Yep thats right. The soundfile comes from a patch from curse that replaced the fizzle sounds from fire, frost, arcane etc... so I just looked for the Escape Menu sound within the MPQs and found it at this path, put the file there and renamed it.

@Topic: Is haste that good for 10/48/3 as it is/was for arcane? With 2.3 we should theoreticly be able to cast our spells without delay and the small clipping with scorch shoudn't matter (in 2.1 when I was fire and had heroism I could hardly use scorch because of /stopcasting macros, but this shouldn't matter anymore).

stopcasting or not is not likely to matter for scorch under heroism/bloodlust.
As it has been proven on these forums, heroism does not lower the gcd.

Somebody posted somewhere in the 2.3 patch notes thread that the new anti-stopcasting mechanism doesn't work for short spells/instant casts (and apperently channeled spells as well, but I have yet to see any proof of that).

Cant find that post anymore, but here is the link to the rather informative thread on the official ptr forums

notice how he first thinks it doesnt work at all and then finds out it only doesn't work with 1.5 second casts and instants.

There is an option in the interface options menu that prevents interrupting spells to some effect (I believe from macros or new spells, obviously esc/movement will still work). But since apparently there is an issue with retrieving character lists right now I can't log in to check again.

Uh I'm sorry but whoever wrote that crass thread in the wow forums is very confused about how things work. The change is beneficial in every sense of the word. The catch is that it won't remove lag at all if that was your expectation.

This guy simply doesn't understand that
1- timestamps are client side
2- doing 100ms wait time on a g15 is very very stupid and garantees numbers above 1.5s
3- the PTR is very laggish

The testing I did was offhour and on scorch, which happens to be 1.5s cast time as well (no haste gear). I had repeatable 40ms lag (time between casts) with 0.025s wait time between my G15 spells.

So what are the new MSD stats in 2.3 from PTR? Anyone got that information yet? If I missed it earlier I am sorry but if at all possible could you A)post the link that has that info or B) just quote my post and tell me what they are...either way I would appreciate it....thanks!

The RED doesn't work for casters anymore since patch 2.2, but there is a new caster metagem in 2.3 called chaotic skyfire diamond (CSD), giving 12 spell critrating and 3% more critdamage. The requirements are exactly 2 blue gems (not more and not less)

Some quick and dirty math on how Fire Blast affects Fireball spam.

Fire Blast - 725 base, 1.5/3.5 = 42.9% +damage, +4% crit
Fireball - 719 base, 115% +damage, +x% haste, +5% damage at 4/5 T6
All specs get +10% (FP), +3% (PWF), +4% (MF), +5% (Misery), +10% (CoE), +15% (Scorch) damage. Ignoring hit, it affect boths specs the same way.

In 1.5s, we can cast 1 Fire Blast, or 0.5*(1+haste%) Fireballs (ignoring latency). The redulting DPS difference is that damage difference divided by 7.5 (you can cast Fire Blast every 7.5s).
So, Fire Blast vs. Fireball in 1.5s is as follows:

Blue gear, 900 damage, 20% crit
2197 vs. 1675, 70 DPS difference

Epic gear and raid buffs, 2% haste (from MSD), 1300 damage, 30% crit
2757 vs. 2350, 54 DPS difference

Top end gear, 7% haste, T6 bonus, 1500 damage, 35% crit
3059 vs. 2976, 11 DPS difference

Also, Fire Blast will lose more to cast delay Fireball, due to being twice as fast. Not sure if the 2.3 changes will make that issue obsolete.

Seems to me that haste, MSD and 4/5 T6 killed Fire Blast in rotations. Vontre's sheet draws and even worse picture with 0.2s cast delay.

Manly,

I have a G15 keyboard aswell but actually never explored the options u talk about. Could u point me to a "guide"? or maybe explain to me what u do to make casting optimal ?

Yea, pretty much fireball scales better than fireblast, so eventually it will be less dps if you include it in a rotation. This is good though, as fireball is more mana efficient.

I didn't see this said anywhere, but I don't think the change to spell casts will help casts <= 1.5 seconds. If you are not manually stopping cast on client side, the GCD will continue until the end, which mean you can't send any casts to the server until its finished (assuming it doesn't send requests during GCD on client side). I suppose it would theoretically reduce the lag time by a half since you are only sending one way and dont need to wait for the cast finished message from the server. So instants followed by a cast won't benefit at all (big deal, they didn't before). More importantly 1.5 seconds casts like scorch or ramped AB could still be improved with stopcasting macro. You would just have to be more precise.

WoW BlueTracker: Analysis of 1.5 s cast problems on Test

I still don't get the stubbornness of Blizzard on this one. While the upcoming solution is better than what we had, a simple .5 to 1s server-side queue is still a more elegant solution in my opinion.

We'll see how it plays out of course.

Amazing, I was looking for this exact post without knowing it existed. This is highly helpful, as I'm trying to educate some mages on why you should cast fireball:scorch 5:1

Pardon me if I'm just missing something here, but what does Roywyn's post have to do with casting a 5:1 fireball:scorch rotation? All I see is discussion on the scaling of including fire blast in cycles as gear improves.

One of the mages I was discussing this with was saying that Fireblast should be used every cooldown while I was arguing that at the current gear level of the mages in the conversation that Fireblast every cooldown is not nearly enough of DPS increase to justify the DPM and breaking a 9:1 fireball to scorch rotation, considering MSD procs and haste.

(And yes, I mistyped earlier 5:1 should have been 9:1)

50 stacks

I dont think anyone will be complaining then. 3 mages 150 stacks 6 stacks per person gg.

The only problem is when someone decides they need 20 stacks. I plan on telling everyone 'If you didn't get any water, find the person that got 400 and ask them for some because I'm not making any more for a few hours.'

But that has nothing to do with mage damage. :p

To be honest, I would still say fireblast is a great spell - its instant and can be casted whilst moving. Fair enough the range is pretty balls but its still helpful when you want to move in a bossfight (which im sure you all do).

If someone takes 20 stacks, that means it also takes 20 stack of their inventory space. I am pretty sure it wouldn't be standard practice to burn through the stacks just to be an asshat.

In any case, 2 stack of mana biscuits for all raid members is a LOT better than 10x healthstones and their multi rank bs.

Arcane Fortitude has been removed. In it's place will now be "Improved Ritual of Refreshment". It will be a 2 point talent, where each point improves the restoration effects of the mana biscuits by 10% per talent point and will leave a "well-fed" buff of 10 to all stats, 5mp5, and 5hp5 per talent point.

Something along those lines? ^^