In regards to AB spam uptime I have to admit I've just started playing with 40/0/21 this week out of curiousity (just reverting from 47/11/3). I noticed that in alot of fights I took part in through Hyjal and BT last night my AB uptime was very high.

Here's a WWS parse from Az'galor and please ignore the dps, that's not the important part here, my gear isn't where I want it to be yet, the purpose is that if you look at my spells used during the fight you'll note that the majority of casts (95% actually) were arcane blast despite the mana consumption. My group build for tonight was me + 1 other arcane mage, 1 holy pally (conc aura was nice I guess...), 1 ele shaman, and 1 shadow priest.

Az'galor WWS Loading...

I realise that Az'galor has periods of down time for us shorter ranged dps during which I had some pretty good mana regen. Most fights I've had so far have been skewed toward arcane in terms of mana regen breaks (Supremus and Najentus were great ones for instance with nice regen breaks between high DPS periods

Naj WWS Loading...

Supremus Wow Web Stats

Later this week when I see Illidan I should have a good assessment of more facets of the spec but so far I find it at least as fun as 47/11/3. I'd like to see it once I have more gear.

BTW this spec is not for those who are short on cash, I blew 24 super mana potions in tonights raid chain potting to keep the AB spam up, but I'm used to farming about 100 a week in my older arcane spec =).

Well actually one may not necessarily put the 3x FB 1x AB rotation into use due to one of my favorite features of the 40/0/21 spec: Haste. Untimely heroisms might make the rotation counting too complicated and it may be more benificial to simply spam frostbolt.

Spell haste isn't really that awful for arcane anymore if you get into 40/0/21 you would cap out (hit 1.0s AB) at approx 263 haste rating with IV up. You could lower this imaginary "cap" if you wanted to account for Bloodlust/Heroism as your 1.0s AB mark. The only "bad" part about the haste is that it is a percentage gain and short cast spells (3 debuff arcane blast spam) get less of a cast time reduction than long cast spells (fireball). On the other hand, with 263 haste rating you will hit 1.0 seconds on arcane blast while using IV, which I find somewhat enticing in regards to experimentation. Ultimately with enough of the new T6 pieces and offset sunwell gear one could hit that "cap" reasonably without nerfing too many other stats.

Rigid rotations lose the benefit of dynamism, while the most enjoyable and powerful thing about the arcane spec is the challenge of managing your mana to hit 0% when the boss hits 0% and also to be able to mana dump when it's time to crank out massive DPS in a short amount of time.

While longer cast time spells get more reduction per spell per point of haste, they also take longer to cast. The DPS increase is the same as long as you're not hitting the minimum 1s global cooldown.

Oh yes, duh. Percentages. Sorry 'bout that.

Surely, you missed the part where debuffs are applied late, which makes it so that chain casting AB will give {2.5, 2.5, 2.2, 1.8, 1.5} cast times, but will cost you {2.5, 2.2, 1.8, 1.5, 1.5} in terms of how much mana is consumed. Rotations out are a good thing - don't use em.

Neither of the rotations we were discussing involved casting 2 ABs in succession, so this isn't a concern at all.

As far as haste's effect, that would definately cause a small problem. I believe you will start running into trouble when you achieve aboive 160 haste rating (~10% haste) because then 3 FrBs and 1 AB will be less than the 8 second debuff. You could, however, begin throwing in a scorch at the end of the 3xFrB and then AB after that, and I think that would fix it, and that seems like it would still likely be better than simply frostbolt spamming while keeping AB stacked until your mana is higher.

My guess would be that you took a short fight which helps double elemental+iv, and that your low crit and hit also make the water elemental more viable.

This doesn't mean you should use this spec, but rather means you need to fix your gear. You have an enourmous amount of available upgrades that can be achieved without stepping foot in a raid instance (and some without stepping foot in *any* instance for that matter). Heck your weapon and bracers are enchanted with intelect... Fixing your gear will up your dps with *any* spec by a considerable amount, and probably help fire spec dps more than it helps frost making you better as fire once your gear is fixed.

Um, unless I'm very confused, Smith Hauthaa does not sell any cloth belts.

Any level 70 +dam green on the AH would be better for Frost than the Inferno Waist Cord.

If only that was the only problem with his way of gearing...

Yeah, whoopsie. I was saving it for the [Scryer's Blade of Focus], and I just assumed there'd be a new belt too.

Actually, I have it set for 600 second fights (which is pretty normal for us, since we're still progressing, and everyone is undergeared... we're fighting the enrage timer on some bosses, like Void Walker). I'm well aware that frost spec is overvalued for any fight close to the 90 second mark (2xFrost Elementals).

I can get better gear for several slots... but that does not mean the spec is useless. At some point, no matter where you are, you're gonna be passing through about my level of gear... whether you've got thousands of gold to burn on mats, patterns, and primals, or whether you're entering Kara for the first time on progression with your guild... at some point, you're gear is going to suck, and I think this spec is a notable improvement over the standard specs that are listed.

That said, let me put some better gear on in Rawr... replaced my weapon, bracers, and belt with badge gear (of which I'm actually about 80 badges short to get all 3)... put on my Kara chest [Robe of the Elder Scribes] (which I normally don't wear because I need the +hit and haven't spent the cash to buy all the [Veiled Noble Topaz] I'd need to make up for it), and pretended I ran Heroic Slave pens until [Quagmirran's Eye] dropped, then had Rawr regem me with rare gems using Optimize... and my spec is still higher DPS than the standard ones.



So with all my gear pretty good for my current progression, 18/0/41+2 is still doing very well for me... as long as you trust Rawr. This is without a Spriest, but assuming raid buffs of course. Even if I add a 125mp5 Shadowpriest the spec remains tops in Rawr.

This is either a valid point that this spec is worthwhile and valuable for pre-T5 geared mages, or it's indicating a significant flaw in Rawr's TC. Perhaps someone who is better with the numbers could validate it?

Edit: Try this... outfit a mage with all T4 level gear... full T4 set, badge loot (bought with all the Kara/Gruul/Mags runs needed to get a full set), and whatever heroic items you think will fill it out. Top it off with whatever rare gems you like. And see if 18/0/41+2 does better DPS. So far, I've been playing with it, and I'm still finding it coming out on top.

Yeah there is no fight in the game that I know that can last 10 minutes and above while maintaining 100% DPS uptime, no matter how much mana you have - bosses would simply die way before the 10 minute mark if you actually had 100% DPS uptime. So yeah if you're going to model 10 minute fights model much lower DPS uptime. Like said above, it's probably modeling you going so deeply oom and wanding that the mana efficiency of water elemental (which is very high DPM but on a cooldown) becomes a significant DPS increase. Of course if you'd model a reaslistic scenario (shorter fight or lower DPS uptime), you'll find the water elemental's DPM a lot less valueable.

As for the gear, a dedicated player will probably not even zone in to a raid instance (with possible exception of kara which is extremely easy and is a badge farming source) with that kind of gear, as he'll easily get the better gear. Farming a couple thousand gold doesn't take all that long (to be honest, farming DKP and learning bosses with a raid that takes people with that kind of gearing mentality takes a lot lot longer and gives inferior gear).

On a side note, the effective damage from the proc on robes of the elder scribes added to its base stats is still not really enough to even color it purple...

To make it short, you're using the lowest mana consumption spec in game. For fights when you'll run OOM after some time, it's pretty normal for lowest mana usage specs to shine. It's not a flaw with RAWR, but a flaw with the usage of it

It's a myth that Frost is a lot more economical than fire. It's DPM is good if and only if the WE has a high uptime and is a significant % of your overall output. Even so, later on in the game fire out-performs both on DPS and on DPM terms simply because empowered fireball and master of elements increase it's efficiency beyond WE and empowered frostbolt.

However, swapping from molten to mage as frost is generally more beneficial (doing so as fire drops the MoE return from the 3%crit), and propensity for fireblasting often either as part of a (usually harmful) rotation or as a shot-on-the-move makes fire feel more inefficient. Add in frost getting more interrupts (further lowering consumption) and it's easy to mistakenly assume it's more efficient.

It's not about frost's low mana consumption, it's about the fact that water elemental does insanely high damage per mana, which is very good when you're absolutely out of mana and the fight is still going, but is not significant enough in any real fight. In other words the water elemental does high enough DPM that you can say that the he "keeps going after you're oom". But you're not really going oom in any real fight so in reality the mana efficiency of frostbolts+elemental is rather similar to the mana efficiency of fireballs, with fireballs unloading that damage faster and therefore being better (on any fight that is long enough for double elemental+IV to not be good enough).

Well, you're overlooking the fact that this was only true for 10/48/3 vs 10/0/51. For 2/48/11 the numbers changed a bit due to the loss of clearcasting giving frost the slight DPM advantage. Not that it makes a difference really to be quite honest.

Unless Rawr is modeling something incorrectly, I'm showing that a fire/coldsnap build can surpass a 2/48/11 build from a DPS standpoint even with my current gear under certain scenarios. For example with the raid setup we use for Brut (SP, Elemental Shaman, single Innervate, JoW), it's showing me that double IV during Molten Fury range pushes it 27 DPS ahead of 2/48/11 spec with my current gear.

If I model Brut with my target endgame sunwell gear and assume Brut kill time drops to 5 mins (reasonable assuming a decked out sunwell raid), the DPS improvement of 0/40/21 over 2/48/11 is 36 dps. It's not a huge difference and is reliant on mana being able to support double IV while bloodlust is up.

MyrddinE/Katikk,

Come see me and I'll make you a Belt of Blasting if you can obtain the materials, if you need any of the cloth transmutes I can do both of them. I can also make the Bracers of Nimble Thought, and I believe that I have a shoulder pattern in our guild bank. Your gear is getting better, but as a tailor I would seriously look into making the Frozen Shadoweave if you're going to stay frost, as well as making the Spellstrike Helm(I can make this too), I used this until I picked up the helm from the Hex Lord, only to pick up the T6 helm 2 weeks later. I'd also look into picking up the Studious Wraps from the badge vendor.

Of course you'll get more dps with 17/0/44 than 10/0/51, the 10/0/51 doesn't really gain any dps talents in the frost tree anyway. But you'll still do more DPS as fire. Remember to use gems and pots as soon and as often as possible and only blink when it's the only way to avoid death - the mana cost is probably not worth the time saving (the time you save by blinking in practice is very small), unless you're already not going oom while using destruction potions and flame caps and not evocating, which obviously isn't the case for you. Anyway you'll most likely do quite better with fire, it's simply a more powerful spec for most encounters in game.

Even for solarian AOE the mobs die so fast the extra regen is probably not worth losing blastwave, and shatter CoC had already been shown to be a waste of a global cooldown on frost nova, not to mention you can't really get shatter with a pve frost spec without making noticeable sacrifices.

I do appreciate the offer Austin, thank you. As far as the belt... I'll get it sometime, but that's a hell of a lot of effort for 20dps (the difference between a belt of blasting and the badge belt). I'll be able to get the badge belt later this week, and that'll be enough of an upgrade for the near future. And I'm working on the mats for shadoweave, but I'm not gonna bother until I get more T4 pieces... the T4p2 bonus is far too worthwhile to give up.

But there's still something that concerns me... you're all discussing how to spend thousands of gold (or equivalent farming time) in order to gear past the point where this spec is valuable... long fights (progression) in underpowered gear. Maybe it's been so long that you don't remember what progression is like? This is my first 70... I don't have thousands of gold lying around. I don't have time to farm thousands of gold... except for raid nights, I mostly quest with my mother (who is retired). I have a job, and a wife who doesn't appreciate it if I ignore her. ;-)

My point is that throwing money (and asking someone to buy multi-thousand-gold worth of purple crafted items is throwing money) at a problem isn't necessarily the best fix. A different spec is a hell of a lot cheaper, and if it nets me good DPS (and I'm always somewhere between 2nd and 4th in my raid), I really don't see the sense in killing myself for incrementally better gear... that's why I'm raiding!

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My claim is that at 600 int, 300 spi, and about +1200 damage raid buffed, 18/0/42+1 is a better progression spec (long fights where everyone is in similar level gear) for TK and SSC than any of the other specs listed. Talk about that. Show me why I'm wrong, or where Rawr is wrong. Show me with numbers... I've already shown my numbers. But don't just tell me I'm wrong without offering some minimal TC to back it up. And don't tell me my gear is shit... I know it. The discussion isn't about the gear, it's about a spec that may be better for people in lower gear. Everyone has to pass through it at some point, and not everyone has a guild that can coddle a shitty player, carrying their sorry asses through Kara Grrul and Mags a dozen times till they have better gear... I'm trying to ask if anyone cane show (with numbers) why this spec is inferior at this gear level. Not for people to tell me how I can get better gear... I posted this in a TC thread, not in Help Me Please.

MyrddinE:

The issue I have with your claim is that 600 seconds (10 minutes) is normal for a fight at that gear level, especially now. For void reaver, this means your raid wide DPS is less than 8000. Given that Rawr says, for your gear, that you will do aproximately 980 DPS to Void Reaver for the entirety of the 600 second fight, there's about 7000 more DPS to make up. Let's assume that there are 7 other DPS geared on par with you. They should all be putting out similar numbers. So, with 8 DPS (Yourself + 7 similarly geared people) you should be able to kill void reaver exactly at the enrage timer of ten minutes.

My point here is simple: your raid is clearly not pulling its weight if 8K rDPS is considered normal for a 25man raid. In my above example of 8 DPSers at your level, there are 17 other slots. We'll assume 4 tanks because that seems to be a ridiculous number. I'm going to use the four tanks' DPS to "balance out" the rDPS to exactly 8K, since you do about 20 short of 1K according to rawr. Four tanks should cover 20 * 8 (160) DPS handily, with change. (One tank could cover that.) This means there are 13 (25-8-4) slots left over that are doing absolutely no damage in this theoretical raid. I think you can see where I'm going with this, but...

It would appear that your guild is not pulling its weight in 25mans if it truly takes you 10 minutes to do void reaver.

[Edit: The reason I brought your assumption of a 600 second fight is... from 520 seconds on downwards, other specs beat yours. To get a kill in this time requires approximately 9.2K rDPS]

Hey there MyrddinE,

I think most readers understand your point and it is something noteworthy to bring up. Although as one person mentioned earlier the fight must go for a very long duration for you to obtain any real substantial advantage.

Most fights in ssc/tk you will not be seeing this 18/0/42 +1 spec outdoing deep fire / IV. No i do not have numbers (my wws reports are now expired) though my total dmg on fights which i have gone oom for over a minute i still managed to out dmg other fellow mages who have followed your current theory by over 100K dmg. Now unless your talking about doing vashj, or even more so kael in blues and random epics, i think my result would stick.

TBH i dont believe anyone here NEEDS to show you numbers, the numbers are there already in all the respectable spreadsheets and dmg tables. You should go plug some numbers with your gear, gemd with the 'EJ gospel' advice, and im just about certain you will see everything right there.

With my last spellfire/spellstrike gear, i only went oom after 7 minutes in most fights including aoe encounters. karazhan/gruuls are very short encounters.