Wrong. In game:

I'm very grateful they didn't go for the 10% / 42 sec route... that would have been absolutely atrocious to try to manage.

Now, we have a choice of:

Begin cooldown cycle with IV + AP + Trinket + Mana Gem

1.4 minutes later: AP back up
2.0 minutes later: Trinket + Mana Gem back up
2.4 minutes later: IV back up
(2.8 minutes later: AP back up if cast immediately at 1.4 minutes)

It's an interesting shift. In 3.0.8, we could choose to wait 24 seconds for IV to come back around. Now we can choose to wait 24 seconds for AP. It probably will end up stretching mana pretty thin as compared to the two minute evocate / gem mana cycle, though. I wonder what the optimal way to stack is now.

Right, I thought PoM(Potency)-AM was broken. Given the trivial PVE dps boost that PoM is, I just have it bound to my Abar key. But if they did fix this bug, I'll move it to my AM key :-)

Hahah, my mistake. I've been spending the greater half of this week without sleep and had just finishing mulling over the postings on the chance of winters chill / scorch getting lowered to 5% (which is where I believe the 10% came from). This is better than the time I forgot buff tool-tips didn't react to changes via talents. Fantasy world indeed.

Given the 10% mana cost decrease does anyone else forsee an issue trying to get the last few seconds of icy veins to stack with evo? Even with spamming ABx3 for 20 seconds (until MBar proc-ed) I was generally never able to actually get down to the needed 40% mana.

I assume one would just cut evo early in favor of hasted evo vs non?

My instinct tells me that waiting a whole minute to stack AP with IV wont pay off in the end. Probably having AP up all the time (aka, macroed to Arcane Blast, so that it pops whenever available) will result in the highest dps. Then again my math is lacking, so... Hopefully the guys at the Dynamic Cycles thread will figure this out soonish.

edit:

@above poster:
Probably, I've had issues burning 60% of my mana on the few seconds IV lasts. Now that AP got tuned down to 20% this is probably going to get harder. Then again, casting one or two more fully stacked ABs will burn your mana fast enough for this not to be much of an issue.

Thank goodness. Am I ever glad to be wrong. It does make for a slightly trickier decision matrix based on the fight flow (whether you can afford to wait the extra 24 seconds due to stand-and-cast issues or a Bloodlust/Heroism lined up, etc.). Now, however, we need to see some math on whether it makes sense to synchronize which cooldowns for maximum theoretical DPS. Since Blizz seems to be moving away from the two-minute trinket model and more at the 45-second internal cooldown model, it may only be relevant to Mana Gems and IV cycles. It also portends the possibility of not really needing to talent IV down to 2:24 due to the 2:48 cooldown of AP.

@manly

Looking it all over, with the 4th AB slam on the rotation after AP has worn off, we can see a fourth AB non crit avg 5-5.3k, Crit avg 9.5-10k. Because we use other cd's with AP making it more potent and well that's CD useage 101, we're not going to be able to "pop" anything with our PoM anymore unless you have a use trinket. The best possible scenario now that I can see, is Dying Curse or w/e passive +dmg gain you have procs >5s into AP so that after AP falls it's still up for the PoM AB.

I took a rough sample of base hits with the other major spells in our arsenal and due to raid scaling, it's very appropriate. Average NC Frostbolt:2950, C:6700. Avg NC Fireball:3500, C:6500. Avg NC FrostFire Bolt:3200 C:7000. Avg NC Arcane Blast:5100, C:9500. So while the sample size wasn't enough to give us exact values, we can see there is a serious gap in dmg from the other spells, and a fully charged 3stack AB.

We see CD useage play into effect now with gem still being a 2m CD while AP/PoM becomes a 1.4m CD. Since we're not going to see useage of PoM with any level of CD's anymore off the first rotation we should assume it best to stack up to 3 ab's, hit our AP/IV/(Trinket)/Gem CD and blast away, as soon as AP falls, we should PoM a 3stack AB for maximization of dmg. Now the trick is to keep using the cd's, we should burn AP on CD everytime no matter what, however a macro for using mana gem/PoM/cast AB should be instilled as well. Since PoM can't benefit from AP anymore, we need to use it with other cd's to maximize. So lining it up with Mana Gem should be the best gain, because we see a .6m loss of dps with the PoM CD. In a real fight, that would mean we would have to use our mana gem 4 times for before we miss a PoM CD.

Since there aren't many fights that are DPS trackers that last for 8 minutes as a base, we can see this not being of issue until Ulduar in my mind. This is my rough napkin math as I just wake up from a flight back from New York, Jetlag kills, so what do you think of it? The CD useage I believe here is abstract and correct in it's useage, we only see a negation in 8+m fights so far. What do you think of it?

It's a buff, nerf, or even depending on the fight length. To illustrate, look at the following:

AP = new buff
AP* = old buff

00:00 - AP / AP* (AP* is ahead by 10%)
01:24 - AP (AP jumps past by 10%)
02:00 - AP* (AP* retains lead by 20%)
02:48 - AP (even)
04:00 - AP* (AP* is ahead by 30%)
04:12 - AP (AP* is ahead by 10%)
05:36 - AP (AP is ahead by 10%)
06:00 - AP* (AP* is ahead by 20%)
07:00 - AP (even)
08:00 - AP* (AP* is ahead by 30%)
08:24 - AP (AP* ahead by 10%)
09:48 - AP (AP is ahead by 10%)
10:00 - AP* (AP* is ahead by 20%)
11:12 - AP (even)
12:00 - AP* (AP* up 30%)
12:36 - AP (AP* up 10%)
14:00 - STOP (both APs off CD, whole cycle repeats) - note, AP* ends up ahead of the new AP when it resets


It keeps going on and on, but here are the stats based on the above data going till 14:00 (when the entire cycle resets):

The old AP (AP*) is better 70% of the time
The new AP is better 8.57% of the time
They are even 21.43% of the time

Obviously some fight lengths are more common than others, and you can use this information to pinpoint exactly whether or not it would be a buff/nerf/neither.



*editted to continue till the entire pattern reset

Arcane Missiles is still proccing [The Egg of Mortal Essence]

you're only considering AP in there though.

to me, it seems like a big deal that your mana gem won't always line up, nor will Icy Veins regularly due to the shortened CD on AP.

not being able to stack those consistently might hurt more than your model implies?

Hopefully simple question, assuming Naxx 25, Sarth 3D, Maly 25.
Which is better for the build - the tailor "lightweave embroidery" or the Greater Speed (Haste +23) enchant ?

Wrong thread, then.

23 haste. It's been answered a bazillion times on other threads.

Don't spread misinformation; 23 haste is *not* better than Lightweave in most cases. It varies; uses Rawr to find out. In general, Lightweave is better.

EDIT: That's for arcane, of course.

I find that to be weird, since 23haste is considered to be the superior cloak enchant in frostfire and fireball specs, according to the Optimal Sets thread. As far as I know the people on that thread use Rawr to check that info.

How is it possible then that, if 23 haste is superior to lightweave in a ffb spec, that it is not superior on an arcane spec where haste is *much* more valuable a stat than in ffb?

I was going to mention that Lightweave was better (per Rawr) in my above post, but I had doubts because I wasn't sure if I set up the program properly.

Looking at both enchants and taking my particular gear into account, it told me that Lightweave was better. I'll stick with it, especially after seeing that it added a little over 1% to my dps and it slotted just above +23 haste in the Rawr enchant rankings.

I could understand how haste would be better for other gear/spec combinations, though.

But then the post above by Baldween still leaves me wondering...

Pretty sure those lists were compiled before Rawr supported the Lightweave embroidery. Also I believe they assume professions of Enchanting/Jewelcrafting, so no tailoring only enchants.

According to Rawr 2.1.9, Lightweave is slightly better for both FFB and Arcane spec (3-4 dps over 23 haste rating).

Edit: Just to make sure it's clear, I'm not recommending Tailoring as a profession for min/maxing, just that if you don't want to drop tailoring, Lightweave is just a tad better than 23 haste.

You cannot use PoM with AP even with glyph sadly.

Keep in mind that even though rawr shows the tailoring enchant as better than 23 haste enchant, it's still not a reason to take tailoring, as unless I'm missing something it's quite weaker than the JC/ench/BS/LW/inscription benefits.

No, you are not missing anything. According to Rawr, tailoring gives the worst comparative benefit of any crafting profession, engineering included.

I would think you would want to go with LW even if 23 haste was "slightly" more dps than LW due to the fact that lightweave procs are FREE whereas 23 haste causes you to cast spells quicker and spend slightly more mana during the course of a fight, this would be of course only important for arcane specs since mana is tight already.

Any confirmation on the 10-15% nerf to Arcane Barrage damage? Saw just one thread in the WoW Mage forum on it, makes me wonder if it's a bug or it's by design...

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that the mana cost increase of AP is now unwarranted? With the recent nerf, it's more on par with other active damage-boosting talents, many of which don't have such costly side effects.

For example:

- Avenging Wrath gives +20% dmg/healing (the interaction with the protection abilities is hardly a cause for concern in PvE, imho)
- Beatial Wrath/The Beast Within increases pet dmg by 50%, while hunter dmg goes up 10% and mana cost goes DOWN 20% to boot.
- Power Infusion increases casting speed AND reduces mana cost by 20%.
- There is talk that Killing Spree will increase the rogue's damage by 20% while active, in addition to its current effects.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the whole "arcane mages can convert mana into pure damage at will" sort of idea, but now it just seems that the mana cost increase provided by AP is too much for its returns. I'm not saying eliminate the mana increase, but something like 10% would be more appropriate, I think.

I wasn't really trying to model changes to dps, only the AP benefit. Speaking in terms of ONLY AP, it will be a nerf in most situations, and if for some reason we ever got to a point where we were casting indefinitely, then it would be an overall nerf of 10% every 14 minutes.

I won't dare try to calculate the nerfs/buffs as whole, because that's far too involved. You're better off waiting for the next Rawr release for that.

One thing I am considering trying myself is to stack AP with trinket procs. The trinkets generally have a 45 second cd, so I could AP every 2nd proc and only cost myself ~6-10 seconds (assuming the trinkets proc'd within 45-50 seconds) which is something I wasn't able to do with a 2 minute cooldown before. This may end up even being better in the long run because the trinket procs are generally better than any use effects that you could stack with AP beforehand (save maybe IV).