You should almost always have the mana to continue fishing for ABAM, and since an ABAM is a free cast, considering anything other than "fishing" on an unprocced stack of 4 is almost always a bad move. I honestly don't remember the last time I cast a normal AM.

woops nvm. Didn't check the FFB thread first.

I think this is covered in the FFB thread?
Well most mages for this fight will run a modified FFB spec, with a more AoE centric frost tree- one my guild mates did try using Arcane as a the base and then dipping the rest in Frost, in the end I out dps'ed her on AoE (mainly because I had the advantage of casting Living Bomb), but she out dps'ed me on single target Anub'arak.

Sometimes you just get unlucky and cast 4+ fully stacked ABs with no MB proc in sight. In this case, it is worth it to cast a regular, non-proc AM to dump the stacks rather than keep draining your mana bar to the extent that you need to evocate sooner (or more often).

I have a really embarrasing question...

Some weeks ago my alt mage hit lvl 80 and I wanted to play arcane in raids. I read this thread (the first post) for the best rotation. My mage has quite decent gear now, but I wasnt happy with my dps, so I checked again different threads about cooldown use because I was unsure about that.

Today I read a different thread about arcane mages and I noticed that they didnt talk about the allmighty 3x AB -> AM if procced / ABarr rotation. So I checked this thread again and I noticed that the first post is quite old....

I feel like a big idiot now because I was playing ~1 month with wrong rotations. I read the last pages of this thread and now to be 100% sure: the current rotation is 4x AB + AM even without MB proc, if I can afford it I can fish for MB proc, ABarr only if PoM is on CD and I need to move?

You may laugh at me now :x

@ Ouna,

on Page 111 towards the end, there is a post by Kavan with a list of cycles with some numbers, worth checking that out.

Quick question, using a t9.25 4 pcs bonus and molten armor for the crit boost. Would it make more sense to replace the 3 points in Incant Absorb and put those 3 points in Student of the mind? Would the 12% of additional spirit going to crit, "all the time" not be better, than the "periodic" damage buff in a raid?

Why is this so? I've seen this referenced more often on the wow forums as well. While you do only need 2/3 IA for the twins (1/3 on Heroic) to hit the cap, in almost every other situation 3/3 will give you more spellpower than 2/3 every time it procs. (Not saying that it's necessarily the best place for the third point, but I'd like to know why people always use this 2/3 figure).

Its very situational. 2/3 is generally accepted as all you need, and all you can really afford to put into it unless you drop other talents that are more useful/less situational. The 2/3 figure first came up during the original discussion about normal Twins and has stuck since then. Its not necessarily a "correct" figure, its just what most people will relay. There is no "correct" number as for every single fight the IA absorbs you get will vary.

Actually rotations on that page are outdated. That was on the first few days when the Missile Barrage was bugged. Check page 113 instead.

For Normal Twins yes it is correct. However, the original statement was more general referring to all fights, not just twins. My point was that if you're referring to all fights generally then there is no "correct" IA spec for all those fights as each individual fight has different amounts of absorbable damage.

In otherwords, for Normal Twins yes 2/3 IA is correct. For Heroic Twins yes 1/3 IA is correct. If, however, you're building an arcane spec to use for all fights (not just twins) and don't plan on respeccing in between every individual fight there is no "correct" number of points to have in IA.