Let's see if this will work... Precast Monitor, It may be in German, because for some reason I cannot get google docs to un-germanify itself for my game email account I created in Germany. Lame.


It is extremely easy to test that, can you send a spell request event with a GCD active is the question, which you can't. If you could, you would be able to see the event fire, and or see the GCD start immediately following a previous GCD consistently. Neither of which are possible. Your cast time for GCD locked spells will be GCD + buffer, where buffer is the delay between the end of the GCD and your reflex of pushing the button again. Latency has little to nothing to do with it in this case.

Try out the addon and see if it gives you a detailed picture of what is going on during a spell cast.


Edit: On re-reading that thread I originally posted this in I think I found part of the confusion.

Pretend we're casting a 1.5 second GCD Instacast followed by a 3.0 second nuke, lets pretend a 50 msec reaction buffer and a 100msec ping time, we get the following:


0.0 - UNIT_SPELLCAST_SENT recorded, instacast fires, GCD starts
1.5 - GCD ends
1.55 - UNIT_SPELLCAST_SENT recorded, GCD starts
1.65 - Cast Bar Starts
3.05 - GCD Clears
3.65 - Cast Bar Completes

Your latency gets inserted between the instacast and the nuke starting. This is not so much applicable to Arcane as it is Frost and Fire/FFB, as they use frequent instants and longer nukes. This loss can be recouped by correctly precasting (not queueing, that has many implications to it that just plain aren't accurate) another instacast over a cast time spell, but will keep being reintroduced following instacasts in scenarios where you are swapping between a cast time and an instant (or really, a non GCD locked spell and a GCD locked spell).

Your ability to correctly time pushing the button immediately following the completion of the GCD will impact your DPS more than your latency.

While this may seem like a hypothetical situation and unlikely to happen, I'm curious which would be better.

Say the fight is seven minutes long and you're using BL/Hero a minute into the fight. Do you blow your CDs at the start so you can get another MI in the fight or do you wait for BL to maximize the effect of it?

Unless I'm mistaken (and forgive me if I am), the only reason why one would be inclined to stack a damage multiplier buff with a casting speed buff is to complete more casts during the damage buff's duration. Therefore unless your casts are > 100% faster under heroism/bloodlust (I.E under the effects of heroism/bloodlust, you can get off more than twice as many casts in that 30 second period of MI uptime) which is highly unlikely-- in many cases impossible due to GCD caps-- you do not receive any benefit from wasting an MI usage in order to receive inflation from that casting speed increase. Let's say you can complete 30 casts during MI without hero and 45 with hero. If you were to wait for hero (in your hypothetical situation wherein the encounter length has been predetermined to be seven minutes) you would only be able to complete 45 casts under the effects of Quad Core during the encounter. However, if you were to use MI twice, "sacrificing" inflation from heroism, you would be able to complete 60 casts under the effects of Quad core.

Additionally, using cooldowns off the bat allows you to more effectively stack them with procs due to internal cooldowns.

In that precise example of a 7 minute fight this would to 90 casts without hero (t=0min + t=3min + t=6min) and 75 casts with hero (t=1min(hero) + t=4min). So much better using it as soon as possible, even more incentive to do it with, as said before, internals procs.
But of course this would have been a better example with realist cast time and hero buff.

So i have a question that I have yet found the answer to. In the arcane tree there are many situation talents that can prove very beneficial on certain fights, the problem with obtaining these talents of course it that we only have so many points we can spend in each tree. So i have been experimenting with different talents to try and figure out which ones i can sacrifice and which ones i shouldnt. This often results in removing a single point from one talent that i will still get the overall benefit from.

One talent i have been considering is removing a single point from missile barrage. This would allow us to spend it on another talent that can prove very useful on certain fights, and (from what i understand) should result in little backfire. With all 4 points in Missile Barrage it is already extremely rare to not have it proc by the time we cast 4 arcane blasts, when removing a single point the chance to proc drops from 40% to 32% overall this should still be easily accomplished by our 4th cast. Now the largest downside that i can see is that ideally, we want to have missile barrage proc on our third cast so that it is available to use immediately after the 4th. However, since our highest dps output comes from spamming arcane blast we could consider our rotation to vary based off of when it procs, casting a 5th or 6th arcane blast on a rotation improves our dps at the cost of a considerable amount of mana. However, considering the overabundance of ways we can get that mana back i fail to see the downside to doing something like this.

Any advice to this concept would be greatly appreciated

**Decided to edit to add some math to the post.

with 5 points in arcane barrage, our chance for it to not proc during our rotation is as follows

1AB -60% 2AB-36% 3AB-21.6% 4AB-12.96% 5AB- 7.776%

With 4 points into the talent it is as follows

1AB 38% 2AB-46.24% 3AB-31.4432% 4AB-21.21% 5AB-14.539%

So if we consider the ability to add an additional AB to each rotation, it just about breaks even comparing 4AB MBAR to a 5AB MBAR rotation. Aside from the added mana required for the rotation the only other downside i could imagine is not having the mana available during specific phases of different fights.

How can you consider this "just about breaks even" when the number is doubled? Personally I feel this is a terrible idea, considering for me at least, it happens all the time where I don't get a MB proc by the 3rd cast (cuz if i don't get it by then, i won't just hit AM after the 4th on the off chance it procced, i keep spamming AB). A lot of our DPS comes from PtL, and reducing EACH cast by 8% on getting this buff just seems terrible. if you really want to use situational talents, take a point out of Arcane Mind or Arcane Meditation, that just seems much more logical to me.

There are few spots were you can shuffle points around to get points into Incanters. Range talents are an easy way, you can drop points from Arcane Stability, Arcane Meditation, Arcane Mind. Hell you could even spec out of Arcane Barrage and save yourself a point there, but then you lose a movement spell, and a way to clear your AB stacks. Removing some of the proc chance on part of your DPS rotation is a mistake though.

He was saying that it breaks even if you go 5ABAM, rather than 4ABAM. With 5 points in Arcane Barrage, 4AB has a 12.96% chance to proc ABAM, whereas with 4 points in Arcane Barrage, 5AB has a 14.539% chance to proc ABAM.

Feable, you are correct that our main source of damage comes from AB, but assuming casting more ABs gives us more damage is incorrect. Arcane isn't a "spammy" spec, like FrB or FB/TTW is. We have to manage a balance between DPS and DPM, and if you're stuck sitting there with your gem and evoc on CD, all that great DPS you've ramped up goes to zero, because you haven't managed your DPM. Also, (2)T10 makes a rotation with MBAM higher DPS than straight AB spam, because of the added haste. Going 5ABAM for a proc, rather than 4 ABAM for a proc, would force you to cast either one or two spells outside of the (2)T10 proc, thus dramatically lowering your possible DPS.

If you really need to find somewhere to take a free point, Arcane Barrage would be my first choice. We have fire blast for a movement spell, and we conveniently already spec into it to get the crit bonus on Arcane Blast. We also have the oft-forgotten PoM to throw another AB while moving, if needed. If you need something to drop AB stacks, its been shown in the past to be more effective to use an unproc'd AM. My current spec sims very well (its the best setup I've found for PvE - granted, I've put minimal effort into it), if you'd like a good starting point.

On a side note, and speaking of specs, if you're having problems with LK, my current PvP spec worked out very well. The problem my 10 had was zero people (other than a warrior tank) capable of slowing the valks. Minimal DPS loss, while gaining the Slow talent.

On a side note related to arcane, Proper PoM usage really makes the difference between good and great rotations. Often 2 of the best possible uses for PoM is: 1: Opening Burst, PoMing your 5th Arcane Blast of a rotation with Quad core/Stacked DFO. (8-10 stacks depending if you can squeeze in a full rotation). And as stated above, Moving as the last possible second while keeping your AB stack rolling , Such as ooze or Goo in the Abom Fights/PP. It's often overlooked that it adds a free 30% crit modifier onto the spell you cast making it optimal to be a (5th) AB blast if you can spare the mana or haven't had a proc AM yet and want to take one more chance.

Thank you very much for all the advice. Ironically I just got my 2p T10 set bonus last night, and realised that when factoring the haste from using MBAM I can see no reason to drop this down to 4/5. It will probably take me time to figure out which talents I consider the least valuable, but some very good points were made in regards to this.

I also did some side math to figure out how much of a dps increase a rotation of 5AB MBAR would grant, and it was minor in comparison to 4AB MBAR. Overall, definitely not worth dropping the point.

It is known that when number of Blizzard targets increases, Arcane Potency uptime is increased. I think Rawr does not model this effect, does anyone have some calculations of the increase in dps with 3-4 targets?

I have a very rough estimate on the dps increase.

Consider using POM Blizzard on the Val'kyrs of LK. Rawr shows at 3 targets(ignoring LK), normal Blizzard is 11500 dps, ABSpam04MBAM is 11700 dps.

When I item edit 1300 crit rating into my gear(to model POM Blizzard), Blizzard dps increases from 11500 to 13500. So I expect Arcane Potency in Aoe situation is about 12500.

To clear up a common misunderstanding--people often quote this thread as a hard-and-fast rule against using ABarr to break AB stacks under a stationary rotation. ABarr is a reasonable way to clear stacks, and will be higher DPS than AM. (~15000 damage over 3.3s versus ~6000 damage over 1.0s)

The issue, as is typical with Arcane, is mana conservation. AM will be ~16 dpm, as opposed to ABarr's 11. Typical rotations should favor AM as it provides better damage per mana, and therefore better damage over a longer fight. Under burn phases you should be chaining AB anyway, so it's hard to find a place for ABarr.

Those numbers contradict the ones in this thread which state unhasted AM is superior DPS and DPM than ABarr.

Perhaps you could show how you got your numbers and/or correct the ones used here?

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> AM versus ABarr .. DPS SHOOOOWDOOWN

What the thread doesn't show is that ABarr does let you get back to stacking ABs much faster than an unhasted AM will.

Given that AM on 4 stacked AB is higher DPS than anything except MBarr on 4AB, why would you want to hurry back to AB on 0AB?

What I meant is that the calculation shows a dps over a 4 second time, in which if ABarr were used, you would already be partly through in stacking your ABs again. In the example given, it compares AB and AM alone, whereby in actual Raid situation, it should be compared in a rotation.


The reason why we want to hurry back to AB because the faster you start rotation, the faster we can stack it to 4.

Actually, that thread does take into account that 40% of the time it will be MBAM.

I still don't see (from NickSeng's post) why we should be hurrying to drop stacks when we can be using our second highest DPS spell (AM at 4AB). The point of our rotation is not to go through it as many times as possible, but rather use the stacks to increase our damage.

Also, using ABarr completely negates 2t10, which has a 40 % chance to proc-this wasn't taken into consideration in the thread I linked, as it was done pre-t10. So by using ABarr you're missing out on the chance for MBarr and ptl, as well as doing less dps.

I probably wasn't very clear, but I was merely refuting the fact that unhasted AM is actually higher DPS than ABarr.

I don't disagree with the fact that you should probably use unhasted AM if MBarr doesn't proc, but not because it's higher dps than ABarr. Because it's not.

The reason we should use it is because there is a chance that the AM would turn out to be a MBAM.

It's probably a moot point, and not worth much arguing, but I still like to point out that unhasted AM is not higher DPS than ABarr

A question about moving on Lichking heroic with arcane specc (phase 1 especially).
The only way to move without lose a lot of dps is by casting ABarr while moving (pom not mentioned because of its cd). What do you think is the best time for it?
At 4 stacks AB-Debuff, or after a 4debuffed MBAM. I usually move (and cast Abarr) after the MBAM cast, but i don't know if this is the best time.
Another question is: should i cast a MBAM-procc from Abarr directly without any AB-debuff? I think i remember it's best, but i don't know exactly and i can't find it again.
In the last days I played Lichking with fire specc, because of its instant spells in standard rotation (living bomb, hot streak) for moving. I like Arcane much more and want to play in this specc if possible. But the comparison arcane/fire shows me that I do more damage with fire specc.
Do you in generel see a possibility that arcane is playable with similar dps (looking at LK hc fight)?

Regarding using ABar while moving check this post I've made (The Arcane thread). It doesn't answer your question directly, but you can infer from it that using ABar right after you've used MBAM should be better. And if ABar procs, you should use MBAM on 0 stack.

It doesn't make sense to me that there was a bunch of chatter about ignite. It's possible this is because I'm a dumb druid. I removed the posts. If it turns out I am dumb, feel free to PM me and I can restore them. Otherwise if I was right, THIS HERE THREAD SAYS ARCANE. Thanks.

Hi,
Being new to the arcane mage business, I was wondering why one would invest talent points into ‘arcane stability’ if ‘icy veins’ also cover a push back reduction. At least so it seems to me, considering that ‘icy veins’ do simply refer to casting in general without limitation to frost spells, they should cover arcane spells as well?

Also, am I right in believing that ‘ice shards’ should be skilled in order to increase damage from casting ‘blizzard’?

My apologies if this was asked before, but although I went through the posts I couldn’t trace anything on the matter.