Pre 2.3 Blizzard definitely worked as Anaxo described (with Quartz). I was using an odd arcane spec with just enough points in frost for imp blizzard, and whenever focus procced and there was > 1 mob around I'd spam it (yes it was hideously inefficient, but nevermind that). The normal 8-second channel would show and then vanish after 4 seconds, and the waves would hit twice as fast as usual.

When using an aoe spell, Lightning Capacitor will still get a charge for each crit of the spell, and fire off if you get 3. I guess it doesn't check for simultaneous charges. Anyway, basically got a bolt every other AE.

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This is far from my best performance on Rage winterchill, first time I've been fire on him, granted none of the 2 fire mages had malediction CoE or 4/t6 and having to get used to raiding with fire again - atleast for my part - is it realistic to get near those destro warlocks? First I was very pessimistic, and I'm sure it's much more than me being naive thinking it should be possible to push closer to them, checking TC dps with Lhavieras script didn't yield much comfort. Shrug.

Matching a warlock at 1800 DPS (or the mage equivalent on total damage, DPS can be misleading) is I think pretty easily in range for a fight of this length given CoE and bloodlust. The lock at 2.2k DPS gets 9 ferocious inspiration procs and scores some pretty substantial CoD ticks; raid DPS would have been higher had he used CoE (almost 80k in added mage damage versus 40k on his own chart). Even with 3 mages there are some fights where I think CoD still makes sense. It's situational, the closer a fight is to a tank-and-spank generally the more CoE makes sense but each fight is different. I almost feel like I need a support group to give me the courage to stand up and demand CoE sometimes :P

Random discovery of the day

If you activate icon before skull, they don't stack. If you activate skull first, icon stacks with it. I've also heard rumors of the same thing applying with hex shrunken head.

Mentioning trinkets, is there a down-low on what's the best combo now? I don't personally have the Skull, I'm wondering if Shrunken Head + Sextant or Shrunken Head + Silver Crescent are better. The extra static damage is nice, but two on-use trinkets. :pshyduck:

It's always been the following for fire
[The Skull of Gul'dan]>[Hex Shrunken Head]>[Icon of the Silver Crescent]>[Darkmoon Card: Crusade]

I don't really understand how is Icon viewed as superior to Crusade for fire spec? Didn't a lot of theorycrafts put Crusade above Icon?

No, the basic averaging puts Crusade at like 78 damage and Icon at 68, but this ignores the fact that no fight is really a perfect multiple of the 2 minute cooldown, and it also ignores the multiplicative effect of stacking skull, icon, bloodlust, and combustion.

Activatable trinkets are pretty much always better than their commonly calculated (duration/cooldown)*(damage add)

I see. However, for my own playing style, I would place Icon below Crusade. This is because I won't always get to use Icon exactly every 2 minutes. There are often situations where I tend to wait a while longer just so I can stack Icon + other effects, or simply because I anticipate that I will need to move or hold dps to handle some boss abilities.

I'm not really good at maximising my trinkets yet. Maybe when I get better I will be able to use Icon to greater effect.

So, I was talking to another mage in my guild, and he said something I thought was curious. I asked what he thought of haste, and he said "I really don't see what spell would benefit from it over other stats with the exception of maybe AM" It got me to thinking about what was valued when people were doing AM builds. There were always a few requirements to it, you wanted 2 pc T5 so you could AB spam, you wanted MSD because the AM pulses each had a chance to proc it and ditto with TLC. Now... TLC made crit worthwhile in the AM spam build, but with MSD and TLC nerfs...

Anyway in a roundabout way, what I'm getting at is that in an Arcane build right now, if you were looking at AM spam really the only stats you would be at all concerned about would be + dmg and + haste. You could keep your MSD meta or really one of the 3 socket helms would work fine too. But stack something like Quag's Eye and Skull get the haste gear from ZA and BT/MH and lastly the new badge gear.... You could stack a significant amount of haste onto this build. I know that haste doesn't increase DPM, but that was the other nice thing about AM spam.... If you had a ret pally on a raid, which a lot of people do now seeing the MASSIVE DPS boost they got, you're always going to have JoW up which is exceptionally nice on AM spam. Stack a shadow priest in your group as well as the fact that you're getting 60% of your mana back while casting, and I was wondering if this might be a potential idea for a raiding build?

It could be viable, but I don't think a hasted AM build will be competitive to fire spec DPS. Ever since MSD was nerfed, I don't think there is potential for AM to ever be competitive. We just can't get to spend mana as quickly as it was pre 2.2 with MSD, so mana should not be a concern. Also, AM doesn't scales as fast as fireball, so I don't really see much potential here.

Okay so here's what I've whipped up so far, I haven't gotten to actually plugging these numbers into Vontre or Lhivera but I plan on that after sleep.

What I've done is take the best possible haste items a person could gear themselves out with and put them onto one guy.

I did -sort of- the same to another character with no haste. (T6 and what I thought was good gear from BT/MH)


My non-haste came out ...............................My Haste came out

272 Stamina...............................................329 Stamina
251 Intellect ..............................................282 Intellect
240 Crit rating ~8.6%.................................370 Haste rating ~ 23.5%
852 Spell dmg............................................683 Spell dmg

So in haste gear you gain
57 Stamina
31 Intellect
23.5% haste!

You lose
8.6% crit
169 dmg (Big ouch)


Anyway I plan on doing some theorycrafting with these numbers later on, in the meantime bed


PM me if you -have- to know what items I was using, the spell haste is pretty limited, but for the non I assumed full t6 with 12 dmg gems and best (imo) items in BT/MH that I could find.

Did you also calculate lost hit rating?

Muahaha - haste is just too expensive in comparison to what you have to sacrifice.

Haste isn't something we can honestly stack up to 300 right now.

Blizzard has only made gear with haste alone. No hit, no crit just haste. I wanna collect a silly haste suit but I am not spending DKP to get tons of it.

My focus is to fit in spell hase where I can in my setup. Spots open for haste over hit are cloak, offhand, rings, helm. Depending on how much spell hit I gain from items on the teir 6 content level I might be able to squeeze in boots or belt.

Overall a little spell haste is a good investment, but just like crit you don't stack it in place of spell hit or damage in every case. Its something you add a bit of here and there to shave around 0.2 - 0.3 seconds off your spells.

Right now I am planning on getting a few haste items for non boss/raid events and a few for raiding.

I think frost benefits equally, if not more so, from haste then fire, no? Haste is wasted on scorches, whereas frost is only casting frost bolts. Granted, it doesn't effect the WE (or does it? I've never seen someone really state if it does or not), but still. Frost doesn't care about the lack of DPM increase, since it's hard to go OOM as frost already. Meh.. I'm pretty disappointed with this patch. I'm missing arcane so much, and I need to replace a few fire specific items before I can even try frost. I really dislike fire spec. It's so horrible on trash with scorch stacking, it has no way to dump mana quickly when it's available (it's ironic that pallys are putting up JoW a lot more now that we all specced out of arcane.. it was like pulling teeth before), our fuckin warlocks never put up CoE (except one who is destro) etc.. R.I.P. AM Spam

At least with frost it will be a little more interesting to play, and I won't get so easily ganked when farming or in BGs.

I believe the water elemental only benefits from the mage's frost damage, stamina, and intellect.

Haste rating is fine, it's better than crit rating and worse than hit (up until the cap). The main problem is lousy itemization- all the haste items are haste and damage, when all the good non-haste items combine at least three of damage, sockets, hit, or crit.

There is nothing inherent to an arcane build that will make your haste rating more valuable that it would be with fire. The very notion is silly.

For all those who aren't understanding why haste affects all specs equally (ecept for possibly frost since currently haste does not affect water elementals). This only holds true for mages.

Every single mage build has at least this 1 thing in common. You're constantly casting. Be it arcane spam...fireball spam...or frostbolt spam. This is even more the case now with the new casting system (it's spell queuing no matter what blizzard says it is).

So lets assume you're casting for 15 seconds. This is the LCD of 2.5, 3, and 5. You would cast 3xAM OR 6xFrostBolt OR 5xFireBall.

Now lets assume you're wearing 785 haste rating. That is 50% haste or 75% the normal cast time of every spell. Your 15 seconds of spell casting now turns into 11.25 seconds if you cast the same number of spells.

AM : 3(5(.75)) = 11.25
Frostbolt : 6(2.5(.75)) = 11.25
Fireball : 5(3(.75)) = 11.25


Since you are now doing the same amount of damage in 25% less time, you have an equal dps gain of 25% on all 3 spells.


HOWEVER, just because haste affects dps equally for all spells that have a cast time...it does NOT mean that the ratio of damage to haste dps benefit is the same for all spells. Talents that give x% more of bonus spell damage will skew this ratio...since not all trees for mages have the same +X amount of bonus damage for thier primary nuke. AM gets 45%, Fireball gets 15%, frostbolt gets 10%.

On a related note, +% damage (not bonus damage) doesn't not affect the ratio of haste to damage dps benefit. Here is the math to prove it. Note that this does not take crits into account.

Assume a fireball before %damage is added hits for 1000 damage. Also assume that fireball does 10% extra damage and you have 157 haste rating (or 10% haste). The dps would be

(1.1(1000))/(3(.95)) = 385.964912

Now assume you have 0 haste rating. To figure out how much damage you need to give the same haste rating would be...

(1.1(1000 + x))/3 = 385.964912

((385.964912(3))/1.1) - 1000 = x = 52.63dmg

Now assume you have 157 haste rating again but 20% extra damage...

(1.2(1000))/(3(.95)) = 421.052632

And the second calculation again with 20% damage and 0 haste

((421.052632(3))/1.2) - 1000 = x = 52.63 dmg

This shows that you have the same ratio of haste to damage dps benefit for all talent lines if you do not consider crit. I haven't done the calculations for crit...so that may skew it.

Silly thing to say considering the lost hit rating is still probably going to impact fire more than most. But you're right no I didn't. Oh look with the 6 open pieces of gear I was able to get the 5% I didn't reach. Cool there I did it, both are hit capped. (the non haste spec had enough hit from the gear I chose)


In all seriousness the reason I didn't calculate the lost hit was because there was really no need. AM spam is already getting a flat 10% and at the gear level I chose you pretty much get hit by default.


AND The reason I chose AM spam, over all other spells, even though it benefits all equally. Is because AM pulses 5 times. No matter how fast you cast it, so the reasoning behind that is that with JoW up ... AM becomes a very cheap spell to cast, combine it with a Shadow priest, gems, pots, and the new improved mana regen, not to mention evocate.... I seriously think that DPM is not going to be the issue here, the more haste you stack the faster you get your JoW ticks. THATS why I think it could work.

The other reason it would work, is because Crit and hit are both incredibly valuable to fire and frost builds. Crit more so to fire, and frost receives very little benefit from haste because a big sector of your DPS (WE) Doesn't get any benefit from it. An Arcane build, while it likes crit, is sacrificing nothing else. It want's damage, and I'm saying that the added haste is > than the lost crit and a bit of lost damage. I'll try to run the numbers tonight but I'm confident the haste build will show a decent amount of DPS.

I would say your a bit misguided on the big portion of damage line. Water elemental will still do the same damage either way. Your frost bolt dps, the lion share of your dps, will gain a lot from haste.

Either way haste is good for fire and frost equally, since scorch and the WE will both lose out on the benefit. In the end with inifinate damage the scale will swing heavily in the favor of the Fire mage with talents and basic mechanics.

Its not a question of ultimately how much better will each tree be with haste, its realistically with the gear available and the benefits haste supplies each tree that will determine how much each spec will want to invest into haste. There is a hard cap for each spec on haste and thats when your cast time = global cooldown. Until then, how do we gauge benefit.