Regarding using pure ABSpam I can only give this suggestion. First realize that ABSpam4MBAM already is in part ABSpam if you have bad luck with procs. Knowing this even if you're doing good on mana early on you shouldn't preemptively ABSpam just in case your luck turns around. The more important part to know is that you should never ABSpam if it means you'll have to use Evocation at any point during the fight where you could be dpsing instead. In most situations this'll mean that you should only use ABSpam at the very end of the fight if you have enough mana left.
Is clipping your last AM with Abarr still a legit strategy? I've been doing Abspamx4-MB-AM-Abarr after 4th missle. It looks to be a little higher DPS but I am not sure about the DPM.
I've seen a lot of interest in how to adjust the optimal cycles in presence of variation so I'll show an example of how you can do such an analysis with Rawr for a 5 minute fight with my gear. First let's take a look at the optimum solution for the complete fight.
We'll now split the fight right before the second mana gem and solve the rest of the fight given different possibilities with mana. We'll use cooldown editor in Rawr to specify that some cooldowns have already been used and using drinking time to change the starting mana pool and of course changing fight duration to 171.01. (The reason why we're splitting right at the mana gem is because the cooldown editor right now doesn't support restrictions on mana gem so we want it to be off cooldown at the split).
We enter the following restrictions in cooldown editor:
0-15.01: !Icy Veins
0-41.51: !Arcane Power
0-59.41: !Evocation
First just to verify we'll check the average case where we start with 19545 mana. I won't show the sequence reconstruction here because it doesn't understand the cooldown editor restrictions, but you can see that we get exactly what was expected. The optimum solution given that we had average situation on mana is the same as the optimum for full fight.
We see exactly what we could predict from the optimal cycle list. Evocation is already at maximum so the only way to readjust is to move down the list of optimal cycles. We now get a mix of ABSpam234MBAM and AB4AM234MBAM.
If we start with 4285 mana we get the following (note that I can't currently simulate going completely out of mana because since I'm simulating it through drinking time the optimum would become to continue drinking into the start of the fight for a few seconds).
The change from the optimal in this case is that we would only use one tick of Evocation.
A few notes overall. The way sequence reconstruction works with Evocation is that if the optimum solution suggests partial use of evocation it'll make the first evocation partial so that it can start it as soon as possible. In practice it'll usually be better to make it a full evocation even if you have to wait longer to start the cooldown just to have more room for bad luck. This way if you're doing bad on mana you can still extend to maximum evocation use over the whole fight.
Another note would be that ABSpam4MBAM, ABSpam24MBAM and ABSpam234MBAM are so close together that in practice you probably won't be able to switch between them for more than very fine tuning of mana. For example you can see one such example in the last solution with full mana. The reason why lower cycles are used there at all is because you can't make partial ticks of Evocation and the optimum solution determined it's better to switch to a slightly lower cycle for some time than to spend time on one extra tick of Evocation.
Could someone explain to me why Rawr is valuing Talisman of Resurgence so highly? I thought at first it was the fight duration forcing Rawr to overvalue intellect, but shortening the fight duration actually moves the trinket up even higher in rankings comparatively. Is it simply because you can line up the on use spell power with other cool downs?
If someone could redirect me to the math for this if it's already done or simply give me a logical answer as to why I should drop 50 Emblems on it, it would be much appreciated.
I've seen a lot of interest in how to adjust the optimal cycles in presence of variation so I'll show an example of how you can do such an analysis with Rawr for a 5 minute fight with my gear.
[...]
We see exactly what we could predict from the optimal cycle list. Evocation is already at maximum so the only way to readjust is to move down the list of optimal cycles. We now get a mix of ABSpam234MBAM and AB4AM234MBAM.
Very interesting to see how to calculate partial fights.
So, if any general advice can come from this analysis, it is the following. When trying to save mana (e.g. you are under 35% before the 2nd mana gem with still a minute to go before evocation): break ABspam with AM rather than ABarr; and hit MBAM after 2 or 3 stacks if it procs. This gives significant reduction in mana consumption with only a few hundred dps lost.
Could someone explain to me why Rawr is valuing Talisman of Resurgence so highly? I thought at first it was the fight duration forcing Rawr to overvalue intellect, but shortening the fight duration actually moves the trinket up even higher in rankings comparatively. Is it simply because you can line up the on use spell power with other cool downs?
If someone could redirect me to the math for this if it's already done or simply give me a logical answer as to why I should drop 50 Emblems on it, it would be much appreciated.
Many things are good about this trinket.
1) There is a very nice on use effect which can be lined up, as you said
2) It is intellect, and therefore scales with kings, Arcane Mind, and Mind Mastery
3) Intellect provides mana, spell power, spell crit, and mp5.
4) More mana = Less Evocating = More casting.
Is clipping your last AM with Abarr still a legit strategy? I've been doing Abspamx4-MB-AM-Abarr after 4th missle. It looks to be a little higher DPS but I am not sure about the DPM.
No.
That technique was hot-fixed out in January. Unless there is a new bug with 3.2.2 in which AM Does not consume the AB Debuff, clipping AM with ABarr is a bad, bad idea - It is costing you 20% of the damage from your buffed, hasted, mana-free MBAM and replacing it with a poor-damage, poor-effiency ABarr, and also costing you the GCD of ABarr.
If someone could redirect me to the math for this if it's already done or simply give me a logical answer as to why I should drop 50 Emblems on it, it would be much appreciated.
I don't quite understand what you're asking for here. The mathematics are so hugely complex we've built and optimized extremely advanced simulators which bend databases into pretzels to do this for us, and you want instead a simple logical answer? There isn't one. Simple juggling with Rawr will reveal around 1.8dps per point of spell and 1.9dps per point of haste, but only 1.25dps per point of int, so it's clear to see that it's probably not the passive bonus. More than likely, trinkets of that level with haste procs are partially wasted, as CD-stacking with everything going off and ~505haste on top of it is pushing AB perhaps beyond GCD limits, making trinkets with haste procs bad, rather than making ToR good.
It more than likely just happens to provide better synergy with the CD stacking. Or perhaps it offers so much intellect that there's some soft threshold where the program optimizes rotations differently, slightly shifting this here and that there, making one or two more ABs fit into a different regime, or cutting one tic of evocation. There clearly is an answer somewhere, but it's not exactly obvious, and is very unlikely to be expressible with either a simple answer or what we'd constitute logical.
It more than likely just happens to provide better synergy with the CD stacking. Or perhaps it offers so much intellect that there's some soft threshold where the program optimizes rotations differently, slightly shifting this here and that there, making one or two more ABs fit into a different regime, or cutting one tic of evocation.
I've a slightly simplistic answer--the night I had enough emblems to get the trinket, I did and I tested it out on a boss dummy. Prior to getting the trinket I was doing around 3000-3200 dps on the dummy on a 5-min fight; with the trinket (replacing Abyssal Rune at the time, I believe) I did ~3400 dps.
Obviously this doesn't account for all fight lengths/configurations/etc but for me at the time that was enough validation of Rawr's recommendation of the Talisman. It will probably not sway one who wants hard math as proof, though.
I've a slightly simplistic answer--the night I had enough emblems to get the trinket, I did and I tested it out on a boss dummy. Prior to getting the trinket I was doing around 3000-3200 dps on the dummy on a 5-min fight; with the trinket (replacing Abyssal Rune at the time, I believe) I did ~3400 dps.
Obviously this doesn't account for all fight lengths/configurations/etc but for me at the time that was enough validation of Rawr's recommendation of the Talisman. It will probably not sway one who wants hard math as proof, though.
The deviation after you have tested on the dummy seems to be 300 and isnt so definitive since this could be from RNG and we dont know how many times you tested. I also remember the Abyssal Rune is higher if not equal than the Talisman of Resurgence in a fully buffed raid, so i believe trading out for it isnt the best idea...but i also see you wearing both at the moment.
Just a quick question to you all from a non-mage. How well would Incanter's Absorption work if a ret or prot paladin kept up Sacred Shield on the mage pretty often. Our prot paladin has the 1 minute long sacred shield, and it absorbs about 2000 damage. When it procs, the shield is up for 6 seconds, so in high damage fights it's going to be going off all the time. Are each of those proc/absorbs going to keep a 300 spell power buff up on the mage in a heavy aoe damage fight (like heroic twin val'kyr)?
it would def work well in high dmg fights. For Twins though it is only usefull to mitigate the dmg. This is because of the way the fight is currently set up. What I mean by this is when you get the debuff to not take dmg from one of the auras it is considered an absorb, so you are absorbing an insane amount of dmg every 1.5-2 seconds. This means that you will have Incanters up the entire fight.
it would def work well in high dmg fights. For Twins though it is only usefull to mitigate the dmg. This is because of the way the fight is currently set up. What I mean by this is when you get the debuff to not take dmg from one of the auras it is considered an absorb, so you are absorbing an insane amount of dmg every 1.5-2 seconds. This means that you will have Incanters up the entire fight.
does it actually work that way? I was kind of wondering the same thing. Does the damage absorbed from the ticking aura (same color) or absorbed balls count towards a SP buff?
Just a quick question to you all from a non-mage. How well would Incanter's Absorption work if a ret or prot paladin kept up Sacred Shield on the mage pretty often. Our prot paladin has the 1 minute long sacred shield, and it absorbs about 2000 damage. When it procs, the shield is up for 6 seconds, so in high damage fights it's going to be going off all the time. Are each of those proc/absorbs going to keep a 300 spell power buff up on the mage in a heavy aoe damage fight (like heroic twin val'kyr)?
Actually you can apply the shield when the mage gets a dot, the only exception should be Anub'arak P3.
does it actually work that way? I was kind of wondering the same thing. Does the damage absorbed from the ticking aura (same color) or absorbed balls count towards a SP buff?
Well you can take his word for it, or you can take my word for it. It's absorbed damage, it procs Incanter's. Twins is tailor made for Arcane as a result. I did a modest 12k DPS on my mage thanks to it.
Well you can take his word for it, or you can take my word for it. It's absorbed damage, it procs Incanter's. Twins is tailor made for Arcane as a result. I did a modest 12k DPS on my mage thanks to it.
Well, both Fire and Arcane get "extra" advantages on the fight. Fire because Ignite itself receives the bonus from having the correct Essence + the Empowered Buff -> Combustion + Empowered is quite absurd. If you can manage to get two empowered buffs and have a good crit rate, I could see Fire easily exceeding 12k. Warriors and Ret Paladins benefit similarly with their crit-percentage dots, which is why you often see them doing 10-12k on the fight too.
That said, Arcane is higher to begin with, and Arcane Power+Icy Veins synergizes extremely nicely with the Empowered buff as well(especially since you know EXACTLY when you will get it, on the second Vortex).
Too bad I'll never find out whether Fire can really be competitive since there's no particularly good reason to use it on that fight aside from pure curiosity's sake.
<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl
The main point of my question wasn't so much about arcane and Twin Val'kyr, but was more about the benefit of having Sacred Shield from a prot paladin kept on the mage as much as possible. Would it be a significant dps boost?
That really dependent on the fight and the other shield buffs that are being tossed around the raid. If say u have a legendary mace in your raid and maybe a Disc priest then it might not be the most useful thing because the mage will be getting other shields, but it could still help.
It entirely depends on the frequency of the damage. It's going to provide at least 300 spell damage provided you get hit once every 10 seconds, which is certainly a very significant buff. I'd say it's worth it for fights where you'll get randomly hit or can intentionally get a dot on you, for example, Northrend Beasts, Faction Champions. It's probably worthless on Jaraxxus(very infrequent damage unless you are terrible), and it's DEFINITELY worthless on Twin Valkyrs because Light/Dark Essence absorbs will max out the 5% of your hp threshold for the entire fight without any outside shields.
It's probably not great on Anub'arak, as you take minimal damage during dps phases(nothing except penetrating cold) and besides, Arcane is not the spec-of-the-encounter for Heroic 25m Anub, FFB is. Having that shield on you could also fuck up your health stability during Leeching Swarm, which wouldn't be great(you would be higher health than everyone else in your group constantly).
The best way to figure out how much the buff actually is worth would be to get parses of Northrend Beasts, Faction Champions, and Jaraxxus, log-browse out the relevant damage-taken-on-self spells on World of Logs, then write a couple of lines of perl/php/lua/whatever and parse the result for the average and median damage-taken-on-self per 10 seconds. Maybe I'll do it if I'm bored.
Last edited by Sancus : 09/28/09 at 7:29 PM.
<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl
The deviation after you have tested on the dummy seems to be 300 and isnt so definitive since this could be from RNG and we dont know how many times you tested. I also remember the Abyssal Rune is higher if not equal than the Talisman of Resurgence in a fully buffed raid, so i believe trading out for it isnt the best idea...but i also see you wearing both at the moment.
Well, I didn't want to get into specifics. I tested thrice, and it was relatively consistent (give or take; this was a while ago, but IIRC I did not dip below 3300 and I did not exceed 3500). I switched out the Talisman for the Rune (at the time) because I needed Dying Curse at the time to be hit-capped; now I obviously have other gear and don't need the +hit from the latter. (I do run my gear against Rawr relatively frequently.)
As I said in my post, my very simple test can't possibly account for a whole lot, but I wanted to share my experience with the Talisman as I myself was a little skeptical before getting it.
Remembering all the jokes about Vezax and Arcane in the past, I decided what the heck and pulled it out this week using the AB4ABarr1234MBAM - clipping casts where necessary. In the only run at him I've done like this I decided to go ahead and waste casting time wherever necessary (stopping an AB to pull out MBAM when I got a proc) in favor of efficiency.
The numbers above, of course, support the efficiency of the most conservative rotations, but this was still surprising to me. The results were stunning: very high numbers and I was sitting with half my mana left at the end of the fight.
Has anyone had a chance to pull out Arcane against his hard mode or had similar experiences? Is Arcane actually the most efficient (raid-caliber DPS) spec at this point? I confess to being nigh-totally ignorant about the good parts about PvE Frost.
Is there situations where it would be worth it to cast a self shield? Does the lost GCD of casting Frost/Fire ward is compensated by the added spell power? And about the mana trade off? Is it worth it to drop the odd point in frost warding to help it?
Is there situations where it would be worth it to cast a self shield? Does the lost GCD of casting Frost/Fire ward is compensated by the added spell power? And about the mana trade off? Is it worth it to drop the odd point in frost warding to help it?
I can't help you with the first part, but it's definitely worth the investment in Frost Warding. The only real alternative is Ice Shards, for the extra damage on Blizzard, but there are very few fights on which AE matters, and on the ones where it does (Anub Arak HM, for example), you'll be better off using a Frostfire spec, anyway.
I have a question of my own, regarding Arcane cycles. It seems common knowledge, and intuitively correct, that should it become necessary to clear 4 stacks of Arcane Blast due to not having the mana to fish for the proc, it's best to clear the stacks using Arcane Barrage rather than an unprocced Arcane Missiles. Has any consideration been given to just how significant the DPS drop would be, if Arcane Missiles were used instead? I'm considering freeing up that talent point.
I can't help you with the first part, but it's definitely worth the investment in Frost Warding. The only real alternative is Ice Shards, for the extra damage on Blizzard, but there are very few fights on which AE matters, and on the ones where it does (Anub Arak HM, for example), you'll be better off using a Frostfire spec, anyway.
I have a question of my own, regarding Arcane cycles. It seems common knowledge, and intuitively correct, that should it become necessary to clear 4 stacks of Arcane Blast due to not having the mana to fish for the proc, it's best to clear the stacks using Arcane Barrage rather than an unprocced Arcane Missiles. Has any consideration been given to just how significant the DPS drop would be, if Arcane Missiles were used instead? I'm considering freeing up that talent point.
It is a bit of a dps loss, but where it really hurts is the major DPM loss, because the normal AM costs just over 900 Mana compared to 0 for MBAM. With the haste levels we are reaching the time difference will be a fairly small difference.
Vezax
We have more mana now and Vezax' health was nerfed by 1/4. Also your overall mana drain depends on performance (dps and staying alive) of other raidmembers, either of which is surely does improve overtime. But, i did one little experiment of my own on determining optimal spellcycle for hasted enviroment, where main nuke spell will get hasted over gcd cap. In fight1 all i did is AM spam, got dry upon Animus death. In fight2 i used AB2-AM cycle, and despite way under gcd casts (0.6+ sec) it improved both mana consumption and damage done +dps.
Incanter's absorption
Usually there is plenty of time to cast a ward due to repositioning movements.
09/26/09, 5:22 PM
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