lgtcount

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.

 

stillnotking

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.

 

Kevinally

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.

 

Hidden

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.

 

adapter

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?

 

EasirokThunderpants

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.

 

Ring0

My variation is to hit PoM upon zoning in and click off the buff, ticking the cooldown but retaining the Arcane Potency buff (+30% crit). This lets me start the fight with some ~70% chance to crit to my first Arcane Blast and PoM will be ready by pull time.

After that I proceed as others have described. Arcane Blast spam until the end of my cooldowns, using the MBarr proc at the last second of IV, and proceeding with a standard ABx4 MBarr rotation. Alternative is to tag an Evocation at the end of IV (using the MBarr sooner) for fights that do not have a period of time where you could Evocate without losing DPS time; perhaps Jaraxus in TotGC25 would fall under this category, although for me I prefer saving CD's to stack a mana dump with Nether Power stacks and DPS on the Nether Portal. Twin Valkyrs could also be a candidate although I personally don't run into mana problems. Every other fight has some period of downtime to sneak an evocate in.

Doing the above mana dumping I have also noticed a DPS increase, and if stacked with CDs it is far better than trying to "burn" mana as the fight nears the end, rewarding proper management of resources. You might also attract the attention of your Discipline Priest, who will drop a PI on you during your stacked CDs to great effect.

 

pyromaniak

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

 

Venie

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

 

Ivlivs

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?

 

Shaitans

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.

 

Brucithant

[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 =)

 

Pasture

It's not your dps you should be looking out for, but rather your damage done. To use an extreme example in Heigan, if you spam Arcane Barrage (along with Fireblast and whatever other instants you have during the run phase) your dps will be lower, but your damage done higher due to the fact your actually putting out damage in those periods you'd otherwise just be running.

It's an extreme example I know, but don't look at Arcane Barrage as a dps talent in a simulation sense, but a utility talent ala increased range in the damage sense.

 

Cranberry

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.

 

Elysianfield

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.

 

Lucai

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.

 

atticus052

Alright here is a rather simple question that hopefully someone knows. I am in pretty much full best in slot ToGC 25 gear and I can't find any recent charts for stat values (sp/haste/crit) etc. for the basic arcane mage 57/3/11. Sorry if this has already been posted somewhere, but I've spent about 2 hours looking and havn't found anything.
p.s. Yes, I know about RAWR, I'm just not a huge fan; Yes, I know any stat values will likely come from it.

 

pyromaniak

This will constantly change depending on your stats however, for you in your current gear as your exact spec Rawr calculates:

1 point of sp ~ 1.85 dps

1 point of haste ~ 2.14 dps

1 point of crit ~ 1.18 dps

1 point of int ~ 1.24 dps