I have found the extra six yards to be a must have in Ulduar. In some situations you need to be 10 yards from other players and the extra range allows for flexibility. There are also a number of scenarios where you need to be in a stationary buff, if the boss is kited or moved away from that buff your DPS could drop dramatically. For me the bottom line is that I don't think any talents are going to make up for the DPS loss of being out of range or the safety and flexibility of where I am going to cast from.

Magic absorption isn't "bad" in my opinion, there just are not enough points available to pick it up. Your healers should be able to keep you up and you can iceblock if things get bad. Also, you can negate a good amount of fire and frost damage by using your wards, as well as getting mana back. Incanter's aborption will benefit tremendously from this, priest shileds, and spellstolen shields. Personally I have it at max because it can be difficult to get to the 5% health cap of spelldamage and the extra points generally mean that I will have a higher average spellpower from the talent. I don't find any of the other talents to outweigh the benefit of three points in the talent.

I do not have any points in Arcane Focus as hit can be acquired through items or buffs, while the many other talents available are too good to pass up. (Always be hit capped and adjust your gear to the raid composition or fight is my motto.) I like the 3 points in Arcane Stability because of the number of fights with spell interruption and my views on Arcane Focus.

As awesome as 1 second arcane blasts sound... seems like at that point it'd simply run you out of mana in 20 seconds =p Why the question is more where the practical/optimal point of haste is, not the fastest possible.

1.0 seconds is the hard cap for all spells. You can only reduce the global cooldown to 1.0 seconds and your spell casttime can only be reduced down to a minimum of a GCD. For arcane, fully raidbuffed (5% shaman haste, 3% ret haste, 6% netherwind presence), you are going to see a drop in the contribution from haste starting around 1000 haste due to GCDs no longer benefiting from haste (although your non-instant spells will still benefit).

Is the hard-cap not without personal %modifiers? I was under the impression that IV can get you below the cap, at least if I am to believe Quartz.

I didn't include external or personal % on-use modifiers due to their less-than 100% uptime. I wouldn't weave icy veins around preventing reaching the arcane barrage cap due to the fact that you're probably only going to be casting two or at most three arcane barrages during the hasted period.

I made a spreadsheet to calculate spell cast time with boolean values for external passive/on-use buffs if you are curious:
Lapsed's Magical Spell Cast Time Calculator

Okay, I am doing something wrong, I guess.

I have made my dual spec/second spec arcane. I have done what I thought what I should, and I am trying the recommended spell rotation (AB, AB, AB, Arc Missles (or the proc if it happens)). rinse, repeat, but I still can't get over 2200 DPS on the heroic dummy in OGR. I am using the marcos below:

#showtooltip Arcane Blast
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Icy Veins
/use 13
/use 14
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast Arcane Blast

#showtooltip Arcane Missiles
/console Sound_EnableSFX 0
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Icy Veins
/use 13
/use 14
/run UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/console Sound_EnableSFX 1
/cast Arcane Missiles

From worldofraids.com


So blizzard is aware of the problem that arcane is now behind fire, even in movement fights. Sounds to me that arcane may get a buff, or fire will get nerfed (obviously not if u read the ptr notes für 3.2)

The impression I get from that comment (and read on there are further comments about buffing dps specs) is:

A. They know Arcane is falling behind Fire.
B. They think players who like Arcane will play it anyway so long as it is within 10% of fire.
C. They don't consider buffing all specs to within 1% of each other because players will still pick the highest dps spec even if that spec is only 1% more dps.

Essentially what they're saying is that they can buff Arcane to within 1% of Fire, but if Fire is still 1% more dps then mages will still spec Fire and there was no point wasting time buffing Arcane in the first place. They don't want to make Arcane do 1% more dps because then itemisation issues arise and Fire mages don't have Arcane gear.

In short, they recognise it's a problem but they're not fixing it. Either you enjoy Arcane and are willing to put up with 5-10% less dps than Fire, or you want the top dps spec and spec Fire. Unfortunately there is no you love playing Arcane and would love it more if it was within 1% of Fire option. Arcane, by these comments, has just got the Frost treatment.

What a waste of time making Arcane competitive in the first place to let it fall away like this.

There is debate only because of Arcane Mages running the IA/Frost warding spec, getting more raid support, and having a faster cast / stacking haste. I push nice numbers because I can acquire my next target while my last cast is still running. (like I'm sure most of you do) and the better the gear and support the more proc fishing you can do. Fights where little of that matters, Fire prevails by a ~10% margin.

** The fights where my all of my tricks work, Disc priest is online, and my proc aren't 1/20 casts I can easily beat Fire. That is the contention, and honestly that is a ton of effort compared to Fire. Call it "skill-cap", raid synergy whatever, that counts for a lot, and can't be balanced in to base-line DPS like they can with Fire.

GC seems to be missing the point that there are avid TCs that also love a certain spec. Really that is who he sees championing the official forums day after day, so he must realize that: Yes we love the spec, no we don't want to change, but we are torn because we don't want a completely inferior spec.

*edit*

I am really surprised at this tbh. We all know the barrage of nerfs the spec endured, and with all of the crit focus these days, I don't think it ever would have out-scaled Fire.

Blizzard seems to be "alright" with reverting nerfs a few patches later when the numbers don't match their estimates (hunters).

1. Abarr doesn't need a buff for PvE, I am okay with it being my "on-the-move" spell, and not part of my standard rotation. But honestly it could use a PvE coefficient like IL glyph (sans the glyph)

2. The AB glyph nerf should be pulled, as we were balanced with it for 3.0. Honesty, how many PvP Arcanes are able to keep a 3 stack up: None. Maybe once.

3. PoM / AP change didn't effect PvE that much so it can stay for PvP balance.

4. Mind Mastery / Arcane Mind: Revert these back to 25%, potentially merge to lessen tree bloat. (Why ever add a scaling nerf for anything! Makes no sense.)

5. The correction of the AB stack / Arcane Missiles bug. This may very well have solved all of the issues Blizzard had with Arcane, but it was incorporated in with the rest.

I honestly don't see how Arcane was every supposed to be the "on-the-move" spec as GC puts it. Fire has more insta-casts (LB, Fireblast, Hot Streak) Even scorch is a global with a cast-bar.

Arcane has it's 51pter. A real flashy looking fireblast.

GC:

Arcane's niche is on-demand burst, not on-the-move. I can go wide open for certain phases of hard-modes, etc. This is raid utility really, and has been abused in PvP. I can beat any spec of any class in a situation like the min-bosses in the gauntlet, or the heart phase on XT. That is the hardest part to balance, and it is hard/impossible to sustain the DPS of fire without any gimmicks / support.

Ya, it's kind of a shame. The way I look at it is that I love arcane. It's by far my favorite PvE spec since I actually have to think about managing my mana in a way that prevents me from going oom, but also allows me to turn extra mana into more dps. However, I personally would feel selfish by lowering the dps of the raid just because I wanted to get my jollies from a lower dps spec, especially on a fight where we are tight on dps.

After all, switching to a low dps spec (unless you bring a strong, unique raid buff) isn't just about your epeen on a damage meter, but rather on how well your group will perform as a whole.

While I am well aware of Rawr, napkin math, and even these forums; in my experience I have never felt like Fire flat out beat arcane. Not by 10% and not by 1%. Again, that is MY practical experience. I run with other fire mages who i consider to be very good, well geared, and knowledgeable of the game and encounters. I certainly feel like I have to work harder to abuse Incanter's absorption, wards, and time my cooldowns for max output with encounter buffs. Sure I ask for innervates occasionally when a healer doesn't need them and I often use Mighty Protection Potions.

The bottom line for ME and MY EXPERIENCE is that I frequently beat and/or challenge good fire mages, and I have never felt like arcane vs fire was a one-sided competition. I am happy raiding as arcane and the charts and testimony of my fellow raiders show that I have never been a liability or detriment to the raid because I run as arcane.

I am not sure if other players feel this way, but I just felt compelled to finally speak up about my perspective and experience regarding the fire vs arcane debate. 3.2 may completely change this, but I will see for myself.