Cataclysm Arcane Mage Compendium - Page 10

Arcticghost · 05/31/11, 2:54 AM

Reason why they are not hit capped is that Intellect is the best stat even if not hit capped. Intellect increases spell power, crit, improves upon our mastery since one spell takes less % of mana and also helps out in increasing spell power from mana gem. So pretty much reforge any secondary stats to hit to get hit capped but never sacrifice intellect for hit.

silentshift · 05/31/11, 8:20 AM

Being a parsing arcane mage my self the reason they are not hit caped is because are BiS items dont have hit on them. Also as arcane you favor int more then anything else obviously and its better to wear a 372 mastery/crit ring then a hit/mastery 359. Also the extra int you have the easier you can make up for those misses.

Another bit of info for you guys is, the only way to be hit caped as a arcane mage wearing bis gear is to have a hit ring off of conclave, and a neck or wep off of al'akir which alot of top mages still do not have because the loot is just that rng based : /

<Razlopp> of Excessive Gaming, Horde-illidan

kadas · 05/31/11, 3:28 PM

I noticed Silentshift has both Mage Armor and Molten Armor glyphed. Is this just due to the Sinestra fight mechanics or is there benefit to switching back and forth? (Molten during burn phases, for example)

Arcticghost · 06/01/11, 1:59 AM

I'm thinking that he has both glyphs just for sinestra. not having mage armor on during burn rotation on a normal fight can cause that burn rotation to expire very quickly. plus the fact that it costs a gcd to switch anyways.

Sophkel · 06/01/11, 3:24 AM

Quick question about mastery. How exact are the benefits calculated? Does it look at your exact % of mana and calculate off that (e.g. when you are at 95% mana you will get 95% of the bonus) or does it work off mana % break points?

silentshift · 06/01/11, 8:22 AM

Originally Posted by kadas

I noticed Silentshift has both Mage Armor and Molten Armor glyphed. Is this just due to the Sinestra fight mechanics or is there benefit to switching back and forth? (Molten during burn phases, for example)

yes that was just for sinestra and i happen to log off in that gear, also my fire spec was something i put together for cho'gal to mess around with.

Lgs · 06/01/11, 8:26 AM

Originally Posted by Sophkel

Quick question about mastery. How exact are the benefits calculated? Does it look at your exact % of mana and calculate off that (e.g. when you are at 95% mana you will get 95% of the bonus) or does it work off mana % break points?

The former.

So it's 1.5 * Mastery Percentage * (Current Mana Percentage / 100)

soulsever · 06/01/11, 1:46 PM

Something I have noticed recently and may become more important as gear moves forward, but I'm not math inclined enough to know. Is there a braking point on a int vs burn phase % mana goal? To clarify at what point is it no longer worth it to keep burning due to the amount of time spent at low % mana pool vs taking mana back to 100% and start over. I'm finding that even now with int proc's and Clear casting I can actually gain mana in the burn phase.

Lgs · 06/01/11, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by Yagerbomb

Will the 5% nerf to AB kill arcane?

In a stand-still, burn fight like Chimaeron, where Arcane doesn't suffer as much from movement, AB is 80%+ of Arcane's damage (I see some top world parses at ~90%). Losing 5% off of that will have a large impact, but I'm not sure where it will fit in with other multipliers.

Karakkonor · 06/01/11, 4:27 PM

Taking simcraft's Arcane damage breakdown, the Arcane Blast nerf sims out to approximately a 4,33% DPS nerf. Comparatively, Arcane will still be very competitive, just not as lightly overpowered as the rest of the head group.

shammma · 06/02/11, 12:14 AM

Originally Posted by Quantuvis

b) Conservation phase: If your conservation phase is mana neutral, you'll be able to complete your mana neutral rotation more times

None of our sources of mana regen scale with haste (evo cast gets shorter...but w/e). If we are mana neutral casting 10 spells in 15 seconds, we will have a net loss casting 11 spells in 15 seconds, ignoring clearcasting.

Other things to consider:

If you are mana neutral with an ilvl 359 item with haste and then upgrade to the heroic ilvl 372 version, the int gain will probably offset the haste gain in terms of net mana spent pet unit time.

If instead you are mana neutral and then reforge large amounts of crit or mastery to haste with no int gain you will spend more mana per unit time and not be mana neutral.

--

Has anyone plugged some dummy Firelands quality gear into rawr/simcraft to predict whether haste will become significantly stronger without 4t11? Both 2t12 and 4t12 -up to breakpoints- favor haste.

Power · 06/02/11, 7:30 AM

I will try to explain:
Arcan gameplay can be described with two simple rules:

1. spend all your mana
2. spend your mana at the best possible damage/mana ratio

If you increase your haste this happens:
You shorten your burn phase (which has a really bad damage/mana ratio) and spend the mana and time 'saved' + the time 'gained' form haste on a longer conservation phase (which has a good damage/mana ratio).
This means you still spend all your mana, but you do this at a better damage/mana ratio.

Lurama · 06/02/11, 10:07 AM

Something that I have thought about doing, but haven't had the time to test out yet; is to delay the burn cycle until after the random chance procs from trinkets and power torrent. Normally all of my random procs occur within the first 20 seconds of a given fight. My main reason for thinking this could be viable is the way that Mastery works into damage for arcane mages and the fact that it is based off of the current mana % and these procs can send me to 70% or less mana. Even if I was near full mana to start with.

Has anyone played around with this notion or done any TC to work out numbers?

Shendow · 06/02/11, 12:27 PM

I might be wrong, but I think mastery bonus ignores temporary int bonuses for the calculation of the bonus, which is why Angayelle's addon is so useful.

However, doing your technique of wating for these buffs to proc is a good one in the begining of the fight, in order to extend your mana pool a little bit by using your managem efficiently, and then extending the burning phase duration.

hackers · 06/02/11, 2:55 PM

Originally Posted by Kavan

The solution is x = (R / (1 + h) - C2) / (C1 - C2).

So what this means is that if you increase haste the dps of the mana neutral cycle mix will increase.

Also, it increases the damage while favoring the D2 cycle (x decreases with haste). Generally the D2 cycle also has a higher hit (and therefore crit) rate per second decreasing time between procs and increasing mana returned from MoE.

If we are mana neutral casting 10 spells in 15 seconds, we will have a net loss casting 11 spells in 15 seconds, ignoring clearcasting.

Keeping the same cycle mix this would be true. The only way to keep it mana neutral is to change the cycle mix to deal with the delta to haste. What he might have said that would be more correct is this:

b) Conservation phase: If your conservation phase is mana neutral, you'll have more cycles of lower DPS, better mps but in the end will have greater damage

This isn't to say that these effects are as great of a contribution to damage as mastery or crit. Haste has as much to do with mana regen as crit, but the effects are secondary (and Clearcasting/MoE only account for 4% of our total resources). The only way I can see pushing the value of haste is to have more low ICD low proc rates that are highly beneficial.

Edit: The 2t12 set has a 3s icd 20% proc rate. Since we will be losing a lot of haste through 4t11, this will likely bring the value of haste on gear up a bit.