Points of contention

The opening sequence of an encounter.

1) Old 40/0/21 style AB spam (ignoring MB procs) until at max_mana - mana_gem and then pop CD's+gem and fall into a rotation.
2) ABx3 (possible ABar on pull just after MD), pop CD's with a PoM AB on a 3 stack, fall into a rotation but with some "wasted" mana from the gem.

There may well be others, but since it's a question that will be asked, thought we might kick it around a bit.

What about cooldown management?
In a patchwerk scenario:


Hypothesis 1:
- Pull
- Abx3
- Use Ap+Pom+Iv+Potion of speed+Ab spam, trying to blow mana asap and then use hasted evocation at the ending of iv/potion
- Use mana gem to go back to 100% mana and use the normal ab3amabr cycle waiting for the cd.

Pro: Max dps
Contro: There is the risk to go oom if something goes wrong.



Hypothesis 2:
- Pull
- Use of standard cycle until reach about 70% mana
- Use all cd included mana gem and continue with normal cycle
- Evocation when needed or kept for massive ab spam under heroism

Pro: Mana stability
Contro: The procrastination on cd use may be a problem on 3 min fight for the longest iv cd


1) What do you do?
2) What do you do under the effect of cd? Continue the normal cycle or spam ab?

Regardless of the travel time, the fact that you can do AM-ABarr shatter combos at all has to do with the way that Wow processes side-effects. The removal of the AB3 buff is a side effect, triggered by an event which comes from the ending of your latest spell.

You can see it like a terribly bureaucratic queuing system where the last tick AM gets to the head of the queue and says to the teller, "hey I've just been cast and I'd like to report my damage" and the teller replies, "okay I'll report the damage and since you are an arcane spell I see there's a buff up for you to get 60% bonus, and you better now go to the side-effects department with this form to let them know you've completed casting." So then the AM-5th-tick fills in the form and gets in the queue at the side-effects dept., but in the meantime the arcane barrage guy was in the damage queue already and says, "hey I've just been cast and I'd like to report my damage" and the teller says "okay I'll report the damage and since you are an arcane spell I see there's a buff up for you to get 60% bonus, and you better now go to the side-effects department with this form to let them know you've completed casting." So then it's only later (a matter of milliseconds, but it's surely later) that the AM-5th-tick gets to the head of the side-effects queue and says "hey I'm a spell and I've just completed casting" and the teller says, "okay you're arcane school, so lemme check here if any buffs are affected by this... ah yes here's one - 'arcane blast buff', I'll get the boys to remove this one." (Which also incidentally leads to the arcane blast buff getting into the side-effect queue to let other parts of the system know he's done now.)

So you see that unless they radically overhaul their engine that this kind of delayed behaviour is inherent to the system and in order to fix this they'd have to do something like what manly suggested. E.g. the first tick of AM would already get into the side effects queue to tell the system to change the AB3 buff such that it would only apply to that specific AM and no other arcane spells after this.

I was considering making a macro for an opening encounter /castsequence AB,AB,PoM,AB,AM and manually casting ABarr before 5th tick of AM. Then carrying on with the cycle of AB,AB,AB,AM,Abarr before 5th tick manually until i get used to the rotation. Also i thought perhaps saving IV and AP until PoM had finished on cd, so i could cast all three gaining arcane potency whilst AP was up. You could possibly throw your mana gem in there as well but i only use it when i actuallly need mana and not so much as a trinket.

According to Rawr, MBAM is higher dps than AB at 3 stack. So the highest DPS rotation is spam Arcane Blast until MB procs, then ramp up to 3 stack and MBAM-ABarr combo. For me, this is the rotation that Rawr suggests any time I'm under Icy Veins and Arcane Power.

I have a few concerns with Arcane.

1. People on the wow fourms QQ about Abarr so it might get nerfed in some form
2. How will Arcane Scale Vs. FFB spec once uldar gear comes out.

I dont want to regem and waste money for me to go back to FFB if thats the case. Also its much more difficult to keep enough mana to keep spam casting normal rotation. I have 22k Mana (buffed)and I had no Mana CD's so I had to do Ab+Abarr rotation to conserve mana on patchwerk last night. Did 5k dps with my gear until I was ooming out dropped to 4.6k. But I am gemmed and Itemized for FFB spec at the moment. Also the new change to JoW sucks.

Drop points from Arcane Focus and Precision to fit your gear. The extra points can go into things like Arcane Stability, Magic Absorption, Instant Invis, Ice Shards, and even Frost Warding. While none of these talents are tremendous for you dps, they can help in certain situations and it is better than wasting points that put you way over the hit cap.

I would guess Rogue are also able to trigger TtW, but it is only worth mentioning for completeness, as it is not reliable in pve:
Riposte, 10+1pt Combat, requires the rogues parries an attack.
Waylay, 35+2pt Subtlety, requires a critical Ambush.

Waylay is generally not taken in pve builds, because it does 0 dps for the rogue, but if taken (pvp build on farm content ?), it might allow for the buff to be present at pull (Tricks + stealthed Ambush).

I made the switch from Frostfire to Arcane, because of the subpar gear that I have on my mage (Karakthuul, Archimonde. I would provide a direct link but Armory is giving me a "guild not found" error when looking for any character on it).

Without raid buffs, I IMMEDIATELY noted a significant DPS increase, even before I picked up the Arcane Blast glyph, and without popping cooldowns or getting the rotation 100% correct. I did 25-man Archavon and Sartharion last night, and managed to significantly up my contribution.

Some thoughts:

I took Magic Absorption rather than Magic Attunement. I'm going to change this. There were too many times where movement put me outside 30y range, and I couldn't DPS. 6 extra yards is significant.

I use the cycle of ABx3, AM, Abr (attempting to clip the 5th missile when lag permits). While very mana intensive, I found that I was able to get through MOST of the 25 man boss using gems and pots and glyphed mage armor, and evocated close to the end on the last ticks of IV. My DPS was still higher than FFB despite evocation. With 2 piece T7 (both for the mana gem boost and the additional spirit) and better gem management, I might have gotten through without evocate. I waited too long to pop a gem in the fight and only got two uses instead of 3.

I have a macro that is Trinket + PoM + AP + IV + Arcane Blast which is separate from the plain AB button. My rotation is 2 normal ABs + Macro, which pops cooldowns for the 3rd AB when they are up and provided quite a few nice AB crits.

As for actual numbers, my previous DPS in most 25 mans was 1.9-2.2k with 95% DPS time. Again, horribly undergeared for most content, only 1400 sp as FFB.

As Arcane, my DPS is 2.6k with the same gear, and only 88% DPS time (Archavon kept running and leaping out of range, see my first thought).

I don't have the clipping down 100%, I don't have the range talent, and I'm completely new to arcane, and my boost was still significant.

Is AM worth using without Missile Barrage?

Personally I tried AB AB AB then ABarr or if MB proc then MBArr ABArr, but never found AB AB AB AM ABArr to be any good.

I've changed my specc to 57/3/11 using the castsequence mentioned earlier in this thread.

/castsequence Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage

But i wonder if there is some way to reset the castsequence once you get OOC. As it kinda sucks to start a fight out with AM or barrage.

I have the same point of contention as dustwhisper. It seems to me that dropping AM out of the rotation until you gain an MB proc would yield higher dps.

Creating a rotation that would look like AB AB AB ABarr --> AB AB (MB proc) AB AM ABarr --> etc...

Also, while under the affect of IV, AP, Speed Potion, BL/Heroism, would the ideal rotation be the same? Or would ignoring the MB proc and just spamming AB be the way to go until the last tick of IV upon which you would evocate and then resume the normal rotation listed above?

With your gear, are you hit capped? I was hit capped with a Shadow Priest, or Boomkin in the raid, which for a while was a pretty reliable assumption until recently. Assuming you are not hit capped, and have no sPriest or Boomkin in raid, arcane will be superior to FFB due to the extra hit you receive from talents, I was noticing my dps was around 300dps higher than the next highest mage in Naxx25 Tuesday night, and that with a rotation that only utilized AM on MBarr procs. So that should account for some of your dps increase. I haven't been able to test against a hit capped FFB spec yet, other than what I was hitting dps-wise pre-patch, but my dps is higher than it was with a FFB spec while hit-capped thanks to our Shadow Priest. And I can only assume I will be doing even better dps as I have begun to use the accepted ABx3 AM ABarr rotation.

I was actually hit capped before. In fact, I ran the full 368 instead of 289 I needed when I was FFB (double dipping) to prevent pyro/scorch/LB issues, which caused my crit to drop because I had to swap out crit gear. I was NOT fully hit capped last night, ran with 245 hit. My miss on the WWS was 3%, which is about right with RNG. So I could get another 70-80DPS out of putting on my additional hit gear. I didn't realize I was running under hit cap because I was pulled in for some missing guildies last minute. So technically, my DPS went up despite my hit going down.

Arcane is very gear forgiving, it appears.

Here is the problem with your reasoning:

What happens if on that 3rd AB you proc MB? You just wasted your debuff on ABarr.

20% of the time you will proc on the 1st AB
16% of the time you will proc on the 2nd AB
12.8% of the time you will proc on the 3rd AB

I'm curious on this as well. Could someone confirm that max average crit damage on AB should be:

((1185+1377/2) + (Spell Power * .8043)) * 1.06 * 1.03 * 1.12 * 1.3 * 1.6 * 1.8175

1.06 = Spell Impact
1.03 = Arcane Instability
1.12 = Torment of the Weak
1.3 = Arcane Power
1.6 = 3x AB stack
1.8175 = Crit multiplier with CSD meta gem

Now, if I assume 2500 raid buffed spell power, + 225 from 2piece tier 7, plus 2 590 SP damage procs at the same time, I have 3905 spell damage, 3141 of which AB will get. So max damage using this formula should be:

(1377 + 3141) * 1.06 * 1.03 * 1.12 * 1.3 * 1.6 * 1.8175 = 20,886.

That means 26k ab crits wouldn't be possible til about 4200 spell power applied. Are some people out there actually seeing raid buffed spell power with procs of just under 5200? Or do I have the math wrong?

Strangely AB3-ABarr with AM on procs is not higher dps than AB3-AM-ABarr, at least according to Rawr if you tell it to clip the 5th tick of AM. Rawr also reports it being 12% more mana efficient. I think this has to do with the fact that the chance to get a proc is high anyway [1 - (0.8 ^ 4)] ~= 60%, and consider that if it's the 3rd AB which procs, you've already pressed ABarr and have to spend more time again to ramp up for the AM-ABarr, maybe wasting another proc in the meantime. (Edit: ah I see bombdigie made the same point.)

Anyway, if you are looking for max dps rotation for use with cooldowns, the trick is to just spam AB until you get a barrage proc and make sure the stack is at 3 before doing AM-ABarr. But this is double the mana cost compared to AB3-AM-ABarr so you should actually really only use it on cooldowns unless you are sure to have enough mana.

Aren't you forgetting raid buffs and debuffs that increase dmg dealt by a percentage? Like 3% from ret aura and 13% from Curse of Elements?

I've seen high dps arcane parses where the mage has had Tricks of the Trade cycled on them rather than the tank, for example.

I recommend you have a look at the first post. I posted the full formula for pretty much any mage spell. You can see that you forgot to take into account arcane_empowerment and additionally COE.

Also, its 1.84475 with 4pct7.
And you used the wrong coefficient. Its 2.5/3.5 for AB and 3/3.5 for abarr.

The corrected formula would be

AB = ((1185+1377/2) + (Spell Power * (2.5/3.5 + 0.09))) * 1.13 * 1.06 * 1.03 * 1.12 * 1.3 * 1.6 * 1.84475
abarr = ((936+1144/2) + (Spell Power * 3/3.5)) * 1.13 * 1.03 * 1.12 * 1.3 * 1.6 * 1.84475

Using your numbers, 3905 spell damage, that would give:

AB = 23444.08
abarr = 21944.03

edit: actually I see you had precalculated arcane empowerment in your coefficient.

Wondering how much dps is lost by switching out to a 1Ab > 1Aba rotation. In my situation i am quite often running 10 mans without replenishment and wondering how much dps i will actually lose.

Indeed, it appears I did miss these. Are there any damage buffs beyond the 3% and 13%? I don't believe RA stacks with FI, and E&M does not stack for CoE. That would still be a 16% damage buff.

20886 * 1.16 = 24,227.

So yes, it would be much easier to get your 26k arcane blast crit.