I think this depends on the type of meter you use. Recount for example counts dps as damage/casttime, which means it won't count evocation etc. Then again, you might have more lags, causing pauses between casts or you might in general not press your button often enough. I know that it is harder with Arcane if you do not have some practice. Spamming FFb with HS-Pyros and constant-time-spaced LBs seems easier to me, though I never played FFB for personal reasons. On a side note, some meters count Dot-damage from FFb and Pyro as in the casttime, thus prolonging casttime during movement phases, thus effectively lowering FFb dps.

This is all true but generally, DPS is veiwed as Overall Fight Damage/Fight Time. Recount only considers your dps for the amount of time you are active, not for the fight duration.

True DPS is a worthless number when you don't consider the fight as a whole. Doing 11k DPS for 11 seconds on a AoE trash pull doesn't mean you are capable of putting out high DPS, it just means you know how to manipulate your damage meter to create an illusion of high DPS.

Overall Damage is, in my opinion, more important than DPS. DPS is just a term where we can quantify the amount of sustained damage we put out over the course of an entire boss fight.

Using EXTREMLY unreliable testing (10 casts for unstacked / fully stacked AB each, both with and without 2pt5), I come up with about the following: The 2pt5 is a 5% increase in DMG, at any given stack. The mana cost still is stuck with increasing only by a flat 12 mana for every stack. At 3 stacks, the next AB will cost 1771 mana without t5, and 1783 with it. Thats what the tooltip says at least. I tried testing it, and it seems to be ok, but on the other hand, without any addons at all or any way to monitor my mana (didn't bother to specc out of meditation) perfectly, I can't really tell.

I created my numbers using shoulder and gloves of t5 (never got anything else, actually) for the numbers with set-bonus active, and one piece of gear roughly matching the two pieces in spellpower and int for the numbers without it. I didn't bother checking the behaviour with crits and 1 or 2 stacks up.

At 0 stacks:
Average AB without T5 = 1466 DMG. 5% more DMG would be 1540.
Average AB with T5 = 1578 DMG.

At 3 stacks:
Average AB without T5 = 2308 DMG. 5% more DMG would be 2423.
Average AB with T5 = 2456.

The numbers seem pretty much ok for a specc with such a broad dmg-range. So really, there isn't anything funny going on, except for the mana-issue. Since it saves us arround 90 mana for each cast of fully stacked AB, this is actually quite nice.

I also did a quick check to see wether the Setbonus did anything to the debuff, but using fully stacked AB with and without it, the following Barrage kept putting out pretty consistent numbers, using the setbonus neither lowered nor raised these. Its amateurish, I know, but it WAS pretty bothersome standing there with only 7k mana and trying to cast stacked ABs.... silly me ^^

I am not exactly sure wether all of the above has actually been in any doubt, or wether it has been clear to everyone but me. If it is of any value as an information, I can repost it in the arcane-specc thread, or just quote it from here. It would of course be a lot better if someone actually did some testing (or better yet, calculating!) that isn't done on a laptop without any addons at all.

Also, on a final note, I guess this means we're still up for calculating 4pt7 and the value of the stats on 2 pieces of Naxx-gear vs. the value of 5% more DMG on our main-nuke.

Thanks for the replies and answers. And I do agree that simple DPS is a useless number: killing a boss means doing a certain quantity of dmg to it, regardless of the actual time it takes!

Follow-up question: on some very mobile fights I do a lot more dmg than a FFB mage (Heigan being the prime example). But on regular fights, how much of a difference in total dmg should I expect between FFB and arcane (with equivalent gear)?

Also: are there other (better?) dmg meters other than recount?

Thanks

So I have read all the Marco stuff I can find but I still haven't found what I am looking for.

I need to know how you attach Arcane Power to your Arcane Blast spell. It needs to be able to bypass AP if it's on Cd and go straight to casting AB.

/cast Icy Veins
/use 13&14(or named trinkets)
/use Mana Sapphire
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Arcane Blast

Only a few things will hang you up, I think Mirror Image is one, but AP isn't

On a straight up tank n spank fight the arcane spec should still come out ahead, but not by a lot. There's no absolutes really, if your FFB buddy gets crazy lucky with RNG he could beat you out. But in terms of averages the arcane spec is still a little bit ahead. Last nights run I was #1 on patchwerk, with the ffb mage coming in at #4. We were seperated by a little over 100k dmg. Last weeks I only beat him by 50k dmg.

Alright, well, heres a repost from what I happen to have added yesterday on the first post

if I were to make a guess, it works exactly like arcane_power, which would give us the new formula

ab_mana_cost = rounddown( round(base_mana_cost [* arcane_focus] [* elemental_precision]) * (1 + ab_stacks * 2 [+ arcane_power] [+ 2pct5]) )

Thx.

I get why the ignites would contribute to a lot of dmg there, but because arcane is such a mobile spec, I can ABarr my way through the dance phases non-stop, and even push the mbarrs that proc. Once when we had about 1/2 of the raid down, I even recast my mana gems during the dance phase to keep my mana up for the long fight.

Not mana efficient in any way, but it's still a whole lot more dmg than what a fire or FFB mage can dish out during those phases.

What can a Fire or FFB do to match that?

Arcane gets one or two ABarrs while running from one side to the other (plus a fireblast I guess although I usually don't bother), plus a MBAM or an AB at each end. Fire gets a fireblast while running from one side to the other, plus can keep LB up and scorch at either end, and use Hot Streak procs while running whenever they happen. Wouldn't totally surprise me if fire can deal at least as much damage during the dance phase.

Fire has better mobility than arcane. Usually when I do heigan I always either hs-pyro/living bomb/fireblast on any micro movement, then scorch in between every stop (if not GCD locked). most of my time on 'movement' I am able to dps. Of course, being able to scorch (and make more hs procs at the same time) helps quite a bit.

I've never had an issue being able to get a AB -> ABarr combo off at each stop during Heigan P2. But even if I did, Scorch and Fire Blast are still available to me to use as Arcane, which I feels gives better mobility while still doing somewhat decent damage with those spells (with the tradeoff of no HS procs, of course).

You point out that we can't cast LB as often as you can cast Arcane barrage. That means you're aware that it's a 12s DoT. It also procs Hot Streak on crits and HS-Pyro is the highest DPS spell that fire or FFB mages have. Thus it's extremely important to cast it ASAP on any mobile fight. (Well LB uptime is a huge part of any fight, mobile or not - but a fire mage who might not be used to being mobile needs to be aware that LB suddenly makes him a mobile caster).

I regularly do more damage on Heigan than any other caster as FFB (I've switched to fire this week now that I have new leggings and should get my 10 man Maly neck - pending a ticket since the quest item is bugged). I did less as arcane on Heigan, even though I did more on other fights. With 2.1s Arcane Blasts I don't think I could've pulled off AB - Abar regularly in between eruptions.

YMMV but if your FFB mage is not putting out much mobile dmg on that fight he probably needs to get comfortable scorching in between eruptions and maximizing his casts while moving. Keep in mind as FFB you have a 6s cooldown on Fire Blast and a higher crit chance on Fire Blast than an 18/53 mage. He should be able to cast a fire spell in almost every quadrant on phase 2 and - if he has no procs and everything is on cooldown, why not throw an ice lance to keep your rhythm going?

I was wondering if it would be more of a DPS increase to equip Gown of the Spell Weaver to put me at the hit cap and increase my SP by about 20. or if it would be more beneficial to keep my t7 4 piece.

Download Rawr and find out yourself.

Guys, what kind of non-mage spells shakles or freezes target and make this talent work - Torment the Weak - Spell - World of Warcraft ?

Please search, the spells that make TTW work have been posted many times.

Yes pure spell power in sockets. The only time you don't socket pure spell power is getting a socket bonus so you would then socket spell power/haste(arcane) or crit(FB and FFB)

To meet your meta requirements socket spell power/stamina

Something interesting to note: as 3.1 approaches, it may become likely that you can have 2t5 with <4t7 + Ulduar gear/T8 as you transition out of t7 gear. In this situation, plus the new epic gems, you can "obfuscate" the stat deficit from t5 pieces while maintaining the scaling properties of the 2t5 bonus. For example, the new epic Runed gems will yield 23 spell power, etc. This is even more true with a JC who can apply +32 spell power gems to these items. The relative weakness of the gear is diminished in relation to its scalability.

As Manly noted above, if the 2t5 bonus is applied in the exact same manner as Arcane power (in effect, like having 1/4 arcane power applied 100% of the time without the mana cost), then this *should* be considered. The next question is, relative to current gear, which pieces are the strongest? My first impression is that chest and shoulder or gloves may be your best compromise.

Chest and shoulder seem like the obvious choices because of the larger number of sockets in them. From a gut feeling and quick glancing at the stats I would say that chest falls short because the upgrades on that slot are so immense, and overall the slot has much more stat-points stacked to it. So yes, shoulder and gloves would be the way to go.

Still not having internet at home, I do lack Rawr or any other tool to help me calculate the value of both 2pcT5 and 2 and 4pcT7 for current arcane-speccs. I would figure (and when I read manly correctly he is actually doing this) that, seeing how AB is the singlemost important DPS-Spell, 2pcT5 far outweighs the drawpacks one suffers from it, but I am actually to much of a coward to face my raid with pieces from SSC before I actually tried calculating it

Finally, I wonder what T8 will bring. If anything, 2pcT7 has made our life so much easier by eliminating even the thought of flamecaps from our minds. I wonder if this will change with t8? Only time will tell, I suppose.

I find FFB specc very mobile; especially in Heigan i have always been in first of damage meters; Wow Web Stats though checking WWS only %4 of total dmg done is fire blast and there is like 3 Living Bomb cast on during dance and 1 hot streak proc only in dance.
Still i believe being able to keep up Living Bomb on boss is better damage then ABarr + Fire Blast during dance. Unfortunately i don't have an arcane mage to compare myself and his damage. Does anyone have actual calculations or WWS I can compare arcane mage vs FFB mage in mobile fights?

edit:typo

When my friend lvled his Wl, he forced me to buy him the Shadoweave set when he hit 30 and he exchanged the last piece at 60 (although he had access to every item from instances and grp quests)

Right now I'm killing the last mobs for lvl30 with my fire mage and I wonder if there is a similar set for a mage?


I heard that arcane is the new dps specc. Had 3.0 and the following changes an affect on the best lvl specc for a mage as well?

I believe spellpower/mp5 or spellpower/spirit is supreme to stamina.