Sancus

The game mechanic situation pre-bc has no bearing on the situation today. Repeat this to yourself 100 times. People who make the argument "you can't complain because we were worse off 2 years ago" are insane retards, it doesn't fucking matter in the slightest, balance demands that you look at how things are NOW. Warlocks consistently, on-average, outdps mages by a significant margin while using their utility curses. All you have to do is look at the scoreboard to confirm this. If Warlocks are actually allowed to use damage curses(this should never, ever happen in TBC), they outdps everyone in the game except for Warglaive rogues. This is unbalanced, period.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

andastra

There's also mana gems to consider. You're going to want to use the first one at around 0:30 and a second one around 2:30 so you can use a flame cap at <20%. You'll also want to use all three combustion charges before 1:30 so it'll be up again around 4:30. Combustion adds crits and therefore mana regen due to MoE. Evocation at 1:19 just means you'll be using it when you only need 2 seconds out of 10 to get back to full mana and run the chance of going oom near the end when you get heroism and pop icy veins and haste trinkets at the same time.

 

• Astrylian

 

Risingstar

Yeah but IV only lasts 20 seconds.

 

• Astrylian

 

Roywyn

Andastra was talking about Flame Caps, that means a fire spec, that means haste isn't actually limited.
Yeah, the GCD caps at 1s there, but your primary nukes will be above the cap.

Haste caps are as follows.
Fireball - caps at 300% (3s/1s) cast speed (+200% haste)
IV = 120%, BL = 130%, 3.00/(1.20*1.30) = 192% speed needed to cap under BL+IV.
That's +92% haste, or 1440+ haste rating.
Frostbolt - caps at 250% (2.5s/1s) cast speed (+150% haste)
IV = 120%, BL = 130%, 2.50/(1.20*1.30) = 160% speed needed to cap under BL+IV.
That's +60% haste, or 940+ haste rating.

Arcane Blast
At 2.5s with IV/BL caps at +60% haste, or 940+ haste rating.
At 2.13s with IV/BL caps at +38% haste, or 610+ haste rating.
At 1.83s with IV/BL caps at +17% haste, or 275+ haste rating.
At 1.5s with BL, it caps at +15% haste,or 240+ haste rating.

You gear will have 419 - 526 haste. The latter if you stack haste.
You can get up to 320 MSD + 320 EoQ + 330 MQG + 280 BoWiz haste from procs/trinkets if you stack them for no reason, but you should only have 175 as trinket clicky in a proper setup.

So, you'll have up to 419+175=594 haste in a good setup, and up to 1776 haste with an inferior setup.
So, your AB1 will get close to the cap and AB2/3 will drop unter the cap, all other spells won't reach the cap yet.

 

Northerner

R.E. Warlocks:

I think it should be obvious that haste increases ISB uptime given that it has only two factors. Those being a static time element (scales nicely with haste) and a charge component (which scales linearly with haste from increased applications). With respect to haste itself only the first component still scales of course.

 

galzohar

While it's nice to make yourself slightly more accurate by taking into account extra ISB from haste, in reality the effect is quite neglicible, just like the effect of having less shadowbolts affected by SP/shaman regen and thus lifetap will be making up a bigger % of your casts is quite neglicible as well.

When making generalizations it's important to pay attention which benefits are extremely tiny and which are not.

 

Silentwalker

What Galzohar was talking about was correct but it should be obvious on the other side that the ISB uptime would only be increased if the warlocks had more haste than the other shadow damage dealers in the raid (IE Shadow Priests). If the warlocks and the shadow priests have the same amount of haste the ISB is negated. Exactly what Galzohar was talking about.

I just wanted to add to what Galzohar was saying if that is not minded by Galzohar.

 

Madlax

First off, thanks for the replies - solved a bunch of thoughts.
2nd - a little feedback for the case-scenario:
1) No run time, so no good LT time
2) Gonna see with Molten/Mage armor tomorrow if any of the mages drops by - though I don´t think they will need Mage Armor.
I´m aware that with increasing haste gear the viewpoint will change slightly.
Also I´ll change the test setup slightly - trying to get 2 bloodlusts ~25%.

Proving that is the whole purpose of the assumption.

 

Evene

If you do this again I hope your comparison includes a warlock with mana regen from mana spring and mana pots if you're comparing him to a mage who's using pots and has mana spring.

 

Ivorthemage

Given the impact of mana regen on dps for arcane mages, has anyone done the theorycrafting for 40/0/21 and leatherworking, to see if drums of restoration actually add more dps than drums of battle?

 

Hate Monkey

Maybe it has been a while since I last played deep arcane, or that I even had mana problems, but isn't the point of TheoryCrafting to reach your maximum potential. A 40/0/21 spec still falls behind a deep fire build in aspects of overall raiding efficiency and overall output of damage. There should be no reason to find a justification, or minimal dps boost for such a failing idea of a spec anyways.

[Drums of Restoration] is such a bad item anyways. It suffers from the same reason Mana Gems for so long sucked so badly. It doesn't restore enough mana. 40mana/sec for 15 seconds, when a ramped up AB costs 600 mana, is wasting that GCD for 1 extra spell worth it? Hardly.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

 

galzohar

The amount of mana consumeables a warlock is using will have no real effect on the DPS (#, NOT %) he gains from more mana. Each ~2k mana is 1.5s more spent casting, while for a mage using evocate with 10k mana each 1500 mana is another 2s spent casting. Of course when the mage stops using evocate already then every additional mana will not be used as efficiently as each gem you drop for a flame cap doesn't provide as much damage as dropping evocate did - but it is extra damage. That's why it's extremely complicated - while the warlock gets rather fixed gains from mana regen, the dps a mage gains from mana regen are quite fight and raid dependant.

Of course the warlock should use mana potions, but it doesn't really mean anything (at least not significant although I actually don't see how the warlock's regen from other sources would have any effect whatsoever) for the shadowpriest dps increase comparison. While if a mage doesn't use mana potions he artificially increases his need/gain of/from a shadowpriest by forcing himself to evocate, while a warlock would lifetap anyway. So while both classes should pot, for mages need to have mana pots modeled while for warlocks it doesn't really affect the result of this specific comparison (although for general comparisons you should obviously include warlock pots, no reason not to).

 

Searix

Actually drums of restoration are per person, so in a stacked dps caster group that's 3000 raid mana and health per person that pops it. Really if you're looking at just yourself benefitting from the drums, that's 600 mana/health vs. 20 spell haste (if you distribute both over 2 minutes).

Btw my theorycraft is still showing 40/10/11 as more dps than 40/0/21 if you get improved scorch but not winter's chill

 

Ivorthemage

"Maybe it has been a while since I last played deep arcane, or that I even had mana problems, but isn't the point of TheoryCrafting to reach your maximum potential. A 40/0/21 spec still falls behind a deep fire build in aspects of overall raiding efficiency and overall output of damage. There should be no reason to find a justification, or minimal dps boost for such a failing idea of a spec anyways."

You havent read the re-assessments of the spec that have been coming out recently. The mana changes make arcane blast spam far more viable, particularly for those of us who have 2-piece T5 but no T6. Not everyone is at the same gear level.

"[Drums of Restoration] is such a bad item anyways. It suffers from the same reason Mana Gems for so long sucked so badly. It doesn't restore enough mana. 40mana/sec for 15 seconds, when a ramped up AB costs 600 mana, is wasting that GCD for 1 extra spell worth it? Hardly."

I would prefer an answer that had math, but thank you for your opinion.

 

diskape

With PTRs and TTRs finally being closed (for good) and a very good chance that the patch will hit the live servers tomorrow - can someone sum up everything that EJ mage community have learned during the past couple of weeks? Things like "what is THE new 2.4 dps spec and why" and such. It'll be a great help for many EJ readers. Thanks in advance guys.

 

Mystz0r

Has someone made a cookie-cutting set of gear anywhere? I might've missed it, apologies if I did!

 

Beska

I think this'll be absolutely great. This thread is pretty much all over the place and a new thread summing up 2.4 would help.

 

Roywyn

Seems like you haven't read much about it either. Keep in mind that the haste changes are at least as important as the spirit change.

You can do that yourself easily. Calculating over a 2 minute duration (that's the drum cooldown), Drums of Restoration are 5*600 mana, or 125 mp5, and Drums of Battle are 80*5*30s/120s = +100 haste ~= +112 damage, -37 mp5.

That means you gain 142 mp5 at the cost of 112 damage. Which is nearly as bad as using the . Yes, the healing one.

Read up in http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html about your way to trade mana for damage.

 

Evene

My point is his comparison had a mage using mana pots in a group with mana spring he equated that to a certain amount of time till the mage was oom. However for a warlock he used ZERO mana regen and equated time spent life tapping for the same fight duration to loss damage. Warlock using mana pots and having mana spring life taps less which directly affects damage output for a set duration fight. A more accurate comparison would eitheir decrease the number of lt's for mana spring/pots or compare to the amount of time a mage can last without pot and mana spring. I don't see how it isn't obvious in a comparison for who should get a shadow priest comparing a mage using mana pots with mana spring to a warlock with zero mana regen is flawed.

 

Ivorthemage

I have read a lot about it, and I am well aware of the haste changes. Haste is a bit problematic for this spec though, as it chews through mana faster, and

Trading mana for damage is what this spec is all about. The problem is that I haven't seen a handy metric yet for converting mana regen to damage with this particular spec.

Anyway, I figured out a way to answer my own question.

600 mana over 120 seconds is 5 mp5, inside the 5 second rule. With the spirit changes, 1 spirit gets you about 1mp5, *outside* the 5 second rule. So 5mp5 is worth ~7 spirit for an arcane mage with mage armor up. The reason why I translate into spirit is that magegraf allows me to add spirit, but not MP5.

When I plug 7 spirit to current stats in magegraf, I get a 2 dps increase.

Drums of Battle get me the equivalent of 20 haste. 20 haste is a 15 dps increase.

So yes, Drums of Battle are a lot better.

 

Ivorthemage

I have read a lot about it, and I am well aware of the haste changes.

Trading mana for damage is what this spec is all about. The problem is that I haven't seen a handy metric yet for converting mana regen to damage with this particular spec.

Anyway, I figured out a way to answer my own question.

600 mana over 120 seconds is 5 mp5, inside the 5 second rule. With the spirit changes, 1 spirit gets you about 1mp5, *outside* the 5 second rule. So 5mp5 is worth ~7 spirit for an arcane mage with mage armor up. The reason why I translate into spirit is that magegraf allows me to add spirit, but not MP5.

When I plug 7 spirit to current stats in magegraf, I get a 4 dps increase.

Drums of Battle get me the equivalent of 20 haste. 20 haste is a 14 dps increase.

So yes, Drums of Battle are a lot better. I know you knew that, but for me how one arrives at an answer is as important as the answer itself.

 

Cryic

Using Rawr.mage, here's the numbers I posted to my guild's forums based on our current progression and the way we normally set up the groups (2 to 3 mages, warlock, shadow priest and sometimes a shaman of various specs). I plugged in buffs based on what we / I normally use: iSpirit, 3 paladin buffs, 250mp5 spriest, flame caps. I normally do not use destruction pots, nor drums. We sometimes have iCoS.

We just killed Illidian last night, so the need to spec something different then fire to help on Illidian is still needed. Yes, I'm sure most guilds can kill with whatever specs, but we need to reduce the time of phase 2 as much as possible, which means non fire specs atm.

Here's the post:


40 / 21 falls behind Deep fire at the very end, but until then, it's extremely competitive, if not better (assuming the shit doesnt hit the fan).

I usually raid as Deep fire, mainly because I hate the thought of chain chugging mana pots to do decent dps on semi farm mobs, so please don't take this as an Arcane Zealot post I like all specs

 

• Xenophon

Given that I do not have 4-piece T6 yet, our other mage is deep frost, and we generally have CoS up but not CoE, I have a feeling that 40-0-21 would be the best spec for me post-2.4. However, I have a question about cast sequence: I've been playing around with Vontre's magegraf, and it seems to be giving me some rather odd advise...

Its ideal cast sequence over a 5 min fight is

Arcane Blast x 15
Cold Snap
Arcane Blast x 56
Frostbolt x 7
Arcane Blast x 3
Frostbolt x 3
Arcane Blast
Frostbolt
Arcane Blast x 6
Frostbolt x 6
Arcane Blast x 3
Frostbolt x 4
Arcane Blast x 3
Frostbolt x 20

And has me at -3000 mana at one point.

I presume a more realistic scenario would be:

Pop trinkets, AP, and Icy Veins, AB spam till AP ends, cold snap to extent Icy Veins
Evocate
AB x 3
FB x3
Repeat the two above till AP/trinkets are back up
Pop trinkets, AP, Icy Veins, and heroism, AB spam till AP ends and/or mob is dead.

Let me know if I am too far off the mark here.