Manly please correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel these are the general steps to decide on clipping/macro:


0) If you don't care about the quality of your non-WoW internet traffic -- or you know exactly what you're doing -- google for "TcpAckFrequency wow hack", do it and reboot. This should reduce your latency by 40%-70%, and matters for this spec to varying degrees. If you do it, remember the changes so you can undo them later if desired.


1) If your latency is in the 50ms range (assuming that means 25ms one-way), I believe the nochanneling macro (call it "A") will work like a charm, and will provide similar results to hitting Abar manually with Quartz (call it "B").

Best case math:
A) Spamming the nochanneling macro 8 times per second, you're looking at a max total delay of 25 + 1000/8 = 150ms.
B) If you manually hit with Quartz (with a good reaction time of 150ms), you get a delay of 0 + 150ms = 150ms.

Average case math:
A) Spamming the nochanneling macro 5 times per second, you're looking at a max total delay of 25 + 1000/5 = 225ms.
B) If you manually hit with Quartz (with an average reaction time of 250ms), you get 0 + 250ms = 250ms.

Result: Manual ~= Nochanneling.


2) If your latency is in the 200ms range (assuming that means 100ms one-way), math definitely favors Quartz and manual Abars:

Best case math:
A) Spamming the nochanneling macro 8 times per second, you're looking at a max total delay of 100 + 1000/8 = 225ms.
B) If you manually hit with Quartz (with a good reaction time of 150ms), you get a delay of 0 + 150ms = 150ms.

Average case math:
A) Spamming the nochanneling macro 5 times per second, you're looking at a max total delay of 100 + 1000/5 = 300ms.
B) If you manually hit with Quartz (with an average reaction time of 250ms), you get to 0 + 250ms = 250ms.

Result: Manual > Nochanneling.


Summary:
If your latency puts you in case (1), then you might as well use the nochanneling macro: at least you'll never jump the gun and clip the 5th missile by mistake (significant dps loss); it also makes it easier to focus on other things in nontrivial fights (Sarth3D). If you're in case (2), you should hit manually, but Quartz is a must-have to reduce latency. If even using Quartz, your combo success rate is under 60% (as Kavan found), you should just go ahead and clip right after the 4th missile instead.

No, this is referring to the Replenishment mechanic that is triggered by an SS hunter, a retadin or an spriest.
57/3/11 with glyphed molten armour is designed for 25 man raids where replenishment is available, as well as other resources such as mana spring/mana tide and so on. In a 5/10 man situation such resources may not be available and as such, you may need to use mage armour and adjust your rotations to match the environment.
Arcane requires that you adjust how you play dependant on the situation, but it has always been that way with no "one answer suits all" solution.

Well, we had a sp and retadin and in naxx25 group yesterday and I was still OOM in some of the fights. Seems like if I can get a druid to innvervate me it goes much better.

Maybe my mana pot/spi/mp5 is a bit low? Some mages are reporting 22k~ mana here while I have 19k at the most, and I guess my spi and mp5 are lower as well.

One more thing I'd like to add, where can I get any help regarding Rawr? I can't figure how to do anything with that software. I set up all the gear/gems/enchants/buffs click optimize (or however it called) but what's then?

For a low mana rotation, rawr seems to choose AB-Abarr with MBAM on procs. It also seems to not automatically prefer mage armor on fights where this rotation is used, so I suppose even if you go oom a little with molten armor, mage armor is still going to provide more mana than you can effectively use and therefore will not be worth the 5% crit loss. Note that for these tests I enabled both armor glyphs to get a fair comparison for choosing the general-use armor.

Currently losing the last AM tick is not an option in rawr, so it chooses ABX3-ABarr rotation when you set the chance to succeed with the glitch to 0. Keep in mind that this rotation still keeps arcane as top dps.

For 5-mans fights are so short you really have absolutely no mana concerns. You won't have to evocate on the grand majority of bosses, and on some you'll even kill so fast that the uptime of AP/other cooldowns will give insane DPS numbers while you won't even use 1/2 of your first mana bar.

After about 12 weeks of [Hex Shrunken Head] hell, Maexxna finally coughed up [Embrace of the Spider]. For the FOTM 57/3/11 Arcane spec, the 2 best trinkets in game for boss fights are this trinket + [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] both of which I now have. My question is, for trash and the occasional heroic runs (including trash + your average 30 sec long boss fights), would using [Sundial of the Exiled] be a better choice than using the Illustration? It takes quite a while to charge up that trinket + on a very short boss fight, the proc from the Sundial becomes better than the overall +200 spell power from the former trinket (even when we ignore the current bug where Blizzard does not charge the Illustration).

That's exactly the thing, I'm not just a little oom with molten armor, it feels like much more than that. But, I guess a part of the problem was me raiding in a pug so I haven't had exactly the best conditions.

I was thinking that as well, and on AoE trash blizzard not stacking the IDS is plain stupid, it's like not ahving a trinket at all, as arcane I just fire AM at a mob to charge the trinket and then Blizzard but by the time blizzard is done ticking the buff is gone.

[Pendulum of Telluric Currents] from the third boss in Oculus would probably be the best AOE trinket until Blizzard fixes [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]. I have the same trinkets as Sinless and I've just switched to the Sundial for trash, but it's very annoying to have to remember to switch between trash & boss fights. No one in our guild seems to like to do Oculus (I've only ever done it once).

I probably missed it somewhere, but what is the softcap for arcane ? Im going from ffb gear to arcane so im probably way overstacked on crit atm ( about 30% with glyphed molten armor )

The World of Warcraft Armory

Here is a quick update on appropriate Arcane Stability usage based on the discussion in this thread:

Here is what the talent provides on its own:

0 points –> 3 bolts (1 hit) –> 2 bolts (2 hits)
1 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 3 bolts (2 hits)
2 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 3 bolts (2 hits)
3 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 4 bolts (2 hits)
4 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 4 bolts (2 hits)
5 points –> 5 bolts (1 hit) –> 5 bolts (2 hits)

Here is what the talent provides with concentration aura in effect:

0 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 3 bolts (2 hits)
1 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 3 bolts (2 hits)
2 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 4 bolts (2 hits)
3 points –> 4 bolts (1 hit) –> 4 bolts (2 hits)
4 points –> 5 bolts (1 hit) –> 5 bolts (2 hits)
5 points –> 5 bolts (1 hit) –> 5 bolts (2 hits)

Without concentration aura, you should only place 1, 3 or 5 points in this talent; with concentration aura, you should only use 2 or 4 points as additional points are wasted.

Obviously, this assumes that the damage taken occurs before the specified number of bolts.

As far as AM is concerned, yes. Its also quite usefull for AB. In any case, I think 4 or 5 is the optimal number. % if you can spare the points/have extra hit (or draenai..), 4 if you want to rely on conc aura.

True enough, but if the cost of doing so is nil because your gearset currently already incorporates too much hit for whatever reason then you may as well do it, because arcane focus isn't helping very much.

Isn't the mana cost reduction (not to mention hit you may be able to gear around) going to be stronger than something like arcane meditation? My mage alt is currently specced Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft , if I take arcane med I have to drop range, interrupt protection, threat reduction or hit+mana cost reduction. Looking at the rawr results the actual dps talents seem pretty tight so it's probably sensitive to the actual gear you're using. Threat reduction really depends on your own DPS VS your tanks' TPS (and then there's sarth +3 where you have a new mob spawn 3 times in the fight so the initial threat issue actually matters too).

arcane stability isn't worth it over arcane meditation.

While according to rawr in most fights you should take meditation over stability, rawr does not model failing your rotation due to losing channeling time. I'm not even sure how well pushbacks are modeled.

i got a logitech g15. With a i call it "nuke" makro which spamm the nonchanneling makro for a short peroid every 0.001s, on dummys i got 80-90%, but i havent tested in the raid yet, its like summergames with programmable controller ><

With your current 246 hit rating, you could stay hitcapped moving a point from Arcane Focus to Arcane Stability, at the cost of only ~10dps worth of increased mana cost (4min fight). I'd say the pushback reduction is well worth that 0.1% dps loss.

maybe if I was experiencing spell pushback frequently eh. IMO, there's not enough fights with spell pushback to warrant that switch (alsot that I'll be able to drop a lot of extra hit when I get the gear I'm aiming for).

Hi

In my guild we are only 2 raiding mages, and our raidleader would rather not loose the 10% crit from scorches. So we sat down at tried to make a viable 53/18 or 51/20 build. I'm having a hard time though, since i can't decide on the "best" scorch spec. My best guess would be something like: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

But loosing Arcane Flows seems like a big deal to me, since it effects cooldowns on so many beneficial spells.

What are you guys doing?

I'm finding it hard to manage mana so that I can make use of Arcane Flows during a fight. I basically need an entire mana bar when I blow my CDs or I risk going OOM. And that rarely happens 2mins into the fight. I'm trying to work innervate into my rotation.

After doing Naxx25 and Maly25 this is the rotation I've been using:
-Normal rotation of AB AB AB AM clip ABarr til BL (usually 6-12s into fight since we have no DPS wars)
-At BL, pop gem, pop all CDs, spam AB and do 3x charged MB-AMs
-Go OOM and Evocate during last few secs of BL
-Normal rotation of AB AB AB AM clip ABarr
-Mana pot
-Mana gem
-For most bosses he's at 10-20% and my CDs are up but I'm at 30% mana
-For longer bosses (Thad, Kel, Patch, Sapph) I went OOM and wanded a bit which totally ruined by DPS (even 10s of wanding = gg)

I started calling for innervates since we're the only class in the game that can actually dump mana right now but I don't need the innervates on the short bosses, just the longer ones. I called for innervate when hiding behind an iceblock and utterly destroyed the meters. I was also able to use CDs again towards the tail of the fight.

From my "observations" AND FOR MY GEAR I think I'm going to change to the following
-AB AB blow CDs, spam AB and do 3x charged MB-AMs
-At BL, pop gem
-Go OOM and Evocate during last few secs of BL
-Normal rotation of AB AB AB AM clip ABarr
-Mana pot
-Innervate
-Pop gem + mana dump on short bosses or pop CDs on long bosses

My gear during these runs was FFB gear with 213 hit. That means I had like 0 spirit. We'll see what changes when I pickup more arcane gear (thx rawr). Anyone see any glaring holes in my rotations? My guilds longest fight was 3mins 47s or something so keep that in mind.

For a 3min30 fight, you get one standalone IV/AP and one IV/AP stacked with Heroism (optimally). For me, Rawr recommends spamming AB (+ MBAM-Abar on proc) only on the latter. For IV/AP alone, I'm supposed to keep the AB3-AM-Abar rotation to conserve mana. That's with no innervate or manatide.

The Arcane spec has an adaptive playstyle, so dependant on the encounter or your raid environment you may need to adjust your rotations.
If you regularly have mana problems then religiously following the standard AB3->AM->Abar cycle won't help you at all.
Look at what mana resources you have, what CD's will come up shortly and dependant on the encounter mechanics, will you have some non dps regen time coming up ? These are factors you need to judge and combine with adjusting the rotation you use to assist you in managing your available mana. Quite a lot of this is dependant on both your gear and what raid resources you have available so there is no "set" answer really, it's one you need to judge for yourself.