We had two arcane mages and a FFb mage in for Patch this week. The two arcane mages did 6700. That said:

* We both got innervates
* We had mana tide
* The kill was 1'51"

Today we did Sarth3D, with one of those arcane mages specing FFb and me staying arcane, and we did the same total damage (him having more AE damage, me doing more damage to the individual mobs.)

That said, I realized when respecing for FFb right afterwards (for Naxx10) that I had fireball glyphs in for Naxx and Sarth (molten armor, scorch, and fireball.) Sigh.


I've enjoyed the spec, but I like the faster pace and the mana games. I'm not sure the other arcane mage is enjoying it as much -- he may return to FFb since the specs are far closer on "real" fights.

Well wws doesn't really mean anything unless some reliable persen post it. It can show what ever you want.
But still I don't know how you use you cooldowns. Last time I tested the spec used molten armor and had like 10-20sec period in a fight when I had no mana at all. Ofcourse if your fights are just about that much shorter than mine you probably don't have any problems.

I've noticed this on the combat dummies too. I didn't think it had anything to do with my macro. It has ruined my quite a few of my DPS tests. >.< It doesn't do this anywhere else, however. Just on the dummies.

Cast distributions from Kavan's chart, for AB3Abar/0(C) and AB3Abar(C):

String: 100100012
MBAM at 0-stack or 3-stack only
String: 100000012
Always stacking to 3 for MBAM (even from scratch)
Using the numbers above, and my own gear, I found AB3Abar(C) (i.e. no 0-stack MBAM) to be better by 0.4% dps and by 1.25% dpm. But YMMV. Originally edited to remove some wrong math.

I'm not sure how you used the numbers, but be careful. You can't just compute a weighted sum of dps of spells. You have to weight it by cast time, because the distribution is cast distribution, not time distribution.

You can either compute it as dps = (weighted sum of damage) / (weighted sum of cast times) or as dps = (weighted sum of (dps * cast time)) / (weighted sum of cast times).

Thanks for the clarification on the %. I thought they meant time distribution.

I believe the new rotation is to never use AM without MB.

That's what the first post says, atm.


Assuming that is right - with heroism up, Abarr drops below the GCD. Under these conditions, AB spam if you can and ABx3AM otherwise?

It is quite an amusing concept, really. Mages have this spell called Arcane Missiles and the governing rule for said spell are: "Never use AM unless your a deep-specced Arcane mage and have invested 5 talent points into the Missile Barrage talent. Furthermore, never attempt to use AM unless the 20% 5-point Arcane Barrage talent has procced".

It's nice AM does have a strong use/niche somewhere currently, but the ruleset/investment surrounding it's usage is bizarre: Relying on the 20% proc, of a 5 point talent, available to just one (of our three) talent specs. Adding something like the ability to proc the +crit debuff (like scorch/WC) to this particular spell, makes much more sense in this light.

If you just spammed your AM key, it would clip your current cast and start a new cast of AM. This macro prevents it from starting a new cast of AM before the prior one has finished.

It's the same with any more than 720haste, meaning- embrace of the spider(trinket off maxxena) would be bad too providing you already had the haste to accomodate I am personally sitting on 570 and I do find it a problem, I found during heroism AB spam is not a bad thing providing you have the mana, works out to 1.4 sec cast with my current gear and at the moment it may be the only spell that truly benefits from heroism.

Mbarr will most likely be up the enitre time during herisom regardless being as haste increases proc rate especially in this tree, so ABx3AM will probly be out of the equation. a more sensible option in my opinion would be ABx4- Abarr.
Although I seem to have no problems with manly's rotation as explained earlier.

I had to yell at our paladins to stop dispelling me during some fights, they were a bit trigger happy.

The same thing happened when AB was first introduced and at some point they made it undispellable (hey, on some dispell-intensive bosses I was forbidden to use AB at that time). I have absolutely no idea why it got changed back, but I am fairly certain the the fix will come anytime soon. I hope, someone made GC aware of the problem on the US forums.

I believe it was always a debuff, but it certainly wasn't dispellable before. I can't say for sure if it was in it's very first introduction, but by the time I had spec'd arcane for the first time it was not dispallable.

Moving back to the rotations, there is one thing I can't wrap my head around Kavan. According to this chart:

Cycle	Kavan's Description	dps	mps
ABSpam/0(C)	(spam AB, do MBAM-ABar at 3 stack or 0 stack only)	5000.8	412.8
ABSpam(C)	(spam AB, do MBAM-ABar at 3 stack only)	4986.5	396.2
AB3(ABar/C)	(ABx3-ABar, use MBAM-ABar at 3 stack only)	4775.5	237.8

When spamming AB, it is a DPS increase to cast MBAM-ABarr at 0 or 3 stacks over doing the same rotation and only casting MBAM-ABarr at 3 stacks. Why then (and I'm not disputing that it is a DPS loss - I looked at the math myself just now) is it a DPS loss to cast MBAM-ABarr at 0 and 3 stacks instead of just at 3 stacks in the 3rd rotation? Based on earlier findings it seemed as though you should only cast AB when MB wasn't proc'd and ABarr was on cooldown, but once you started you should continue to 3 stacks.

*edit- Additionally, how are you calculating your MPS figures. I was trying to do it based on the breakdowns you supplied by multiplying the cast %'s by the mana cost of the particular spell and dividing it by the cast time, but my numbers were a bit inflated. I got 321.53828 for the 3rd rotation in the chart above and 327.40304 for the same rotation with MBAM-ABarr at 0 or 3 stacks.

I have a little whisper session with every healer pre-raid explaining if they only see mages with debuffs on them to leave them be. I would be surprised if it doesn't get changed over to a buff at some point. It makes sense from a PvE and PvP standpoint, IMO.

When BC first came out it was a debuff that was dispellable. They made it non dispellable soon after

They were SUPPOSED to make it a BUFF now which should be dispellable by hostiles (particularly in pvp) they seem to have overlooked this little detail and now arcane mages in pvp can stack the debuff with impunity for even more burst...

I was refering to Kyth's WWS. Looks like he posted 6 minutes before you with the actual link.

It does make sense to me to potentially give AM the scorch/wc debuff for arcane. However, its usage is not unprecedented, even though it is amusing for a spell to only be useful if something else procs. Pyroblast is basically designed the same way now.

Didn't see you there sorry and I think that wws loggs posted here are pretty reliable but just those random post on other forums are not. Also if the fight lasts 1min 51sec then yeah arcane is pretty sick probably will go far ower 7k with some luck. I just don't like the spec because you really need that innervate + more mana regen from other raid members. Ofcourse if you are the guild leader it pretty easy to order people to innervate you .

Off topic: If people have tested fireball it would be nice to see what kind of damage they have done so if you could post or just someone could make new thread for that or something.

I don't get why people post WWS. All it does is further shit on the threads. It doesn't brings anything to the conversation, it just opens up to people posting more WWS parses of their own. And this is where I have a problem with it. Anyway, I don't post mines because ultimately its pointless.

Agreed. I think we can pretty much sum up anything an Arcane WWS will tell us by saying 'Arcane is the best spec far and away for Patchwerk style fights, but is much much closer to FB/FFB on most other fights where Arcane cannot sustain such a mana intensive rotation'.

We dont need to post any more WWS reports for peope to flex thier epeens. I think keeping the discussion on the topics of how to get the most out of an arcane spec rather than who can get more innervates on 2 minute zerg fights would be far more productive.

ok, i like thinking of damage rotations as a big if-else statement. Maybe it's my background in programming, but I just think better this way. So help me make the best DPS arcane if-else statement!

We're just going to write it without taking into account DPS cooldowns like POM, Arcane Power, Icy Veins, trinkets, Managem, and heroism. We also won't take into account innervate from druids.


If AB_debuff = 0
If ABar is off cooldown
cast ABar
else cast AB
If AB_debuff = 1
cast AB
If AB_debuff = 2
cast AB
If AB_debuff = 3
If MBar = active
cast AM
else If Evocate is off cooldown
If Mana < 40%
cast Evocate
else cast AB
else cast ABar


My only real question about the rotation is what if you have 2 stacks of the AB_Debuff and you're in the middle of casting your third and MBarr has yet to proc. I know this was mentioned earlier in this thread but I can't seem to find a definitive answer.
The 2 options I see:
After the third Arcane Blast lands, wait a split second to see if MBar procs. If it does, cast AM, if not, cast ABarr.
Just Cast ABarr and if MBar procced, oh well, just wait until you get ABx3 and cast AM.

Do we have the proof of which is better? I'm thinking of just going with the 2nd because its easier to pre-empt it.