DOH am actually 57/3/11 and NOT 18 >< sorry for the confusion.

Deadwizard, I took a moment to look both at your spec and your gear and I have a couple of suggestions that might help lead you toward more DPS and whether/when to use Mage Armor vs. Molten Armor.

First, in noting your gear, I see that you have almost *no* spirit on your items. You also have several items that use +crit in their itemization (over both hit and haste). You are currently standing at +6% hit (2% below the cap for arcane mages). First and foremost, you should be gearing toward reaching that cap (which is 210 or so hit rating). That linearly scales with your overall DPS. Secondly, swap items that have crit for haste where possible. But, before doing this, look for some items with a little spirit on them. This is because of the mana-intensive rotations that maximum DPS arcane spec requires.

If you are having mana troubles during a boss fight (likely), using a glyphed mage armor will help you somewhat. But, because you are severely lacking spirit, it isn't going to help you as much as it might. Ironically, if you have good raid support for mana, you may be able to get away with using Molten Armor. But, in your current gear, your better bet is to use Mage Armor, gear for hit, haste and spell power. As a matter of fact, you should prioritize: hit (to cap) > spell power > haste > int > spirit > crit as you swap over to better gear.

If you looked at my armory, you prolly saw my pure dps set which isn't capped. At start, i always have a Shadow Priest in my grp which gives me 3% to hit....with my 1% with heroic presence and a stack of +40hit to reach the desire +271hit rating (Must swap Forge trinket for the Mark of the war prisoner to get +73hit) which is my cap right now on level 83boss ^^



Since i mostly do 10mans pretty much, its hard for me to get good haste item over the crit one i have. I used to be FFB spec which is why you are seeing heavy crit rating. This is looked at closely but where i wasn't sure, it was about the spirit factor. I knew somehow i was low, but didn't know exactly the impact it had or how important it really was over other stats. Thank's guys for your input and am becoming more and more of a stat freak now helps me alot to understand whats going on behind all mechanics.

I have noticed a very large drop off in Arcane Damage since the most recent changes. My gear is improving every week yet my damage done seems to be the same. I basically have to get an innervate to compete with the 19/52 Mage in guild. My stats are great for Arcane as I have pushed hard to gear purely for the build

2154 spellpower, 18% crit and 500+ haste.

I am curious what glyphs are being used. I currently am using Arcane Blast, Arcane Missile and Mage Armour.

I tried switching to a AB03[MBAM] rotation but I am still seeing more dps from AB3[MBAM]ABarr.

The last thing I want to ask about is macro's. I have not been able to find a reliable listing of Mage macros that people use.

As far as I can remember from reading through this thread glyph of Molten Armor is supposed to be the better DPS choice, even with the mana regen provided by glyph of Mage Armor. Your rotation seems fine with AB3[mbar]Abar, I use the same rotation and I haven't seen a significant decline in my DPS.

Manly does a pretty good job of keeping the first page updated with the most recent changes. It would behoove you to read that as it has quite a bit of good information. The cycles you are using are outdated and no longer optimal to use at any point in time. Mage armor vs Molten armor has and probably always will be debatable. Any dps simulation will tell you to use molten armor (always) unless you are way undergeared. Lots of people still use mage armor.

Glyphs: AB and AM are required. Mage Armor / Molten armor (depending which one you choose) after that. AP is close behind if I'm not mistaken, but generally not used.

As for macros, I put [nochanneling] in front of my AB, AM, and Abarr to make sure I'm not interrupting my AMs. It's a slight dps drop but I prefer to be able to just spam my buttons rather than try to time my next AB to the end of my AM without clipping the last missile (or sometimes wasting time because of lag). The other macro(s) I use are just a button tied to AB that uses all my cooldowns (and another one with MI tied into it). I had to make 2 because the macro with MI breaks if MI is not cooled down and will not cast the AB (not sure why). Depending on how the fights going, I can either spam this button to use any cooldown as it comes up, or I can use my normal AB and then hit this one to pop whatever is available at any given time.

Are you asking if mage Slow triggering TtW is a bug, or frostfire bolt not triggering TtW is a bug? If you are asking about the first case, no it is not a bug, it is deliberate addition by Blizzard. In the case where all your tanks like giving the healers aneurysms and causing more raid wipes by not having an attack speed debuff, mages can cast Slow so TtW will be active. TtW will be active because of Slow's ranged attack speed reduction. For the latter, frostfire bolt not triggering TtW is not a bug on bosses, because you cannot affect the movement speed for boss mobs. TtW will be active with frostbolt snare and frostfire bolt snare on non-boss mobs.

You know, I've been leveling my mage as a kind of pure Arcane spec and I've been getting a lot of 'Immune' messages when putting Slow on bosses. There are exceptions, but in 5-mans, it doesn't seem like Slow sticks to many bosses. I wonder why that would be different in raids now that they changed it so that melee attack speed debuffs activate TtW as opposed to just Slow and Cripple (Doomguard). Has anyone raiding tested to see if Slow sticks to bosses post 3.0.8?

[quote=Raencloud;1109712]Manly does a pretty good job of keeping the first page updated with the most recent changes. It would behoove you to read that as it has quite a bit of good information. The cycles you are using are outdated and no longer optimal to use at any point in time. Mage armor vs Molten armor has and probably always will be debatable. QUOTE]

I check the main page every day.

AB AB AB ([mbarr] or abarr) is equal to AB3[MBAM]ABarr
AB3+ [mbarr] is very similiar to AB03[MBAM] the difference is hitting MBAM on 0-3+ stacks AB, vs the notation Manly has of only casting MBAM on 3+.

My cycles are exactly what everyone has been discussing for the past 2 weeks.

My issue is that for some reason I am not seeing any increase to my dps yet in the past two weeks I have jumped from 1900 spellpower to 2100+ and 300 haste to 500 haste. This confuses me and I have been trying to figure it out. I normally can work these things out on my own but after a few solid days of testing I am baffled.

I am going to use your suggestion of tying a few cooldowns to my AB hotkey as I find with the CD change on AP I am missing it too often.

We have Malygos and Sarth Thursday night and I will use that time to try and re-solidify my standard rotation. I have always found Maylgos a great fight to go balls out on and not worry about mana.

I think you may be confused on the notation that manly is using in the first post.

Most of us are taking AB3[MBAM]ABarr to mean:
With Missile Barrage Proc: AB AB AB AM ABarr
Without Missile Barrage Proc: AB AB AB ABarr

Whereas AB AB AB ([mbarr] or abarr) means:
With Missile Barrage Proc: AB AB AB AM
Without Missile Barrage Proc: AB AB AB ABarr

The difference is if you cast ABarr at 0 stacks of AB after a Missile Barrage AM at 3 stacks. After 3.0.9 it is generally accepted that this ABar at 0 stacks is no longer worth it.

No I am not confused, I think the variations of notation just confuses people. I should have thrown the (or) in mine to avoid confusion. The only time ABarr is cast with a zero stack is when I need be moving. It's not worth it with the nerf to the coef.

My rotation is;
With Missile Barrage Proc: AB AB AB AM
Without Missile Barrage Proc: AB AB AB ABarr


I don't just take whats printed on the front page and believe it's canon. I test and do the math THEN check my findings against what guys like Manly and Kavan etc get. I rarely post on these boards and when I do it's not meant to be for discussion on rotation shorthand.

The be perfectly fair, the AM glyph is very much responsible as well. Its not just the coefficient nerf that caused the rotations to change.


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Also, while of no particular interest, I (finally) updated the spreadsheet on the ffb thread (which supports arcane and frost) to support the new 3.0.9 mechanics (new abarr coefficients, am glyph, new AP values). Also fixed a bug where AP increased dot damage (yay more fireball dot damage..).

Also added AB mana cost formula

Last night as we were finishing up maly, i was joking a bit with our priest saying that now that mages are arcane we are going to roll on all cloth with spirit. Afterwards i became curious towards how close gearing up in healer gear could get you to be able to spam AB like in the "good" old t5 days..

Playing around in simcraft told me that a pure ab spam in a 5 min bossfight with my current gear (1000 int, 400 spi unbuffed) and got the following results:

With AP, POM and IV in the rotation i would be idle around 25% and lack around 1000 dps, and without AP, POM and IV idle time would drop to 22% but i would lack around 1500 dps.

Testing in Simcraft showed that if i add 100 mp5 would bring idle time down with 3%, 100 int also 3% and 100 spi was worth 2%.

Now i wonder how close one could actually get to a point where stacking int/spi/mp5 could be sustainable? I noticed on wws that a lot of guild take down bosses in nax25 way faster then 5 min, and on shorter fights it should be even easier to sustain a pure AB spam.. Do i miss something, or is it impossible to stack enough int/spi/mp5 while maintaining enought hit/spell/haste/crit to surpass our current rotations?

Probably a philosphical question:

Any other reason (one I do not see atm) for changing the effect of mage armor glyphe except that its current effect would lead to a regen of more than 100%?
It is of course strange someway, but 120% while and 100% manareg while not casting, for example, would still lead to manaregen during breaks in bossfights, as you don't consume any mana in the latter case.

But... why?

Seems like a lot of work (re-gearing, angering warlocks and priests) to become a) POSSIBLY higher damage and b) DEFINITELY more boring to play.

Just a thought experiment, there should really be a large improvement if i should "steal" the gear from our healers and return to a pure spam playstyle..

Well, of course Slow counting towards TtW is not a bug.

However, FFB is a very odd case because it DOES count for the DK Glyph of Blood Strike as I cited before, but I have heard no mention of that as being a bug. Notice in that link I posted they say:

http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t38659-b...ched_yo_uncle/

So, essentially the problem that comes up is that a FFB mage can provide utility from Scorch and FFB (for any DKs using the glyph). However, a deep fire mage can bring Scorch too, but provides no benefit for the DK. Since the normal snares on bosses that work for TtW such as Frost Feaver, etc. that tanks apply don't count for the DK, it seems like, unless you have no DKs using the rune, there is no reason to ever bring a deep fire mage UNLESS they provide more dps than an arcane mage.

The last simcraft I saw that compared the two specs still showed Arcane mages as higher dps than 20/51/0, but this was before the shatter bug was fixed and the 3.0.9. changes were applied. Playing around with Rawr, I still find that a similarly geared mage still comes as higher dps than 20/51/0. If this is the case, then I'm honestly a bit confused as to how the build has become so popular since it only really fits into a very niche raid makeup.


Anyways, to get back on subject, has no one heard any blue response on classifications of snares and why some seemingly work while others that as a result should work as well, don't?

Also, is it possible to add to the front page a list of what does and doesn't work with TtW? I've had several mages ask me about this and it seems like it would help a lot of people to have it there instead of in bits and pieces throughout the middle of this thread.




@ Sendag: Switching to arcane does seem to change optimal gear around to stuff that has spirit. Take a look at the optimal gear sets from the post in the mage section and play around with stuff a bit. For example, Gothik's Cowl with the other 4pT7.5 tends to come up as highest dps for a FFB/deep fire mage, but for an arcane mage, using The Sanctum's Flowing Vestments with 4pT7.5 comes up higher.

uhm bit confused what rotation is best now after ABarr nerf. People on page 53 talks about ABx3 then Abarr for normal rotation, that is also what vontre wrote on page 45. But manly said on page 46 that the new normal rotation is ABx3 then AM?

Under the current rules, regen while casting is capped at 100%. So either they have to change that, change the Mage Armor glyph, or just leave it and have it not be very good.

First of all, the highest dps cycle currently is not AB Spam, it's AB Spam, MBAM at 3 stacks when it procs. Secondly, each additional mana gets you on average 1.8 damage switching cycles to ABSpam3MBAM from AB3ABar3MBAM. This is not a very large increase. However, because of the low arcane hit cap, and the current sucky itemization, there are a couple slots where gear with spirit is best in slot (mostly because it's ilevel 226 and doesn't have hit). Unless Blizzard continues this trend of not providing gear without spirit/hit for chest/waist/boots/wrists/wands/offhands, this is unlikely to continue to be the case in Ulduar. Yes there really are no ilevel 213+ items we can wear without spirit or hit for any of those slots.

Arcane in WotLK is unlike Arcane in TBC. We have a much wider variety of cycles to choose from, and a much small dpm tradeoff between the sustainable ones and the max dps one. Because of this, the value of additional mana is lessened.

Edit, @above:
Read the first post. Use the highest rotation on that list that you can sustain. Depending on your gear/raid setup, this might be ABx3 AM all the time (slighly slow dps and mana used), or ABx3 ABarr replacing ABar with AM on procs (higher dps and mana used). During cooldowns, spam AB and use Arcane Missiles at 3 stacks of the AB debuff when Missile Barrage procs.

Personally, I've found that AB3ABar3MBAM is sustainable, so I've been mostly using that as my normal rotation.

These are the exact changes I was pondering.

Mage Armor may be overkill for me atm, I really haven't noticed myself having to deviate from standard rotation and have been able to AB3+[MBAM] quite alot.

I will switch my spec and glyphs tonight and see what results I get.

@Manly

You are definitely correct. AM glyph is another big reason for the small change.

The front page is updated with the correct rotation.

Oki thats whats i wanted to know since abx3 abarr is not listed on front page without AP. So thats still more dps then using AM as last then. ty.