I don't know the simulation craft well enough to know if that is a good idea during this patch, but I know for next patch it won't. A few pages back simulation craft was posted with the the effects of tier10 2piece under way, and it showed that it will be more dps to use ABMBAM24 rotation than just doing pure ABspam (besides the fact that ABspam is way more mps as well), because of the tier10 2pc proc.

So not sure about that right now, but for next patch that will lead to less dps.

Good point. Also found a post I missed where Kevinally described manadumping at the start of the fight like I've been doing, and confirmed good results -- even better results by alternating manadumping/not manadumping on successive IVs. So for the remaining weeks of 3.2, it looks like this is the way to go.

Thank you for pointing that out, I really didn't want to have to repost the same information. I would like to make a further clarification regarding that, though.

When I first read about mana dumping, I was hesitant. I knew even with all of my CDs rolling, it was impossible for me to burn through 60%+ of my mana before IV dropped. I even tried it in a 25m raid with heroism on the pull, on top of IV and a haste potion. my ABs were 1 second casts, but I still could NOT drain 60%+ mana. I say 60%+ because evocation returns 60% of your mana, but you also have mp5 and OO5S kicking in, returning mana.

I am fairly heavy on my mana use, spamming AB whenever I have more than 2 procs up to max myself out, regardless of MBAM proc. Assuming I used evocation when IV was about to drop, regardless of mana use, because of my playstyle, and even with a mana gem, I needed to evoc before it came off CD again. This causes more harm than good, and destroys any modicum of a mana management rotation you may have.

My best results came from staggering my temporary haste buffs. Pre-pull, I'll pop a haste potion. for the opener, I still pop all CDs minus IV. Just before the haste potion wears off, I'll throw IV. As IV is wearing off, I'll evoc. Using this method, my first evoc will almost always take full effect. For the last evoc, I have the advantage of knowing exactly when my guild will be using heroism on any given fight. Our shaman class lead is amazing at knowing when to use it to maximize its effect. Because of this, I can stagger my CDs until just before we hit that heroism point, and get a second solid mana dump in, with a full hasted evocation afterwards because of synchronizing heroism timers. Your results may vary, and I honestly don't know how to model this in any simulators, it just came through trial and error.

Granted, when we get our T10 (2) bonus, this will all be a moot point. I think we've all agreed that, at that point, AB4*AM will still grant higher DPS.

Considering you'll also want to use AP in the beginning I don't think this is a good idea. AP gives you more DPS when you use MBar procs because it's additional to the AB stacks damage bonus. Basically it gives you 20% additional damage to the damage you'd do when none of your spells received any bonus from AB stacks - and obviously a MBar does more DPS than an unstacked AB, thus nets you more damage gained from AP.
Because of that I always use ABSpam024MBarAM while I have cooldowns popped and ABSpam04MBarAM otherwise.

Obviously the rotations depend on the fight. If you can easily get an evocation through in transition phases (Northrend Beasts) you'll want to maximize damage and make sure you can make best use of the transitions to evocate.

So I've been reading heckloads of pages (including the first post) now to try finding something relevant when it comes to PoM usage. The first post seems a bit inaccurate and old tbh, since it still got the AB+3 rotation.

Some say that PoM is best to use right before Arcane Missiles(MBarr), but some say MBarr dosent even benefit from the 30% Arcane Potency crit-chance.

So: ABx4-PoM-MBarr(AM) and start the cycle over again OR
ABx4-PoM-AB to get the 72% extra arcane damage on AB?

I think pretty much all our mages are doing this at this point. The opening seconds of any fight show all mages with a spike of around 8k dps or more, which settles back down to upper 5k average by the end of the fight.

I do a slight variation of what you have described though. I preload PoM before the fight and lead with an instant AB, followed by MI, then my IV+Resurgence+AP macro with AB Spam. I typically do not unload MBarr unless I know the proc wont last until the last tick of IV.

The PoM'd AB is to counter the dps loss from the GCD wait while MI goes up (definately don't want to MI after starting my CD macro). I don't lead with MI because it doesn't seem to be an effective threat dump for mobs you haven't actually touched yet.

However as Kevinally noted in his follow-up, this leads to suboptimal timing on evocation. I often end up with either an unhasted evocation or an incomplete evocation (not being below 40% when starting it). For fights that start immediately (unfortunately NOT the beasts encounter) I can take advantage of the double-pot trick to pop a haste potion right before pull and delay IV until the potion wears off... thereby getting more benefit from the hasted evocation. But for other fights I end up with a period where I am dumping MBarr as soon as it procs while I wait on a mana gem or evocation to be ready. Maybe it's a wash, but I still feel like it is a net increase in both dps and total damage and I end fights much closer to zero mana this way.

When using PoM with AM or Mbam, only the first missile will receive the additional 30% crit from arcane potency. Additionally, Mbam, being a channeled spell wont benefit from the instant cast effect. Thus, the most optimal way to integrate PoM into your rotation would be to use it on an AB after you have applied the 4-stack debuff from AB.

ABx4-PoM-AB

i see where your coming from, i burn my mana at the start of the fight and at the end it works out fairly well my gear is a little lower then yours most likely though so you can prolly get a bigger mana pool, and quite alot more SP ;p i burn my IV & AP at once i do hit 1.5 second arcane blasts with a nice hit to them, once my IV fades, i AB spam with Beserking but at the last second i pop evocation my dps is around 8,000 then i do the same at the end of the fight, sometimes it isnt timed perfectly but eh not much you can do about that but running with 28k mana fully buffed seems okay to me, i can burn my mana alot faster at the end, because i dont use procs i keep that AB spamming when i drop below 6,000 mana i change my rotation

I don't think a POM'd AB should be popped at the start of the fight, it's better to use it after 4 ABs in order to have the 4 stacks buff on an AB that is most likely to crit (for the +30% buff).

Other than that, I don't use MI at the start of a fight too. The images attack the mob who hates you the most (aggro), and if you pop them before attacking they'll just walk about doing nothing. One should hit a boss at least once before using MI.

Btw, I'm experimenting raids without the 51st point in ABarr, in a IA-oriented spec, and I have to say my dps aren't getting affected at all. Sure, I miss the instant casting you sneak in at the end of a fight (mostly on trash) but it was just a habit. Against a boss that "last hit" is useless, and during a boss fight I prefer not to wipe AB stacks with a suboptimal cast. Besides, there are few encounters where you really need to move so much that you can't continue stacking AB, and where you have to use so many ABarr's to wipe the stacks that it affects your overall damage done or dps. Do anyone have experience or calculations to comment on this?

I use MI prior to the fight starting, like immediately before. I would rather have them walk around for 1-2 seconds rather than waste a GCD for the MI, especially if I'm not sure that they will be up the entire 30 seconds due to some unknown (such as dying because of AoE damage). Furthermore, it allows me to initiate the fight will all of my cooldowns without fear of pulling agro or even coming close. As most of you know, threat is almost never an issue as arcane; however, I've had some "oh shit" moments at the start of fights with a paladin tank, presumably because their initial agro is a little slower. I do the same with a Fire/Frost Ward. Again, on the theory that I would rather not waste a GCD on a ward unless I'm absolutely certain that I'm about to be hit by a powerful Fire/Frost attack (and for example, those scenarios don't exist with the Beasts encounter). And I say powerful because, for example, a puny 500 fire nuke would only net me 75 sp. If I'm going to waste a GCD, I would rather get the full benefit of the IA.

As for the lack of a 51st point in a ABarr, I also utilize the same spec. I don't notice a dps decrease and when I checked my DPS meters from when I did have the talent, ABarr constituted about 0.2% of my overall damage. I don't have any math to support the theory that 3/3 IA is a dps increase to compensate for the lack of overall damage. (Comparing overall damage done prior to and after the drop of ABarr wouldn't really help as my gear probably improved over that time and the fight parameters differed as well). In the end, I believe it's probably a wash and if you still run heroics, you should probably keep ABarr. In a ToC/TOGC run, Abarr seems very negligible.

[quote=Ivlivs;1464030]I don't think a POM'd AB should be popped at the start of the fight, it's better to use it after 4 ABs in order to have the 4 stacks buff on an AB that is most likely to crit (for the +30% buff).

Well as I understood it he isn't PoM'ing the first AB. He clicks PoM 2 minutes before the fight and gains Arcane Potency and then removes his PoM which will start its CD and be rdy for the fight again. However by doing this he gets an extra arcane potency on his first spell. At least thats how i interpreted it =)

Something I find a lot of people discounting is the damage increase from Magic Absorption. For binary effects it's about a 10-15% extra chance to resist, which can sometimes mean a substantial gain of DPS. I frequently resist CCs on faction champions, and I'm fairly sure I've resisted Jormungar debuffs a few times as well, which is worth a reasonable amount of DPS for only two points. Of course, on Anub it's even better thanks to reduction on Leeching Swarm. Even if you're kept below 1000 hp, TOGC Anub is still gaining about 700-800hp/sec from you, so MA by resisting some of that is providing an effective 100ish dps for all of P3.

This is of course setting aside the benefit of being able to finish a cast before reacting to certain mechanics (e.g., Koralon's embers) due to higher survivability.

Magic Absorption only indirectly increases your DPS IF you go oom every fight and IF there are effects to be resisted. The first case shouldn't happen given proper cooldown usage, the second isn't always reliable. It doesn't increase your dps on fights like Anub, it just reduces the damage required to kill him (which is valuable in its own right). It's a survivability talent more than anything else.

Anub leaches 30% of your current hp every 2 seconds in ToGC 25. So if you're being kept below 1000hp, he is only leaching between 250 and 300 hp every 2 seconds or 125-150hps not 700-800.

He's talking about increasing DPS as a result of a) not having DPS be interrupted by a crowd control spell, and b) not having to move to clear a debuff. Without a resist in both of those scenarios your rotation comes to a halt.

The fact that you can do damage with ABarr when running doesn't necessary mean that your damage done will be greater if you have it - you have only a limited amount of points to spend, and you have to choose the ones which give you more benefits in terms of damage, and to take ABarr you have to drop another talent that could provide more damage overall.

My personal experience: when I had ABarr, I removed a point from Magic Attunement (+3/6 yards), the motivation being that even if MA affects dps in moving fights (ony, for instance) it isn't a *pure* dps talent, and the lack of range distance can be worked around with better positioning/moving skills sometimes.
I found myself not using ABarr that much though, cause in the encounters I face you don't need to move so much that you're forced to use ABarr to wipe your AB stacks before they expire. Notice here that building your AB stacks up to 4 is always the way to go, therefore in moving fights you should focus on not losing stacks: basing on my current haste rating (400ish) I would wipe my stacks with ABarr only when I had roughly less than 2 seconds on my stack timer, otherwise I would cast another AB and continue stacking (and a 2 secs AB that builds your stack provides more damage in an overall rotation than an instant ABarr which wipes your not even maxed out stack). In my (although limited) experience there were really few fights when I needed to move for more than 2 secs (AB stack last 4 secs), and in some of them it wasn't because of encounter mechanichs but because of poor moving skills on my part (I'm getting way better tho :P). Positioning and proper blinking are a huge help in such situations. And yes, Heigan The Dance Boss is a little extreme example tbh =P

As of now I pretty much find myself topping the dps and damage done charts, or anyway having a consistent behaviour (if I'm in the top 3 dps I usually am in the top 3 damage done too). Anyway I'm still looking into this issue, so if anyone has experiences or calculations around it please share

Maybe thats a noob question, but why its necessary to clear out an AB stack ?

The only benefit of using another arcane spell after 4X AB is that the mana cost (and also the increased damage) are reduced to their initially level (which is bassically necessary cuz we still dont have an unending supply of mana).

According to the tooltip the effect of higher mana cost will last for 6 seconds. So if you finish your running before the 6 secs you can cast a normal missile to finish the stack and start your rotation anew. Else the stack expires naturally and you also start your new rotation.

So during running your casting of arcane barrage is bassically adding more damage (which could also be done by other instants, but maybe Barrage is the best one) and you get a 4% chance to proc a missile barrage.

No need to be this arrogant tbh, we're discussing about trying new solutions to get better at what we do here. Rawr can't perfectly simulate things like moving fights or out of range issues, so it all goes back to trying a spec out and see if your dps increase or decrease. Mine increased. Personal experience. Show yours if you're testing this solution too and let's discuss it.

It's not like I *need* to prove you a point or convince you of something, if you want data that I can't provide, do your tests and provide it yourself.

No, the burden of proof is on you. It's no good coming in here and rehashing things that have already long been considered and discussed, and thinking to yourself that you've come up with "new solutions".

Case in point. We've been theorycrafting range talents in here at least since I've joined over 2 years ago. Except on Patchwerk there are hardly any fights where you don't have to move. Suddenly coming in here and saying you dropped a range talent based on personal experience doesn't wash. When Icehowl charges to the other side of the room, you and I both have blink, but we'll both still have to run as well. I have 2/2 MA and runspeed on boots, while you have icewalker. I will start casting again before you, that's a dps increase.

So now I see on your armory that you do have 2/2 MA, but I check your achievements and it doesn't even look like you're a raider. So come back to us when you've done Yogg-Saron and explain again how "lack of range distance can be worked around".

Hmmm. Seems there has been a misunderstanding here, probably I didn't explain myself well.
I never said I came up with new solutions o_O certainly I haven't, all the specs I tried were based on comments on this website. I told my experience was very limited. My objective here was to ask more expert people if dropping ABarr was better or not. I put an effort on trying it myself to try and contribute to this argument, even if from a non pro-raider point of view. I explicitly asked if someone more expert than me had tried that solution out and could tell if it was good or not.

My post wasn't meant as "I invented this -> I tried it out -> it works yay me", but "I read this here -> I'm interested to try it out -> what do you think?". I'm very sorry if it sounded the other way round.

And btw maybe it wasn't pristine obvious from my post, but my attempting at working distance around failed (even if I never reached yogg-saron) that's why I tried putting 2/2 MA and dropping ABarr. That's why I asked here if it was a worthy or shitty solution, providing *limited* feedback on what I tried instead of asking blindly and without effort on my side.

Thank you for pointing out the use of Tuskarr on boots, I had it on when I was FFB spec and had some hit problems and I forgot to change it now that I have less problems in arcane spec. I'll be happy to listen to other constructive suggestions from someone more experienced than me, that's why I read this forum in the first place.

The thing that is hard to model is the benefit of having options.

All the models contemplate some degree of movement, but the simulators use averages but real play is never at regular intervals. When things go hay-wire it happens at the most oportune time. Perhaps blink is on CD, POM is on CD and you got a 3 sec run because your raidmate stood too close to you have poison. Ok, easy start your run and you could drop your Fireblast, but it is on CD...whats left, ice lance , a sequence of Abarr, Fireblast, Abarr is a nice use of 3 GCD and that is a nice option to have.

So the question is, what are you giving up to get it. I think I read it here that Arcane Mind is the smallest DPS boost (please don't say you have student of the mind). Is it worth it, to me it is, but speccing for options is a subjective thing.

I've read a few pages here (including original post) and I'm attempting to figure out why my arcane mage has some unacceptable dps. Single target, no-movement fights I can hit about 4100 dps on average. I feel this is low for my gear level and I want to make sure I have the right mindset.

What I currently do is Arcane Blast to fish for an Missile Barrage and then I hit Arcane Missiles. Should I not care about the proc and be doing a simple Arcane Blastx3 and then Arcane Missiles. I even tried a rotation of Arcane Blast until proc and then cancel the current cast of Arcane Blast to get AM off. Honestly the dps didnt change much. It's also possible that I dont understand Skada's dps monitor enough to know if there are qwerks to its dps monitor. Can anyone provide some assistance? Also one last question: Sometimes in a fight I can cast Arcane Blast up to 7 times (which seems impossible) before getting a proc, is there some bug I am unaware of?