It doesn't matter whether you have mana issues or not: Enchanting Spellsurge will not solve them if you do and enchanting intellect won't help either. Adding 600 mana is only giving you a further 1.4 fireball before OOM. Hardly a change to consider.
Given that you're a little strapped for cash I'd say the only option open is +40spell. The question essentially was if you'd want to go for shadowfrost/sunfire or the cheaper +40. There is speculation that +30int may be better than +40dmg given a 2/5*T5 and a 25-man, T6-level raid in 2.4 arcane spec but the jury is still out and this of course does not affect your 5-man experience in the least (or your prospect for kara, or anything at all unless you spec arcane in 2.4). Spellsurge is so horribly bad it's practically nonexistent for DPS casters. For certain types of healer, it's another issue because unlike DPS, there -is- such a thing as too much healing.
Spellsurge is actually not bad. When I was arcane specc back in SSC I always kept an spellsurge weapon which i swapped in when the internal cooldown was over and I proposed my normal party members to do the same. with Arcane Missiles, 1.5 sec ABs or as a Shadowpriest, surge proccs very fast, so you don't lose very much (20 spelldmg AT MOST) but gain almost 50 mp5 (5x10mp5 if everyone in the group has it).
Of course this doesn't apply to liquiz because he is stressed on money and is not arcane specc, just wanted to mention it. I definitely plan on testing arcane in 2.4 and my Spellsurge Fang of the Leviathan (or Spellsurge Tempest of Chaos, if Fortuna is kind) will be part of that. Hopefully my fellow mages are not too greedy to test it too.
My PVE run will only go until I run out of quests (group quests don't count) in SMV and Netherstorm (I have barely touched any quests in either place). Being 70 and having a ton of quests should alleviate the immediate cash problem, double gold on a turn in never hurts.
From the sounds of things the +damage is probably the better way to go for the short term, both in cost and speed of taking things down. After all I am fire spec and quick kill is usually the reason you are fire spec, though I will be re-speccing ice or arcane as needed further into raiding.
The spellsurge sounds like it really starts to shine when it's planned and when its done as a group of people. If I get another decent 1h mage weapon to drop I may look at having this as a spare for those fights where my job isn't so much dps as it is support.
To eliminate OOM in a long fight the only answer has to be better management of my gem(s), the scorch/fireball rotation and when to evocate. I do try and pay attention to the theory crafting thread, so Ill go back through that and see what I can pick out to do that.
I'm curious about something. Right now our guild is farming T6 content in preparation for Sunwell. Given that we aren't trying to progress on any bosses, and we're down to 2 nights a week raiding, how important would you say that pushing for higher DPS is? I ask this because I'm the worst geared of all our raiding mages, so I've got practically no chance of topping any meters unless I go full-out consumables. However, being the cheap bastard I am, I'd rather do competent DPS and save money by using Mage Armor, Mana Emerald, Shattrath Flask, no pots unless necessary, no Flame Cap/Destro Pot, etc. Is it worth going balls-to-the-wall DPS for farm content, or are meters irrelevant at this point?
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
If everything else is truly equal (gear, skill, etc.) then the pure dps class should beat the hybrid. If a raid chooses to run without rogues, mages, warlock or hunters, they should expect their overall dps to be lower. You can quote me on that.
My take on it is that you do what you enjoy. Personally I don't really raid for loot (or rather, don't have anything left to loot) and bosses don't really offer a challenge anymore. The only challenge left is outdoing your previous best and analytically cut down on your mistakes. I'd rather spend the extra gold and enjoy the farming time rather than just farming for the sake of getting ready for sunwell.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I'm curious about something. Right now our guild is farming T6 content in preparation for Sunwell. Given that we aren't trying to progress on any bosses, and we're down to 2 nights a week raiding, how important would you say that pushing for higher DPS is? I ask this because I'm the worst geared of all our raiding mages, so I've got practically no chance of topping any meters unless I go full-out consumables. However, being the cheap bastard I am, I'd rather do competent DPS and save money by using Mage Armor, Mana Emerald, Shattrath Flask, no pots unless necessary, no Flame Cap/Destro Pot, etc. Is it worth going balls-to-the-wall DPS for farm content, or are meters irrelevant at this point?
I think you can split the difference; go all out on Teron or Rage and slack off the rest of the week.
You want to have some idea of where your raid dps is at going into Sunwell.
Currently I've got my eyes set on haste gear out of ZA (Cloak, Neck, Boots, Sword) , and Belt of Blasting (come on 2.4!). Those pieces aside, I can't seem to come up with any other ways to upgrade my gear without killing Vashj, or Moving into BT (Neither of which are attainable for my current guild atm).
No WWS to share, sadly, but Recount shows my effective DPS at around 1100 overall (in Kara/ZA typically with just a Spriest) and around 1300 or so on boss fights. Double IV/Pet on all fights, and on longer fights using them 3 times.
My typical cast rotation is frostbolt til a mob is at 20-25% health, switch targets and cast a new bolt (to take full effect of haste, and lose as little casting time as possible). When there is only one target (or last target) I'll finish with Fireblast/CoC.
I think I've got it all just about down, but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
First
Having read about CD management, and knowing when it's best for ME to use Comb/IV/trinks/pots etc...I still run into issues where shamans pop Bloodlust at what seem like random times. I know that "I" want bloodlust right as the mob hits 20%, that way I am fully powered up in execute range. I have tried to explain this to them, but it doesn't seem to sink in real well. I am one of 3...count them 3 total mages in our guild...so it's hard to explain why it helps...some might call it "greedy".
Are the benefits of using my CD's in execute range better than using them under bloodlust...granted I am not in really long fights, so I might not always get 2 shots at IV/Combustion/trinkets in a single fight if IO pop them right a the beginning. we are a pretty small guild thats made it to Shade in Kara at this point, and I know there are some loot options that I really want to try for there.
Second
I have gotten enough badge rewards to get the Runed Spell Cuffs, but there are other items that I sorely need to replace, and while starting to stack some haste might be nice...I might need some other items first. Shoulders/Boots/Trinkets(thinking Icon)
You need to get on the same page with your shaman. Our elem shaman saves Bloodlust for 20% if he has any fire mages in his group, and if I end up in a resto shaman group they typically just wait for me to call out Bloodlust in vent.
I think there are still a lot of people that are concerned with their own numbers, and less concerned about the "groups' numbers. I will continue to work with them on syncing this up though.
From day one I have always raided as fire and done quite well. Now that our guild has bt/hyjal on farm i'm looking to mix it up a bit and have some fun playing with arcane. As fire I have always been top of the damage meters but after reading alot about arcane I have decided to raid this week as arcane for fun. Of course I am still concerned about doing very good damage but don't exactly have a great idea about spell rotation.
I shouldn't have a problem coming up with a spec, but am interested to know how spamming AM compares to a AB AM rotation, or AM spam while AP is up vs AM with AP up. I have some haste gear and am able to use the haste offhand from badges *if* it would be a better option than chronicle. If someone could check me out on armory and let me know their opinion of what rotation would work best for my gear I would appreciate it.
If you put your stats in a simulator like Vontre's or Lhivera's you'll see for yourself how AM compared to AM/AB rotations is. AM Spam doesn't exist. It's amazingly shit, scales terribly and a truly low-DPS spam.
If you put your stats in a simulator like Vontre's or Lhivera's you'll see for yourself how AM compared to AM/AB rotations is. AM Spam doesn't exist. It's amazingly shit, scales terribly and a truly low-DPS spam.
Allright thanks. So basically just as I thought- Fire = win until *possibly* 2.4 shows us something amazing with Haste+AM spam
Man, nothing will ever make AM win anything, it scales worse with everything, starts off bad and increases bad. There will never ever be a way to make AM Spamable in the close future aside of a serious rework. No amount of stacking anything will make AM spam better than any other spam.
Arcane blast is the core of an arcane dps spec (which might exist in 2.4), and arcane missiles is just not viable enough for anything besides a situation in where you don't want any spell pushback if you spend 5/5 in improved arcane missiles (which you prolly won't because its not a very intelligent choice in talents :P )
<@Terror> "It's easy to forget what a sin is in the middle of a battlefield."
<@cky> opposite over hypotenuse
The only reason i ask is because i'm bored at the moment since I have always been raiding as fire. We clear bt/hyjal in 2 days and i'm just looking to go another spec to stay awake and interested during even if it means sacrafcicing some damage (which im sure it will if i'm not fire). I wouldn't mind going deep arcane and doing the AB spam thing but I don't have 2 piece t5 so i'm not sure if that means it wouldn't be viable. I do however have TLC (allthough im not sure if it is good to use for ab spam vs icon or quag eye).
We just have the last 2 of bt tonight and then hyjal so if anyone wants to give me some advice on a good ab spam spec that I can try out I'd appreciate it! Mostly wondering if Pom pyro> icy veins for arcane spec which I'm assuming it is since at the moment AB spam reaches GCD but correct me if i'm wrong.
Forgive me if this has been posted about. It's brief in case it has. I have some more pictures as well of other frames of note.
I believe Mages can actually cast faster than the Arcane Blast debuff will apply. The result, I believe is that you spend 2.5 seconds casting, but pay for the mana cost of the stack size on you. For instance, you pay normally for the first cast. The second cast will be 2.5s, but you might pay 341 mana since mana is done at the end of the cast. Here's a quick compressed version of the video I took: ArcaneBlast-Xvid.avi - FileFront.com
The one I used to search through the frames was the larger version, just in case. Here's the most interesting pic out of them all, Frame 257 in VirtualDub. This basically catches what I'm wondering about: http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/1...257specik7.jpg
Are you refering to when you start your 3rd AB cast w/ less then 1.5 seconds left on the debuff so it casts in 1.5 seconds but it costs you the mana for a regular un debuffed AB?
Are you refering to when you start your 3rd AB cast w/ less then 1.5 seconds left on the debuff so it casts in 1.5 seconds but it costs you the mana for a regular un debuffed AB?
The opposite, actually. My second cast of AB takes 2.5s, but I'm guessing I pay the mana cost of the 2.1s cast (one debuff). With Arcane Meditation, I can't turn off mana regen inside the 5sr, so it's a bit difficult to see what I'm being charged.
On the PTR, with no talents, I actually confirmed this suspicion. I get this (ignore the goofy PTR name):
This is one frame before the AB debuff is applied on the second cast of AB, to give you an idea how long it's taking to apply on the PTR. On live, it doesn't take near as long, but this shows the debuff application can lag terribly (Also, these were taken at 1:00am, CST). 7766-7571 = 195 mana, so we get what we paid for here. http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2...rame261ds4.jpg
This was the frame where mana was subtracted from the bar. Remember, I have no i5sr regen, so it never moved.
7571-7230= 341 mana, the price of AB at one debuff, yet I didn't get my ~0.334 seconds off. http://img48.imageshack.us/img48/783...rame375ha3.jpg
This isn't limited to the first cast with no debuffs. The same can happen going from 2 debuffs to 3, and you pay 1043 mana for the 1.8s version. I saw this while I was in TK tonight. =/
This is a known fact for quite a while now. The server side delays a fraction with confirming "you have the debuff". Since the stopcasting change and the 2.2 AM nerf nobody has bothered with it much.
Nowadays some claim that in fact it's merely quartz that is missinforming us of the time it takes to cast; ie, the 2nd spell is in fact casting at 2.2 just your cast bar is wrongly displaying 2.5. You need to refer to your timestamped logs to accurately gauge what's going on.
The problem is that the combatlog is just as misleading. It works on local timestamps, which is debatably ends up being pretty much the same as looking at the quartz value.
Oh and roywyn - the quartz hack to display the total cast time is now in quartz directly. I made a feature request to get this added, and it got accepted Sad thing I got no dice on my request to display channelled spells ticks on the cast bar.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I'm sorry I probably said this the wrong way. What I meant to say was that the combatlogs and the quartz time should give you the same values, because they both work on local timestamps. Both are equally misleading on their own due to that.
I wouldn't knock down per-se the numbers because of that, but you would definately have to provide a 5min-ish parse to smoothen out latency out of the equation.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
02/18/08, 10:24 AM
Sad thing I got no dice on my request to display channelled spells ticks on the cast bar.
