I believe it's the evil opposite of the split you do at the end of the debuff. You start the spell before the speed increase is applied, but end the spell when the mana cost increase is in affect. >.<
Also, with good stopcasting you might be able to fit an extra scorch into the cycle or something..
Easily. Against Dr. Boom I have 99.9% certainty to succeed with simple 3x AB + 2x Fireball + 1x Scorch. Now in raids I'm running in higher lag environment with lower FPS, so I might run into troubles with such rotation, but I'm willing to bet that if I really tried, I could use it as my primary rotation.
Against Boom, I have even succeeded quite reliably with 3x AB + 5x Scorch rotation, and my ping is hardly ever bellow 150+. Stopcasting seems to do miracles. However, in practical situations 5x Scorch is really hard to fit between AB stacks, I tried once at Magtheridon and only had about 50% success rate.
N x AB + AM + Scorch should be trivial with stopcasting.
Originally Posted by Stein
I believe it's the evil opposite of the split you do at the end of the debuff. You start the spell before the speed increase is applied, but end the spell when the mana cost increase is in affect. >.<
Uh, nasty. Maybe I could verify this... Dr. Boom, ready your bots!
We did lurker tonight too and I beat all the other mages (10 48 3) and was 2nd overall on dmg, sadly don't have WWS for that though.
I was playing a bit with trinkets tonight and was on purpose not using AB much, which I want to try and improve and weave in more often. I've not had access to WWS before this kill tonight so my rotations and gear choises has varied alot and it's been based on what 'seemed' to work. However, I never really got bad numbers from pure AM spam and it's worked great thus far - could be the result of everyone else sucking, but I somehow doubt that.
Edit: I'm having a bit trouble deciding what trinkets to use, mostly with regards to the lightning capacitor but also the sextant. Sextant on the Leo fight I got to 25% uptime resulting in ~47 dmg and the passive 40 crit rating. I have quite an array of trinkets, so it's a bit of a luxury problem, however some advice would be nice - I've access to Icon, Quag Eye, Capacitor, MoD, Sextant and Morogrim trinket - so far my largely subjective decissions has prioritized Sextant/Icon or Sextant/Capacitor. Ideas?
It seems to be non-trivial to actually verify AB-debuff issues by just parsing combat logs, but this for instance is something that I find bit odd:
(bot dies to suicide etc. lines have been removed)
6/14 01:57:21.109 Your Arcane Blast hits Dr. Boom for 1389 Arcane damage.
6/14 01:57:21.468 You are afflicted by Arcane Blast.
6/14 01:57:21.875 You gain Clearcasting.
6/14 01:57:23.718 Your Arcane Blast hits Dr. Boom for 1356 Arcane damage.
6/14 01:57:23.921 You are afflicted by Arcane Blast (2).
6/14 01:57:25.625 Your Arcane Blast hits Dr. Boom for 1363 Arcane damage.
6/14 01:57:25.812 Clearcasting fades from you.
6/14 01:57:25.843 You are afflicted by Arcane Blast (3).
Notice the time delta between two first AB's, 2.609s. I was using stopcasting, and tried to be as quick as possible. Unless I missed over 0.5s of time by just waiting (very unlikely, since I was trying to be quick) the only explanation to longer than 2.5s cast time is that the debuff didn't affect the second AB from the beginning of the cast. Also, the Clearcasting is bit odd, I have no idea if the second, third or both AB's were actually free...
However, it's possible that I was distracted, and it was my mistake. Or that I had a lagspike or something.
So it looks like you used an ABx3, AMx2 cycle for that fight and did not try to change your spells based on clear casts (same crit rate for both AB and AM).
How do you feel about trying to maintain a cycle that chains together the AB debuff for the fast cast, low mana spell? Which encounters do you try to maintain that on? Also, how often do you make a concious effort to alter your cycle to take advantage of clearcasts?
PS. I have to get on our Pallies about the JOWs - thats ridiculous how much mana you got from that, lol.
Actually I'm using ABx3+AM+Scorch on Mag. Where a lot of AM comes from is from the adds, I usually AB spam till 50% and AM till the end because it's usually easier to CS during AM channel. I also use AM for Heroism. Usually I don't have a problem with ABx3+AM+Scorch even with 500 ms latency.
I only change rotation if I get a clearcast on AM, then I add another AM after. Also if I'm using any AM8 rotation I obviously use rank 10 on clearcast.
Edit: I'm having a bit trouble deciding what trinkets to use, mostly with regards to the lightning capacitor but also the sextant. Sextant on the Leo fight I got to 25% uptime resulting in ~47 dmg and the passive 40 crit rating. I have quite an array of trinkets, so it's a bit of a luxury problem, however some advice would be nice - I've access to Icon, Quag Eye, Capacitor, MoD, Sextant and Morogrim trinket - so far my largely subjective decissions has prioritized Sextant/Icon or Sextant/Capacitor. Ideas?
Based on the Leotheras parse, Lightning Capacitor accounted for 6% of your 829 dps which means it was worth ~50 dps by itself. That's just godly; Sextant/Capacitor are the clear winners f you will be using as much AM as you did against Leo.
What has anyone said in the past two pages that is new? Possibly the only useful insight was Kavan linking his WWS for Mag, as before all people said was useless shit like "arcane can crush the meters" or "arcane is great on trash" or "arcane dominates." Myself, I would like to see 2-piece T5 mages link more WWS on all fights, especially ones that arcane is weak on, to see both the highs and the lows.
I know I'm new to posting in the thread but I do read it daily. However, we are getting WWS up and running this week. I will be more than happy to get some links on some more static fights, or more movement fights if wanted.
I'm in the position to be able to get 2 pieces of T5 soon and thinking about spec'ing to try out arcane. I'm wondering what others views are on what the optimal spell hit is for an arc/fire raiding build. With the 10% from arcane talents you only need 6% from gear, but fire would need a lot more. Is it worth stacking the spell hit for your fire spells even though it is wasted on your arcane spells? (assuming an AB/fireball cycle) Or is it better to ignore some spell hit and use an all arcane cycle?
If you are past karazhan I wouldn't even spec arcane/fire anymore, just go all arcane. If you spec arc/fire and want to actually use fire spells you need a huge amount of +hit, which kind of defeats the purpose of arcane (being less dependant on +hit and stacking dmg and crit). You could spec elemental precision but then you will miss out on important fire talents which makes speccing partly fire even more pointless.
Assuming 41+ in arcane your fireballs hit for less than from a fire mage, you need to stack more +hit even though your crits are bigger, they cost more mana and you don't have molten fury, so there is really no good reason to even cast them unless you have severe range issues. The other stuff you can pick up from arcane instead seems like filler talents, but they are quite useful.
Imo the only worthwhile arc/fire spec is 33/28, and even this is pushing it on boss fights.
The only "filler" talent I would like to have would be magic attunement. That pales in comparison to having improved fireball with a 41 yard range available when it's needed.
The reason I wouldn't go arc/frost is the fact that you can't get the range talent with 12 points.
Here's a parse from the world wide "lol TK open, lets go do VR" run. We got VR to 1% and had to halt it there due to some botching with a SS, but anyway. One of the reasons I've wanted to go Arcane is for the mana dumping abilities. With deep fire, a shadowpriest, evoc/gems, chain-chugging SMPs, you can basicly end a fight with full mana (this is doubly true when the boss has JoW, and we have a paladin who is very good at keeping JoW on). This is of course wasted potential damage.
I find it hard however, to tell just how much ACTUAL dps you gain however (if any). From simply note-pad TC, AM isn't really higher DPS then Fireball, assuming all the relevant debuffs, AM comes out a bit, but Fireball will crit more, and hit harder when it crits. So should come out about even. But ofc, Fire doesn't get (a decent) AB, and at the Gruul raid (in the link below as well), at around 20%, I had a full mana bar, and just started to spam AB, and watched my position on the meters rise a few places.
And as others have noted, TLC is godly for Arcane spec, esp considering the "double dipping" you can achieve with Arcane Potency (which was news to me a few days ago). I do find that my Focus proc (5% half cast time metagem) is almost a loss, as I proc it on AM alot, and if I want to take advantedge of the Focus buff, I must cut my current AM cast off before it finishes. Obviously this means the DPM of AM plummets even further.
Still, DPS seemed quite high. And our rogues are running in/out at Pounding (no CH), so they are obviously suffering DPS.
Edit: No rotations is used, I'm randomly spamming AM/AB depending on the color of the sky.
Last edited by Teenee : 06/21/07 at 1:57 PM.
Reason: Added rotation note.
Not needed, but very helpful on Magtheridon, Gruul, Lurker Below (killing adds), Void Reaver, Morogrim (dependent on strategy), and Leo (for dodging whirlwinds). I haven't done Vashj, Kael, or beyond so I can't comment on how useful range is for those fights.
Not needed, but very helpful on Magtheridon, Gruul, Lurker Below (killing adds), Void Reaver, Morogrim (dependent on strategy), and Leo (for dodging whirlwinds). I haven't done Vashj, Kael, or beyond so I can't comment on how useful range is for those fights.
I'd say for Lurker, the extra range isn't that useful. Even with the 41 yard range, I would only be in range of the 2 adds on my platform and the one strong add on the main platform nearby. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't change if I had 30 yard range instead of 41.
For Magtheridon, it's really only nice if you're on a cube that's far from Mag, so you can nuke longer before you have to get to your cube.
Gruul and Void Reaver I definitely agree with though.
Hydross: nice to have (avoid possible problems to get in range while staying away spread out)
Lurker: no use
Karathress: no use
Morogrim: no use
Leotheras: good
Vashj: very good (allows to stay in inner circle and nuke everything without having to move)
Al'ar: no point comparing fire spec vs arcane spec
Void reaver: good
Astromancer: no use
Kael'thas: good (makes thaladred easier to kill, which is the hard part of the fight)
Rage winterchill: helps spreading out, but not much use otherwise
Anetheron: no use
Naj'Entus: no use
Supremus: very good
Shade of Akama: no use
Teron: no use
Gurgtogg: no use
I'd say for Lurker, the extra range isn't that useful. Even with the 41 yard range, I would only be in range of the 2 adds on my platform and the one strong add on the main platform nearby. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't change if I had 30 yard range instead of 41.
With the 41 yards range, I could assist to another platform for their two adds and hit the big add that was on that portion of the inner cicle. I think the tank has to move it slightly though, as I've been ok on it before but failed last night. It also lets me Fire Blast from the inner edge of a platform onto Lurker.
Probably not worth a separate thread so I'll just post this here.
I've seen several posts claiming that Arcane Blast with Arcane Power is efficient as AP only increases mana cost by 30% of base cost of AB. I decided to do some tests and the results I got were not in line with this. 3 stack debuff + AP resulted in 692 mana cost, which doesn't make any sense no matter how I compute it as it is more than 30% of full 3 debuff normal AB cost. Can anyone verify my findings? I tested with spamming a script that displayed UnitMana("player") while casting, so I doubt I was hallucinating.
Probably not worth a separate thread so I'll just post this here.
I've seen several posts claiming that Arcane Blast with Arcane Power is efficient as AP only increases mana cost by 30% of base cost of AB. I decided to do some tests and the results I got were not in line with this. 3 stack debuff + AP resulted in 692 mana cost, which doesn't make any sense no matter how I compute it as it is more than 30% of full 3 debuff normal AB cost. Can anyone verify my findings? I tested with spamming a script that displayed UnitMana("player") while casting, so I doubt I was hallucinating.
AB starts at 195 mana, with 3 debuffs, it's around 633ish mana, AP increases that to 692 mana, which is only about a 59 mana increase (30% of 195).
AB starts at 195 mana, with 3 debuffs, it's around 633ish mana, AP increases that to 692 mana, which is only about a 59 mana increase (30% of 195).
Ok serves me right for not testing mana cost in retail before. For some reason I was under impression that mana cost increased by 50% in each debuff, apparently it is 75%. Was it ever 50% or am I just totally confused now?
Out of all the bosses you listed that I have tried too I've had not felt I was at an advantage with the 41 yards - I've done them with both specs numereous times now.
I think 41 yards is overrated. It's nice to have, but really only so you can slack on moving.
I don't get why you say it's nice to have on Gruul, you get knocked the same distance and have to spread out the same, the room is not small enough to warrant standing max range to avoid people. Never found it a problem there.
On Vashj I get your point, but then again, I'm kiting the striders in p2 always so it makes no difference for me.
I don't understand why you like it on hydross either, the area is not small enough to make spreading out a problem 30 vs 41.
What makes it good on Leo? It allows for some more slacking with moving, but if you are awake the range plays no role what so ever.
The only reason I could see it would make a difference would be if the range limited your dps output or somehow deminished your role as DPS in the raid, and I've just not seen that so far.
On Kael I see your point with Thaladred, but if you play smart and pay attention to the gaze cooldown you will know when he goes out of range and for how long he will be there. AM still 'bugs' and keeps chaining even out of range, it just takes some getting used to before you can play it safe and not cut waves. I've consistantly beat everyone on dmg meters chaining AM on p1 Thaladred by knowing when to move and not.
On any fight where you might find yourself > 35 yards away, or > 30 yards away, Flame Throwing is helpful. You spend a deceptive amount of time moving into range when you could be casting.
It's not that it's necessary, it's convenient and it adds DPS in reducing the amount of time you have to spend moving around.
Is it necessary to have it on Hydross? Absolutely not. Does it mean you can more easily position yourself where you'll never have to move the entire Hydross fight? Yes. And that means more damage done.
Certainly the impact is fairly small, but it's there.
I just don't see that what so ever, and I dare you to try it and report back your findings. Moving on hydross can be done when the transition is on and then you don't lose any dps - it's all about playing smart.
You make it sound like this is a bad/lazy thing when in fact it's the opposite, as any "slacking" you can possibly do on moving translates directly into a dps increase.
<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl
I just don't see that what so ever, and I dare you to try it and report back your findings. Moving on hydross can be done when the transition is on and then you don't lose any dps - it's all about playing smart.
It's pretty much impossible to test unless you can somehow force Gruul to do the same tossing, or force all my guildmates to do the same stuff on Hydross, etc.
But it's common sense. If something let's you more easily position yourself and avoid moving at all in some situations, then obviously it is boosting your damage.
I'm not arguing that it's huge, but if you're arguing that it zero then that's kinda silly.
06/13/07, 7:41 PM
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