC" and brain lag in processing it, and muscular coordination in selecing correct spell given proc.
To me...people are getting a little too excited about AB spam a little too early.
If you're going straight by Vontre's spreadsheet, I think people are a little confused by the amount of total damage done. I modified it to adjust the GCD based off of the haste you have on. For AB spam, haste is very powerful. Stacking haste seems to give the greatest benefit over pure damage. Now with the 2t5 bonus, It's showing that it's possible to sustain around 2875dps for 65 seconds. During this 65 seconds, around 28k mana is used. But at that point you're wanding. So you've done 186875 total damage. This does not take into account the new spirit/int change as i haven't bothered to look up the new formula.
In the same 65 seconds for deep fire...you've done 151125 damage...but you're not even close to being oom.
Also, you still do not see the same sort of benefits from IV or bloodlust for AB spam as you do for fireball. With the new items, the sheet I configured for AB spam has a passive 364 haste. Bloodlust & IV both put you to the 1s GCD before their entire cast time reduction is applied. This means that cooldown stacking will be less benefitial to arcane than it is to fire.
Also, AB spam has 0 pushback protection and the damage is sub-par to deep fire when used in any sort of rotation. We will need to wait to see the rest of the items out of the sunwell before we can really get a feel if AB is going to be viable at all.
I am going to be a little more specific about which spells I cast to maximize dps in a 40/0/21 build.
Arcane blast is primary nuke, This is spammed until I hit 40% mana or icy veins is up and have pots, mana gems on cooldown .
Frostbolt until timer is back up on pots and mana gems
Evocation when boss is at 50% normally am close to full after evocating because I switched to frostbolts at 40% mana
Frost bolts crits are higher then arcane blast crits with my build gear so I do this:
Icy veins is used whenever its up and I cast frostbolts why active
If bloddlusted I cast frostbolts (I never stack Icy veins with bloodlust)
If I use arcane power I cast frostbolts.
Last % of bosses health I evaluate my mana and go into an arcane blast spam so I am close to zero mana when boss dies.
With a shadow priest and ele shammy in my grp I can almost maintin frostbolt spam, after 2.4 I totally expect this scenario to totally rock and am impatiently looking to see if it can way out dps fire. I am particualry interested is what would happen if I stack int. I am maxed in hit already for both ice/frost using the frost oveersight. if I can do what I am doing in 2.4 and totally cast arcane blast except when icy veing or bloodlust is up on a boss fight, this spec will kick ass. It is not dependant on stacking haste.
If anyone has a better rotation to maximize dps casting these spells I would gladly like to hear it. Currently I far exceed the mathematical dps of 3arcaneblast/3frostbolt rotation, This is of course dependant on the boss fight. If there is alot of moving around this spec is very difficult to keep high dps. That is its weakness. This equates to 30 yard range vs 41 for fire, no dots ticking why your moving. So be forewarned it is not an easy spec to play, but it is by far much more fun then spamming fireball and is definately comparable in dps. Lhivera mage calculator with my current gear will verify this, and that is based on sticking to set rotations.
I will be first to admit that if I drop some of my crit for damage then according to the mage calculator I can get even more dps out of fire if I stick to traditional rotations, which I dont. it will not be substantinally more though.
Elemental Precision is still, as far as I know, 6% to hit for frost spells
In short, everything so far is slanted (poised?) for a 40/0/21 'comeback' come Sunwell. Personally I am not very pleased at the thought of having to maintain AB rotations, but one can't ignore the DPS benefits from the GCD and int/spi change which radically changes numbers.
So far its looking like this: (gearing for 40/0/21)
sunfire robes
leggings of calamity
4pct6 - boots + belt + bracers + (hat or gloves)
2pct5 - shoulder + (hat or gloves)
for short fights you want as few hit as possible, as your frostbolt should be low. In that case, you might want to go towards t5 gloves + t6 hat. In long fights you plan on many frostbolts, in which case you want a bit more hit, so you would be more heading towards t5 hat + t6 gloves. I won't lie that I haven't been really looking deep at the numbers, but that would be my first order guess. Mage armor assumed of course.
Last edited by manly : 02/12/08 at 12:58 PM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
From what i've looked at, I'm not sure it's even worth getting 4t6 if your primary focus is on AB.
Belt, Boots, and Bracers are already best in slot though, better than Anetheron's Noose, Slippers of the Seacaller, and Cuffs of Devastation.. so with already having 3, might as well get another piece for the bonus.
They're best in slot after knowing some of the drops of 3 bosses. But items like the Leggings of Calamity crush T6 and even the vendor items...and i'm sure we have more items like this to come.
AB hits Instantly? Either I'm an idiot and don't get what you're saying or you're hell-drunk as your name suggests. AB is not an instant and it never was, except in the case of POM-AB perhaps. Every time you actuate a spell, irrespective of cast time, it instigates a GCD. You should try it some time, press scorch and before it lands try to use a /stopcasting /cast counterspell macro. You will interrupt the scorch but clearly not cast the counter because, lo and behold, all spell casting initiations, irrespective of channeled, cast or instant have a GCD built in.
From wowwiki: A global or universal cooldown, frequently shortened to "GCD", is the cooldown which starts every time you start to cast a spell, and it affects all of your class spells. There are exceptions to this, however, as noted below. The basic rule of thumb is that if the spell affects the casting of the next spell, it will not activate the global cooldown.
If the spell has a casting time less than the global cooldown (or instant cast), you generally have to wait the remainder of the global cooldown. If a spell with casting time is interrupted before it has finished casting, the global cooldown will be canceled, meaning you can start casting a new one immediately.
I tested it a bit and it seems like doing scorch + macro (/stopcasting /cast icelance) would give me spell not ready. However doing scorch +strafe + macro worked most of the time. Maybe server-lag made the strafe come after the macro some times. In any case I think strafe works as an interrupt and thus cancel GCD while /stopcasting doesn't.
Or maybe I'm just drunk ;-) Ne1 got the tools to try it out or know the answer?
You're correct that moving will stop the global cooldown. However, you are still setting yourself back half a second or so to stop your current cast and throw a CC'ed AM. It would be worse than casting without a stopcast macro before the mechanics were changed.
Regarding the intterupting cast bug, has anyone heard of it being fixed? It was said earlier that the addition of Mob ID should fix this, but I read nothing on the notes about this issue. I haven't made it on the PTR yet to test, but it would be quite a shame if this bug still persisted on 2.4.
I just finished an afternoon's worth of work adding some more advanced logic to mana control for arcane specs. This is modeled with 2.4 in mind. Whoa. So why is arcane suddenly awesome, on paper at least?
Well the elephant in the room was actually the global cooldown. Thanks to the hard cap of 1.5 seconds speed on Arcane Blast, arcane was pretty much completely unable to utilize haste, which meant that bloodlust and IV was wasted, which is of course bad stuff. Oh, and the ability to wear 2 T5 without losing 4 T6 is also a big plus.
Ok, so now that we can actually get some dps out of arcane, where's the mana? The new regen formula of course... only moderately impressive with our normal stats, but add in raid buffs like divine spirit and blessing of kings, and you are looking at twistedly high mana regen.
I hate to say it though but you guys are doing it all wrong. I'm sad because I don't get to use harsh words like "terrible" when comparing intellect anymore, intellect and haste are merely "pretty good". Point for point intellect has the best returns, but there's a couple reasons you don't want to stack it. Firstly, while intellect wins out by a slight margin, that only happens if the fight reaches a certain duration. Intellect is still primarily concerned with longevity, and that means it doesn't necessarily come into play 100% of the time, whereas spell damage is always boosting your dps no matter what. Secondly, intellect is actually more costly than spell damage. A 10 int gem is the same as a 12 damage spinel.
Now, for haste, why would you even consider stacking haste at all? It doesn't increase dpm like damage or int, so you're not getting as much benefit, and you still run the risk of dipping under the 1 second global cooldown and losing the full benefit. Don't stack haste, that's dumb.
So spell damage is still your primary stat. Intellect is now a close secondary stat, which is cool because now we can use it to match socket bonuses and get free item points. Haste is still pretty good to come by incidentally, similiar to crit, so don't worry about having some haste on your gear. Just don't stack it or gem it.
Check my calculations on the site and post any questions you may have here.
Bleh. I never did like AB rotations, so I eagerly switched to deep Fire last patch. But if Vontre's site is accurate, I'm looking at a sizable (50+) DPS increase from switching from 2/48/11 to 40/0/21. *sigh* Glad I haven't sharded any of my T5 set yet.
the simulator assumes full 2.4 buffs, so sub gcd casts as well as the new int/spi changes.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
What's the length of time you got on that calculator?
Sunwell fight DPS might need to aim for slightly over five minutes.
5 minutes
I played with it a bit more and found that haste tremendously boost fire/ice damage and only slight increase to arcane specs. Its hard to tell what total end game gear would do to numbers, because my guild has just gotten into mt hyjal and bt. I would be very interested in seeing the numbers from a t6 geared mage.
I played with it a bit more and found that haste tremendously boost fire/ice damage and only slight increase to arcane specs. Its hard to tell what total end game gear would do to numbers, because my guild has just gotten into mt hyjal and bt. I would be very interested in seeing the numbers from a t6 geared mage.
Below both assume full raid buffs
My gear
Fire - 2418
Arcane/Frost (if i were to somehow currently have both 2t5 & 2t6) - 2612
Gear for fire with Sunwell items so far.
Fire - 2784
Arcane/Frost - 2660
I see that haste is scaling poorly with this model for AB/frostbolt. One problem is...nearly everything that comes out of the sunwell has Haste on it.
I'll try to put together an arcane set and test it out.
Does the simulator take the "AB bug" into account? I mean the fact that during the AB ramp up, the debuff is slightly delayed, while casting is not. This means that often (read always), you won't get the lowered cast time, but will still have to pay the increased mana cost. You can easily test this if you have a cast bar that shows the cast time of your current spell. Happens every time for me after 2.3 and the new casting mechanics. Essentially, the debuff is delayed once, meaning you have to do 4 casts to get a fully stacked cast. I could be wrong, but this was my experience on PTR.
I set it up with no pushbacks, and my current gear (except i fudged it to have 2p t5 w/o changing my stats)
it gave 2401 for fire, and 2708 for 40/0/21 over a 300 second fight. I was about to post that seems a bit high, considering my gear isnt really perfect. Then i saw it only had me cast scorch 3x at the start. Any way to get it to have you keep the scorch debuff up instead of assuming somebody else will?
I set it up with no pushbacks, and my current gear (except i fudged it to have 2p t5 w/o changing my stats)
it gave 2401 for fire, and 2708 for 40/0/21 over a 300 second fight. I was about to post that seems a bit high, considering my gear isnt really perfect. Then i saw it only had me cast scorch 3x at the start. Any way to get it to have you keep the scorch debuff up instead of assuming somebody else will?
40/0/21 is arcane/ice your confusing me here, nevermind reread your post......
Why do people always forget that Arcane Missiles is terrible? Seriously, there's no reason to touch that spell anymore, use frostbolts or fireballs.
I know there is much hatred for AM, but please amuse me and add a proper 48+/0/11 arcane build if you get a chance with ABAMx3+Sc cycle. From what analysis I've done using my gear (assuming frostbolt hit capped) I get reasonably similar numbers for AM and Frostbolt if you restrict Frost to max 21 points. It depends on what curses are available and whether you have someone to leech winter's chill from. You'll say that Frostbolt has better dpm characteristics, but my findings suggest that 5SR interaction and CC double dipping closes the gap between the two significantly. I actually think the arcane/frost hybrid will end up slightly ahead because of cold snap, but I'd like to see how well founded this AM hatred is.
02/12/08, 10:41 AM
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