Its hard to model in RAWR I think at this stage of the PTR - the IFs shake out this way to me:

IF you're getting Bloodlust at most of the times you'd use Icy Veins anyway (your examples of Anub P3, twins pact, etc) - and you have 800-900 haste + Black Magic + 2pcT10 ... then you're getting 1.1s AB casts without Icy Veins anyway... so you're not nearly giving up the 300 DPS (per your example) you'd be giving up by dropping it now.

IF Icecrown really does have a lot of persistent frost damage etc which you can Ward - then having full pushback resist + 3/3 IA would more than make up for any DPS lost.... without even considering gains from SotM, full +INT etc.

HOWEVER if most Icecrown fights are long with many "Burst phase" opportunities like XT Heart, Storm Power, etc - then keeping Icy Veins will be the way to go since nothing from Arcane alone could make up for the extra haste for additional burst phases once Bloodlust had been spent.

I haven't done any raiding on this PTR so I really have no idea which way things are shaking out.

I'm pretty sure they do. What PI does *not* stack with is Bloodlust. That was the likely culprit.

At one point Blizzard announced in the patch notes that PI would not stack with IV, but then later on the backpedaled and decided that the rule would be "Haste buffs cast on other players would not stack with each other, but would continue to stack with haste buffs that are self-cast only." The only two spells that match that rule are PI + Bloodlust/Heroism.

It definitely stacks. I always get it in our raids and in my arena teams and I try using IV at the same time because it results in some pretty crazy burst when you have both.

Actually I even tested it a few weeks ago when the Priest I arena with wanted to know my FB cast time with both up.

AP doesn't stack with PI because of a long-standing bug due to the fact that, once upon a time, PI was a damage increase not a haste increase. IV definitely *does* stack with PI.

This sounds logical. I haven't done any testing on the PTR myself either to know whether that would be the case either. You conclusions seem sound-if there are burst phases IV is necessary, if there's pushback/raid damage it isn't. Obvously this is over simplified, but it seems easy enough to check-I have my character on the PTR, just haven't played it yet. Perhaps someone who has can let us know which they think is the more valid assumption?

I cant imagine that dropping IV would ever be ideal. 20% haste for 20 seconds on a 144 second CD. Thats +656 haste * (20/144) = 91 average haste rating for one talent point. And if you use stacking mechanics it becomes even more valuable.

I dont really understand what exactly anyone would want to trade IV for, but even without doing the math I can tell you certainly that one point in IV is many times better than one point in StoM or arcane mind (compare 91 haste to 3% attribute, even if you had 1000 spi and 1500 int. thats 30 spi or 45 int). If you want IA or arcane stability, then dropping StoM and then Arcane Mind are what you should drop in that order. These have been mathematically shown to be the weakest talents, and therefore the ones you would drop to free up those talents.

If you want to drop IV so that you can pull multiple talents out of the frost tree, you will be pulling them potentially out of piercing ice, frost warding, or precision. Dropping piercing ice would significantly impact your AoE dps, and frost warding has utility value.

If you are going to post about dropping IV from an arcane build, please provide some math that can justify this choice.

You're making a false assumption. You mention that we may always be near haste cap all the time with heroism/2t10/black magic, which might be true...if you had those buffs all the time. Heroism only occurs once per fight, for example. The other two buffs are random procs where as IV is a controlled haste increase. If you are reaching the haste cap with all of the haste buffs (a semi-common occurrence for some mages even now), then the solution is to stagger the haste buffs (i.e. wait for heroism to fade and then use IV) rather than get rid of the talent altogether. Furthermore, you're ignoring the potential usefulness of IV in a 10 or even 5 man situation where you most certainly would not have every available haste buff necessary to get you to haste cap. Finally, as was mentioned earlier, there simply isn't another talent that provides as much usefulness and damage as does the single point into IV.

I tend to agree with this, unless we're approaching/at the haste cap sans buffs then it is possible to stagger some of them so that they continue to provide a dps increase

However strictly they aren't referring to just a single point of IV but rather the 11 points spent on Frost - whose primary purpose is to get to IV; the real comparison is thus between 11 pts elsewhere and IV / Precision / Frost Ward.

Check in Rawr for the dps figures for the talents, for me IV is worth about 320 which puts it just above TtW. Looking at what is potentially available with those 11 points there is nothing even vaguely near that would be comparable, regardless of where you put them or in what combination.

So i've been reading up on Incanters for the deep arcane spec and i keep getting mixed replies for it. On the Twin's fight in TotGC heroic some people say the talent is capped at 1 point and the otehr 2 points are pointless and are better used elsewhere but others say that the 3/3 points is much better as you get more from it. Can anyone shed some light on this for me please and say weather i should be taking 3/3 rather than 1/3 points in this talent

Thanks for noticing, its much appreciated! I've corrected the error and updated the graphs in the post.

You should note however that this is somewhat unique to valks. Other fights there will be a difference between 1, 2, or 3 points. (Hodir, Mimiron, Koralon to name a few that you can absorb using fire/frost ward)

My pleasure. Thanks for those graphs

This is not quite correct... There was discussion previously (on this thread I believe) that showed that 2/3 was needed for reg ToC, but only 1/3 for heroic 25 (because of the increased damage).

The point thereafter is fights other than the Twin Valkries, which is why I chose a 3/3 IA spec which I feel grants me more dps than any other talents I could have chosen. For my take on IA you can see my post here World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Best way to spec for Incanter's Absorption? and the subsequent discussion. I believe I am correct, but would much appreciate confirmation or correction, whichever the case may be.

Please tell me how it is not correct as my post clearly states for Twin Valks. Also you can do non heroic Twin Valks with zero points in IA and do just fine. For regular Twin Valks you should not "need" 2 points in IA at all.


I would suggest maxing out IA in any case where you know it will be used often via wards, shields. Usually this comes with a close relationship to your resident priest. Still the buff only lasts 10 seconds so if it doesnt get reapplied often it might be a waste of resources to go 3/3. (not just talents but gcd's)

Had some really odd behavior in todays 10 man onyxia run and also in the past few raids on emalon:
Used fireward to negate onyxias randoms fireballs in phase 2 on me, had her once target me 3 times in a row, I did absorb all of the 3 fireballs damage and restored at least 10k mana (think was even more), about 3-5k mana per fireball.
And this with my spec having only 1 point in magic absorption. Basicly I could restore 20k Mana with one gcd of using fireward with 2 points in magic absorption?
Somehow I m pretty sure that this wasnt just "luck" as kind of same happens in every emalon run where I m used to use fireward to negate his firewhirl and get about 3k mana per whirl.

Well, is there a bug?
Working as intend but luck dependent?

I would also be interested in the math for fireward regarding the spellpowerscalling as the amount of absorbed damage is sometimes really huge while it seem to be kind of small in other scenarios as for example in PvP Arenas.

That's the Frost Warding. When it procs, you fully absorb the damage, it doesn't remove the ward, and you gain mana. So yes, you could have that proc 3 times in a row, resulting in a ton of absorbed damage and mana return, from a single fire ward.

How is this a good idea at all? I can't understand the reasoning behind this idea. You've just spent a large amount of mana stacking AB for 60% more damage. Presumably you are breaking the stack because you did a few more expensive ABs and didn't get a proc. And then you waste all that effort by casting a *single tick* of AM which costs you another 982 mana for neglible damage. Not to mention that if the last AB did proc, you've wasted that proc by cutting the spell off in order to restack AB again.

While I dont know the math, I would suspect it would be worthwhile if you can pop AP/IV after you cast your ward but right before Incanter's kick in. In that case it would be better to have 3/3 IA of course. Also, you help your healers by popping ward on big nukes

Without the CDs ready, I think I read in this thread that it is not worthwhile DPS-wise.
However, this strategy will give you a problem if you hold back your AP/IV cooldowns to wait for the incoming nuke/IA proc. You might miss one use of them depending on fight length.

That was an amazing 2 weeks. That said, I just don't think it's a good idea to lose IV which is an awesome CD to have with the cooldown happy, fast-burn arcane spec. Stacking it up with ap during arcane blast spam can make a big difference, especially when dealing with adds or emergency raid clean up.

I don't understand why dropping Ice Veins is even being discussed here. Where do you plan on spending those 11 points if not in Frost? The only dps talent in Arcane you might otherwise skip is Student of the Mind and 3/3 there cannot compete with Icy veins, let alone the 3% hit you pick along the way.

Sure you could open up Arcane utility and have an instant invis threat dump, 80 resistance to all magic and pushback protection, but they're not needed and I don't see why you'd drop Icy Veins for any of the above. If using Icy Veins during full haste stacking moments causes you to drop below the global cooldown, just don't use Icy Veins at those times.

Examples make this easier to digest I think - and again this is all theorycrafted based on 2pc T10 and Black Magic and >800 Haste.

Standard RAWR 57/3/11 vs 68/3/0

Would include 2/2 Magic Absorption, 3/3 SOTM, 3/3 Incanters, Abar, and 2 pts in either cloak or shielding

On Hodir Hard Mode 68/3/0 would be more DPS than 57/3/11.
On Northrend Beasts 57/3/11 would be more DPS than 68/3/0.

Those are just 2 examples - it varies based on the fight dynamics but its no longer clearly an "always lose" to drop Frost since Arcane is no longer as mana starved as it once was, most people tend to be over on hit anyway (esp. alliance), and in the background of 2pc T10 + Black Magic it looks like the gain from Icy Veins in shorter fights is MUCH less than it has been until now.

How much of that was due to things that you could easily take in the 57/3/11 build anyway, like Incanter's?