It comes down to using PvP gear in PvE situations. If you really wanted haste and generic spell damage, you could just as easily use [Loop of Cursed Bones]. It is barely better than LoCB, socketed with a reckless pyrestone, and only such because you're comparing an ilevel of 154 to 133.

I never use Arcane Explosion in Hyjal, simply because I'm fire specced. That is the only reason you'd be using [Hellfire-Encased Pendant], and being that haste doesn't affect AE, and crit will affect your MoE returns on flamestrike, you're better off using Hellfire and flamestriking. With AE as a Fire mage, you're getting no returns from MoE and you're missing several talents that greatly boost the use of AE (Arcane Focus, Arcane Impact, Clearcasting, Spell Power -- you get the idea).

Flamestrike is quite competitive, albeit not king of AoE. A WWS log for you to look at even...

Enthorn - WWS

172,000 mana returned from MoE -- that's quite a lot. I was only fifth in damage for the trash waves, but I also was the only person in the raid removing curses (269 of them, despite there being 2 other mages and 2 druids).

So my argument is, either go full Arcane if you really want to do AoE on trash in hyjal, or stay fire and flamestrike away with Hellfire equipped.

You realise you would have had phenominally better results with arcane explosion as fire spec ? I expect you to be #1 or #2 on trash dms, not anything else.

I'll try Arcane Explosion, keeping with the normal 2/48/11 build, on our next run. Any time I've used AE instead of Flamestrike, and I have tried it on trash before, I run out of mana far quicker than if I had used Flamestrike. Then I just end up not being able to cast anything.

Even Rawr is putting Flamestrike ahead of AE in DPS -- albeit slightly (4948 vs 5006). It doesn't help that my guild is short on shadow priests either and not always able to get one for runs, so I'm trying not to base this off my own experience. If you could explain how AE is going to surpass Flamestrike for me, I'm very willing to listen.

Edit: wrong thread.

Even if you go oom at the end of a trash wave(using mage armor + tidewalker trinket helps a lot), you will have done way more damage with arcane explosion than with flamestrike.

Some reasons, why it is better:
- -40% aggro vs. -10% aggro
- ae has a much bigger range, flamestrike will only work if all the mobs are on 1 spot
- a big part of the damage comes from the dot, so if you spam flamestrike, the dot component is wasted. Also if the mobs are moved away from the area, where you put your flamestike, the dot also fades away
- the damage cap for arcane explosion is way bigger than it is for any other ae spells. That's the reason you do want to use arcane explosion for hyjal trash.

That's just spreading misinformation, haste very much affects AE. Infact, after you get damage capped on your AE, on several mobs, it's the only real significant damage boost to your damage.

If you want some great AE damage, equip [Ashtongue Talisman of Insight], it will have a very high uptime & with IV + some decent haste gear it will push your AEs down to 1sec casts, which is already a 33% damage boost, simply because you get to cast more.

But you might indeed have some mana constraints without a SP & Mana Tide, things to try:

- Find a feral to whisper for innervate. (It will be avalible more than one time during the trash waves.)
- Use invisibility & fill your mana bar during trash.
- Try to get Jaina Proudmore near your AE spot, so Mage Armor provides double mana returns.


On the topic of GPoS, this was an item I'd been waiting for a while, mainly to fill a small lack of hit rating I had & to provide more stamina for many encounters. It's around 0,5DPS ahead of the Hellfire necklace with a hit rating gem for me, and Hellfire pulls ahead slightly with imp DS. At such tiny DPS differences I will weigh the extra survivability higher.

1) Maybe my gear is just plain terrible, but I'm usually not damage capped when spamming AE since the change.
I hit the cap on around 13/14 mobs last I checked in Hyjal, so I only go past the cap on 4 waves or so? Keep in mind that your melee usually zergs down 1-2 mobs very fast, so you're only capped for a small part of that wave.

So, before droppping all spell damage gear ("OMG cap! Useless!"), check how often you're capped.
I'm usually fine with AToI and TLC equipped as trinkets.

2) Arcane Power didn't extend the AoE cap last time I checked, it only makes you burn more mana. Has it changed recently?

3) Enthorn didn't actually have a shadow priest in the raid at all. And even if he had one, he should probably just MC Necromancers to chain Frenzy your melee.
Unholy Frenzy - Spell - World of Warcraft for a link to the spell.


To Enthorn:
You were outdamaged (on trash) by a Blizzard spammer.
I used to do Blizzard on trash when I was fully specced for it since it was nice control and kept ranged aggro in check, but the Seed/AE spammers did roughly twice my damage.
Yes, the AoE damage caps cut down Blizzard (and Flamestrike) damage that much.

Regarding AP: I can't say. I was arcane for a while and only noted the "purty numbers". Most MH waves, crits were around the 1400 mark on AE. Under SCB/IV/AP I'd see up to 1850. I doubt this increase is from the SCB effect, though I'm prepaired to agree I may have missunderstood/not noticed something.

One of the reasons my damage from Flamestrike is so low is that I removed 269 curses over all the trash waves. That frost mage who out-damaged me using Blizzard removed five. There were some waves I didn't cast anything but remove curse.

Two other runs I have WWS logs for where I did have shadow priests and wasn't performing remove curse: Wow Web Stats , Wow Web Stats

I'll try Arcane Explosion the next time I'm in hyjal, but all of the reasons that AE is better than Flamestrike, I don't have a problem with. I am not threat capped, the mobs aren't running around -- they stay in the consecration for the duration of the wave. Thanks for the input, though, as always.

Our last Hyjal parse, with me using an AToI:

I did Flamestrike a few times (mostly on the pull), but the average hit was 834 with a ~2.6s cast time (38% crit).
My average Arcane Explosion hit was 722, but with a ~1.3 second cast time (25% crit).

The Flamestrike dot fixes this to an extent, but AE is just flat better DPS. Looking at that WWS you linked Enthorn, most of your AE dps was in the 2000-2500 range for DPS. We used one more AoE than you did (7 vs 6), but all 7 of us were above 3000 DPS.

[e] Wow Web Stats WWS if you're interested.

Thanks Jarlyn. In the logs I posted, you can see that I used Arcane Explosion as well. While your average hit was 834 compared to 722, my average was 884 to 727, and on another other run, 934 vs 704. That's with 45-47% crit rate. What that average damage doesn't take into account is MoE, ignite, and the DoT, as you mentioned.

I'll definitely be giving AE a whirl, per all of your suggestions -- thanks for the insight ;-)

Rawr'ed my equip and used raidbuffs gave me the following result (50/0/11):

Flasks:
Distilled Wisdom: 63.67 dps (I am gnome mage, that might push this a bit)
Blinding Light: 54.93 dps
Supreme Power: 49.64 dps

Elixirs:
Draenic Wisdom: 52.54 dps
Adept's Elixir: 31.45 dps

I tend go with the elixirs on farm bosses and stick to flask for new bosses.
Too bad, Distilled Wisdom can't be bought for Illidari Marks

My Guild now has MH/BT on farm and are working our way towards our first Kalecgos kill whilst gearing up the raid for Brut.

My spec of choice is the standard 2/48/11, but current our current situation with SPs has made me begin to think otherwise.

At best we have 2 SPs in the raid, sometimes 1, sometimes none. This happened last night, hence current spec 18/0/43 (for BT RoS thru Illidan).

I have also noticed that even when I do have a SP (as Fire spec), I’m unable to use Flamecap/Destro Pot due to mana issues. Sometimes I can use a Flamecap, but often I’m chugging pots and gems just to keep going. The question is will an unsupported 18/0/43 put out more DPS than an unsupported 2/48/11. I found last night I had sufficient mana with gems and could use destro pots.

On another note, having finally got a Skull last night, wanted to confirm the correct usage of Hex/Skull.

Assuming enough time for 2 uses….
Scorch up
Flamecap/Combustion/IV/Berseking(Trolls ftw)/Hex
then
Skull/Destro pot (whilst still under Flamecap)

Repeat sub 20%. Other than dropping combustion/cap for Frost I’d assume the rotation would be much the same?

@Zaylin - I use them both together, don't know if that is optimal however

Stack them if your GCD stay above 1s. (Check your scorch cast time tooltip too see your GCD. It's the same as your GCD.)
If you get your GCD to the cap, then use them one after another.

Seeing that you have Kara/ZA gear mostly, you can stack them for a while. Takes much more haste gear and Ashtongue trinket to have to stagger them.

I hope this is the right place to get help with macro.

Can someone explain to me why the following macro doesn't work?
(When IB is still on CD, but Hypothermia is over)

/stopcasting
/cast Cold Snap
/cast Ice Block

I thought it should work because from what I gather Cold Snap doesn't trigger GCD, but it behaves as if Cold Snap does trigger GCD and causes the subsequent IB cast to fail. Strangely, when IB is not on CD, it actually works i.e. both Cold Snap and IB are activated in a single button press.

Is there a work around? I need a macro that allows me to use the second IB during an emergency in a boss fight, because I usually save Cold Snap for IV.

Wasn't sure which thread to post this under so I chose this one. A guildy asked me if I reached a rediculous amt of spell hste such as 50% would I switch to pyroblast instead of fireball. I have never really thought about it and personally feel that after working hard to stack that much haste switching to pyro would be starting back at square one with a higher mana cost. But I am not very good at number crunching, and figured you guys would know more on it than I.

I see what you mean, but his question was more towards 50% haste(I think that is the right number). Such as when your 3s fireball goes to 1.5s cast, which would make your 6s pyro go to 3s cast, and would going to the longer cast/more powerful spell be more dmg. It was a rogue who asked the question so our ideas on haste effect may be different. I didn't know how to answer his question myself so I brought the question here.

Two fireballs is better than one pyro, always. What Manly said is correct.

final_cast_time = talented_cast_time / (1 + spell_haste)

x = 3 / (1 + 0.50)
x = 2

50% haste gives you 2s fireballs. 200% haste gives you 1s fireballs.

First of all, 50% haste won't bring your fireball down to 1.5seconds. You will need 100% haste to achieve this. But to answer your question, no, pyroblast isn't better unless your fireball is way under 1sec cast time (haste has no more effect on fireball -> limited by GCD <-> but pyroblast still gains from additional haste) - just as Manly said.

If you look at it with no haste at all, you have 3sec fireballs and 6sec pyroblasts. So instead of casting 1 pyroblast you can cast 2 fireballs in the same time. With 100% haste you have 1.5sec fireballs and 3sec pyroblasts. Nothing really changes, you can still cast 2 fireballs instead of 1 pyroblast. It would be even worse with 100% haste: The pyroblast dot ticks every 2 seconds. Using 0 haste you have 3 ticks (1 tick every 2 seconds) whereas you will only have 1 dot tick with 3sec pyroblasts (the dot refreshes itself), which will result in 1 tick only every 3 seconds.

because the two casts are sent from the client immediately - but the second cast doesn't pass the client-side check on the Ice Block cooldown

You'd need to wait for a server round trip for the client to acklowledge the Ice Block cooldown reset, and then cast Ice Block. I don't know of any way to to do this in a macro & assume you'll need two button presses (pressing that button twice, for example)

Though dblaikie beat me to the technical reply, I still want to add that it's more observable for pom macros:

/stopcasting
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Pyroblast

If you are standing still when you activate this macro, you'll get a clean pom-pyroblast with a single keypress. If you are in motion however, one keypress of the macro gets you the pom buff and a "You cannot do that while moving" error message. A second keypress will launch the pyro without waiting for a gcd (though a split second delay seems unavoidable).

While hardly a catastrophe when zapping randoms in a BG, using a pom-polymorph macro during raid is a bad time to learn about these nuances and it is not all obvious what is going on there.