I know this only applies to Alchemists, but using the new Sorcerer's Alky Stone seems almost a requirement for myself. 40% bonus on Mad Alky Pots is awesome. I havent seen any discussion on it here. My other trinket is the badge one.

The World of Warcraft Armory

I'll agree, the Sorc Alchy Stone is wonderful. 60+ static damage, and 40% to mana/hp/rejuv and mad alchemist pots.

Another thing is this: It also buffs the regen from Fel pots too. So if all else fails and you can suffer the spell damage debuff it gives you, then 3200 x 1.40 = 4480 mana. Or rougly 30-40% of your mana pool. Its a pretty significant jump. I'm unsure though if like a Mana Pot that it can crit, but its a huge benefit if push comes to shove and you need more mana for a timeframe to keep pushing out DPS, I'd take it over a standard mana pot. Its a fixed value, so its a constant in that regard, which can help extend your mana longer to the next gem/evocate and what have you.

I also always assumed before getting to this site that my other trinket would be the serpent braid from Tidewalker to boost the output from mana gems. This gives 25% boost to mana from the gem and 15 sec of increased damage besides the hit and crit.

Having gotten SCB on sunday night i'm also interested in the viability of a SCB/SAS combo. My gut is telling me SCB/activate trinket(HSH) and LWing for drums of restoration would be better and SAS/SCB would be overkill on the mana and too much of a gimp on dmg. Currently I am unsure of my trinket choice (SCB+TLC/Icon/DMC/SNH) and have settled on SCB/TLC for now, running with a spriest and resto shammy. Would SCB/SAS be viable given a fight length of say 6min? Or would that just be overkill?

I think with SAC and SCB and a shammy and spriest I could spam AB 90-95% of the time over 6 minutes. 100% with an innervate. I have about 375 mp5 and 14.5k mana and 1250 dmg in raid mode.

I have a few questions...
I'm arcane specced mage, this is a link to my armory profile The World of Warcraft Armory (sometimes it may show as if i was wearing 4/5 T6 but i use 2/5 T6 legs and chest plus 2/5 T5 gloves and shoulders for PvE raiding)

Here are the questions that have been bothering me lately:

1. Does the SSO neck for casters (aldor version) stacks with Band of the Eternal Sage (MH exalted ring) and can proc at the same time? Do you think the SSO neck's better than The Sun King's Talisman (the neck from kael'thas TK) for arcane spec?

2. What in your opinion is the best possible combo of trinkets for arcane spec? I'm using SCB plus Icon at the moment

I'm looking forward to hear your opinions, any comment is welcome.

PS. Sorry for any possible gramar mistakes, it's not my native speaker..

I was thinking about the trinket too, but..

The main advantage of the alchemy trinket is 40% more mana out of mana potions, at least that's how i see it. I usually get resto shaman along with SP, plus improved evocation (2/5 T6) and not to mention chain drinking mana pots and using gems.. In other words i hardly ever find myself OOM, even in the longest possible encounters.
I saw a few arcane mages using SCB with darkmoon:crusade, what do you guys think about that combo?

so what about 4-piece t5 bonus? 100% uptime should be possible

Trinkets hands down for arcane mages should be [Hex Shrunken Head] and [The Lightning Capacitor]. been useing since T5 and havent found a good one to replace it with yet. [The Lightning Capacitor] procs all the time as arcane and i usally get a 1k hit 2k crit

The 4-piece bonus is possible with very high uptime, that is correct, but the rest of the gear is moderately shit. The gloves and pants are horribly bad and the chest is moderately worse than T6. Ideally, you'll only keep pads and (head or chest) and go for T6 in the rest, which is quite a bit better.

Note that the 2*T6 bonus is also quite useful as arcane, a boon in it's self most of the time, though not as much as you'd think because while evocating it's often the case that (a) you weren't at 0%, rather at 3-4% to start with (b)your SP won't switch off (c) 10sec is a lot of passive regen anyway hence, you overflow if you let it tick to full effect.

Trinkets are a toss between Capacitor and SCB, depending on occasion and on whether or not you fill with AM or FrB. The difference is small, though I'm personally in favor of SCB as it offers more versatility in case shit hits fans, like Evo is cut short, SP is cut short etcetera.

E: I believe Kavan once said he trashed with T5 and bossed with T6, though I suspect it's for some cryptic reason that he can TC and I can't discern, like "I don't evo on trash, thus the (number) benefit from T6 bonus is negated".

In other news, arcane loses another relative bonus it had versus fire in the next patch, 2.4.3, with the integration of CoS/CoE. Now Fire will also get Malediction (or in some cases "will also get a curse") thus diminishing the gap even further.

Personally I'm seriously debating ditching Camp Arcane. My guild lost the spirit-buff priest as soon as we realized we needed another CoH in SWP and now the sims indicate arcane is in fact sub-standard with the fire out-put I can do, given the gear I'm wearing. This is probably in no small way linked to the fact that I have to wear T5 pants (as it's the only piece I have) and T6 head, rather than Channeled Elements and T5 head.

Shame, it was good while it lasted... I'll miss you, AoE DPS.

50/0/11 yes [Hex Shrunken Head] and [The Lightning Capacitor] are the best tinkets.

40/0/21 [Serpent-Coil Braid] and [Hex Shrunken Head] / [Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone]are the best. I use [Hex Shrunken Head] because you can stack your cooldowns and wreck shop and get some pretty big crits with cooldowns.

Wow Web Stats

Wow Web Stats

Wow Web Stats

Kreegs beatdown stacks with Div Spi, and I was using it. Having three stacks of scrolls per raid in order to remain competitive is not my idea of fun, however. It's hugely simpler to farm Flamecaps than Spirit Scrolls.

Also, these do not cover the fact that Improved Div. Spi. also entails a +45damage for me, an absolutely non-trivial amount.

I think [The Lightning Capacitor] gets benefit from enh shaman stormstrike and shadow priest misery? A 26 % increase in a trinket is very significant. I think Rawr should include stormstrke's effect.

How can u buy Kreegs Beatdown? I'm in DM but the drunk is red and I can buy anything off of him. What rep do I need to grind to get him friendly?

My feelings exactly. I ditched arcane after getting the leggings of channeled elements to complement 4pT6. I had great fun raiding as arcane clearing up Hyjal and BT. Controllable bursts, very flexible dpm, incredible trash dps, even more incredible AoE dps. Having Kavan as a mentor (and a friendly competiton ) also helped speed up the learning process. All in all it was fun.

Now I am Meditation/Frost. We started to have more consistent CoEs (which won't be a problem anyways after next patch), and less predictable imp. spirit and spriests. Well, two weeks into raiding with my new spec and I have already broke two personal dps records with Med/Frost on Mother and Council (and came really close on Illidan). I am absolutely in love with the amazing mana efficiency and super synergy with all that +spell haste going around.

Arcane will always have its special place in my heart. And who knows what WotLK will bring?

I'll give you the benefit of doubt and assume you're serious here...

Basically, you need to leave him alive and kill the last boss in the instance King Gordok, then speak to the Ogre that spawns to be crowned "King". Once crowned all the ogres in the instance become friendly, and each of the boss ogres you left alive will do something special for you. For Stomper Kreeg he'll sell you various types of unique booze, including the Kreeg's Stout Beatdown.

Since we are on this topic, is [Kreeg's Stout Beatdown] farmable at 70? I read long ago that they disable tribute runs at 70 due to the ease of farming and buffs.

The tribute run has not been disabled, but you no longer get the special buffs when completing it if you are level 70. Also, you don't need to complete a full tribute run; you only have to skip Stomper Kreeg, which is very easy to do as he is conveniently located off to one side of one of the earlier courtyards, well out of aggro range for 70 characters.

Yup ran DM yesterday, grabbed 270 of the stat drink lol.

Definately think it helped out on our 2nd downing of Teron Gorefiend Wow Web Stats

OK, so I've been wondering about this, and hoping that someone has the numbers to back it up.

I see alot of people talking about the 48/13/0 spec. -->Spam AB w/POM-AP-Pryo. What about using IV? Maybe a 50/0/11? or even 40/0/21? Is it worth losing the Imp AM (main filler spell right now) to get the Cold Snap? And is it worth the pretty quick drain in mana to spam AB through a, IV?

Essentially what it comes down to, is Pyro or IV?? Which will net the best DPS over a long fight (7-10 minutes). This is assuming the obligatory 2 piece T5.

Sinless I'm curious, are you really competitive with Frost? Illidan aside, I didn't expect Frost to be able to duke it out with Fire at this level of raiding, how are you finding it? I'm waiting on a Skull to make the plunge to fire (and the gem vendor) but I'm wondering if perhaps there's any chance at all that Frost will be competitive enough.

Hey Pint, thx for asking

Well, first, to answer your question, yes I feel very much competitive with Frost for the fights I have done so far in BT. I have a lot of experience with arcane for these fights (the last 4 months or so) but I was still able to come close and even exceed my previous parses.

As I said in the post, this was my second week of trying out this spec (first full week really) and I haven't done any of the Hyjal fights with this spec yet. But I can talk about most of the fights in BT. On our first night of BT, where we cleared the first 6 bosses upto Mother, I died prematurely on Najentus, Supremus and Teron.

Wow Web Stats - This one is for Shade. Yes, it is a very gimmick fight and all, but check out how little the difference is when it comes to burst. Kavan pops AP/trinket/IV along with heroism but frost is almost up there with time for only a single elemental. Now if this lasted 1:30 instead of 50 seconds, frost would have higher burst.

Wow Web Stats - This one is for Gurtogg. I died when I got the Fel Rage and was dead for a whole 40-50 seconds before I got a Brez.

Wow Web Stats - This one is for RoS. I was stealing most of the shields, so it doesn't show a lot. But just for the sake of completeness.

Wow Web Stats - Mother. I like this one. Yes, Kavan got an FA but check out how many fire vulnarability buffs she is getting. Even then frost pulls ahead against Atabulus (our fire mage) who also didn't get any FAs.

Wow Web Stats - Council. I like this one, too. Kavan was tanking the mage, so the only real comparison is between the other two mages. In this attempt, my dps has improved about 2-300 over my best attempt as arcane for this fight. Yes, it is a very long fight and definitely doesn't favor arcane, but it was refreshing to spam away frostbolts without looking at your mana bar once.

Wow Web Stats - Illidan. Again, doesn't mean much but for the sake of completeness. Kavan definitely spent more time on parasites and the fire mage is tainted by phase 2. But the point is I was ~50dps short of my best attempt as arcane for this fight, a fight which I think is tailor-made for arcane with controlled burst periods.

To top all this, you can see I am still learning how to manage my elemental. It should account for 10% of my damage on a typical fight yet it is only around 5-6% even on relatively safe fights.

Overall, depending on fight duration it is an extremely viable and competitive spec. My trash dps suffered a little but not much and I am still using AE for AoE with all the talents I put in arcane. Most importantly, even though farmed bosses can get really boring after a while, I started to have some serious fun again !

I hope these help.

Edit: I wanted to add a couple more things. I know that individual parses in general do not prove/disprove any argument including whether or not a spec is competitive for raid dps. But I can see from my own experience that, depending on fight duration and whether or not you can make full use of your water elemental, frost is a competitive and enjoyable spec. I still have a lot to learn regarding timing my cooldowns (I keep forgetting to use cold snap as soon as I burn WE and IV for example), using destro pots, etc.

Frost may not be the highest raid dps in a 6 minute, tank-and-spank fight but we rarely have such fights these days. I am looking forward to next week's Hyjal and BT clears, this time with ~70 more spell haste, mostly thanks to my new, shiny, beloved [Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer] !