Akaikami

I admit to not having read every single post in this thread, but of the many I've looked into, I haven't seen anyone mention pushing to 4/5 T5, pre-sunwell. The 4-piece set bonus has no internal cooldown, restarting the 6 second duration on every crit you score. My thinking when putting together my gear was that with the exceptional speed of casting for 3x arcane blast, it should be feasible to have this bonus active almost 100% of the time, given roughly a 1.5 second cast and 30% crit rate.

Taking that into account, I put together the [Cowl of Tirisfal], [Leggings of Tirisfal], [Gloves of Tirisfal] and [Mantle of Tirisfal] set. I then added every piece of spell haste gear I could find for each leftover spot, pushing my spell haste rating to 254. Also, I spec 5/5 in Arcane Focus, wasting very little ilevel on spell hit, getting just enough to put me at the requisite 76 rating needed to cap.

I spec 50/0/11 and rely on arcane missiles as my "filler" spell. Each missile lands in .86 seconds, so even when using my filler, the 4-piece stays active. Add to that proc the one that comes from the [Band of the Eternal Sage] and your constant stream of spell hits and crits will maintain for you a sizeable spell damage increase.

As for trinkets, I favor the [Serpent-Coil Braid] and [Hex Shrunken Head]. The Braid is invaluable in maintaining your mana pool. The head, paired with a gem use and arcane power gives an exceptional boost to dps.

While testing this strategy, I found that it seems to be optimal to maintain at least a 14k mana pool after raid buffs with ~400 mp/5 while casting. I tend to gem for Int until I hit that mana threshold, then go for spell haste/spell damage gems.

Generally, I start a fight by spamming arcane blast until I've used about 4k mana. I then hit a macro for
/Cast Icy Veins
/Use Hex Shrunken Head
/Use Mana Emerald
/Cast Arcane Power
/Cast Presence of Mind

and continue to spam arcane blast until I've spent another 4k mana, then use a Super Mana Potion and continue to spam arcane blast until the abilities run their course. At this point, I scale back to a 3x blast, 2x AM rotation to stem the loss of mana (I'm often paired with only a Resto Shaman for support and have never gotten an innervate in a raid (we are 4/5 Hyjal, 8/9 BT)). Once the gem and shrunken head cooldowns become available, I pop them and return to arcane blast spam, then pot, then spam, then back to the previous 3x, 2x rotation. Eventually, I do run oom with this strategy; It is not perpetually sustaining. Once I go oom, I use Evocation and start the cycle over.

Using this strategy, and with very little mana support, I tend to average about 1700-1900 dps on most hyjal/bt bosses, with a spike of 2100-2200 on RoS and a dip to 1300-1400 on Naj'Entus (and of course, even less for Shahraz, but Shadow Resist gear changes everything).

Thoughts?

 

Keldarn

That seems on the low side to me. In my arcane gear/spec I can easily reach over 3K on RoS, for instance. Think my WWS parses expired though, so can't pull up any numbers.

 

xiaoxin21

The dps numbers by Akaikami seems fairly accurate assuming no flask/pots and wearing T5 and not having support. Reaching 3k on RoS will largely depend on your overall raid gear and composition.

 

Polgarra

I have a question in regards to the discussion towards the beginning of the thread about best use of clearcasting. At my current gear level I find myself doing mostly Arcane Blast with about 5-10% of damage coming from Frostbolt filler. My guild is 5/5 Hyjal and 7/9 BT (we've stormed t6 and have made this progress in less than a month of raiding, so not much farming happening just yet - translates into zero pieces of t6 level gear thus far for me). As a result of my t5 level gear, I generally play a bit conservative on the mana except maybe on RoS and Gorefiend, and want to get the most out of every spell.

My question, and problem, come in that I was under the impression that AM was generally accepted as the best use of Clearcast procs but I am rarely able to take advantage of them. I currently have a /stopcasting /cast Arcane Missiles macro bound to number 1 for quick and easy access, but when spamming Arcane Blast I can almost never cancel a cast and switch to Arcane Missiles before AB eats the clearcast.

So here's the question part. Is there an effective way to catch clearcasts and fire off AM without wasting GCDs, and is it even worth it to stop an AB to hit AM? I'm mediocre when it comes to macros, and I'm aware of many of the limits of what a macro can do, but I'm curious about some sort of [Clearcast=True] type macro. I know you can include if/then type factors such as target=hostile, or combat=yes, but is it possible to have a macro fire Arcane Missiles if Clearcast is present and fire Arcane Blast if it is absent? My instinct says no, but I'd rather ask and look silly than wonder if I'm missing out on something. Even if this were possible, the Clearcast doesn't seem to pop up until 3/4 of the way through the next cast anyway.

I am mildly curious about the school of thought that promotes casting an AB/AM rotation, but upon first glance it looks like a significant dps decrease compared to AB spam and ignoring clearcast. Feel free to share math or opinions as I'm open to trying many different things to be as efficient as possible.

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.

 

Kavan

AB/AM variations are dpm rotations. For your dps rotation you should never change from AB spam on CC, the general accepted view is that to be able to do the switch on CC you would need to pause between AB casts too much to make it worthwile (it'll take at least your latency until you get the needed information).

 

Imnumber01

Hey guys, long time reader first time poster

I've been fire for quite some time now and have just recently had the shot at picking up the 2pT5 bonus. So I've been all over this thread reading and re-reading to better equip myself for raiding as arcane.

My question is about weapon enchantment choice.

I'm sure a case can be made for either Sunfire or +40spd.

I would say that the majority of the 40/0/21 mages I have seen are using +40spd, is this merely because it it less expensive or is it because they don't have much raid support to maintain 90% AB uptime?

My gut tells me that the balancing point where Sunfire outperforms +40spd is around 90/10 split.

Also, has anyone (silly question) done the math to take into account 40/21/0 getting the benefit of scorch debuff (from other 2/48/11 mages) as well the constant +10 spd from sunfire?

 

Wizeowel

Yes people have done the math. In the first post of this very thread you can find links to various theorycrafting tools. Your specific questions can best be answered using Rawr.mage. It will indeed show that there is a case to be made for your choice of enchant as an arcane mage. This will likely be wholly dependent on fight parameters.

 

Dhaalamar

I'm an arc/fire mage in full t6 (8/8). I raid with the t6/6 t5/2 combo though. Manapool fully buffed 13.5k. Most of the fights I'm concerned about are sunwell.

The brutalis fight is the one I have the most trouble with. I can usually more than hold my own on other fights (twins, kalec, felmyst) but on brutalis I run into mana problems. On brutalis our other two mages with similar gear but deep fire spec do about 2200dps. I normally push about 1950ish but it's a challenge and I always need an innervate.

I use flask of supreme power (so that both my fireball and arcane blast can benefit) and I gem/pot/evoc as soon as they are available.

my rotation on this fight is ABx3, AP, AB spam (gem soon as I'm down 3k mana), AB spam (pot soon as I'm down 5k mana), AB spam (until down to 5k mana), (ABx1, Fireballx1) rotation spam until new gem and pot are used then full AB Spam to 0mana, Evocate, AB spam to 0, innervate+gem/spot goes to repeat from start.

The reason I stick the evocate farther in is that occassionally someone will do something stupid and we fail on brut (not often). Our guild gets back to try again in usually 3 minutes or so and I hate the cooldown not being available.

So after all of that setup, basically it all comes down to this. Should I do something differently? Am I reaching my max theoretical dps for this fight? Should I use the adepts/draenic instead of the flask of supreme power? How would I calculate whether or not it's good to evoc since that 12 seconds I'm not dpsing at all (would I be better served with longer filler)?.

 

Kavan

You're wearing full T6 on armory so I just guessed which 2T5 you're using. Estimating your situation in Rawr you should be able to get up to around 2200 dps, but I might have some info wrong. Definitely do evocate, adept/draenic should be about 30 dps increase over supreme power. For your dpm rotation use the full cycle, getting AB debuff up to 3 before dropping it. Change your meta to CSD, you're losing another 30 dps there.

 

Dhaalamar

Great information. Couple questions. (and for the record im using shoulders/legs for the t5/2)

How is adept's/draenic better than the +70 spell dmg of flask of supreme power? How do you calculate that?

I'm going to switch my meta gem. I've had the other meta gem due to the increased int and such.

We did brut again tonight and I did 1950 again. Really getting frustrating.

 

Wizeowel

Kavan is the author of the mage model in Rawr, a tool which can be used to calculate the maximum theoretical damage you can do in a particular fight. (It's mentioned in the first post of this thread.)

 

Dhaalamar

I realize that, I was asking for how the calculation is made. I see what was said in the first post, I'm just unsure after reading it which one is better for my situation.

fyi, i have about 705 mp5 on average fully raid buffed with shaman on the brut fight. (465 mp5 while casting).

 

Kavan

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking. You calculate how much sustained dps you do with flask and how much dps you do with elixirs and you look at the difference.

 

Elysianfield

It might simply be your spec... I haven't seen any high dps arcane/fire mages in late sunwell, but there are numerous arcane/frost mages. Since your filler spell isn't really designed to be your primary nuke, you can (to a certain extent) disregard it altogether and look towards other abilities that you can use to boost the dps of your primary nuke. Getting Icy Veins would be a fairly substantial boost in that you'd be able to get quite a couple more casts off during your AP + trinket + etc. uptime.

 

Wizeowel

Perhaps oddly, 40/10/11 spec with fireball filler and wear *four* pieces of both T5 and T6 does come close in dps to 40/0/21. But there's a very small window in which this is any good, since with Brutallus leggings and/or Twins shoulders you'll want to go back to 2T5+4T6. Indeed, overall on Brutallus I found not only the triple IV of arc-frost superior, but also the double iceblock. Burn is one of the biggest dps killers on that fight.

 

tommynt

I m doing very fine as 40/0/21 or 40/21/0 through whole T5 and T6 content - actually i m still even totaly outdpsing 4T6 destros and rogues - but my concern is Brutalus - we will down Kalcegos soon - and I cant imagine to hold 2000 dps for 6 min when rawr tells me (and is right) that pure AB spam well have me stuck at 2000 dps and I know i cant hold this for 6 min.
Me equip is sunwell googles, 4 T5, PvP Neck, Bracers and Belt, Hex and serp.
There are no real equipupgrades for me apart sunwell T6 Items.
Or some1 really think that I might be better of with 2T5/2T6? I doubt - rawr tells me it s same good

So actually the main question is - as there are no arcan equipupgrades and I know I wont be able to hold 2000 dps (well no1 else in my guild can so it might not matter ..) should I collect fire item and just respec for Brutallus?

What about encounters after Brutalus?

I know the pros and conc of arcane very well and biggest con is no pushbackprotection apart from icy veins (thats why 40/0/21 is my final spec after playing round with 40/21/0 - is pushback a huge matter in later sunwell encounter?

 

Wizeowel

Actually yes fire spec is probably is better on Brutallus (assuming you have 4T6 and hitcapped for that). Definitely if you don't have the all the things arcane needs - VT, wrath of air, mana tide, JoW, divine spirit and an innervate - you'll likely do better as fire. So if your guild needs a bit of extra dps for the first kill then you should of course respec. But I understand that your question is whether you want to respec every week?

Well looking at the next bosses, on Felmyst it's arguably better to go back to arcane: the long downtimes means huge regen and so you'll have 100% AB spam, and can use your cooldowns on almost every wave. Last week I was 100k damage above the next person on Felmyst herself. On the skeletons you'll do silly damage because you can spam aoe while running. Also don't forget that with the very aggro sensitive and burst healing needed that your improved amplify magic buff on the raid will save lives.

On Twins there's also a good advantage to being arcane. Because the tanks get knockback, your -40% threat will be very significant on phase 1 - other classes except for hunters are threat capped. On phase 2 it's also okay to be arcane, but fire can spellsteal a +35% buff to great effect in that phase. So I think it's maybe equal damage, but it's probably more important to get the first twin down quickly compared to the second.

On M'uru it's debateable. Arcane can do huge burst in phase 2 because it's very short, you could conceivably use double icy veins and then get a heroism after that for 80 seconds total hasted (and easily have enough mana for 100% AB spam). However, raid dps needs to be high for phase 1 also, and you will likely suck at this. Fire mages will be much much better when assigned to M'uru on phase 1.

Kil'jaeden I don't know but all the top guilds use only firemages there and by the time you have some Twins+ drops then your gear starts to favour fire very heavily.

So conclusion is: don't pass on fire spec gear, because your guild needs you to do your best dps, then you have to accept that arcane cannot be the best spec for Sunwell. It can be useful and stays competitive on the easier bosses, but fire is most dps when you reach the end.

 

Dhaalamar

One thing you might consider is doing what I did last night. I respec'd deep fire for brutalis and pushed 2250dps. Used flamecaps etc. since mana wasn't a problem. Then after the fight I went and respec'd back to arc/fire.

I have to agree completely with the points Wizeowel makes on the other sunwell fights about where arcane is good/bad. Especially on twins where threat is a real issue since you have to stay below both tanks and felmyst where the regen between phases is pretty extreme.

For M'uru fire is heavily favored because you can spell steal a buff that makes the next 5 or 6 casts (I forget exactly which) instant casts. For deep fire this means chaining pyroblasts together for 10k to 12k crits with the right cooldowns.

 

Wizeowel

I'm doing 2271dps now on Brut as arc-frost, not sure how much I'd do as fire since I miss a lot of spellhit. However I would indeed respec for M'uru if my guild didn't kill the Fury Mages first. I still feel it's rather pointless to spec into pyroblast for a buff which is only infrequently available and only in the 'easy' phase of a difficult boss. Moreover, if you suck at stealing the buff quickly, and the tank on that side doesn't have spellreflect, they can be toast very quickly. Using Rawr to calculate the 80 seconds of P2, I see myself at 3kdps with arc-frost and only 2800 with fire-iv. So I'll trust the numbers for the moment and stick with the 'lesser' spec.

 

Etherealz

I'm not sure what you mean by 'bad at stealing'

Have one macro for setting your focus to the fury mage, and then a /stopcasting /cast [target=focus] spellsteal macro.

 

Dustwhisper

I have a question regarding itemization for Arcane-spec. We have one mage that swears to arcane and rightfully so because he top2 mage and most of the time top5 in raid. He does get ele shaman or SP or even both and an innervate or two so his AB spam % is always 90% more often 95-100% depending on fight (read: Not council/illidan). We are 5/5 and 9/9 not done SW yet so that's where our gearlevel is at.

My current disagreement with said mage is his insistance that he would gain as much from skull of gul'dan, cowl of the illidari highlord and zhar'doom as a firemage and warlock. Admittadly zhar'doom most likely though he already has tempest of chaos and he managed to get cowl last night. I just cannot fathom how said items would benefit an arcane-mage as much as a firemage with the heavy hit on both skull and cowl (him sitting on 2pt5 3pt6 and 9% hit from gear alone which is way over cap). Said person is also gemming 5haste6dmg gems over 12dmg or int gems which I would think is mostly a higher gain, atleast on the longer fights / sunwell.

Seeing as I have not played arcane-spec since the MSD era and this guy managed to become CL I thought I'd get some feedback here =)

 

tommynt

The mage got no clue, he ll never benefit closely as much as a firemage from skull and in my opinion also not from cowl.

Tell him to install RAWR to check what gear he needs and to socket int and maybe even some spirit so he dont need inervate and double support.
I can hold 100% AB Spam in most BT/MH fights without any support and was able to hold 100% and far highest dps on illidan without any support apart one inervate.

Looks like he just want showoff his superskills be being on top on epenmeter while asking same time for triple support and proly not even using Manapots on cooldown.

A Arkanmage with support should not be outdpsed in any BT/MH fight from another mage imo ("Lucky" fights as Archimonde f.e. dont count)

 

Dustwhisper

Oh I agree I used to be his CL in a diff guild but I took a break when that guild died now he is my CL not that I ever listen to him and he knows that :P

Not happening, his answer has always been "Yea sure theorycraft, I go by gutfeeling I know what works!"