Wilshire

I don't believe this has been covered thus far (please correct me if I'm wrong) but what is the actual benefit from using a 50/0/11 build to a 40/0/21 build? I've seen that Pint has posted that AM is better as a filler spell for recovering then frostbolt while putting out a bit less damage but didn't see any numbers on how much more mana it recovers.

This data is the kind of information that should be included as hard evidence between the difference of the two specs in the mana management portion of the OP.

 

Keldarn

AM is less DPM than frostbolt, so I don't see how it would be any better. Rawr shows me with my gear being better off with frostbolt, even in a 50/0/11 build.

One of the advantages is an uninterrupted AM for tanking council, and, depending on where you put the last two points in arcane, 4% less dmg through prismatic cloak.

 

Seferis

Regarding Haste as an Arcane Mage:
I plugged my current Armory Profile into Rawr. Furthermore I included the usual raid buffs I get (Resto Shaman, Shadowpriest, no innervate, Improved Divine Spirit and so on). I also included some additional gear to the one I currently wear but rather have on my bank (Footpads of Madness, Hex Shrunken Head). Then I set the Fight Duration to 420 seconds which should favor Spirit and Intellect and let Rawr optimize for damage. The odd thing: It found a setup that was not insignificantly better by doing one thing mainly: Changing to Spelldamage/Haste in each and every socket.

This just further shows how situational gemming is for an arcane mage.

 

Shînja

I'd like to come back to this. I just got my 2 T5 pieces after passing on them for a pretty long time for people that needed them more than I did. So now I would like to go for Arcane Specc. I downloaded Rawr, played around with it for a while to see what Gear would be best to choose (ZA, Badge, S3/S4 and T4/T5 content) and what surprised me was that Rawr gave me in its optimal solution only haste/spd gems (except for 3 Blue ones) (6 Minute fight, 175 Spriest MP5, raidbuffed, no other support) As I was quite stunned by this (I expected Int Gems where the socket Bonus is nice and Spelldamage Gems for the rest of it. I would also have to use the AbFrB3 Cycla for over 260 seconds, which is unexpectedly long) so I came over here to get my explanations, found them on page 12 and 13... and then I read the quoted post which got me back to zero, as I'm not even at 4/9 BT and still Rawr comes up with haste/Spd being the best gems.

Do you have any explanations for this? It surprised me a lot due to the "normally 80% AB, 20% FrB" and "Int and Spd Gems are best before Sunwell".

PS: I'm not a native English speaker, so please bear with my poor English.

 

Fujisaw

Shînja:
The haste gems are for the rotation that is being used since you are not AB spamming and FrB more haste is better. This rotation is a bad rotation the only arcane rotation that should be used is just spam AB until you run out of mana and FrB your mana back that is after you mana pot/gem and Evo if you need.

Wilshire
50/0/11 is for farming AM is great for it use 2 and most mobs die

 

Shînja

@Fujisaw: Well, the rotation is what Rawr chose for me. I thought (before reading this Thread) that AB spam would be my final goal, but as we know now: it isn't.

 

Wizeowel

Fujisaw, your first statement is correct. Since Shînja can only cast 20% AB, haste is preferred due to the AB-rotations. However, your second statement is not correct. Kavan has shown that AB rotations can be higher dps than Frostbolt spam. You should be wary about making blanket statements like 'bad rotation' if the evidence points that Frostbolt spam would be less dps for Shînja.

Shînja, I would like to answer your question more fully but I'm afraid since you logged out in PvP gear that I cannot. However, I have a suspicion that you are simplifying the situation too much for Rawr. I can't believe that there is any six minute fight at your level of progression where there isn't also some time running around regenerating mana. You can fill this in with Rawr under the Fight options: DPS time and Fragmentation.

Fundamentally it does come down to the poor support you are getting. Mages who are expecting to do five-plus minutes of arcane blast spam are also expecting to have 350mp5 from VT, mana tide totem, JoW and perhaps the spirit buff. Without all that then on a stand-and-nuke type long fight you will indeed prefer haste over intellect for the simple reason that you don't really need the intellect for ABFrB type rotations - they are already mana-positive. Furthermore, I think you'll find that the runed crimson spinel is the best option for gemming your gear, so if Rawr is telling you reckless gems are the best then I'm guessing you didn't select the +12 spelldamage ones for the optimiser?

 

Shînja

I should add: I'm only gearing for arcane specc, not playing it already. Neither is the gear gemmed correctly or anything like that (I have to regem a big part of my fire gear und gem my arcane gear (putting Hit gems only in slots I will swap out for arcane))
I didn't notice the fragmentation part so far, I probably should twist that a little

I actually put a pretty weak shadowpriest (150-175 mp5), no manatide and so on (actually we are running very short on heal shaman)
So, I just decided on a gear I would like to use (gemming for fire mainly and only using the gems best for arcane on the arcane only gear) What hit me though was that the optimizer selected a haste/spd socket for my T5 shoulders, but at the same time it tells me that the very same shoulders with an int gem would be better (and actually the dps goes up if I choose that option), but well. I've got enough badges to get the epic gems for everything, but unfortunatly I will need 115 more for the badge robe (and its gem)

So well, you asked about the gear, so I'll write down the available gear here. I hope you don't consider this as spam. In brackets I'll write down what I will probably choose thanks to Rawr.

Head: T4, Hood of Hexing (my choice: T4 with crit Meta and spi/spd gem)
Neck: S4 (haste or crit), Shattered sun Pendant (Scryer), Brooch of Unquenchable Fury (my choice: haste S4 with 12 spelldamage (bec. of fire/frost))
Shoulders: T5 (Int and spi/spd gem)
Cloak: Shadowcaster's Drape, Cloak of Subjugated Power, Ruby Drape (my choice: Shadowcaster's Drape)
Chest: Tormented Demonsoul Robes (after I got more badges), Scarlet Sin'dorei Robes (my choice: Demonsoul Robes with Haste/Spd gem)
Wrists: S4 (haste or crit), Runed Spell-cuffs (my choice: haste S4 with either 10 Intellect or spd/haste. Rawr suggests haste/spd so far, not sure about it yet though)
Hands: T5
Belt: Belt of Blasting (2x 12 spelldamage (for fire/frost))
Legs: Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons (2x 12 spd gem (for fire/frost))
Feet: Boots of Incantations, Footpads of Madness (my choice: Boots of Incantations with haste/spd gem)
Finger: Mana attuned Band, Fused Nethergon Band, Ahyens Gift, S4, Violet Signet of the Archmage, Scryer rep. ring (my choice: Mana attuned Band and Fused Nethergon Band)
Trinkets: Icon of the Silver Crescant, Quags Eye, Serpent-coil Braid, Lightning Capacitator (my choice: Icon and Braid)
Weapon: Blade of twisted visions, Wub's Cursed Hexblade, S2 Staff (my choice: Blade of twisted visions)
Offhand: fetish of the primal gods
wand: Carved Witch Doctor's Stick, The Black Stalk, Trisfal Wand of Ascendancy (my choice: Witch Doctor's Stcik with 12 spd)

I hope I didn't miss anything. Gonny play around with it a little more though, and maybe somebody here got some suggestions.

EDIT: I should add that I am still waiting for Akilzon's Necklace (hoping that no healer will need it) and Hex Shrunken Head (which dropped only once in the last 30 or 40 times I was in ZA and unfortunatly I didn't get it) I'm wondering if the S4 haste necklace might actually be better than the heal necklace...

 

Kavan

If the optimizer doesn't pick a direct upgrade then you've definitely forgot to make it available. If somehow that's not the case could you please post the rawr character file so I can see what's going on?

 

spiffy

Our guild usually brings 4 deep arcane mages to raids. They don't have any T5 (they've always passed on it for reasons unknown to me). They have around 1100-1400 arcane damage, sufficient amounts of crit/hit, and about 150+ haste. They prefer to all spam AM. I think they would be better off with arcane/frost and having one of them go deep frost to put up the debuffs (and also for the utility frost would provide vs. AOE packs). Any thoughts?

 

mako

I wasn't aware TBC arcane is raid-viable without 2t5.

You're right though, AB rotations should net more dps than AM spam. I don't have the math to confirm/deny that a winters chill mage + 3 arcane/frost mages would be better than 4 arcane/frost, but I think it would depend on how much time they need to regen while casting frostbolts.

 

Stein

It's sort of funny to me that this...misconception is persisting. Yes the client will show you the wrong time in your cast bar for the ramp up ABs, but if you start spamming the ramp up ABs at the right time, the server will still fire it off for you at the faster, debuffed speed.

I tested this months ago and posted what i thought were conclusive results on here somewhere.

(found it: [Mage] TC after 2.3 )

This "ramp up is broken" stuff seems to be based on research kavan did waaay back before the patch to address stopcasting.

Arcane blast lover; champion of arcane specs everywhere!

 

Shînja

Sorry, I didn't see there actually was a reply. I'm going to upload this tomorrow (european time) although I modified the character a little, o I'll try to reproduce it.


Sidenote: I was raiding ssc with arcane Specc today, my only support at Hydross for example being a shadowpriest... Oh, I really really enjoyed beating our Warlocks on this fight (and by far) Same for Lurker (Second behind a rogue), Leotheras (first, but a lot of people died...) and karatress (first) Our Raid is usually dominated by the DPS of 3 Mages excpet for AE fights and sometimes a Warlock or a Rogue, but the difference was great, espeascially as for the first 2 fights, my only support was a shadowpriest, who died early on leotheras wehre I got an Innervate. (I got 3 Innervates and the Spriest on karatress, being a raidleader has some advantages, as every druid likes to offer them to me if they are not needed anywhere else (which they usually aren't)) So pretty convincing first arcane experience, I'm really looking forward to maybe have a shaman or retri Paladin and gaining more experience with this very interesting specc!
(I hope that such sidenotes are allowed in this forum, please just delete it if I shouldn't write stuff like that)

 

Wizeowel

I'm glad you pointed this out. I believe I must have read over your original post. Perhaps you could contact the author of Quartz with your findings?

However, I believe that the discussion that you quoted above was regarding when to use PoM. Light4 was suggesting that you PoM your second AB in the ramp up so that you'll have AB(2) applied when casting the third AB. I was pointing out that, with regards total time spent ramping up doesn't change and you'll lose 1 or 2 ticks of mana regen compared to starting the fight with PoM. So, if there indeed isn't a 'bug' on ramping up, then Light4's argument is even less valid.

I do remember another discussion some weeks ago with Roywyn about activation of hasted effects where both of us were assuming there is a bug. I'll try to address that if I can find it.

 

diag

Is there a TC of IV+evocation?

I never have a pally in my group, it is very often for me to lose 3 or 4 ticks.

I usually use 4/5 tick with weapon switch, and if I use IV with evocation, I can use 3/5 tick only.

And IV+evo really mess up my cd stacking.

 

Light4

I switch weapon by macro, which makes swapping much faster.

As I also run into the problem of interupted Evo quite often I use the last bit of IV to hasten up the Evo (cast time is determined at the beginning of the cast).
Other than that, you can try to use a bossmod to predict certain abilities which might be disadvantageous to you and time Evo right in between (as you do with CD-stacking)

 

Stein

yeah, sorry, my response was sort of beside the point of your post. it just seemed you were assuming the ramp up bug as fact; it seems thrown around a lot as fact (it's the prime reason AB rotations are out of style).

Arcane blast lover; champion of arcane specs everywhere!

 

Stein

In a perfect world, you'd evocate with 1s left on IV. Making sure you're low enough on mana, w/o running out during the IV, in a part of the fight that's conducive to evocation, etc. can be tough to coordinate though.

Arcane blast lover; champion of arcane specs everywhere!

 

diag

What I am doing with evocation after swapping weapon change is:

0.0 evocation
0.0 switch to int weapon
8.0 4th tick
8.1 switch back to dmg weapon
9.6 gcd finished
10.0 5th tick

If the evocation is interrupted, all remaining ticks are gone, and 1.5 sec gcd is also wasted to switch back to dmg weapon.

 

Doroteasenjk

Er, what assumption are you talking about? The ramp up bug was quite present last night in BT for me. Continuous demonstration of a problem is not the same as "anecdotal evidence."

 

Stein

I proved via combat log that the 2nd and 3rd ABs can be cast in the reduced time if you press the button earlier than your client says you should.

Whose "evidence" is anecdotal?

Arcane blast lover; champion of arcane specs everywhere!

 

Polgarra

I've had a nagging question about this for a while and wanted to get some opinions on it. Running 40/0/21 and aiming for highest possible AB spam time, but I use Frostbolt filler on longer fights or fights where I am not receiving much mana support. I'm wondering if running 5/5 Arcane Focus and only picking up 6% spell hit from gear is widely accepted as the best option for someone that spends, let's say 10-15% of a fight casting Frostbolts. What I'm getting at is, this puts you well under the spell hit cap for your primary filler spell but allows you to better itemize for stats other than +hit. Since it's a low percentage of my overall spells cast, is it still worth it? Are you better off using AM as a filler to avoid resists? I know the answer will vary from one fight to the next, but I'm looking for more of a general statement, or even a simple explanation of why I shouldn't worry about the spell hit for my filler.

Inignot: And remember, there's no such thing as a dumb question.
Happy Time Harry: I have a question.
Inignot: Yes, in the back, the retard with the dumb question.

 

angayelle

I ran into the same problem and after checking WWS i found that i was casting 10-20 frostbolt per fight as filler, this represent 1-3 missed frostbolt due to the lack of + hit. It makes only 6k-12k of lost damage, not that much on a boss fight, no ?

If i was casting frostbolt during all the fight, this would be a real problem but, as filler, the loss is negligible so there no need to bother that much. You can still equip a weapon with + hit and +int/spirit for you filler spam. You can have a look at this list but it will cost you a GCD due to the swap.

 

xiaoxin21

Since it only takes 126 hit for 10% spell hit for cap for frostbolts(with EP). It would be advisable to do with only 3/5 focus and get hit from gear which is plentiful and easy to get even from badge gear.