Arcane Mage Compendium 5.2. - Page 2

Spazzster · 02/22/13, 9:18 AM

I have just recently started to do the same thing that zimzamzoom mentioned, however I have no logs with concrete evidence that getting the extra tick on NT is worth it or not. Obviously, simcraft continuously is putting it as a dps increase given the action list I have described (which is similar to the scorch weaving method that most mages are using at this point). To note, Frost armor in general seems to be a dps increase according to simcraft. As I said though, I have no logs to back this up. However, I do have this;

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/76387164/495...%20Scaling.png

This is a scaling of the next 2500 points for my personal character on a "helterskelter" fight - 495 mage with 4 pc. I expect most people will be the same. I think we can safely say that at this point, there is no obvious Mastery>Haste benefit and if either of them DO benefit over the other it will be a matter of playstyle and fight mechanics.

Also, the one caveat to swapping to frost armor is that I swap back to Mage Armor when using Living Bomb since the haste required to get an extra living bomb tick is simply out of reach at this point.

Timisoreanu · 02/26/13, 12:51 PM

Doesn't matter wich one you use since the values of both are way to close because people looks at those 2 spells in part like single units. Mage armor = 10% extra damage, Frost armor = 7% haste. The result is obvious without even taking a paper and a pen.

The real question is : What is better, haste or mastery?

In order to answer to that question you need to test each with specific gear, buffs, and eventually spell rotation modification like:

Test1: BiS haste based gear, frost armor, gems, enchants and reforges = x Damage for a 5 min dummy fight. (10 tests and make an average)
Test2: BiS mastery based gear, mage armor, gems, enchants and reforges = x Damage for a 5 min dummy fight (10 tests and make an average).

rh8452 · 02/26/13, 1:50 PM

Mage armor is not quite a flat 10% damage increase though. It is only 10% for a spell that you cast which goes off when you are at 100% mana, which is generally not the case. Even playing optimally, most of your spellcasts will go off between 90-99% mana. in addition, there are times in a fight when "burning" is worth it - during haste buffs such as heroism or lei's hope on heroic Sha, for instance, or towards the end of a fight when the boss is going to die.

Because a mana gem grants additional mana based on haste, it is often worth spamming AB and not using scorch down to as low as 70% mana during such buffs, as the gem use will bring you back to 100%.

In addition, if rune of power is going to require a recast or an unavoidable movement period is anticipated such as for attenuation on Vizier, one may cast multiple ABs down below 90% mana because spamming scorch during movement will be mana positive, resulting in you being back at 100% mana by the movement period's end.

So over the course of an actual fight, you are probably getting more like 9.2 to 9.5% damage out of mage armor.

♦ nathanbp · 02/27/13, 5:54 PM

Mage armor is not a 10% damage increase in any case unless you're starting from zero mastery (which is impossible since we get 16% base). Looking at Logix's current gear for example, he has 45.29% mastery, so Mage Armor is an increase of (1+.4529+.1)/(1+.4529) = 6.88% damage at full mana. Note that Frost Armor's haste multiples with other haste bonuses so it does actually increase your haste by 7%.

Timisoreanu · 02/28/13, 2:45 AM

Originally Posted by nathanbp

Mage armor is not a 10% damage increase in any case unless you're starting from zero mastery (which is impossible since we get 16% base). Looking at Logix's current gear for example, he has 45.29% mastery, so Mage Armor is an increase of (1+.4529+.1)/(1+.4529) = 6.88% damage at full mana. Note that Frost Armor's haste multiples with other haste bonuses so it does actually increase your haste by 7%.

Was stating the damage bonus just from mage armor alone.

Our actual damage increase = % increase from mastery * mana percentage.

Mage Armor provides 3000 mastery wich means 10% extra mastery, thus extra damage. Check rh8452's post.

Prokaryt · 02/28/13, 3:12 PM

Since mastery is additive and haste is multiplicative directly comparing 10% mastery to 7% haste wont work. Mage armor increases mastery by 3000 and at all gear levels 3000 mastery is 10% damage. Frost armor increases haste by 7% and consequently will translate into more than a 7% increase is casting speed. Ramifications include better scaling on frost armor for one. Its not as easy as comparing 10% to 7% because the two stats behave differently. As you can see below the added casting speed is greater than 7% above 0 haste.

Mastery 0: 100% Damage+10%= 110% Damage
Haste 0: 1.00 Casting Speed*1.07= 1.07 Casting Speed (+7%)

Mastery 1: 116+10= 126% Damage
Haste 1: 1.16*1.07= 1.2412 Casting speed (+8.12%)

Mastery 2: 125+10= 135% Damage
Haste 2: 1.25*1.07= 1.3375 Casting Speed (+8.75%)

1% more Haste does not mean 1% more damage necessarily but the same can be said of 1% more mastery due to mage mechanics. As pointed out earlier mastery's value is not 100% realized. I would even say 9.5% is overstating the realistic benefit from mage armor and 9% is more in line with current game play due to imperfect rotations and movement requirements (Assuming ~25% casts at 95% mana, ~25% at 85% and ~50% at 90%).

Edit: Sorry for all the % signs :P I tried tog et rid of as many as possible to make it more legible

rh8452 · 02/28/13, 9:55 PM

Haste from frost armor is difficult to quantify damage-wise. If assuming from 0, 7% haste translates to "7% more spells cast" which linerarly equates to 7% damage. However, because you will also realize additional mana regen out of haste and greater mana returns from mana gem or other mana sources, this means less scorch (or filler spells in general) which means more overall damage per cast.

So mastery stacking means "fewer spellcasts but they hit harder, more scorches"
Haste stacking means "more spellcasts but they hit for less, less scorches".

Considering scorch is largely irrelevant since the patch removes it from arcane's toolset, but on some fights like protectors or other heavily multitarget fights you could already replace scorch with putting another nether tempest up on an adjacent target, especially when you had the cleansing waters buff which made using scorch nearly pointless because your mana regen was so significantly boosted.

With enough haste in T15, on multitarget fights it is possible that the current arcane "rotation" could be maintained except scorch would be replaced with putting another NT up. You would simply focus the boss/kill target, focus AB and missiles and otherwise tab through other targets putting NTs up as filler to fish for missiles procs.

Monny · 03/19/13, 5:06 AM

So, now that scorch is gone I have been using Frostfire Bolt during mana conservation, but it feels sub-optimal.
I keep using Rune of Power, and I have been considering joining the melees in some fights to use AE instead. The spell itself allows good conservation since it both procs AM and refreshes charges, but is not suitable for any fight where the boss is not static for long periods. Any different approach to the missing scorch?

Timisoreanu · 03/19/13, 6:25 AM

RoP is still superior to Invocation, however there's alot of movement involved in ToT so using RoP will be tricky because you will end up casting it more times then necesary. To prevent this you will need to anticipate future positions, sometimes simply not cast it during encounters like Durumu or Tortos where constant moving is mandatory.

In 5.2 there are 2 possible arcane builds: mastery based and haste based. Mastery is still better than haste but less mobile. AC stacking is gone so instead of using FFB or any other spell, just break the stacks with AM then build them again. I will update the thread with 5.2 changes today.

Meanwhile I strongly recommend frost until you have at least 25% crit unbuffed then just swap to fire

rh8452 · 03/21/13, 5:35 AM

With mage bomb being buffed significantly you can play perfectly viably on some fights like council by simply doing the following with invocation or ROP:

Keep NT on all targets
Missiles / AB to 4-stack
barrage when first NT is about to fall off if 3+ targets will be hit otherwise just camp 4-stack while reapplying NT and use excess missiles procs up
explosion / glyphed cone of cold when many targets ie. sand elementals / bats / etc
evocate to maintain invocation buff or keep rune down
repeat

You could play with invocation if you wanted the ability to burst a kill target quickly (loa spirit, various horridon adds) or ROP if there was limited movement.

This sadly does a spectacular amount of damage on such fights because of how ridiculous the bomb buff was for arcane.

It should also be noted that if you put NT on a target which is frozen, the entire dot duration will now benefit from shatter as dots snapshot. Thus if there is a frost mage in your raid you should coordinate with them or set auras up so you can reapply dots to things which are affected by deep freeze, particularly bloodlord / flame caster adds on horridon, loa spirits, etc.

Timisoreanu · 03/21/13, 5:43 AM

Indeed. NT is amaizing for arcane as it scales amaizing with haste , in fact is best in any spec unless you have alot of targets(6+). Still, on encounters like Council, where you have to kite add, move from charge, move to stack / not stack makes it really hard to pull decent numbers and RoP is more or less useless there. Invocation works fine tho.