grayrest

Spirit is going to be valued slightly higher for you due to your racial, but what you're seeing is the basics of arc dps: more mana == more damage. Be sure to adjust the fight length, uptime, and spriest mp5 to a variety of values. The defaults are for a comparatively long 5 minute stand and nuke, while I find a 220 or 260 second fight to be more representative of mana usage during a t5 fight--fights longer than that normally have fairly significant downtime/regen.

There are several options you can take to get rid of +hit: get the Vindicator's/SSO neck, Belt of Blasting, or back points out of Arcane Focus for use elsewhere since you're at the hit cap for taking 2 out.

 

Pintofbrew

Webbers: You insisted your fellow mage "stay within 2% of me"? Sorry to sound patronizing, but that's rather excessive demands. A fluctuation of 2% can happen naturally, and most certainly does happen on any boss-fight when you're not standing-and-casting alone. I wouldn't be surprised to see a discrepancy of 7-10% until your caster got the "feel" of the new spec, let alone optimized gear/raid setup/decision-making process for it. Unless you meant "over the whole raid" which is a good normalizing sample to gage overall performance, but suffers immensely from having trash in it. Arcane will eat alive any spec you care to throw at it on trass. from 100% AB time on trash to massive AoE damage, if you're comparing two mages over a whole raid, one fire and one arcane, both performing correctly, and the arcane mage is -only- 5% ahead at the end, he's probably seriously under-performing on the bosses. On trash it's perfectly normal for an Arcane to pull out at the very least 15% ahead.

If the main reason you're speccing Arcane is threat, then you probably need to make your tank ramp-up the TPS, or you're playing wrong (read: popping cool-downs too early).

 

◊ manly

That depends on how fast your guild pulls trash. If you chain pull non-stop I can't fathom the results, giving that I barely have enough mana as fire spec. But then again I use an unhealthy amount of instant casts.

<superblotto> Last I heard the Arcane Believers were going to burn the Infidel normal people at the stake but refused to use fire. Things went down hill from there
<arioch> arcane blast the firewood
<Blackpatch> they tried
<Blackpatch> but went OOM

Manly <Jet Silk Tires> / Lich King

 

Webbers

Double Post GG webbernub <-- Please delete this post admin

 

Webbers

Hi Pintofbrew, Manly

Yeah it was probably unfair (and arrogant) of me to throw down that challenge to her but I thought she was just wide eyed at the 2pcs T5 set bonus. But I was proved wrong - and I learnt from that (again and again).

Imo for DPS meters - At my level the only fight that matters is the boss fight. We don't call it trash because it is important. the only down side for my Arcane mages is they miss there sheep targets as they're still drinking when we pull (WTB better water plz Blizz)

Also I'm a mage - I spec as needed (I’m always at 50g) but my heart in 2.4 is with Fire, that’s what my main gear is for and that is a personal choice for me. I spec Arc/frost and swap in gear when I'm needed to fill the SP SP RS AM AM group (I'm being very consciences of not turning this into a fire vs arcane thread - I hate those threads).

And yeah I am threat capped and yeah if it’s not a common problem for other fire mages it must be a tank TPS issue. I’ll bring it up. And yeah I pop CD’s fairly early to ensure I get 2 to 3 uses of each. And maybe it’s just that my tanks aren’t of a lvl yet where they can handle Combustion, IV, destro pot, Trinket, Flame cap, haste drums and Blood lust…… I love 2nd boss MH as I swich to the first Infernal right before ripping the boss of the tank

But I’ll repeat that my main reason for loving arcane mages in my raid is the TPS – DPS ratio. They can go all out and then if you treat them right can keep it up for the whole fight. BUT if that is due to my tanks TPS then it may be guild specific.

But try out the support group – and if your Shadow priest melt face like ours then you can use your 100% AB rotation
Its the possible dream

 

grayrest

There isn't a single pull in t5 that both requires you to sheep and to be at full mana. I drink between pulls next to the tank and if the pull goes, I stand up and sheep. If I'm low I do rotations or pop a gem. The mage's job on pulls is to sheep. Doing damage is secondary.

 

Alvira

I looked by Rawr for my own mage and compared it to me in fire gear and fire spec.

My current armory shows my current arcane mage gear. Its T6 gear outside of the two 5 pieces, so your mages might be a bit lower considering where you are at now.

Raid buffed, with curse of shadows (not improved). AB spammed gives 1998 DPS. (This is not counting things like bloodlust or AP, this is just AB spam statistics taken from Rawr). The same tooltip tells me that the TPS (threat per second) for the AB spam is 847.71 TPS.

So, just based on normal AB spam, the DPS to TPS ratio is 2.36

Activating arcane power during bloodlust plus trinket would probably push it higher, but not as much because of the arcane talents.

Me as Fire spec in fire gear (means no T5, wearing things like hatefury mantle, leggings of channeled elements, belt of blasting, etc) , in raid buffs with COE (unimproved) and scorch up, on Rawr gives me fireball spam doing 1504 DPS. The TPS of this fireball spam is 951.98 TPS. And the threat would really shoot up during the molten fury, blood lust phase if you throw in IV, trinket, drums, heroic pots and whatever else.

Based on just normal fireball spam with scorch being up, the DPS to TPS ratio is 1.58

Hope this is what you wanted. In any case, arcane mages don't have to worry about threat. You couldn't draw aggro even if you wanted to. Unless you did something stupid like throw out an AP, POM Pyroblast (which is fire) at the very start of the boss pull. At ROS phase 3, even with the raid boss buffs pushing damage to ridiculous levels, I could go all out on AB spam and still not pull aggro. Our glaive using fury warrior once pulled aggro in ROS phase 3 before I did, and my DPS as an arcane mage on ROS phase 3 can go as high as 4200 DPS for the whole phase.

 

Pintofbrew

I assure you, my SP does melt faces. I find 100% AB is only possible on Rage (because of Jaina's Aura) and Naj'entus (because of lots of OO5SR time). Beyond that, if you're above 80% AB you're getting Innervates or you've got a Restoshaman and an SP and JoW.

 

xiaoxin21

It will depend on what you deemed as 100%AB, does it include evocation time , movement time, time when debuff is forced to drop via movement or IB, and your raid not dying etc.

It will largely depend on raid dps too, Currently I can sustain 100% AB for all T6 fights save Mother and Kaz with 1/2 innnervates.

Naj/Supremus/Shade/RoS/Bloodboil/Teron are all pretty short fights. For council the way my guild did it I have like 50% dps time which result in plenty of regen. Illidan P4 is mana regen as we dont dps illidan at all during P4.

For hyjal,most fights are sort and Archi most of the time is decurse / running from DF.

Sunwell wise it is harder to sustain 100% rotation. However with the change to kalec giving the massive regen buff. IT is possible to get 100% AB if you are in the same zone as your SP/shaman all the time.

One thing missing in rawr is the Mana Tide / innervate buff feature which would give a clearer picture on the mana management.

Oh and I pulled aggro at Felmyst without using POM anything. Apparently I did AB 4 crits for 5k each at the start and it came to me, partly my fault as I was not paying attention to threat meters ever since I specced arcane, and I am think the tank must have missed all his first 5 moves or something.

 

Kavan

The latest version has both Mana Tide and Innervate option. It's in the options after the aoe and evocation settings.

 

xiaoxin21

Kavan: thanks for the info,

Curiosity sake, How is the innervate and mana tide modeled by. A flat mp5 increase over the course of the fight duration. Or as a actually buff casted during the fight for a huge mp5 over a small duration of time.

This is due to the fact that I actually do switch weapon sometimes during innervate(via closet gnome) for maximum effect. And Mana spring uptime is also affected by the uptime of mana tide.

 

Kavan

Right now it converts them to mp5 over the whole fight, using the int/spi/combat regen from equipped gear. I doubt I'll add option for swapping weapon as that would affect the stats while casting and would increase the complexity of optimization. Good point about mana spring though, I'll have to fix that.

 

Mitholorin

Hello!
Wont be making much of a contribution here, but i have a question regarding Arcane spec at Brutallus.
When one reaches brut, the best Arcane gear available to me gives me a theoretical DPS of about 2k over 6 minutes, according to rawr. Ofc, it is not humanly possible to catch every clearcast with iv/hero, its not possible to time everything 100%, so im guessing at best I'd be able to do about 1900 DPS with my current gear + t6 bracers and the other badge robe.

My question is : Are any of you SWP arcane mages doing Brutallus as arcane, and how is it working for you? Cant seem to find any WWS with arcane mages on that fight, and I'm wondering if I'll need to pick up more t6 while wrorking thru BT. The general concensus is every dps with 2t6, but Arcane is fairly new as a contender and the general concensus might be wrong?

 

xiaoxin21

I do Brutallus as arcane and I would say 1-2 innervates will be ideal for your dps.And I would think the best arcane gear available to you will do more than 2k dps over 6 mins depending on the buffs you get and debuffs placed on brutallus.

Assuming your guild already killed Illidan, and you have access to all gear from that and below and standard raid buffs/debuff and a SP that does 175mp5,2 mana tide and 1 innervate. I came up with a gear set requiring no pieces from BT that does more than 2.2k. IF you have access to BT gear it will go higher.

gear set for your reference: Head: T6, neck: Brooch of Nature's mercy,Shoulder:T5, back:shadowcaster drape, robes:robes of rhonin,bracer:cuffs of devastation, gloves:T5, belt:belt of blasting, legs:channeled elements, boots: boots of incantations, ring:ancient knowledge and exalted Hyjal ring, trinkets:SCB+Hex, weapon :tempest of chaos + dark secrets.

If you have access to BT gear, your dps will be even higher

 

Alvira

Recently, I have been seriously considering the thought of having an alternate gear set specifically for long fights and the T5 set seems ideal for it. The normal progression for an arcane mage raider is that as you get through SSC/TK, and into BT/Mt Hyjal, you initially get two pc T5 as fast as you can. Then you go on to 4 pc T5. But once T6 becomes available, you replace two pieces easily enough at first, then as BT/MH becomes farm status, you start being in a position to accumulate the rest of T6 piece.

My idea is that We re-gem T5 completely with yellow +10 int gems. So, we use the gloves and one more T5 that is yellow gemmed with the rest of our T6 equivalent gear that is gemmed for damage for the mostly short fights in BT, MH. Then, for those few more longish fights, we swop into full T5 which is gemmed completely with yellow +10 int gems.

Chest has 3 slots, shoulders has 2, leggings has 1, and head has 1. So, that's up to 7 slots all of which can be gemmed with +10 int gems for an additional +70 int. Ideally, there are other gear slots that have gem slots where you can do the same thing, but I think getting two slippers of the seacaller would probably be too much of a luxury for most people.

This allows you to be at maximum effectiveness for short raid boss fights, for trash, and for normal daily grinding/questing. While you can still aim to spam AB in your alternate T5 gear set that is fully gemmed for int in the long boss fights where this is necessary. The 4 piece set bonus on T5 also helps mitigate some of the damage lost from its inferior damage to T6, and the yellow gemming.

Of course, going into sunwell, things might then get different and you might then need to re-gem even your T6 pieces for int. But that would be more for the raiders who are deep into Sunwell.

 

Azzuro

The boots off Lurker, as you'd be hit capped with that set, are better than the Boots of Incantations.

 

Kavan

You have it completely wrong. Int is better on shorter fights, damage is better on longer.

 

Alvira

Huh? Int is better for shorter fights? Why? You can already spam AB 100% in short fights.

Why would damage be better on longer fights? @@

 

Tinybronco

The longer a fight goes the more % of your spells are taken up by your "filler" rotation. These are more dependent on damage than they are on intellect, and therefore the longer the fight is the more damage goes up in value, catching and surpassing intellect.

 

xiaoxin21

Not right, intellect affects your filler spell and AB equally.

what int increases: spelldamage, regen, mana pool, crit.

Haven't done the Maths, but I would think up to a certain point in int, spi will surpass int in regen value for long fights so much that it is more worthwhile gemming +10 spi than +10int for regen, taking into account the loss of spelldamage and crit, based on the diminishing returns of int on regen.The value I am starting to estimate from is about 600-700 int

 

kittylitter

I might get e-jumped for this... but why is there nothing regarding a straight frostbolt spam? With the four piece t6 bonus (and the tier 6 pieces are certainly better than the tier 5 ones), CoE, and the rest of the Arcane tree benefits, why isn't a 'fb fb fb fb fb fb fb fb' rotation viable? Assuming you're going to work in your cooldowns, timing them together correctly to maximize the burst damage you can get, adding in the 5% frostbolt damage from the tier bonus, and the amazing mana efficiency, (all assuming that you have a deep frost mage in the group, providing you with a 10% crit bonus) is this a reasonable option?

 

Wizeowel

Because it's about 700 less dps than AB spam, and surprisingly it's also less dps than ABFrB3FrBSc.

 

Gediablo

Good post by Alvira. I especially like the part about AB-spam as much as possible being the key and every thing else is just different ways to preserve mana without gimping you mana too much. This is unlike all other specs and classes, and is essential to understand how to play arcane. I have read too many bad arcane guides praising 3xAB+1xAM+1xscorch as the BEST DPS rotation. It is not, nor is any firebuild and spec. AB spam infinitely with 40 talent points in arcane is. The best way to make the mana last longer (for me with my gear) when this isn't possible for me is to squeeze in some clusters of 3xfrostbolts now and then (4xtier6 + 2xtier5 is really awesome for this spec). I don't think the original post by Alvira emphasized the whole AB debuff management too good though. The point of using e.g 3xfrostbolts or 1xAM+1xScorch before returning to AB spam is that the mana cost of the AB spell is based on the number of AB debuffs when ending the cast, while the casttime depends on the number of buffs when starting the casting - so you can get a just 1.5 cast AB for basic manacost. The whole filler discussion is revolving around that mechanic.

Anyway to the reason I made this post - this thread needs this table:
My point here is that the percent mana cost increase of AB with a debuff is additive with Tier5 two set bonus. The extra mana costs are just added together (not multiplied) and used on the default spell cost. Basically this means that when you use Arcane power you should just spam AB, as it doesn't really matter that much if the spell cost 672 or 731 mana when you get 30% more damage for only 8.8% more mana cost.

I have raided as much as arcane as fire in TBC so far - tried all TBC raid encounters so far including Felmyst as both specs several times. Atm I'm mainly doing Sunwell, and I'm specced 40-0-21 and is able to do 2.1k dps on 6.00 min Brutallus kill (probably the worst fight for this spec). It is around 100-150 dps lower on this boss than I have been able to do on him as fire so far, but the 40-0-21 spec is MUCH better for e.g. both trash, Kalecgos and Felmyst (and most other encounters in the game). For 5 and 10 man instances no firemage will be able to keep up with my damage as 40-0-21, unless the pulls happens so fast that I cannot drink - aggro, scorch-up-time, weaker AoE, and simply lower dps than AB spam makes it impossible. This is a fact.

My impression on arcane is this: Not worth it for 25 man raids without 2xtier5 and a shadowpriest+resto/elemetalshaman in your group. You simply have to stop spamming AB too often without them. Also if you hate using gem and super mana pots on max cooldown never touch this spec. If it is unthinkable that you can ask druids for innervate on trash pulls in raids don't bother respeccing this either - you will probably wipe the raid due to slow polymorph from you sitting oom in a corner drinking (unless your guild is slow at clearing trash). On the other hand if the above isn't a problem and you know how to spam AB non-stop (doh!) this is for you. AB spam (or AE spam) is possible on pretty much all raid trash pulls in TBC, and this makes it vastly superior to fire on trash in all raids - even better dps than warlocks in this department. On bosses on farmstatus arcane is better than fire in most cases for the same reason - If the boss got below 3 million hp it is extremely doable to spam AB the entire bossfight and again fire cannot compete. In utility/survival fights the extra iceblock and not having playing with fire favors this spec to fire again. Another thing that talks for this spec is how aggressive you are with taking aggro risks. Personally I hate the thought of me wiping the raid at an encounter due to pulling aggro, which in many fights makes my fire damage a bit lower, than I know it could be. As arcane I hardly ever have to watch my aggro in raids, and can even go all out in 5 mans heroics without pulling aggro - that is unthinkable as fire.