Kevinally

This is actually what my guild does as well. We use our 2 standard tanks, as well as either another warrior who is offspec prot, and/or a DK who is offspec to tank. they chain taunt the mobs to keep them locked down. FC25 is usually enough of a cluster that they don't need to set up a rotation to prevent DR, just taunt off whoever's getting chased. After slapping a couple FoK rogues on the other two healers, its a joke to single target burn them down one by one.

[edit, because I just realized you were talking about 10]

we still toss one extra person on "tanking", and the DK DG's the second healer to make sure the rogue's FoK in combination with one other locker keeping him under control.

 

Tilethryn

Was wondering if someone could direct me to some math/provide some guidance on cooldown stacking for arcane mages these days. For pvp reasons I'm going to be dropping tailoring for engineering, which will allow me to pick up hyperspeed accelerators for raiding purposes. To date, I've been opening fights with mirror images/IV/AP/haste pots (or whatever consumables I'm willing to burn depending on farm status or not). I've never been 100% sure if its optimal, but when AP is back off CD I have been waiting out IVs cd to stack them. I'm not good enough at math, and Rawr's cooldown editor seems to be broken, so I can't tinker with it, but perhaps I'm already amiss.


So in that vein, I'm looking for guidance re: cd stacking when I pick up the hyperspeed accelerators. I assume I'll open with MI/IV/hyper/consumables/(trinkets if I ever obtain any decent on use trinks). Is it to my best interest following this to just pop cds as they come up? AP and hyperspeed seem close e nough that I could conceivably hold off on AP until the accelerators are back up. Should I be doing that then using IV solo, or waiting on IV cd as well? Any links to math/suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

Kevinally

IIRC, it depends on length of fight, as well as your gear level. If your character wasn't listed as a NE Hunter, I might be able to answer the question a little better for you. It also depends on spec. When I was playing FB, I would get up the scorch stack (if I had to), pop my CDs, and go to town. As arcane, you'll want to hold off until you get that 4th AB stack, then use CDs to hit the hardest out of the gate as you can. If you've got a disgusting amount of haste, you might want to stagger your haste pots, IV, and hero, so you don't start clipping the GCD (at my gear level, with hero and IV, I clip the GCD with damn near everything, which is just a painful waste).

A quick search finds the Mage Cooldown Management thread. Although its a year old, the information is still correct. Either you use all your CDs as soon as they become available, and get every last drop of DPS you can out of them, or you stagger them to keep up with eachother, and hope that the synchronization of them makes up for the DPS you lose during those time gaps that you *could* have used them.

TL;DR: just use them whenever you can, as much as you can. If you're clipping, start staggering.

leveling specs all depend on what you want. for straight scaling damage output (and last I checked) fire was leading. arcane has moderate output, but also has mana problems. frost is great for AoE grinding.

 

Randull

Has anyone else noticed that Incanter's Absorption does not activate from Burning Bile absorbs? Frost Warding may not as well, but it's less obvious and I have not been specifically watching for it.

 

maxrandom

Have someone crunched some numbers regarding frost in 3.3 yet? I've tried to browse through various forums, but haven't seen any real math yet on the subject.

 

mercury283

I was looking for the same thing myself. The only thing I've seen so far is Lhivera's analysis on the official forums which seems to conclude that the changes (in their current form) increase Frost PvE dps by around 6.2%, bringing it up to about 86% of Arcane's current DPS:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Frost 3.3 Analysis (PvE)

 

Psilo

Can we reopen/reestablish the Frost PvE thread in lieu of 3.3 changes?

 

Sinless

This is a moot question. A focus CS macro will not even change your current dps target to CS your focus target. In other words, there is nothing to mitigate and no dps loss. Not to mention the dps target will be debuffed to hell by the raid and your focus CS target won't.

 

Tribat

On a similar note, for faction champs we use 2 2-man teams of lock+mage each assigned to CC a pair of ranged adds. Once we have the mobs assigned to us, I focus target one of them and use the addon Clique to sheep it and when it is time to switch so the lock can fear my target and I can sheep his I use the macro:

/target (name of mob)
/cast polymorph
/targetlasttarget

so I never have to switch off the dps target to poly no matter which of the two it is my turn to CC.

 

Kevinally

are you noticing this specifically in ToGC, or in ToC as well? I tested tonight in ToC25, and it absorbed both the tick on me, as well as the AoE from another person, and proc'd IA just fine on both occurrences. I was using Fire Ward. I haven't had the chance to test in ToGC yet.

 

rodrigoduran

Same thing here . The damage was absorbed by fire ward but did not proc IA. ToGC.

 

Kevinally

Hmm, so either something else was proccing IA for me (unlikely, no other source of fire damage) or its an unspoken difference between ToC and ToGC. I'll have to see if I can find logs to verify, once my guild forum host is done with its nightly updates.

 

ShoGuL

I have a quick question and a quick searched revealed nothing, I am curious as to this:
At the moment the Reign of the Dead 245 and 258 ilvl trinkets stack, this seems to be intended (the buffs are called two different things, unlike the melee trinket) but I wanted to ask before trying to get both. Have blizzard stated anything about this at all?

And if so, sources would be good.
Thanks

EDIT:
Thank you, but I am well aware that you can wear both, and of their effect. My question was regarding the possibility that this might be considered a bug and 'fixed' by Blizzard.

 

Daytrader

You can wear both. One is BiS, the other is 2nd BiS. Awesome trinkets by the way. The 245 one ends up being around 2-3% of overall damage. (Observation)

 

Korwiin

I don't have access to RAWR so I can't run the numbers myself. As an arcane mage is the T9 4pc bonus (+5% crit) worth losing the 2.2% of haste I would lose going from 'Soothing Touch' legs to the Tier legs which are all crit?

TDLR: is 7% more crit on AB and AM worth 2.2% of haste?

Thanks

 

Dejah-Thoris

My Rawr rates my 4pct9 as 228 DPS, and says my T9 legs are about 180 DPS ahead of Leggings of the Soothing Touch.

 

myztikrice

I've heard from other people that the melee trinkets from TotC25 (Death's Verdict) won't stack next patch. The question is if the same thing will happen to Reign?

Just because Haste is slightly better than Crit doesn't mean having Crit is a useless stat.

 

Daytrader

Please provide the source of this information.

 

Whitemagee

I've been searching for the "stat cap's" for spell power, crit and haste for a while, but haven't found that yet. I know which stat to to choose first, but is there some place that tell's you when i.e, haste or crit becomes more valuable than spell power? Or in any other combination of stats?

Maybe there is a site completed for all classes?

 

Shaitans

It's impossible to compile a list for an individual class, much less all classes, because the relative importance of each stat changes depending upon your current stats.

Solution: Use Rawr.

 

Zedicuss

With the race change now active, what is the best race for an arcane raiding (no PvP) mage?

It seemed at one point that Draenai was best for the 1% hit, but with the Ulduar and ToGC gear, plus arcane spec, it seems hit is no longer an issue. So, what is the best race for a ToGC raiding mage?

 

Devilspit

You can use rawr to change your race and view the dps change that it gives you. For me troll was the highest dps increase.

 

Tulipohare

I've been using Arcane Power only in conjunction with Icy Veins. Is there any way to capitalize on Arcane Power's shorter cooldown aside from a Bloodlust/Heroism, for example, that haste caps you and makes IV pointless?

 

mako

It really depends on the fight length. On normal fights (no gimmic buffs) it's generally better to just use AP on cooldown, delaying the second IV until AP is up again.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

Kevinally

2 Minute CD on AP, 3 Minute CD on IV (assuming you haven't spec'd into it). If you really want a haste CD for your AP, you can use IV/AP together first rotation at 0 minutes, AP/Haste Pot at 2 minutes, AP/IV at 4 minutes. After that, and as I've already shown here, you'd be best just using your abilities as soon as they become available.