Pasture

Any word on the Arcane Blast glyph yet? I'm a little concerned that I haven't seen anything about it anywhere else other than on EJ itself.

 

Kel S'jet

Of course we can model it. That was my point a page or so back when I was commenting on a TC output for the arcane mage. I have actually been proposing that due to the evocation change, that is how we should model arcane's dps process now, and not the way we have been doing so far. The cycle would be at 2 min intervals with a maximum of 8 seconds of downtime (regen). Modeling it in a full raid situation would only require synchronizing the start of the regen phase with other conditions, such as IV and/or Bloodlust ending, which shouldn't be too hard.
To go hand in hand with this, we would also have to look at arcane's rotations differently, since we would be aiming to now not just come up with a 'best DPS rotation' scenario, but a 'best DPS rotation that allows us to burn all our mana in 2 mins' scenario. Which, I must admit, is an exciting prospect to think about.

My comment on the cycle being longer was just an attempt to elucidate certain differences in the details between the Arcanist's 'burn-regen' cycle and the Rogue's 'burn-regen' cycle. It was not a statement of defeat on the viability of modeling the cycle.

Either way, I am very much so looking forward to getting on the PTR and crunching some numbers this weekend.

 

dedmonwakeen

8sec Evocation every 120sec is a serious chunk of time.....

If you can't squeeze those Evocates into "motionless" down-time, that is near a 7% loss.

That is a fair chunk of dps to make up in the remaining 112sec.....

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Vairgoth

I miss the old AB mechanic of increased haste. It enabled me to keep up with Hunters on Trash DPS (was able to keep up with the singe glaved rouge until he got his second glave) But am looking forward to the new one to see if the Burn-Regen method of playing is as effective as it was raiding two piece T5 in sunwell.

For fun I decided to level another mage - and after playing other classes I realize how crappy leveling a mage is. having the reduced Evocation time will be great for lower level mages of any build. Annoying chain pulling tanks will piss mages off less (and probably wont be able to piss of arcane mages at all)

Standard fights may not see a benefit to FFB mages, but think of situations where a part of your raid is dead but your able to keep going - that extra minute where your able to evocate instead of waiting while your oom could be the difference between wiping and not.

I'm very excited about the changes coming for Arcane =)

 

Kel S'jet

Just a point to note, an arcane mage will never have an 8 second evocation, in fact, with the proliferation of haste gear, I would hazard and say almost no mage will ever have a 8 second evocation anymore. (e.g. 18% spell haste is so easy to achieve nowadays post talents/gear/raid effects, which puts the Evoc at around 6.5+ seconds, IV would probably shave off another seconds or so from that too).

Furthermore, the idea is to synchronize the evocation with other haste increasing cooldowns, e.g IV or BL, which, if you see my proposed spec a few pages back will synchronize pretty well with an arcanist's other cooldowns.
On top of all this, we must remember that the Arcanist's DPS in the 2 mins before the evocation his DPS will be considerably higher than today's modeling scripts and/or theorycraft is putting it out to be, since he will be using very very high burn rotations in order to achieve the "ensure all mana is dumped within 2mins" idea (nb. the DPS time will not be 112 seconds, it will be 120 seconds of burn -> ~6ish seconds of regen -> 120 seconds of burn etc, so the cycle actually lasts 124-126 seconds). At least, that is the idea.

Either way, it will be interesting to test this out on the PTR, now if only I could get on...

 

dedmonwakeen

What exactly do you mean by "very very high burn rotations"? Can you give an example?

ABar is CD-limited...... MBAM is proc-limited...... Increasing casting speed will increase proc-rate of MBAM, but the 20% proc-chance is a severe dampening factor.

ArcaneBlast spam ignoring ABar/MBAM actually provides less DPS than weaving in ABar/MBAM......

I'll play with your spec and add the conditionals Roywyn asked for...........

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Eyegore

This^ The question being, it would seem, is it worth sustaining a seemingly crazy cycle like AB spam with MB on proc as much as possible with the intent of completely draining your mana pool every 2 min, or using a more conservative rotation to lower the downtime spent evocating when not cooldown stacking. Or is it even worth using a very aggressive rotation when blowing cooldowns/trinkets? I understand it is pretty much anathema to traditional raiding mage thought to actually try to use evocation as much as possible, but the ability of an arcane mage to have a 2min evo and to ramp up the AB buff at extreme mana cost does raise the question... can it be made to be worth it?


Also:
I would think it would work better to just use a regular /stopcasting /cast macro for iceblock and invis, then put the /cancelaura in front of your /cast frostfire bolt or whatever else you are likely to want to use directly out of them, rather than putting cast and cancel for the spell on the same button if it is going to lead to accidental cancellations. Or am I missing something? (my mage was my 3rd 70, and I have not gotten around to leveling him yet so I may well have forgotten something here.... what would you be going for with a /cancelaura /cast of the same spell on one button?)

 

gatina

Are ToW and MF fixed and stacking now?

 

Kel S'jet

High burn rotations are easy to see.

Consider Arcane under conventional thinking with non-2 min evocations. Here we are told that it is best to temper your usage of AB (and through extension, your mana), hence making something akin to {AB ABr} the defacto, general purpose rotation. Good DPS, Good DPM, everyone is happy. The key to this thinking is that the arcanist has a very limited set of mana regeneration tools, 3 gems, 1 pot, passive regen (MP5 + replenishes etc) and the possibility of an evocate. The goal is to be at 0 mana by the end of the fight.

Now consider Arcane with 2 min evocates (as well as the new AB mechanic). We are now telling the same arcane mage, that he can go completely OOM every 2 mins and be back up to full (approx) within 5-7 seconds with very little effort. So whereas the "conventionally thinking" arcanist is aiming to go OOM by the end of the fight, the 'new' arcanist is aiming to go OOM every 2 mins. How does he do this? Simple, he changes his defacto rotations to accomodate 2 min oomages.
Rarely will he us {AB ABr} anymore, instead, knowing that he has to not only burn through all his existing mana but all his passive regeneration as well every 2 mins, he will be much more aggressive in using stacks of AB. With the goal being to find a good balance between DPS and DPM in the 2 mins he has. Essentially, each arcane mage will have to figure out given his personal stats, what is the best DPS he can achieve while going OOM in exactly 2 mins.
Some might end up using {ABx3 ABr} and a fully ramped {ABx3 MBAM} just because they cannot manage to go OOM in 2 mins otherwise. Some might not have as much regen and may pick {ABx2 ABr} while not ramping their MBAMs. Some may select some other combination.
Either way, the point is that it will vary. At no place does it devolve into the "ArcaneBlast spam ignoring ABr/MBAM" that you are making it out to be (who mentioned that AB spamming is the way to go anyway? Not me), since the basic mechanics of AB have changed to apply to all arcane spells. Instead, the choice will be on how much do you ramp those spells, or better yet, how much do you need to ramp them to go OOM in 2 mins.

As I look back, these changes are providing something unique to arcane again. The Arcanists of old will remember how Arcane was before. Where, unlike Fire or Frost specs, there really wasn't really a "this is every arcanists rotation to do max DPS, follow it like clockwork or fail" (which held true till ridiculous gear levels devolved it into AB spamming).

Arcane is becoming dynamic again. Where every arcanist will have to look at his gear and his mana pool and make realtime decisions and throttle his mana usage back and forth to achieve a goal. There will be no "this is THE arcane rotation". Instead it will be "this is the Arcane mindset - find your own, toon-specific rotation that fulfills this mindset".

Too wordy?

 

Ztorm

Burning your mana in a 2 minute period, followed by a recovery phase, seem like a good idea on paper but is impractical in many raid situations. The reason is because your "recovery" period is dependent on being still for 6-8 seconds without any interruption or movement. Many of the current fights have AoE damage or other elements that prevent you from completing a full recovery period, including many of the more difficult encounters: Sartharian +3 drakes, Sapphiron, Kel'Thuzad, and Malygos to a limited extent (due to spark responsibilities and phase 2 AMS blasts). If your recovery period is disrupted, then your DPS is going to tank. That's the danger in a play-style that revolves around a mana dump: if shit hits the fan you will not be able to recover.

The same reason is also why the rogue DPS model is an unrealistic representation of the arcane mage playstyle. A rogue's recover period is guaranteed: they will generate energy 100% of the time regardless of environmental factors (unless they die). The same guarantee is not true for mages. Additionally, a rogue's cycle is on a much shorter timescale. Any mistake they make during their rotation can be compensated over the length of a fight. This is different than an arcane mage whose cycle is comparable in length to the encounter duration.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." -Albert Einstein

 

solbergb

Yeah. What it has that is unique is raid mana regen and the best standoff AOE in the mage arsenal, the fully talented blizzard. Survivability doesn't enter into it.

 

Kel S'jet

Take a look at my posts from a few pages back where I talk about IV. I cover this exact situation. IV provides a "shield" to your evocate. It is one of the ways you can use it. So for fights heavy with quick, periodic raid wide damage, the function of IV switches from primarily being a DPS boost to primarily being a cast interruption shield.

The good thing with this, is that it works anyway. Since you would be wanting to use IV on evocates anyway due to the haste boost. The only real thing that will change is where along the IV duration you start your Evocate. On non-aoe damage boss encounters you would evoc with approx 1 sec left on IV (to get the speed boost) however, on raid-aoe heavy fights you would instead have to evoc with approx 6 seconds left on IV (so that not only do you get the speed boost, but the interrupt 'shielding' as well).

So the trick in getting around the issue is varying when during the course of the IV you start the evoc, that is all. This is, in my opinion, a completely acceptable solution.

edited: Clarity

 

solbergb

My solution to this problem was to put all the cancelauras into a single macro and put bind that to a different key.

So if I'm in a panic and mashing invis, mirror image, ice block, whatever, I never do it/undo it by mistake.

But if I need to just flash the ice block to clear debuffs or go invis to wipe threat and immediately get back to the shooting, I do a two click sequence that is deliberate and is bound in a way that it's actually faster than punching the same button twice.

 

Kavan

Rawr.Mage already considers all possible mana regeneration tools. While preexpansion spirit was quite a powerful stat for an arcane mage even taking AB glyph into account mana regen has still almost no value. The dpm conversion is plain bad. It's better to use molten armor over mage armor and you would only use AB spam with cooldown stacking. Preexpansion you would want to maximize AB spam even outside of cooldowns, this is not the case for 3.0.8. And if AB glyph does not exist we remain where we are currently where it won't be benefitial to even cast Evocate on every cooldown and you'll probably never want to use AB spam except under extreme haste conditions.

 

Roywyn

That may seem like it at least.

Could you test it again with Arcane Missiles and no proc trinkets?
It has fixed damage, so we can say it 100% sure with 1 cast (non-crit assumed).
Setting up Rawr with Naxx-25 gear and full raid gear gives 2 relevant cycles, with and without the AB Glyph:

1) AB-ABar with MBAM on procs. Your bread-and-butter cycle.
2) AB spam with MBAM on procs. Slightly more DPS, much more expensive.
*) AB2-ABar and AB3-ABar are less DPS and less DPM than AB-ABar once you gear up.
They do fill a niche if you get above 33% haste during cooldowns and don't have the the mana to AB-MBAM through it.

Without the Glyph, AB-MBAM spam is a 103 DPS gain at a 280 MPS cost. That's 0.37 DPM, which is outright terrible.
With the Glyph (not sure how it works and how it's implemented right now), it's a 453 DPS gain at a 280 MPS cost.
That's a 1.62 DPM conversion, which is still pretty bad, but not that bad.

Evocation in that gear is a 34k Damage loss for about 18k mana, that's about a 1.89 DPM loss.
The exact amount of mana gained is hard to tell, since it also includes the mana not spent casting and the mana gained from being inside 5SR.

That means it's definitely not worth Evocating just to spend the mana on AB-MBAM spam.
And since Evocation is your best mana tool, that means you don't AB-MBAM unless the fight is so short that you end with mana to spare otherwise and didn't use Evocation or potions.


There is a little bit of choice left when you get above 33% haste on cooldowns.
Otherwise, scaling pushes Arcane into a AB-ABar cycle.
(Hm, there might be a mistake though, because AB and ABar have nearly the same "Muphrid" scaling of base_dmg:sp_coeff.)


[Edit]: Rawr is telling me that AB-ABar is better than AB3-ABar. More DPS and better DPM.
It uses AB2-ABar and AB spam during Arcane Power and/or Heroism, depending on how much mana I have.
It actually picks AB spam over AB2-ABar even when I have to use Evocation, which is odd since AB1-ABar and AB2-ABar are so close in DPS and DPM.

The small DPS difference sounds right, I think Kavan assumes a 3*5% AB Glyph. The mana cost is pretty absurd indeed.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

dedmonwakeen

I've found AB-spam to be only 2% to 3% better than MBAM/AB-3x/ABar........ at twice the mana consumption.

Even stacking cooldowns may not be worth it unless you have serious amounts of mana to burn.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Physicist

Thank you, Roywyn for carrying out the tests in Rawr.

It seems the changes on the PTR will do only two things then:

a) Buff the old {AB-ABr} rotation.
b) Allow {AB-AB-ABr} rotation to not be so awful when haste bonuses start clipping against the 1-second cooldown of ABr.

That's it. The rotation remains the same. Mana issues are alleviated slightly by a two-minute evocation, but if burning your mana offers no reward (or worse, actually drops your dps!), what's the point?

There were early claims Arcane was raid viable. Is that the case, or is it back to FFB cookie-cutter builds for everyone?

 

Kavan

I'm not sure exactly, but my guess is that it has to do with interaction between AB stacking and Arcane Power. And yes I'm assuming 3*5% AB glyph.

 

helldrunk

Has ne1 tried calculating the following mixed rotation.

AB-Abar
and on proc switch to AB3-MBAM-Abar

Then you wouldn't waste mana ramping up AB for Abar but there is about 50% risk that you lose an MBAM proc since they don't stack. About 1/3 of the rotations should be in the AB3-MBAM-Abar rotation.

 

Physicist

'Charging up' MBAM with AB is a dps loss, even before you factor in you are potentially 'wasting' MBAM procs during the charging up process.

 

helldrunk

hm, doesn't that depend on gear since the MBAM charge is scale with 113% (1.88 *0.6) of +damage in comparison to a Abar charge which only scale 52%(0.86 * 0.6) of +damage.

I did some rough calculations based on rawr and excel. With my crap gear it was a dps loss but with decent gear it was 4-5% higher dps than AB-ABar with MBAM on procs.

 

Pasture

Arcane HAS to be a lot closer to FFB builds post-patch. For starters it gets a 12% damage buff that FFB does not due to the Torment the Weak changes. On top of that, Arcane Barrage, which accounts for around 40% of my dps, will hit 15% harder than normal.

If not the top dps spec (which it seemingly won't be) then it at the very least won't be so far behind.

I still maintain that given arcane cannot give the 10% crit buff (without speccing into silly specs and using scorch), it should be the top dps mage spec.

 

Pasture

So I guess no increase for mage dps there. Not that it was working anyway.

Out of interest does Fire Leaf work?

 

Kel S'jet

So I finally managed to get onto the PTR.

I didn't have that much time on it tonight, but I did observe an interesting fact.

As I postulated a few pages ago, it seems that an arcane "shatter" combo is possible with the new AB mechanic!
From the looks of it, my assumption was correct, the new AB debuff ends on spell hit (though only in certain cases). More interesting is this debuff's interaction with Arcane Missiles, that being, that the debuff stays on till the last missile has hit the target.

This allows for you to sneak in a Arcane Barrage while the 5th missile is still flying towards the target. The ABr in this case will benefit from the same debuff stack that the AM volley was benefiting from. I have managed to do this on the PTR with little to no difficulty (will provide pics if necessary but I think you all can easily do it for yourselves).

To reproduce this case:
The simplest way is to just spam AB and build up some stacks, then on an MBAM (you can do it on a non-MBAM as well, I just found it easier to do it on an MBAM for some reason due to the timing), cast AM. While the channel meter is running down, cast ABr *just* as the AM channel is about to finish. If you time it right, your ABr will launch at approx the same time as the last AM missile is launching. When you look at your combat log, compare the damage of that ABr with that of a non-stacked ABr and you will get your proof.



I believe there is much more testing and analysis that needs to be done before we can answer this question with any semblance of certainty. For now however, we can safely state that arcane is definately becoming more viable. Just a note, while running some cold tests (ie no raid buffs, no flasks, etc), I found that my Arcane spec on the PTR was doing comparable damage to the 'cookie cutter' FFB spec that I use on live. Now naturally all the increased crit I would get from raid buffs and so on will definately impact the final analysis (and so will ToTW for that matter), but the point still stands.

 

Swindley

I just had to quote this, because I had the exact same problem. KT 10 man, no replenishment. Note that this encounter is particulary bad because of the mana detonation (I think I once got it like 10 times in a fight, once right after my evo, blowing away 6k mana).
You can time your evo well, right after the aoe frostbolts, to not lose any ticks, or use gems perfectly. However on this fight particuarly, there's nothing you can do from simply having bad luck. It's a long fight, and the mana detonations are particulary devastating for a mage, because once you've used your gem, evo and pot, there's nothing you can do really. Even using mage armor, it won't help much and further lower your dps even more. I'm embarassed to start wanding pre 50% to still have some mana left for the burn phase when adds spawn.

I'd like to at least have SOME options of regaining mana, besides wanding and waiting.. Lower evo CD sure helps, but will it be enough? Evocating does reduce my DPS, but I'll take the few % dps loss any time instead of being 100% useless untill I can regen enough mana from wanding.

edit: this was without using LB at all, it was simply not possible because of mana.

edit again: Or buff wands, that would actually be about time. Even trippling the dps wouldnt be overpowered in any way in either PVE or PVP.