Moreover, isn't it true that wands with shadow-based damage consume destrolock ISB debuffs? In turn reducing the shadowpriest's damage from MF/SWD, mana regen gained from VT, and a DPS reduction for other shadow casters in raid.

I think you guys are missing what I was saying, the idea wasnt to do wand DPS and try to outdps people while wanding...thats just crazy stupid lol, the idea is instead to do the majority of your damage from AB and then when that is used up (no mana!) you wand instead of frostbolt, giving you A) 100% of your mana regen because you arent casting and B) not using any mana so you can regen quickly (faster than right now because we will see the new spirit regen in 2.4) and get back into your arcane blast rotation. One thing I like about this -concept- is with the other version of this Ive heard (frostbolt instead of wand while at 0 mana) is the only way to gain mana while frostbolting is if you have a shadow priest, no shadowpriest means you will still stay at 0 mana and wont get to AB until you get mana gems/potions etc up. If you wand instead, gonna get your mana back regardless of if you have a s-priest or not.

The flaw with your idea is that you think Arcane Blast is a spell so high in Damage Per Mana (DPM) that using it exclusively would make up for the loss of damage during these seconds while you are wanding. This is highly false. I'll list some reasons:
First of all, an arcane mage "with only a few points to take Icy Veins" will surely have Arcane Meditation. Which is a constant 30% mana regen from spirit, regardless of shadowpriests, shamans or any kind of armor you may want to use. Basically, there is a constant flow of mana that effectively makes your mana pool bigger, also reducing the bonus of not casting from 100% to 70%.
Secondly, you will have much higher DPS (over fights longer than your effective mana pool, which is base mana pool + evocated mana + mana regeneration + potions + mana gems + other sources -Blessing of Wisdom, Mana Spring/Tide totems, Vampiric Touch- ) with a standard rotation than with an arcane blast spam. As you can notice by testing it yourself, spamming arcane blast can only last for a minute or so, depending on gear. Given you have 200 mp5 while not casting and 10000 MP, it'll take you 4 minutes to regen your full pool by wanding only. Add potions, gems, evocation, and still you can't get lower than a minute or so. This means that by this method you're gonna be doing extremely poor dps for half the fight's duration!! And you will have wasted pots, evocation, gems, and used horribly your shadowpriest/shaman.

Naturally there's probably more reasons to add and calculations to be made to snuck in some good comparisons, but as the situation stands now, Wand Specialization is still an uthopia. Duh

Being "OK on mana" is not enough. If you're using gems, you can use mana pots as well and then at first stop using evocation, then if you still have mana use flame caps, and then if you still have mana use destruction potions. If you're trying to max your DPS evocating over using mana pots is not a good idea even if you use destruction potions.

Since mana potions are the last mana restoring element you should be removing when your mana overflows, the new trinket will almost always have some kind of benefit from the 40% extra from potions. How big that is, though, depends on what it allows you to do. The benefit could be anywhere between nothing (rarely) to allowing you to not evocate (or better, not use mage armor)) depending on fight length, DPS uptime and raid support you're getting.

Note that I'm considering the extra mana better the more you need mana, as the more desperate you are for mana the worse the mana restoring abilities you will use to keep it up, which is why "best case" scenario for the trinket is if you're already using everything AND mage armor, then if you already don't use mage armor it reduces evocation time, etc....

Bottom line is that trinket is quite better than 63 damage. How much better depends on a lot of things, but it's probably enough above 63 damage to make it better than trinkets that would otherwise be better than "just 63 damage". At least from a "I want to do my best, screw the costs" perspective.

AB spamming and wanding is worse than having AB cycles.

Another way to look at it is that AB is a total waste of mana but is worth it when it comes at the cost of mana you already have in excess, and is even worth sacrificing some ineffective damage boosts for (while non-arcane specs would use at least some of those to boost damage as they can't use the extra mana). It is not, however, worth it to sacrifice mana you do not have in excess in order to cast arcane blast - its DPS (or the dps of any spell you don't have mana to sustain... It just happens that AB is the only spell that is actually not sustainable no matter how much mana you have) is simply not worth spending time wanding.

I think you're mixing two different changes up:

Initially Veins was not going to stack with Bloodlust, but this was reverted.
The only change to the Skull is that using it first will incur a cooldown on your other trinkets, the same way all other trinkets do.

You can still use any given trinket while using Veins, which can still be used with BL. The only 'nerf' going live currently is that the Skull is now subject to the anti-stacking rules all other trinkets are.

Ah ha! Now see I remember reading this as well. However I can't find the blue post for it anymore, and all the patch notes for the PTR on the websites say that it still doesn't stack.

EDIT: I tell a filthy lie, its just the europe PTR notes

I couldn't find any evidence of it on the US site's notes either, but here's the blue post for anyone else that missed it.

Apart from what I said about wanding actually disrupting dps from locks and shadow priests, and what others have said about the fact that it will take you at least 2 minutes to wand back to full mana, I'd like to point out that there is a simple calculation you can do to prove to yourself that this idea doesn't work.

average dps = (AB spam dps x M) + (wand dps x N) / M + N

So if AB is 2400 dps for forty seconds and wanding is 300 dps for two minutes, then you are doing average 825 dps. With one evocate, timely use of pots and gems, the shadow priest mana you can maybe get that up to a whole two minutes of AB spam in the first four minutes of the fight, giving average 1350 dps before dropping back to 825 dps.

Now, if your AB spam is 2400 dps then you can probably manage more than 1400 dps with fireball anyway and sustain it for longer - and not need to use gem and pot cooldowns for mana. Do you see the flaw now?

The only time there was somewhat serious discussion about Wanding rotations was when AM spam was incredibly broken with TC and MSD. I think it was a debate between wanding or Rank 3 AM. Other than that scenario (which we most likely won't be seeing again), save your wands for a really sloppy Phase 2 RoS fight

I can see how serpent-coil brand gets more useful when you're 40/0/21 in a fight that allows exactly 3 gem uses... I don't see how it's all that great though compared to something like the new alchemist stone, especially when you're already hit capped (you should consider how rawr values hit beyond cap, as it's something very hard to estimate since it doesn't have 0 benefit due to being able to drop hit in other slots but it's also far far from the benefit it would have if you wouldn't be able to reach the hit cap).

The thing that makes SCB so good for 40/0/21 is that it's another cooldown you can stack at the same time as trinkets. aka, add on another 225dmg while you're spamming blast during arcane power, with your other trinket on and heroism.

You're forgetting though 1 is a 2 minute cooldown and the other is 3, so you will only fit 1 out of every 3 gems with an arcane power. And I doubt losing the mana and DPS from using gems on cooldown is worth it for the sake of stacking all of them with AP.

No, but you stack it on the one you get heroism with, and every other one before/after that, which is a significant dps boost.

If you are to use the SCB and HSH together the braid and the hex are on the same cooldown while AP is on a 3 minute cooldown. If you want to maximize the time spent dpsing with all 3 of the cooldowns (okay so 4 with PoM) you'd generally wait 1 minute do to so except, when it is right down to the wire.

The difference is that when you chain 3 ABs together, building up the debuff, as each AB ends, you start casting the next one before your client gets the result of your previous cast back with the new cast time debuff, so you cast it with the previous cast time. Your rotation looks like:

2.5sec AB at 100% cost
2.5sec AB at 175% cost
2.17sec AB at 250% cost
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
1.5sec AB at 100% cost
2.5sec AB at 175% cost
2.17sec AB at 250% cost
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
etc.

Adding a frostbolt in between each AB gives your client time to get the debuff, so your cast times are:

2.5sec AB at 100% cost
2.5sec FB
2.17sec AB at 175% cost
2.5sec FB
1.83sec AB at 250% cost
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
1.5sec AB at 100% cost
2.5sec FB
2.17sec AB at 175% cost
2.5sec FB
1.83sec AB at 250% cost
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
2.5sec FB
etc.

In other words, for each rotation, looking just at the ABs, you're doing the same damage, with the same mana cost, and casting a 1.5, a 2.5, and a 2.17 in the first one, and a 1.5, a 2.17, and a 1.83 in the second one.

EDIT: No problem. It amazes me how much complexity and subtle intricacies like this that Blizz managed to fit in one spell.

Wow, thankyou. I have learned something today, I will adjust my rotation accordingly.

If you wait on your mana gems, you're losing 1/3 of their boost on average in order to boost them up by 30%. 1.3*2/3<1 so you're actually losing dps if you wait 1 minute every time for it to stack with AP. When it stacks naturally, great, but when it doesn't it isn't worth waiting. I remember when I did the math for IV and icon it was never worth waiting on IV for the icon although it was worth it to have the icon wait for IV if it happened to be less than ~40s wait (so normally not worth it, but if you happened to have <~40s left on your IV you should wait) - most likely same applies to AP and SCB, except the time worth waiting will most likely be quite lower as the mana returns from your mana gems don't get multiplied by AP, and not only you give up trinket uptime you also give up # of gems used in the fight.

There's roughy a 10% value increase for SCB for Arcane/Frost above what other items gain just from overall damage increase in 2.4. Here's where I see this coming from. It has nothing to do with overstacking. Main difference comes from GCD reduction. In 2.3 best spell during Heroism and IV is Frostbolt. So you would use SCB twice with Frostbolt and once with AB spam. In 2.4 however what you would use during Heroism and IV is AB spam (not Heroism and IV at the same time). Value of damage increase from SCB is much higher for AB spam than for Frostbolt.

Thanks for that. I went and forced one of my mages to a little testing today.

Basic T6 geared mage, using no haste gear, gems and super mana pots on CD, molten armor.
Shaman in group for mana spring. Int buff, no wisdom, no spirit buff.
He lasted 4 minutes before he had to Evocate - which pretty much suffices for a 6 minute calculation.

I´m testing it again with a kinda equally geared mage(9% haste) as you are to see if it still works.
As for the Spriest usage, the main idea was to see if a mage needed one to last 6 minutes.
I´d assume with stacking haste gear that it could get a serious problem, but as it seems now it ain´t yet.
I rather use a Spriest on a warlock and healers in that regard.

Just to justify, since that statement might taunt someone:
6 min casting as warlock with 0 haste and 0 mana regen would wield a consumption of ~53.000 mana and require 22 LT - thats 33 seconds downtime(which is, rounded down 8% lost DPS time - or with 2k DPS 60.000 damage lost).
With, for example 280 haste, we´re going up to 60-65k and even go up in Lifetap downtime by some seconds.

Kudos again for clarifying.

Galzohar, true statement. If you happen to wait on your mana gems you are losing that however I usually have a rotation that I use personally that works for me in particular and boosts my dps in HJ and BT to be one of the top DPSERs in at least my guild. It may not work for others but, it does work for me and my dps at least among the mages is almost unmatched.

My macro combination happens to be is Hex, SCB, IV, Combustion, then I just FrB spam. I usually just have a scorch hit on the boss before I hit my macro. I've done the rotation before and the dps that I do it doesn't do enough dps if I just wait that one minute. The buffs that I get from having everything up at once makes everything much easier on me and from seeing using all of them together maximizing the time that I have Hex and SCB's cooldowns up at the same time.

But, I can see with your numbers and figures how you came to that conclusion. I'll try it sometime thanks Galzohar.