Like he said above, it'll go to whichever crit triggered the 3rd buff. Hits target if you have 2 charges, 2nd jump if you have 1 charge, and 3rd jump if you have 0 charges.

This trinket, in addition to being very good, is interesting in that it's one of the few caster trinkets I've seen that scales on something other than damage. It does, in fact, scale linearly with spell crit.

One question: if you drop a Blast Wave and crit six mobs at once, will it proc twice?

I believe I remember reading that there was a small limit on how frequently charges could be built, meaning multiple crits on one AoE would only count a single time. I may be mistaken, though.

I don't know for sure about the cap, but I know that on a full hyjal clear when i was arcane specced, my TLC did 7% of my total damage. And it does proc insanely often during AOE.

It scales with crit but not really like every %1 increase shows an increase in LC performance.
At 20% crit you crit 1 in 5 spells. So a LC proc every 15. At 21% you need 14.29 casts. You can't cast .29 of a spell so you still need 15 casts. Only at the next % up can you drop to needing 14. Granted this assumes you cast an infinite number of spells and we all know that crit is prone to dry spells and hot streaks and more crit % is always going to be better than lower crit % for the LC.

It's not linear, but it's really close.

This is not a stepped function though really. Yes you need three discrete crits but the increase in procs over time as your crit probability increases is indeed linear.

I'm finding 4-5% of my raid damage can come from TLC. Examining alternative trinkets, that's really good by comparison. Looking at parses, I even find it hard to imagine the trinket I'd need to put in that slot to get the same damage, and hearing a T5+ mage saying it is 7% (as opposed to possibly lower, due to increased damage from spells by comparison), is a little daunting.

At what point does one "upgrade" out of using the TLC or does it look like it is "the" mage dps trinket to have for the expansion?

I believe Manly's 7% from an overall clear is much higher due to the fact that mages AE a ton in Hyjal. In a stand-and-nuke scenario, TLC's % contribution will only decrease as your gear gets better (assuming one's gear doesn't get better by only increasing crit-rate).

I can see TLC being an integral part of any AB-AM-scorch cycle mage or smart mages who would swap it in for AE fights, but I've long stopped using it on single target boss fights - I tend to stick to a combination of the Icon, Crusade and Nel's tear.

I would never shard TLC though, as Manly stated, it's just that awesome on fights and instances with heavy AE components - Morogrim, Solarian, Hyjal trash, etc. etc. - so in that respect, I would agree that it's a trinket to keep for AE fights down the road.

25 more dps with that trinket is actually enough to bring 3XAB-AM-scorch 43/18/0 spec over 33/28 3XAM-fireballX2 DPS on my spreadsheet. Sextant should also proc more with AM, although probably doesn't scale as much due to its internal cooldown being a very significant part of your "average time between procs".

You'll get about 122.56 damage per lightning bolt, assuming 43% crit rate, 16% hit, and TLC gets 100% of your +hit and all but 11% of your +crit (shaman talents for increase crit to lightning bolt spells I assume don't include this trinket). Modify this by the inherent 15 resists lvl 73s have, which will reduce it's damage by 3.08%, so 118.78 damage per bolt.

Assuming your lightning bolts get (3/3.5)*1.05*.9692 = 87.23% of each +dmg per bolt, TLC is worth 136.16 spell damage, which is almost double the value of Icon of the Silver Crescent.

I was thinking about those alternatives, but the amount of +damage relative to TLC was too low for the similar reason given in the post just above this one:

I didn't work out the math to the detail Zure here has, but it would seem to me that the +damage value of TLC is significantly higher than Icon/Crusade, as each can be represented by a flat +damage increase, even for single target DPS. This example is for lightning bolt (3 second cast), anyone hitting faster (scorch/AM/AB) should have a higher +dam value due to crit frequency.

I will elaborate on what I said earlier. When you are arcane specced, your arcane explosion has already a 'high' amount of crit rate. Now, each time you proc a clearcast, your next aoe has 30% more chance to crit on every single targets. The end result of those coupled mechanics ended up giving a totally insane amount of procs from my lightning capacitor. Any clearcast turned directly into 2 lightning bolts, more or less.

Otherwise, under a 'standard' case of 3x AB, AM, scorch rotation, it gave me results generally around 3-4% of my total dps, which is still a lot, even despise the resistances.

Of course this is me just sitting at work thinking crazy thoughts, but I wonder how much theoretical DPS an enhancement shaman could conceivably get from dual wielding 1.3 daggers, both with flametongue on them. It would require a completely ridiculous build and gear selection, min. 31 in Enhance, rest in Elemental, and gear with spell crit on it.... but i still think it would be a totally awesome project for a bored/geared out shaman to undertake.

It doesn't matter if you AOE or not, arcane potency is effectively a 3% crit increase. The reason for the multiple procs is simply (and only) the high amount of hits.

Well, not to quibble much but you can somewhat leverage combustion and clearcasts to produce an exceptional amount of crits at the same time in theory. In practice of course it doesn't play out well.

I'm just that guy though so carry on =)

This is correct. Arcane Potency doesn't have any kind of nonlinear synergy with TLC.

If you AoE 10 targets 10 times, Arcane Potency causes 3 more crits to appear (one the one Clearcast spell), which is exactly the same as what you see when you shoot 100 spells at one target.

Ok there is a lot of talk about Mages here (guess they are the most popular caster crit class) but I myself am an Elemental Shaman...

I have been farming illhoof since our first kill and am Curious if anyone knows the number crunches for this.

On average atm I have 42% crit fully raid buffed, and cast at about 2 seconds (give or take with latency/Drums/Heroism)

I worked it out myself to be roughly 7 casts for a proc, and 14 seconds of cast time (in a desirable environment) So that is roughly 100 extra damage per cast?

Anyone back that up, or figure out just how much of a DPS increase that is?

Unfortunately this guy has been rather cruel, 5 months of zero LC drops... yeah

Well, searching in this very thread for "shaman" gave me the following...

http://elitistjerks.com/364928-post61.html

>.< I totally missed that.

Cheers

Our elemental shaman just got this a couple weeks ago, and loves it. He's also got a ~40% lightning crit, but the especially interesting uses aren't from LB spam. An EMed CL that procs LO (love those acronyms) will indeed shoot 2 proc bolts. Also, and especially, Magma totem builds charges, as does flametongue weapon, since both can crit. (That last bit won us an OOM-fest attrition battle in the arena against 2 paladins with an unexpected burst.)

Just tested on a mob, this is not true. Flametongue and Lightning Shield will build charges, totem crits will not.

Thanks. Guess I misunderstood what he told me.