Well, according to the 2-cycle theorem, the optimum cast cycle will always be exactly 1 or 2 different cycles. Usually the 2 optimum cycles will happen to be the 2 cycles closest to the MPS you can afford for the fight duration.
Try to think of it like you're 'zeroing-in' on the proper MPS value. If on a 6 min fight you can sustain 200 MPS over the duration, then given cycles of {300, 275, 210, 180} MPS, your best choice will tend to be towards {210, 180}.
The true optimum solution will not necessarily be the optimal MPS cycle, since MPS has no direct correlation to DPS, but it will rarely not be the case.
In other words, giving a 'main rotation' is somewhat a misnomer. It depends on context. Yes, generally on short fights you will probably use the cycles given as 'main cycles' in the first post. But on long fights that are taking your mana, those 'main cycles' would be poor choices.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
On the other hand you're just concerned about your own speculations
Slander, if you are referring to Pasture's post regarding PvP-focused nerfs, then you should know that it is not his own speculation, he read the same Ghostcrawler post that I did.
The main reason that the rotations with closest mps to your affordable mps are usually optimal, is because you already ignored all the bad rotations.
What I see a lot of people doing wrong in raids is sticking to 2 cycles regardless of cooldowns, which is incorrect, as during certain cooldowns (specifically AP) a 3rd rotation can become optimal (see: rawr, as well as common sense). A common mistake I see is people spamming the ABX3-ABarr3C rotation and going oom and/or swapping to a AB-ABarr-2 (or 3) C rotation. If you're in a situation where you're not sure which 2 rotations you should be mixing, use the middle one (in this case AB-ABarr-3C) and if you lack mana swap to 2C and if you have too much for some reason (usually you shouldn't considering you already use ABX3-ABarr3C on cooldowns, but it can happen in several situations) then you can burn it with extra ABX3-ABarr-3C.
The main reason that the rotations with closest mps to your affordable mps are usually optimal, is because you already ignored all the bad rotations.
What I see a lot of people doing wrong in raids is sticking to 2 cycles regardless of cooldowns, which is incorrect, as during certain cooldowns (specifically AP) a 3rd rotation can become optimal (see: rawr, as well as common sense). A common mistake I see is people spamming the ABX3-ABarr3C rotation and going oom and/or swapping to a AB-ABarr-2 (or 3) C rotation. If you're in a situation where you're not sure which 2 rotations you should be mixing, use the middle one (in this case AB-ABarr-3C) and if you lack mana swap to 2C and if you have too much for some reason (usually you shouldn't considering you already use ABX3-ABarr3C on cooldowns, but it can happen in several situations) then you can burn it with extra ABX3-ABarr-3C.
Well, I did edit the first post to mention something I took for granted, but I guess it wasn't very clear. The 'burn' rotations are 'good' during AP because you pay a small fraction of the extra 30% mana cost you're supposed to be paying for AP. Thus; more AB = more mana savings. It is true that you want to generally 'upgrade' your rotation during AP as a result of all that, but I am unsure how to 1- word it to make it clear 2- how to establish a simple guideline that would allow the player to make the proper choice as to which rotation to switch to.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Due to the haste cap on ABarr, I find myself settling into the AB AB [AB mbarr] abarr rotation as my default rotation until I figure out my optimal mana + damage rotation for the raid / fight. I've seen a number of posts suggesting this to others as well. Is there any chance you would mind adding it into the list on the first post?
I know that you don't want to clutter the post with all of the variations, as they are too numerous to count. And while I am interested in seeing how the dps, mps, & dpm numbers match with the other rotation per your calculations, I think that it is likely that this is one of the most common rotations used and would be very beneficial to a number of mages.
I keep hearing/seeing people go 57/3/11, isn't it more optimal to go 53/0/18? 6% crit on AB is only worth maybe 2 or so percent dps increase. 10% mana off of all spells has got to be more than that. I'm guessing 3-7% dps increase, but I need someone to calculate it.
Also people say go for the crit meta, but I have a feeling that not needing to use blue gems at all and the int increase will make the other meta gem give like +50 spell power, which is probably better.
I did consider 51/2/18 but arcane flows is just a better dps increase than the crit on AB. My main problem is should I prioritize arcane stability or arcane mind. And how many to put in each.
I keep hearing/seeing people go 57/3/11, isn't it more optimal to go 53/0/18? 6% crit on AB is only worth maybe 2 or so percent dps increase. 10% mana off of all spells has got to be more than that. I'm guessing 3-7% dps increase, but I need someone to calculate it.
Also people say go for the crit meta, but I have a feeling that not needing to use blue gems at all and the int increase will make the other meta gem give like +50 spell power, which is probably better.
I did consider 51/2/18 but arcane flows is just a better dps increase than the crit on AB.
Have you considered using Rawr to evaluate the effects of your suggestions?
Not to mention the effect of losing 4 utility points in the Arcane tree.
Edit: I believe that once you can maintain AB3Abar3C, trading sp/haste/crit for mana regen doesn't net you much, because the higher dps rotations involve AB spam and are very mana inefficient. Also, every point in Arcane Mind translates to a significant amount dps (from crit, spellpower, initial mana pool, and evocation).
I will do more research before making posts from now on, I was hoping someone who is more skilled could do the calculations for me. Also losing 4 points in the arc tree isn't even very important, those are filler points in arcane stability or arcane mind, which aren't even worth that much in terms of dps.
I recently made the switch to arcane from previously playing FFB and FB and I sure hope they don't nerf arcane because it's a welcome change to the boring rotations of 2/48/11 in BC and the FFB/FB builds in WOTLK.
Just a few questions I'd like to ask the mage arcane community:
1) when are you guys using your mana gem cooldown? it is a theoretical DPS increase to use it in the burn phase but i find myself having too much mana if i do so, wasting a tick or two of evocation if I mana gem during this phase.
2) is it better to POM-AB on the 2nd stack of AB or 3rd Stack of AB before starting on the burn phase?
Mirror Image starts a GCD on other cooldown abilities (AP/IV/ManaGem/Trinkets), but not nukes. You don't need to double-tap, just put Mirror Image as the last spell in your macro, before the ArcBlast. Should be, in order... AP, IV, Mana Gem, Trinket1, Trinket2, Mirror Image, Arc Blast
1) Mana gem along with using cooldowns. Use them as soon as you're down 5k mana, or wait til bloodlust if they won't be back up before bloodlust.
2) 3rd AB, I think? This was discussed like 5 pages back.
1) Mana gem along with using cooldowns. Use them as soon as you're down 5k mana, or wait til bloodlust if they won't be back up before bloodlust.
The problem is that you might still waste an evo tick if you can't burn down 60% of your mana (66% for Blood Elves) in 18 seconds. The options are:
- Wait until you're down about 10k mana before using your cooldowns (but you might postpone them to the point where you don't get them a second time later).
- Waste an Evo tick (but you did cast Evo with IV on, so downtime was "short").
- Use your Evo later when you actually need 60% mana back (but IV is gone, so it'll be a "slow" Evo)
To be honest, I don't know what the right answer is (I have a feeling it's the 3rd), and I tend to haphazardly do either of them depending on the fight :-)
Hi, I've read a lot of the posts about which trinkets are better/best for Arcane. But the one I am wondering about is the JC's [Figurine - Twilight Serpent]. I know that [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] is generally regarded as the best. My question is on the 2nd trinket.
If you can use the hit, would [Dying Curse] be your best 2nd trinket option? If you don't need the hit, I hear most people like [Embrace of the Spider].
But this [Figurine - Twilight Serpent] is very interesting to me, because of how well it syncs with your 2 min cool downs. Overall, I believe the use effect on the Twilight Serpent is worth a lot more than the stated +292 sp for 20 secs. Because that is 20 secs fully modified by Arcane Power and Icy Veins, as suppose to random procs on the Embrace/Dying Curse/Sundail.
Does the controllability of Twilight Serpent net you more overall dps than a chance trinket? (of course it also has 2 sockets, socket bonus, and 42 hit rating).
Arcane gets 6% hit from talents
Another 3% from Misery et al
Another 1% from goat if you are alliance
That's 9-10%
7-8% hit from gear is so easy to get, that I can't see wasting a trinket slot on one. I mean, look at my toon. I'm over hit cap by about .8% and I have no idea how to get rid of it.
The hit trinkets are for warlocks and fireball mages, imo.
Hi, I've read a lot of the posts about which trinkets are better/best for Arcane. But the one I am wondering about is the JC's [Figurine - Twilight Serpent]. I know that [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] is generally regarded as the best. My question is on the 2nd trinket.
If you can use the hit, would [Dying Curse] be your best 2nd trinket option? If you don't need the hit, I hear most people like [Embrace of the Spider].
But this [Figurine - Twilight Serpent] is very interesting to me, because of how well it syncs with your 2 min cool downs. Overall, I believe the use effect on the Twilight Serpent is worth a lot more than the stated +292 sp for 20 secs. Because that is 20 secs fully modified by Arcane Power and Icy Veins, as suppose to random procs on the Embrace/Dying Curse/Sundail.
Does the controllability of Twilight Serpent net you more overall dps than a chance trinket? (of course it also has 2 sockets, socket bonus, and 42 hit rating).
Extremely simple question. Unless you are severely under geared to be below hit-cap for Arcane (which is ridiculously low), two best trinkets are the illustration and the embrace. No questions about it. Same goes for Frostfire specs (though you can switch the embrace for the sundial, very similar dps). For Fireball specs, I'd still go with the illustration and the embrace and design the rest of your gear around it. But for Arcane, no questions asked.
I went 53/18/0 for imp scorch the other night as I was the only mage in the raid and came out with a question in regards to pyroblast.
Is it even worth taking pyro as 53/18 (for use with POM only, obviously) considering neither Spell Impact nor TtW affect the spell?
Or is it better to drop the talent, finish out WiF for better AOE and then use POM for AB as noted in the first post?
Did a search and couldn't find an answer on that in this thread anywhere, my apologies if its been asked.
I'm not sure if going that spec is the best thing to do in that situation. I haven't yet checked the numbers on it, I will try to later today, but my suspicion is that with that spec you will be doing about the same dps as 0/53/18 in which case you should probably switch to FFB spec anyways. It's not like FFB is bad dps, the only people who should really be able to outdps you at the moment with FFB spec are arcane mages (57/3/11) and well played affliction locks.
I'm not sure if going that spec is the best thing to do in that situation. I haven't yet checked the numbers on it, I will try to later today, but my suspicion is that with that spec you will be doing about the same dps as 0/53/18 in which case you should probably switch to FFB spec anyways. It's not like FFB is bad dps, the only people who should really be able to outdps you at the moment with FFB spec are arcane mages (57/3/11) and well played affliction locks.
I played with fireball, FFB and Arcane Scorch in rawr. All were really close DPS wise, with shorter fights leaning towards arcane scorch. Since I prefer the playstyle of Arcane...have all my glyphs, keybinds, macros, etc set up for Arcane... it didn't make much sense to reinvite the wheel for farming Naxx.
back to my original question though, the more I think about it... I'm sure its such a minute difference that it really doesn't matter much.
I probably shouldn't quote myself, but since it seems that people don't read the thread...
Originally Posted by nathanbp
The new Rawr rotation format is X#Y, where X is the normal rotation to use until missile barrage procs, and #Y means "when Missile Barrage procs, do Y at # stacks of AB". C is shorthand for Arcane Missiles Arcane Barrage Combo. Which really isn't a combo, just cast AM then ABar.
For example, ABSpam03C means spam AB, when missile barrage procs, cast Arcane Missiles then Arcane Barrage at either 0 or 3 stacks of the Arcane Barrage debuff.
As another example, AB2ABar3C means normally rotate Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage, but if Missile Barrage has procced, instead of Arcane Barrage do a 3rd Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, then Arcane Barrage.
I probably shouldn't quote myself, but since it seems that people don't read the thread...
As another example, AB2ABar3C means normally rotate Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage, but if Missile Barrage has procced, instead of Arcane Barrage do a 3rd Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, then Arcane Barrage.
Can we all agree to stop using this overly complicated and somewhat confusing secret code. Manly's nomenclature from the first post works fine and doesn't require previous knowledge to understand and conflicting terminology is confusing the children.
AB AB AB [mbarr] abarr
AB [AB AB mbarr] abarr
AB [AB mbarr] abarr
Can we all agree to stop using this overly complicated and somewhat confusing secret code. Manly's nomenclature from the first post works fine and doesn't require previous knowledge to understand and conflicting terminology is confusing the children.
AB AB AB [mbarr] abarr
AB [AB AB mbarr] abarr
AB [AB mbarr] abarr
I agree, especially when the first 30 some odd pages of this thread are based on the ability to double dip the 60% debuff bonus. I basically ignored all posts before the first post that had the word "hotfix" in it.
02/05/09, 1:48 PM
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