I'd like to emphasize what manly said by quoting myself, a few posts up...

I see no fire/totw comparison in that :x

Tossing random points around
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000
Its not that bad, although I am truly unsure about whether or not I want 60% pushback resistance (idea being that you can make use of conc aura without wasting an extra talent point).

Looks good, although the 14% hit in gear needed for it still makes me cringe

Thanks for the info. I've read through TTT some time at the beginning, but since I never noticed any new threads pop up I kind of assumed that most of the info is stale. I'll be updating Rawr based on that.

I've been constantly doing between 4500 and 5000 dps on Patchwerk as Frostfire spec. Once I got a good Hot Streak string in 10 man and topped out at 5200, but I'd never been higher than that either in 10 or 25 man. Respecced Arcane after logging in when I got home yesterday afternoon.

Subsequently, last night I pulled 4900 in 10 man and tonight I pulled 6000 in 25-man. We also didn't have our usual Elemental Shaman and since both of our mages went Arcane, we had no Scorch/Winter's Chill. So with those, which we always had before, I probably could have been even higher.

I always casted ABx3 - ABar, and on MBar procs I ramped up 3 AB's before casting AM, clipping a Barrage at the end.

I'm one of those Mage Armor people. I just like the idea of being able to use the Spirit on gear for something now. I'm not going out of my way to stack it, but on non-tier pieces it's nice. Not amazing, but nice. I was also at 504 mp5 while casting but our Disc priest wasn't here tonight, so I had to use Spirit Scrolls (and honestly, after the first one wore off i totally forgot about it).

Our other mage saw a similar dps increase as well (he's not as well geared as I am, but proportionally we both went up about 20%). Here is our combatlog: WoW Meter Online

For what it's worth, since I had mostly FFB gear I was a bunch over the hit cap. I've since reduced that and gained a bunch of spellpower out of it (question - I'm 1 under the hit cap now. Is it worth sticking a Veiled Monarch Topaz in a slot when most of that hit will be wasted? I'm thinking not.). Additionally, I decided to gem the yellow slots for Intellect, so I put Brilliant Autumns Glow in all those slots. Ran with over 24K mana and some Spirit on gear (never gemmed though), and didn't have any mana problems at all. I ran low a couple of times near the end of a fight but stuck it out rather than evocating since it would have ended soon enough. I actually did blow out my mana on Patchwerk and had to evocate - did that before my Arcane Power came back online, so I had a full mana bar to blow when I used that cooldown the second time.

All in all a fun experience. Reminds me much of the 40/0/21 days in many ways.

Changing to Arcane brings a different playstyle (as does any other with different mechanics). To answer your question, it's worth it now to play around with the spec and see if it is what you want. Your damage won't be pathetic at all. If you're beyond this step or will go this spec regardless then the best place to evaluate your gear would be to use Rawr. It's quite a handy tool and is really user friendly. If you switch some pieces around there you can easily see which would effect you the most.

I was wondering this also, pre-patch I was gearing myself towards a fireball spec, so right now I am running at 350 hit, I can swap out [Dying Curse] and [Heigan's Putrid Vestments] and I am at 230 hit. Currently have no hit gems, I do have sanctum flowing vestments I can swap for heigan's, or should I say I did but I vendored them. Would it be wise to use one of my restores on getting them back? I can't really think of a chest piece that is better concerning arcane spec. I did see manly using it, but he may just be using it as a filler since he just respecced tonight.

If memory serves right I did see the vestments as being one of the (if not the) best chest pieces. I'd ask for it back.

I am highly interested in moving away from this lazy 1 button FFB specc but I'm lost. everyone speaks of the DPS, but... Where is Your Damage Done standing on boss fights?

Allow me to remind you that in the past, Arcane was still at the top by DPS, but Damage Done started to fall behind the further you went into the End Game.

Wow Web Stats

There is a WWS from the mage forums posted by Freeze on Tichondrius. You can see both arcane mages did more damage done. Although this was a short fight and that is what arcane excels at.

I switched [Gown of the Spell-Weaver] out for [Valorous Frostfire Robe] and [Signet of the Malevolent] for [Band of Channeled Magic]. Was an easy (and painless) way to drop down 120 or so hit.

Here is a WWS from Tuesday with my first attempt at arcane spec. Largely still in FFB style gearing, ended up getting 4 new items that night which included valourous helm (was heros), shroud of luminosity (was deathchill), bindings of the expansive mind (was azure cloth bindings), and finally band of channeled magic (was titanium spellshock ring) which should increase me abit more. The other 2 mages in the parse were running the fireball spec for comparison.

Wow Web Stats

As you can see, in most cases I was quite abit higher than the fire guys, even when they had decent RNG.

Holy shit at your patchwerk parse, rng on crits much? 78% fireball crit wat.

So the argument for 2/2 Magic Attunement and against Student of the Mind is the way itemization works and the dps gain through less movement because of more range.
But why 2/3 Ice Shards? Blizzard? PoM+Frostbolt?

The 11 in frost is purely to reach IV.
The points you take on the way are highly debatable and pretty much open to personal preference.
It is common to see 2/3 Ice Shards simply as if you are going to AoE as arcane then you will Blizzard, so some filler points to improve that don't do any harm.

Mynak, I was referring to poor scaling of Arcane Blast in TBC (pardon me for being unclear) but yeah, I got my answer from WWS stats posted above, Thanks for the info

If you have replenishment mechanics in the raid, then mana isn't that much of an issue, yes it's something you need to be aware of but I didn't find it much of an overhead. Try staying with glyphed Molten Armour for a few raids and judge it from there.

Because Frost warding and Permafrost are useless to an arcane mage in the tier while Ice Shards will give you some extra crit on Blizzard.

You are correct, Roywyn. At normal run speed a toon moves at 6 yards per second. Many months back we tried to check if this was correct by teleporting to Shattrath, so we knew both testing toons were facing in the correct direction, one would Blink and the other would hit the auto-run button at the stroke of a stop-watch, comparing the time they both landed at the same point to the distance travelled (which is constant due to Blink).

We tried to test the same with the boot enchant, but found it a little better than the 5% move buff it suggested, though at this level of accuracy, it's not really possible to ascertain in such depth.

Long story short, 6y range is a bloody big deal. Get behind a pillar at Saph, waste 1sec less to get in range. Engaging KT adds before he spawns, get to them 2-3sec faster (they move a damn load slower than 6y/sec). Easier Gluth add kiteing. The list goes on. 6y range is definitely a non-trivial damage increase. Particularly when we're discussing a spec where some players consider SotM a discretionary talent.

I'm rather surprised at people who don't think "Magic Attunement" - extra range - is not worth spending points on. The situation is NOT equivalent to the days of BC arcane raiding. As I understand it - please correct me if I'm wrong - you get the AB Buff for ABa if your ABa hits before the last AM bolt hits target. This can be done with practice after 5 AM bolts have been cast due to the differing speed of the casts in the air (ABa being faster than an AM bolt). Being at maximum range gives you a much longer and reliable window for your combos, as far as I can tell ... Thus for all practical purposes extra range and staying at maximum range is extra dps.

I have a few questions concerning arcane builds.

I've read in one of the first posts that during stacked cooldowns you should spam AB until missible barrage procs. How sustainable is this with molten armor on? And should I be doing this only when AP, IV and bloodlust are up or is it also a dps increase when only bloodlust is up?

Another question is how "lag friendly" is arcane, my server is terrible atm and when it starts to lag I find myself casting full pyroblasts half of the time with a FFB build, I can imagine not being able to get you arcane barrage to benefit from AB debuff is quite a dps loss.

how valuable is 4pc T7 bonus since I'm way over hitcapped atm, I know the best way to drop my hit is replacing my dying curse but I don't have another trinket to replace it with atm.