I still don't see how can anyone really consider doing anything "on clearcast". Taking minimal values of 0.2s reaction time and 0.1s latency (0.2s reaction time is realistic lowballing for reaction time for an event you're expecting and devoting 100% attention to, I actually tested it out with a stopwatch and a friend starting it and me stopping it as soon as I see the timer starting to measure reaction time to get some results to do statistical analisys on). That's minimum 0.3s lost every spellcast. If you actually ignore clearcast but cancel the spell and cast missiles on clearcast, you will have 0.4s delay but only on clearcasts. I just can't see how such a big delay (remember this is the minimum value) can be made up for by applying 30% crit to an arcane missiles over an arcane blast. You'll need to do a lot of math to convince me that it's worth doing *anything* as a mage "on clearcast", aside from possibly PoM pyro during AP.

Remember that even fights with "phases" where you can claim you've been doing DPS on the "important" phase often have that phase way too long for you to be able to really AB for a significant duration anyway. Not to mention your "mana efficient" rotation is still burning more mana for less damage than fireball/frostbolt spamming.

While I don't have the straight math to rule out arcane, it would take a lot more than what had been brought up here to support arcane spec to convince me.

And I think it's already widely agreed upon that arcane isn't even worth discussing without 2/5 T5.

Not only do you need the t5 bonus, you also need a shadow priest, the spec does rely on another class and gear. Fire in order to compete with this also needs gear, haste and t6.

As for reaction time to AB and missile, read the first post where I mention experience is key here. I've been using quartz for a cast bar and stop casting macros for a while now since I live on the east coast and raid on the west. In 2.3 I have removed most of my stopcasting macros on all spells except missile, and some instants. I don't spam my buttons, I press them when needed. When I see clearcast procing, I hit my AM key. It is as simple as that. It's all about experience. This spec has a lot more to manage and very dependant on gear and another player beyond your control. Clearcasted missiles are not only high dps, but they drop your AB debuff for free. I usually eat a potion and gem within the first 30 seconds of a fight, I keep my pot/gem timers going at all times, I make use of my evocation. I sometimes cyber for innervates however this is not to maintain mana more than it is trying to beat someone on the meter.

A minor point, but to point out that raiding arc/fire or arc/frost and flasking, you would normally use supreme power rather than the flask of pure death for fire/frost which could affect dps slightly.

Personally, I think four piece T4 is a lot harder to get than two piece T5.

You mean T6? T4 is from Karazhan and Gruul which there are so many PuGs going there on my server . I doubt it is different on other servers.

Experience means nothing without results. If you feel that Arcane can compete, you should post WWS that shows it exceeding 1800dps on a reasonable test fight such as Teron Gorefiend, or something similar to that.(heck, I would be duly impressed with 1600)

Or at least post something. Honestly, people saying 'oh Arcane is quite viable' and then launch into a multi-paragraph argument of it are not adding anything useful - damage is also about the numbers that you put out, and without a presentation of some sort of actual evidence it's pretty much impossible to have any sort of discussion that will ever arrive at a conclusion.

We can argue for weeks about the "soft" benefits/downsides of each spec and how that "should" affect dps.

But it's not as simple as that - If you are doing this, that means you are casting slower than you are actually capable of. In order for you to make a choice about what to cast when clearcast is up, that means that you have already sacrificed the ability to send a cast message to the server before your current cast has completed client-side.

It's not a question of reaction time, it's a question of how the game works. You can either chaincast at maximum speed, or you can adapt to clearcasts. Either or. There's no physically possible way to do both, latency simply doesn't allow it.

short:
The minimum human reaction time for foreseen events is about 240 ms. (The Psychology of Human-computer ... - Google Book Search)
long:
Consider an experiment of the following sort: the testee is being told to hit a button as soon as an led lights up, there is only one button, but he may only react to the light, he may not press it preemptively. (hit the gas on he green light) A typical reaction time is 240 ms for such an experiment between the events "light is on" and "button is pressed down". Time may vary between individuals, but is in the range of 100-470ms. The CMN model presented in the book linked above has the following explanation for this:

* It takes 100 ms for a stimulus to be detected by the eyes and send to the brain. This does not include processing of the image, see it as an inherent "latency" between eye and brain. This number is suggested by experiments that flashes faster than 10 times per second can no longer be counted (as always, this is a medium value).
* Now that the information has reached the brain, it takes about 70 ms to do a simple conclusion. Simple here means: "This is the signal I have been waiting for, now I press the button!" or "Clearcast is up, now I hit arcane missiles!" More elaborate thinking requires more time/cycles, eg: reacting to different colored lights, choose the right button, considering remaining mana and fight duration.
* The remaining 70ms is the lag/latency between conscious thought/intention to do something and actual movement of the limbs.

To sum it up: Even to fastest reacting computer geeks with highly trained arcane skills will not be able to react faster than about 100 ms to a proccing buff, the "normal" person will take about 240ms, my grandmother will need about half a second. Keep in mind that the event is foreseen, but not precise - reaction time for some Boss encounters is higher, because you can see the countdown ticking down and can anticipate the event precisely.
Therefore dripping a spell to cast arcane missiles is prone two two kinds of latency: a) the latency of the game and the network connection, and b) the latency of your decision making process. Theorycraft therefore should consider both and will likely find out that it is an inappropriate procedure to do max dps.

I've actually run this experiment on a set of around 150 gamers and ranges were all in the 100 to 320 range. I was using the data to write AI code for a first person shooter and needed realistic reaction times. The time I picked for the very best AI was 120 ms, by the way. Anything faster resulted in consistently unrealistically good weapon accuracy. This is not a question of "being a better player". There is a real lower bound, and that bound is 100 ms.

Human response aside gentlemen, it does not change the fact that the server will induce (insert latency here) worth of time delay between the Clearcast proccing and your being notified of said occurence. Resulting in a grand old delay of over 200ms in the most optimistic of circumstances. And that's the delay in -requesting- for a change of spell, which in turn will take (latency) to reach serverside and in fact get processed.

Actually you rarely see Innervate mentioned. It actually works very well with Arcane Burst. It's often unused on many boss encounters. Sneaky tactic though, if you have a friend who's a druid you will have other Mages scratching their heads. You just need to ensure that the encounter is short or long enough to use it properly.

Arcane is very useful on the whole in BT. Even though on paper 10/48/3 should do more dps, the application of arcane and it's flexible approach to burst dps makes it actually very viable. Illidan phase 2, RoS interruption, Gorefiend and burst/mana dumping with debuff to name a few.

Arcane despite it's flaws is actually quite well engineered and my spec of choice for BT.

Possible Bug: Fire Vulnerability and Ignite are also causing [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] to proc. This was supposed to be fixed in the 2.3 patch for Warlocks/Priests (Shadow Vuln/Shadow Embrace) but I guess it got missed?


You might also want to include the mechanics of a spellcast. The casting time is decided when the spell begins while the mana cost and damge is determined when the spell is cast. That's important for people spellstealing on Krosh/High Nethermancer, and for people who are doubling up on Combustion. Channeled spells' mana cost is determined when the spell begins casting.

As for latency, I'm not totally sure about this but I think you actually get latencyX2, because when you see the spellcast copmlete on your client you still need to wait <latency> for the server to tell you your cast procced clearcast, and only then will you add the human reaction time and send another spellcast. Thinking about it you may even be getting 3Xlatency - not sure. Definitely worth testing, although 1Xlatency+reaction time should be enough to kill the idea, 2Xlatency or 3Xlatency will most definitely kill it.

I know that, when I am in Hyjal spamming Rank 1 AE to fish for a clearcast on the more mana-intensive pulls, it often comes up too late for me to switch to the max-rank AE. Maybe I am slow, but I rarely hear the sound more than a split second before the moment I should be pushing the button to cast my next AE...

This leads me to believe the delay is higher than latency * 2...

Looking at things, though:
1 - there's latency * 1 because the server finishes the cast after the client;
2 - an unknown delay where the server determines if the spell procced clearcasting (it doesn't seem as instantaneous as it could be: perhaps the proccing calculations are low-priority on the server, or perhaps it's just me imagining things);
3 - then latency * 1 to send the "you procced clearcast" back to the client;
4 - latency * 1 to send the "begin cast" message to the server.

So we get a delay of latency * 3 + reaction time + proc calculation time.

Correct me if I am wrong, but when most people talk about latency in wow they mean their "ping", the time it takes for the client to contact the server and for the server to send a reply, while you are talking about one-way latency. This means event 1 and 3 make together 1 "ping" latency, not 2. Also, event 1 and 4 are the same thing, only they belong to two different casts, so you can't count them together the way you do. (Notice this is for an instant cast spam situation, for spells with a casting time event 1 does simply not exist)

So your delay is simply Ping + reaction time + proc calculation time (if there is one)

I highlighted the parts of your post that i found ironic. No one is arguing that arcane can not be effective. However, at top-end gear levels, it does lag behind fire. Both the theorycraft and in-game numbers prove it. Unless you can show some actual numbers that contradict this, you really are wasting your time arguing it. The only time it can compete with fire is on short/gimmick fights or those with fire immunities. Not having CoE will bring it close as well.

Vontre's post was based on the theorycraft and in-game numbers. Not what is more "fun" for him. If you find arcane more fun and can live with doing less dps, go ahead. Attacking his posts due to your personal feelings is uncalled for however.

For a comparison, here is the link you posted to your Illidan(actually has Teron-Illidan) kill- WWS

And here is a link to our WWS history as mostly fire and not always getting CoE- WWS

Our mages have similar gear. The difference between fire and arcane is pretty clear.

Arcane may not be viable at 4/5 T6 gear level, but this is a general informational thread. I have not seen anything in the post indicating that evaluations are valid only for players that have cleared Illidan. In fact majority of players have not and at T5 level the statements made are a bit too strong in my opinion. AB cycles being an outdated technique is a deceiving statement.

Regarding CC reactions I'd add the following. The only time I'd change my spell on CC is when I'm in ultra conservation mode and then I'd use AB+AM anyway so no fast reaction is needed. On a normal high dps (non AB spam) rotation I'd never change on CC. I haven't done a formal analysis of comparing the two options, but my guess is that combination of mana gain/dps loss when reacting to CC is too high to be compensated with more AB spam with saved mana. The only time when you'd react on CC is on AB and in my experience you lose more than half of the AB cast in time. Reacting to AM proccing CC on the other hand is very reasonable.

This post: http://elitistjerks.com/570626-post1786.html seemed to have some really good information about the relative damage/MP5 tradeoffs of things like destruction pots vs mana pots, mage/molten armor etc. I found it helpful. Someone might want to consider condensing that information into the informational thread.

I would love to get some sort of sneak peak on the so-called 'improvements to spirit' which have been hinted are in the works for WOTLK. Whether mages get a talent/ability (like Paladin spiritual attunement) to use spirit in a more effective/innovative way then currently - making it more desirable for all specs rather than simply great for Arcane mages and a itemisation-annoyance for most of everyone else.

So in conclusion, in order for arcane to work compared with fire:

1) You need a specific group-setup feeding you mana.
2) You need to be 2/5*T5 but not T6 yet.
3) Mage Armor instead of Molten.
4) Mana gems instead of Flamecaps.
5) Mana pots instead of Destro pots.
6) Evo instead of 8sec DPS more.
7) Heroism doesn't benefit AB at all.
9) Disrupting cycles nets in DPS loss due to re-ramping of AB.
10) No interrupt resist.
11) 30y range.
12) Don't get CoE.
13) Let's not even get into how you'll cope as arcane with no Icy Veins, because it'll either mean AB*2/3, Am, non-ignite scorch, or AB*2/3, 3*Frostbolt or AB*2/3, AM, Frostbolt. And good luck making that first AB hit the timer of <0.5sec AB buff in a raid. Dr. Boom's latency at 4:00am might take kindly to it but I'll be a witch's sandwich if you pull that off in a raid. This can of course be alleviated with some haste, but lest we forget? You'll be losing out a percentage of the haste due to (at least) 1.5sec out of your 13sec rotation will be GCD capped so you're automatically ditching 11.5% of your haste value already and that's only so you can cope with making the rotation work.

I seem to recall some gentleman doing some research in TC after 2.3 about the AB buff not correctly registering in time if aggressive /stopcasting was used; tests need to be done again however, to establish if it is still the case that closely-cast AB will indeed cast at the correct speed rather than the previous debuffs due to server-side delaying the signal of the debuff arriving.

Seems to me enough credit has been given to Arcane in the front page thanks. Any other mages turning up with "you're doing arcane injustice because I think it's the greatest since grilled cheese" will do well to address some of these issues rather than go on about "experience" and how they find it more fun. Fun never figured in the title of the thread, only information gentlemen.

Arcane is good for those who enjoy its playstyle and accept its detriments - if a viewer is coming to this 'sweet informational thread' for confirmation - take it. You can raid as arcane if you wish and be 'OK'....

... however posters who are dedicated min-maxers have a different definition of whats 'ok' to others out there. Ok to many people here might mean the absolute best performing theorycrafted spec and nothing less, while some people simply want to know if something is viable for raiding - even if its not the theorycrafted min/max way to play.

Might as well put this in here: Is there a point in which using all your cooldowns paired together will typically out-dps popping them every time their up? For example, pairing Serpent-braid, Skull/Hex, Destruction pot, Icy Veins, and Combustion together instead of individually? Quick math is showing me it does with enough cooldowns, but additional testing would be nice

"Good" is entirely subjective and arbitrary. In the vast majority of environments, arcane is mathematically inferior to fire. If you (generally, not necessarily Tyrian specifically) want to say arcane is okay to make yourself feel better, that's fine, but I'd prefer informational threads to actually be informational.