Madolyn, I only do AB x 4 and then AM. Even if AM does not proc, (wich is not often cuz it usually does) it will give good damage because you have been building up the AM-damage by using AB x 4. I only use ABarr when I have to move around and still want to do some damage while moving.

Also, depends on the fase of the fight, you can just nuke nuke AB untill your mana is done... Make sure you do that at end of a fight if you know what I mean. It's an art to be completely empty with mana at end of bossifight. ^^

Reference Roywyn's original post here.
Updated below and shamelessly stolen from our guild forums (thanks Timitz):

I did some testing of 4piece tier10 with blizzard to see how the buffs interacted with other damage buffs. It looks like the T10 bonus doesn't just calculate off of your base damage - it scales geometrically with other damage effects.

Here are the numbers I was seeing:

Blizzard with no buffs: 944 per tick
Blizzard with only quad core (4PT10 buff): 1114 per tick (118% damage)
Blizzard with quad core + arcane power: 1336 per tick (141.6% damage = 120%*118%)

This was contrary to the static bonus that I was expecting to see (i.e. 100%+20%+18% = 138% with both up)

So basically, this means that, whenever possible, you should stack arcane power and mirror images to squeeze out an extra 3.6% damage bonus.

I'm slightly curious as to why you'd have expected it to be an additive bonus given that such damage modifiers are almost always multiplicative (for mages at least). This behavior is consistent with Arcane Power's interaction with the Icehowl charge effect, the Twins' Empowered effects, Jaraxxus' buff, and Queen's vampiric effect to name but a few.

What would be more interesting to know is if given a window of sufficiently powerful multipliers, say MI + AP + any of the above encounters, is there a point at which it's better to not consume the AB debuff. I'm fairly sure this has been touched on before, but from what I remember only 'full fight duration' modifiers were discussed. The difference here would be that the window is small enough that the time it takes to ramp up the AB would be significant relative to the window; or, in other words, the "extra" damage from keeping the AB debuff would not have a chance to normalize. With napkin math I see, for example, casting a fifth AB before MBAM seems to do more damage if you can only cast two spells before multipliers start falling off (since casting MBAM and then AB(0) wouldn't give you any "bonus" damage).

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.

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.

Not necessarily. If your cast time is below 1 second then it would be impossible to clip missiles because the channel would have completed before the GCD. I found it better to spam buttons at that point because if you watch Quarts you will end up casting early by sending a command before the GCD as expired.

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.

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.