Potential huge noob question incoming, but I've found nothing else regarding the issue.

My mage is an orc, an herbalist, and I use Soul Casket. With all that in mind, and the fact that evo and gem have 2 minute cooldowns just like ALL the rest of that, is it best to actually delay arcane power to line them up with all of those, or to actually use it every cooldown regardless of stacking CDs for burn phase?

I find that there is usefulness in knowing the total % of your current mana to the max mana with procs and using that to compare to total % of your current mana to your base mana without any procs. Here is why, the procs don't only happen during the burn phase. In the conservation phase your mana stays at or should stay at around 90-100% even with procs, if you have enough mana regen and critical hits return 30% base mana with Master of Elements. Where I see this as potentially useful, is to know how much mana that you are over the base mana with procs activated so that you can fully use that mana without wasting it when the procs end.

I actually started working on an addon with a similar premise as this just a few days ago, with some other useful information that I find useful. This is the first AddOn I am creating so it might take a little bit for me to complete. When I have finished, I will make a post here so everyone can try it.

I went through my calculations again, and it turns out as long as you are dealing more than 8kdps it will be more effective to cast AP whenever it is off of CD. Here is a link to a graph of dps for 6 minutes comparing using all the CDs at once and using AP whenever it is off of CD. http://i861.photobucket.com/albums/a...lculations.jpg

is this just a tooltip bug, or is it affecting mastery bonus. One guy over at wow forum said he ran separate test varying in mastery rating and noticed he didn't gain damage increase as he should have.

in other words, will this fix increase our dps?

I've not testing myself so I'm unsure. Going by what is said in the Blizzard Forum 4.1/4.1a it's a tooltip error.

4.1/4.1.0a Known Issues & Bug Reports - Forums - World of Warcraft


However it would not be the first time Blizzard have gotten the wrong end of the stick. I have confirmed that the tooltip damage is not being affected by mana levels but I can't say yet whether this is just a broken tooltip problem or that the mastery is "broke". If it is broke the data I have at the moment suggests it is broken enabled so that the bonus multiplier is in effect and at worst is not being reduced by having lower mana.

Please note that the burn phase is initiated by the availability of evocation as soon as you hit around 35% mana and not by arcane power. Since the cooldown of evocation is 2 minutes, this should like up nicely with trinkets, mana gem and other on-use effects.

I might be mistaken, but I believe he was wondering if he should use AP as it comes off CD. Not that that would start the burn phase, but rather to use AP in your conserve phase. You could potentially squeak out an additional AP this way depending on the fight length. But I think the general consensus is to save it for the burn phase (i.e. wait until evo is about to be back up and time it with your mana gem and/or trinkets). This will have to be a bit fluid depending on fight mechanics though.

@angayelle: Its about your addon. I would like to see an another timer next to TimeToOOM: TimeToDie. I think it would be a big help to decide when start the final burst phase. And if the two timer showing nearly the same value at AB4 a message can pop: Start Burs Now!
With this we could easyly finish the boss fight without going OOM to early, or with wasted mana.

I thought about it too, currently using TimeToDie addon, only problem is that it would be useless when targeting adds but not that problematic. Thanks for the suggestion, keep it coming but on PM, no need to clutter the thread.

Sorry for the delay getting back but I can confirm it is only a bug in the tooltip damage, the mastery is fully working as intended. Using AM I was able confirm that at full mana AM was hitting for 1.X where X is bonus damage I should get due to Mastery at full mana and at just above 0 mana Am was hitting for almost the value displayed on the tooltip as expected.

I haven't seen this analysis before, so I thought it would be interesting to post it here for everyone to see. In arcane an important portion of performance comes from handling the conservation phase. A key component there is a balance between being as close to 100% as possible and not wasting any mana. The closer you are to 100% the more likely it will be that you will waste some mana. What is the exact relationship between percent mana you are trying to maintain and the amount of wasted mana is unclear, but it would help to have a way to make an informed decision about this tradeoff.

One way to look at this would be through simulation. Here instead I'll take an analytic approach. The basis for this is a gear set with a mix of 359 and 372 gear with 117672 mana, 9222 spell power and 24.62% mana adept. The mana neutral cycle in this situation maintains a base 17469 base dps without mastery and is achieved as a mix of two cycles at 3.28 dpm tradeoff.

Let's say we're trying to maintain average mana level at x ratio. In this situation our conservation dps is 17469 * (1 + x * 0.2462). On the other hand if we waste on average y mana per second that will result in a loss of dps about 3.28 * 1.2462 * y. Using this we can now make an informed decision about how close to 100% it's safe to be based on how much mana you would be wasting on average. Raising our average mana level by x is worth it if it doesn't result in increased mana waste of more than (17469 * x * 0.2462) / (3.28 * 1.2462) = 1052 * x mps. So an increase of 1% is justified if we're not wasting more than 10.52 mps. As a comparison mage armor ticks for 4236 mana every 5 seconds or 847 mps. We see that the threshold for not wasting too much mana is about equivalent to 1% of mage armor ticks. The optimum level of mana to maintain will depend on the exact relationship between mana level and wasted mana, but at least intuitively the numbers show that it's safer to be more worried about not wasting mana than it is to be worried about being as close to 100% as possible.

This may seem odd, but how does the 2% max mana metagem stack up against the 3% crit damage?

Even at fairly modest gear levels, it seems to give around 80-85 mp/5

I'm delving into semantics here, but this description is inaccurate. 95% does not ordinarily correspond to when Arcane Mages use Mana Gem.

More accurately: 95% (in this context) refers to the highest value Arcane Mages feel safe hovering mana at during the Conserve phase, without wasting Mage Armor ticks. And to a much lesser degree, replenishment. For current gear levels, this does not correspond to where Arcane Mages should use Mana Gems.

Lets assume we have ~100k mana. Our mana gem restores on average 12.1k, thus we use it at ~88% mana, not 95%.

With higher gear levels these values will eventually co-incide, but people should know that the Hover Value the mod picks - defaulted to 95 - is not when you should be using a Mana Gem. Not in current gear at least. The correct value will vary a little depending on gear and raid buffs, but is more likely to be ~85-92%.

In case others were wondering whether to note it, I mentioned in PM to angayelle there could be two lines on the right instead. One at 95%* (aka the Hover Threshold), and the other at (Max Real Mana - 12 100). The Mana Gem icon should be next to the latter, not the former.

* I just say 95% because it's a clean number. Some people feel more comfortable with 90% or 97%. It really is just personal preferance.

Item - Mage T12 4P Bonus no longer affects Arcane Missiles, and no longer allows it to be casted while moving. Now changes Arcane Power to decrease the cost of spells by 10% instead of increasing their cost.

No idea about the impact on DPS but definitely takes away the fun factor.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this new 4T12 is just lame for arcane mages.

Today AB costs 870mana and 4AB costs 6090mana. With AP up, AB is 957mana but stacks cost is based on 870mana + base cost which is 957; therefor we have 4AB at 6177mana (870*6+957).

With 4T12, with AP up, AB is 783mana and 4AB 6003mana.

Difference between now and 4T12 : 6177 - 6003 => 174mana / AB

A typical burn phase is about 16~20 AB... let's say 18 AB.
-> 4T12 is about 18x174 = 3 132 mana economy, woot I can fire another AB... I'm really excited... or not...

Adding the fact that 4T12 is only based on AP usage, which is a 2min cd... yeah not so much of an awesome bonus

Do they ever do some math before implementing a 4p bonus ?

Who know's they'll probably change it again before it's finalized. But it would make Shard of Woe stronger if this is the final 4pc, I could also seeing it cause the value of mastery for arcane to increase slightly.

This new 4p bonus seems really underpowered as compared to some of the others. Not only is AP on a 1.5 minute CD but it only lasts for 15 seconds. During that 15 seconds you can only cast 11 to 15 AB, which would only net 1914 to 2610 mana per AP. That is not even enough to cast half an AB. It might be a little bit more balanced if they made the 10% mana reduction a passive ability, that is active all the time from having AP. Personally I was looking forward to the mobility increase from the old bonus.

Just did a little napkin math while eating my lunch here.

I'm assuming 870 mana base cost for AB.
I'm using 150% * base cost * stack number to determine the Mana Cost.
For AP mana cost I'm just adding 10% of the mana cost to get the cost during AP.
Mana 4T12 is 90% (10% reduction in cost) of the mana cost.

Thus, assuming the 16 AB casts (estimate) during AP (all at 4 stacks) you save 16704 mana.

So that's on par with Mana gem mana...

EDIT: formating.

Your formula for mana cost is off, it should be BASE + BASE*1.5*STACK.

So, mana cost would be:
0 - 870, 1 - 2175, 2 - 3480, 3 - 4785, 4 - 6090

The mana cost for AP uses a strange formula as well (assuming the tooltip mana cost is correct): (BASE*1.1) + BASE*1.5*STACK. Only the starting mana cost changes, the increase per stack is not affected by the increase. Assuming 4T12 uses this formula, we have an updated table:

Stack #	Mana Cost	Under AP	4T12	Difference
0	870	957	783	174
1	2175	2262	2088	174
2	3480	3567	3393	174
3	4785	4877	4698	174
4	6090	6177	6003	174

All the current costs correspond to current tooltip costs, without shard equipped. It's interesting that AP currently doesn't affect the scaling of the cost at all, it just increases the cost by a static amount, no matter the number of stacks.

I was doing some trend analysis on what the 'top geared' arcane players (wowprogress top 25 excluding those in pvp gear at the time the sample was taken) are allocating thier ratings, hit/haste/crit/mastery (I was at work and needed a distraction). but more importantly what I was seeing I wasn't able to replciate on rawr- it was always maximising hit however these guys where not; and i find it unlikely the additional intellect at 372 v. 359 (~ +300) made up for such a dramatic reduction in +hit

Avg: 1,515 (14.79%)
MedL 1,504 (14.68%)
St. Dev: 105 (±1.02%)

* rating manually adjusted for racial +1% hit for consistancy

Rather than do some bad math at the moment I was thinking that the reduction in dmg/dps caused by a miss is minimal compared to those gained during the burn phase from increased Mastery / Critical Strike.

Is this premise reasonable? Has anyone done any work to show how hit should be reduced as gearing scales?

It's entirely due to extra int on 372 pieces. Hit is still far and away the best secondary stat, but int is nearly twice the value of hit in BiS gear. In addition, since CS can no longer miss, there is no reason to hit cap for the sake of interrupting.

It isn't that hit is bad and should be reduced, it's that int is so much stronger, and unfortunately 372 gear has very little hit on it, along with trinkets having nothing to reforge.

For MageManaBar, I have a question: What does the level slider stand for? I think overall it's a great addon that does what it's supposed to, thanks !