Arcane Design - Page 11

Elimbras · 09/13/10, 7:33 AM

Originally Posted by Logix

Naturally, a 'mana regen' cycle will come at a hefty DPS penalty. Similar to how Arcane mages of today must exercise 'skill' in knowing when to stop spamming ABs (or 'fishing'), the Arcane mage in this hypothetical will have to know when he has spammed his 'regen' cycle enough to store enough mana for another round of the 'burn' rotation. Now granted, this all hinges on the fact that a alternating "burn - regen" cycle produces more overall DPS then a constant 'mana neutral' cycle, but that is not too hard to balance with just the numbers. It will be easy, if such a 'regen' rotation exists, to balance the DPS and DPM outputs of the various cycles to ensure that a mana regen followed by a mana burn cycle is never superseded by a straight and simple mana neutral cycle, if used correctly (and that is where the complexity comes in).

I don't think it is a good design to have a better sustained dps with burn and lull phases: this means arcane would either be in a bad position for sustained dps (read Patchwerk) fights, or that it would be too good for burst dps fights (where some phases are really more important, such as Anub'Arak, for example). It is good to allow this burst and regen cycles, but they should have a lower sustained dps as a "globally mana neutral" (or slowly decreasing) cycle.

Now, second point I wanted to say. I got an infraction for saying it ironically, but I think the point is valid. If you want a spell that is really cheap a low dps, you still have a wand. I know it is not fun at all of wanding, and it doesn't interact with talents: most would prefer to spam a mana-free spell with the same dps, and I agree. However, that's free dps, and you still can regen at this time, so from a theoretical point of view, that's possible. I don't know about mage regen in Cata (nor in live), and wether that is sufficient or not. But playing a holy priest as a main, I know that in many Ulduar fights, holy priest gameplay was mostly alternating these burn and lull phases (we had a very high raid hps, but could not sustain it), and I sent significant part of my time doing strictly no heal, in order to save mana / regen before the next burn phase. Maybe, the easiest example to explain was XT-002, before the tantrum nerf. I went "crazy" during tantrum, in order to keep the raid alive: these were really high damage times. Outside tantrum, healing requirements were significantly lighter, and I spent a significant part of my time throwing just POM and COH for heals (so, 2 instant spells every 7s), and wanding (or doing nothing, just to be ready out of GCD in case of an urgency) outside it if it was not urgently needed.

Ocrist · 09/13/10, 8:20 AM

I'm not playing on the beta, but - from the sidelines - I tend to agree that a mana-positive dps cycle seems unnecessary. That's never the way we played in BC as arcanists. We never casted frostbolt as an active mana regenerator cycle (even though after 2.4 casting frostbolt did allow you to regenerate some small quantity of mana), but instead cast frostbolt at close to zero mana to brook us over until a mana gem or pot or evocation was up again, and you could carry on spamming AB. I feel an active and substantial mana regeneration cycle would depart too much from the way we always played the spec - knowing how long the fight would be, when burst phases were needed and planning in advance which set of cycles were probably going to be optimal for that fight and on the night. That's fun.

For added finesse in play, what about not having a regen cycle, but instead allowing evocation (via a Glyph perhaps) to be particulate and not binary, ie allowing partial evocates? If evocate is going to allow us to regenerate 20K mana every 2 minutes, I think it would be a really fun game-play mechanic to allow this regeneration to be split up into smaller distinct units over the course of 2 minutes. So you decide for instance to do a 25% evocate (you've got to get the timing right or you'll use up 50% of evocate), then wait for 30s and do another partial evocate. This would also remove the really, really irritating interupted evocate scenario (don't forget - no more icy veins to protect evocate) that genuine does occur at no fault of the player occoasionally.

cbags · 09/13/10, 10:49 AM

I noticed one thing that seems that it would force an Arcane player to dump the T10 gear pretty quickly once the 4.0.1 patch hits. Since they removed Missile Barrage" from the game as a talent, you can not proc Pushing the Limit. So if your planning on being Arcane after the patch, you may want to invest in the "other" purchasable pieces. The part that does kind of tweaks me is that the 4 piece still works.

Venthos · 09/13/10, 2:23 PM

With 2-piece Tier 10, it would be easy enough to change the effect from Missile Barrage to Arcane Missiles, as that produces the same effect.

As for a mana-neutral rotation, it seems like AB2 ABarr is the best contender, replacing ABarr with Missiles on proc. We'd be able to pull this off fine until 30% haste, as the GCD after using ABarr makes it so there's a gap before the next 2AB so it doesn't run into the ABarr cooldown as easy.

And after 30% haste, we'd likely have enough mana to deal with 3AB, though scaling mana gems would definitely help. If we even reach 30% haste this expansion, that is (what with them aiming to control stat increases).

Logix · 09/13/10, 3:21 PM

Originally Posted by Ocrist

I tend to agree that a mana-positive dps cycle seems unnecessary. That's never the way we played in BC as arcanists. We never casted frostbolt as an active mana regenerator cycle (even though after 2.4 casting frostbolt did allow you to regenerate some small quantity of mana), but instead cast frostbolt at close to zero mana to brook us over until a mana gem or pot or evocation was up again, and you could carry on spamming AB.

And this brings the discussion full circle.

You are right in your description of how Arcane used to work in BC (to some extent), however this will not work in Cataclysm, for the simple reason that Mana Adept exists and will have to be optimized. Along with this, you must also remember there are a host of other differences between BC and Cata. E.g. we can't chain chug pots (which probably went a long way to give the 'feeling' of actively increasing your mana levels back in BC).

Blizzard's idea of Mana Adept (link is in my previous post), is that there will be a specific point that Mana Adept is balanced around. When you are above this point, you are doing good damage and benefiting well from the mastery. When you are below this point, you will be doing poor damage since you are not benefiting from your mastery as much as others. It then becomes the goal of the mage to remain at or above this point. For simplicities sake, lets call this point 60% mana.

Now, my assertion is that this 60% mana point is nothing more then an artificial "oom" point for the mage. I.e. The mage will burn till he reaches it, then switch to a mana neutral rotation and wait out his cooldowns. This does not really make for interesting play and more importantly, it is exactly what mages have been doing since BC (as you described). What we are proposing, is to have something new which evolves the gameplay into something a little more dynamic. Where control over mana is a given. It then becomes all about the decisions the mage will make, decisions like "when should I start increasing my mana to be able to sync a burn phase for boss timing X" or "how much mana can I increase without falling too far in DPS".
(n.b. It is important to note that active mana regen does not only have to come from a mana positive cycle, that was just one of many solutions. The priests' new archangel mechanic is another, so is the Warlock's lifetap)

Now the mage does make similar decisions to this concerning when to burn, but they are not nearly as frequent since the entire process right now is throttled and controlled by the mage's mana regen cooldowns. My assertion is that the entire decision making process of when to burn or when to regen or how much to burn/regen or when to stop burning/regenning, should all, at all times, be in the mage's control. This will give us not only a much more dynamic experience (which is severely lacking) but also clear cut distinction between good Arcanists (those who really are using their tools optimally) and bad ones.

One of the single biggest issues with the current Arcane's model is that it will, eventually, make skilled Arcane mages indistinguishable from unskilled ones. Most in part due to the fact that the gameplay is extremely formulaic (cast X till a% mana, then cast Y till CDs are up, pop CDs, rinse repeat). Someone (probably one of us) will figure out this formula in the next few days, and from then on its pretty much game-set-match.[*] Imho, a spec should never be just fun to theorycraft. It needs to be fun to play as well.
And as usual, the finer level tweaking is just plugging in your mastery amount into a calculator.

Personally, this is probably the aspect of the new arcane I find the most abhorrent. What is the point in have a spec that claims all this control. That connotes being 'rewarding for the thinking player' or advertises a cerebral casting experience, when at the end of the day, it is just a simple game of 'simon says - 2 moves edition'?

[*] Just to clarify. There is nothing wrong with the theorycrafting community, or the fact that we theorycraft out optimal solutions. That is not the intent of the noted comment.

Uglybugger · 09/13/10, 3:56 PM

Originally Posted by Venthos

As for a mana-neutral rotation, it seems like AB2 ABarr is the best contender, replacing ABarr with Missiles on proc. We'd be able to pull this off fine until 30% haste, as the GCD after using ABarr makes it so there's a gap before the next 2AB so it doesn't run into the ABarr cooldown as easy.

I think the "mana neutral" rotation won't be a rotation at all. It seems to me that it will be a set of priorities:

1) Is Arcane Missiles up? If yes, cast Arcane Missiles.
2) Is Arcane Barrage on cooldown? If no, cast Arcane Barrage
3) Cast Arcane Blast.

Arcane Blast, with only one or two debuff stacks behind it, is inferior to both Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage in DPS. If you really, really want to conserve mana to the fullest possible degree, then yes, you would cast AB twice. However, if it was acceptable to take a slight hit in DPM in favor of a substantial DPS increase (and I suspect this will be the case), then you'll use AB as little as possible.

A cast sequence under this philosophy would look something like this:

ABarr (proc)
AM
AB
ABarr
AB(proc)
AB
AM
ABarr (proc)
AM
AB
ABarr
AB
AB(proc)
ABarr
AM

So on and so forth.

Some observations from the PTR:

Bug? - The Arcane Blast debuff seemed to be affecting the damage of Arcane Missiles still, although not by the exact percentage listed in the debuff. I need to strip and try it again to verify, but if others are not receiving the same results, then I'm bugged. Arcane Barrage is not affected by the AB debuff.

Intended? - Any missile in an Arcane Missile cast can proc Clearcasting. It was not unusual for me to proc Clearcasting twice on a single Arcane Missile cast.

Intended? - Each missile in an Arcane Missile cast would consume an Arcane Potency charge, increasing the critical chance of individual missiles by 15% rather than the full AM cast.

Pasture · 09/13/10, 4:07 PM

Originally Posted by Elimbras

If you want a spell that is really cheap a low dps, you still have a wand.

Ok. We'll use an example of a couple of good, active mana regen mechanics.

Hunters have a good mechanic. They can regen mana actively whenever they like, but they only do 40% when doing so. Warlocks have a good mechanic. They have to spend a global cooldown to life tap for a good amount of mana, but can do it whenever.

Let's have a look at wanding. On a tank and spank I might do 14-15k dps. If I were to wand I would do 500dps. That's 3% of my normal dps. While wanding I wouldn't be actively gaining any more mana than normal (we won't have spirit any more remember) - I'd just not be spending it. As a regen mechanic, doing 3% of my dps to regen my natural Mage Armour and replenishment mana.... that's a pretty crappy mechanic no?

Look at Fire mages. They can potentially cast Scorch for free (along with free pyroblast procs), whilst gaining mana from Master of Elements procs. That's a step down rotation in terms of dps but it allows for moderate regen. It's something that would be much better suited to Arcane than Fire, but Arcane just doesn't have enough abilities to be able to play around with like that.

Either way, wanding isn't an option. 3% of your normal damage for the same mana regen you'd be getting while casting? How is that even an option?

Hidden · 09/13/10, 4:38 PM

Originally Posted by Uglybugger

Bug? - The Arcane Blast debuff seemed to be affecting the damage of Arcane Missiles still, although not by the exact percentage listed in the debuff. I need to strip and try it again to verify, but if others are not receiving the same results, then I'm bugged. Arcane Barrage is not affected by the AB debuff.

I'm having the same results. The AB debuff clearly says "Arcane Blast damage increased" though so we have to assume it's a bug.

As for mana regen mechanics:
It all depends on what entry level Cataclysm raid stats will look like. Ideally the lowest DPS Arcane cycle would at least consume no mana including raid buffs, allowing you to cast a low DPS cycle until your next mana regeneration cooldown is ready.

Adding a real mana regeneration cycle would mostly lower the negative impact of playing badly so I'm not sure Blizzard would add one.

Dorrinal · 09/13/10, 4:44 PM

I think there is a bit of confusion or misunderstanding of what Kalgan quoted. Evocation is our active mana regen mechanic, for better or worse. Maintaining an average mana level over the course of our Evocation cooldown means juggling a couple of cycles to maintain a high average mana, eventually (or suddenly -- wheee!) burning down to 30% or so every two minutes. So we would be back to the up-and-down style of play we had in 3.1. Cry about Evocation's shortcomings all you like, I won't disagree, but I am not the only one who found Arcane fun and interesting under that system.

Elimbras · 09/13/10, 4:54 PM

I don't know about mana natural regen of mages in Cataclysm (nor in live, in fact).
And I do agree that wand is really not a good gameplay.
What I wanted to point out, it's that this is already possible, and that this was used by other specs at other time, when mana matters for them. However, I agree with you even more, because Blizzard gave the healers a spell to cast when they don't have much heal to do, or when they want to regen. They specifically stated that they wanted to go away from the paradigm where you should do nothing to save mana. In Cataclysm, all healers have a highest (by far) hpm, lowest (also by far) hps heal, that they can spam infinitely. As long as its hps is sufficient and that there is damage (but I don't expect much encounters where damage will be low enough for this low hps heal to exceed it), that's better to heal with it than do nothing, because that's healing you do at the best hpm ratio available, hence you are saving mana by casting this heal. You just change heal when you need more mana, at the expense of hpm.

Now, in fact, thinking more about it, and being also partly devil's advocate, Arcane mage are somehow in a similar situation. They have a low dps cycle, which is about mana neutral or allows slow regen. They have burst if they want. And in fact, they have any medium rate between both. The game is now the same for healers : you have excess of mana (or at least, pool of mana) : how do you spend it ? Healers don't have much choice, they spend it according to incoming damage. That's some universal truth of healing : healing done is more correlated to damage received than to anything else (including players skill). You can do only as much healing as there is damage, and even when you wippe, the difference between damage and healing is very small compared to total healing, because this difference is strictly bounded, and the bound is largely lower than healing output.

Healing depth (or fun factor) comes from several factors:
1/ Reacting in time, quickly, to the incoming damage (or even anticipating it).
2/ Picking the right tool for the right job (at least, when you have several useful tools, some specs could use efficiently only one tool).
3/ Picking the right target at the right time (sort of triage contest).

Clearly, dps don't have much of these factors. Factor one is definitely out of question, and 3 is nearly also out of question. 2 happens, partly, through procs and cooldown synchronisation / clashes.
But, compared to healers, they have the flexibility of chosing their burst time. If the "sustained dps / sustained hps" medium cycle is in total their best dps cycle, then there is an interesting choice for arcanist. Which cycle do you choose, and when do you want to burst (if you do want at all) ? By how much ? You could have a incredible burst for 30s, and then do low hps for most of the fight. Or have a higher sustained regular hps. What is the best strategy for this boss ? When can I use my mana regen tools (evocate, gems, potion) ? Do I want to use a regen elixir ? Am I reacting efficiently to AM procs or clearcast procs for more mana saved ?

For mathematicians, imagine that your dps=f(mp5) function is increasing (that's logical : the more mana per 5 seconds you spend, the more dps) and concave (low dps cycles have a better dpm). What is the optimum cycle ? And more importantly, how and by which margin do I deviate from this ideal cycle to have controlled burst ? Due to randomness of fights, a good arcanist could also adapt to the events of the fight. Is a crucial dps disconnected or dead ? I can increase my dps on adds / burn phase if need, but will do less damage in total. Is it needed ? Good arcanist will also reacts on short scale events, such as an add (e.g. a bloodbeast on DBS) going down too slowly. It's possible to adapt on the fly to crits or non-crits. Or to your number of clearcast / AM procs. In fact, by having your burst controls, you have more choices to do than many other specs. The only main trouble I really see is that arcane could deal with a third proc (or a more complicated proc), to alter more the rotation on Patchwerk (monophase) boss. I can add a minor trouble: good arcanist might do less damage than worst players, because they focus more on adapting their dps to the needs than doing really high sustained dps. However, I see it only as minor, because this is already the case for healers (higher hps is not equal to better death prevention), and this is also partially the case for dps (cc when needed, placement (or moving out of fire), aggro management).

Zeldyrr · 09/13/10, 4:58 PM

Originally Posted by Uglybugger

Bug? - The Arcane Blast debuff seemed to be affecting the damage of Arcane Missiles still, although not by the exact percentage listed in the debuff. I need to strip and try it again to verify, but if others are not receiving the same results, then I'm bugged. Arcane Barrage is not affected by the AB debuff.

Does this AM increase in damage change with the number of AB debuff stacks? If so, then yeah, it's probably a bug. If not, is it do to Nether Vortex/TtW? By that I mean AB slows the target and TtW gives a 6% increase in damage to AM.

Uglybugger · 09/13/10, 5:14 PM

Originally Posted by Zeldyrr

Does this AM increase in damage change with the number of AB debuff stacks?

Yes, it appears to be tiered with the number of AB stacks.

Tonight I'll wipe my PTR talents to try it with 0/0/0 and find a target dummy no one else is playing with. I'll let you know how it turns out. It's possible that the "not the exact percentage as listed in the debuff" part was due to Mana Adept, but there was definitely a bonus applying from the Arcane Blast debuffs.

Uglybugger · 09/13/10, 6:08 PM

Originally Posted by Uglybugger

Tonight I'll wipe my PTR talents to try it with 0/0/0 and find a target dummy no one else is playing with. I'll let you know how it turns out. It's possible that the "not the exact percentage as listed in the debuff" part was due to Mana Adept, but there was definitely a bonus applying from the Arcane Blast debuffs.

Here are the results:

Arcane Blast Stack	0	1	2	3	4
Arcane Missile Tick	343	394	446	497	549
% of base damage	100	115	130	145	160

So, yeah, bugged to match the previous version of Arcane Blast.

However, Arcane Blast (the tooltip, anyway) appears to interact correctly with its new mechanics:

Arcane Blast Stack	0	1	2	3	4
Arcane Blast Tooltip	1280	1536	1792	2049	2304
% from base damage	100	120	140	160	180

Logix · 09/13/10, 6:26 PM

Originally Posted by Uglybugger

However, Arcane Blast (the tooltip, anyway) appears to interact correctly with its new mechanics:

Just to add to this.

From the testing I have done on the PTR, the tooltips for most spells accurately display damage. From what I can tell, Mana Adept, Arcane Specialization, Arcane Tactics and Spell power modifiers are all present in the displayed damage (the displayed values also change with your mana %, as expected). TTW, however, is not included.

A slightly different observation.
Neather Vortex only works if you are in range to cast Slow. AB is 40 yards, but slow is 35 (without the glyph). Casting AB at 40 yards does not apply Slow. I think it would be worthwhile to confirm whether this is the intended behavior or just a bug.
Due to this, I checked whether NV is actually doing a 'force cast' of Slow on AB, which would mean that it would charge the mage the mana cost of Slow on top of the normal AB cost. From what I can tell, this is, thankfully, not the case. Though I still need to confirm it.

Edit:
Forgot to mention. AP doesn't change the damage in the tooltips either, it does, however, change the mana cost as expected.
Also, AM range seems broken. I.e. it doesn't cast at 40 yards. It lets you press the button (i.e. doesn't give a "out of range" error) but it doesn't fire the missiles (you do get multiple "out of range" errors when the channel has already begun). It casts fine if you are at 35 yards. I will try to test if this is the case with untalented AMs, but from playing around at low levels, I don't think this is the case, so it could be the buggy talent.

Needless to say, I think the spell is very buggy right now, which is why you are noticing the other bug with it, i.e. AB stacks still affecting AM.

edit2:
So just confirmed at low levels on both the beta and the PTR. The range bug for AM is present in both places. So yea, I think we can safely say that the spell is really bugged right now. Best to just continue with our theorycrafts assuming that it won't in fact benefit from AB.

Ocrist · 09/14/10, 9:42 AM

According to Kavan on EJ, this theory of aiming to maintain your mana above some percentage is wrong anyways. If there was a magical percentage, it would be 40% because the idea is to gradually ramp up your cycle's mps as you get closer and closer to using evocation. What matters is the time at which your evocation comes off cooldown, not some magical percentage point at which mastery becomes more or less effective.

I think that's more accurate. Generally speaking, the approach is something along the lines of...

Evocation and mana gem are available at the start so you burn some mana quickly, use gem and dps cooldowns, burn more down to 40%, evoc back to 100%, play conservatively until mana cooldowns are available, burn more, then come back up and play conservatively, then nearing the end of the fight you try to time your burn down once again to match the end of the fight.

Which seems to show that Kalgan wasn't reading the forum post very carefully. It's neither what the poster nor Kavan said.

I like arcane mastery because it adds some depth to an otherwise shallow spec. It changes the way I play mid encounter in a controlled way as opposed to stupid stuff like hot streak where I just hope for the best. I will be making some mistakes (none as dumb as waiting until 20% mana to evocate or using arcane missiles every time it's up LULZ), gradually over time I'll get bored and look into / math out minor details and make fewer/smaller mistakes.

Yeah, that. My gut says it'll be very hard for players to perfectly optimize their fights since optimal behavior will be different from fight to fight and further vary based on mastery level, but most players will (hopefully) be able to use general guidelines to get reasonable results from the spec.

Sounds a little to me as if Blizzard is still a little unsure themselves how Mana Adept will work out. And does anyone else find it intriguing that they're giving open hints/guidelines as to how arcane should be played? That's something they normally try to avoid isn't it? It's like they're know a lot of players aren't very happy with the state of arcane (or as they would see it "don't get it") and are trying to push us in the right direction. Is this a sign that player agitation might be forcing them to consider changes?