Finkum

The reason, as outlined by others earlier in the thread, is that a 10 minute fight with zero-downtime is a very unrealistic model for any SSC/TK fight. Most fights in SSC or TK have a 10 minute enrage so that is a reasonable upper bound, but none of these fights consist of 100% dps time. Some examples: for Hydross, there is downtime every frost->nature, nature->frost transition, and further downtime if ice-tombed. For Leo, every whirlwind and elf->demon, demon->elf transition. For VR, every time you are targetted by an orb and have to run away is regeneration time. Even fights without aggro wipes like FLK involve running and retargetting (totems as well as adds).

Roywyn did a very handy analysis that calculates the trade-off value for most if not all mana recovery options - the best trade-off are using mana pots, gems (if fire-spec, otherwise a non-issue) and evocation, with mage armor/respeccing for arcane meditation somewhat worse (although obviously this depends on your spirit/intellect totals). Although mage armor is technically a worse dps tradeoff than arcane meditation, it does have the benefit of being available regardless of spec, affording greater flexibility to higher DPS/lower DPM specs - they can excel on shorter fights and still perform decently on long ones simply by switching armor types.

If, after using pots, gems et al you still end up OOM on a regular basis then yes, respeccing to include arcane meditation will be a net dps increase. I don't think anyone here would dispute that.

However, given that many (most?) T5 progressing mages make do without it, I think that either raid composition or group make-up (not enough paladins, no (i)DS priest, no resto/elemental shaman or shadow priest in group) is more likely to be the root of the issue.

Here are some numbers, assume zero haste, 10k mana pool:

Rank 14 Frostbolt spam (accounting for EP/Frost Channeling): -114 mps

Super mana pots: +20mps
Gems (reconjure cost is ~ -4.5mps (1670 per 6min), but during this time you aren't frost bolting, so I will approximate as -4mps: +20mps - 4mps = +16mps
Evocate: +14mps (6000 mana per 8min)
Mage armor: +15 - 20mps (depends on your spirit and intellect scores when raid buffed)

Crappy shadow priest doing 500dps: +25mps
Decent shadow priest doing 800dps: +40mps
Shaman mana spring: +10mps
Resto shaman mana tide: +17mps (3000 mana ever 3min)
BoW: +8mps
BoK: Again depends on your total int/spi and affects many other mana sources (evo, tide, mage armor), but let's estimate at +10mps.

Total net regen with no group buff support, but full pot/gem/evo/MA use: -49mps (oom in 205 seconds - 3.5 minutes).
Total net regen with the above and BoW, BoK and a crappy shadow priest: -6mps (oom in 1667 seconds - 27 minutes).
Total net regen with the above but a resto shaman instead of a shadow priest: -22mps (oom in 454 seconds - 7.5 minutes).

If you have a good shadow priest or both a shadow priest and a shaman then your regen becomes positive and you can start switching to molten armor/ditching evocate etc.

Of course on a real fight you will use IV/other spells than frostbolt, your shaman won't always have their totems down or pop mana tide every time it's up, and VT uptime will often be less than 100% - but this is offset to a greater or lesser degree by movement time, latency, and encounter gimmicks.

TL;DR: With no group support in a tank-n-spank fight a 18/0/43 build is optimal; but with only minimal support arcane meditation quickly becomes superfluous.

 

xiaoxin21

There are actually fights in T5 instances that you would go oom, Basically all the AOE fights. Morogrim,Solarian and weapons in P2 Kael.

However, you can solve this by asking for an innervate(which currently isnt modelled in rawr)

 

Aramezzet

I'd like to inquire about the value of Spell Haste for Arcane. This has been touched on in this thread, and though I looked through the 2.3 thread I didn't find any posts about it. With the release of [Quick Lionseye]s, the comparison of spell haste to damage has become pretty relevant.

The Arcane spec is built around being able to spend all of your mana throughout an encounter. Playing it correctly involves spending all of your mana, while maximizing DPM over the course of the entire fight. Although haste will cause you to spend your mana faster and therefore force you to cast Frostbolt more often, I think that the resultant increase in DPM may outweigh the decrease from your spells hitting softer (A good analog is thinking of spell haste as an increase to the length of the fight). Plugging numbers into RAWR hasn't really given me a clear answer, only showing a 1.5 DPS difference between a Runed Spinel and a Lionseye in favor of the Spinel over a five minute fight.

Other than Ice Barrier, are there really any places to put those talent points?

 

Hate Monkey

So it was mentioned somewhere in the 2.3 mage TC thread that pairing Icon/Hex with Combustion is a greater gain than pairing Skull with Combustion. But what I've been trying to cope with the fact that there still is that thread about rolling ignites, are they still around and worth any more time on?

The basis of this post is to find out the best way to force(?) rolling ignites to happen more often, when the difference in cooldown popping to passive haste on gear effects change. Can use Brutallus as the encounter in question to provide timing and such.

For those of you who never read the rolling ignites thread, or forgot the basics of it, the general assumption was that in order for you to get rolling ignites to happen, you needed to have finished a cast on a Fireball while your previous Fireball was still in the air. This occurs at about max range with ~2sec casts, varies depending upon latency.

I wouldn't go into such a detailed explanation before any numbers came, but since I'm a Troll, I have a problem with how to compute Berserking properly into a rotation since it can change the outcome of some effects as much as the difference of a Skull can.

Using 0 passive haste:
Berserking(10%)+IV+Skull: 2.05s Fireballs
Berserking(20%)+IV+Skull: 1.85s Fireballs
Berserking(20%)+IV: ~2.08s Fireballs
IV+Skull: 2.25s Fireballs

Using 59 passive haste rating: Bracers and BT trash ring
Berserking(10%)+IV+Skull: 1.98s Fireballs
Berserking(20%)+IV+Skull: 1.78s Fireballs
Berserking(20%)+IV: ~2.0s Fireballs
IV+Skull: 2.18s Fireballs

Typically on Brutallus, I get the 2nd soak group position, and can reliably get a 20% Berserking buff. So using those numbers, the closest to rolling ignites I can get is when I pop Berserking+IV together, using Icon/Hex paired, and use Skull after. That's all fine and dandy for round 1, but round 2 at 20%, do I selectively pop everything seperate in order to pair Bloodlust as close as I can to get a 2s cast? Or do I follow the same order even with Bloodlust and lose all possibility of rolling ignites?

Even rolling one ignite, no matter how little is still a dps gain over not rolling an ignite.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/random_number.png

 

xiaoxin21

Not really, although Icy floes will help. The point to bring across is fire is better. I did run a long time as frost in a 17/0/44 spec before when my guild just started T6 instances(before the time of IV).

 

Pintofbrew

You say arcane spec has not been looked at from a haste perspective and you are wrong. It has been examined and has been found seriously flawed. You mistakenly quote a DPM increase using haste, this is clearly not the case. If like Galzohar you examine DPM in a damage-per-mana-intake-minus-spent rather than damage-per-mana-spent perspective,(ie, taking into account any regen sources) it's a clear DPM drop. In the best case scenario it neither increases nor decreases but that is merely a flaw in terms of calculating: Your overall mana expenditure will be more, even if it stays at the same efficiency. Your mana input however will be the same. As arcane you do not need the help of Haste to increase your burn rate, you can do that just fine and with a lot more control by cycle variation.

There is no good reason to gem haste rather than either damage or intellect in arcane, and BL-IV making AB 0.96sec cast is bad enough and practically reason enough to either not IV during BL or swap to a non-AB spam.

Your claim that haste effectively increases fight length is only partially true: it is a fair approximation in terms of your output, however your intake is not modified in the slightest. Your mp5 from spirit will not increase, your mp5 from SP will not increase, and your flat mp5 from mana spring and BoW will not change, it will be exactly the same as it would have been had you gemmed/geared for Runed Spinel. In fact, it will be even less than if you gemmed for Int/Spi.

 

◊ manly

That's not quite what I tried to illustrate in the rolling ignite thread. In fact, I expect the case of 'fireball ends casting during another fireball being mid-air' to give a case of lost ignite. What I said is that you want your fireballs to be mid-air during the time an ignite tick happens. Try to think of it this way:

You cast fireball. At the time that you finish casting fireball, you had a 1000 dmg rolling ignite left to tick, on which you add 400 dmg from the current fireball. So once the 'fireball' bolt will land, that bolt will erase whatever ignite was in there and overwrite it with a 1400 dmg ignite to be split in 2 ticks over 4s. In other words, if you cast a fireblast before it lands, then that fireblast will apply say a 1200 ignite total (1000+200). So you get a 1000 ignite, then fireblast lands first, overwriting the ignite with 1200 ignite, then fireball lands, overwriting ignite with 1400 ignite (instead of the expected 1600).

With this said, I fear your strategy will not last too long for as long as you stay in the 2nd soak group. The better your gear gets, the closer you move to 5min (or shorter obviously). If you use the strat outlined above, you will be gutting yourself out of a set of 2min cooldowns. But ignoring that small detail, credit where credit is due, I like the idea. So lets dig a bit. Here would be my take at it.

Sadly, I made the choice 3 years ago to roll an undead 'because it looked cool' which means I get to pay a tax and not get my rightful berserking. So berserking is out. So using my current gear as reference;

(base - 217 / 13.82%)
fireball = 2.64s
fireball + IV = 2.19s
fireball + bloodlust = 2.03s
fireball + IV + bloodlust = 1.69s

(base + drums - 297 / 18.92%)
fireball = 2.52s
fireball + IV = 2.10s (borderline case)
fireball + bloodlust = 1.94s
fireball + IV + bloodlust = 1.62s

(base + skull - 392 / 24.97%)
fireball = 2.40s
fireball + IV = 2.00s
fireball + bloodlust = 1.85s
fireball + IV + bloodlust = 1.54s

(base + skull + drums - 472 / 30.06%)
fireball = 2.31s
fireball + IV = 1.92s
fireball + bloodlust = 1.77s
fireball + IV + bloodlust = 1.48s

So this means, in other words, that only 3 of those cases can be used. The practical implications of this are somewhat annoying as it requires a reworking of rotations (assuming of course the benefits of rolling ignite outdoes the loss of doing slightly suboptimal cooldown stacking). This means, in other words, those are the cases we want;

Problems with those:
-case 1 is not realistic. how are you going to get a bloodlust alone and not stack anything with it? I mean, if you assume the theory works and that you can reliably get rolling ignites, then even so it does'nt work. By memory, with 40% base crit rate, and 2s fireballs, if the rolling ignites always roll you get an average 20-25% increased dps from rolling ignites alone. But in revenge you cant stack anything with bloodlust (ie: no IV, no skull, no drums). It strikes me as not realistic at all. Maybe if you get 2 lust on execute range and your brutallus kill is like 6:30 or something.

-case 2 gives 2.10s, which is probably not workable.

I don't think anything besides case 3 is realistically usable. skull/IV with no drums is very easy to accomodate, although unnatural.

 

MyrddinE

I'd rather spec for the worst case than spec for the best case. The worst case is that we've lost half our DPS and are fighting to kill the boss before it enrages... I want my contribution to that fight to be as high as possible. We're wiping 2/3 of the time for some reason or another. Four weeks ago we killed Void Reaver AFTER the enrage timer (sadly, I was one of the dead). The most important time to still be doing the most damage is when the fight is most critical... if we're downing the boss in 6 minutes, then obviously it's not so critical that I do maximum DPS. If we're catching the boss at 9 minutes and 45 seconds, my total damage over that time is extremely important.

That's an excellent writeup, but it is completely useless for me, because it's comparing the tradeoff of taking AM for a fire spec... that's going to be a really poor trade, obviously. 42 points in Frost however loses no damage, only CC, so there's no damage tradeoff at all making AM a far more palatable choice.

That is definitely an issue. The ranged DPS do not get a shaman, a shadowpriest, or JoW. We have one resto shaman normally, who is in with the healers (who get our sole shadowpriest as well). You can discuss the inequity all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that not every mage will get a shadowpriest or a shaman in every raid. In fact, I'm sure many of you have had to do without more than once. You obviously shouldn't spec for something that happens to you occasionally, but our raid is short on regen classes... the few times I've had a spriest it was like a flood of mana filling me with power... sadly, I've rarely had the luck.

You have to look at the DPS cost of Mana pots, Evocate, and Mage Armor as well, as in the link you provided. The costs aren't as high for me (because my DPS isn't as high as the Sunwell dream gear the linked post considered), but they still exist. By dropping Frost CC/solo/instance talents, that allows me to do normal fights with just Mana Gems. That frees me up to skip Evocate (more DPS), use destro pots (more DPS), or use molten armor rather than mage armor (even more DPS). These are valuable choices not available to a 10/0/51 spec. I can use mage armor, mana pots, and evocate to get through a long Solarian fight with no support... or I can use destro pots, molten armor, and skip evocating to maintain higher DPS on more normal fights.

It never becomes superfluous, because it increases the choices for frost mages while losing them no raid DPS talents (just CC/instance/solo talents). That, and I get the very nice 5 points in improved AE, increasing my AoE damage (which frankly sucks for frost mages).

Edit: I'm probably going to respec again to make a slight fix... on my spec I have 4 points in Arcane Focus... a pointless waste, since I'll be targeting 124 hit rating for Frostbolt. So I moved 1 point out of AF to put into Ice Floes. I *may* also drop Ice Barrier to put another point into Ice Floes, but that I'm less sure of. I don't need it for pushback prevention anymore, but the loss of about 2000 health (start a fight with it on and put it up again during fight) for soloing and instancing is not something I'm sure I can give up, just so Cold Snap can pop 48s sooner.

 

galzohar

Unless you're trying to carry weights of people that you know are definitely going to die where you will live, saying you want to handle long fights due to dead people can be countered by saying you need to unload your dps before you die yourself. Just like other people might die early and cause you to need an extended DPS period, you also might die making all your extended dps ability moot. That's why I completely ignore "the death issue" when comparing gear/specs, as in reality if I was in a raid where it mattered I wouldn't be a raid because I simply can't stand where everyone keep dying next to me to stuff that are easily survivable. So no matter how you look at it, considering deaths doesn't change the way gear/specs affect your play.

As for haste and dpm etc, remember at the end stuff like rawr do a good job at evaluating the gains from extra mana efficiency, not just straight DPS. As long as you put realistic conditions and not something rediculess like a 10 minute fight with 100% DPS uptime. If you're going to do 10 minutes (which is reasonable for void reaver learning attempts) be more realistic and put 70-90% DPS uptime - since if the fight takes long it should be because people are running around a lot, not because they're dead and you're doing their job. And to be honest I don't see myself doing anywhere near 100% DPS uptime on void reaver either - it's just too movement intensive.

Too bad stuff like WWS completely skew DPS uptime. I wish it actually counted your DPS time based on the time it should've taken you to cast your spells rather than the time you spent with damage being dealt within the last 5 seconds which actually allows you to have 50% DPS time with frostbolts but have WWS show 100%, not to mention fireball with the DoT can have as low as 23% DPS uptime while still showing 100% on WWS due to its dot. If you really want to know your DPS uptime count the number of abilities used and apply any relevent haste to it and see how much time you spent casting those abilities VS how long the fight lasted.

MyrddinE, keep in mind nobody told you to spec back to 10/0/51. 17/0/44 is quite superior for raid DPS, it's just that 2/48/11 is superior to both of those specs.

 

• Anaxo

MyrddinE, it sounds like your raid group is a bigger problem than the 18/0/42+1 spec you are advocating. You don't justify spec viability based on your raid's inability to keep away from fires.

 

Dara

Edit: The assumption behind this post is wrong.

Dream of working cold snap spec is simply too delicious to dismiss too easily. Though Nurru argued that this topic is already been beaten to death, I believe there is yet another aspect to it that has been overlooked (browsed 2.3 thread from around p90 to end). This aspect is relatively low true value of combustion which leads to a new variant of 0/40/21.

Proposed variant of 0/40/21 - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Main benefits:
- 1 additional icy veins
- 1 additional ice block (aggressive use such as silence at Azgalor while popping cooldowns)

The losses:
- mana efficiency
- 1% crit
- loss of treath reduction in AE

The main argument is that combustion's value should be questioned because some of the combustion induced crits will happen regardless of it. I do recall previous posters expressing their doubts on combustion, but I believe this is first attempt to quantify it.

The math:

I consider quite conservative scenario of cooldown stacking:
- duration 20s
- no heroism, drums (these would make my case stronger)
-> enough haste in order to be able to fit 8 fireball casts into 20s window.
-> with no haste and some lag 7 fireballs should be possible in 20s window.

What is the probability of combustion being completely irrelevant when stacking cooldowns?
Formula: p(exactly k crits from n casts) = n! / (k!*(n-k)!) * p[crit]^k * (1-p[crit])^(n-k)
7 casts - No haste & moderate lag + IV
8 casts - Some haste, using IV to fit 8 completed casts in 20s window.
Valuation of combustion:

Upper boundary as assumption: combustion is able to guarantee 3 crits in 20s.

Expected salvaged crits = p(exactly 2)*1+ p(exactly 1)*2 + p(none)*3

Interpretation would be that combustion's true value for most t6-level mages is less than 1 more crit per 20s window. As conclusion, combustion's value scales inversely with haste(stepwise scaling) and crit.

Value of extra IV:

Roywyn valuated IV as following [Mage] TC after 2.3:
Fundamentally the value of additional IV is inversely related to the duration of encounter. As extension of this line of thought, at 6 minutes 20% haste for 20s averages out to 1,11% haste. In naive comparison, the loss of 1% is not an issue.

Due to the complexity, I will use more qualitative approach to discuss the potential loss of crit during stacked cooldowns. The offered benefit are situations with 2 non-stacking trinkets and getting more out of a flamecap and possibly molten fury. With 2 trinket scheme, extra IV should allow one additional trinketed fireball vs. lost trinketed crits from combustions(2 rounds). It's worth noting that the 1% crit from pyromaniac should not be forgotten while comparing the benefits.

As special case where this shines sub-3 minute encounters extra IV allows two rounds of 2 min cooldown stacking against IV.

As final word, I don't propose this as the new mainstream dps spec but rather as a new perspective to discussion around this particular spec. There is more work to be done before before such statement could be made. Afterall, I do not present mana considerations nor go deeply into valuating the benefits of additional IV. Should my math survive the scrutiny, I hope this bit is a contribution to mage TC community who's insights I have enjoyed for a long time already

 

◊ manly

Personally, I don't really mind whatever spec you go for. However, I can't help but notice that you seem to have the same stance than everyone that asks me questions about specs. The way your post is formulated makes me strongly believe that you do not really seek answers, but rather, expects to get patted in the back somehow. So my question is this. Are you really interested in argumenting about specs, or you really just want to keep your spec no matter what?

 

Raencloud

While I agree that in a situation where you are not getting a shadow priest or a shaman (and assuming you ARE actually running out of mana without AM) then yes it will be beneficial. Also, it's true to an extent that you aren't really giving up strict raiding talents for it either. However, there IS a point where you can pop destro pots and mana gems, not evocate, and use molten armor with the 10/0/51 build, and when you reach that point (typically when you have a shadow priest and/or a shaman you are there), 10/0/51 is a better build because AM will be worthless because you can do the same things in the 10/0/51 build already so extra mana is giving you no more increased damage.

One reason would be Ice Floes. While often times it won't make a difference (ie fights under 6 minutes in length you will only be able to use cold snap once) or possibly too long (over 9 minutes, and assuming 10 minute enrages) you will be able to cold snap twice regardless, there are those fights that will last between ~7-8 minutes, and you will see a DPS increase in those fights by have Ice Floes for the 2nd cold snap and an additional water elemental use.

With the remaining 9 points, you have several options, including modifying to a 13/0/48 build (to get arcane impact to fix the aoe problem you are complaining about). You have choices of increased damage from shatter (helps with trash and aoe) and control from imp blizz/permafrost/frostbite.

At the very least, you should be 13/0/48 as soon as you reach the point where you are not evocating, using molten armor, and popping destro pots and still finishing the fight with mana to spare.

 

galzohar

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (give or take, could move a point from winter's chill to ice flows, and 2/2 frost nova is just a filler) is as good as it goes for frost raiding...

However in just about any realistic fight (well, not al'ar or supremus) a full fire spec with icy veins will do clearly more DPS (although not a lot, but enough to justify not speccing frost).

 

Kavan

I don't think your valuation of combustion is accurate. Value of combustion is not in raising the number of crits to 3, you should valuate combustion in terms of how many more crits on average you will get.

 

MyrddinE

That is true, I do move around frequently. I specified 100% DPS uptime because Rawr has a bug with idle time... it assumes all idle time is in one huge chunk, which gives very skewed regen amounts. 10% downtime means more like 3-5% of OO5SR regen, since the first 5s of each downtime has no regen. For example, dodging blasts on Void Reaver rarely takes more than 5 seconds, so despite not shooting, I'm also not getting OO5SR regen ticks... but Rawr would count all that dodging with full regen, as if the 5sr was actually the 0sr.

 

◊ manly

I think that ultimately we cannot easily quantify the worth of coldsnap. It is very dependant upon context. 0/40/21 came back into the light due to Eredar Twins, a fight that is notably far more involved than any other fight before it in terms of healing requirements. Look at any WWS or any killshot of Eredar twins, you will notice 10-13 healers. This is where double ice block really comes in handy. But here comes the tricky part; the worth of cold snap (purely for double ice block, I am ignoring double icy veins) is purely speculative. It might keep you alive longer, but should you really trust your skills and be really really pro at chaffing your potions at the precise time it will save you, then you probably don't need it. Double ice block might also do nothing. Its definately a nice-to-have for that fight, but I do believe the fight is controllable enough that you shouldn't need it if you accept the fact that you will probably be using a major fire protection potion/healthstone during the fight. I know I sure as hell did not respecced for that to ease our first kill.

However, with all of this said, I am having a very hard time to agree with the build (0/40/21). First, the 2nd icy veins does not have as much synergy because you already used the first one with the 2min cooldowns. Second, the build is totally devoid of aoe tools. You lose blastwave, dragon's breath, -40% threat on arcane explosion (which is now a really good aoe spell, particularly with IV) and possibly even combustion depending on how you spent the points in 0/40/21. Combustion might be relatively a bad talent, but it really shines on aoe. -1% dmg (or -1%crit, again, depending on where you put the points) cannot