Well technically that isn't true, scorch will benefit from it. I'm not saying you can't make arcane work somehow but it will not be 3xAB 1xAM 1xScorch/Frostbolt. In that rotation only your first and third AB are higher dps than fireball, you lose too much dps from the rest of the rotation. If you are going to outdps fire you will need to work in more fully debuffed ABs, maybe 4xAB before you use your filler spells, but even that may not be enough. You cannot play catchup at the very end, at 20% with molten fury and c/d stacking fire is going to outdps even your ab spam, even in 2.4 where you would both benefit from BL. Not to mention even in our current gear if BL and IV affected AB alot of mages would already be clipping the "one second rule". Lastly unlike arcane fire isnt blowing it's gem/pot c/ds on mana, it can use them to c/d stack destruction pots and flamecaps with the rest of it's c/ds.

But the changes don't do this - a lot of people seem to forget that some caster classes don't benefit AT ALL, not even a little bit, from improved 5SR regen. Shaman and Paladin have no way to gain anything significant from this change, so their healing doesn't change at all. Similarly, Fire Mages gain nothing, and if anything, this added regen is merely *sufficient* WITH a shadow priest to make Arcane somewhat viable.

So, we still have at least 4 specs/3 classes that benefit from a Shadow Priest. Druids don't need shadow priests as-is, so the only class this changes anything is for priests, really. So the argument that regen is "overpowered" and "makes shadow priests obsolete" is broken from the start, since the changes don't even affect most players.

I still think that hasting up your DPM part should give a noticable increase to Arc/X specs.

Yes, the aim is to boost your AB spam. By feeding mana and by feeding power (crit/dmg).
But AB spam isn't everything, you do need a good filler/DPM rotation. And since pure AB spam is very limited (1-2 minutes), having a more powerful filler is should make a difference.
But any argument is void without numbers, I'll try to setup a little model later.


As for 2T5, it still is required. Without it, AB spam at current best gear is on par with Fireball spam and that's it.
Maybe you can optimise your gear to surpass it by 3%, 5%, but that's it already. Fire scales better than non-T5 AB spam.
Since your filler spells (FrB, FiB, non-spammed AB) are worse than Firespec Fireball, you'll be left behind.

20% is huge, even if you have to sacrifice stats. Now, let's get to the stats part.
I valued the items with their common dmg-equivalence values (pawn-string like), valueing 1 hit as 1.2 damage.
( Reason: T7 is low on hit, you seem to have to gem at least some hit. 10 hit on an item gives you one less hit gem, allowing you to gem for 12 dmg in that gem. Seems fair from the gear we've seen so far. )

At T6 level top (Hyjal/BT), keeping 2T5 costs you ~10 + ~28 dmg (shoulders + robes, although robes/gloves/leggings are pretty similar losses), just under ~40 damage.
At Sunwell level, keeping 2T5 costs you ~25 + ~55 (shoulders + hat, gloves/leggings being close too), ~80 damage total.
To compare, keeping 4T6 in Sunwell costs you just under ~20 damage (shoulders+belt).


A loss of 80 damage is roughly a 4% loss. 3% more than keeping 4T6.
2T5 is still required, and good enough to justify worse item stats. But the stat loss becomes noticable, and it gets harder to keep up the high damage.

Vontre, where is this change reflected? In your magegraf.com interface? Or the magedps.zip file? lol I went to the magegraf.com interface and it still shows the same mana consumption anamolies I noted previously.

Is it the magedps.zip file that you changed?

The thing is haste is already more or less on par with damage when you're getting the full effect. So when you add mana limitations it just drops in value and becomes far from a good stat to have. It increases dps, but by less (according to the simulator, by much less).

Vontre, I think your arcane/frost spec logic is almost perfect. But it doesn't seem to be applied to the other arcane specs. For example, even when I reduce the fight time to 2 min. Then the arcane/frost spec will spam AB all the way until near the end, then switch to frostbolt.

But the other two arcane specs will try and mix in all manner of scorch, fireballs, AM even when they are far from out of mana. And then they end up evocating near the end of the fight and ending it with tons of mana left (because they did not full AB spam at the very start).

This is assuming the changes were made to the magegraf interface on your website.

Yes. something like that. With the new spirit changes. It is possible to use a high DPM spell like frostbolt indefinitley. So, you don't really need to have a complex AB rotation. You can still use it, maybe it might net more mana regened or higher dps, but it makes things more complex and the difference probably won't be huge. Any excess mana is gained is used for periods of AB spam.

So, for example, say you have a two and a half minute fight.

Start: AB ramp up, then AB spam with AP. Use gem, pot once able to. AB until oom. then evocate. then continue ABing until oom. Will probably run almost dry at near the 2 minute mark. Then frostbolt until your gem and pot cooldown is up. Then eat gem, pot, and immediately AB spam until nearly oom again. Then frostbolt spam again.

This ensures that you WILL be nearly oom at the end of the fight and you would have used as much of your mana as possible on AB spam.

The shorter the fight, the better the results because the more often you will be spamming AB. Until any fight that's slightly less than 2 minutes, you will probably be ABing the entire fight. Its easier to simulate on spreadsheets rather than trying to guess how much mana you need to save up for the last 20 % of the boss fight.

It doesn't matter if you are frostbolting at the last stage when bloodlust is up. Because frostbolt also benefits from bloodlust anyway. In fact, stacking icy veins and bloodlust while ABing at the end probably results in less DPS because you risk going under the 1 second global cooldown. So, its better to use icy veins and AB spam earlier.

What about ~6 minute fights? Will this be viable? or is fire still the way to go. Think sunwell.

I am not sure. But I personally think it will still apply. Last time, AB spam even with shadow priest support would probably only net you 1 minute of casting. So, the rest of the time, you have to rely on a high DPM, AB rotation. Thus, it was more beneficial to "time" your AB spam periods.

Now, with the new changes. Its possible to keep up AB spam for up to 2 minutes (depending on how much you stack Int). Its still not quite the full 5 minutes, but you will do a lot of damage over 2 minutes with AB spam. And a longer fight means more mana regened as well.

Vontre's interface and spreasheets assumed a 5 minute fight.

The thing is, Arcane can use the early 2 minutes of AB spam to get far far ahead in damage and DPS done. For the rest of the battle, other specs like full frost and fire will be playing catch up. Especially fire, who will be relying on the last 20% of the boss with molten fury to catch up.

Everytime arcne can gem and pot up every two minutes, it can again AB spam until nearly OOM so netting another surge in DPS and damage.

Plus, let's not forget. spamming frostbolts or fireball isn't exactly low DPS either. Its slightly lower than a pure frost or fire spec of course, but its not that much lower because arcane specs crits for as high as the pure specs (maybe even higher) with spellpower. So, if you get a string of lucky crits, even your "low dps" phase might result in dps that is relatively close to the pure specs. This is excluding stuff like molten fury and water elemental of course. (arcane has arcane power also, so its the same).

Whether arcane will be the highest DPS spec or other specs next patch is debatable at this point because the patch changes are not finalised. And different raid bosses have different mechanics which might favour different specs.

A boss with too much movement isn't that great for arcane. Similarly, a boss with a lot of spellpushback from aoe damage isn't good for AB spam also.

But a boss where you move around once every 45 seconds. And you can then DPS with no interruption for 45 seconds. That will be good for arcane.

This is something nobody can really know for sure atm, even the fights people have done up to this point may be tweaked alot. One thing that is controllable though and could work in favor of arcane is raid dps. That basically comes down to raid makeup and individual gear/knowledge. Arcane works very well with raids that tend to minimize their # of healers as much as humanly possible and maximize dps with the raid setup. The higher the raid dps the faster you can end the fight, and for arcane the higher % of time that can be spent in AB spam, and since you are part of raid dps this decreases the fight duration even more.

Requiring 2 crimson spinels you're not very likely to craft that trinket, especially since it doesn't look too incredible compared to the trinkets someone with access to spinels should have.

Are frostbolts really better fillers than fireballs? And is pom/pyro taken into account on AP for fire?

thanks for the info re: spinels.

PoM pyro doesn't really compare to IV in arcane rotations. And the reason frost seems to excell is that frost gets -slightly- better scalling early in its tree for frostbolt than fire does for fireball (near identical crit bonus, better % scaling from improved frostbolt, +6% frost damage, supposedly +6% hit from elemental focus (confirmation?)). Furthermore, Frost is far, far more mana efficient, meaning that it becomes much easier to refill your mana on frostbolt spam and thus leaves more opportunity for AB spam between filler frostbolts (assuming an FBx3ABx1 rotation while regenerating mana, untill mana is high enough to go nuts with AB + cooldowns).

Also, frost channeling > master of elements in terms of single target mana conservation. Cold snap really is just the icing on the cake.

I know full fire fireball is more mana efficient than full frost frostbolt but I suppose it needs to be checked for only 21 points. Improved frostbolt is about as good as improved fireball in terms of scaling - due to frostbolts 0.95 coefficient multiplier a 2.5s frostbolt gets about the same dps/spell damage as 3s fireball if no other talents are used.

But yeah I thought about icy veins as extra haste when in reality it also give a big increase to efficiency when paired with AP, as spamming AB during AP is a lot more efficient than spamming it without AP (+30% damage and small increase to mana cost since it's additive). That probably makes icy veins critical (same cooldown as AP as well) even though haste in general isn't useful. PoM pyro is actually pretty strong though and shouldn't be ignored, but I doubt it'll make the difference due to losing IV.

theres also the ability of icy viens to hit a channeled spell in the last 0.5seconds of the buff to effectively extend it beyond its 20second duration (saving valuable time on, for example, evocate).

yes, I'm 100% sure because I tested the spec with 119 hit and I missed 1.5% frostbolt in a 4h raid, a 40/0/21 is caped @ 129 and it's one of his quality.

We also forget the little arcane buff from 2.3 : "Arcane Meditation increased to 10/20/30% mana regeneration"

Actually the spec is not bad for a BT/hyjial raider, I just tested winter, naj, supremus, archi but I was really surprised by all the advantages of the spec (I'm gonna cry in fights with mass pushbacks?), despite the fact that bloodlust and IV actually sux with that spec.

We also haven't seen the haste items, depending on what we get we could start to reach that pinacle pre-BC rolling ignite outside of cooldowns

Galzohar: Also consider in 40/18/3 that the 18 can potentially be Master of Elements rather than Imp. Scorch, raising fire's DPM considerably. My only negative feelings are down to the odd value of hit: From 85 to 126 hit it's a drop in value depending on the % of fire you're casting per boss. This surplus half-value hit would be a further 60-80 item points an arcane-arcane would have made into int or spell.

Admittedly however, I'd much prefer 40/18/3 to 40/0/21. I'm quite adamant that PoM-Pyro will be worth a decent amount of the IV loss combined with the clearly superior fireballs (Spellpower Ignite CSD anyone?). The added utility of 41y and 70% anti-pushback can't be underestimated either. Arc/arc at least can fall back on AM for pushback(remember, full fire may have 70% but on heavy consistent pushback it still will suffer -some- pushback which AM won't, thus partially mitigating the inferior DPS of AM) but 40/0/21 can't fall back on anything.

Just for fun I tried to see how much spell haste rating is possible with the gear we know so far, putting [Design: Quick Dawnstone] in every gemslot, the best I got is 571 passive spellhaste, resulting in about 2.11s Fireball cast time.

The calculation that arcane is good for Sunwell is built upon the assumption that we will be able to use all CD`s on mana pots/gems.

If the Sunwell bosses turns out to be the biggest raid dmg bosses as of yet, it can kill all hopes of using arcane. In that scenario we will be forced to use several CD`s on HS/healing pots.

Kalecgos seems to do a AE each 20 sec or so. Anyone have info on other bosses raid dmg abilities?

Ill do some research and post my findings.

Irrespective of raid damage, with the exception of certain occasions where it's impossible to do otherwise (like Kazzak's bolts), using our CDs for health is not something that should be scripted into a boss's strategy. 2k health will hardly turn the tide of battle. I can see why a healthpot/HS could be popped once or maybe even twice in an emergency, given particularly unusual circumstances (even unavoidable ones like being the target of Solarian's arcane bomb and arcane missiles at once) but I strongly disapprove of changing a classes strategy to cover for another class's job.

In the rare occasion that health consumables are of absolutely irrefutably unavoidable nature, I'm happy to accept a one-off occasion where I'll need to gimp my output. Nobody whined about low damage gear on Mother, why should you mind there?

Besides, in the grand scheme of things, analyzing Kavan's WWS he uses up circa 45k mana in a 6m fight, and that's with 2.3 values. Mp5 will increase this value between 8.5k (assuming all I5SR) to 10k (assuming 20% OO5SR). Subtract three mana pots from that and you see the overall loss in resource isn't that devastating.

I was under the assumption that elemental precision effected for frost and fire mages as I counted that towards my spell hit as a fire mage. I only am asking this as reading the above threads, I keep hearing people talking about elemental precision and how it effects frost mages, making me want to double check that is also effects fire mages spell hit as well. Thanks in advance. I appreciate the order in which is important to have capped. I currrently run 157 spell hit not including my elemental precision which I figure adds another 3% equals to like 36 more spell hit roughly according to the math you provided. I currently have 1k spell damage, 191 spell hit (elemental prec included) 30% chance to crit. But looking at the order you provided, I will be trying to get some more spell haste items.