Various folks verified yesterday that the 4pc bonus was 32% (1.18 * 1.12) on basic Arcane Missiles; but ash2ash's Blizzard numbers only show 18%. Was there a hotfix, or does the bug only apply to select spells like AM?

Most of those people were forgetting about mirror image's slowing the test dummies. 12% torment the weak

For quite a while, I have been spamming AB while blowing all cooldowns for the first 20 seconds of the fight (IV duration - or while all cooldowns/heroism is blown). I then return to the standard rotation. My experience has been that my AB spam dps is much higher (1-3kdps) than my standard rotation, despite the only slight dps increase predicted through theorycraft. This may be due to additional lag issues with using arcane missles, since using [no channelling] (which I do not use) increases lag, or you are stuck between clipping a missle and wasting cast time. (I average around 300ms). I use Quartz, but I find that my lag is too variable for perfect casting. (Note that I do not have the 2 piece bonus, but will be getting it on tuesday, so this may be inapplicable to those with the 2 piece bonus). I have also seen large increases in overall dps from rather inexperienced mages when I tell them to: 1. Blow all cooldowns and AB spam, 2. evocate at 10k mana (on the last second of IV), and 3. resume the standard rotation from then on, with an additional burn cycle when all cooldowns are up. However, this could be a placebo effect from knowing that their dps is being monitored.

I would expect that AB spam is optimal if you are down to 1 second casts with all cooldowns blown, since the additional 12% haste buff will have no effect. However, with the 2 piece bonus, it may be more effective to split your cooldowns and do the standard rotation, even during a "burn" phase with all cooldowns, due to the extra 12% haste. As such, it may never be optimal to do AB spam during a burn cycle, as you would be losing the additional 12% haste if you split your cooldowns. (I'll come back after work and post an analysis of cooldown stacking to see if "splitting" haste cooldowns, as a result of the 12% haste buff, increases throughput dps)

I'm a new poster, and have searched/skimmed through most of the pages on for the answers to my few questions but haven't been able to find anything directly so please re-direct me if they have been answered.

Link to my Armory

-I am currently under the impression that all CDs should be used off of the start to squeeze in as much up-time as possible, including double-pot trick so long as the it makes sense for the fight. I was wondering if this changes considering trinkets like Muradin's Spyglass, Haste from 2PCT10, etc. So basically, should I;

• a) Double Pot Trick, Icy Veins, Arcane Power, Mirror Images(4PC), Scale of Fates, start ABSpam4MBAM rotation. -or-
• b) AB till MBAM, ABSpam4 till MB, Blow all of the previous listed CDs, AM, continue ABSpam4MBAM.

Option B seems smarter due to stacking mechanics of Muradin's Spyglass, as well as starting with all CDs blown with extra 12% haste due to 2PC, and starting at the top of a damage rotation to potentially squeeze out more 4Stack MBAMs, as opposed to starting "at the bottom of the rotation."

-Rawr currently lists Black Magic still being>63sp to 1hander. However, I am currently pushing 923 haste and I'm an engineer who is currently using Scale of Fates as well. This means I get IV+Scale of Fates, followed by Hyperspeed Glove-Enchant, along with Black Magic proc, guranteed to hit somewhere in between all of those. At that point is it still worth it, or should I just go with the straight SP boost. If Black Magic in particular outweighs +63SP, should I swap some of my sp/haste gems to straight sp, due to the minimal haste gains at this point?

-Trinkets: RotD has continued to elude me week after week. Apparently we won't be able to use Heroic Muradins & Regular Muradins at the same time. How do you guys rank Dislodged Foreign Object in comparison to others? Rawr continues to list Flare of the Heavens>Dislodged.

Appreciate any feedback. Thanks in advance.

Part of the problem with that analysis is you only have 20secs worth of data at the start of the fight and thus a pretty small sample of casts. I too see some heady numbers when AB spamming under IV/AP but it is usually when I am criting on ABx4 cast for very large amounts. If your crits don't happen or you crit more early on in the AB stack you don't put up the large numbers.

In saying this tough, it is a lot harder to not clip missiles under IV/BL conditions and if your latency is high, it seems to make it even more difficult. So there is some merit to the argument given 'conditions on the ground'.

Option B seems to make more sense here, which is essentially how I start fights. You blow cooldowns and spam AB as soon as you have Pushing the Limit (2t10 buff) and a 10-stack of Cultivated Power from Spyglass. Haste caps under Black Magic, IV, the tier buff etc can be really tricky. I recommend Milamber's Haste Calculator:

Spellhastecap Calculator

Dislodged Foreign Object is an excellent DPS trinket, but it's undervalued in some older versions of Rawr--you might need to refresh item data from the Armory. It's significantly better than even heroic Reign.

In an attempt to prevent clipping of the MBAM and to ensure the first AB after MBAM gets the haste buff, I've started to use a nochanneling macro for my Arc Blast. However, I only use the macro'd AB for my first cast after MBAM and then I switch back to using a regular Arc Blast spell. This way I minimize the negative downside of a nochanneling macro while negating the possibility that I will clip the MBAM.

Understand that in terms of min/max, this is not the optimal solution because the optimal solution would require that you perfectly snipe the AB cast after the MBAM finishes. However, as many have pointed out, this seems completely unreasonable especially when you consider that add-ons like Quartz are still an approximation of your latency and human reaction time/error is always a variable which can never be consistently controlled.

But doesn't nochanneling have no effect unless you are casting arcane missiles? In other words, your method just requires you to press more buttons for the exact same result as just using a nochanneling macro.

Two points:

- Whether or not you use nochanneling in the ABs that do not immediately follow an AM does not matter at all. When casting AB, you're not channeling, you're casting, so the macro will only slow down the spell following Arcane Missiles, nothing else
- Sadly, given that nochanelling macros are calculated client-side and thus do not use the spell queue, the best DPS will once again come from stuff that enables you to spam your button every 5-10 ms: a programmable keyboard like the G-15 or AutoHotkey, with mousewheel-casting your ABs being a close substitute.

Even at 1136 haste (where I am at currently), Black Magic is still considerably better than +63sp. The only downside is that I actually have to think about which cooldowns to burn at which time to avoid "wasting" excess haste. But IMO thats a good "problem" to have.

Dislodged Foreign Object is indeed very good. The reason it isnt listed properly for you is that if you just download the current release of Rawr, some of the item entries in its database are incorrect. In particular, DFO is missing the data for the proc effect. Simply right-click the trinket from any list and select "Refresh Item Data from Armory". After doing this, DFO should rank as #1 trinket, above the 258 Reign as well.

I'm also trying to find out the optimal cooldownstacking.

Seeing as I have dislodged foreign object, muradins spyglass, I'm now troll (race-changed last night), sit at 1180-90 passive haste and have speedpots.

Until I bought troll I've been doing following:

Start fight (sometimes with hastepot when i bother), dislodged usually procs somewhere on my first MBAM or second which means muradins is close to if not already maxed with 10 stacks. when I see dislodged start (proc/tickups) I do IV+Speedpot+AP which means I have POM ready before top stack of dislodged so i can smack inn an additional AB on 10 stacks of dislodged. This has seemed to be fairly nice (I'll be a bit behind anyone that blows their CDs the 6-10 seconds before me but I'll race past them). Now is this optimal? It does move my CDs 6-10 seconds.

Now I also have berserking from troll.

Seeing as berserking, IV and AP are all on diff cooldowns is the general idea after the start (when I burn all) to use them whenever they are up or should I synch IV+AP with dislodged or not care about dislodged at all.

For putricide I also saved my speed-pot to synch with ap for bloodlust/heroism on p3 then IV after heroism/bl.

I have of course played around in RAWR but RAWR does not show (atleast without some extra setup?) how one should synch cooldowns with trinkets like dislodged/muradins nor how to follow up with the desynched cooldowntimers of them after stacking.

With 4p T10 (which I will get this coming reset) berserking and MI will be synched on cooldowns, synching inn AP seems like a good idea aswell (second time that is after 3 min CD is up).

I am contemplating the first tier of the arcane tree at the moment, going into the final stage of the ICC bosses. This is especially regarding push-back resistance and the optimal talent-points spend.

At the moment I have 2/5 in Arcane Stability, which seems sufficient together with improved concentration aura and the relative small amount of bosses where push-back is a major problem. We just had enough DPS to kill Queen, a boss with constant AOE dmg, and Sindragosa has a constant AOE as well. From what I've read I am not certain to what extent the Lich King has un-avoidable AOE, but push-back resistance seems beneficial for Queen and Sindragosa alone in my opinion.

My problem is this; because of my current gear situation I have 1/3 in Arcane Focus which leaves both 2/5 in Stability and 2/2 in Arcane Subtlety. I am gearing towards 3/3 in Focus as this overwhelmingly seems the biggest DPS boost, but this does leave two assumptions.

I would have 2 points to spare, assuming I don't drop a point from Arcane Mind for example, should they go into stability, and thus leaving subtlety void? I have never tried having less that 1 point, would the threat be too high in end-game raiding?

The other option is 1 point in subtlety and 1 in stability. I've read that 1 point would be sufficient but does that include the constant AOE bosses, or simply overall?

I don't think anything on Blood Queen causes spell pushback (maybe Blood Bolts do?). Her AOE DOT certainly does not, so I'd value points in Arcane Stability fairly low for Blood Queen. Similarly, Sindragosa's AOE DOT almost certainly will not cause spell pushback, so there's probably not much point in talenting in to Arcane Stability for that fight either.

Just to pile on to this theme. I'd appreciate a sanity check to my method. I work from the assumption that most fights run 5-6 minutes. I use Scale and Talisman (share a cooldown). I avoid stacking the haste buffs from Heroism+Speed Pot+IV+Scale as it just seems too hasted (no I don't have numbers, just the experience of trying to manage it), so I try to spread them out, while maximizing overall impact.

I use two macros:

1) IV+AP+Sclae+Mirror Image
2) AP+Talimsan+Speed Pot+Mirror Image (Rawr says this is my highest DPS cycle when combined with Herroism)

For fights where I know Heroism will be called in the middle of fight (seems like most with my group):
I pop macro #1 very early in the fight. This frees up AP after a bit over 2 min in. I pop #2 during Heroism (If Mirror is still on CD, no biggy). Then pop #1 again if fight goes long enough, and/or fill in gaps during the home stretch with stand alone IV and/or Scale as they free up.

For fights where Heroism is called toward the end:
I pop macro #1 very early in the fight, and hold macro #2 till the end, but fill in the middle with Scale+IV as they become free in the middle.

For fights where Heroism is called at the beginning:
Pop #2 with Heroism. Pop #1 as soon as Mirror comes off CD. Pop #1 again after CD.

Unless I am mistaken, I thought 3/5 Arcane Stability was required with Improved Conc Aura. 2/5 only provides 40% and Improved can only go up to 50% fully talented. This leaves 90% instead of 100% and any pushback clips a missile which is a DPS loss. IMO you either go 3/5 or 0/5 since there is still some debate over the usefulness of this talent in ICC.

Correct me if i'm wrong, but I think today's patch has a fix for the "double pot" trick. If I understand correctly, when you cast a potion prior to entering combat, the potion debuff now carries with you through the fight.

Having Mirror Image in your macros will cause you to loose a GCDs worth of up time for your cooldowns. I recommend linking your cooldowns to a 4 stack AB or MBAM.

What is the probability of gaining clearcasting during blizzard?

One night of icc 10 trash, I tried to Arcane explosion trash, to gain the 3 % dmg buff, until clearcasting procs, then I use blizzard. I feel that my blizzard damage goes up(60 % crit averaged).

I tried to blizzard 2-3 target dummies and the probability is much less than 10% per target per wave. However, Arcane explosion has 10 % chance per target.

please delete

Unless it's been changed once again AE should have 10% per target and Blizzard should have 1.25%(10/8) per target.

I searched but couldn't find an answer to this question: does the current model for Nibelung in Rawr account for the fact that it does not proc from each missile but only from the initial AM cast?

It should account for that yes.