Arcane in Cataclysm: Updated for 4.01 - Page 11

Nerdling · 10/31/10, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by FractalLaw

Forgive me if this has been posted elsewhere in this thread, but lately I've been considering the 4 points I have in Improved Arcane Missiles and Missile Barrage.

They just don't seem worth it.

Admittedly the numbers may skew some when Cata hits, but for right now I'm really wondering if I'd be better off freeing up some of those points for another use.

I'm fortunate enough to be have the Glyph of Mage Armor, so my in combat regen is quite high. I haven't really had mana issues even with heavy, heavy AB spam, and ABr is still available to clear stacks.

Has anyone tried going without those two talents and dropping AM completely?

The problem as I see it atm is that you just don't really get much value from whatever else you might choose to spend those 4 points in. I know atm that dropping those 4 points would have little effect on my DPS/DMG because most of the time I rarely even have to conserve but you have to spend the points and as it is your already taking the other most valuable points in those teirs as part of your build anyway.

I have given serious thought to dropping them and maybe taking more of the situational talents and I might do that next reset. Later when we do have to spend more time conserving those points will ofc have a bit more value since they will be improving our best DPM spell but I have to be honest I'm upset at having to spend 4 points on our signature proc when it is so weak and I too would love to see what impact each point does have on overall damage. The other 2 specs get an instant cast mana free proc for the 3 points they have to spend, something they really want to proc where as we only want ours to proc during conserve phases and it doesn't even reliable do that.

Edit typo's

Coren · 10/31/10, 11:13 PM

Originally Posted by Mentalfloss

I've also noticed, mana concerns seem to be unfounded. I can spam high mps rotations or even straight ab spam most of time and have little need for a conserve or regen rotation. I find mage armor and the meager amount of spirit I have already generates me over 2.25k mp5.

Sorry, correct me if my math is off.. but in order to have 2.25k mp5 from mage armor, it would require you to have a 62,500 manapool... which seems alittle unrealistic to me atm...

Kallisti · 10/31/10, 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by nostie

Please let me know if my math is off at any point.

Disregarding effects on MPS, we can look at stats in the following way:

1% haste = 1% extra damage
1% crit = ~1.06% extra damage (using CSD)
1% mastery = 1.5% extra damage (if at 100% mana)

Now look at ratings:

1% haste = 32.79 haste rating
1% crit = 45.906 crit rating
1% mastery = 45.906 mastery rating

It takes 1.4 times as much of crit or mastery to achieve the same % haste. Therefore, at 100% mana:

1 mastery rating = ~1.07 haste rating = ~1.42 crit rating

At 93.33% mana, mastery and haste rating are equal.

Diregarding MPS, 1 haste rating is worth more than 1 mastery rating because we spend a fair deal of time below 93.33% mana.

Excuse me if I am missing something, but I think you ignore the fact that haste and crit are multiplicative to each other. This means the more haste you have, the better crit gets and vice versa. The whole thing does not scale linearly, so all these calculations are totally artificial and you can not make a general statement without watching the individual case, unless there is such a huge difference in viability that you will never cross the breakpoints.

Your calculation is only valid for the first percent if you have neither haste nor crit.

Nerdling · 11/01/10, 1:40 AM

Originally Posted by Kallisti

Excuse me if I am missing something, but I think you ignore the fact that haste and crit are multiplicative to each other. This means the more haste you have, the better crit gets and vice versa. The whole thing does not scale linearly, so all these calculations are totally artificial and you can not make a general statement without watching the individual case, unless there is such a huge difference in viability that you will never cross the breakpoints.

Your calculation is only valid for the first percent if you have neither haste nor crit.

But Mastery is also multiplicative too so for this purpose it's irrelevant that they are multiplicative, I read it as purely an attempt at giving a base value comparison. I did the same myself a while back on the blizzard forums but added in some guestimates to account for MPS based off my experience from testing. The figures are indicative (though maybe it should be pointed out that it is). Ofc the relative values of the stats change in comparison to each other depending on the quantities in a given case however that doesn't negate the the value of a base comparison which aids then in determining what ratio you should have the stats in relation to each other in order to properly min/max.

Apart from giving a full formulation that could account for every possible variation in the ratio giving a base comparison valuation is the only way you really can ascribe relative values to the stats.

Edit typo's

Kallisti · 11/01/10, 9:09 AM

That is true, but there is probably a lot of people who will just look at such postings and then go like "okay, haste is better than crit and mastery, so we solely reforge and gem for haste" or even equip worse items because they favor haste, which might as well be the wrong thing.

It would probably be more interesting to take rough estimates of realistic gear (like avg ilvl 251/264/277) and then calculate the values based on the base stats you are going to have with that respective gear, because that is exactly where reforging and gemming usually comes into play.

I have no idea how the results would look like and neither the time nor the interest to do that (especially since mage is not my main), but if someone likes to theorycraft, I think the approach should at least be kinda realistic and not completely artificial.

Logix · 11/03/10, 4:46 PM

Immense changes to Arcane are incoming on the latest beta build (Build 13241 - Codename Unicorn):

Arcane

* Arcane Blast now increases damage by 10% (down from 20%) and mana cost by 150% (down from 175%) with each cast of Arcane Blast. Now also reduces the casting time by 0.1 sec with each cast. Base cast time reduced from 2.5 sec to 2.35 sec.
* Arcane Missiles base damage has been increased by 5%, from 341 to 358.
* Focus Magic tooltip clarified to add the 30 min duration and 1 target limit.
* Arcane Barrage base damage has been increased by 5%, from [ 1004 - 1228 ] to [ 1054 - 1288 ].

It seems they want to capture the BC essence of AB. I am not too certain how this will play out (it is pretty late for such changes). The lessened damage increase per stack may not be offset by the cast speed reduction, but we will have to see.

I will be getting you some numerical analysis of these changes by the end of the day. Playstyle ramifications will follow as well.

Naturally, the next update to MMS will be delayed again, since I need to model these new changes as well. Apologies for that.

Edit:
Preliminary Spreadsheet Results for Arcane Blast
I have plonked the new numbers into my big 'ol arcane spreadsheet. The results look promising.

DPS is almost identical across all stacks (the new Arcane Blast does slightly more).
DPM is more interesting. AB0 and AB1 have slightly gained DPM, whereas AB2, AB3, AB4 have lost some DPM.
What does this mean?
It means that our "conserve phase" just got a bit more efficient, but our "burn phase" just got a bit more mana hungry.

As a general point, this change essentially trades super sized AB4s for smaller sized AB4s but more of them. So you will probably not be seeing massive numbers anymore (your uber-crits will probably be a little more than half of what they used to do), but you will be seeing more of them.

Edit2:
Major impact to ABr and conserve phase reliability.
Ok so there is some bad news.

The casting speed reduction has unfortunately had a somewhat negative impact into the reliability of ABr during the conserve phase.

As we all know, ABr was balanced around being able to use it reliably with a AB2 rotation. Previously, ABr could reliably be used in an AB2 rotation till ~30% haste. With this change, this 'upper limit' of haste has been reduced to 22% (i.e. above 22% haste, you can no longer reliably cast AB2 ABr - which is a default fallback for a conserve phase rotation).

This becomes a much, much bigger problem when we realize that the 4pc set bonus for mages reduces the cast time of AB by 10%. With the 4pc mage set bonus, AB2 ABr will become an unreliable rotation at only ~12.5% haste. Throwing Netherwind presence, haste totems and proc haste effects into the mix, and we have a very serious problem with keeping our fallback conserve phase rotation reliable, unless we start avoiding haste like the plague (which, in turn, has a massive negative impact on our burn phase dps).

The only way to fix this, is to reduce the cooldown on ABr, or, have some mechanic (maybe haste?) reduce it as well. Alternatively, you can try to bake in a reduction to ABr's cooldown into the 4pc bonus, but that wont be solving the core issue.

More analysis coming soon.

Aldure · 11/03/10, 10:49 PM

I've done the same and run the numbers on the changes. I am getting the same numbers as logix. I extended my calc to the 5th Arcane Blast cast as the 4th stack buff is allocated on the 4th cast and you dont get the dam till the 5th. In pre 4.0.1 ABr and Mbarr used to get the buff so the only thing that gets the buff now is ABlast. From my numbers, the 5th cast is 10% more expensive in terms of DPM even if the spell cost is actually 14% cheaper (the cast time reduction is the thing).

Explaining my conclusion (Spreadsheet soon). If first cast is 2.35 seconds, and every stack reduces cast time by .1 second then the 5th cast is now 1.95 seconds. I dread to think with haste buffs, and hero what the burn rate will be if you decide to spam Ablast will do the numbers. Will adjust my assumptions if they are believed wrong, but from my double checking of this on dummies it seems correct.

Spreadsheet link -> http://godsofwar.org.au/magenumbers.xlsx

-Impacts are, Master of elements becomes a more valuable talent (even when bugged).
-Mana regen with higher mana pools means that 3 and 4 stack blasts become less costly in short bursts. But, when an item procs, you burn hard, then return to conserve phase till next item proc.
-Interweaving smaller burn cycles with smaller regen cycles might be a better method of controlling mana (my opinion).

Kyriani · 11/03/10, 11:01 PM

With the increased consumption in the burn phase with these changes will this affect which metagem would be most optimal for arcane? Historically it's always been the +crit rating/+crit dmg gem but now with our regen tied so tightly to our mana pool size does the Int/+2% mana metagem have a place for arcane at 85?

Logix · 11/03/10, 11:53 PM

Originally Posted by Aldure

Spreadsheet link -> http://godsofwar.org.au/magenumbers.xlsx

I haven't proof-checked the entirety of your spreadsheet, but there are a few errors that may be throwing off some of your calculations.

For example, your base mana cost for AB at 85 is incorrect, which, naturally, is causing your DPM and MPS calculations to be incorrect as well.
I can only surmise that these errors are being caused by a somewhat faulty base mana value for your mage at 85. I have found base mana at 85 to be ~17418.

That being said, your trends are matching my analysis since I the errors seem global, hence, while the exact values are wrong, the relative values (between old and new AB) are correct.

Try to correct these issues and we will take a look at your spreadsheet again.

Originally Posted by Kyriani

With the increased consumption in the burn phase with these changes will this affect which metagem would be most optimal for arcane? Historically it's always been the +crit rating/+crit dmg gem but now with our regen tied so tightly to our mana pool size does the Int/+2% mana metagem have a place for arcane at 85?

The arithmetic for optimal gemming strategies just got a tiny bit more complicated. That being said, after having completed my gemming for my tier 11 85 mage on the beta, I find that the new restriction to CSD may not be as harsh as initially thought, since we will probably end up having to spend a lot of gem slots to make up our required hit.

That being said, a complete analysis on how best to gem is still in the works. Thankfully I hadn't started it yet, otherwise all my work would have been for naught with these new changes.

By the way, I have run some simulations and the issue I eluded to with ABr and the unreliability of conserve phase fallback rotations is worse then I feared.
With very basic gemming (avoiding haste), AB2 ABr is already borderline unreliable in tier 11. Any raid haste effects and/or procs will send it over the edge.
This issue compounds upon itself when we see that the total available mana for a tier 11 arcane mage is not that much more then an entry level raid mage. What this means that our initial assumption that "we will have enough mana for AB3 ABr to become our stable, reliable, mana neutral rotation" is, in fact, incorrect. We are still very reliant on an AB2 ABr rotation as a stable fallback, even in tier 11 gear. However, the change to AB makes this not possible in a realistic scenario.

You may be asking, what does all this mean?

In a nutshell, it means that contrary to intuition, RNG will get worse for Arcane as gear improves. Whereas before we could rely on counteracting bad RNG by falling back to a few AB2 ABr cycles, we now will be forced to ramp higher to AB3s, which means that during our conserve phase, due to bad RNG, we will be forced to consume more mana when we don't want to, and where we didn't need to before, in lesser gear.

What this also means is that as our gear improves, we lose mana management tools/options. AB2 ABr being a stable rotation at lower haste levels serves us as a reliable mana neutral-ish DPS tool. We lose this tool as gear improves.

I cannot stress enough how much of a negative impact this has on Arcane's playstyle. We must find a solution to this, either by reducing ABrs cooldown, or some other effect, like having haste effect it. (A temporary solution, which I do not even want to propose except as a last measure, is to bake in a cooldown reduction of ABr into the 4pc tier 11 set bonus).

Kyriani · 11/04/10, 12:00 AM

Would returning Arcane Barrage's cooldown to its previous 3 seconds fix the issue you see?

Logix · 11/04/10, 12:25 AM

Originally Posted by Kyriani

Would returning Arcane Barrage's cooldown to its previous 3 seconds fix the issue you see?

It most certainly would, however, 3 seconds may be too much since it would trivialize some gameplay.

At 3 seconds, AB1 ABr would become an easily attainable, stable, reliable rotation. It would also allow us to have a reliable mana positive rotation, which is something that I feel blizzard does not want.
Instead, I feel blizzard wants your "mana positive" rotation to be something which is inherently unreliable, but something we gain access to by capitalizing on "good RNG".

What is "good RNG"? Say you find that you are getting lucky with AM procs, you can use AB1 AM AB1 ABr cycles to gain some mana (every so slightly). This is good gameplay.

In short, I feel a reduction of ABrs cooldown to 4 seconds is probably the best bet, since it does not allow AB1 ABr to be a reliable rotation in realistic scenarios.

Either that, or have ABr's cooldown be affected by haste so that even with 4pc t11, AB2 ABr remains reliable.

Edit: Interesting Update
So, remembering the good 'ol days of BC, one of the first things I checked was whether the old gameplay of "buff clipping" is still possible.

For those who do not remember or were not there, back in BC, you could potentially cast an AB0 with the speed bonus of a fully stacked AB if you started the cast with the AB debuff still active, but ended the cast with the AB debuff having faded. This used to let you cast an AB at the speed of an AB3 (AB only stacked to 3 back then and AB didn't increase damage or mana).

After testing it on beta I can say that this 'behavior' is now possible again with the new AB.

If you start casting with ~1 second left on your AB4 stack, you will cast at the reduced cast time of an AB4 (-0.4 seconds), but it will only cost you the mana of an AB0 stack (it will also only do the damage of an AB0 stack).

Now whether this is useful or not, we cannot say, yet. Maybe this will call for investment into the "Early Frost" talent, causing us to weave in a few frostbolts to exploit this mechanic? It will be interesting to see how such a cycle compares to a more straightforward cycle which is ended through conventional means (i.e. ABr or AM).

I will start crunching the numbers.

Aldure · 11/04/10, 3:20 AM

Originally Posted by Logix

That being said, your trends are matching my analysis since I the errors seem global, hence, while the exact values are wrong, the relative values (between old and new AB) are correct.
Try to correct these issues and we will take a look at your spreadsheet again.

Thanks, the values that I used were off the top of my head, I was more concerned with getting the modeling right (also, knowing the correct base mana value also). But I'm glad we've both modeled the trends the same way. Having looked at the mana consumption as well, 1 or 2 things may well need to change before this goes live.

1. The cost - Currently the base cost or the cost multiplier needs to go down with the current RNG issues mentioned by logix. I've posted a similar comment on the RNG element on the suggestion forums a week ago.
2. Abarr CD - Needs to go to 2 or 3 seconds if the new model is to be adopted (.1 sec reduction, 2.35 cast base)

Update: Spreadsheet is updated with base values for 85, added column which shows high burn rates are actually more expensive. So our possible sustained burn periods are actually shorter with the changes.

Elemento · 11/04/10, 6:27 AM

Originally Posted by Logix

AB2 ABr being a stable rotation at lower haste levels serves us as a reliable mana neutral-ish DPS tool. We lose this tool as gear improves.

I cannot stress enough how much of a negative impact this has on Arcane's playstyle. We must find a solution to this, either by reducing ABrs cooldown, or some other effect, like having haste effect it.

I'm not sure why the concern that we won't be able to sustain a reliable AB2 ABr. Cycles we'd use in mana conservation phase (assuming at 85 we're not geared yet to sustain AB3 AM)

Preferred = AB2 AM = 64% chance of an AM proc across 2 AB's (=1 - (0.6*0.6))
Assuming no AM procs = AB2 ABr = 36% chance

So far so good. Now lets look at sets of 2 cyles in a row
AB2 AM, AB2 AM = 40.1% chance (=0.64 * 0.64)
AB2 AM, AB2 ABr or the other way around = 23.0% chance for each (=0.64 * 0.46)
AB2 ABr, AB2 ABr = 12.9% chance (1 - 0.6^4)

If the ABr cooldown only becomes a problem 12.9% of cycles (2 cycles back to back with no proc) why are we worrying? So we may have to throw in a 3rd AB roughly every 8 cycles I can't see that destroying our mana conservation cycle. If it really did make the difference then you could chose to use an AB AM when you get a chance to make up the difference.

Surely reducing the CD on ABr is only required if we want to simply stick to a fixed rotation. Adjusting rotations on the fly is what always has seperated Arcane from other specs and allowed good players to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack

Logix · 11/04/10, 7:38 AM

Originally Posted by Elemento

If the ABr cooldown only becomes a problem 12.9% of cycles (2 cycles back to back with no proc) why are we worrying? So we may have to throw in a 3rd AB roughly every 8 cycles I can't see that destroying our mana conservation cycle. If it really did make the difference then you could chose to use an AB AM when you get a chance to make up the difference.
...
Surely reducing the CD on ABr is only required if we want to simply stick to a fixed rotation. Adjusting rotations on the fly is what always has seperated Arcane from other specs and allowed good players to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack

Because Arcane has no reliable mana positive rotation.

AB2 ABr is not a true "mana neutral" rotation. It is only considered such because of the very principal you describe, i.e. casting a few AB1 AM/ABrs into the mix where possible, coupled with clearcasting procs (for proof of this statement, run MMS with AM and Clearcasting turned off with a AB2 ABr rotation). Essentially, it is only after you have already used RNG to your advantage can you achieve mana neutrality with AB2 ABr. To then say, "just use more RNG to makeup having to cast AB3s" makes no sense, unless we somehow have manipulated the "good RNG" chances of occurrence as well (i.e. somehow altered the proc rates for CC and AM). Which, as the patch shows, is not the case.
AB2 ABr is extremely delicately balanced to produce the mana neutral rotation we need.

But this is only half the story.

Assume for a minute your best case scenario, that we need to ramp to AB3 every 8 or so cycles. That would mean, we would need to spend at least 2-3 cycles of AB1 AM (not AB1 ABr) to make up the lost mana. These are AB1 AM cycles above and beyond the ones we would need to be using anyway. We then compare the DPS, DPM and MPS values of 1 AB3 ABr to 2-3 AB1 AMs. What we find is troubling, i.e. the extra damage gained from the AB3 in no way justifies having to spend 2-3 reduced AB cycles to compensate for it (especially since we will be casting the AB1 cycles at a lower mana % point, hence gaining even less damage from Mana Adept). So we are left at a having to cast a higher AB cycle, which overall is reducing our DPS. Counter-intuitive, yes, but rational.

To complete the picture, we need to understand the longer term impact casting at a reduced mana % has for Arcane. Again, remember, Arcane has no quick fire, reliable method to make small mana gains, so our RNG induced AB1 'makeup' cycles will actually be cast at lower mana % levels.
One core idea of how arcane works, is that performance in one phase spills over into the other, which then spills over into the next super cycle (at least if you trying to maintain performance), due to the way the phases are linked together via evocation. This means that if you get a case of bad RNG in one conserve phase, it will spill over not only into the burn phase of that super cycle, but into the next super cycle as well. The only way to stop this, is by taking significant performance hit.

So no, we cannot just hand wave the issue away and hope that RNG will fix it. Arcane has a ton of RNG happening anyway, RNG that good Arcane mages need to be using already. We can't just keep offloading the specs issues onto RNG and hope for the best. Arcane is a spec about how well you can control, not about how hard you can pray.

To your second point. Reduction of ABr to 4 seconds does not make Arcane static. Not in the slightest. As I described in my previous post, AB1 ABr, even at 4 seconds, is not a reliable rotation. In fact, this change actually has little impact in changing what our reliable rotation set was from the previous day. At the same time, it is a solution which allows the new model of Arcane Blast to work, without causing too much damage to the conserve phase MPS balance.

That being said, nowhere does reducing ABrs cooldown lead to a more static gameplay for arcane. The dynamic play for arcane comes from leveraging procs (AM and Clearcasting), not from using ABr in any specific way. ABr has always been a "my AM hasn't procced and I need to clear my AB stack now" spell. It has no bearing or say in the elements that make arcane dynamic. Not that Arcane is that terribly dynamic in the first place.

Obeast · 11/04/10, 10:40 AM

What is so sacred about mana neutral rotations?

If it's not possible to build a reliable mana-negative rotation (which is what you need to make, by mixing it with the proper proportion of a mana-positive one, a mana neutral rotation for use at the 100% boundary), arcane's mechanics are not destroyed -- you just use an ascending series of mana-positive rotations in the time before a reset via evocation.

This may mean that it's optimal to use AP below 100%, or with a rotation that is not AB spam. But so what? I see nothing about arcane's mechanics that demand the ability to hover at 100% without sacrificing too much damage. If your MPS=0 "rotation" (it is more precisely a mix of rotations) is very bad, then you won't use it, and you'll instead see a series of 2 or more MPS>0 rotations used in such a way as to consume the right amount of mana (an evocation's worth, plus regen) in the right amount of time (time to evocation's CD ending).

Edit -- and yes, this will mean that in some cases bad RNG in the low-MPS cycles will reduce the proportion of high-DPS cycles you're able to use (just as good RNG will sometimes increase it). But, again, so what? Damage will be balanced around whatever the spec can do, on average.