A lot of the existing misconceptions on arcane specs and arcane style of play is why I feel that the arcane portion of the opening post of this thread needs to be revemped.
Uninformed Mages need to be informed about some big misconceptions of arcane which are now legacy.
Misconceptions of arcane.
1) AM is good - NO! AM is never good, does not scale and will never be good in the current patch version. There are very little situations where AM can be used, and be prepared to drop like a rock on damage meters if you start using AM.
2) What AB rotations to use? - Forget about these. Irrelevant. Arcane style of play now is about spamming AB as much as possible. You start off spamming AB and continue to spam it for the majority of the fight. Casting any filler spell is only when you find that you can't sustain AB spam anymore. It is a last resort to tide you until your gem/evoc/potion cooldown is up so you can spam AB again. AB rotations have zero place in the new arcane style of play.
3) AB spam is impossible. No, incorrect, wrong. It wasn't possible or feasible last time, BUT it is now prefectly feasible for a large majority of raid fights. in this patch, it is feasible, just do it. Run yourself out of mana first in a raid stting with a SP in group before you claim it can't be kept up the whole fight.
In the current setting. You need just two key ingredients to play arcane.
a) have two piece T5
b) have some good mana support (either shammy or SP in group would be good).
Then just AB spam, eat gem and pots as soon as you can. And that's it. The sooner people forget about AB rotations the better. If you can spam AB 100% of the raid fight, great! If not, 90% is still good. If its 90%, what spell you cast for the remaining 10% is so small a factor it doesn't matter. So stop worrying about AB rotations and what filler spells you are casting. Get into a raid setting, spam AB, and see how often you actually run out of mana before you worry about such stuff. In the new context of arcane, you will find that it happens so rarely you will wonder why you ever worried so much about it in the first place.
Alvira, while I commend your attempt at dispelling missconceptions you are absolutist in your statement and are in fact wrong. Both me and Kavan include AM in our builds and I assure you I do not "drop like a rock". I also disagree with your "forget about rotations" notion.
You don't seem to miss-understand the facts, you just seem to wrongly put them forward. In essence, your wording does you wrong. What I think you meant to say was:
1) AM is not a good damage source. Do not under any circumstance attempt to make AM a major percentage of your output. It is sub-standard, despite having a place in certain builds, and it's place is as a filler to generate more mana to sustain your AB.
2) Rotations are only relevant to correct timing if you're short on mana. One does not start weaving in fillers as soon as one is almost OOM, this may result in CDs coming up and you're stuck on 20% mana, weaving fillers and waiting 25sec for next manapot CD. This is when you realize, you should have predicted the timing of events and correctly used Fillers BEFORE you came to this junction, rather than go AP-IV-Hex-Destropot-SCB and only have 12sec worth of AB mana's worth. Rotations in the old-sense of the use is indeed dead, in that you will not in fact spend a signifficant amount of time generating DPS from AB*3/AM/Sc or (AB/AM)*3/Sc.
Forgive me. I might have been to forceful in my wording. But at the same time, I am trying to put across in as simple/ straight forward a way as possible how arcane style plays now.
The thing is. Newbie arcane mages that try conciously to keep up rotations are causing unnecessary complications to themselves at the detriment to their damage. And they come off disappointed in arcane style of play without understanding why. Consider this.
Newbie Mage A just tries and spam AB for all raid fights. He only worries about filler spells (whether AM, or otherwise) when he gets treuly low on mana. He will be fine for most of his raid boss fights. And that few really long raid boss fights where he ends up running draw. Well, he learns better and does some conservation in future. He starts from max possible dps, and works his way down. He has learnt how to manage his mana successfully in all his raid fights and his damage.
Newbie mage B. Tries to start off with rotations. He starts off trying to manage mana off the bat when it is uncessary for maybe 80% of his raid boss fights. He finds it uncesserily complex, and unrewarding because his dps is subpar despite all the rotations. A persistent newbie then gradually increases his AB spam, and reduces rotations until he finds the right mix, which in many cases, he finds was unneccesary in the first place. It involves tons more trial and error and practise, and his dps given the complexities he is inflicting on himself is lousy. There may be a high chance many such newbies try the style for a couple of days. And just give up. Go back to fire or something, with the notion the spec is not viable.
I understand what you are saying. But trying to be overly accurate here is not helping newbie mages. Why bring up rotations, or even using AM somehow somewhere when it may apply to very few situations. It just gets them started off on the wrong footing and wrong understanding of how arcane plays from the very start.
I won't try and say when AM is or is not usable. But surfice to say, even if we choose to spam scorch, fireball, or frostbolt instead of some AM rotation as filler. The DPS difference is not going to be great. Because AB would have made up 80 to 90% of total damage anyway. Its not like the AM rotation or that few cast here and there as filler is going to make total dmg or DPS that much higher than a mage that just used frostbolt, scorch or fireball instead.
And this bit about saving mana for that final blood lust, or last oomph. On a practical basis, I disagree. Here's the main issue. Bloodlust is just hasted spellcasting. If you have to conserve mana for it, you may overconserve and end up with too much mana. In which case you did less overall DPS and dmg than you should have. There is nothing wrong with just spamming frostbolt, or fireball during bloodlust if you can't afford to AB spam.
If you suceed in spamming AB 90 to 100% of the fight. Your DPS will already be high either way. But if you get so fixated on wanting to be able to go full bore during the bllodlust period, that you end up going rotations for half the fight. There is a very good chance your overall DPS and damage is going to be lower than if you had simply just tried to AB spam as much as possible regardless of when the blood lust comes.
Fire mages need to time their trinket cooldowns, destruction pots, etc well with the bloodlust and molten fury period. The DPS of an arcane mage is much flatter and is centred around keeping mana up so that AB spam is possible. So, if it coincides with a bloodlust, good, if not, it really isn't going make that huge a difference either way. Maybe on a max theoratical damage level, it might. But for most newbie arcane mages, on a practical level, it shouldn't be the thing they are focusing on at all.
Take serpant coil braid. As a trinket, its great for arcane mages. on eating a gem, it gives a power boost too. But, are you really going to try and time your trinket around bllodlust? I don't. I never do. I try and use up enough mana so that I can eat a gem, and then quaff a potion as soon as possible. I don't "wait" until bllodlust happens and then eat my gem. The damage difference here is not going to be earthshattering. The danger is bigger in fact, if I wait too long to eat my gem, such that later, I don't get to use the trinket a second, or a third time. That few thousand mana lost because I delayed too long waiting to time my tinket cooldown exactly with bllodlust is going to cost me few more AB spams and dmg and DPS then that small damage boost I will get if I ate a gem exactly when bllodlust hit.
I am trying to lead new arcane mages in the right direction. And getting fixated on keeping up rotations, trying to weave AM showhow into it, trying to time cooldowns, are all not the right direction for a newbie arcane mage trying to raid well with arcane. Its like trying to run before you walk. They have to get the concept of AB spam and extend your mana as much as possible into their style and playing first. Then they can worry about stuff they are doing only 10% of the time.
Let's say another newbie arcane mage takes AM totally off his toolbar. He uses fireball or frostbolt as filler instead but keeps up the arcane blast spammage. Is his style of arcane play wrong? It isn't. He will likely do just as well, and not much worse then if he specced into AM and then tried to fit in an AM rotation as filler. He would have gotten the true concept of arcane style raiding today right. And that is the most important.
While I agree that people new to arcane should keep it simple, I complete disagree with the rest of what you said. Anticipation, mana management, and timing cooldowns is the quintessential challenge for top arcane mages and, I believe, ultimately is what separates the great from the very good. Playing it safe, as you suggest, will not get you any closer to the theoretical max dps that so many on this forum strive for.
I raid with 4pt5 myself, but i've given some thought to how arcane damage could work without having t5 at all. The set bonus does not increase your DPM at all, so theoretically, you can do without it if you spam AB enough and manage to run out of mana @ boss death. Bonuses that do not increase DPM at all are AP, IV, hasterating, and 2pt5. Of these, the "best" are the IV and haste, since they increase your ppm. So, with a double IV arcane frost build, and haste gear, one should be able to happily spam oneself out of mana in most fights, and suffer no loss due to lacking 2pt5.
2pt5 was very nice when we used cycles to do arcane damage, but it doesnt make as much sense for AB spam
I raid with 4pt5 myself, but i've given some thought to how arcane damage could work without having t5 at all. The set bonus does not increase your DPM at all, so theoretically, you can do without it if you spam AB enough and manage to run out of mana @ boss death. Bonuses that do not increase DPM at all are AP, IV, hasterating, and 2pt5. Of these, the "best" are the IV and haste, since they increase your ppm. So, with a double IV arcane frost build, and haste gear, one should be able to happily spam oneself out of mana in most fights, and suffer no loss due to lacking 2pt5.
2pt5 was very nice when we used cycles to do arcane damage, but it doesnt make as much sense for AB spam
y/n?
I thought the 2pc T5 mana tax applied only to the base cost. In which case it SIGNIFICANTLY boosts DPM. Am I wrong here?
I thought the 2pc T5 mana tax applied only to the base cost. In which case it SIGNIFICANTLY boosts DPM. Am I wrong here?
To add more detail to the other responses, the increased mana cost of AB is fixed. Each debuff increases the mana cost by 146 mana and reduces the cast time by .33 seconds. AP and 2t5 increase the base cost but do not affect the mana added by the debuff.
The base cost of AB is 195 mana, so 2t5 and AP add 20% (39 mana) and 35% (68.25 mana) respectively and 62% (120.9 mana) combined. When fully stacked, AB costs 633 base: 672 with 2t5 (106%), 701.25 with AP (110%), and 753.9 with both (119%). So you get a significant gain in dpm, as everybody mentioned.
Err, two piece T5 is for the damage boost to AB from the set bonus. The increased mana cost is a necessary cost paid for the increased damage. You would lose a significant amount of damage from your ABs from not using two piece T5.
While I agree that people new to arcane should keep it simple, I complete disagree with the rest of what you said. Anticipation, mana management, and timing cooldowns is the quintessential challenge for top arcane mages and, I believe, ultimately is what separates the great from the very good. Playing it safe, as you suggest, will not get you any closer to the theoretical max dps that so many on this forum strive for.
That would be for mages striving for the best possible theoratical DPS. But this thread is about info. To mages who might be new to the various specs. As I mentioned before. Its best to learn to walk before learning to run. Get the basics of playing arcane right first, then try and push for max dps. Worrying about AB rotations, timing trinket cooldowns for a newbie arcane mage is unnecessary and unproductive. Get the 90% part of your damage made up by AB spam right first. Then, go and tweak the remaining 10% that is made up by fillers.
Its like taking an exam. Do all the easy and core questions first. Save the hard bits to puzzle over last. If you start off worrying about that 5 mark question and get stuck on it the whole exam. You are going to fail your exam. So, get the basics of playing an arcane mage down first. The sooner new arcane mages throw out some of these misconceptions, the faster they will grasp the core concept of raiding as arcane now.
Err, two piece T5 is for the damage boost to AB from the set bonus. The increased mana cost is a necessary cost paid for the increased damage. You would lose a significant amount of damage from your ABs from not using two piece T5.
Indeed, i was not aware that the two-piece bonus increased the damage you deal per point of mana. The set bonus description is quite misleading in my opinion. However to me its good news, been raiding with 4t5 for ages, and didnt really want to lose the set.
My point was to stress the fact that as arcane, you strive to increase DPM and mana capability - not purely dps. As fire, the conditions are (given a good sp) infinite mana in most fights, and you gear for haste, and benefit alot from Herosim/Bloodlust, since it increases DPS, while increasing mana consumption proportionally. As Arcane, one is "always" able to unleash ones maximum potential damage through Arcane Blast. Increasing the spells burn with haste gear and effects are not as beneficial as for a fire mage, since you may then run out of mana to spend.
Haste gear and effects may lead to one having to stop casting entirely, giving time for oo5sr regen, and thus "extra" spells compared to a non-haste caster, but this does not change the fact that hasterating and haste effects are not as good for arcane as they are for fire. This would apply to other burn effects like 2pt5/AP, but luckily Blizzard only made the cost of the increased damage apply to AB0.
Your latest post makes it seem like you accept pure burn effects as a boost to your total damage done, but this is not correct - you should as arcane be able to make use of your entire mana capability using the tools available in an arcane spec : AB3, AP, IV. And DPM increasing stats like damage, crit, hit, mana capability increasing stats like intellect and spirit, will generally serve you better then DPS-at-a-cost increasing ability : spellhaste.
I have a quick question since i'm no maths genius with all this. Everyone saying haste > sd/crit which has made me think if i should regem all my gear to reckless pyrestone, most of my gear is all runed spinels. My current stats are hanging around 1250 spell damage with 33% crit and 76 haste.. if i were to regem my gear.
Is it worth sacrificing 110ish spell damage for 90ish haste rating?
Kuun , post in the help me please thread, Anyway the answer is it depends on your gear and your gold.Using Rawr will give you a more accurate answer, but I would not destroy all my spinels for pyrestones if it gives me a grand total of 10dps increase total
1) AM is not a good damage source. Do not under any circumstance attempt to make AM a major percentage of your output. It is sub-standard, despite having a place in certain builds, and it's place is as a filler to generate more mana to sustain your AB.
I'd be willing to refute this. Recently, I've switched into the 40-0-21 build once I got my tier 5, but before that, I was seeing a very good damage output from AM spamming in Kara/ZA/Badge gear. This kind of damage was beating out mages of all different specs on both trash and boss fights. The only downfall was in mana efficency, but once 2.3 rolled around, that was no longer a problem. I am by no means saying it is the best build, but it is certainly viable.
I understand what you are saying. But trying to be overly accurate here is not helping newbie mages. Why bring up rotations, or even using AM somehow somewhere when it may apply to very few situations. It just gets them started off on the wrong footing and wrong understanding of how arcane plays from the very start.
The day when accuracy is sacrificed at the pedestal of simplicity, we veer off from Theorycraft and Proving what we know and start on the path of Speculation and Subjectivity.
If "Newbie A" can't handle disseminating accurate, concise statements then perhaps they should be on wow forums. Dumbing down information so the masses can handle it automatically neuters anyone bright enough to handle more information by plugging their inquisitiveness with what seems like a simple, though inaccurate answer.
Originally Posted by Ceara
I'd be willing to refute this. Recently, I've switched into the 40-0-21 build once I got my tier 5, but before that, I was seeing a very good damage output from AM spamming in Kara/ZA/Badge gear. This kind of damage was beating out mages of all different specs on both trash and boss fights. The only downfall was in mana efficency, but once 2.3 rolled around, that was no longer a problem. I am by no means saying it is the best build, but it is certainly viable.
If you were competing with AM, it's because you were competing against incompetents. Aside from 2.2 AM abuse, AM has never, ever in it's history been competitive under any circumstance. If you want to Refute my claim, you will have to magically conjure data proving that AM DPS is somehow better than shit, which the whole mage community has been ignorant of until today. The talents that make AM scale are simply inferior to even those that make Frostbolt scale. Let's not even go into how bad AM is compared to Fire Ball.
AM is a mechanic to generate more mana for 2.4 Arcane specs. Nothing more. Even using FrB vs AM filler is a highly contested question which is up to debate. One being more versatile and incorporating "+1 IV" the other having pushback-resistance, lower DPS, but ultimately more mp5 generation. AM as viable DPS? No. Simply No.
Its quite possible that everyone I have played with on my server was terrible, but I doubt thats the case. I was seeing 1000-1100 DPS self buffed, and 1200-1350 raid buffed in no gear out of TK/SSC or higher. As I said, since then with the T5 pieces, I'm looking at 1450-1600 DPS with 40/0/21, but to say that there is no way you can get any damage out of arcane missiles, just isn't the case.
I did not say "there is no way you can get any damage out of arcane missiles" I said that in no way can AM ever be considered a spell that can compete on DPS terms. Do not miss-quote me. You may notice I myself am specced into AM, and have been so since the day 2.4 went live and am very aware of how it works.
AM is, and always has been, the worst sustained DPS spell mages have, with the abusing exception of 2.2 AM spam. If you'd like to insult my argument, once again, I insist you must come up with proof of your statements, with either WWS logs or Mathematics on why AM is competitive, rather than "I was seeing 1000-1100 DPS self buffed" and other tripe.
My current favorite builld with my 2x T5 is 61/0/0. About once a month I will respec 40/0/21 to see how I like it, because it's supposed to be the best build and I love arcane. When I go into ZA and face the second to last boss Hex Lord Malacross, I always miss the uninterrupted arcane misseles. Icy Veins is good but doesnt last for the whole fight. Also, I like the uniterrupted missiles in PVP play, and lastly I may be a little lazy and the arcane missiles aiming tracks your opponents. Lastly, AM trigger cooldown like crazy. I fell in love with them when I was wearing spellstrike, and I finally got the Lighting Capacitor.
If you have two pieces of T5, I would recommend 50/0/11 or 61/0/0. I have played both and enjoyed the extra survivability of the arcane tree. And for raiding all I use is Arcane Blast spam, or Arcane impact for trash. In the end, go with what you enjoy the most; if I get T6 to break up my T5 bonus I will go back to 2/48/11. Until then, I am holding my own quite well in BT and Mt. Hyjal content.
My current favorite builld with my 2x T5 is 61/0/0. About once a month I will respec 40/0/21 to see how I like it, because it's supposed to be the best build and I love arcane. When I go into ZA and face the second to last boss Hex Lord Malacross, I always miss the uninterrupted arcane misseles. Icy Veins is good but doesnt last for the whole fight. Also, I like the uniterrupted missiles in PVP play, and lastly I may be a little lazy and the arcane missiles aiming tracks your opponents. Lastly, AM trigger cooldown like crazy. I fell in love with them when I was wearing spellstrike, and I finally got the Lighting Capacitor.
If you have two pieces of T5, I would recommend 50/0/11 or 61/0/0. I have played both and enjoyed the extra survivability of the arcane tree. And for raiding all I use is Arcane Blast spam, or Arcane impact for trash. In the end, go with what you enjoy the most; if I get T6 to break up my T5 bonus I will go back to 2/48/11. Until then, I am holding my own quite well in BT and Mt. Hyjal content.
I don't understand what you mean by this. How are those builds providing extra survivability to arcane frost? Or rather how does the arcane tree provide extra survivability over fire or frost? Unless you are taking improved mana shield, arcane fortitude or prismatic cloak I don't see what you mean. Or am I missing something? I'm not saying they are bad builds at all compared to arcfrost as I've been all 3 and like you enjoyed the uniterruptable cast and mana regen from AM when not spamming it.
Unless you are taking improved mana shield, arcane fortitude or prismatic cloak
Yep, that's it, and Improved Blink and Magic Absorbtion. 2.4 had improvements for arcane fortitude and arcane blink - I'm not saying it's fantastic, but hopefully it's not obsolete anymore. If I was having problems staying alive I would go 40/0/21, but my guild is heavy on heals, I can run, and Ice Block has been a godsend.
This is my first level 70 mage. so yes I am a noob when it comes to builds. I tried to build my own vice follow the ever so popular cookie cutter designs. Nothing wrong with those, but it's not my style. My concern is I seem to fall in the group of builds you say should never be used for raiding. (33/28/0) I went with a 40/21/0 build and I stay even with the other mage in our raid group and it's pretty much a back and forth battle for top DPS in the raid group between us. He is a 2/48/11 build and we are pretty even gear wise. I've had no real issues with mana regen My guild is currently farming Kara and starting on ZA and i have had no mana troubles. I make it through the prince fight with out resorting to my wand the other mage has to in phase three. To get to the point of all this should i rethink my build, keep it or tweak it. If it will help my toon name is Sathvelin on Sister's of elune server so you can see where i put my points. I also had the idea of switching up to a 39/11/11 build but i have serious doubts about trying a AP/ POM pyro/ icy viens build i think it'd be a Christmas tree build and be inefective. Any advice is apreciated.
This is my first level 70 mage. so yes I am a noob when it comes to builds.
Having read up to there, I have a definite question: You open with "I am a noob with builds" and then proceed to discuss builds. That's great, however you neither (a) pose a question/inquiry (b) offer insight that is not already common knowledge. This begs the question, aside from your post being a random display of opinion with no purpse, is there some reason you're posting?
The 33.28.0 has been proven to be worse in every conceivable scenario than full-fire-IV. Admittedly, often by not much, but inferior nonetheless. Full fire not your playstle? That's a good reason to not spec it, but not a good reason to defend it in a TC thread. At your gear level/raid bracket it's probably feeling quite a lot more powerful than it has credit and reason to be, and it's also remarkably prone to spiking more.
Neomaji: Likewise, you do not demonstrate anything new. For all intents and purposes, 61/0/0 is clearly and unquestionably worse than any arcane spec with Icy Veins, either 21 frost or AM variants. If you are having to spec deep arcane for evasive talents like imp. Blink, Prismatic Cloak etc, then you either fail at moving or your raid-healing fails. Nor even Fire-specced mages ever had any reason to be susceptible to dying, at the top tier of raiding, back before we all had Ice Block, with full-crafted lol-stamina gear, and with 3/3 play with fire which indeed -negatively- impacted their survivability. Any requisite to spec for survival indicates a failing of cause. Someone recently I saw had a signature of "there's a name for people who need to select a spec to survive rather than to DPS, it's 'Unguilded' ".
You begin your post with "in defense of AM". AM never was under attack, the claims it was somehow not a bad source of sustained DPS were. Despite your title, you then go on to demonstrate nothing, at all, which is in fact, "in defense" of said spell. That's like writing an essay entitled "the history of applesauce" and then proceeding to discuss how you were late to your dentist's appointment last week.
Each time someone comes up and claims "AM is great, you're wrong (insert mage name here) to claim it's so bad, because (insert reasons, none of which address that AM is BAD DPS.)". It's funny in a way, that despite every week there are at least two "crusaders" fighting a pro-arcane battle, each time they get put down for either not arguing correctly, or simply being wrong. People, get over it, arcane doesn't need "champions". This isn't forums-wow.com, nobody is going "lolol S1 welfare noob spi-gem arcaen lolol l2p".
And there is no point, of course, of anyone asking "can you next time please back your words with maths/TC" because it's like asking a frog to eat a brick. It's impossible.
You begin your post with "in defense of AM". AM never was under attack, the claims it was somehow not a bad source of sustained DPS were. Despite your title, you then go on to demonstrate nothing, at all, which is in fact, "in defense" of said spell. That's like writing an essay entitled "the history of applesauce" and then proceeding to discuss how you were late to your dentist's appointment last week.
My post clearly stated that I liked Arcane Missiles because they are unterrupted in some fights, like ZA for example. I don't see why you have such a negative attitude towards other peoples likes and dislikes.
Other than that, I pretty much agree with what you stated.
05/13/08, 6:24 AM
Similar Threads
