I am unclear as to how well a 20k mana pool sustains AB3 -> x for any ammount of time longer than a mana dump for max burst dmg. Note I am not questioning if it is possible, just wondering how maintainable?

I spent some time at the test dummy last night with a SPriest and a Ret Pally.

Vampiric / JoW / Wisdom buffs for regen

I am able to keep an AB3 -> (MBAM on proc) ->Abar rotation for roughly 1:15
I am able to keep an AB2 -> (MBAM on proc) ->Abar rotation for roughly 2:40
I am able to keep an AB1 -> (MBAM on proc) ->Abar rotation for roughly 8:45

(I am sorry I have no stats to back this, but it is just rough estimates)

What I was happy to see was that even at the AB1 low cycle, I was maintaining 3200 dps on the dummy.

How much does mana regen improve for you guys in a raid setting? Again note that I had a SPriest with me and JoW up on my test dummy.

Also, I must have missed this in another post but haven't found it yet ... where are you getting the 60% increase from with AB at full stack? Shouldn't that only be 45%? I am missing a piece of the puzzle here on where the last 15% is derived.

Edit : Was able to find the source for the final 15%

So I played arcane yesterday on sarth/malygos. If anything, it was a harsh reality check and good reminder of why I would never play deep fire without burnout. Pushback resistance is not something negligible. I meant to type this a few hours back but EJ was lagging out.

I think there are many options, and that arcane builds should all include at least some points in pushback protection. The options are many:

-Arcane Subtlety
-Arcane Focus
-Magic Absorption
-Arcane Mind

There are some immediate contenders. I do believe that 2pt Arcane Subtlety is somewhat overkill. Magic Absorption is a hit and miss. It can be awesome and it can also do absolutely nothing. Generally in pve though, I just don't see why I would need it. Arcane can sustain its mana. I don't need extra mana under some fights. However, what I really want is pushback protection. Now that does comes up quite a bit on boss fights. As far as I'm concerned, its somewhat a no-brainer. I instinctively put 2/2 magic absorption over spirit, but I never thought it through.

Already that gives 3 points at a relatively cheap cost pt-wise. 60% pushback protection is quite considerable. Now comes the harder decisions. And to that I add a point of contention:

Is it worth taking the last 2 point of Arcane Stability ?

I am asking because on pushback fights I could conceivably assume I will have Concentration Aura. But do I want to rely on it ?

The next best bet is taking points away from Arcane Focus and Arcane Mind. Granted, its easy to come up with the extra hit rating, but you do lose 1% DPM. Arcane Mind, well, I think that one is a judgement call. With this said I did update the build on the first post.

edit: updated build
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=012004000000

I had like 21k on my 25man naxx run last night. I didn't really have any mana issues. I think I used 2 mana pots during the night to avoid using evo. I did ABx3 pretty much the entire time.

Although I am not quite geared to be arcane spec (15.71% hit rating self buffed @.@) and a pretty bad gear setup (no spirit and not sp).

Here was my patchwerk from last night, it was actually the first time attempting to use ABx3 + AM/ABarr cycle EVER.

Wow Web Stats

I had both mana tide and mana spring. It was my first time raiding with this guild so I wasn't used to their kill time so I used my set of cooldowns at bad times, but I still managed 4.5k dps. But I barely did better than a FFB mage due to my inexperience with clipping the 5th missile and huge server lag.

If a boss is at let's say 15%, and I still have a ton of mana + my mana gem up, is it better to just spam AB until he dies, or maybe spam ABx3 and MBAM?

Later that night, during Maly25, when we BL'ed a 2 stack of sparks, I just basically popped cooldowns and spammed AB until phase 2, where then I evocated. I'm not sure if its the BEST use of my mana but with 1.5s 45-48k crits, it was just too nice to pass up. Should I have done this differently?

Edit: I run molten and had huge mana issues. Should I consider mage then? To save myself 8s every 2 minutes versus 5% crit?

JoW would be so nice for arcane if it was max mana still.

I was yesterday naxx.

I used ABx3/AM/ABarr. Its impossible to go oom with Managem and Evocation on cooldown, and with Netherwind Presence i have more than 22% haste!

Here you can find the logs Wow Web Stats
Also Armory if you are interested: The World of Warcraft Armory

I don't know your typical raid composition, but even 1 holy paladin in the raid would typically use it to protect their own casts, even if not talented.

What you said is mostly true, except Rawr still insists on using Molten Armor over Mage Armor even for very long fights (though the gap gets closer with increasing fight duration).

Isn't it far more advantagious to shed some Hit from your gear to make room for more Spellpower and take the freebie 6% Hit from talent points? I know I would never waste time with Hit on gear if it was being given to me for free. If your gear has too much hit, then you don't have optimal Arcane gear.

Though my interest is in mana to dmg conversion and not utility, so that may skew my perspective.

That is exactly my point. He doesn't have optimal Arcane gear. And neither do I. In a raid setting with 3/3 Arcane Focus and 3/3 Precision, the alliance hit cap is 7% spell hit. That is a laughable number and it is hard to NOT have it.

As Manly stated, spell pushback is a big deal with Arcane. So much of a deal that people are searching for talents that they can drop to put points into Arcane Stability. 1/3 Arcane Focus and 1/2 Arcane Subtlety can give you 5/5 Arcane Stability (with the 2 throw around points) and remove all pushback issues. And to sacrifice what? 20% threat reduction you don't need, 2% mana cost reduction you will barely notice, and a little less spirit on your gear (assuming your optimal 7% hit set includes spirit pieces).

Few people have access to an optimal Arcane set of gear. 7% spell hit gear will have a lot of pieces with spirit, which until Tuesday most Mages avoided.

Just because someone doesn't evocate or go OOM by the end of the fight, does not mean they are not hitting their max dps. It just means they have more mp5 and external mana support than you do, or are downing bosses a hell of a lot faster than you are. I think most of the folks responding to this thread understand how DPM plays into Arcane. This isn't old school arcane where you could literally trade all your mana for more and more dps. You can, obviously, spend all your mana with the new iteration of AB, but you are not getting more and more dps in exchange. It tops out now, so there is not much point in doing non-stop AB spam.

Yes it is. Also those same talents give you 1% reduced mana cost per point. Hit over the cap carries no value. So on purple pieces with 40+ hit you just may be better off finding a blue replacement or those purples that always get DEed.

Hah [Dying Curse] just went from our 2nd best in slot, to 3rd or 4th. I've always hated the hit mechanic.

I saw a few players suggesting Arcane builds without Arcane Stability and instinctively ignored them for a build that does. Whats one of the most frustrating things that can happen to an arcane mage? Interrupted evocation is probably the worst, but interrupted Arcane Missiles is not far off. The spell itself is clunky, high mana up front anyway, which makes it very frustrating to *ever* get interrupted. Perhaps my memory is tainted from the TBC version of the spell - and that it won't be so bad now if AM is used mostly on 2.5 second MB procs, but the same sentiment lingers.

My final build was this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Edit - Picking up slow is just personal preference. I can't imagine being an Arcane mage without it, for only 1 talent point. Has nothing to do with other tanks being able to apply snares for TTW.

The main point is we are seeking full pushback prevention and deciding over whats best to drop to make room for it. I only picked up 4/5 Arcane Intellect. But perhaps this is a mistake due to intellect+replenishment having terrific synergy? I don't particularly want the unnecessary hit from Arcane Focus and reason that i'll manage fine without the associated +3% mana cost reduction to spells.

I agree with an above posters that "2 points in Arcane Subtlety is probably overkill". Personally, I wouldn't drop below 4/5 (80%) pushback prevention, so I think it would be quite reasonable to have your first tier of arcane as 1/2 Subtlety and 4/5 Stability. Getting only 3/5 (60%) Pushback prevention seems a little counterintuitive to me (Get 100% or nothing, I'd say) , but it's going to be highly subjective between players whether they agree with th at.

---

With all this in mind, i'd recommend a base build similar to this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

There are 3 spare talent points which you will place in either:

- Slow (Taking 1/1)
- Arcane Subtlety (Upgrading from 1/2 to 2/2)
- Arcane Stability (Upgrading from 4/5 to 5/5)
- Arcane Intellect (Upgrading from 4/5 to 5/5)
- Arcane Focus (Upgrading from 0/3 to X/3)

It's all just personal preference, really. Are you happy without full pushback prevention? Do you really want that extra couple % hit - etc? Do you trust your tanks enough to take only 1/2 Subtlety?

The morale of this story is, pushback prevention is probably something people shouldn't really skip over lightly. It might not be needed in every fight, but in the fights where pushback is abundant - it's very frustrating to have to deal with.

Anyone else notice that the Arcane Blast debuff is now dispellable again!

I tested the optimal DPS specc for arcane the last 2 nights. DPS ranged 500-700 more than our FFB mage. We spent most of the time wiping on 3 drakes OS, but I have the parses for the fight for review. I tried to shatter proc AB when I could with AM. I was also running the rotation ABx3, AB. Only using AM when it procced with 3 stacks. I will try ABx3 AM AB shatter tonight. Anyways here is a comparison on WWS with 2 arc mages and an FFB mage for those interested in how stats might look, our gear is comparable.

Wow Web Stats

Mana was an issue for me a few times, but only when I would get an evocate interuppted. We also didn't down Sarth, so I don't have a full fight length mana log. I have always been an arcane fan, so I have played with the=is tree for a while, and have learned to get some good numbers.

If that is a purely PVE build, I'm curious as to why you used a point to get slow instead of 5/5 Arcane mind. ToTW is active as long as Infected wounds or Thunder Clap is up on a boss thus rendering the GCD used to cast slow on the boss useless and a waste of DPS.

Edit: Misread

To respond to a few of the things I've seen posted in the last few pages, the curiosity of how many points to put into Arcane Stability, or what spell to use PoM with, or whether or not to get slow.

With regards to the Arcane Stability argument, it was stated on page 3 with a detailed breakdown that you should put either 1/3/5 points in as the 2 or 4 points in are a waste of a point due to the fact that they allow the same number of missles through. All in all though, some points should be put in for pushback reduction because raid-wide damage is a significant factor of a lot of the fights in the current content.

Now correct me if I'm wrong please, but I read that some people were arguing that you should use PoM on a Arcane Blast to increase the speed of ramping up the 60% damage boost buff; more specifically, the third Arcane Blast as opposed to the first two. They argued that using the PoM on the third AB will get a bigger crit damage because you'd have already ramped up 40% more damage. That is true that you'd have ramped the buff up to its 2nd mark thus giving 40% more damage, but that damage would only work on any other arcane spell NOT including Arcane Blast. The Arcane Potency talent is what gives the 30% crit chance increase after using PoM and not a crit dmg increase thus the damage would be the same. So does it really matter which AB to use the PoM on?

My last point would be whether or not to get the Slow talent. Once again I'm not trying to step on any toes here but doesn't the Slow debuff not work on raid bosses (skull level 83)? If I'm wrong with that point, it doesn't really change my argument. Ideally you should have some kind of tank on the boss keeping their slow effect up to gain the 12% damage increase from Torment of the Weak. Whether that be a Warrior with thunderclap, a Druid with infected wounds, a Pally with Judgement of the Just, or a DK with frost fever (can come from a DPS DK too). Now if you have to worry about trying to keep up with the AB>AB>AB>AM>clip with ABarr rotation and watch your gems, evocation and all the other timers, do you really want to be worrying about having to keep a Slow debuff up on the boss as well when the tank is almost guaranteed to do it for you? Not to mention the fact of casting Slow would waste a global cooldown which hurts your overall DPS.

I've been thinking a bit on which point in the rotation to use POM. Now bear with me here but what if you ramped up your arcane blast using AB > AB > AB. At which point you would then use POM. You use your arcane missles with the 60% dmg buff and 30% crit buff, and also using ABarr and clipping the 5th missle you gain the 60% dmg and 30% crit for your ABarr as well. Once you have used your ABarr you then use IV and AP and discharge your POM on a AB and begin spamming AB until the last tick of IV at which point you would use Evocate.

The rotation would look like this:
(fight begins) AB > AB > AB > POM > AM > (clipped) ABarr > AP/IV/MI > (instant)AB > AB > AB...etc > Evocate > resume normal rotation of AB > AB > AB > AM > ABarr

edit: deleted due to double post due to lag

I believe it has already been ascertained that casting AM with POM active will result in POM being consumed by the first pulse of AM.

Thank you very much for the clarification, I didn't catch that part of the tooltip

That would be a very good use of PoM and "double-dip the clip" as they say. Get the 60% damage increase and the 30% crit increase on both the AM and the ABarr! I'll have to try that out to see if it works!

Arcane Potency is consumed at the beginning of the AM cast. Leaving you with PoM still up after the AM, but no more Arcane Potency. (Literally just tested it.)

What about dropping 2/2 Arcane Potency to get 5/5 Arcane Stability?

something along these lines:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Is Arcane Potency that much of a DPS boost? Is it worth more than getting 100% push back protection?