Is amplify magic still a good buff for tanks on most encounters?

The healers and tanks in my guild seem convinced the increased magic damage scales somehow, making it useless on any encounter with significant magical damage.

All I have been able to find however is that the healing part behaves like spellpower and scales, but nothing about the damage part. This scaling reduces the healing effect ofcourse, but is it still worth casting on fights like sarth + 3d?.

Is

Enchant Weapon - Black Magic

Any good compared to the +50 spellpower enchant?

I do know it's less better than the +63 spellpower enchant, but I'm not that rich yet.

You should stick with +50 spellpower for now, next patch +63 spellpower will be a lot cheaper.

This seems to be a pretty basic question that probably has a well established answer, but I can't seem to find it in either these or the WoW Forums. Perhaps my googlefoo is weak.

When is the Spellpower (Or Crit chance for that matter) established during a spellcast?

Is it determined when you hit the button to cast the spell? When the Spell finishes casting? Or when the spell impacts the target?

I'm pretty sure Haste is calculated when the button is pressed, and I think Crit chance is probably calculated when the spell impacts, but I'm not sure about Spellpower.

This seems important for trinkets that add a time based proc buff to Spellpower, such as [Sundial of the Exiled] For example, if Spellpower for a specific spell is calculated when the spell is cast rather than when the button is pressed, it may be more effecient to pop in a Fireblast in the last second of the proc if there's not enough time left on it to finish a FFB cast.

It would also matter when deciding to refresh LB during a Spelldamage boost proc if doing so would result in one less FFB cast at the higher spell power value.

I believe Haste is determined when you start casting, Spell power is determined when you finish casting, and Crit is also determined when you finish casting. If crit was determined on spell impact, we wouldn't have ignite issues, shatter combos wouldn't be possible, and we wouldn't be able to get a fourth and third charge out of Combustion and Fingers of Frost, respectively. I'm fairly certain that Blizzard's server-side calculations would be fast enough to check two spells against your one charge.

Spell power is tricky though. From what I've seen, if I begin casting something and my buff wears off before the cast finishes, it will not inherit the spell power that I started casting with. For something like Living Bomb, this would be irrelevant, since you would never want to prematurely refresh Living Bomb.

I actually meant delaying your LB refresh until after the proc wore off so that you would get in the extra cast during the proc rather than using your time for the LB GCD.

Thanks for the clarification on when Crit is determined. Can you think of an effective method of testing to determine the answer to the question about Spellpower?

Has anyone seen really strange WWS numbers comparing mages to each others or mages to themselves week to week, for example huge swings in one mage's dps, or one mage doing more than another despite a rotation that looks inferior?

I'm trying to figure out what's going on with a few of our mages' dps; for example, we had a newer mage show up for Patch yesterday and he did 200 dps more than a more experienced mage despite having slightly worse gear, not keeping up Living Bomb as well, casting 0 Pyroblasts on Hot Streaks, and forgetting to use Mirror Image. Both had FFB crit ~45% with around the same number of casts and ignite ticks, same number of scorches, but WWS is reporting the newer mage's ignite ticks as 600 more than the older mage.

In previous weeks, I've seen mages swing 800-1.1k dps from one week's kill to the next, but I always just chalked that up to RNG.

I would say that if all of the mages are spec'd into FfB, the RNG plays a much bigger part. FfB's high crit modifier can lead to some fairly large swings with the same mage from week to week.

I've been using NeedToKnow for a few weeks, and it has proven to be a very effective one-stop-shop for monitoring buffs/debuffs. It's easy to configure, and you can set each monitored buff to track either those only you cast or those any mage casts. It will also track the number of stacks (if applicable) for a monitored buff. Mine is set up to monitor any Scorch refresh but only my own LB's, Hotstreaks, trinket procs and item damage buffs.

Apologies if this is a bit late, but I don't get to read these forums as often as I'd like.

Wait for a trinket like Sundial of the Exiled to proc, then cast a Frostbolt against a target (make sure you've already snared the target if you have Torment the Weak, so the 12% damage isn't affecting this). When Sundial has 1 second left, begin casting another Frostbolt. If both of the frostbolts are non-crits, or if both are crits, compare the damage.

If the damage is the same, then that means spell power snapshot was done at cast time, and not when the spell finished casting, or when the spell landed. However, if the damage is not the same, that means it's looking at spell power when you finish casting, or when the spell lands.

If that's the case, you'll need to cast a Frostbolt and have the cast finish right before the buff fades, so that your spell power takes into the trinket upon cast finish, but the buff fades while the frostbolt is in mid-air.

Is there anything worth buying with emblems of valor (besides tier tokens) for a frostfire mage?

The BoE bracers so you can AH them?

On a serious note, no, tier tokens are it as the rest of the valor badge gear we can wear has spirit or mp5 and there are better items from raids (some Naxx10/heroic epics are actually better).

Amplify/dampen works like a healer having extra spellpower. It does not scale based on the boss's AE damage abilities, although you cannot reduce the damage below 50% value. There were two old threads which used to discuss the buff: When to use CoR, Amplify/Dampen Magic? and [Mage] Amplify/Dampen Magic Mechanics?

Buff usage depends on the encounter, but there are many more fights where amplify is useful than fights where dampen was useful. Amplify/dampen magic has always had strange, non-intuitive interactions with boss abilities. For instance, amplify magic does not affect Sapphiron's frost aura, even though logically it should. Heavy heal-based fights favor usage of amplify, like Brutallus in Sunwell, Gurtogg Bloodboil in Black Temple, and Patchwerk (for the main tank and hateful tanks). Shaker sums up a quick guideline this way:
I've never done Sarth3D, so I can't offer any ideas on whether amplify magic would be a good thing. Honestly, if your healers still fight you over the buff after you explain the benefits and how it works, I wouldn't bother pushing the issue. It's just a hassle and not your problem that they want to throw away an extra 255 spellpower to their heals.

Casting time is always determined when beginning the cast (ie: before you see the time remaining on your cast).
Damage is calculated when you pay mana, which is incidentally usually when the spell leaves your hand. There are a few exceptions, such as arcane missiles and living bomb, whereas the explosion is a separate spell (ditto for AM come to think of it). 'Calculating spell damage' is redundant; its not what teh game does, it only calculates the damage to be dealt.

You can also wait until the patch and trade them in for Heroism tokens, and buy blue quality gems with them.

I just wanted to confirm this. And add some praise to the NeedToKnow mod. It's excellent at tracking all buffs and debuffs perfectly, extremely easy to use. I actually found it so good I've instructed all our mages to use it in the guild. (if they'd prefer scorchio2 etc that's fine, but I've tried it and I liked NeedToKnow better)

Also, I've set it up the exact same way as Kaymar, and it works 100% flawlessly, and I never miss a Hotstreak, LB refresh or buff window!

The long answer can be found a while back in the thread with all the theorycrafting tied up with it. The short answer is that the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is so powerful that even a t4 helm with it will be competitive to any lvl 80 Blue without the gem. A quick wowhead search will show you all the LK helms with a meta socket. Tailoring will lead you to the Hat of Wintery Doom Engineering to Visage Liquification Goggles and pvp/badges to Savage Gladiator's Silk Cowl. These are all fairly easy to obtain or you can use the drops from Heroic Strat or Heroic Occulus. Until then keep whichever head you have from TBC.

Hello,

I whould like to play with an arcane spec to experiment other specs, i am used with a frostfire build

I tried to change talents in Rawr, to have a look at the cycles used there, but i am not used with arcane abbreviations and such

Can someone please tell me what is the (or more than one) cycle to use with an arcane spec? I searched in the forum and i am stuck with abbreviations too but without something clear like Rawr

I also looked in warcraft europe forum but finding unclear reply or 2007 rotations (the old blast blast blast missiles scorch rotation)

Thanks in advance

^

Where mana isn't an issue:

Arcane Blast x3, Arcane Barrage (and use Arcane Missiles when the Missile Barrage talent procs)

Where mana is an issue:

Arcane Blast X1, Arcane Barrage (and use Arcane Missiles when the Missile Barrage talent procs)

-----------------

There's been a lot of discussion as to when it's best to use your missile barrage procs. ie do you use then straight away or wait for a stack of 3 arcane blasts. I've seen so many different variations of this that I now have no idea when it's best to cast arcane missiles once you have the proc up.

There are also arcane 'shatter' combos that can be used. ie you only cast 4 ticks of arcane missiles and then you cast arcane barrage so they all benefit from the increased 60% damage. It's easier said than done to time this with double speed missiles however.

Really thanks, finally something clear, i have one last thing to ask

The new torment of the weak will work with other snares too, in the rotations you suggest shall i keep slow up or it's better to rely on other players snares?

I guess weaving slow is almost like weaving living bomb, so i should have not much problem there

Thanks again

^

As an arcane mage now I don't use Slow in my rotations. Wasting dps time casting Slow pretty much negates the 12% bonus you get from casting it. After the patch there should always be some kind of slowing effect up on the boss so you shouldn't need to worry about it. You will get the 12% damage increase anyway. Most patch arcane raid specs don't even spec into Slow.

This can be significant. I ran into this problem and think I have mostly fixed it.

I have a decent computer and card. Pentium 4 dual core, 2GB ram, GEforce 7600. Not state of the art, not not an antique either. But it has had performance issues on WOW ever since I bought it. The issues were solveable in BC, but frame rates dropped in LK, and I have had serious dps issues in 25 man content or high graphics content. (3k dps on Patch when my gear should be getting me over 4k).

I did some troubleshooting this week. Deactivated Defender (didn't even show as running on my taskbar, but on a tip I disabled it anyway and performance dramatically improved). Closed all other apps (IE is greedy but Mozilla is pretty good - Rawr is greedy). I have also learned to not run 25-man content with questhelper activated. In general, deactivate your pvp and questing mods for Raiding.

DPS jumped considerably in 25-man content last night. Haven't run Patch yet, but was getting 3500 dps on fights with lots of mobility, which was a good sign.

The WOW official tech forum has a decent sticky on how to troubleshoot performance problems. There is no one sized fits all but if you are having framerate issues on boss fights it is almost certainly killing your dps.