• Feylna

The theory behind this is that any mana you have at the end of a fight is DPS that you could have used but didn't (for arcane mages). So if you're at 5% health or so (for example) on a boss and still have 40% mana, you should "dump" that mana by spamming something such as AB, thus ending the fight with as close to zero mana as possible, and thus doing as much damage as possible.

 

Phoenixrisng

im a 57/3/11 arcane mage on Blood Furnace and all the other mages in my guild are the same spec and was looking at different specs and i heard that there is a spec that takes out AB all together and you just fishing for the Missile Barrage proc and it ups your dps by a significant amount and was wondering if anyone else has heard about it?

 

Elysianfield

Phoenixrisng, if the answer to that question isn't immediately apparent to anyone that sees it, they will never become a first-class mage.

 

Shaitans

I assume your AB abbreviation stands for Arc Barrage and not Arc Blast. As for that, the DPS isn't hugely different as you rarely use Arc Barrage anyways (only when moving AND there's no chance that you will be able to renew the AB stack before it falls off). It's more for the utility of having any instant nuke with a 36 yard range.

Another way to think about whether it would increase your dps - what talent would you move to from Arc Barrage. One point in Student of the Mind is about 30 dps (out of 9500). One extra point in IA is probably the best bet, but then you have to worry about the 5% hp cap.

 

Daytrader

The abbreviation for Arcane Barrage is A-Barr.

Yes, there are specs that do not include A-Barr. From my experience the point spent in A-Barr has more value is spent elsewhere. I went arcane after the recent changes, picking up A-Barr, and found that it amounted to less than 1% of my damage (usually zero). The usefulness of A-Barr can be likened to Fire Blast as a FB/FFB mage, only useful on the move when other better options are unavailable. It is not part of any optimal rotation what so ever.

Casting A-Barr at the end of MBAM is not effective anymore because it does not gain from the AB debuff.

Casting A-Barr to wipe AB stacks is sub-optimal. The reason you wipe stacks is to conserve mana. What most mages who use this tactic do not realize is that A-Barr is worse DPM and MPS than an unhasted Arcane Missiles. If you are looking to wipe AB stacks you are better off casting unhasted Arcane Missiles for 2 reasons. 1) You get more bang for your buck on the AB stacks using missiles than A-Barr (more DPM), and 2) the passive regen you get while casting missiles equates to more MPS.

In practice, fishing for MBAM is best. Even if you burn some mana. With proper use of gems and evocation mana should not be an issue.

As far as where to spend that point, you have 3 options: Incanter's Absorption(IA), Student of the Mind(SotM), or Magic Attunement.

The most valuable in practice is IA. 2/3 points is acceptable, but i choose 3/3 because it then requires less damage for me to reach maximum spell power. Unless your set up Rawr properly it will not assign value to this talent.

The second most valuable (some say the most valuable) is Magic Attunement. Arcane has a short range to begin with and being able to get in range of the boss faster equates to more DPS. You can argue that range talents are situational (melee need to be up the bosses ass to do damage, why do I need range?) But we are RANGE DPS. I find extra range useful in pratice. Again, Rawr gives this talent no value.

SotM comes in a distant third. I do not spec it. The value of spirit, and therefor crit, is minimal. Off the top of my head I recall maxing out SotM to be less than a 1% DPS increase. Very expensive at the cost of 3 talent points.

For those of you who are thinking about Arcane Stability should know that most, if not all, unavoidable damage for new content does not interrupt casting. (correct me if I am wrong)

And just to be thorough, I see some arcane mages picking up Ice Shards instead of Frost Warding. Frost Warding becomes very valuable to the arcane play-style with the proper use of wards. You are using wards to increase your damage anyway, now those wards also offer a 30% chance to restore mana equal to damage absorbed. Seems like a no-brainer when your only other choice is spending points to increase frost damage.

Good Luck!

 

semata

2/2 MA is a lot more valuable than IA, if only because you almost always need the range whereas IA is only relevant on fights with frequent elemental raid damage and twins. Especially on the twins fight, two seconds of the vortex would push you to the IA buff's cap, making the third point useless. That said 2/2 MA is already maxxed out in the standard 57/3/11 spec anyway so it's not an issue; competition for the ABar point is really only between 1/3 SoTM or 3/3 IA, which is no contest at all.

However, even though it doesn't fit in our normal rotations, Arcane Barrage does hit decently hard while DPM isn't much of a concern anymore. In any fight you're bound to want an instant cast nuke at your fingertips when forced to move. Even if it only accounts for 1% of your damage output, that's a 1% (minus PoM AB & FB) the talent gives you. Lackluster for a 51 pointer, but a lot better than SoTM and probably a last point in IA as well.

 

magealexis

Have you run with 1/2 MA in ToGC to see what it's like? I've long been an advocate of 2/2 MA, though I've always had 3/3 IA, dropping a point in arcane potency or the like... However, I respecced yesterday and dropped to 1/2 MA-before running a 10 man VoA/Ony/ToC run. For those fights I did not feel there was any issue at all with range. The challenge, I expect, will be with tonight's 25 man run of that same content, and this weekends ToGC attempts (I'm particularly thinking of the portals/volcanoes on Jaraxxus).

Does anyone have any numbers or more experience with the difference between 36 yards and 33 yards vs 2/3 or 3/3 IA?

Also, since I'm currently over the hit cap (300 hit, plus talents and raid buffs) I've been wondering about the benefit for ToC of moving from 3/3 Arcane Focus to 3/5 Arcane Stability. Rawr shows a 24 dps drop from moving those three points, but all of the pushback in those fights seems random so I'm not sure how to model it properly to know whether 3/5 stability provides any dps gain over the 24dps from reduced mana cost.

 

◊ nathanbp

I've run the past couple weeks of ToGC with 1/2 MA and 3/3 IA. The only fight where I noticed range as an issue is Beasts, but it can be a rather large issue since spreading out is fairly important during the wyrms phase, plus range can help with hitting snobolds and running back to Icehowl after he charges. I just switched back to 2/2 MA 2/3 IA because more points in IA doesn't help on Twins, and I'd rather have the range than the chance at some small amount of extra spellpower for a brief period of time on the other fights.

 

semata

I've not actually tried it, but extra range is a DPS increase whenever you have to move to get in range. VoA won't be a problem, but it's everytime ony deepbreathes and potentially in Northrend Beasts as nathan says. It seems to me that the portals and volcanoes come out close enough that range won't a problem on that fight, though.

I guess we won't normally feel range to be an issue because 3 yards is in all honestly not a lot of extra ground to cover. It doesn't feel very detrimental to hold the movement key down a tad bit longer after all, even though that's a second (or 3?) of dps time lost.

And there's always the mental pain of getting used to 33 yards instead of 36 after so long :P

 

Geniusa100

One thing not getting mentioned is the effect on the casting rotation that barrage has. My example would be 4xAB with no Missle Proc. Even though Barrage is suboptimal to missles, you also get back around 2s of casting time in which you are casting arcane blast- this speeds up your rotation with your higher dmg spells.

It may still be off- but if the goal is to get to those ABx4 then missles as often as possible- barrage may not be the ugly fat kid she is known to be. As for clipping stacks, I can see this not being worth consideration- everything runs smoother with a full Missle Proc then right back into AB's.

EDIT! This is in reference to clipping the last missle to add in an AB- it adds and extra GCD for not much more than the dmg of the already casting missle-

 

Ocrist

Sorry Kevinally, you're absolutely right that this was in the wrong thread, that's why I'm continuing here ... Here's hoping not to get banned for a simple error (?)

I have been reading the arcane thread since it started out, and I don't think anyone proved any such thing. After chanelling AM, starting an AB cast when Quartz is in it's red "lag" section most definitely does often result in only four missile being cast and showing up in my combat log. It would be a difficult thing to "proove" as the subjective experience of being in the red zone can't be recorded by any log that I could send you. All you would see would be - "Orcrist casts four but not five missiles", and would have to trust me that I didn't start the AB cast too soon. As far as I understand the Quartz mechanism, this behaviour could be predicted: ie my previous cast incurred a lag of 300ms, the lag of my next cast is not necessarily so long and the red zone would be longer than the actual lag.

 

Kevinally

And as long as I don't get called out for trying to moderate, we should both be fine

I could be wrong, but I believe the Quartz "red bar" is based on your latency at the time you started casting. The technique of casting AB once your AM hits the red zone works perfectly for me, but my latency is always stable between 148 and 152 while raiding, and my framerate is always stable between 90-100. When raiding, do you see your latency jumping and skipping? That might cause what you're noticing. Everyone else that has posted regarding Quartz red zone casting seems to be in the same boat I'm in.

 

Ocrist

I don't have as good latency and framerate as you, that's for sure, but at the practice dummies in Ironforge, it's pretty constant (somewhere around 200ms), though it does vary a bit. I actually think very few people are privileged to raid with latency spreads of only 0.004 seconds (4 millseconds!), and that my experience is probably the norm. I have a new computer, live in a large urban conurbation (in the EU), have a fast internet connection and am paying to have reduced ping. My situation can't be that uncommon.

Man, I would love to turn off the rest of the raid's casting noise so I could listen in to my own cast sounds ...

 

Alezio

I'm not currently using quartz, when i did I often had big changes in my latency (or red area) from cast to cast. One guild member I spoke to about this said a likely cause of this is "spell queuing" and the red area is your latency plus the time you pressed your button early.

A way to test this would be casting a spell with a pause in between and noting the red area, then spam cast and see if the red area increases in size. If this is the case it is likely that you shouldn't start casting your next spell after an AM until the cast bar is further into the red area to avoid clipping.

 

Kevinally

I went from my previous ISP, supplied through my apartment complex, that had our entire complex bandwidth capped right in the middle of raid time, to a 20meg fiber line. Before that, I was playing on the college network at Embry Riddle in Daytona Beach (major aerospace engineering college, serious network). With the exception of my apartment complex's ISP, I've always had nice tight latency spreads, so I honestly don't know if thats the "norm" or not. I always assumed that unless you've just got a shit connection, your latency doesn't fluctuate.

As for only hearing your own cast sounds, try setting the number of sound channels to "low". I'm fairly certain there are better ways to do it via an LUA or INI, but I'm not sure. Alternatively, if you're willing to spend some $$$ on your gaming rig, pick up an HT Omega Clario and a Tritton AXPro headset. I can manually adjust the "depth" of sound in my games. Its a huge advantage in first-person shooters, but I've never thought of using it the way you're mentioning. I might just give that a try!

 

Ocrist

Is it possible or even legal to manually replace the default AM cast sound with one that is more high-pitched, penetrating or perhaps louder? Not the best option, granted. I would prefer a little addon showing a flag when the fifth missile has left my hand. I suppose this wouldn't be that difficult to code would it? (he said in complete ignorance of any coding skills)

 

◊ Diabhalta

I get this also with spell queuing my AB's, each successive AB has a larger red zone and have come to the same conclusion you have. If I pause long enough so that I'm not using spell queuing my latency red zone is unchanged and I have a consistent 50ms latency. Silver lining I guess is it lets me know when I'm not spamming hard enough but does make optimal casts post AM tricky.

 

Mangara

There are addons, like Quiet that horse!, that replace the shriek of the Death Knight's mount with another sound. I think the same approach could be used to replace the AM sound, although you'd have to know the exact name of the sound file.

 

alannia

If we could somehow lower other sounds so that your own char's sounds are much louder, that would be a cool concept. Another option is to find and setup a mod that plays an additional sound for a particular event. For example, I had setup SCT to play a Chime sound for my Mbarr procs. This was an additional sound that overlapped the game's Mbarr proc sound and made it more obvious when *I* get a proc. So I had a distinct visual (scorchio2 bar) and audio alert (chime) that occurred per event. Unfortunately SCT became oudated and I switched to MSBT, not sure if it allows similiar event and sound personalization as I've yet to play around with the options but I'm gonna guess it probably does.

 

EasirokThunderpants

I am curious as to why the extra range would matter on portals or volcanos in heroic Jaraxxus. They always appear just off Jaraxxus's left hand (the hand that is not holding a staff), and they are on a fixed timer... so we ranged mages should always be pre-positioned for them.

Unless there is something different about placement in 25-man togc versus 10-man togc (our 10-man group has cleared through anub in togc but we are still stuck on beasts in 25-man togc)?

 

brolynn

I find my range to Lord J varies wildly in practice; dodging infernals, etc. I personally notice a meaningful change in my play style with and without the +range to AB chasing infernals and the boss himself.

 

Klatzy

In regards to AM clipping and the use of quartz. The problem that you're having Ocrist is mostly like related to your innate reaction time. Humans have reactions times on the order of 0.2-0.3 milliseconds to respond to a simple color change with a click.

Human Benchmark - Reaction Time Test

With latencies in that order of time, you're bound to run into human error based on reaction times. Try dummy tests, comparing conservative casting versus timing it to quartz's estimated optimal cast window. See if it matters that much for your dps.

 

Shaitans

Based on our raids experience, this seems to vary depending on the direction that Jaraxxus is pointed when the void or the volcanoes are cast. While this does not change for the most part (unless the tank is a retard and is moving in a circle), it can happen when, for example, Jaraxxus turns (on his own) to cast incinerate at a certain target. This, in effect, causes the volcano or the portal to spawn in a different location.

If you are properly positioned (i.e. around the hexagon), you should be able to reach either without the increased range. The problem can occur when, for example, there is a crap ton of fire in the middle and the tank is forced to move jaraxxus to a new spot. But even then, proper positioning should negate the need for additional range.

As a caveat, the infernals can and will go pretty randomly about the room and there is very little ability to constantly move to keep killing them. So additional range with those guys (and maidens I guess) would be a benefit.

 

• Astrylian

Pre-positioning for volcanos/portals doesn't matter anyway, you still have to move more, if you have to move, whether it's beforehand or during.

And again, Arcane Barrage is totally suboptimal to use in a normal rotation, most importantly because using AM instead has a 40% chance to be an MBAM even when you didn't have MB proced before you go to cast it. Getting back to Blasting sooner does not outweigh that.

Also, human reaction time does not play into timing the AB at the end of the AM, because you're not reacting to something, you're timing something. You have forewarning of when it will hit the red, and subconsciously start pressing the button earlier than when it actually hits the red, so that you actually register the keypress when it hits the red.

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Ocrist

Yes, casting AB after MBAB is about timing not about reactions, and at the moment the ony option in the cacophony of lights and noise that sometimes occurs when grouped up in a raid is to fall back on conservative timing. That's my beef. The red zone in quartz does genuinely lead to clipping on my setup, and I'd therefore love to find some other cue - be it an altered AM noise or a visual cue from an addon - to get me that little extra edge. That would then indeed be about reactions.