Regarding Tier13 4pc, this is more or less a answer to a post from Maje in the Fire Mage thread, but the more interesting aspects affect the other 2 specalizations.

As long as you are faster in creating x stacks after the buff ( combustion/icy veins/arcane power ) expires, one would assume that x would be the desired number of stacks to gain before activating mentioned buff.

So let's say for combustion with 10 stacks you have a cooldown of 70s. You can start to re-gain Stolen Time after Combustion expires 10s after activation, so you have 60s left to regain 10 stacks. That sounds doable for all fire mages even with low haste/#Pyros.

A frost mage has a icy veins cooldown of ( 180 - x * 15 ) * 0.8 cooldown that leaves ( 144 - x * 12 ) - 20 seconds to regain x stacks.

For x=7 this would mean 40s to regain 7 stacks, the maximum x which looks reasonable.

Same goes for Arcane with 90 - x * 5.25 - 15 resulting in the most interesting case, as the deviation by x is the lowest and numbers will probably be between 7-9. A more exact analysis of the cast frequency would be needed, and to achieve even more perfection Arcane Mage might have to differentiate between phases with and without bloodlust.

Of course one should also not forget about the effect of delaying the first use of the ability in a finite fight.

In SimulationCraft currently only the Frost Mage specialization accounts for the Tier13 4pc Bonus ( but profiles are not yet regenerated ). Better profiles with changes to gear or action priority lists are always appreciated, especially in this case for Arcane.

Edit: And now I'm in the Arcane thread instead of Cataclysm Mage Simulators and Formulators. Sorry.

With 10 stacks of Stolen Time my Arcane power CD is reduced from standard 1.5mins (90sec) to a 37sec CD. This is a reduction of 53sec meaning that each stack grants a reduction of 5.3sec and not the 10sec stated in the tooltip. Is this a bug or a tooltip error or something I missed?

The cooldown is reduced by 7sec per stack, before talents.


EDIT: Err, yeah, 7, not 10. Sorry, copied the error from the poster above. Point is, it's affecting the pre-talents cooldown. Talents are applied afterwards.

Tooltip says 7 sec per stack.

Means:
120s - 10x7s (T13 4pc) = 50s
50s - 25% (Arcane Flows) = 37,5s (round down to 37s)

A brief test as arcane shows that missiles stacks Will of Unbinding on a per-missile basis.

Flame orb does not activate it whatsoever, so an "opener" as arcane if you have this trinket will now end up being pot/precast AB -> up to 2 more ABs to fish for missiles procs -> missiles -> AB x3 -> POM AB -> AP / SoW / gem burn

This will give you 5-6 AB casts (minimum) before using AP. What this allows for is usage of AP while pot / trinket procs / lightweave etc are still up, and while you have 10 stacks of Will up for all ABs cast during AP/gem. 6 AB casts will reduce the cooldown of AP to about 1 minute. At the 1 minute mark, SoW will come off cooldown as well and be available again to do another burn or mini-burn depending how you're playing.

If missiles doesn't proc off the first or second AB cast then you would likely just do 3 more ABs, POM AB and start an AP / gem burn as normal.

Previously, Flame Orb was the highest DPET during a conserve phase since it was a good way to burn clearcasting when you had no AB stacks as it did more damage than a 0 stack AB for significantly less cast time, and cost no mana if used that way. Now, with the tier bonuses and Will of Unbinding, Flame Orb isn't as attractive to cast until you've gotten your 10 stacks of Stolen Time up.

So, what are peoples oppinions for 4s T13?
I was thinking of sticking to 2s T12 (heroic pieces) and 2s T13 (for stolen time).
This would give me more uptime on the stolen time, and I wouldnt burn unnessecary mana due to extra usage on the arcane power.

Personally I dont really see Arcane Power being worth 'spammed' unless u got evo ready along with other cds, whats peoples oppinions on this?

Considering going back to arcane when I saw 4.3.2. nerfing fire again so:p

The lower cooldown on AP is definitely useful, and you do want to essentially spam it. When using AP in a conserve, you just want to use as many ABs as you can during AP, and then do your best to regen with AM once AP is finished. You basically just do a mini burn every time AP is up, and a regular burn when AP and evoc line up.

I'm sure it would be easier with SoW, but it is definitely not required. I don't have SoW.

I'm still getting used to the effect the 4pc has, but here is a pretty clean example of it on H Baleroc yesterday:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Just go to the buff details tab and buffs gained tab, and select the uptime for arcane power, arcane blast, and evocation, and you can see that it is pretty clearly sustainable.

I see, I guess you are probably right on that part. Was just sceptical that the lower mana/mastery dps would suffer cause of that mini burn, but then again I am thinking maybe this can be solved with lowering haste aswell? But then again that would mean you restacked T13 2s faster. Which is again a bad thing, hmm.. My problem atm however is I got too many crit / haste pieces in general and not nearly enough mastery, hehe. So for now I'm staying fire:-P

I didn't say you shouldn't use AP on cooldown (except when near 'true' burn phases, then depending on fight length you could/should delay it a bit), but what I've done while specced Arcane on Ultraxion was trying to keep my mana steady high, even with AP running. In short, I'd still be in a conserve phase, and rotation wasn't altered much.

Here is a log in which I did that and I guess the results were pretty good.

I don't think this is good advice. The following is using data from my stats in Spine gear (as currently logged off), and my Spine logs from last night.

First, the expected benefit from 5% additional crit from Molten Armor for me would be 1.403/1.353 = 1.037, 3.7% more damage.

Now let's calculate the expected benefit from Mage Armor over the same period. My mastery of 21.48 gives a base multiplier of 32.22% extra damage at full mana. Observationally, using Mage Armor I ended most full tendon burn phases at around 60% mana last night. Switching off Mage Armor, I would have lost 4 ticks and ended at 40% mana. So on average let's assume that a tick of Mage Armor will provide the extra damage gained from going from 70% to 75% mana: (1+(0.75*0.3222))/(1+(0.70+0.3222)) = 1.3145% extra damage.

Now we can calculate the benefits of Mage Armor by how long during the tendon burn the extra mana (and thus damage) provided is there for. The worst case would be ticks at 20, 15, 10, and 5 seconds before Seal Armor Breach finishes casting. We calculate the extra damage gained by (20+15+10+5)*1.3145/23 = 2.9%. Compare this to the 3.7% gain from Molten Armor. However, this requires you to have cast Molten Armor at precisely the right time to have gotten the Mage Armor tick at 25 seconds and still been done with your GCD for the Arcane Blast cast at 23 seconds. If your ticks are earlier compared to the end of Seal Armor Breach, it's easier to have gotten Molten Armor off in time, but Mage Armor is worth additional damage by virtue of the extra damage from ticks applying to more Arcane Blasts. For example, with ticks at 23, 18, 13, 8, and 3 seconds, it's worth 3.76% additional damage, about the same as Molten Armor. If you did clip a tick while switching, comparing to ticks at 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5 seconds mean Mage Armor is worth 4.34% additional damage.

In summary, Molten Armor is worth at best 0.8% additional tendon damage (3.7% vs. 2.9%) if you never miss more ticks of Mage Armor than required to switch to it. I don't think the risk is worth the small potential benefit.