Nothing, *nothing* in game comes close to an Arcane Mage going full out burning something. Activate PoM to cast your first Arcane Blast, then pop your tinket and AP once you have 3 Arcane Blast debuffs and just burn. It's absolutely ludicrous DPs, even if you can only sustain it for very short periods of time, but we have found it incredibly useful on some fights. (The third boss of Shadow labs, for example - he never actually got to teleport us, he died that fast).

Final comment about Arcane Blast - all my figures assume a 0.2 second casting lag, as I know that many casters get this. However, whenever I've parsed myself, my lag is much less than this. As an example, when a shaman casts Bloodlust, Arcane Blast drops below 1.5 second casting time, although it doesn't circumvent the GCD. I actually find the gap between the blast finishing casting and the GCD finishing noticeable. If you lower the lag figure, spells with a shorter casting time (Scorch, Arcane Blast ramped up) benefit far more - although Arcane Missiles doesn't change at all.

Yesterday i had a chance to check how mages do on dmg meters in TBC in ffa nuke fights. Target was Doom Lord Kazzak which is basicly 60 sek of max dps and here is the result :



Top 2 places are rogues who got bloodlusted, as it can be seen by my grp i didnt have the luxury of shaman.

So i guess it isnt so bad as some say. Offtopic: he did drop a nice cloth pants, 19 int, 3 sockets, 14 hit, 24 crit and 42 dmg if i remember correctly.

Is anybody else annoyed with the massive itemization hole that is no +spell hit gems, combined with literally all of the desirable (read: stam > int) socketed cloth caster items having 0 spell hit?

Quick reference, these are the only usable-by-mages socketable items with innate spell hit: [Mantle of Tirisfal], [Warp Infused Drape], [Spellstrike Hood], [Handwraps of Flowing Thought], [Spellstrike Pants], [Auchenai Anchorite's Robe], [Manaspark Gloves]. Exorcist's Silk Hood and Spaulders of Oblivion have spell hit as socket bonuses only.

Yes, im very much annoyed by this, i've mentioned this several times in different threads here. There is btw one epic droppable gem with spellhit [Vivid Chrysoprase]

There are definitely missing holes in the caster gem itemisation, and even some of the gems that are present don't make much sense. (The blue / yellow game has spell penetration on it, sigh).

But overall I think itemisation for casters is sporadically attrocious in the expansion. Not only are there multiple quest lines in the same area that give identical rewards, or rewards that are inferior to the zone you just came from, but also faction wise the vast majority of factions just aren't worth getting as a DPS caster - there are noticeable holes in almost all the faction rewards for decent caster gear.

Here's some more food for thought. I decided to compile a list of which items have the most spell damage, dependent on whether they were socketed or not and if Improved Divine Spirit/Mind Mastery was in play.

click for big since this one would break the tables hard

Methodology notes and interesting stuff:

- Socketed items assume that [Swift Starfire Diamond] is in use in each meta socket and has the supporting gems to activate it, [Runed Living Ruby] in each red socket, [Potent Noble Topaz] in each yellow socket, and [Glowing Nightseye] in each blue socket.

- Critical strike rating and hit rating were deliberately ignored. This was an exercise to pull out the highest possible spell damage numbers.

- Random stat greens were deliberately ignored because they are not generally useful. This includes wands.

- The highest damage 1H weapon, [Gladiator's Spellblade], seems to have been deliberately made a dagger to keep it away from paladins.

- Improved Divine Spirit usually doesn't make a difference with one or two exceptions.

- [Charlotte's Ivy] and [Lola's Eve] together are possibly the two best possible items when used as a pair; i.e. they're simply ok separately, but that +15 set bonus makes a hell of a lot of difference. (For purposes of "distributing" the set bonus I set Charlotte's Ivy's damage to that of [Choker of the Fire Lord] and Lola's Eve's damage to [Ring of Spell Power].)

- It is somewhat annoying that two of the best spell damage items in question are crafted blues with 0 stamina ([Cloak of the Black Void] and [Bracers of Havok]).

- [Ring of the Fallen God] continues to be amazing even at the top end, the only pre-expansion item to appear in every list. If you don't have it, the closest fallback available in the expansion is [Signet of the Violet Tower].

- If you're specializing in an element, the available items that are specific +elemental damage are the obvious winners:

Arcane: [Starheart Baton], [Talisman of Kalecgos] (though really who would use these anyway?)
Fire: [Inferno Waist Cord], [Leggings of the Festering Swarm], [Flametongue Seal], [Ring of the Eternal Flame] (this last one only if just Mind Mastery and not Improved DS applies; if both, Lola's Eve w/set bonus is better)
Frost: [Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders], [Item not found!], [Grasp of the Dead], [Frozen Shadoweave Boots], [Cold Snap], [Sapphiron's Wing Bone]

Anybody have any idea how to figure our overall contribution to DPS of [Shiffar's Nexus-Horn], assuming thott's info on procrate being 35% is correct ? Also, despite what tooltips says proc duration is 15 sec actually.

First, you've got to calculate the trinket's chance to proc out of your own chance to produce a critical strike.
Working with the values you provide, the formula should look like this:

( x * 35 ) / 100 = p

x = Spell Crit [%]
p = Proc Chance [%]

Based on the value "p" this formula provides, you can calculate the uptime, which is dependent on the casting time of the spell you are using:

(( 15 * p ) / ( 100 * y)) * 100 = Uptime [%]

y = Casting time [sec]
p = Proc chance [%]

Now, the calculation of the average spell damage gained:

( Uptime [%] / 100 ) * 225 = Spell damage

For example, a frost mage with 30% spell crit (assuming five stacks of Winter's Chill on his target) and Frostbolt (2.5 seconds cast) as main nuke would gain an average ~141 spell damage through [Shiffar's Nexus-Horn].

/edit: My calculation is, of course, disregarding the fact, that the 225 spell damage buff doesn't stack with itself, so the values are a bit inaccurate.

(Sorry for my bad english, it's not my first language :))

I was *moving*, damn it. Next time, you pack and unload the truck, I'll upload the spreadsheet. ;)

edit: And Jehona, the problem with that is that I believe there is evidence suggesting that Shiffar's is one of the new breed of trinkets with an internal cooldown.

Yes it seems so, I have never gotten the buff to refresh itself.

I ran it trough excel and this is the result:



Graph has equivalent constant +dmg this trinket gives with 30% critrate and 0.15s cast lag for scorch, frostbolt and fireball (1.65s, 2.65s and 3,15s). X-axis is the supposed "cooldown" of the proc.

Critrate actually affects the trinkets performance very little, unless it rises very significantly (not too suprisingly).


For those who want to know how I calculate things, my formulas are following:

pproc% for each cast is (crit%*proc%), how many casts you have to shoot before proccing (ashot) is log(0.5;(1-pproc%)), where log(number; base) and then I just count supposed cd + average time (cd + casttime * ashot) and from here on it should be obvious.

edit: Ramped up arcane blast should benefit as much as scorch (except for the +dmg scaling for AB being much better) and if it procs on each AM crit AND the added +dmg would affect rest of the shots in ongoing AM, then AM would benefit a bit more than scorch, due to 1.0s cast time of each bolt and "no castlag".

AB->AB->FB->FB->AB works for me, but I generally have 350ms latency at best. The FB->AB is cutting it very close, you would likely have to delay the cast yourself on a worthwhile connection.

I was using 3, but you don't always get the debuff exploitation benefit; I also use manual /stopcasting macros on my primary nukes to get the effect FastCast used to allow (more or less - IceHUD's lag indicator helps a *ton* with this).

AB(2)->AB(1)->FB->FB->delay-> is 3 seconds left on debuff after the second frostbolt; since the 3rd/1st (the 3rd AB in a cycle is the 1st AB in the next cycle) AB casts at 1.83 seconds cast-time, you need to delay the casting for 1.2 seconds (we'll be lazy and ignore the .03). This gives you ABx2 + FBx2 damage over 2.5+2.5+1.83+2.17+1.2 = 10.2 seconds.

If you do AB(0)->AB(1)->FB->FB->FB-> (i.e. don't shoot for the overlapping AB), you're getting ABx2 + FBx3 over (2.5*4 + 2.17) = 12.17 seconds.

Using my stats (~18% crit, 730 +frost, 623 +arcane) and build (35/0/26, so Spellpower and Shards both, and a 6% crit rate increase on blast):

E(AB) = (700 + 623*2.5/3.5)*1.03*(1*.76 + 1.75*.24) = 1391
E(FB) = (620 + 730*3/3.5*.9)*1.03*(1*.82 + 2.25*.18) = 1492

(1391*2 + 1492*2) = 5766/10.2 = 565.29 DPS
(1391*2 + 1492*3) = 7258/12.17 = 596.38 DPS

(Interestingly, under *very* low lag conditions, FB3 cycles do allow for the overlap condition to occur; however, you only have this occur if cast delay is <125 ms. In this circumstance, the cycle becomes AB(2)->AB(1)->FB->FB->FB for 7258 damage over 2.5*3 + 2.17 + 1.83 = 11.5 seconds, or 631 DPS).

Now, this ignores cast lag; if we get above 400 ms, cast lag impacts FB2 cycles, but below 400 ms, the cycle is close to cast lag independent (it matters a little bit in terms of AB(2)->AB(1) lag). DPS can be roughly considered (for lags from 0-400) to be 5766/(10.2+lag).

For FB3, below 125 ms, lag-adjusted DPS is 7258/(11.5+lag*5). Above 125 ms, it's 7258/(12.17 + lag*5).

Oh, and FB2 cycles probably drop to a 0/1 cycle at 1s cast lags, since at that point you can't even get the 2 FBs finished and the AB started before the debuff drops off.

So, for 200 ms cast lag:

FB2: 5766/(10.2+.2) = 554.42 DPS
FB3: 7258/(12.17+.2*5) = 551.10 DPS

Use of fastcast macros probably affects the order of the results, since it affects the effective cast lag.

edit: There are probably errors in my math, since I'm somewhat new to mage theorycrafting. Please do point them out.

After some preliminary mathematical work, I'm quite unimpressed with Arcane Blast-Frostbolt rotations.

I'll give more detailed numbers later, but Arcane Blast is of comparable size to Frostbolt. So, comparing 5 Frostbolts to 3 Frostbolts + 2 Blasts, the only advantage of the Blasts is that I shave a tiny amount of casting time from the second one. The Frostbolt from the deep Arcane build is slightly stronger, because Spell Power + Mind Mastery > Winter's Chill + Empowered. But why I am I spreading my talent points to meet the needs of 2 spells as much as possible, when I could be beefing up Frostbolt to almost the same extent, and keeping outstanding utilities like Ice Barrier and Water Elemental (which is much bigger 3min damage boost than Arcane Power)?

Basically, I was hoping that something like 40/0/21 would be nice way to bring up my DPS compared to deep Frost, while still maintaining Ice Block, and the basic Frost-based playstyle. As it stands, though, it seems like there's no point. I should keep my fun Frost spec until the day arrives when I'm not doing anything but serving as artillery at raid bosses, and then switch for raw DPS.


My current setup, with some ordinary buffs (Int/Spi/Mark/Wis/Kings):
499 Int, 647 dmg, 74 hit, 241 crit, 295 Spi, 0.25 sec casting lag, equal-level mob
Build A: All Frost DPS talents + Clearcasting (assuming stacked WC).
Build B: All Arcane DPS talents (besides Emp. Missiles) + Imp. FB, Shard, Piercing, Channeling

Average Frostbolt hit
A: 1216
B: 1293

Frostbolt, averaged over crits:
A: 1605
B: 1636

Average Arcane Blast, crits included:
A: 1255
B: 1563

Straight frostbolt spam:
A: 583 DPS; -66 MPS
B: 612 DPS; -63 MPS

AB-AB-FB-FB- (waiting if necessary, to time the next AB precisely as the debuff ends)
B: 628 DPS; -66 MPS

AB-AB-FB-FB-FB (assuming debuff resets during 3rd FB)
B: 613 DPS; -64 MPS

So, it's a sizable increase, when I'm fighting Patchwerk. Actually, conservatively estimating that the Water Elemental does 700/2.5 = 280 DPS at a 25% uptime, so 70 DPS, it's not even an improvement. Given that even now, I can often Coldsnap the Elemental for three summons in a fight, it's far more than that.

And when I'm not (hypothetically) fighting Patchwerk, it's even better, because of Ice Lance, the WE's Freeze, and fundamentally, the fact that I can deal with trouble far, far better than any other Mage.

------------------

Leaving it at that for now--what am I missing? Why are people going Arc/Frost?

Heh, we both tried the same calculation. Can you post your exact stats (Int and Spi bonuses from gear, +frost, +arc, crit rating, hit rating)? I just want to compare numbers. I'll post my updated spreadsheet once it's ready, so you can see what I'm doing.

EDIT: Conceptually, we're doing exactly the same thing.

The default coefficient of Frostbolt isn't 3/3.5, but rather 3/3.5*0.95 = 0.814. And this part I'm less certain about, but I think the coefficient if you have Imp, but not Emp, is just 0.814-0.1 = 0.714.

My elemental runs oom at like ~18-19sec mark, waits for few seconds to regain mana and manages to shoot 1 or 2 more bolts, a bit depending on luck and how much it had to move when summoning before it was able to start shooting. While I was running in todays raid, I had like pretty close to ~8k of mana. (I still wear [Netherweave Bracers] and [Netherweave Boots], can't seem to find good enough bracer / boots combination that would be better, 76 +dmg out of those 2 slots is a lot it seems)

Did this thread break?

Something weird is going on, but I can still read the posts.

test

more test

aaand... one more.

Well, it goes onto page 55 now, but why is there a 56? Anyway, the admins will check it out.