Arcane Missiles has never functioned as a normal channeled spell. It is a spell that periodically shoots off individual spells, instead of a constant stream. This is also why AM had a chance to proc on every wave of missiles, and why other channeled spells like Mind Flay and Drain Life do not.

To be honest Its purely a matter of preference. I don't pvp at all, and if I were I wouldn't be deep fire, so I don't give much value to imp nova. The other choices are just purely a matter of 'best dps' in case I ever need to deal out frost damage, which is close to never. Its nice to have for illidan phase 2, but that's about it. Not like firespec is worth trying to top meters on that fight anyway. I mean, I couldn't care less about the talents, as long as I get 3 EP and IV I'm happy.

If you want to get real technical, it's a channeled DoT that's gotten patched repeatedly to make it work less like a DoT. It barely acts like one now except for the fact that it (still?) took (takes?) an invisible debuff slot.

I suppose the issue with AM is if it "counts" as periodic damage for the purpose of the trinket proc. If so, then the trinket _might_ be worth having for an arcane mage. The proc will never happen as a frost mage, and apparently you get some (but not great) benefit from the fireball and ignite DoTs.

Still, it looks like it was intended for Shadow Priests to me.

The point was that it doesn't, so that it's pretty much worthless

All-in-all, leave this one to the Warlocks and Shadow Priests (as has been stated before already).

Today on Brutallus kill as a 2/48/11 grped with sp and resto shaman i went oom at 5%...... I've been going over it in my head and i just dont get it how it was possible. No evo used. WWS -> Wow Web Stats

You had enough total mana (assuming 10k starting mana) to cast ~116 fireballs. 6 minute fight has enough time to cast 120 fireballs if you cast from start to finish, a little less if you count scorch applications and a little more if you count bloodlust/IV. You seem to have casted 122 fireballs and 2 scorches which makes sense since BoW ticks don't show on WWS which would account for ~3500 more mana or ~8-9 more fireballs. Ignoring scorches and taking IV/BL into account you should've had the time to cast 127.5 fireballs.

The destruction potion you used was worth several thousand damage, but if you had the time to cast 1-2 more fireballs (1 would probably be more or less enough, and 2 fireballs almost definitely enough) a mana potions instead of one of the destruction potions would've actually done you better. I'm assuming you were already using flame caps as I see no mana gems used although I hadn't noticed the flame cap buff on WWS.

Bottom line is on fights ~6+ mins, even with a resto shaman and an uber shadow priest, you're still going to need a mana potion (or a judgement of wisdom kept up...).

Even if you had the mana just to go oom at 0% with a shadowpriest, without one you'd have to use gems pots and evocation - costing 8 seconds of DPSing (mana not used during those 8 seconds counted as extra mana so you can count the 8 seconds as wasted time), and several thousand damage for each of the 2 flame caps that were lost and each of the 3 destruction potions that were lost, and would still be 3500 mana short which would mean you'd still have to use mage armor to last through the fight or lose 7-8 more fireballs which is worse than losing 3% crit, meaning you should've mage armored as well.

Damage that would be lost for not having a shadowpriest is at LEAST 4% (very rough and lowballing figure! wouldn't be surprised if the accurate figure is closer to 10%) before taking into account the 3% crit lost from mage armor that would've costed a bit under 3% more of the DPS (exact amount requires to figure out the OO5SR regen to see if with mage armor you could've spent less time evocating and thus not losing the "full" ~2.6-2.7%).

Keep in mind 6 minutes of straight nuking is quite an extreme, and not having to keep scorch up is even more of a special case. For example if you'd have to move 10% of the time your mana would've lasted fine with you doing exactly the same as you did on the WWS.

Conclusion
At least for brutallus and probably for other fights (at least longer ones) giving shadow priests to warlocks over mages is just plain silly. Short fights is where it gets complicated as warlocks keep getting the same benefits while mages' benefits shrink quickly, mostly once you're capable of keeping yourself going with pots and gems and no SP/evocation. Even in that situation of a short fight I'm not sure if a warlock would benefit more but at least the results won't be as obvious as they are in a fight like brutallus where mages should have significant priority.

Estimating SP DPS required to be worth bringing is harder, but at least on your WWS he was dealing 1400 DPS which should be enough considering about 100 of the warlock's DPS and about 200 of each of the 2 mages' DPS came from the shadow priest's mana regen. It seems borderline enough though to be worth calculating more accurately (as in, take your gear/stats and calculate exactly how much damage you'd lose with no SP), especially for shorter and/or more movement-heavy fights.

On a side note seeing you hit the enrage timer yet the SP is in a healer group rather than a DPS group - is tank+raid healing that intensive that you can't afford the SP for a 2nd DPS group since you already brought a 2nd one? Then again looking at all the attempts none was even close to killing him so DPS probably wasn't your #1 problem (then again it doesn't mean healing was either at least not without looking at all the attempts individually...).


*Note haste gear was neglected completely, as I can't see your armory, but I doubt it would be anywhere near enough to change your mana consumption to need any more than a single super mana potion, *maybe* 2 if you really have a noticeable amount of haste.

Has anyone tried Arcane blast on brutallus?

I've given it a go a couple of time but I couldn't really gleam any useful theory out of the experiences.

I'm wondering what the best rotation for it would be, I'm currently using AB/bolt/AB/bolt.

Right now consumables wise I'm just straight mana pot + gem as every drop of mana is needed to squeeze out more AB's.

Actually, we've got our kill today. I opted for a 1-tick evocation which turned out to be unnecessary, but i would have had finished stupidly low otherwise.

Wow Web Stats
2 flame cap
2 destro pot
1 mana pot
1 evo tick (unnecessary)

I could have used a mana gem in between the 2 flame caps, but I didn't want to risk it. Maybe I should have.
In any case, my dps is what you get from a solo fire mage, given I did all the scorching and didn't get an innervate. If pets were counted in, I would have been #4, losing to double lust hunter.

In any case, it shows 125 fireballs and 16 scorch. I kinda like having more haste; I get to do really slick scorch rotation, literally refreshing it with sub-1s scorch left.

EDIT: and ironically, flame caps are still not combat logged.

Not sure if this would be the best place but can you ask your warlocks why they even considered using destro pots when mana potions are pretty much worth double the dps of a destro potion in any case considered (except maybe on the last CD if they happened to be at high enough mana to not need any LT till the end)? Especially seeing the abysmal luck they had with crits.

For an empirical but reasonable explanation, http://elitistjerks.com/604775-post1005.html

For warlocks wether you have a SP or not, it's common sense to use mana pots over destruction pots normally. There are quite a few *exceptions* of fights with intensive movement when you can lifetap on the move and not really lose DPS to it. Most fights, though, mana pots would reduce your lifetap needs and thus increase DPS more than a destruction pot would. Same goes for a mage using evocate - it's even more noticeable as mages gain a lot less mana/sec from evocate than warlocks get from lifetaps.

Regarding the mana gem between the flame caps, while it might cause a little loss on flame cap uptime, it probably allows a full destruction potion usage which would be very much worth it. Keep in mind in tight timer fights you can safely assume the fight will last to the very last second, and if it happened to end early then grats you got your kill so it doesn't matter your DPS wasn't optimized. But if you were having it "on the edge" and having the fight last the whole 6 min then you do your max DPS.

Keep in mind that evocation several times less effective than non-stacked destruction potions, so during the stacking you'll have to be doing several times your normal damage which probably doesn't happen (although accurate values can be calculated to make sure). When it comes to 1 evocation tick, though, it gets closer. But considering it wasn't even needed in your case it's kind of moot to discuss this very unique case of having to choose destruction pot during cooldown stacking + 1 evo tick VS a mana pot.

I admit searix its not an easy choice, trinketwise. I mean, skull not stacking with mojo madness is really frustrating. At least it 'works' with flame caps, which you get to use when you don't equip serpent-coil braid. Although, with my new belt, I am back in the sub-hitcap area, I could almost see myself use SCB. It does strikes me as a really tough call. Theres a number of suboptimal play I know I have done, most of which related with trinkets not stacking that I haven't yet adapted to. Maybe SCB will simplify things. Gotta rerun the numbers again.

Talked to my Sp and i now know what happend, he had to move when he got burn and late in fight he had to help heal so thats the mistery solved. Less than intended crit rate (unlucky random ;/ ) didnt help on mana returns from moe too.

We didnt hit the enrage, we had 5 sec left when he dropped dead. WWS is rly weird, it counted burn dmg to some players like for example to manly o_O.

@ manly
Where you grped with ele shamy ? Your "high" crit rates makes me wana kill random number generator ;/

Are you implying that your raid got me burned ? Bastards !

(to answer your question: ret pally +3% crit and elemental shaman. 41% crit rate is slightly below what I was supposed to get critwise. Ishaxa got 46% for reference, and no resists)

Yes they know. And destro pots are guild-bank-provided, so I doubt they would intentionally avoid using them. Group was
{ishaxa f.m, manly f.m, furiotoo d.l, eswedge el.s, siawyn s.p}. The other locks were all destro locks, but had resto shaman and no s.priest.

No ofc not Just browsing through Brutallus WWS kill's shows a lot of plp getting credited Burn dmg as their own dealt, increasing raid and personal dps and total dmg done which is weird

Bah, ret paly and ele shaman

Btw we didnt have a single warglaive rogue in raid I wonder how many guilds without warglaives killed him pre-enrage.

For any plp interested, i'll be releasing kill movie tommorow.

Ah, that answers that (as in they used the provided destro pots x3 instead of mana). I've got a few hundred mana pots to burn through myself and didn't even consider destro pots, though they would have some use on the last cooldown use when I life tap too much but that already means I messed up somewhere.

And in the end I preffer the resto shaman for myself even if in theory I'd get 3% crit ... Crit can prove very unreliable (the 2 warlocks without ele shaman are ~5% under if they're close to best set) and minimum hit I can get is 183. I get tide back, decent enough and somewhat reliable dps boost.

Something I've been agonizing over with my guild master about, and I haven't been able to find a clear and well-explained answer to are the following:

Who benefits more from a Shadow Priest: Mage or Warlock?
Who benefits more from an Elemental Shaman: Mage or Warlock?

My current belief is that the Shaman goes to the Mages, while the Spriest goes to the locks, on account of the Mages not needing the mana because we have Evocation + Gems, relieving the Warlocks of Life Tap, and the Fire Mages benefit greatly from Heroism, with crit giving additional mana regen. Currently, most nights the Warlocks in my guild get the Shaman and the Priest, letting the Mages with either a BM Hunter or a Resto Shaman (if spared). I get called out as being whiny every time I ask the two to be split up: the GM's argument is if gives the Spriest and Shaman additional regeneration -- but what about the non-hybrid DPS classes?

Somewhat recently, we compared lost DPS due to using Evocation vs. Life Tap and I conceded that more time was lost to Life Tap given no additional raid buffs (granted predicting Evocation's time is easier, since Life Tap scales with DPS and not Intellect).

However, I've been somewhat out of the loop and from what I've read here the goal is to avoid Evocation, and favor Flame Caps over Mana Gems. That leads me to believe it should be the reverse: Shaman to Warlocks due to need for +hit and Spriest to Mages to avoid Evocation and gemming. In the past, when my mana seemed to not drop due to a Spriest, I spammed Arcane Blast so I could use it.

@Manly: Our Healing Priests mooch Innervates. I got lots of innervates one day in Tempest Keep when we were steamrolling it, but that's the extent.

I'm really curious about a further comparison between giving Mages Shadow Priests on Brutallus over Warlocks. To me it seemed like the Warlock damage was considerably worse for a 6 minute duration fight without one compared to Mages not having one. Even when chain mana potting it seemed they were doing poorly in damage. The warlock damage in EJ's Brutallus WWS is considerably lower than the Warlocks in ours (link). Phobophile was 40/0/21 so ignore that, but the other Warlocks had a Shadow Priest, Resto Shaman, and 2 sets of drums. The mage group had a BM hunter, resto shaman, and 5 sets of drums (4 haste, 1 resto), so using our WWS for a comparison between warlocks w/ shadowpriest and mages w/o doesn't seem entirely possible. Not too mention I know I didn't use consumables perfectly and the same goes with others in our raid.

Using Rawr assuming the best pre Sunwell gear, max consumable useage, and no moonkin or ele shaman I'm getting ~100 dps difference between having a Shadow Priest (375 more mp5) and not having one. I know I'm forgetting to include every detail of how I have my rawr for Mages configured and I couldn't find an option for mp5 for rawr for Warlocks, but I'm hoping the debate over who to give the Shadow Priests too can be further clarified in a situation where no Elemental Shamans are used, meaning Mana Tide is always there.

Well, in our case all 3 warlocks were destro.
Furiotoo - elemental shaman, s.priest, 1 bloodlust (3 drums from me)
Gilliam - resto shaman (2 drums)
Lailla - resto shaman (2 drums)

this means, no maledictioned COS amongst other things. I know Gilliam is usually our token affliction warlock, so his destro lock gear is probably not optimum.

I guess we are either doing things wrong, or our mage lead is setting up the group, but our mage group is me and another mage, a boomkin, an ele shaman, and a shadowpriest. The locks are in with another shadow priest.

Read my above analysis... You don't compare lifetap time and evocation time, you compare evocation time needed to gain X mana and then the lifetap time needed to gain that same amount of mana. You will always get that the time spent evocating to get X mana would be greater than the time spent lifetapping for getting that same amount of mana. A mage in the "evocation zone" will pretty much always benefit more from a SP than a warlock, but it gets more complicated when the mage wouldn't need evocate even without a SP, as destruction potions/flame caps are simply not as good as avoiding evocation.


Regarding elemental VS resto shaman, both mage and warlock would gain more DPS from an elemental shaman. You can claim crit variance makes crit less good but in reality it's completely not true, as increasing crit increases your average expected crit as well as your "minimum (and maximum) reasonable expected crit". In other words adding crit increases the # of crits you would have in an "I got unlucky scenario" as well as the "I got lucky" scenario, and the end result is that the fact crit is luck-based makes absolutely no difference on how good it is.

Resto shaman is ~4800 mana while 3% crit is 40~50 dps or so which over 6 minutes of chain casting is in the area of 17k damage. That's quite a good deal (to trade the resto for an elemental) no matter what caster you are - the question is for which casters it would actually be a "better" deal than others, or in other words which class would gain more absolute DPS by losing 4800 mana and gaining 3% crit, since the damage lost by losing 4800 mana depends on your class and for a mage also on what mana situation you're in (will you need evocate to make up for it? mana pots? gems? each have different "DPS cost"), and 3% crit isn't exactly equal either (although quite close with mages getting 210% crits and warlocks increasing ISB uptime, and both get in the area of 2.5-3% DPS increase from it).

But why set the groups up that way? (Minus the Boomkin, please, sorry :P)