Here is a link to the description of the bug.
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Shadowpriest buff?

I had similar results tonight. I wasn't sure if i was doing the "arcane shatter" (is this an official term now?) correctly, but I knew I was when the 14k ARBars started hitting.
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But my gear (and possibly gem) choice is way off according to RAWR. RAWR is telling me that all the priest spirit/mp5 pieces are king now. Gothiks cowl is no longer best in slot. It seems 7.5 helm is better because of the spirit on it. So if chest + helm have spirit and 4pc bonus is crucial, the only open slot is shoulders. RAWR is pointing towards [Mantle of Dissemination].

Some questions that were raised:

1) Malygos, my guild pops bloodlust after first vortex with 2+ damage buffs. Is it worth me saving all my cd's till then?
2) Which spell to stack with PoM? I put frostbolt because of the frost crit bonus damage and its low/high end damage was better than FFB. Perhaps linking it with AB may be better just to get that third stack faster.
..#showtooltip Frostbolt
../stopcasting
../use 13
../cast Arcane Power
../cast Presence of Mind
../cast Berserking(Racial)
../cast Icy Veins
../cast Frostbolt
3) Gem choices. I'm almost all 19sp gems right now. Int and/or spirit gems?
4) After initial burn phase, what is the progression of rotation to ease mana back? back in 40/0/21 it was frostbolt spam. Today I was AB/ABar while waiting for cd's to pop back up and gems or evoc.
5) Trinket choice. RAWR says [Je'Tze's Bell] + [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]. Hopefully I get [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] soon because I already have [Je'Tze's Bell]. Many of our fights are so short I only get off one evocate making mana not even a problem.

I don't see a difference between "adding a frost mage to a raid with 0 mages" and "adding a frost mage to a raid with 10 fire mages".

A frost mage in general seems a valuable addition to the raid right now. The extra mana, the extra trash DPS, the guaranteed 10% spell crit on AoE trash/zergs and the kiting abilities in my eyes do outweigh the loss of personal single target DPS in general.
Frost however is a liability if you're facing a single target DPS requirement that is hard to reach.


There are two types of shatter bugs.

One is the Classical Shatter Bug, where you cast a second spell before the projectile of the first spell breaks the Freeze effect.
The reason is that whether a spell crits or not is determined at the end of the cast. So the second spell gets the 50% crit bonus because the target is frozen at the end of the second cast. The Freeze effect breaking before the second spell lands has no more impact on the spell crit chance.
That one has been talked to death, everyone knows about, all Devs know about it and everyone is more or less fine with it.

Attempting to fix it would require a complete remake of game combat mechanics, and even then I'd be quite sure you could still produce shatter combos by timing the 2 spells that they both hit the target at the same time.
So both spells get the Shatter bonus before the game realises that the Freeze effect just broke, a latency/mechanic style New Shatter Bug.

The other is the New Shatter Bug, where you time your spells so well that you cast an instant second spell before the game realises that your first spell finished casting.
That bug exists for Fingers of Frost, Combustion and Arcane Blast. It requires you to time an instant cast at the end of the previous cast so that it gets the benefit of a buff that is supposed to fade when the first cast ends.
You only have a very small latency/process window after your first cast end and before the game properly processes the execution of the spell.

I'm not sure whether this New Shatter Bug is easier to fix than the Classical one.
I suspect the "You heal tank for 20k. Mob hits tank for 5k. Tank dies." type of bugs are also connected to the New Shatter Bugs, just like the "Brutallus hits you for 200k. Brutallus hits you for 100k. You can Ice Block. (You live.)" Sanctuary timing bugs.


I think most of us want to get those things fixed, but it's not easily done without turning the whole game engine upside down.
Ignite is probably also just another case of New Shatter Bug, just like everything else that can be called "spell processing and execution timing bugs".
We'd love to get those fixed, but we're aware that it would take an unrealistic amount of effort to just attempt it.

The extent to which Arcane DPS is overpowered at the moment is ludicrous.

Tonight I screwed around to a 2-3% buffer over everyone on bosses, with 22% spell hit (gogo FFB gear).

Even WITH the Arcane Shatter combo exploit, the spec is still absurdly strong. I sincerely doubt that bug accounts for the 1 - 2k dps differences I was seeing.

I am sincerely hoping for a retouching, and a rapid one at that

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Ok well tonights raid we had 3 of us mages go the 3 diff specs, I was the new fire/totw build, another was the new arcane spec and the other mage was the old fotm ffb spec. On patchwerk the arcane mage dominated us both with myself behind him and then the FFB mage. Arcane spec did rape us on patchwerk but it seemed almost 50/50 between myself as fire/totw and the arcane mage for every other fight, I raped the arcane mage on thaddius though. Seems arcane and fire/totw are similar depending on the fight. On 3 drakes I also dominated the arcane/fotm ffb spec.

I'd say arcane is currently ahead of fire/totw, while ffb seems to be pretty pointless now.

I'll post wws when someone uploads it

Its easy to fix. Just make AB only boost (AB) + either (AM or abarr). Although that would make for some quite hectic tooltip.

Actually, seeing as how the problem is caused by network latency, I am not sure how you overcome it. In order for the AB (de)buff to effect the entire AM, it's got to watch for 5 procs. How can it know to not apply the (de)buff if the 5th hit is ABarr instead of AM? Perhaps I'd easier than I am thinking.

Well, it is not any sort if perfect comparison, but if you look at the WWS I posed, Draxil stayed FFB spec. He and I run together every single week in 10 and 25mans and have very similar gear. His is maybe a tiny bit below mine now, but I'll be honest, he's a better player than I am (much faster reflexes.) With both of us in identical gear with identical specs, he will out DPS me by a little every time. I did quite a bit more dps/dmg than him in several fights in that parse. More than I think I probably should, to be perfectly honest.

At any rate, I loved arcane through TBC and am glad to be playing it again.

Sorry to double-post.

Another easy way to possibly tone down arcane/increase dynamic playstyle, is to reduce the length of the Missle Barrage proc. Right now it lasts so long you can actually not notice go off for 5 seconds, suddenly see, and still have time to buff up 2xAB. If they shorted down the length of that buff to like 8 seconds(?) or so, you'd still have time to buff it if you were quick, but it wouldn't be nearly so laissez faire.

I think you misunderstood manly a bit, what he proposed was, that the buff from Arcane Blast only effects one spell, either AM or Arcane Barrage, not the first spell that is casted.
For example if it only increases the damage of Arcane Barrage (and only fades after casting ArcBarrage) than you could cast 2 or 3 AM before and the buff would be still there and the AM would have done their normal damage. But the first ArcBarrage consumes the debuff and does higher damage.
So yeah it is fairly easy to fix.

This really isn't worth going into too far, but the very nature of AM demands that for the (de)buff to work on AM (only AM) it has to stay up for 5 ticks. Each individual tick of AM is almost like an individual spell, which is why 2 ticks out of 5 can crit. My concern is if the AB (de)buff is to only apply to AM how do you ensure the (de)buff is up for all 5 ticks, but goes away if AM get cut off by another spell (ie ABarr)?

Explaining in terms of ABarr is kind of silly, especially considering it already works that way with ABarr. The issue is, obviously, how to make it work with only AM.

If you only increase the damages of Arcane Barrage there would be no point in casting AM beside Missile Barrage procs.

If you only increase the damages of AM there would be no point in casting Arcane Barrage ever.

The debuff simply should be consumed on spell casts (and AM mechanism changed if only the first hit takes the +60% damage)

There was a 6.2k spriest parse linked in guild last night. One of the top alliance guilds, unfortunately can't remember it at the moment.

P.S. I may have forgot I had POM on that fight.

Has anyone any knowledge as to how latentcy will effect interaction between AB stacks and AM/MB.

eg 450m/s lag chain casting AB3 then AM. Will AM recieve AB3 debuff, AB2 debuff due to lag or first missile AB2 then AB3 after that? (Obviously i know ABr will slot on the end of this but doesn't factor into my question)

I play on euro server so haven't been able to test myself as yet as i'm still at work, but as i have constant 400+ lag it'll play a big part in decieding to spec arcane or fire.

Another option would be to have MBAM with normal damage (i.e remove the buff on cast) and have it add a 1-tick dot for the bonus damage.

As for the latency issue: 3.0.3 showed that for normal mobs with TTW and some lag shooting off FrB and MBAM resulted in the first 1-2 missles not getting the bonus. Of course, this is debuff application on target instead of buff application on player, but I think the latency issues are the same.

Cutting into the whole Arcane Phenomenon discussion, this morning I discovered Serpent Coil braid stacks with 2*T7. I'm not fully aware if it did in the past, but I'm quite certain it did not through Beta. Both the mana gained and the +225 spell effect doubled for a combined +450 spell and ~5700 mana.

Not that it makes the trinket better than shite, but it does introduce an interesting potential for the worlds-sickest-CD-stacking video of all times.

The mana gained from the gem always stacked before, however the spell damage buff did not so that part of it has changed.

Ah, that makes sense.

Agreed. I would expect a mobile spec like arcane to do a little less dmg on stationary tank and spank fights and come out ahead on movement fights. Still makes arcane a viable choice and a fun one, but not quite so overwhelming.

And as it stands, this is crystal clearly the case. As an old time fan of arcane (pre 3.0), I am not intimidated by this change, but I am sure Blizzard will act swiftly on this once they get a hold of the zomg-arcane-pwns-here-is-WWS-to-prove-it wind.

Yes Arcane Pwns on short fights. You really think Blizzard is creating more EZMODE naxx fights? In longer fights Arcane equals out with Fire trees.

In addition, without raid mana regen buffs arcane sucks, OOM's too quick.

Your last line from this quote is the most pertinent, since it covers over 85%+ (approximately) of what we see in raids today. That being said, it should not be hard to see my point.
There is a fire mage and a frost mage. The fire mage puts out 4k DPS, the frost mage puts out 3k DPS, we need to kill this boss that requires each DPS spot to output 3.5k DPS. The frost mage approaches me first (0 mages in the raid), I do not take him since he cannot complete the 3.5k DPS requirement. The fire mage approaches me next, I accept him to the raid and have a 0.5k DPS buffer. The frost mage approaches me again (1 mage in the raid), I accept him to the raid, since his lack of 0.5k DPS will be made up by the fire mage, and in return, we will get all the goodies that he brings, which in this case will be a little more mana, quicker access (possibly) to the boss since we *may* clear trash faster (nb, having a Frost mage in the raid is not an automatic insta-gib of all trash in a 800 yard radius, lets not get ahead of ourselves here), and maybe a slight bump up in the fire mage's DPS since he will not have to scorch.
Say now we have 2 fire mages in the raid, this gives me as a raid leader a 1k buffer for our next DPS spot. Naturally though, you must keep in mind this is very raid specific, which was a point I was trying to emphasize in my previous few posts as well but for some reason or another people keep on missing it.
This may seem like a pretty arbitrary to you, but take note, this is more often the case than not.

True, this would fix this 'bug', but it would simultaneously destroy Arcane's viability, which right now, is only 1 day old. I am not surprised that you do not care about that aspect of your 'fix'.

I feel this thread has, yet again, devolved into people throwing around totally non-viable 'solutions' to issues that are almost totally vacuous. Yet again, the influential minority is pressing forward its agendas and grasping onto any and all tendril issues that they can whilst simultaneously attempting to give off the impression that they are taking the 'high moral road' and doing what they are doing 'for the greater good', when they are clearly just trying everything in the book to get the spec that is threatening their dominance nerfed (to the ground baby).
This is not new. I have seen it happen before. It is the picture perfect view of what happened with Arcane during the beta as well, and we all saw the state of Arcane PvE coming out the other end of that process.

So before I leave this thread (at least until it calms back down and people stop being so unfetteringly bombastic), here are some facts that I believe no one can dispute.

1. Arcane is viable and competitive, not overpowered. Right now, even with its 'bug' (which to some is such a critical bug that it is an unacceptable addition to the game and hence we must purge its existence asap), Arcane is just about breaking even. In almost no scenario is Arcane just thrashing the competition 4 ways to Sunday. Arcane is not the new BM/Readiness Hunter spec, not by a long shot. Do not bother to listen to the mages that will tell you otherwise, they are wrong.
2. For Arcane to be viable, a very specific set of raid requirements need to be met. The lack of even 1 of these requirements can threaten to drop Arcane back into the non-viable bucket somewhat.
3. Arcane's delicate casting process means that it perhaps the closest thing the mage class will get to having to use actual 'skill' (*gasp*) while casting. On the flipside, the delicate casting process has very little room for error, and even small errors will compound to a loss of a lot of DPS.
4. Like all specs, Arcane has its strengths and its weaknesses. Mobility, consistency of damage and immense burst are its strengths. Long fights, AoE and raid utility are its weaknesses (nb, non-exhaustive list). By no stretch of the imagination is Arcane without weakness, and neither is any other spec. Arcane will be better for some fights, and worse for others. If you feel that your non-arcane spec should just be best for all fights, then you are being unrealistic.
5. There is absolutely no logic that can justify this statement: "In the event of multiple (>1) mages in the raid, every single mage in the raid must bring a scorch/WC debuff and exceptional ranged AoE DPS otherwise they are a detriment to the raid".

So ravage as you will.

Quick Edit:
Fun fact. If you collated the WWS parses from all raids that occurred last night (since the patch is not even 1 day old yet), you would still not have a statistically significant set of data to assert "zomg-arcane-pwns-here-is-WWS-to-prove-it".

I think you guys underestimate the complexity. For starters, if I cast AB -> abarr I wouldn't be too surprised if from time to time you do not gain the damage buff. This is because of the latency for gaining buff. If I were to guess, possibly also happens with AM ticks.

As far as 'preventing players from chaining AM AM while clipping the last tick to get 6 boosted AM ticks' I don't think it would pass the reality test. The only case that that would happen is if you somehow ended up doing AM MBarr (possibly due to time for mbarr to be gained). Even then, its really nothing much to write home about.

If you make the AB debuff only apply to (AB + abarr) (which I believe would make the most sense), you must make sure that players always have the bonus when casting abarr (ie: make sure latency buffs dont happen). You would still cast AM because of missile barrage. It would become somewhat the deep fire/deep frost analogue playstyle-wise. Use procs when they proc, otherwise proceed with normal rotation. It would still be a fair ways different though.

Funny, this is exactly what you were trying to do with Arcane in the beta too Manly, and continued trying to push this agenda even when myself and pretty much every single other career Arcanist screamed at you and said that we want Arcane's playstyle to be significantly different from fire or frost. I find it intriguing that you still have not let this agenda go.
But then again, it is no surprise that one of the most vocal fire mages in the community wants arcane to be like fire. Who would have thunk it?