Aye. The more I re-read that, the more I came to the same conclusion. My question now, is how on earth does that change anything we do in regards to shatters? You're still aiming for the ghost charge, hence you're still going to fire off two frostbolts and an icelance or deepfreeze, so why the change? I understand that under BL/heroism and with IV going, cap is easy to hit, but even haste capped with latency, how does that change your approach?

It's not intended to change anything about using Ghost Charges. It's supposed to make it a lot easier to use the second charge on Deep Freeze.

Ghost Charges are not an intentional feature. They're clearly a bug -- they're a bug that's both difficult to fix, and not terribly important since exploiting it perfectly results in a DPS gain of less than about 2%. The intent behind this change is to make the abilities work gracefully as described in the tooltip. Prior to this change, a player who was spamming Frostbolt and trying to nail Deep Freeze on Charge 2 (which is the intended functionality) would have a lot of trouble doing so, as he's likely already begun precasting his Charge 2 Frostbolt before he even sees the FoF buff. After this change, he can reliably use the second charge on Deep Freeze.

Those who make use of ghost charges won't see any difference, really. Those who don't (because they can't, or just don't know about it -- remember, the vast majority of players don't read any forums) will find that the rotation works a lot better after this change.

In a PvE setting it could quite often be the difference between having 1.x seconds to react to a proc and 2.x should we choose to attempt a shatter (on e.g. Deep Freeze). I can't see anything negative with it; it's a minor positive tweak to functionality. Hopefullly there's a few more tweaks planned to make shatters (either ghost charge or otherwise) more interesting as we get closer to 3.3.

I'm confused, currently on live (and as far back as I can remember in this expansion) FoF procs upon completing a cast, not when the spell impacts on the target in the case of Frostbolt. Are you telling me it's not working this way on your realms since you all seem to debate this change? Brain Freeze (instant Fireball) however will proc on impact rather then cast completion so I'm thinking it's a typo.

Geglash: currently, it procs on cast if you're also specced for Frostbite, and on hit if you're not. They're changing it so it will proc on cast whether or not you're specced for Frostbite.

I see. Does this mean that if one is specced for 1/3 (or 2/3) Frostbite and 2/2 Fingers of Frost that from time to time FoF would proc on cast completion (since Frostbite procs that time) but other times won't (Frostbite not proccing)?

[] Run speed enchants- beats the other enchants if you spend at least 4 seconds running per minute.
Actual quality depends of fight, gear, behaviour and much more, 4s/min is a generalised figure and threshold estimate

I have always been seeing this that is better if you do spend 4 seconds running each minute, but again i have checked several places and i cannot find the exact math and what it is that it aids that can beat out the either 12 crit 12 hit or 18 spi

It can actually be found in Rawr. Under Options|Fight, fill in say 30 for Movement Frequency i.e. there is movement every 30 seconds; and then for Movement Duration fill in 2 second i.e. you run for 2 seconds every 30 seconds. You'll see that run speed enchants are clearly higher dps than anything else.

I found it pretty hard to find posts regarding this elsewhere, and after viewing Sancus's brief comments I decided to test on my own. Found out a few things about engineering after some extensive testing, check this out:

Taels gains Taels's Fire Ward.
Taels casts Fire Ward.
Taels casts Global Thermal Sapper Charge.
Taels's Global Thermal Sapper Charge hits Expert's Training Dummy for 1 Fire.(2427 Overkill)
Taels's Global Thermal Sapper Charge hits Expert's Training Dummy for 1 Fire.(4206 Overkill) (Critical)
Taels's Global Thermal Sapper Charge was absorbed by Taels.(2499 Absorbed)
Taels's Mote of Flame fades from Taels.
Taels's Pillar of Flame hits Expert's Training Dummy for 1 Fire.(1803 Overkill)

Bomb crits are giving trinket procs, (note: I do not think saronite bombs can crit, but the Goblin sapper charges can).

Taels gains Taels's Fire Ward.
Taels casts Fire Ward.
Taels casts Global Thermal Sapper Charge.
Taels's Global Thermal Sapper Charge hits Grandmaster's Training Dummy for 1 Fire.(3615 Overkill) (Critical)
Taels's Global Thermal Sapper Charge hits Grandmaster's Training Dummy for 1 Fire.(2384 Overkill)
Taels's Global Thermal Sapper Charge was absorbed by Taels.(1818 Absorbed)
Taels gains Taels's Mote of Flame (2).
Taels gains 1818 Mana from Taels's Frost Warding.

The bomb self damage can proc frost warding, I received 4200 mana from it during one test.

Taels casts Runic Mana Injector.
Taels gains 5332 Mana from Taels's Runic Mana Injector.

An extra 1000 mana is nothing to scoff at, when mana potions are used that is.

Summary of gains:
-27 Spellpower to cloak

-340 Haste on-use to gloves (1 min cooldown)

-Rocket boots that also give 24 crit rating

-Extra 1000 mana/health from Runic Mana and Runic Health injectors

-Bombs that are not on the global cooldown that can be thrown every minute
Saronite bomb- Inflicts 1150-1500 fire damage (can be used 25 yards away) (1 min cooldown)
Global Thermal Sapper Charge- Explodes dealing 2188-2812 damage in a 10 yard radius (does same damage to me) (5 min cooldown)
Bomb crits give me Reign of the Unliving mote procs
Damage given from global thermal sappers can be absorbed with fire ward and give mana back through the frost warding talent
Damage can also be fully resisted, giving mana back with the magic absorption talent

-Ability to use the Robot auctionhouse in Dalaran

-Jeeves, for repairs and ability to access bank anywhere

-Moll-E, for mailbox access anywhere

-Gnomish Army Knife, which has a chance to resurrect dead players



Conclusion:

I like how much of an active role engineering has. It gives me extra things to due to drown the monotony of our rotations. I find that bomb throwing between casts (off the GCD) isnt hard at all. The only thing I found "Difficult" about the profession first off was recognizing when cooldowns were up, but that has disappeared with practice and adding some nifty cooldown timers.

I am going to be keeping engineering/jewelcrafting for raiding at top level, as I feel its superior for my playstyle than tailoring. I feel like I have more control over my burst, and from all that I've read, it provides more damage than tailoring does theoretically. I'd like to see some more math savvy geniuses like sancus, lhivera or vontre take a more in depth look into it, do you believe its worth it? (Btw lhivera, what happened to order of the raven?)

Thank you for your time.

So I'm standing at Steelbreaker's feet after killing his two cronies along with the rest of the dpsers in my 25 man raid, doing my arcane rotations. I'm all set up with Quartz and am spamming the hell out of my keyboard between AB casts (after the GCD length server request limitation - I've done my reading up, thanks Manly), but NOT after chanelling AM/MBAM. Nothing could be simpler? The only problem is knowing exactly when that last AM has left my hand in the middle of the fury of sounds and lights. For the life of me I can't say for sure that I'm getting all five casts out, have clipped and only cast four, or have been slow and wasted precious ms of cast time. Especially in heroism/bloodlust, MBAB does fire off missiles awfully quick. The solution:

1. A no-channeling macro? As everone agrees a dps loss related to your lag, but in this situation perhaps a comprimise solution that might yield the best results.

2. Turn down all sound effects, except the sound of my own casts. Doesn't exist does it?

3. Watching the battle log (for instance via "Mik's Scrolling Battle Text" or "Parrot"), to see when the fifth hit lands. Also a dps loss related to the flight time of the missiles (and also a server lag?).

4. Watching when the AB buff/debuff is cancelled, for instance "Power Auras"?

5. A new addon. giving you an unmistakeable visual/audio signal to say when the fifth missile has left your scrawny mage hand?

6. Wildy guessing at the timimg and dreaming about reaching my theoretical dps limit as calculated in Rawr. My present option ...

Your ideas?

Orcrist, your question belongs in simple questions/answers, but I'm not sure that it has been specifically discussed there, so here's your answer. you said you're using Quartz. Turn on the latency bar, if you haven't already. When your AM cast bar is down in the red section, start throwing AB. You will cast all 5 AMs.

regardless of how you feel about the mechanic of a spell, we are talking about just that; the mechanic of a spell, not about 3.3 changes.

I had a gut feeling we had already talked about this in the near past, I just couldn't find it. I found it. The Arcane Thread - Page 120. If your "gut feeling" goes against what has already been proven to be true, by all means, show us something empirical to prove us wrong.

Orcist, I was having the same issue. I went to the target dummy and tested out some spell rotations and sure enough I was clipping my AM a bit early.

Since then, I simple err on the side of safety. If my latency is show as unusually high (700ms) I will wait till about 400-500 to queue up my next spell. You're never going to be perfect but it's better than clipping a missile.

I haven't had a lot of time to test on Dr. Boom (and his uptime isn't all that great), but based on a short test this morning and another this evening, it appears that Deep Freeze no longer benefits from shatter in the latest PTR build.

In my opinion, this is good in that it improves crit scaling for frost, but of course bad news for the talent, because it lowers the DPS of deep freeze significantly (the non-crit damage would need to go up by about 35% to match a deep freeze that shatters).

Tiga, it seemed to be benefitting when I tested this morning, but I'll try to put some more time into it and be sure. It is for sure, however, not eating an extra charge of FoF.

This is a difficult thing to test well due to the long cooldown and the fact that Dr. Boom won't regenerate. Very annoying.

Edit: Tiga seems to be correct; the damage component is no longer eating an extra charge, but it's also not benefitting from Shatter.

Regarding the whole "is you is or is you ain't clipping Arcane Missiles" thing, remember that Quartz's red latency zone is an estimate based on recent pings. If you're quick on the draw and your latency spikes even just a few tens of milliseconds at an inopportune time, you can easily clip even if you're in the red. It's not that the concept isn't sound, it's just that the tool can't provide 100% predictive accuracy.

Latest Deep Freeze test on Dr. Boom (using rank 1 frostbolts to proc FoF and to make him last as long as possible):

23 Deep Freezes, 19 hits, 4 crits (17.39%). Character window crit chance is 23.3, so adding winter's chill to that should make it 28.3% and it should be 78.3% with shatter.

Also, there's a reason why FoF was changed to proc on spell impact (in patch 3.1) and that problem seems to be back again: if you just spam frostbolts and the second frostbolt on a FoF would proc a new FoF, you hear the sound that gaining the buff makes, but you don't actually get the buff. It seems their "clear FoF" code is munching new procs.

It seems their server side technology for implementing spells and effects is really causing problems with fingers of frost...

This is really what I've wanted to say since the discussion started yesterday. Quartz does not guarantee anything, nor is it proven to be entirely accurate. There is a reason that some spriests use an addon for Mind Flay and that some warlocks use an addon for Drain Soul. Mages don't have any addon as far as I know, but looking at combat logs, I can get sometimes 'perfect' ABs 100ms after the last AM, and other times I can play 'perfect' according to quartz and still clip half my AMs.

Quartz shows you an estimated time based on the latency measured in the response to the "start casting" event you sent the server. But Internet connections - especially home connections - can have extremely variable latency between two points. If it shows you 110ms, and you time that perfectly, but the "real" latency on your AB cast dropped to 90ms, you sent it 20ms early and clipped the missile.

The basic problem with quartz here is that it only shows you the *expected* value of latency - this is the point at which you should hit your button if missing positively has the same impact as missing negatively (clipping vs delaying). What you actually need is the 'best cast point' - the point on the latency distribution curve that maximizes net damage to aim for; I would expect this value to be somewhat above the 'expected ping' (probably around a standard deviation above the mean if server ping fit a normal curve, which it doesn't.)

On the other hand, that value *is* quite machine calculable for a given latency curve - it's probably a reasonable thing for a mod to attempt to do, if you know how much damage you lose by missing in each direction by various amounts. If anyone's interested in trying this, feel free to pm me; I can set down a more precise mathematical definition of 'best click time' in terms of ping distribution, human click curve, and error-impact (what impact on your dps missing the perfect cast by x milliseconds in each direction has); it involves an integral and a curve convolution. Implementing it in an addon is well beyond the effort I'm willing to put in, though.

Being able to tell quartz to underestimate or overestimate red_bar_start by a constant amount (or fraction of ping) would probably be sufficient here; I doubt most people's ping-curves vary over time that much.

I've been minimizing my time spent on WoW lately to the best of my ability, but I will say that it's much tougher to throw bombs as Arcane than as Fire(which is fine right now, since the only hard fight in the game you're playing FFB anyway, and bombs are aoe so they're 5x stronger on Anub) due to the fact that there's no "on gcd dead time" and throwing a Saronite Bomb requires a short amount of targeting time. The only time you have dead time as Arcane is when you move, as none of your spells are instant so there is no time spent on the GCD at all that isn't subsumed into casting time.

Simplest(and most accurate) way to check this is to make two Rawr profiles, one set up as eng/jc and the other set up as tailoring/jc or whatever your alternate option is. Every time I've done this, Engineering shows up superior even ignoring bombs AND casting time gained from using Rocket Boots, both of which are very significant as well.

Given how trivial it is to (over)hitcap yourself as Arcane, Rocket Boots letting you gain crit for hit can likely be counted as a dps gain as well, even though crit sucks for Arcane.

Engineering is about the whole package.

I am struggling to see how this change helps in the way you describe. If FoF procs upon spell cast completing, does that spell not use the first charge up when it lands? This means that when you see the proc, the cast following it (that particularly under hasted conditions you are likely to be quite far into before the proc even appears on your screen thanks to latency) is already your second cast?

A spell procing FoF means the next 2 spells will have the FoF effect. The spell procing FoF doesn't consume a charge. The reason that procing on spell cast is better is because it shortens the time to notify you of the proc.

Before the change, a proc on impact meant you could have consumed the first charge already and perhaps casting another FB, which would consume the 2nd charge. In Lhivera's words.

Basically, procing on cast means you don't have to wait for the impact to know if FoF proc'd and lose 1 charge already. This give you time to cast DF for the 2nd charge without having to cancel a FB.