Actually, if you go by the new Pyromaniac tooltip, it should be giving us 3% melee crit.

I checked, it was 3% fire spell crit on the PTR.

Edit: On the amplify magic subject, is it safe for Sartharion with 3 drakes? I assume not unless the extra spell power doesn't affect flame breath or twilight torment. Anyone know for sure?

I don't know why you guys knock down arcane in 3.0.8. With the arcane barrage bug, the spec is simply better than the rest for most situations. I expect to see a flurry of 6-6.5k arcane parses by the end of today (results being consistent unlike fire spec). The only downside is that the spec is somewhat unfit to provide the scorch debuff. And I don't mean to knock down 51/20/0, because I do give it apparently far more credit than most people, but even with such a spec the rotations are simply not meant to support scorch.

I do believe that for as long as the abarr bug exists arcane will stay on top with no real downsides, followed by fireball-based builds, then ffb builds. The numbers are close, each of them with advantages and disadvantages. Fireball suffers from poor DPM and inability to provide good aoe. Arcane is a bit in the same boat, but 2min evocation allows it to never go oom literally. FFB is kind of making compromises to gain more decent aoe dps (but still nothing close to what frost gives).

How will it fair when the bug is fixed though is what I am interested to know, I wouldn't want to settle into arcane for medium-long term if it's just going to be fixed by the time ulduar is out and ends up being the same if not less than fb/ffb builds :<

Apart from the obvious benefits that Arcane provides (as many have already pointed out), it would be worth remembering that there is a few of us who have been Arcane for a very very long time. Arcane being viable in 3.0.8 is not just us "FOTMing it", but in fact, it is us returning to our spec and playstyle of choice, which, given the very, shall we say "bland" playstyle of Fire/Frostfire, has been long long overdue. (I'm totally trying not to sound like a snooty/elitist Arcanist).

That being said, there are many things about Arcane that people leave out when discussing the spec, partly due to the fact that most discussions are squarely based around the "what will my patchwerk dps be with this spec and the best gear in the game", which, at least in my opinion, is a very shallow way approach indeed.

Long ago, I remember writing many posts about one of the inherent strengths of the Arcane spec being its ability to manipulate its mana in ways other specs could not hope to achieve. On paper, this may seem like a very 'meh' point, but almost any mage who has spent the better portion of his raiding career as arcane (obviously the pre-WoTLk version of arcane) will attest to how fantastic (in playstyle, performance and utility) this strength turns out to be. And it wasn't just the ability to spend more mana to do more damage, but it is more about the sheer granularity of the trade off that the arcane mage can do this at. (die hard fire mages will claim that they can do "the same thing" with choosing between casting LB or not, but they are missing this very important point).

The 'dynamic playstyle' was its other draw. The fact that the buttons you are pushing and the rhythm you are pushing them in changes so drastically from fight to fight. The fact that your rotations themselves change given the gear you are wearing (which is another point that many discussions fail to consider. It is all well and good to hypothesize about what the rotation will be given the best hypothetical gear in the game with the best hypothetical raid conditions etc, but the failure of this approach, at least with Arcane, is that if your gear does not almost exactly match this 'theoretical maximal gear' or the conditions vary slightly, which I think I can safely say applies almost 99% of of the time, then you will not be performing optimally as arcane).
This idea that the rotations used by two Arcanists of different gear levels will vary on the same fight really does impress upon us the importance of each arcanist looking at their gear and re-evaluating his/her rotation on a personal level. Most career arcanists sum all this up as "Arcane requires more real-time 'thought'", which is also why some of us refer to Fire and Frostfire as "bland" specs.

But at the end of the day, yes, you are right. Most raiding mages just want a spec where they can "ritalin mash one button for win level DPS!" and not have to bother with anything else. This is why the number of career arcanists has always been low, and why it will always remain to be. At the end of the day, as many before me have stated, it is a spec that requires more finesse, skill and a slightly deeper understanding to play well. It is also a spec that has a much steeper learning curve.

NB> I would just like to point out that there was in fact a time when arcane really was "FOTM". This was back in the days of the second incarnation of the MSD. The "AM spamming age" of arcane is not a correct representation of the true number of arcanists, and on a whole, was only a blip on the time line of the arcane spec. Arcanists existed way before the MSD days, and continued to exist way after after the MSD nerf. If anything, Arcane is definitely not going to be "FOTM" post 3.0.8.


EDIT: Without having to create another post, I thought occurred to me after reading Manly's new sig. I have always wondered why certain mages in our community go so far out of their way to vocalize a call for "nerfs" to a spec that is not their chosen way to play the mage. Manly has a very deep past of doing it somewhat for Fire vs Arcane for PvE (Affix does it with fervor for Arcane vs Frost for PvP on a daily basis) and they do it with so much zeal, vigor, and unfortunately, their arguments are not only flawed in places but misleading most of the times.

To manly: Do you realize that which you are labeling "The arcane barrage bug" is a 'bug' that has existed in the frost tree for almost an age? Why then have you chosen just this moment to go lauding this as such an important "bug" that it permeates your every post? Perhaps it is due to the fact that Frost does not and will not ever threaten "Fire PvE dominance"? Either way, I stand to my first point, that being that it has always fascinated me just how attached some people are to their 'chosen' spec and just how far they will go and how much time they will dedicate to keep it that way with no thought to what anyone else really thinks.

If arcane pull off the highest theoretical DPS, then yes it will be. Perhaps it wont last, but it'll be FOT[Sec/Min/Hour/Day/Week/Month/Year] until people either ascertain "okay, I can't perform this to the theoretical limit as I can with FFB/FB/Whatever" or "Hey, I just plain don't find this fun" (that's me right there, especially arcane PVP, but that's another topic) or even "Hey, my gear just plain blows and I can't do this."

Manly is a responsible reporter of sketchy mechanics. His sig carries issues that are known to the mage community and represent what likely is not intended behavior. From the perspective of a former developer, I payed much closer attention to those in my community that told me about bugs that were both good and bad than I did to those who just told me about the bad. In the case of the shatter combo (as you reference it as being the same as the 'blaster combo') it was identified, announced to Blizzard, and they decided to leave it in. It is possible that they will leave this one in as well, I doubt it, but it is possible.

Noting also, that he is currently pointing out that Burnout applies to all spells, not just fire spells, which means he is effectively seeking to 'nerf' his chosen spec. Affix has also, in the past, called for frost 'nerfs' in the form of making Frost Nova break on damage (he was largely responsible for that, I believe).

I, also, have campaigned to get Ignite fixed, even though in most tests I do the gained bug nets you more than the loss bug takes away. I am, and always will be, a fire mage.

Some of us want things to work the way they do by intended design, not by bad mechanics interaction or potential bugs.


Edit: Actually, a thought... Manly, would a "Known Bugs / Weird Interactions" sticky be a possibility?

Assuming the damage gets carried away, they will nerf the spec somehow, even if they can't fix the combo. Any mage who was raiding with the MSD/AM will be able to clearly see this nerf coming a mile away.

Yes, fireball spam is kind of boring/easy. But the mobility and many side benefits of arcane do not justify it being the top pve damage spec. They explicitly said this about frost's benefits.

Such a sticky would be possible, although I don't think it really fits the way most other threads in ej work. I mean if someone if up for it, fine, but I fear its going to devolve into stuff like 'mana being a bad mechanic in general'. We all know it but realistically its not going to be changed.

The line between "Bug" and "Feature" is sometimes blurred, this is one of those cases. Shatter combos themselves existed Pre Ice Lance in the form of Frostbolt->CoC, or Flamestrike->CoC (as Faxmonkey has made famous). There was a post by Blizzard saying they were aware of the situation and were keeping track of it. This acknowledged that they knew it existed, and were choosing to keep it in, or at least, choosing not to actively attempt to fix it yet.

What this boils down to is what they say once they know about it. Not saying anything makes you an irresponsible reporter, meaning you are actively not reporting something that looks like a bug. Even if there is precedent for it existing in that form (IE shatter combo), if that precedent was identified as being a Bug turned Feature, then you need the same confirmation that happened for it. Until that happens, you are effectively abusing a bug, that tends to make development teams unhappy, whereas if they get reports of an interesting mechanic they can either leave it as is, or seek to actively design it to work in a consistent way. The happier they are, the more likely they are to reward player creativity.

I would argue that what we are experiencing in the 'Blaster Combo' is a bug associated with the way the debuff is removed by AM. Once the servers come back up and I double check Pyromaniacs effects, I'm going to take some time to isolate when the debuff is consumed by AM, I expect it will be at the end of the channel bar, which allows the current situation of either precasting or effectively cancelcasting the ABarr on top of the AM to get the effect, since the command to cancel the channel bar happens after the spell request is sent, and thus the debuff isn't gone yet.

This screams of bug until it is verified to either be intended, or retroactively intended as a 'feature'.


Eh, I just know we have a lot of information about how weird things work (Spell Impact/FFB Glyph additive after Firepower, used to need FoF+FB for procs on Imp Blizard, Burnout increasing all but Blizzard, firepower not applying to the LB DoT) and it is sort of scattered about and effectively tribal knowledge. We, as gurus, can dish it out upon query, but if we centralized it somewhere the potential exists for it to get identified easily and fixed (as we've seen with items in your sig getting taken care of reasonably frequently).

I suppose a WoWWiki page could work too, or an official forums thread, I just hate dealing with Wikis and my chances of getting a user maintained known bugs thread on the forums stuck is ten to the power of my overdrive.

There is a qualitative difference, I would argue, between something like Shatter Combos that works due to in-game mechanics like flight time, and something like the Missiles->Barrage technique, or cheating a third charge out of Fingers of Frost, that works due to network mechanics.


Still, we do know GC reads "all the major forums" even if he doesn't post on them. This is as good a place as any, if not better, to maintain such a list, where strict moderation can be done (if anyone's willing to do it). Seems well worth a try.

This comes down to designer/developer intent. Acknowledging that tooltip text sometimes contains errors, this text is often the best indication of what that this intent is.

Old School Shatter Combos

The Shatter talent text reads "Increases the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 50%". The intent here is that spells cast against frozen targets have an increased chance to crit. This means it can be shared between mages. One mage novas a mob and 10 mages (with shatter) launch spells with a travel time at it, all spells get the shatter bonus.

The mechanics have a built-in way of limiting this--frozen targets break out on damage--so this mechanic cannot be overly abused. It is almost entirely a soloing/farming/pvp mechanic.

Note that the text doesn't put a limit on the number of spells that should be affected by shatter.

New Fingers of Frost Combos

The Fingers of Frost talent text reads "Gives your Chill effects a 15% chance to grant you the Fingers of Frost effect, which treats your next 2 spells cast as if the target were Frozen". Here, the intent is clearly to limit the effect to the next two spells cast.

People have discovered you can slip in an ice lance on that second spell. This is clearly a bug (and to be honest, could be added to manly's sig although I don't think that sig is suppose to be an exhaustive list of all mage bugs). The designers intended FoF to affect 2 spells and it can affect 3.

Of course, nobody cares about this bug because with Naxx level gear it is actually a DPS decrease to slip that ice lance in there. The benefits of starting another frostbolt are too great and ice lance scales too poorly.

Arcane Shatter Combos

The new text for Arcane Blast ends "This effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 seconds or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast". Here, the intent is clearly to limit the effect to the next arcane spell (other than another AB). The fact that we can clip AM and get ABar to get the effect is clearly a bug.

If the AB stack also effected Frost or Fire spells, wouldn't that be a bug, too?

I would add that (in my opinion) it is best not to get upset over these things. Arcane should compete with fire/frostfire on its own merits, not by leveraging a bug. Bugs will suddenly get fixed and where will arcane mages be on that day?

Additionally, in this case, the bug leads to less of the dynamic play that makes arcane attractive. If I have read the theorycrafting here correctly, the power of the bug makes you ignore MBAM procs. That is unfortunate...as reacting to procs makes for a more fun raiding experience. As a frost mage at heart (forced into FFB due to frost's lackluster numbers) I'm jealous of the idea of more dynamic cycles.

This is most probably what will occur. To some extent perhaps our definition of what FOTM means is slightly different. In my definition "ease of play" is one of the core defining characteristics of FOTM and hence it is an idea baked into the very definition of the word(which is why I would label MSD arcane as FOTM since you really just needed to spam your AM button). I do not base what FOTM is just on actual theoretical performance which is only achieved through a very involved process. That I just call "The best theoretical performing spec". But this is all just semantics, I think we both understand each other.

This is the other POV. One that I would agree to if I had actually seen it in action. A common fallback response is "I am doing this to help the class, not just my 'chosen' spec". I would be much much more eager to believe this if I could actually see the person (whoever it is) actually make a consolidated effort to give each 3 specs the same attention when 'bughunting'. At what point do you say 'the devs are ok with shatter so I will leave it be but they are not going to be ok with blaster so I will continue to push the point'? It seems pretty arbitrary to me.

We need to be more vigilant than this, as well as being more realistic. If you truly wish to push forward the idea that "we are doing this for the betterment of the class and not our spec" you will definately have to find a better example than this. The reality of the situation is that a deep fire mage will not be using non-fire spells (except perhaps blizzard, and aoe is of such miniscule importance right now). So no, choosing to 'fix' burnout will not by any stretch of the imagination 'nerf' the fire spec. The example stands as nothing more than a 'look I talk about bugs in my own tree too'. To the casual observer, your point is sold. I however, will still shop around.
On the other hand a deep arcane mage will be exclusively be using the 'blaster combo' (yes, I like the phrase and am adopting it now). In short, the importance of burnout working on non-fire spells to a fire mage is not equivalent to the blaster combo's importance to an arcane mage.
And as far as affix is concerned, I do not even wish to start. I have read his arguments and find them very very bias and some of them downright illogical. If we apply Affix's logic on the spec vs output matrix, fire and frostfire specs should be doing theoretical DPS directly proportional to the difficulty of playing the spec (in pve), which would place fire/frostfire/frost far behind arcane by a solid margin. And in the grander scheme of things, affliction warlocks would be kings of DPS.

I agree with you here. Some of us really do wish a spec or class to succeed by design rather than bugs. This is why I was one of the most vocal members of the beta community when the first iteration of Arcane on the beta devolved into "Blast spamming". If nothing else, I have always been an advocate of better design. I however do think there is a limit. Sometimes we should just take what we can get and be thankful for it. I, along with the very few arcanists left, have had to endure an entire raiding campaign in WoTLk as a spec that we somewhat have grown to despise. Why? Because we were "shouted down" during the beta since we were the clear vocal minority. The issues with the arcane spec were thoroughly documented and brought to the attention of blizzard months before there was any talk of WoTLk going live. I know this because I was part of that effort.
At that point, where were the people calling to 'fix' shatter? Where was the talk of fixing bugs from other specs that are clearly 'bad mechanics'. There was none. On the contrary there was actually talk of enhancing the bug to apply to PvE in order to make Frost's pve rotation less mind numbing (which was Lhivera's main push for the beta). At that point I saw no one, not a single person point out that shatter is actually a bug and we should not look to enhance it. Instead, I believe the entirety of the community (even non-frost mages like myself) rallied behind the idea for the greater good of the spec. This is the point I am trying to make. "Bughunting" must be taken with a grain of salt. It is not the be all end all of all things. There is a bigger picture. That is what I choose to see.

PS. I apologise for the multi-quote, I tried to separate the points made by Zaldinar in another way, but sometimes it is just not possible to do so since his points touch on some distant ideas. A thousand pardons for this.

Sorry for my poor English.
Just did some simulation.With the optimal gear,full buffed at 3K SP,arcane could achieve 7K dps.using AB3-ABrr/MBAM cycle and arcane combo.The talent is 57/3/11.result shown below.

Int:1333, Spi 672, SP 3028, Cri 0.454, Haste 0.478
Time 300001 damage 1600719983 using mana 150677230
MBAM: 25008 times,DPCT 22903, DPS 13544
ABrr: 42335 times,DPCT 11113, DPS 10953
AB: 127007 times,DPCT 9029, DPS 5340

Overall DPS:7299.8 MPS: 425.32

Are those calculations with or without the Arcane Blast glyph?

Can someone post the "accepted" 57/3/11 spec - or tell me if this is it (posted below). Are the preferred glyphs Molten Armor, Arcane Blast and Arcane Power?

Also, I'm assuming that the new Arcane Blast glyph will need to be discovered and not readily available for raids tonight.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=040120000000

I agree 100% with the above poster, I've been waiting to return to Arcane, which I raided as from the second I got 2piecet5 until the end of BC. FFB has been a filler spec for me until Arcane was repaired.

Search for my post from earlier in this thread. I have a link there to the 57/3/11 spec.

As far as glyphs go, I personally will be going with Arcane Blast, Molten Armor and possibly Mage Armor as a third. Though this might change when I have actually raided with the spec and see how my gear (and regen) performs in a live environment.

NB. When I first proposed the 57/3/11 I added a caveat that the 2nd tier Frost talents are somewhat debatable. Some people prefer Frost Warding over Ice shards, though I still prefer Ice shards since I still foresee the Arcanist spending more time Blizzarding than fighting Saphiron over the course of a raid night.
Lastly, in my spec, the last point is also interchangeable. I choose to put it in slow since there really isn't any talent that is a pure dps increase at that point. So I picked slow since it is pretty much a signature Arcane skill and I intend not to just be DPSing patchwerk when I log in. After all I still need to do dailies and perhaps 'farm' some honor.

Edit: It was my understanding that the Arcane Blast glyph is vendor available. I do hope this is the case since I fully intend to raid as Arcane tonight.

Yes, AB Glyph was trained on the PTR. In addition to Kel S'jet's comments on the 2nd tier Frost talents being debatable, there's also debate on 3 talents in particular in Arcane: Prismatic Cloak, Slow, and Arcane Meditation, which you've got 5 points to spread between. There's no really 'wrong' way to assign those points, all are viable (Utility vs Survivability+Utility vs Slight Damage Increase).

For max DPS, ideal glyphs are Arcane Blast, Molten/Mage Armor, and Arcane Power. If you frequently swap armors between fights, AP would be the one to drop to get both armors.

I also think it's worth pointing out that most of us have gear that has no spirit on it because it's what we picked up from Frostfire spec, so it's possible we won't be seeing the full extent of what Arcane can actually do for at least some period of time, while we get some of the pieces that we've been passing up.

Using gear available to my wife's mage (most, though not all, 213/226 gear), 57/3/11 maintains a steady lead of ~30dps over 53/0/18, in addition to providing superior Survivability, and instant Invis. 53/0/18 does have a slight lead in AoE damage due to the more frost talents increasing the damage of Blizzard. I've included both as built-in specs for Rawr 2.1.8 so people can compare them in their own gear (might be a gear level thing; at lower levels, they may need that reduced cost more).

I think we will initially have some variations, simply because we don't know yet how the spec handles in a raid.
Personally, I am leaning towards 53/0/18 as with all the mana reduction from Frost, I may be able to use glyphed Molten Armour even if there isn't much in the way of replenishment mechanics in the raid - trading 6% crit for AB for 5% crit to all. Arcane has always been heavily subject to both personal gear and typical raid composition and I don't see that changing.

With my gear (not bad, but not the best), 3/3 Student of the Mind and 3/3 Arcane Meditation, Rawr is valuing stats at:
1 int = 1.38 dps
1 spell power = 1.36 dps
1 haste rating = 1.04 dps
1 crit rating = 0.7 dps
1 spirit = 0.26 dps

I think in general frostfire gear is good enough for arcane spec. Spirit is still not good enough to gear for, except where you have no other choice (it just sucks slightly less for arcane than it did for frostfire).

Over the past few weeks, I have slowly been gathering what I consider to be a good "Arcane Raid set" in anticipation of today. Stat wise, it follows the priority system that is already published. It is relatively heavier on spirit than pure frostfire (though I am not 'actively' looking for spirit gear, I'm just not completely discounting gear with it), and has more of a focus on SP and Int. I am still missing a few pieces but I think I have got it to a place where I can gauge the performance of Arcane in raids quite effectively.

As far as the other question is concerned, I believe Astrylian is correct. The choice between 11 or 18 in frost will be gear dependent more than anything else (and as a secondary point, it will also be raid makeup dependent. If, for example, your guild does not have a consistent source of replenishment or such and so forth and etc). Remember not to get confused when people post theorycrafts of Arcane's performance with either their own gear or some theoretically ideal gear. These results while pretty to look at will not accurately represent what your performance will be. This is one of the secrets of Arcane. Along with rotations, there is no 'be-all-end-all' best talent point allocation for all occasions, at least until the point where everyone has the same gear and raid makeup.

Either way, 3.0.8 is landing so we will soon have a much clearer picture, hence, let the fun commence!

Spirit isn't about straight dps, though. It's about increasing your regen enough that you aren't wasting time using Evocation more than you have to. It's "indirectly" about dps in that regard. I don't know what the numbers come out to be, but when I tested Arcane in my Frostfire gear on the PTR with some regemming, I was able to get 380 mp5 while casting, and that allowed me to cast ABx2 ABr MBar on procs for about 8 minutes, when I ran out of mana gems and would have had to cast another. I think in time we'll find that there will be an optimal amount of Spirit from gear that we should aim for. I don't think it will be "on every piece" but as long as its useful, it might be one of those things where the numbers don't tell the entire story.

That said, those numbers seem to suggest that gemming for Intellect > gemming for Spellpower.