Sweet Informational Thread - Page 41

Rivan · 04/01/08, 2:42 AM

Originally Posted by galzohar

Pryoblast is the "I have banish timer and it's going to break in ~5 seconds from now" or "Mob reflect shield will wear off in ~5 seconds" kind of spell. It has no other uses at all, especially with icy veins as it means you'll never have PoM-pyro in a real spec even if arcane will actually be good in 2.4.

I'd have to say that Pyroblast is the best spell I've found for nuking after stealing the haste buff in ZA. Is there another one thats better with 300% haste?

Doroteasenjk · 04/01/08, 7:35 AM

Originally Posted by Alvira

Certainly I challenge people to say that arcane is uselss for any fight longer than 1 minute.

On the contrary, I challenge you to prove that it isn't.

Maybe you didn't notice it in your rush to post in this "informational" thread, but there is a lot of facts and theory, backed up with detailed models, about the effectiveness of the three trees and spell rotations and gearing.

There is a difference between theory and supposition or a hunch. All you have put forward is a hunch, backed by nothing more than your experience in the context of your raid. That is not fact; it is not theory.

Alvira · 04/02/08, 2:46 AM

Originally Posted by Vontre

Ahoy there, magesires! On the behest of Lord Beef and his majesty King Gurgthock I bring you this compository of all things magely!

However arcane damage spells have poor mana efficiency, and the tree is generally a weak choice for encounters longer than 60 seconds (virtually every raid encounter). Sustained dps with Arcane Missiles lags a good 10-15% behind fire or frost dps, while Arcane Blast cycles require a restrictive gear setup to work and will rarely exceed fire dps. Because these cycles are both difficult to maintain and less damaging than simple fire nuking, arcane is not a recommended talent spec for dps min-maxers.

This remains on the opening page.

Quote by Madlax on page 142 of the "mage TC after 2.3 thread

"Thanks for that. I went and forced one of my mages to a little testing today.

Basic T6 geared mage, using no haste gear, gems and super mana pots on CD, molten armor.
Shaman in group for mana spring. Int buff, no wisdom, no spirit buff.
He lasted 4 minutes before he had to Evocate - which pretty much suffices for a 6 minute calculation."

On page 136 of that thread, Andorian said

"These are the numbers I'm getting in Rawr.Mage for top end gear for a 5 min. fight.

40/0/21: Mage Armor

2589 DPS (CoS 13%, Basic Raid Setup)
2657 DPS (CoS 13%, CoE 10%)
2762 DPS (CoS 13%, CoE 13%, WC, Never Going to Happen)

As time decreases from 300s to 280s Arcane DPS is at 2696 (CoS 13%, CoE 10%).
As time increases from 300s to 320s Arcane DPS is at 2615.
At 360s, 2552 DPS.
At 420s, 2572 DPS.
At 480s, 2505 DPS.

2/48/11: Molten Armor

2635 DPS (CoE 10%, Basic Raid Setup)
2707 DPS (CoE 13%)

Fire:
As time decreases from 300s to 280s Fire DPS is at 2670 (CoE 10%).
As time increases from 300s to 320s Fire DPS is at 2605.
At 360s, 2568 DPS.
At 420s, 2564 DPS.
At 480s, 2494 DPS.

It looks like just under 5min is the sweet spot for fire but arcane appears to be a viable spec come 2.4. I personally think I'll be going arcane for the extra ice block, trash DPS, and AoE perks.

Thanks again for Rawr, it's simply amazing.

Edit: Both specs were using optimal gear/enchants/consumables for each but with the same raid buffs."

I could plug my own gear into Rawr. But its not the best optimal gear anyway. Anyway, my point is that Arcane is now competitive to fire after patch 2.4 and certainly not a weak choice for any raid fight longer than 60 seconds. Don't get me wrong. I respec Vontre greatly and I have used his excel spreadsheets before as well. But there has been significant buffs to arcane since patch 2.4 and this opening thread on Arcane is outdated. So, I will call it as I see it.

hypetech · 04/02/08, 3:02 AM

Originally Posted by Alvira

But there has been significant buffs to arcane since patch 2.4 and this opening thread on Arcane is outdated. So, I will call it as I see it.

I don't recall seeing any buffs or changes to the arcane tree in the 2.4 patch notes. Care to elaborate?

Alvira · 04/02/08, 3:11 AM

1) Haste can bring global cooldown to as low as 1 second now instead of capping at 1.5 seconds. So, arcane blast spam can also benefit from haste effects added.
2) There has been a change to how more int will increase the mana regen per spirit. The net effect is that Arcane specs now have more mana to play with during a boss fight. And mana = damage for arcane.

Combined these make arcane specs competitive to fire now. There will be certain fights where fire wins out, and vice versa. But Arcane is viable and competitive and certainly is not a weak spec for any fight longer than 60 seconds.

hypetech · 04/02/08, 3:22 AM

While those are nice improvements, you still have the issues of managing the short debuff of AB, having your filler spells resisted from low non-arcane spell hit, being limited to a flask of supreme power to go across multiple spell schools, and the other various weaknesses of arcane in mobile and dynamic fights where you are constantly having to restack the AB debuff from scratch with the full cast time.

Alvira · 04/02/08, 3:30 AM

Ok. so I concede that bringing out Arcane's full DPS poptential will be more challenging than just spamming one button... But for those who can, its competitive enough.

Varrah · 04/02/08, 9:29 AM

Originally Posted by Alvira

40/0/21: Mage Armor

2589 DPS (CoS 13%, Basic Raid Setup)
2657 DPS (CoS 13%, CoE 10%)
2762 DPS (CoS 13%, CoE 13%, WC, Never Going to Happen)

2/48/11: Molten Armor

2635 DPS (CoE 10%, Basic Raid Setup)
2707 DPS (CoE 13%)

Hmmm, I try not to prelude posts with "I haven't done the math" and "it's 2 in the morning", but I'm afraid I have to jump in here. Given the numbers you posted there, it looks like for a five minute fight, fire still wins by about 50 DPS? Not to mention fire gives a raid buff (+15% fire damage, and many destro locks are now speccing fire, as well as shamans shocks if you have those). Also, aren't most raid encounters longer than 5 minutes the first time you do them? (off the top of my head, brutallus, the most important DPS fight I know of, is 6 minutes?)

Further, fire benefits from resistance to spell pushback, as well as being somewhat less dependent on your raid compostion.

Arcane, however, makes better use of spare innervates, in addition to favoring raids that don't use COE. It also has the advantage on fights where you have to move (moving time = more mana regenerated + no mana spent, shortening the effective duration?)

Am I to understand, then, that your argument that arcane's strengths make up for the loss of pushback resistance/improved scorch (and the 50 DPS or so on a five minute fight).

I do not necessarily think you are wrong, I am merely attempting to understand your position now that we have some common math to work off of.

P.S. I didn't check your numbers, but I assume you did some research into them.

galzohar · 04/02/08, 9:54 AM

Pushback can be simulated easily by adding an averaged amount to the cast time of spells based on the pushback frequency. Frequency can be measured, and while it changes between fights, we already know that you can get different theorycraft results for different fights and just have to see which spec does better for which fights (assuming there's a difference of course) and choose which fights are more important to you (or for the real hardcore, respec accordingly).

-10 spell damage can be modeled and is not very significant (but no reason not to count it).

The following depends on number of mages in the raid:

If CoD is worth casting over CoE even if all mages are fire or you simply only have 2 warlocks (CoS+CoR and no CoE...) it's easy as you always have CoS and never CoE and thus your spec doesn't change the actual setup.

If CoD>CoE if mages are arcane but CoE<CoD if all mages are arcane, you take the DPS of a CoD and divide it amongst the mages in your raid as negative DPS. Remember it's the CoD-lock DPS VS a CoE-lock DPS which is lower than simply taking CoD dmg/60s.

If CoD<CoE even if all mages are arcane (and you raid with 3 warlocks), you simply assume CoE is always up.

The only thing that's actually hard to model about arcane is losing the debuff, and its effect can vary greatly between fights as well as between different strategies or even DPSing strategies (say if you do most of your ABing in bulks, losing the debuff while frostbolting is not a huge dps loss. If you lose the debuff even during AB spamming you'd lose a lot more, as well as if you try to constantly keep the debuff up even while casting frostbolts). Then again you can just assume each time the debuff drops in a fight you lose 2 seconds of DPS and gain 2 seconds of mana regen, so once you actually go through a fight and see how often the debuff drops you can tell exactly what the DPS loss it is causing.

It's far from impossible to tell wether arcane will do more or less DPS than fire (or even another arcane variant) on a given fight with given conditions. It could, however, depend significantly on those conditions, so your results will be different on different fights and/or with different raids. You'll just have to assume which conditions are more relevent/likely (which fights you're having more trouble with, which raid/party compositions you're more likely to have...) and go with the spec that'll do best under those conditions.

Doroteasenjk · 04/02/08, 10:41 AM

Let's note some things about arcane:

1) Arcane Blast with 3 debuffs is very poor DPM. To counteract this, most arcane mages use a rotation that allows the 3-debuff to drop off in the middle of an AB cast to get a hasted cast while spending undebuffed mana.

2) Arcane Blast debuff is applied late some of the time. The mana cost for AB is charged at the increased cost but the cast time is not decreased. Thus, you will have lower DPM and lower DPS than theory states. I don't know whether the models reflect this. Some mages use a filler spell during the debuff ramp up to ensure increased DPS/DPM, but I haven't seen the theorycrafting on this; it is definitely lower DPS than taking your chances on the debuff applying properly.

3) External haste throws off Arcane Blast rotations. PI, Drums of Battle and Bloodlust/Heroism can be applied pretty much at any time (on a micro scale) during an AB rotation. This means you need to plan for a one-second window for your filler spells, or you will end up with the lowest DPM possible.

Conclusion: Arcane Blast rotations are buggy, fragile and variable, with overall lower DPS & DPM than theorycraft suggests. The AB rotation cannot be kept at maximum DPS because of the bug. The DPM will, in practice, be much lower because of the variable size filler window and the bug.

aznxk3vi17 · 04/02/08, 10:55 AM

The theory going around now is that one has enough sustainability via Shadow Priest, consumables, and the new spirit mechanics to never let the AB debuff drop. We all know about the old Arcane rotations, but they are seemingly outdated now. Your points really don't mean much anymore. When in a hasted mode (IV, Heroism/BL, Drums, etc.), the general thing to do is to spam Frostbolt, since your GCD is brought below 1 second.

tl;dr: DPM isn't really taken into consideration with Arcane anymore. It's definitely a large part of playing the spec, but this is not the reason some of us are looking into its viability (or lack thereof).

edit: missing words

Doroteasenjk · 04/02/08, 12:41 PM

Originally Posted by aznxk3vi17

one has enough sustainability ... to never let the AB debuff drop.

You are going to have to show some numbers for that. As much as I have loved Arcane in the past, I find it extremely hard to believe. What gear level (damage, int, spirit) do you need to do this? Mostly Tier 6 isn't suffiicient.

As for the myth of the "spare innervate", that is to laugh. Healing druids innervate themselves. Tanking druids innervate when they aren't getting hit; DPS druids have an innervate to spare but that goes to other healers or shadow priests.

The posts on the last 5 pages of this thread do not support Arcane in the way that the cheerleaders describe. They ignore the real game mechanics in favor of certain kinds of ideal (and practically unobtainable) conditions, gear sets and raid compositions.

Rule: when you do theorycrafting, words only serve to explain the numbers, not replace them.

aznxk3vi17 · 04/02/08, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by Doroteasenjk

You are going to have to show some numbers for that. As much as I have loved Arcane in the past, I find it extremely hard to believe. What gear level (damage, int, spirit) do you need to do this? Mostly Tier 6 isn't suffiicient.

As for the myth of the "spare innervate", that is to laugh. Healing druids innervate themselves. Tanking druids innervate when they aren't getting hit; DPS druids have an innervate to spare but that goes to other healers or shadow priests.

The posts on the last 5 pages of this thread do not support Arcane in the way that the cheerleaders describe. They ignore the real game mechanics in favor of certain kinds of ideal (and practically unobtainable) conditions, gear sets and raid compositions.

Rule: when you do theorycrafting, words only serve to explain the numbers, not replace them.

I never said I was an Arcane user or a cheerleader, and as I said, have only noted that that's the general idea behind Arcane. You insert Frostbolts here and there to keep your mana pool from dropping too low, but still keep the AB debuff. You can simply do a search; it's been well established that this is how 40/0/21 mages operate. The reason you don't see numbers is because it's hard to model, and if you're saying that Manly and Co. are ignoring game mechanics, I'd say you haven't been reading enough.

galzohar · 04/02/08, 12:57 PM

The extra mana is mostly from the int changes, it hardly has to do with itemization, although more int obviously helps it. Nobody is actually spamming AB through the whole fight, but rather simply casting it often enough to keep the debuff going so you never have to ramp it up when you do burn the mana to spam it.

The DPS calculations already take into account all those mana issues/etc and when numbers are brought they usually don't include an innervate (although seeing the results and the fact healers/SPs may almost have more mana than they can ever use, maybe innervate to arcane mages *should* be a standard as it's probably the best way to use it to increase raid DPS, assuming the arcane spec is already enough DPS without the innervate to be worth speccing into...). Anyway saying stuff about arcane's lack of mana efficiency as a counter to the calculations is quite pointless.

At the end though on average length fights, based on current calculations, I don't see arcane being hands down better although more things still need to be taken into consideration such as # of mages and CoE VS CoD (assuming a maledicted CoS is always there from the shadow embrace affliction warlock), and actual duration and the actual portion of the time you actually get to DPS of the fights that matter (aka sunwell) when you're learning them. Overall the numbers are too close to totally burn either spec down, not even full arcane at least until more numbers are run (and more accurately) taking at least these factors into account.

manly · 04/02/08, 1:14 PM

To be quite frank, I already addressed this. Yes, rotations are out, and this is a major bonus. Getting an untimely pushback which messed up your rotation was something I definately hated from arcane spec. But nowadays the playstyle is 3 stack AB spam and frostbolt to stagger your mana consumption, making sure to always 'refresh' your AB debuff. Think of it like a scorch debuff.

Spamming frostbolt during cooldowns is very debatable. I made a post about this, but nobody took up my challenge.