The Arcane thread - Page 126

• Feylna · 11/07/09, 10:01 AM

There is no way to make an addon that can tell you when the fifth missile is in your hand, as that is simply a graphical representation of what is going on. Quartz essentially tells you when that fifth missile will leave your hand by showing you the red zone. As was pointed out earlier, sometimes spamming abilities can cause the redzone to be larger than normal, however, this doesn't make it a bad tool. You just have to understand that you can't start the next cast right when you hit the red zone.

Your situation, however, is not the same situation everyone is experiencing. I personally run a smooth-ping at 56 and my redzone is always accurate. I can actually start moving right when I hit that red zone and see the fifth missile leave my hand as I move. The fact that you have a bad ping, and that this causes your quartz to feed you incorrect ping information is something you will have to plan around. Timing your casts a bit more into the red zone would be the optimal choice.

But like I said, it is impossible to mute only certain sounds in wow (without editing game files which is against the ToU), and it is impossible to have an addon tell you when a graphical event happened. Graphical events are not tied to combat log events anyway. Like for instance, if you cast an ABarr at someone on an epic flyer, you will do the damage to them even though the Abarr animation moves slower than they fly and never actually hits them.

ash2ash · 11/07/09, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

It's not going to happen, since there is no way for you to gauge your instantaneous ping - any latency measure that is used in calculating the "red zone" is going to vary from the time it is calculated to the time it gets displayed in quartz, and even further by the travel time of the ping. You might be able to improve this situation slightly by making quartz' red zone dynamic, but you'd probably have more beef with that since there would effectively be two moving targets that you had to line up. Any notification tool you use is going to run into basically the same problem.

You could help yourself by doing everything you can to have a stable internet connection (and thereby a stable latency), but many of those factors are beyond the control of the typical user, so you are going to have issues regardless.

I don't use quartz for my own castbar, but I usually delay red-zone clipping in icehud by a fraction of a second to ensure that the fourth missile channels. This gets really difficult in bloodlust/icyveins/PI situations, but I figure that being slightly delayed (on the order of milliseconds) is better than being slightly early and cutting the damage of the channel by 20%. If you are extremely lazy, you can add a nochanneling modifier to arcane blast; however, as has been stated before, this is going to be a significant dps loss that increases as you experience higher latency levels.

TheFunction · 11/08/09, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by ash2ash

It's not going to happen, since there is no way for you to gauge your instantaneous ping - any latency measure that is used in calculating the "red zone" is going to vary from the time it is calculated to the time it gets displayed in quartz, and even further by the travel time of the ping. You might be able to improve this situation slightly by making quartz' red zone dynamic, but you'd probably have more beef with that since there would effectively be two moving targets that you had to line up. Any notification tool you use is going to run into basically the same problem.

You could help yourself by doing everything you can to have a stable internet connection (and thereby a stable latency), but many of those factors are beyond the control of the typical user, so you are going to have issues regardless.

I don't use quartz for my own castbar, but I usually delay red-zone clipping in icehud by a fraction of a second to ensure that the fourth missile channels. This gets really difficult in bloodlust/icyveins/PI situations, but I figure that being slightly delayed (on the order of milliseconds) is better than being slightly early and cutting the damage of the channel by 25%. If you are extremely lazy, you can add a nochanneling modifier to arcane blast; however, as has been stated before, this is going to be a significant dps loss that increases as you experience higher latency levels.

I do something similar to avoid clipping my AM's. Since I don't use Quartz as training wheels, I just start casting AB as soon as I see the third missile leave my hand. It's very rare for me to clip the fourth Missile at that point. Near perfect timing is definitely a goal, but I don't stress over it as much as others. Mainly because I have a lot to keep focus on, and I'd rather be 500 dps short than to get caught standing in fire or poison. During Bloodlust and IV, I tap my buttons like I'm tapping to a beat. AB usually casts in 1.1 seconds while those two are active, so I just double tap AB ever 1 second til MBarr procs, and double tap AM when that AB cast is about to end. Within a second, I'm double tapping AB again, and recount shows I do the same amount of AB and AM hits give or take 5% (105 ABs : 100 AMs).

Davkaus · 11/08/09, 10:20 AM

I just start casting AB as soon as I see the third missile leave my hand. It's very rare for me to clip the fourth Missile at that point.

I usually delay red-zone clipping in icehud by a fraction of a second to ensure that the fourth missile channels.

But what about the fifth? Am I missing some reason that makes it acceptable to clip the fifth missile?

Geniusa100 · 11/08/09, 10:56 AM

This is in reference to clipping the last missle to add in an ABarr- it adds and extra GCD for not much more than the dmg of the already casting missle- why not just let the channel finish then get back into the rotation?

One thing not getting mentioned is the effect on the casting rotation that barrage has. My example here 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.

Shaitans · 11/08/09, 11:07 AM

Originally Posted by Geniusa100

One thing not getting mentioned is the effect on the casting rotation that barrage has. My example here 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.

This is, of course, a possibility. In terms of getting back to your AB stack rotation, there is no denying that an A-Barr would make it faster; however, the problem is that A-Barr (as compared to an unproc'd AM) is less mana efficient (and the passive mana regen you get while casting the AM) and does less damage (even if you compare the unproc'd missiles to an A-barr + one Arc Blast).

Chews · 11/08/09, 2:31 PM

Originally Posted by Feylna

There is no way to make an addon that can tell you when the fifth missile is in your hand, as that is simply a graphical representation of what is going on.
.

There is an addon that reads the Combat log and gives a raid warning and a sound on MindFlay ticks.

Maybe it could be modded to use for AM. Not sure how much use it would be other than letting you know you didn't clip.

MindFlayTimer for Shadow Priests.
Mind Flay Timer - Addons - Curse

Kevinally · 11/08/09, 5:35 PM

Originally Posted by Chews

There is an addon that reads the Combat log and gives a raid warning and a sound on MindFlay ticks.

Maybe it could be modded to use for AM. Not sure how much use it would be other than letting you know you didn't clip.

MindFlayTimer for Shadow Priests.
Mind Flay Timer - Addons - Curse

If I remember correctly, Mind Flay does not have a travel time. We would be better off waiting to see that fifth missile leave our hands, than relying on an addon to tell us when it lands. By the time that fifth missile lands, our channel has been long over. Good idea, though.

Cm1 · 11/09/09, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

MSBT does indeed allow this level of sound effects for certain buffs (auras as they're called in MSBT). You can get quite cute with it too. As an example I used to raid with my hPriest and set up two different sounds, one for when I had a Surge of Light Proc (free and instant Flash Heal available) and the other being three stacks of Serendipity (max hasted Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing).

I've just tested this with my Mage and have set up two sounds again, one being 3 stacks of Arcane Blast (you can set it to 4 if you want but I want to know when i'm at 3 as i'm already casting the 4th when my aged brain has interpreted the *ping* in my ear). Second *pong* sound is MBarr is up. Nice thing is you can set up MSBT as different profiles for your toons, but I have all of my 'procs' in one profile and use it for:

hPriest (SoL & 3xSerendipity)
rShaman (Water Shield gone)
Rogue (4 or 5 combo points)
Warrior (Instant Slam for Fury and Sword and Board for prot)

It's a very useful feature and adds another sensory input for data rather than having to 'see' more. My one tip would be to keep it to a couple of sounds however. If you set up too many you end up having a cheap version of Tetris playing in your headset while trying to play wow.

Ocrist · 11/09/09, 1:17 PM

Originally Posted by Cm1

MSBT does indeed allow this level of sound effects ... Tetris playing in your headset while trying to play wow.

Sorry, but I think you're missing the point here (correct me if I'm wrong). We're not looking for an audiovisual signal for when a buff is turned off or on (for instance a procc of loss of the AB "Debuff"), we're looking for something which can register when the last of five missiles has been cast (and I appreciate this isn't doesn't mean when the graphics show the missile leaving my hand). On top of that or as an alternative, it would be nice to make the cast sounds of the missiles more audible so that they can be heard though or over the other raid noise.

Pasture · 11/09/09, 7:47 PM

Not sure if this is or isn't new from the bug updates on the PTR but:

Mages

* Arcane Concentration: The interaction of this talent with Arcane Missiles has been restructured. Instead of an Arcane Missiles cast triggering the talent, each missile has an independent (but reduced) chance to trigger this talent. In addition, the talent will no longer sometimes be triggered from misses by Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Blizzard.

And also:

Blizzard: The tooltip on this ability will now update properly from all talents which increase its damage by a percentage. Also fixed a bug where some trinkets were not triggered by this spell.

Though we've heard the latter was fixed before when it wasn't.

ash2ash · 11/09/09, 10:15 PM

* Arcane Concentration: The interaction of this talent with Arcane Missiles has been restructured. Instead of an Arcane Missiles cast triggering the talent, each missile has an independent (but reduced) chance to trigger this talent. In addition, the talent will no longer sometimes be triggered from misses by Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Blizzard.

I'm having trouble understanding what motivated this change. If this is intended as a fix to the Arcane Potency munching issue, I think it fails to appreciate the complexity of the problems between Arcane Missiles, Arcane Potency, and Missile Barrage.

Crit chance is calculated when the spell leaves the caster's hands, and arcane potency (looks like) it is going to be calculated upon the missile hitting the target. If this is true, then even in the best case scenario where you go into a MBAM with arcane potency and come up with five procs, the crit bonus is only going to apply to first and last missile, and possibly the fourth. It might still be a fairly significant increase to non-MBAM, but I still don't see myself casting it too often.

Hilariously, to counteract the effect of the calculations, it might actually be a noticeable dps increase to stand closer to mobs, since you will have more overlapping periods between when the procs get calculated and when the missiles hit the target. Needless to say, this seems really counterintuitive as a ranged class.

Cm1 · 11/10/09, 8:54 AM

Originally Posted by Ocrist

Sorry, but I think you're missing the point here (correct me if I'm wrong). We're not looking for an audiovisual signal for when a buff is turned off or on (for instance a procc of loss of the AB "Debuff"), we're looking for something which can register when the last of five missiles has been cast (and I appreciate this isn't doesn't mean when the graphics show the missile leaving my hand). On top of that or as an alternative, it would be nice to make the cast sounds of the missiles more audible so that they can be heard though or over the other raid noise.

Indeed. I was responding to Alannia's post about having a mod which emphasises when his/her toon gets a proc, not in relation to the 5th missile leaving the casters hand.

I'll try and play around a little bit more with MSBT and other (similar) mods regarding the cast of a channeled spell - AM in this case. My mind is racing and i'm at work atm, but as AM has a flight time, the combat log will only record a 5th missile when the 5th missile lands.

I'll need to check the combat log at a detailed level, but if the log detailed an individual missile cast separate to one landing, in theory we can just have a simple mod which does:

Mage begins casting Arcane Missiles
i=0
For each "Mage casts Arcane Missile" cast (not landed) then i=i+1
if i=5 then *Play Sound X*

If the combat log doesn't differentiate between an AM cast (i.e. it leaving your hand) and it striking the target, then we can't do a lot. Hmmm - thinking aloud though...If we know the distance to target and the flight time, then we could work out the expected cast time of the 5th missile based on the time it took for the 1st and 2nd AMs to land....not sure this will work when the distance is so great that all five would be in the air at once.

I'm brainstorming, any thoughts?

Wizeowel · 11/10/09, 9:31 AM

I don't think you should be wanting to respond to a sound, since brain and finger latency will probably be very high. I'm thinking it might be better to make a sound if you don't cast the 5th missile. In this way you know you've clipped and can adjust your reaction accordingly. In this way, negative reinforcement might be better than a prompt.

janrael · 11/10/09, 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by Wizeowel

I don't think you should be wanting to respond to a sound, since brain and finger latency will probably be very high. I'm thinking it might be better to make a sound if you don't cast the 5th missile. In this way you know you've clipped and can adjust your reaction accordingly. In this way, negative reinforcement might be better than a prompt.

This is certainly the best approach from a learning perspective - providing cues for action won't train your timing nearly as fast as providing an error-response. Flashing the cast bar (blinking to a clashing color and back) might work better though, since that's what you're generally focusing on to make the timing decision. Of course, the game will start to resemble Golden Tee..

Shaitans · 11/10/09, 11:41 AM

Originally Posted by Wizeowel

I don't think you should be wanting to respond to a sound, since brain and finger latency will probably be very high.

This isn't necessarily true. The path from the ear to the processing portion of the brain is a much more direct path than things you see, wherein the image has to be flipped and processed. It's the same reason why wide receivers (in football) have a slight advantage over the defenders covering them because the receivers will react on hearing the proper "hike" whereas the defender has to wait to see the receiver move.

Edit: Of course any benefit (which is already fairly small) that's bestowed by hearing vs seeing would be completely negated if the sound is based on some approximation.

janrael · 11/10/09, 1:51 PM

Originally Posted by Shaitans

This isn't necessarily true. The path from the ear to the processing portion of the brain is a much more direct path than things you see, wherein the image has to be flipped and processed. It's the same reason why wide receivers (in football) have a slight advantage over the defenders covering them because the receivers will react on hearing the proper "hike" whereas the defender has to wait to see the receiver move.

'Brain and finger latency' *is* very high compared to the trained predictive timing capabilities of a person. There are a number of consistently timed cues leading up to the correct time to press the button - reacting, whether to a sound or a visual stimulus, can never approach the speed the button-press can be timed to after training.

Incidentally, the reaction time to visual stimulus isn't much worse than auditory if the image doesn't need to be interpreted - you can react (in a reflexive sense) to a whole-screen red flash *far* faster than you can to a health-bar being low. The football players can't manage that because they have to interpret the degree of motion of their opposing players; if they were robots that literally didn't move until the whistle blew, there would be no such discrepancy.

tonydt1g3r · 11/10/09, 2:57 PM

In rawr with my current gear setup I am seeing arcane have a +300 dps advantage over ttw fb, but when I'm raiding I just dont see the extra damage. In fact im doing alot less total damage done in arcane spec. I'm puzzled as to what I am doing wrong. I am just abx4 and if missiles is procced I cast it, if not I barrage. I think I am doing something seriously wrong because I would assume the damage should be similar. I'm wearing 2pc T9 2pc T8 with 245's weapons, rings, ect I am supplementing my gear with relentless gear. crit with ttw-fb and haste for arcane. toons name is Fuzziejr on Arthas.

Any advice apreciated. It seems arcane should be gaining alot more traction especially with 3.3 raid buff.

cbags · 11/10/09, 4:42 PM

You should be fishing for MBarr procs as much as your mana pool will allow for one.

dyelynn · 11/10/09, 6:06 PM

Originally Posted by tonydt1g3r

In rawr with my current gear setup I am seeing arcane have a +300 dps advantage over ttw fb, but when I'm raiding I just dont see the extra damage. In fact im doing alot less total damage done in arcane spec. I'm puzzled as to what I am doing wrong. I am just abx4 and if missiles is procced I cast it, if not I barrage. I think I am doing something seriously wrong because I would assume the damage should be similar. I'm wearing 2pc T9 2pc T8 with 245's weapons, rings, ect I am supplementing my gear with relentless gear. crit with ttw-fb and haste for arcane. toons name is Fuzziejr on Arthas.

Any advice apreciated. It seems arcane should be gaining alot more traction especially with 3.3 raid buff.

The biggest hurdle I faced when switching from FB to arcane spec was efficient use of cooldowns. You have far more and they're available far more often with arcane, and you have to make sure you use them. Also, make sure you're not still gearing for the amount of hit you'd need for FB, as it's far less with arcane.

Shaitans · 11/10/09, 6:41 PM

Originally Posted by dyelynn

The biggest hurdle I faced when switching from FB to arcane spec was efficient use of cooldowns. You have far more and they're available far more often with arcane, and you have to make sure you use them. Also, make sure you're not still gearing for the amount of hit you'd need for FB, as it's far less with arcane.

On that same note - make sure you are running optimizer in rawr with arcane spec selected. It should switch out a few pieces of gear and you may see a larger than 300 dps increase between arcane and ttw/fire. I know that I do at my gear level.

semata · 11/10/09, 8:36 PM

Originally Posted by tonydt1g3r

In rawr with my current gear setup I am seeing arcane have a +300 dps advantage over ttw fb, but when I'm raiding I just dont see the extra damage. In fact im doing alot less total damage done in arcane spec. I'm puzzled as to what I am doing wrong. I am just abx4 and if missiles is procced I cast it, if not I barrage. I think I am doing something seriously wrong because I would assume the damage should be similar.

That's your problem right there. You should not be casting Arcane Barrage unless you are moving and PoM is on CD. Arcane Barrage has been gone from our rotations ever since something like two weeks after 3.0.8. At this stage I'm quite frankly baffled as to why the myth of clearing AB stacks with ABar is still alive and well.

Also why get T9 chest and badge shoulders...?

Thuran · 11/11/09, 4:48 AM

Hey guys, love the post!! i am fairly new to Elite Jerks and have been reading up on the thread for arcane and its helped me out loads! for instance i never could figuer out the red bar in quartz and always got different opinions on it. Now i know what to do. But my issue is this, i am always top of dps meter in top 10 with a 4.5-5.5k dps with my current gear setup and my rotation is as everyone elses, AB AB AB (if procs AM) ABrg. Yet my problem is this, i have letency in game of 150-200ms but for some odd reason i am always lowest on damage meter (not DPS meter) and i was wondering why that is. I use all my cooldowns in a boss fight and still its not helpfull to me. If anyone has anytips or idea how that is could you please help me out? My toons name is Ulthuan on Terenas server EU in the guild Elusive. Thanks all for taking the time to read this and sorry if i missed a thread that was posted about this. Have a great day

Drachenmond · 11/11/09, 7:13 AM

@Thuran: This might be first of all because your gear combination is very! strange!
Your hitrating is way, way, way overcapped.

Next: You said, you read the thread. Fine. Yet you say as well, you use a fixed rotation (with one AB less than standard) instead of adjusting rotation to mana-pool and you still use ABarr.

When you are best-DPS, worst Damage it usually means, you're spending a lot of time in combat running, or standing around doing nothing, yet as Arcane does not have any dots it's quite normal to not do as much damage as your DPS implies.

Shaitans · 11/11/09, 12:00 PM

@ Thuran,

Like Drachenmond said - keep reading up on here and updating your gear and you will get better. First off, the proper rotation is to stack to Arc Blast to 4 (not 3 like you said) and then to use Arc Missiles. Cast Arc missiles regardless of whether you get the proc (that is, unless you hve the mana to spare and can keep casting Arc Blast at 5 times the mana cost to "fish" for an Arc Missiles proc.

Secondly, make sure you have downloaded Rawr and used the optimizer tool. That should take care of your issue at being way over hit cap. (As a side note: For 10 man, you may not have an SP or boomkin for the extra 3% hit and so you should have an offset to compensate in that event). You should only need 189 hit to be capped at full raid buffs. Like Drach said, you're waaay over that point.

Finally, as for the DPS v. total damage issue, I bet that if you make the corrections that have been suggested and focus on making the most of your Cooldowns that you will be top in both DPS and damage done. I know that I just completed a 10 man ToGC run last night and took top spot on 4 out of the 5 fights in both categories.