Cataclysm Arcane Mage Compendium - Page 27

Esarael · 09/29/11, 7:33 PM

I think it's pretty clear that chaining 20sec APs is impossible, but perhaps a 30sec AP might be viable (which lines up nicely with Evocation's cooldown, 1min or 2min CD trinkets).When I say "a 30sec AP", I mean an AP with cooldown of 27sec, but cast every 30sec.

In order to do that, we'd need 9 stacks of Stolen Time; we would then have to cast 9 ABs in 15 sec. Let's say you'll keep a 4ABAM rotation. Let's also assume you'll be on 1268 haste - with the extra 500 from 10 stacks of Stolen Time, you'll be at the soft cap. This would give us a cast time of:

1.68sec for Arcane Blast 0 stacks
1.60sec for Arcane Blast with 1 stack
1.51sec for Arcane Blast with 2 stacks
1.43sec for Arcane Blast with 3 stacks
1.35sec for Arcane Blast with 4 stacks

So, casting 4ABs would take us 6.22sec and let's say we interrupt AM as soon as we can (that is, we channel it solely for our GCD duration of 1.26sec). Then 4ABAM takes 7.48sec. To get 9 stacks of Stolen Time we'd need to do (in this scenario) 4ABAM4ABAMAB. This would give us a total time of 16.64sec, falling short of our gal of 15 sec.

Notice, however, that while we're casting those ABs we are gaining haste from Stolen Time stacks, so the time it takes for us to get there is actually less than that. I suspect that due to client-server delay, an AB you cast will not benefit from the stack you gained from the immediately preceding AB, but we'll have to test that. Taking all of that into account, I anticipate we might need a little more haste to reach 30sec APs; I will try and model that later.

Please correct me if any of that math is wrong. To be honest, though, I'm more worried about how our mana usage will go around with this set's bonus and with keeping APs on the run. Perhaps we'll need a less mana intense rotation for that, say 3ABAM, and then the time it takes to get to our desired number of stacks change.

I'm very excited about this set's bonus.

Aldure · 09/29/11, 8:16 PM

The other thing that needs to be taken into consideration is that now, 2 Arcane powers (1 full, 1 partial) into 1 hero (40 seconds) could be possible. For Hero:

15 seconds of AP
20 seconds before CD expires again (if you get 10 stacks - ie 70 second reduction).
5 seconds of AP.

Having said that, I believe that looking at the bonus you will end up just rolling Arcane power into what ever rotation you're on at that point in time (Conserve or burn). Gearing means that our mana pool will be higher and as such absorbing periods of higher mana burn. I get the impression that Blizzard has done this type of set bonus to negate such large mana pools but I don't see that being as effective if Shard of Woe (Still BIS) for instance is being used and this reduces the impact of AP cost. How much more valulable Shard of Woe is now? Needs to be modelled.

Edit: Just had a thought, if you can cancel the buff after 1 or 2 stacks, you should be able to bring the AP timer down even more. But this is highly dependent on how the time decrease is applied to the Arcane Power CD. If so, in theory a full 2nd AP could be fit into Hero.

Esarael · 09/29/11, 9:12 PM

The way I understood the set bonus is that the ability's CD is determined by the number of stacks of Stolen of Time on the caster at the moment the spell is cast, though I might be wrong.

In this scenario, two full APs could easily fit into TW, provided the first AP is cast with 10 stacks of Stolen Time.

Time = 00: Time Warp and Arcane Power are cast (40 sec remaining on TW buff, 20 sec remaining on AP cooldown)
Time = 15: Arcane Power buff and Stolen Time fade (25 sec remaining on TW buff, 5 sec remaining on AP cooldown)
Time = 20: AP is off cooldown

If cast until ''Time = 25'', the second AP should fit into the entirety of Time Warp buff's remaining duration. On one hand, casting AP closest to ''Time = 25'' ensures one has as many as stacks of Stolen Time as possible from the beginning, which reduces AP's cooldown and (depending on our haste) may enable us to squeeze in an extra AB during that AP. On the other hand, delaying the cast of the second AP reduces the benefit of mastery during that AP.

I suspect there's a sweet spot in between those two where casting the second AP would be optimal.

Acosmo · 09/30/11, 10:49 AM

On fights where I start off with TW I always keep my burn up until the TW buff is on 0-1 sec, then I use Evocation. This is not always possible since I will end up on 0% mana before TW buff has run out, but if the buff goes off as I'm channeling Evocation I didn't waste as much as I would have. The reason I do this is to not "waste" haste on channeling Evocation. My point here is - do anyone else do this and is it the best way to maximize your DPS?

Tyrian · 09/30/11, 12:24 PM

I get the impression that Blizzard has done this type of set bonus to negate such large mana pools

I interpreted the bonus as a herald of the long-term change Blizzard wants to make for Arcane (aka for the next expansion). The conscious intent is to encourage more frequent decision making, and consequently, more opportunities to make the right or wrong decisions. This should help differentiate player skill a little more.

Lack of decisions needed is something many feel has been increasingly problematic with growing mana pools, with burn phases lasting 45+ seconds, and especially in non-raid content. With this in mind, the set bonus itself is both interesting and exciting.

Eylirria · 09/30/11, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by Proudmoore

A thought occurs. Given that the Arcane Flows talent reduces the Arcane power cooldown by a percentage, will it similarly reduce the cooldown reduction of 4T13? (If my meaning is not clear, in the same way to Early Frost being less than a 0.6s reduction in Frostbolt cast time).

Edit: removed secondary section, was incorrect and unimportant (AP has a 15s duration, not a 20s)

If my math is right, the CD on AP will be 37.5 seconds. Flat reductions come before % reductions. Given AP's base CD of 2mins, it would look like this

120seconds - 70 seconds = 50 seconds.
50 * 0.75 = 37.5

Given average cast times for AB in raid situations, I'd guess we'd be actually pretty close to 40% uptime on the buff, since we'll still have 22.5 seconds left on the "shortened" AP cooldown, and won't have much if any "loss" on the stolen time reduction because we'll rebuild the charges to 10 before we're wasting uptime on AP.

Pyryte · 10/01/11, 9:49 PM

Originally Posted by Acosmo

On fights where I start off with TW I always keep my burn up until the TW buff is on 0-1 sec, then I use Evocation. This is not always possible since I will end up on 0% mana before TW buff has run out, but if the buff goes off as I'm channeling Evocation I didn't waste as much as I would have. The reason I do this is to not "waste" haste on channeling Evocation. My point here is - do anyone else do this and is it the best way to maximize your DPS?

No, this is in fact a DPS loss. You will end up with a non-full mana pool after evocating, making your conservation phase dps even lower. The dps you lose from your conservation phase will outweigh the gain you got from continuing to burn. Having TW doesn't effect your burn phase at all, if anything it will make it quicker because you cast more ABs in a shorter amount of time. You shouldn't alter your play due to timewarp/lust/hero though, just evocate when you normally would and let the haste buff carry over into your conservation phase.

You aren't 'wasting' haste on evocation. If you use evocation once the haste buff is gone, the evocation lasts longer, and thats more time that you're not attacking. This and the reason above are why you just continue to play as per usual when you get hero/lust/TW, or any other haste buff for that matter.

Sinless · 10/03/11, 12:27 PM

Kavan,

Does the newest version of Rawr support custom cycles? I tried to look for it but couldn't find it. The question of course, is, how much better is saving flame orb for a mini burn phase right after evocation compared to using it right before main burn phase and just ignore mini burn phases. I don't think there is a well-established consensus on this, and I'd like to try and use Rawr (or another simulation tool for that matter) to see how those two scenarios compare.

Kavan · 10/03/11, 8:47 PM

The cycle analyzer lets you calculate the cycle data for mini burns (I think it's called hyper regen in the dropdown), but the other calculations outside the analyzer don't use hyper regen cycles, so at the moment you won't be able to do the complete comparison in Rawr. In most cases though you should get a flame orb ready after evocation anyway with top end gear.

From my experience tuning action lists in simc for 4T13 the most you can afford regarding mini-burns on APs is to go down to about 85-88% mana, which results in a tiny ~20 dps increase compared to ignoring mini burns. So if you don't have any multipliers to go with it I would definitely not bother with it.

Morthoul · 10/05/11, 11:49 AM

Resto druids have noted a Shard of Woe nerf on PTR, from 405 to 205. However, it was already doing 205 for Arcane, and this still seems to be the case; my Arcane Blast still goes from 871 to 666 on PTR.

2011 Oct 15: I've continued to check this. It's still 205 for Arcane.

Zaluparizhegokita · 10/09/11, 4:29 PM

Originally Posted by HowToReadPreviousPosts

I'm not sure if this will work, because even the 2pc says that the stolen time buff will be lost when AP expires. But I'm looking forward to test this, if 4.3 hits the PTR probably this week.

Interesting part is that tooltip says 30s on Stolen Time, but looks like that we are going to have it for 15s? (18 glyphed) Isnt it just lame?

Spacedonkey · 12/05/11, 2:13 AM

It is 30s.

fierypower · 12/05/11, 3:15 AM

Is SoW still BiS for arcane even after the nerf?

Gaws · 12/05/11, 4:09 AM

Yes, Heroic Will of Unbinding & Shard of Woe are both BiS for Arcane. The nerf applied to healers, 205 mana for Arcane was already nerfed in T11, afaik.

issok · 12/07/11, 9:08 AM

Originally Posted by Salazay

Another problem i have in mind with that is, that our soft haste cap would be at 1268 - which is, taking an increased itemlvl into account - pretty low. Furthermore this will weaken our burn while TW is active for the first 10 spells after poppinjg AP. Even if flameorb would increase the stack I don't know if the 4p bonus is worth it or if it's better to get some offpieces to have an flat 500 haste increase..

So with the t13 set bonus, should you reforge your haste to 1268 to gain damage increase from mastery etc.? Or is that kind of reforging actually a dps loss?