The sexy part of this is that the DPS of doing this is so far ahead of say deep frost frostbolt spammage that you can sit out a significant portion of the fight, regenerating mana at 100% and still come out ahead.
Many people think that the mage who has to stop casting for 20% of the fight is automatically inferior to the one that chain cast. But that is not true. Total damage matters. In the theorycrafted numbers above, arcane blast already has half the mana efficiency of frostbolt. In my own calculations with a little better gear I came to over 60% when including the other arcane efficiency talents that a deep frost build will not have. Add to that the option of spamming arcane missiles every 15 seconds for free and you get decent DPM. Not great but decent. The time you lose to lag when clearcasting is not nearly enough to offset the damage advantage.
I do not see a deep arcane build being optimal for solo-grinding since there mana efficiency is key. But for instances I see quite a few possibilities there, especially since all the damage calculations do not factor in slow, which could potentially be extremely useful on many fight. Not to mention the extra to hit and the significantly better threat reduction. I mean, who can say no to highest DPS combined with highes threat reduction?
Originally Posted by Vhad
Originally Posted by Draele
Originally Posted by Vhad
Ehm, did they change arcane blast? What I remember about it is it coster MORE mana at a faster rate ultimately giving you a better DPS but a much lower DPM.
It does, but i believe the speed of the casts giving you Clearcasting for Arcane Missles will make up for it.
I'm still not convinced, you have to acknowledge the clearcast, stop spamming arcane blast and going to AM, with AM being a 5 sec chanelled spell and reaction time and all I think you would lose the speed buff stack more often then not. Will have to see though, the idea is not bad - I just think it'll work better with something like scorch.
Edit:
Not entirely sure how it works in beta at the moment, but from the picture at blizzard's site its +80% mana cost -0.4 sec cast time stacks 5 times, if it keeps stacking like that rank 1 goes from 190 mana 2.5 sec cast to a 760 mana 0.5 sec cast spell - now granted 10% clearcast you would have to go through 7600 mana spamming max buffed arcane blast to get 1 clearcast. Its late and my math could be wrong, but that doesn't spell efficiency to me.
Ah! Then scorch does look better. Either way the concept is the same. Cast AM only one Clearcast, otherwise, spam a fast spell.
so a 475 mana nuke with a better dmg coefficient then scorch but same speed, that does sound a little more interesting then the first itteration of arcane blast - thanks for the info.
Arcane blast has not been updated yet on the official site, but the latest numbers for a fully wound up blast are:
1.5 second cast time
700 average damage
488 mana
It takes 3 casts to get there. At those numbers, the DPM is not terrible. Frostbolt (pre channeling) has a base DPM of 1.878 at max rank, arcane blast has 1.434. What makes the spell interesting is that it outscales every other mage spell since it gets a 2.5 second damage bonus for 1.5 second cast.
Arcane blast has not been updated yet on the official site, but the latest numbers for a fully wound up blast are:
1.5 second cast time
700 average damage
488 mana
It takes 3 casts to get there. At those numbers, the DPM is not terrible. Frostbolt (pre channeling) has a base DPM of 1.878 at max rank, arcane blast has 1.434. What makes the spell interesting is that it outscales every other mage spell since it gets a 2.5 second damage bonus for 1.5 second cast.
Is that the top rank? Rank one sure isnt 700 average dmg, unless ofc you have beta info with talents and gear--
1) Spam Arcane Blast. Not too expensive spell, that once you start chaincasting it casts quickly.
2) Clearcasting procs often since you're casting this baby quickly.
3) On a Clearcast, cast Arcane Missles. Since it's free the high cost of the spell (Now even higher due to Empowered Missles) is negated.
4) Since it's on a Clearcast it has a 30% higher chance to crit due to Arcane Potency. This likely applies to all ticks. 5 seconds worth of damage at a +30% crit? Yum
5) Spell Power increases the damage done by said missle crits.
6) Go back to chaincasting Arcane Blast, having not lost the chaincasting bonus while channeling AM for 5 seconds (Arcane Blast speed increase lasts 8 seconds)
Hot. Just hot. Amazing sustained damage here AND mana efficiency if you only cast AM on clearcasts.
There's just lots of things wrong here.
1) The expense of the spell increases with time. That's just a fact.
2) And Clearcasting doesn't proc just as often too. Since Clearcasting is a % chance, you're going to see more Clearcasts "on average", but you're also going to be paying quite heftily when it doesn't. Clearcasting isn't about time, it's about the mana.
3) You're going to get Empowered Missiles?
4) This is true.
5) This is true.
6) You're still going to run out of mana just as fast (if not faster) than Frost/Fire mages - they will all have Clearcasting too.
Arcane Blast has a ton of DPS now, almost at the level of a Molten Fury Fireball. The DPM on both it and Arcane Missiles are still a bit too low to make it a primary nuke at this point though. The DPS on Arcane Missiles also doesn't compare favorably to a mage's favorite bolt spell (Fireball or Frostbolt). It is very low threat though, which might be important. Arcane Missiles or the Arcane tree in general also suffers from a lack of talents buffing jst Arcane. There are three talent points for Arcane Missiles and three for Arcane Blast. Improved Arcane Missiles is still a poor talent while not leveling (encounter dependent) and Arcane Focus is taken as filler by 90% of the mages anyways. Pure Arcane also suffers greatly in that it doesn't gain any bonus from Heroism/Blood Lust.
Arcane Blast is fulfilling its role though, a really high-DPS nuke that drains mana like crazy. I'd like it a lot more if it went down to instant-cast though when it was powered up. In terms of DPS it would stay the same, but it would become very interesting in PvP and allow some fun in PvE encounters. As it is now, it would probably be useful for a standard Frost build that has mana to burn near the end of an encounter or just before popping Evocation in the middle of the encounter. Fire would stick to Fireball and Molten Fury.
I am not a mage but I still enjoy my theorycraft as much as the next man. I also really like the clearcast AM concept, but I'd say this is the way to go with it:
Spam Scorch to proc Clearcast, then burn that on AM.
With ignite, you are effectively getting 245% damage from your Scorch crits, and with Master of Elements you can keep up Scorch spam for quite a long time. With the new changes to +dam contribution from long-cast spells, Arcane Missiles gets 143% contribution from +dam over its full duration, and that makes Empowered Arcane Missiles incredibly good. With +1000 dam (sounds like a lot but trust me you will have this at 70), a Clearcasted Arcane Missiles will be averaging just over 1000 DPS before any other modifiers come into play.
I always liked Arc/Fire, and was definitely looking at it for the xpack. If your math is right, you've just confirmed it.
And I'm lucky enough with my ping (usually) that I can use AM on CC without losing too much time while chainscorching.
Might even give up pyroblast for MoE, if what you say is so about its aid to mana efficiency.
ETA: Wow. It says a lot about this spec that there are good arguments for a lot of the twiddly variations. 43/18 for bit more versatility but no MoE? The crit/MoE tradeoff in the fire points? Do you try and find a point for pyroblast? Is slow worth it over more damage or more mana/mana efficiency (2 sources for both!) Do you worry about threat reduction? I think the biggest sign of quality in the TBC trees is exactly how many ways you can go and how many choices are GOOD choices.
I think that last has been said before, but I think it bears saying again.
I intend to go for a 40arc/21frost build. For raid PvE, it really doesn't seem to have any weaknesses:
1. Highest possible burst damage (probably of all classes) in the form of AP+ArcaneBlast.
2. Lowest possible threat of any spell school (again, probably of all classes).
3. Highest possible +hit
4. Largest possible mana pool
5. Most possible regen
6. Most efficient standard nuke (Frostbolt with channeling)
7. Strong (but not ideal) kiting abilities for mobs that can be slowed
8. Some interesting utility in the form of PoM. IceBlock, and ICS.
Sure, there are situations where the WE or DB would come in handy, and IceBarrier is really good, as is WC for boss battles and soloing large elites. But like the forum avatar parody of the UPS sign (DPS - We Deliver!), this build is extremely potent.
My concern would be with PvP. Sure, you get AP+PoM, and some very scary ArcaneBlast possibilities, but some of the potential jewels of PvP (Blastwave, DB, Slow, IceBarrier, Shatter, WE, Blazing Speed, or any of the damage reducing talents) just get passed up.
Still, with this kind of DPS and threat reduction, it just might be worth it.
EDIT:
I realize the trend of the thread has been toward arcane/fire. The reason I shy away from it is because so many of the most potent damage amplifiers fire has are lower in the tree (Critical Mass, FirePower, Pyromaniac, Molten Fury, Combustion) where most of the deep frost talents are survivability/utility. You miss WC, but more than make up for that with Instability, Spellpower, and Potency (without the debuff you have to build up). You lose out on Empowered Frostbolt, but it seems to me that it is roughly equivalent to Mind Mastery anyway. I'm just not convinced that a 41arc/20fire build is going to have the same "push" that a deep, deep fire setup will.
Erm, you've missed a few changes if you think that frostbolt is the most efficient nuke. Scorch is already more efficient, and thanks to the current Fire talents, Fireball becomes more efficient than frostbolt in the expansion.
40 arc / 21 frost builds perplex me. You don't have the sustained DPs of a fire mage, you don't have the snares and defenses of a frost mage. A fire mage is going to be dealing more damage than you on a fight, a frost mage is going to be slowing far far better than you can. Also, BTW, Molten fury means that Fire is capable of the highst burst potential sub 20%. Nothing is going to come close to fireball spamming at that point, especially with all the crit talents that fire has and the mana efficiency it's picking up along the way.
It was a good build for Molten core and BWL, but tbh arcane / frost really hasn't offered much in AQ40 or Naxx as far as we (my guild) has seen.
The new arcane tree looks nice. But imo it doesnt change that deep fire is better overall.
Main reason to go arcane (for pve) is if you want slow (and if thats usefull for raiding), with the new changes at least you wont hurt yourself too much by doing so.
Maybe AM will have 1000 dps while clearcasting, but with 1000 spelldmg, I guess fireball would get close to that too, and it wouldnt just be for clearcasting.
Of course, by casting fireball/scorch you lose the chance to get a bit mana regen from 5 sec rule, while clearcasting AM, I cant theorycraft far enough out to see how much that would actually benefit you. In the end Im not so fond of changing attacks too much for clearcast procs, you end up wasting too much dmg trying to do so. But I know many others like it, so maybe its just me who is wrong.
By going deep arcane instead of deep fire, you lose like 10% crit, 10% fire dmg, 20% spelldmg on fireball, 30% dmg on wounded targets etc. Not really sure the benefits from arcane can make of for those talents.
Except for slow as mentioned before. That talent might be worth it all. Looks like they removed the melee reduce on it though, making it a bit less interesting.
Erm, you've missed a few changes if you think that frostbolt is the most efficient nuke. Scorch is already more efficient, and thanks to the current Fire talents, Fireball becomes more efficient than frostbolt in the expansion.
40 arc / 21 frost builds perplex me. You don't have the sustained DPs of a fire mage, you don't have the snares and defenses of a frost mage. A fire mage is going to be dealing more damage than you on a fight, a frost mage is going to be slowing far far better than you can. Also, BTW, Molten fury means that Fire is capable of the highst burst potential sub 20%. Nothing is going to come close to fireball spamming at that point, especially with all the crit talents that fire has and the mana efficiency it's picking up along the way.
It was a good build for Molten core and BWL, but tbh arcane / frost really hasn't offered much in AQ40 or Naxx as far as we (my guild) has seen.
Not disagreeing with you here. The problem with the 29/22 builds we have now is that all you get is frostbolt - which is great when you want a lot of sustained damage. It was my understanding (may be wrong) that while Scorch had a very slight edge in DPM, it lost out to frost on DPS. With Fireball having the opposite issue. Correct me if I'm wrong on that one.
The idea would be to use Frostbolt on long battles or on trash clears where stopping to drink would be unwanted, but then fire up Arcane Blast (with clearcasting into AM) when burst is important and mana simply not the most important concern.
Basically, nothing in the fire or frost tree will directly boost the damage of AB/AM. So you get to choose your secondary based on what is helpful. Scorch is one way to go, Frostbolt another (especially if you want to use IceBlock while learning new instances).
Nope, at the moment with 600 to spell damage, scorch is both better damage and better damage per mana on a fully debuffed mob. (Winters Chill, Improved Scorch etc etc). Fireball is a *lot* more DPs, but at the cost of mana.
In the expansion, every bit of maths I've done shows that thanks to the new fire talents, fireball becomes insanely mana efficient. It just give syou so much damage per point of mana spent its madness - I believe someone has theory crafted Rank 9 fireball to be the single most mana efficient nuke in the game?
I agree that at the moment, if you go deep arcane you have to pair with frost or fire to make your main nuke worthwhile. My issue with that is that Arcane should be able to have one nuke that works okay on it's own, and that in order to make arcane worthwhile they have to buff it to the point where it's deep talents are better than frosts / fires - and currently even with these revisions, they don't look that hot comparitevely.
(For example, one easy change - why not make reverse Arcane Blast? Have it start off as a big, high damage nuke that becomes faster and smaller with each subsequent cast, until it is a super arcane scorch? Why does Arcane need *two* spells that are suppossed to be high damage and very mana innefficient?)
Nope, at the moment with 600 to spell damage, scorch is both better damage and better damage per mana on a fully debuffed mob. (Winters Chill, Improved Scorch etc etc). Fireball is a *lot* more DPs, but at the cost of mana.
In the expansion, every bit of maths I've done shows that thanks to the new fire talents, fireball becomes insanely mana efficient. It just give syou so much damage per point of mana spent its madness - I believe someone has theory crafted Rank 9 fireball to be the single most mana efficient nuke in the game?
I agree that at the moment, if you go deep arcane you have to pair with frost or fire to make your main nuke worthwhile. My issue with that is that Arcane should be able to have one nuke that works okay on it's own, and that in order to make arcane worthwhile they have to buff it to the point where it's deep talents are better than frosts / fires - and currently even with these revisions, they don't look that hot comparitevely.
(For example, one easy change - why not make reverse Arcane Blast? Have it start off as a big, high damage nuke that becomes faster and smaller with each subsequent cast, until it is a super arcane scorch? Why does Arcane need *two* spells that are suppossed to be high damage and very mana innefficient?)
Likely because of all the mana saving/boosting abilities Arcane has, coupled with its low threat and high +hit. :D
But I think we're on the same page. If I had to pair up a deep arcane spec with another tree, it might as well be frost. For fire, even casting Scorch as my primary nuke (i.e. didn't care about empowered fireball), I would STILL want Critical Mass, Firepower, Pyromaniac, and Combustion. I would want them way more than what deep arcane has to offer. And if I have all that, why not talent out Fireball so that it becomes somewhat competitive with Arcane Blast, and still beating it on mana efficiency?
That is all PvE though. For PvP purposes, an Arcane Blast/Slow setup using scorch primarily to stun opponents might be amazing anyway. I wouldn't know with all the new talents/spells out there. Very hard to theorycraft out a matchup I've never seen. :D
Erm, you've missed a few changes if you think that frostbolt is the most efficient nuke. Scorch is already more efficient, and thanks to the current Fire talents, Fireball becomes more efficient than frostbolt in the expansion.
40 arc / 21 frost builds perplex me. You don't have the sustained DPs of a fire mage, you don't have the snares and defenses of a frost mage. A fire mage is going to be dealing more damage than you on a fight, a frost mage is going to be slowing far far better than you can. Also, BTW, Molten fury means that Fire is capable of the highst burst potential sub 20%. Nothing is going to come close to fireball spamming at that point, especially with all the crit talents that fire has and the mana efficiency it's picking up along the way.
It was a good build for Molten core and BWL, but tbh arcane / frost really hasn't offered much in AQ40 or Naxx as far as we (my guild) has seen.
Basically, nothing in the fire or frost tree will directly boost the damage of AB/AM. So you get to choose your secondary based on what is helpful. Scorch is one way to go, Frostbolt another (especially if you want to use IceBlock while learning new instances).
Not true, Molten fury is for ALL dmg. Not sure AB would be better sub 20% then fireball, but it does increase AB/AM dmg
Edit: Oh and Playing with Fire is ALL dmg as well;
Well, I wasn't counting playing with fire. But I guess since we are talking about pure PvE, I probably should. Molten Fury though, that was a total oversight on my part. Not sure how it would stack up to Empowered Missiles or Mastery/ArcaneImpact/Spellpower/Potency/Instability.
I still think that if you had to pair up 40 arcane talent points with another tree, frost is the best choice. For IceBlock if nothing else, but also for all the early talent improvements to Frostbolt where the equivalents in Fire are way up at the top. And I can definitely see some raid PvE specialists going down this road.
One thing we aren't discussing though is all the crit improvements to fire in the deep part of the tree. It seems that with good gear, an Ignite team will probably do top-honors over a group spamming Arcane Blast. The question is, with 25 person raids, will we see some of the same scary ignite teams that we see now in AQ40 and Naxx?
Does Molten Fury double-stack on Ignite? In other words, does a mage crit on sub-20% result in +30% damage on the actual hit, then an additional +30% damage on the Igntie?
As far as Fireball vs Arcane Blast, there's two main things. Currently, Fire is all about balancing mana to end at zero mana for the encounter, by mixing up Scorch and Fireball as appropriate. Arcane Blast would allow for an even higher tier of mana -> DPS, but I don't think that mana pools will allow for that jump. Secondly, Fireball gets a big boost out of Blood Lust/Heroism. Arcane Blast gets little to no boost out of that spell. In any PvE situation, I'd expect to get that buff for sub-20%
I also think people aren't realizing just how fast Arcane Blast uses a person's mana. The consumption starts at around 150 mana/second, before Clearcasts/JoW etc. But that's a huge drain on a mage's mana pool that requires a lot of preperation in advance to get maximum use out of the spell. I think the spec to get maximum benefit out of Arcane Blast in PvE is going to be Frost, because it's so difficult to change the DPM ratio currently. If Frost has mana to burn on an encounter, then they can use Arcane Blast as needed.
This is how I imagine the an Arcane Mage will be in the expansion.
Will want at least ONE. Utility of Slow spell on a boss (If most are not immune)
Arcane Mages in general I feel will be horribly bad in the Xpac for PVP. I feel a Fire build gives you too much to offer.
Arcane Mages I feel will be incredibly powerful in PVE.
I think an encounter will go something like this....
Mage waits for a nice aggro gain.
Mage blows the crap outta the mob with Arcane Blast/Missles on clearcast.
(This part needs number crunching) Mage either Uses rank one missles till clearcast and uses Max rank Missles or wands till mana pool is full. (Dare I saw wand specalization might be VERY good this build?)
Mage repeats First part by blowing mob up with Missles/Blast.
Evocate/Invisibility.
Spam more damage with AB/AM
Big question we need answered is can we Drink during invisiblity. If so thats just another complete bar of full mana we can throw at the mob.
Tack on with an arcane PVE build has the most aggro reduction, the most, the most hit increase, has max mana regen, has 15% bigger mana pool, and can spec to be uninteruptable with some other cool utility (Imp CS, Imp Dampen, AP, POM).
Also, perhaps with an Arcane build mages should be looking at a high amount of spirit so they can get a full mana pool back quicker.
Also regarding clearcasting, it should be incredibly easier to pull the switch off with AB being an instacast. Should hit the target immediatley which SHOULD give you enough time inbetween the global cooldown (1.5s) to see if you proced the clearcast and should cast AM next. No reason why the AB to CC AM combo shouldn't work here even with lag.
Big question we need answered is can we Drink during invisiblity. If so thats just another complete bar of full mana we can throw at the mob.
Originally Posted by Crezax, wow-europe forums
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....61866542&sid=1
Invisibility will work like an aggro wipe after the 8 seconds of cast time and take you out of combat. If you can manage to get the spell off, there should be no reason for you not to be able to get a chance to eat and drink.
As for downranking damagespells, I don't think it's going to be very viable choice. The problem is that they're going to introduce the new +dmg scaling to reduce the effectiveness of downranking. Rank 9 Fireball is probably only going to gain like 9/13 of your +dmg. I don't know if anyone knows the exact number, but it'd make sense that to be something close to 0.7 to be linear compared to spell levels / ranks.
I hope they squash Fire talents so people stop blowing a load over them and imperiously declaring that Fire trumps every other spec in the game. Ugh, so angry.
In any event, unless you force talent specs in the expansion, Fire isn't going to run away with damage nearly as much as it has in the past. With the prospect of bringing 3-4 Mages in a 25-man raid, you are definitely not keeping a rolling ignite up there as often. Hell, if you bring 3 mages of a different spec each, you're not keeping it up at all. I've seen Mages with inferior Frost builds easily outdamage equally geared Fire mages when they don't catch the Ignite, so I'm not really concerned for the future.
Yeah, you guys will get some decent damage boosts, but so will Frost with the addition of these deep Arcane talents, and I honestly think many people are overstating the level of overall dps gain from these new talents (at least, I remember having an argument on here with a Fire mage a couple of months back where he made it clear that the new Fire talents would only improve Fire damage output overall by a few percentages).
10/17/06, 10:06 PM
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