You should almost always have the mana to continue fishing for ABAM, and since an ABAM is a free cast, considering anything other than "fishing" on an unprocced stack of 4 is almost always a bad move. I honestly don't remember the last time I cast a normal AM.

Thanks alot guys!
@ Shaitans: Love the name and your tips helped out loads now i am top3 of damage and dps
@Honclfibr: its worth it trust me :P
@Drachenmond: gears weird lol but its doing its best

thank you all

woops nvm. Didn't check the FFB thread first.

I think this is covered in the FFB thread?
Well most mages for this fight will run a modified FFB spec, with a more AoE centric frost tree- one my guild mates did try using Arcane as a the base and then dipping the rest in Frost, in the end I out dps'ed her on AoE (mainly because I had the advantage of casting Living Bomb), but she out dps'ed me on single target Anub'arak.

Sometimes you just get unlucky and cast 4+ fully stacked ABs with no MB proc in sight. In this case, it is worth it to cast a regular, non-proc AM to dump the stacks rather than keep draining your mana bar to the extent that you need to evocate sooner (or more often).

Well I do cast unprocced AM quite frequently. Sometimes fight mechanics kind of force you to do so. A good example would be Jaraxxus HM, where I like to build up 3 stacks of AB before any kind of portal opens, then spamming AB on it, along with either of Heroism, Icy Veins or trinkets/speedpot.

There is no good reason to maximise your DPS on Jaraxxus, if that means your DPS on portals is hampered even a bit (especially if you're, like my guild, on a point , where it occures every so often that a second mistress slips out just in time to ruin your day...)

This is just one example, but I wouldn't fish for proccs on any fight that requires bursty damage.

@ Ouna,

on Page 111 towards the end, there is a post by Kavan with a list of cycles with some numbers, worth checking that out.

Quick question, using a t9.25 4 pcs bonus and molten armor for the crit boost. Would it make more sense to replace the 3 points in Incant Absorb and put those 3 points in Student of the mind? Would the 12% of additional spirit going to crit, "all the time" not be better, than the "periodic" damage buff in a raid?

First off, you only really need 2 points in Incanter's Absorbtion.

Also, I'm not sure of the amount of spirit you have on your gear at the moment. However, in my gear with 674 spirit and the 2 set t9 bonus, and Glyph of Molten Armor, Rawr values the points in SotM at 60 dps for all 3 points.

Personally, I would take IA over SotM because 60 consistent dps isn't really an appealing bonus when you can get a large (though temporary) spell power boost from IA.

Why is this so? I've seen this referenced more often on the wow forums as well. While you do only need 2/3 IA for the twins (1/3 on Heroic) to hit the cap, in almost every other situation 3/3 will give you more spellpower than 2/3 every time it procs. (Not saying that it's necessarily the best place for the third point, but I'd like to know why people always use this 2/3 figure).

Its very situational. 2/3 is generally accepted as all you need, and all you can really afford to put into it unless you drop other talents that are more useful/less situational. The 2/3 figure first came up during the original discussion about normal Twins and has stuck since then. Its not necessarily a "correct" figure, its just what most people will relay. There is no "correct" number as for every single fight the IA absorbs you get will vary.

Indeed 2/3 is the number you need for Twin's normal mode, and in that sense it is a "correct" number in the sense that it's been calculated. You can check Rawr yourself for this, but from my own memory back in September then 1/3 gave me ~800 dps, 2/3 gave me ~1500 dps and 3/3 gave me ~1500 dps. So the last point added nothing to my dps.

For Normal Twins yes it is correct. However, the original statement was more general referring to all fights, not just twins. My point was that if you're referring to all fights generally then there is no "correct" IA spec for all those fights as each individual fight has different amounts of absorbable damage.

In otherwords, for Normal Twins yes 2/3 IA is correct. For Heroic Twins yes 1/3 IA is correct. If, however, you're building an arcane spec to use for all fights (not just twins) and don't plan on respeccing in between every individual fight there is no "correct" number of points to have in IA.

I run on 3/3 IA all the time, it may not be needed for Twins but I see advantages in other fights.
I use Fire or Frostward frequently on Bossfights like Gormok/Icehowl/Jaraxxus (to just point out ToC Bosses) to get some buffed Spellpower for a short duration and as a plus you also get mana back very often, which is always good on Arcane Spec. The only thing that bothers my mind is the GCD on both of the Ward spells and if the Spellpower buff outweights the loss of one GCD that could be used for casting AB. Does someone have numbers on this?
Also with 3/3 IA you get more Spellpower from getting shielded by a priest/pala or a Raid Healer with Valanyr, you dont absorb that much damage to go mile high with the IA buff but you get a decent Spellpower Buff every now and then.

I found myself usually poping wards when runing, so the loss of a GCD isnt a real big loss.
If a fire at Beast heroic, Koralon, Jarxus and so on hits me, my main concern is usually not to die not to squeeze in one Arcane Barrage which contibution to overall dps is questionable anyway.

It is impossible to make a calculation about how important it is to pop wards to help survive, as it depends on your healers, your raid awareness and even things like lag and latency.

I have transferred two points from Arcane Mind into Incanter's Absorption, an action which Rawr-- not calculating anything from the IA-- calculates as a ~20 dps decrease. Although this talent does vary linearly as intellect increases, the dps lost from these two points does not compare to the dps gained from the points invested into IA. Although the importance of Arcane Mind will be substantially greater with the expansion (when spell damage increase is based off of intellect), right now, assuming damage is being absorbed, Arcane Mind is significantly inferior to IA. Am I calculating this wrongly, or is it appropriate to exchange a few points in Arc Mind for Incanter's Absorption?

Thanks a bunch.

There aren't points for this, unless you are avoiding Magic Absorption, which is an extremely poor choice, since the hilariously irrelevant amounts of dps that talents like Arcane Mind produce can never compare to a 10-15% magic damage reduction.

I'm comming back to WoW after a 2month break and I'd like to ask something.

I read a few pages behind that in a full rotation dps for the current arcane build it is more valuable, DPM wise, to cast MBAM as soon it procs, regardless how many stack of AB you have on you.
Is that accurate? Shouldn't we hold off the proc till 4AB?

While ABspam0234Mbam is somewhat light on mana it lacks as much dps as some of the other current cycles. As previously addressed, the most optimal arcane-mage rotation at this point in time is abspam04mbam. It has been calculated by Kalvan and interpreted by various members on the thread that you should stick to this cycle when dpsing and if you happen to be running low on mana (mana<35%) you can either downshift to a slightly more mana efficient; such as from ABspam04Mbam to AB4AM0234Mbam or ABspam0234Mbam, to compensate for the mana loss in the early portion of the fight. Another option at about 35% would be to use evocation-- although the benefits of this will be highly dependent on gear and CD's used. More information pertaining to this subject can be found in Rawr and in post 2958, as well as Kalvin's calculations:

The Arcane thread

The Arcane thread

Cheers.

Rawr looks absolutely correct.
1824 / 228 = 8 so it's 800%
100%+4*175%=800%

The cost is 800% of the base mana cost, that's however only an increase of 700%.

Wow. Don't know how I missed that =P Many apologies for the mistake.

I have a question about something I don't see most Arcane mages doing: shifting to AB spam during CD uptime. As a troll mage, I generally hit three CDs near the start of the fight (IV, AP, Berserk) along with Talisman of Resurgence and likely at least one other proc from Lightweave or Abyssal Rune. What I've started doing is simply spamming AB during IV, Evocating the mana back on the last tick of IV, then switching to standard ABx4MBAM. On a training dummy, I see an increase of 150ish DPS when using this cycle for a full IV cooldown, and I also have more mana at the end. I have begun using it on live fights and am pleased with the results, though it does require using MI right off the bat to avoid pulling aggro, which generally I would do anyway. Is there anything I'm missing here?

Also, I wanted to comment on ABarr. ABarr may not be part of our standard rotation any more, but it is far from a useless point. There are so many situations where I want an instant chunk of damage that I can't imagine ditching ABarr. Anub's scarabs are the most obvious current example, or indeed anything that is about to die and won't last for a full AB cast. Fire Blast works but gets little increase from talents and is on a long-ish CD.