◊ manly

I think you strongly misunderstand how RAWR works. It calculates the DPS and DPM for every rotation possible, and then calculates the DPS/DPM for every rotation with/without cooldowns (mix and matching cooldowns). Then, based on the full list of every possible rotations, it applies Linear Programming to solve the most optimum selection of cycles.

In other words, its a lot better than you give it credit for. If you believe the numbers are somehow wrong, you can easily verify them on your own -- you'll find that the formulas to calculate spell damage for a spell are well known (same as what I put up on the first page) and that it is trivial to calculate. If we can predict with near 99.9% accuracy (and it is likely higher than that in practice since this was exhaustively verified) how much a spell will hit for given x, y, z buffs, then really, give me one reason why it should be discredited ?

In any case, if I had to chose between trusting someone I don't know that is 'trusting his instincts' over a fleshed out software that has been worked on for months by many programmers, I think the choice is beyond obvious.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Araxus

So RAWR constantly changes the rotation through the fight depending on where your mana and cooldowns sit? I'm not debating RAWR's ability to maximize the damage of a spell. I'm debating the rotations. When is it feasible to cast AB #4, #5, #6, and so on? How much spirit do you need to make it feasiable without losing too much dps in other stats? Is this worth doing?

 

◊ manly

No see, RAWR does better than that. If it sees that it is possible to cast (for example) 5 extra AB in a fight, while having 3 stack AB debuff, its going to change the rotations and pick up the rotation 'AB(4)' (which means, only spam AB with 60% more damage). Then from there it can see that it is optimal to cast that rotation while lust/AP/IV are up since its a DPS and DPM gain. So instead of doing your erroneous play (from a theoretical perfect play point of view***) and use your 5x ABs tackled early one without any cooldown (read: lesser DPS and DPM), it does it only at the most optimum time.

Of course, I know that's not precisely precisely how it works, but thats essentially what it ends up doing.

So yes, if you want to know, it will properly tell you how much extra mana you gained from x extra spirit for a x fight lenght, and from that extra mana it will recalculate a new optimum play for that fight, then calculating the new DPS.

Anyway, keep in mind, I realize that its one thing to play it one one thing to math it out. I realize that it is easier from a player perspective to adjust early your mana rather than late and that yes, generally I prefer tackling an extra AB4 here and there when I see that I seem to have 'too much mana', but the fact is: its factually sub-optimal to do so. But in any case, my point isnt to point out that doing so is bad, but mostly that your argument about it 'being unable to take extra AB casts in account' is actually false and that it will calculate them.

Log on with different model:
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2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Celani

Does anyone have numbers on the DPS increase of the Arcane Power Glyph? I can't seem to get a handle on it. Fight duration, trinket/potion procs, and getting the second IV in along with it make this one wander all over the board.

 

Omnia

Does RAWR allow us to see what specific rotation sequences it picked as solution? We should find that out for each typical fight duration (2min, 3min, 4min), using either Mage or Molten Armor. There should be at least some general trends.

 

PubaNWO

I'm still curious why mages aren't using Incanter's Absorption.

More +SP is always welcome in my book :P

 

Pakinheat

For the current 57/3/11 spec mages, which gylphs are recommended?

 

Auriol

The general opinion is the following:

1. Arcane Blast
2. Molten / Mage Armor Glyph
3. Arcane Power

 

Rhayn

Because it assumes two things:

1) You are taking damage
2) You are shielded if #1 is true.

Using Mana Shield is a waste because your mana IS your DPS for Arcane. The only time I see this coming into play is if a healer shields you during an AoE damage fight, or the AoE damage is something we can mitigate on our own (think Sapphiron + Frost Ward).

Otherwise, points are best spent somewhere else -- which is going to be the case a majority of the time.

 

Auriol

Two-fold answer:

1st, the 57/3/11 build stretches thin as it is on talent points. It's already sacrificing some good talents that would be "nice to haves".

2nd, Incanter's Absorption assumes you are taking damage. In a boss fight, if you are taking damage, you are probably going to be dead very quickly. A hit for 20k on you is going to wipe out your mana shield, drain your mana, and bring you close to death. And if you aren't taking damage, or taking incidental aoe-ish damage in a boss fight, its not enough to justify spending talent points here.

 

PubaNWO

Yeah using mana shield would drain your own mana but if you had ways to mitigate for the mana loss the extra +SP would be very nice for boss fights which in most cases you will be taking some sort of dmg whether its from AoE, auras, or random nukes.

Plus I read that Incanter's Absorption is additive and has it's own "memory" so if you get dmged while having an existing IA ticking you get the 2 +SP added together for a few seconds.

If +SP is the stat for mages why wouldn't anyone not want more of it?

 

birdy

Because losing mana means losing DPS.

 

PubaNWO

Yea you're right if you take direct dmg from a boss you are likely to die if you don't IB but I haven't found much problem ganking in WOTLK as I did in BC.

But for a fight like Sapph where the frost aura ticks for 1200 dmg (at least for me) the bonus from IA is +180 SP (if my math is right) and if it ticks again while you are shielded from another shield besides MS then you get +360 SP for a few seconds.

But maybe 5 points is too much for extra +SP on boss fights? I can see where IA is pretty useless against trash clearing but I have a select few peers in RL who only look at dmg/dps during boss fights as the true measure of dps so trash dps is not a big deal to some lol.

 

Stavros

I was thinking of doing

1. Arcane Blast
2. Molten Armor
3. Mage Armor


I am wondering what the overall DPS loss/gain is for having the option for 5% crit up if mana is not an issue, as opposed to the extra 3 seconds of Arcane Power during boss cooldown burns. I am curious, that if instead of the 3 seconds of Arcane Power, if you switched to Molten armor for the 5% crit during your burn, if you had the mana to sustain a 20-30 second blast without the Mage Armor regen.

I suppose you don't need to glyph Molten armor, but it seems like the option of using Molten armor as much as your mana can take it would be a net gain over 3 seconds of Arcane Power.

 

PubaNWO

My problem with RAWR is it's all theoretical and simulated.

In actual game play the software doesn't account into a player's skill, computer/video card capabilities, lag, and timing.

You can run numbers all you want but you still have to "play" and "hit the keys" and "react to unexpected things" which you can program into that software.

And I'm not trying to blast or RAWR or start a flame war because I use the program myself for gear checks and expected dps for certain rotations but I don't rely on it 100%. I still have to "test things out" for myself.

 

PubaNWO

How often are you going to switch your armor during a fight?

3 seconds of more AP may not seem like a lot but if you crit and POM crit and it's on a 2 min. timer you can do a lot of dps in the long run IMO.

 

Omidin

I've respecced 57/3/11 about an hour ago, and was amazed that Rawr said I can now do up to 1k dps more than I could with my current gear in FFB spec.

However, for some reason Rawr seems to value Haste pretty highly. It suggested I change my items to ones with Haste (such as frostfire robe to gown of bleaumox etc) and changed all my crit gems to haste ones. I was wondering why that is, considering ABarr is instant, AM have a talent that reduces its cast time significantly, and AB requires less casting time than FFB for example.

Could this be a bug resulted by me setting up stuff wrong in rawr?

I'd appriciate any help I can get before I put money into regemming.

Armory link:
The World of Warcraft Armory

 

Omnia

I did some testing, and the following two seem very close in terms of combo success rate, given 40ms ping:

A) Manually hit Abar when the 5th missile leaves your hand (listening to first missiles for rhythm).
B) Using a [nochanneling] macro for Abar, and spamming it as fast as possible (I mean, SNES turbo controller fast) when the 5th missile is coming up.

(A) requires focus and good ears/rhythm/reaction (but gets tough in 25man mayhem), (B) is nubfree (but a little tiring after a while). Note, (B) might work for people with bad ping, assuming the [nochanneling] check is done server side and not client side.



EDIT: getting 80-90% success rate for both, so I think people should give a try to option (B), and see if it works for them.

Macro 1:
/castsequence reset=11 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles
Macro 2:
/cast [nochanneling] Arcane Barrage

 

Pasture

Remember FFB benefits massively from crit. Arcane much, much less so. We only have 50% bonus crit damage and that's it. No procs based on crit. No mana return based on crit. No 200% damage crits. As such crit is much less valuable.

Haste on the other and helps us with everything other than arcane barrage (though it does allow is to get back to our big nuke more quickly). It helps both blast and barrage and speeds up our entire rotation. Provided your mana can be sustained, the more haste the better.

 

Turwok

Where did you get 0,2sp for 1mp5? My rawr shows different:
1crit =0,54sp --> 230 crit = 126sp
1mp5= 0,35 --> 350mp5 = 122sp

This leads to think molten and mage armor are really close on dps gain.

---- edit ----

I've turned off automatic armor change from rawr options and compared full dps for a 500s fight:
molten armor - 4750 dps (It was 5.2k, but I've added some pushback, lag and other things that dropped it a little)
mage armor - 4720 dps.


Edit again: Grammar

 

dralarn

You would never use mana shield. However, your wards provide a nice 10 second damage boost every 30 seconds at the cost of a GCD on at least Sapph and KT. It also syncs well with the Frost Warding talent.

 

Shala

Can you explain why mp5 increases your dps? Or well in other words, mage armor. Is it because you dont need to evocate and you can go on dps'ing during that? Is that with molten armor glyph?

 

grayrest

I hate this argument because it's stupid. The whole game is simulated and the system is well understood, if you fail to achieve the predicted results then the failure is almost always in your modeling or your performance rather than in the math.

You can account for all the factors you listed except player skill using the latency variable. You can also account for fight interruptions and other non-casting situations as long as they're predictable. What you can't account for is sub-optimal gameplay.

You will not hit the number you see in rawr, but it's completely possible to consistently hit 95-98% of that number. I did for months in BC and I could consistently look back at a fight and see where I lost that 2-5%. I'm not saying that you should rely on Rawr over personal insight (e.g. I went int gemming instead of SP for 2t5 arcane) but Rawr results are much more predictive than trying it out because it removes the RNG, your group comp that night, and your ability to play a new spec from talent comparisons.

I'd be surprised that this works at all. The ABr getting the AB buff bonus is due to the server thinking that the ABr is cast with the AB buff up and the AB buff is cleared by the ending of the AM channel. If the server believes that the channel is over, the buff should have cleared and this should fail every time. I would go for the ABr after 4 strategy since the downside (no 60% damage on the ABr) heavily outweighs the upside (60% damage on one missile).

 

◊ manly

Oddly enough it does work and is somewhat reliable. I didn't expect it to work either, given that nochannel usually enforces a check client-side and logically, at that point, you're guaranteed it is done casting on the server. But despise all of that, it works. The most logical explanation is that it is yet more evidence of the fact that buff/debuffs are delayed, probably because they are queued and processed on a different process. Your spell is done casting (AM), but the buff removal is queue. By the time you cast abarr the buff is still active.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

galzohar

Yeah, it's the same thing that lets you bubble and die anyway (and have bubble go on cooldown), or have a 20k heal land (and cost mana) on a dead tank, as well as some of the wierd ignite stuff.