Meditation depends mostly on whether you care about the rather paltry regen it gives and whether you're plentiful on the spirit gear (which amazingly, all T6 level gear seems to be). Arcane Impact is indeed a wise choice, I'd even argue for Magic Absorption in cases with low SP availability.

Ultimately, your spec will depend on how much you need Imp Blizz. 2 points spent in the 6 total you can spec it up with are mandatory to make tier selection (unless you go for imp. Nova) and then the question really becomes "do you need more AoE CC, or do you need more AoE power?".

As a curious side note, while I'm impressed I gained a stalker I'm even more impressed he didn't realize I wasn't even referring to him. With four-five infractions in the previous page and a multitude of people banging the "I pwn, therefore my spec is bettar" drum I only vocalized a generic demand for improved standard of posting.

The autority in this forum do one hell of a job at keeping the playing field level, you only need to look at the banhammer to realize: Each one every day must see dozens of reports and have to act on anything up to five accounts. Forcing them to work overtime simply because certain posters are under the impression this is like a gray version of forums.wow-europe.com and that threatening, chest-beating and general pointing to their armory mixed with "lol get 2100 Arena before you post noob" attitude is selfish and ruins the experience for everyone.

Keep EJ Tidy. Read The Rules.

There is something funny about your sim Vontre. I turn on Judgement of Wisdom, and DPS from all of the arcane specs and fire goes down.

I've just used Vontre's simulator (really nice stuff) and for arcane specs it isn't good I must say, but maybe in the near future we'll have some of that fixed.

Also seems that wherever the word "Arcane" appears it irritates many "posters" so coming here to get info about anything that has arcane points in the build will end up being shooed away.

As Fandoth said the casting is very erratic on 40+ points in the arcane tree (it took me about 1 month to accommodate with the 30% meditation in 2.3) so it takes time if you want to get "the results" that the "different" people get. As I'm trying to see the dps and stuff I don't know if the Arcane Blast cycles can really be modeled since I get the same dps and dmg live as in the spreadsheet, even though it's not a patchwerk scenario standing still and dpsing 100% of the time and I'm casting more ABs than the cycle pointed by the spreadsheet .


From what I've experimented the past week, I found out that a powerful mana regen tool that arcane has is magic absoption talent (since you will have at least 12k mana if 40+ points will be used in arcane). Only had tried it at Vashj but will do more this week. So it's a good talent because most hits that a mage will receive will be ranged magic hits, but that isn't the thing, the thing is that the magic dmg most bosses have is binary and +68 to all resists (without gimping dmg) together with the prismatic cloak talent (4% reduction) will get you to somewhere at 18% magic dmg reduction (I may be faulty in calculating +68 resist being 14% reduction) and that means you will fully resist 18% of the forked lightning hits from vashj (more if you'll be tanking the strider). I personally got from 3k to 9k mana in the vashj fights and I was never kiteing the strider.

At Al'ar I've experienced the same, that is many times resisting the 1 flame buffet he casts before the tank gets back near him after a flame quill, Void Reaver's Arcane Orbs (being hit by an orb is not viable, but pointed this just for reference), Solarian's Arcane Missiles and Light of the Astromancer.

Also from what I've seen the magic dmg received that isn't binary is in the range of 0-1.5k and the dmg that is higher than 1.5k is binary thus making that talent really nice for mana returns.

I don't know if is adequate to post here this kind of info but since it would be useful for mages, I thought this would be good. So if anyone knows more about this can confirm it since I've just recently really thought about that talent and how will it affect a mage (because of the nice mana returns I've started to look at lately), and also at this point don't know if you can collect this kind of information from WWS .

EDIT:68 resist from magic absorption talent (10), improved mark of the wild (33), cloak enchant (7), mage armor (18).

Selun you missinterpret. Said "posters" don't shoo away people getting info on arcane. Said posters have an inherent hatred for posts in Theorycraft threads which profess 0 theorycraft, "I didn't do the maths but" and hearsay combined with circumstancial evidence for mitigation of the terrible image arcane has in our impression.

Until someone turns up with a parsing -proving- arcane to truly be competitive all this commotion is speculation; I'd like all the arcane mages to stop going on ad nauseum with theories about how all sorts of things make them seem worse than how they allegedly are, but untill I see a WWS proving it, there's no merit in the statements.

As for Magic Absorbtion, I've run it in the past; while I dumped it long before we got to Vashj I can't say I was taken aback by it's effect. It very well might provide substantial amounts of mana in certain fights, particularly for uber-size arcane mana pools. Perhaps the arcane exponents have not looked deeply enough into exploiting it's AB-feeding potential.

One of the things I'm truly hoping for with all my heart is for WotLK to make it a modular talent and grant level/2 or level/3 all resist rather than the pathetic flat +10. I'd find it hard to justify not getting if it was 35 all resist.

Yes Pintofbrew I would love to see people supporting it but that won't happen soon. About the low resist it gives might mean that it would be imbalanced on pvp as many talents would be if they get improved. That is why I've given up on explaining my numbers and way of doing the nice dmg mages are supposed to.

@Goggles: Magic dmg isn't reduced how the physical dmg is. Magic dmg is resisted in increments of 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and obviously 100% if the magic attack isn't binary. So that is the point of Prismatic Cloak for me and that is why I get so much mana back. If the magic dmg is binary then it will be reduced in only 2 ways, 0% or 100% resisted. So Prismatic Cloak means that you will fully resist (100%) binary magic dmg worth of 4% of the full dmg you'll be receiving. (explaining this is difficult for me, but don't know if you'll understand this way I've put it).

So you get 100k dmg, 4% resisted means you'll mitigate 4k dmg. If that 100k dmg is done in 1 hit and is binary then you will either fully resist or take all the dmg. If that dmg is done in hits of 2.5k each then it would take 40 hits to do that dmg, but since you have 4% dmg reduction that means you will resist 4k dmg and so you'll fully resist at least 1 hit and most probably 2 because 2.5kx2 is closer to the 4k dmg you have to resist because that talent dictates it so.

No, prismatic cloak is just a 0.96 modifier to all damage taken, regardless of type. It's completly unrelated to resist mechanics.

edit (proof): It works identically to defensive stance for warriors, see effects on Defensive Stance Passive - Spells - World of Warcraft and Prismatic Cloak - Spells - World of Warcraft .

No Selun, you are misunderstanding.

Prismatic Cloak reduces all damage by 4%. This is not added to any resists, or to your armour value. Whatever hit you take, 4% of it is subtracted as it hits you : so a 1000 point fireball would only hit you for 960 damage. THEN you apply the effects of resists.

Also, due to the way resists work, unless the spell being cast is a binary spell, Magic Absorbtion won't work - as unless you have 300+ resists, you won't be fully resisting anything. You'll be getting plenty of partial resists, but they don't count for Magic Absorbtion. Off the top of my head, the only spell effects that are common enough to count AND where you wear enough resists to actually be resisting them would be Anetherons Carrion Swarm, Kaz'Rogals Mana Drain and Azgalors Silence.

Actually, with 200% crit damage (for easier computation), you only need 33% crit for your crit damage to equal your non crit damage on paper. That said, I prefer deep frost myself. Arc/frost just loses too much damage if your winter's chill bitch dies, is benched, doesn't show up, gets effectively cc'd by mob or just plain respecs.

I might add Hex Lord Malacrass to that list because of his periodic 0.5s cast 20x Spirit Bolt volley (Shadow damage). Hex Lord is also a fight that benefits greatly from Dampen Magic. I'm sure most folks know this, but figured it's sweet information if you don't.

Spirit bolts are not binary, so resist gear will only grant partial resists, and no full resists. Just like imp tanking on Illhoof. You won't get a lot magic absorption procs there at all.
Using resist gear is all fun and stuff, but did you ever try Malacrass with 2 good healers and full DPS gear? He'll just fall over in 2 minutes.

Also, correction in bold. Check your facts before you post wrong information.
Spirit bolt damage is not affected by amplify/dampen any more.

Asking for DPS difference between items is pointless; items DPS generation is dependent on everything including buffs, spec, spell, target, stats, debuffs, mama's pie etc etc.

If you have questions direct them to "Mage: Help Me Please" and not to Sweet Info. As for the DPS, get an elementary theorycraft system like Lhivera's, put in your stats with either bracer and see.

Don't be lazy.