Something I'll note is that if Blizzard wanted to give Arcane mages the 'Mage crit debuff', the logical place to put it would be in Missile Barrage. This is the key deep Arcane talent (besides ABr) for Arcane specs, and 5 shots of AM = 5 stack of debuff.

The only issue that's preventing me from going 'full arcane spec' is that debuff. If Blizzard can get that small problem fixed, and make a deep Frost/minor Fire Frostfire build competitive, I think that all 6 Major/Minor spec options for Mages will have been covered, which is a not inconsequential feat on Blizzard's part.

I agree completely Ulth. It would allow for arc mages to get icy veins and still provide the crit buff. The spec lacks spec-based raid support aside from focus magic, while fire and frost provide imp scorch and imp water ele/winter's chill.

While its not related to the discussion on Arcane that dominates this thread, I'd just thought I'd point out that the new 2 minute evocation coupled with the glyph opens up some really interesting possibilities.

Just now, on the PTR, I soloed Onyxia.

I had to use a very unique build Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and a flask, but I got the job done (I wiped at under 100k without the flask and so I just went and got one). Sure it, it was a bit tricky and I have relatively decent gear (though many here do), but its repeatable. It just takes some practice to learn to properly manage all your shield cooldowns and such.

This is not going to help your PvE DPS, I realize -- but it could definitely be a fun way to use your second spec once dual specs come out if you're not the sort to PvP. I'm fairly certain there are at least 1-2 ZG bosses that I can kill, I'm about to give that a shot.

You don't happen to have a WWS parse for said accomplishment, Faxmonkey?

Sorry, no, but I have it frapsed.

In the pre 3.0.8 world a FB->ABarr + MBAM rotation was better than a AB->ABarr + MBAM if specced correctly and torment worked. With torment working for AB now this shifts even without a base damage change.


Edit: On a side note, a quick forum search turned nothing up. Anyone else noticed that Blizzard + 1/3 Imp Blizzard + FoF yields procs now? I was under the impression we still needed 1 point in Frostbite, but I may be behind, I don't as closely follow the specifics of frost stuff as I do others.

Neuro, earlier in this thread it was explained the GC coment meant "TtW will activate on any kind of slow, be it move speed, attack speed, cast speed". It was not intended to mean "TtW will activate on only an attack speed slow".

Correct. However it will not proc off frostbolt alone on a boss because the debutf does not apply. Fortunately, if the boss is attacking you then you can simply turn on ice armor and put up a nearly permanant attack speed debuff. With evocation on a 2 minute cooldown you do not need to worry about mana.

Gotchya - didn't think of ice armor

Thus far in the initial discussions about the viability of the Arcane spec (either 51(+2)/18/0) or 51/(+2)/18), I have seen simulations run with a two-cycle approach (AB->ABar and AB3->ABar) with MBar's applied upon occurance (20% rate talented). What I have not seen, however, is a measurement of the value of the AB Spam for cycles of more than three (short of the "burn" cycle of pure AB spam).

We are all in agreement that an AB Spam ad infinitum is implausible, but I think that is an assumption that should be at least investigated before being made into a postulate. The first question that should be asked, I believe, is this: what is the comparable DPS between a fully buffed AB and comparable Fireball or Frostfire Bolt, if given similar talent spec (mana efficiency notwithstanding). Over the life of a mana pool (until a caster runs out) would spamming AB actually generate more straight-line DPS? I don't include MBar, which has an inherent 20% proc advantage to AB due to cast times. If the answer is "yes, spamming AB will generate more DPS" then the question becomes a matter of "for how long?" can you keep this up.

To my mind, a "less efficient cycle" may generate more DPS with the inclusion of spirit/glyphed mage armor, procs that hyper-inflate spirit (like healing trinkets) and spirit gemming. Time to do some real calculations...starting with a ABx6->ABar strategy.

As I understand, there is a reason people refer to the "2 cycle theorem" for arcane. You see, given 2 rotations, one that is the most efficient and one that is the highest DPS but is unsustainable, if you add a 3rd rotation that is more efficient than the efficient rotation, it'll replace the efficient rotation completely, allowing more of the other rotation. If you add a 3rd rotation that's more worthwhile to use than your high DPS rotation at one point in a fight, it'll always be worth it (as long as you have mana, otherwise you resort to the efficient rotation). That's why there can only exist 2 cycles (aside from wierd exceptions like haste procs messing things up, but even during those times there will only be 2 cycles to consider).

No actually, I am fairly certain the 2-cycle theorem assumes the parameters do not change. If you get a proc, or if anything happens that changes your base numbers, then the 2 cycles may change.

I could be wrong on this, but I am fairly certain that is how rawr does it (models separately rotations with/without cooldowns) so that you can apply LP solving. Anyway, point being, during a proc, or during a cooldown, your 2 cycles MUST change, by definition, and then come back to your original 2 cycles once the procs/cooldowns are over.

When equipping 2 items before casting evocation, the cooldown is in the tooltip (as well as effectively) changed from 5 to 4 minutes. If unequipped again, the tooltip changes the cooldown back to 5 minutes, but the remaining cooldown stays on 4 minutes.

If evocation is cast without the bonus and the items are equipped afterwards, the cooldown changes to 4 minutes again, but the remaining cooldown stays on 5 minutes.

In other words; only by equipping the items before evocation will the remaining cooldown be reduced to 4 minutes.

I just took this snapshot on the PTR, its Blizzard specced 0/3 Frostbite 1/3 Imp Blizzard 2/2 FoF:



From what I read in the frost raiding thread and don't see here, this looks like an unannounced change.

So effectively, in an "out of combat" situation, we could throw on 2 piece T3, evoke, swap back to our current gear, and have 1 minute cooldown on evokes for quick trash and farming?

Obviously wouldn't work on boss fights unless you can get out of combat before and after the evoke, but this still seems over powered for pvp and other situations.

What I meant that even during a proc, while the 2 rotations to choose from may change, there will still only be 2 to choose from.

I think it should be easy to prove that for:
i=1...n
max sum(Ai*Xi) (max dps)
s.t. sum(Bi*Xi)<=M (mana constraint)
s.t. sum(Ci*Xi)<=T (time constraint)
with all variables being non-negative

Then, regardless of T and M, in an optimal solution n-2 elements of X must be zero. I'm not 100% sure about proving it, I'm sure there are people here that know these stuff better than me though and can do this.

If X is a vector of times spent using every possible casting algorithm that chooses spells not taking mana into account (but takes stuff like procs into account), then proving the above also proves the 2 cycle theorem - except those 2 cycles might, in some situations, be a tiny bit more complex than "AB-ABrr and AM on procs".

After plugging in some basic conditions into Rawr (for my maiden voyage with the application), I have seen that there is a marginal difference in DPS between ABx3->ABar and AB3+n (being some time after the third iteration). So, if given that, it may render the argument moot. However, if you include another factor: that being MBar procs 20% of the time then on average, you will have a "Buff Breaking" event occur every fifth AB cast with you probably casting the MBarAM after the sixth AB cast, you might conclude that a "naturally" occurring period of ABar might be ABx5->ABar. With the "shatter" combo happening on each MBarAM proc. So, a typical scenario might look like ABx4->MBarAM->ABar(chained for 1.45x spell dmg buff). All of this, of course, falls to the bracketed realities of mana caps and (lack of) mana regeneration.

When can we expect to see it?

Just curious, did you use tier 3 or tier 6 for the evocate bonuses?

Hello, this is my first post, though I've lurked here for a while.

I was thinking of ways to compare AB -> ABarr vs. ABx3 -> ABarr in 3.0.8, and I did an analysis that, very counterintuitively, tends to show that the simple AB --> ABarr is actually higher dps than stacking it 3 times. That was crazy to me after spending so much time on this thread, where the assumption is that 3 stacks is higher DPS, but after reviewing the numbers I can't imagine where I could have gone wrong.

I'm ignoring haste and MBAM procs as they aren't relevant to the simple question I was asking: How does one stack of AB consumed by ABarr compare to 3 stacks consumed by ABarr?

Here was my analysis:
x = damage (not dps) of AB
y = damage (not dps) of ABarr (unbuffed)
In 36 seconds, the one-stack rotation cycles 9 times (since it takes 4 seconds to cast AB + ABarr) and so does
In 36 seconds, the three-stack rotation cycles 4 times (since it takes 9 seconds to cast ABx3 + ABarr) and so does
Solving for y as a function of x, we see that the point at which the two cycles are equal is where y = ~0.659x:
So where the damage of ABarr is 65.9% of the damage of AB, then the cycles are equal. But when y (the damage of ABarr) goes higher than that -- as it clearly always is -- the 1-stack cycle wins out when you run the numbers with the above formulas.

Doesn't this mean that it's never worth it to stack the buff? What it seems to me to show is that ABarr is just on such a higher level than AB (mainly because it only takes up 1.5 rather than 2.5 seconds) that the detriment of casting fewer ABarrs by stacking the buff outweighs the benefit of having each of those fewer ABarrs hit a bit harder.

Thank you and I hope this question is considered appropriate for this forum. If my analysis is flawed, I would love to see why that is so! I'm in a rut and so a pair of fresh eyes on this analysis would be appreciated. Have I taken the right approach?

For ABx3+ABar you're missing the fact that ABs get modified by debuff already. A single cycle is x + 1.15x + 1.3x + 1.45y, so total for 4 cycle equals 13.8x + 5.8y.

Of course as you said you completely ignored MB procs so the result doesn't tell you much.

If I understand your comment correctly, Mirror Image is broken on the PTR in a different way from currently on live?

My understanding of the intent of MI threat reduction is:

- distribute existing threat split evenly (33%) across all three images
- reduce current threat to zero while images are up

The current implementation on live is buggy and instead does:

- distribute threat to all 3 images at 133% per image (someone added instead of dividing?)
- subtract 9M from current threat
- keep the negative threat for 30 seconds, even if the images die earlier

Not sure of the current implementation on the PTR, just what Faxmonkey posted.

Is my understanding of the intent wrong? Will we see more changes/bugfixes to the spell with 3.0.8 or later patches?