People keep confusing the talent:

with actual judgements with similar names (such as Justice). There's just no way to determine from the debuff tooltip if the paladin judgement also applies the talent, which then enables TTW. My Power Auras trigger string includes paladin judgements, but it means it can also flag false positives. I think you can assume that any target tanked by a protection paladin will have the talent applied. Warrior tanks seem to be the least reliable source of attack speed slows (thunderclap).

I will try to make it clear for those who never played a paladin.

There a 3 different judgements:

Judgement of Light - Spell - World of Warcraft
Judgement of Wisdom - Spell - World of Warcraft
Judgement of Justice - Spell - World of Warcraft

All of those judgements can trigger Torment the Weak but only if the paladin has the talent:

Judgements of the Just - Spell - World of Warcraft

As TigaFin said, there is no way to determine from the debuff tooltip if the paladin has that talent. But neither Holy Paladins nor Retribution will have it. Only Protection Paladin should have it.

Don't forget frost armor/ice armor procs. They also trigger TtW.

I think we're focusing on raiding though. When raid-specced (frost/TTW) and doing daily quests, I'm usually using ice armor to keep TTW up. I wouldn't try that on Patchwerk and it's not going to be very effective on raid trash either.

Why not use Frostfire Bolt on the pull to keep TTW up? It ends up being a wash since with FB spam with Ice Armor because you have to wait for your target to get to you before TTW applies.

Sometimes I do, but the initial frostbolt casts faster, does more damage, costs less mana and the mob is within easy reach for looting by the time it's dead. I also get far more FoF procs from ice armor procs than from my own FFBs or frostbolts. With ice barrier up, pushback isn't a problem on normal world mobs. It's not elegant by any means, but it just works. To be honest, it just makes me hate the frostbolt glyph more than ever.

I have been the 57/3/11 spec for quite some time, I'm almost in what you would call "optimal" Arcane gear. Here is my question about what is going to happen to Arcane in 3.1

A few people have said that blizzard is pushing us to the 18/53/0 spec, which I have been before, but do not enjoy quite as much. I get innervates from 3 druids per boss fight (evil grin) and mana isn't really an issue as of now. Is this spec going to survive all of the changes of 3.1, or is the 57/3/11 going to die out, or be reborn as a new spec for Arcane.

Thank you in advance, long time reader, first time poster! All of your advice and number crunching has made me a much better mage than I would of been on my own

In Ulduar there are many boss fights with random AoE that can interrupt your evocations, that's one of the reasons most mages will not be speccing it. Also I wouldn't ever count on getting an innervate from a druid in ulduar until you have it on farm status.

So how much time do you spend on AB spam each fight?

Well, as you can see in this thread and news sites like mmo champ, there really aren't any changes in the pipe for arcane.

There are important differences between the fights we'll be seeing come 3.1 and the fights were used to, as mentioned above. And if you're talking about comparing arcane with the TTW/Fireball spec, there are some relevant changes in the patch that I can summarize:

Raid crit debuff (imp. scorch) reduced from 10% crit to 5%
Molten armor changes and molten armor glyph
Living Bomb glyph introduced
3% nuke crit from imp. scorch talent

As you can see, these changes don't amount to that much, other than on the whole fire probably got a slight buff compared to the other trees. If arcane is a viable alternative to fire specs before the patch it stands to reason it will still be viable. At this point all we can do is speculate, and to that gloomy collection of pre-emptive complaining and premature obituaries I'll add that there's one element of Uldular fights that might favor arcane mages. Periodic damage increasing buffs should provide more benefit to the mage with his own cooldowns and elective cycles to pair with the encounter's buff, rather than the mage whose significant buffs in the fight are molten fury, bloodlust, and the haste potion.

I think im one of the few mages still playing arcane with 3.1 and heres the reason:

1.) There are fights like Malygos, where u get dmgamplifier, these fights depend on good burst in short times and arcane was ALWAYS on top @ Malygos. (By on top i mean 1000-1500 dps ahead)

2.) The threadeduction of the firespec is a joke. Taking into account that (at least in my guild) most of the ecounter will get tanked by deathknights, which build up the least threat of all tanks your going to stop your dmg for threat ALOT. Thinking about the T8pc4-bonus this even gets worse. 2 crits in a row. lb with glyph maybe just ending and crit for 4-5k, the one fireball which you were casting while hotstreak procced (crit for ~50%) + the pyroblast which you can cast 2 times in a row if t8 proccs... now just think about standing in the Shadow Crash of General Vezax.... And thats someting that happens REALLY often to me. There is no way you wont going to pull aggro or go invis/stop dmg to dont, which makes you loose a lot of dmg, while arcane is pulling ahead with 40% threatreduce and fullburst in this scenario.

3.) on Ptr i started icy veins a bit later to evo with the last tick of hero+icy veins, which lets you fight at least 4 minutes without any thoughts about fuckin up an evo.

4.) I just love arcane

My thoughts :<

How do you sustain you're mana using Molten armor?? I ask because I've been raiding arcane for a while and I've been at 23k for some time now and I still can't use molten armor without going oom too much. I use the AB3 (3MBAM or ABarr) rotation and I've changed my rotation to try to adapt to molten armor and my dps drops significantly (went from 5k on patch using mage armor to about 4.5k using molten). I use the mage armor glyph because it allows me to sustain the 2 minute rotation, but only barely so I can't go all out on CDs after the initial mana burn. All the "good" mages on my sever use mage armor, so I'm just curious as to how molten is better. I don't trust the RAWR conclusions because that simulation assumes everything goes perfectly which it never does and I feel that mage armor allows better dps in the less then perfect conditions.

@ omnia: Yes Icy Veins protects evocation from push back.

icy veins last 20 seconds, arcane power 15 seconds. With hero+icy veins my evocation channels for about 4 seconds. It needs a bit training to time it right, but after 5 trys its totally easy, especially with poweraura (addon) set, so that i can see the actual time left of ap / icyveins etc.

Screen
Tells me about Innervate, Powerinfusion, Arcane Power, Icy Veins, Trinketprocc + health and mbamproccs

edit: oh and i forgot to say. yes if u start a spell with icy veins, it still gets protected after icy veins is gone!

You have to pay attention to how much mana you have left and when your cooldowns are coming up and swap to a lower mps cycle (AB2AM) if you're going to go OOM before your gem or evocation is ready. I believe in current gear there is not really a large difference, however in 3.1 with Ulduar gear, the Molten Armor change, and the Mage Armor glyph no longer effective, Molten Armor will likely pull ahead by a significant margin.

Omnia's question was if using Evocation at the last instant of Icy Veins protects the entire channel from pushback, which I've seen claimed but never really been sure works (can't test it myself at the moment).

Ya I've changed to that rotation to make my mana last but then my dmg really plummets. (I don't have hard number right now unfortunately). I've also done AB3AM the whole time and that too is a little better on the mana, but not as much dmg as using the regular rotation with mage armor. Personally I'm excited about the spirit changes because it will allow me to glyph mana gem since mage armor won't need a glyph to be just as effective and the mana gem will allow for even more leeway with AB spamming.

Mage armor's buff from 30% to 50% is only to compensate for the 40% spirit regen nerf, it's not just as effective as the currently glyphed mage armor, though it is true that the mage armor glyph is kinda gimp with only a 20% increase =/

I meant just as effective when paired with the 50% from Arcane Meditation. You'll be at 100% mana regen in combat and the way I understand the spirit change is that it's real effect will be on out of combat mana regen, so if we lose some out of combat regen, but have 100% in combat it will even out, the mana gem will be an added boost to that to allow for the AB spam longer.

And I do always have the mana for AB3AM. My point is that in my experience, both my own and watching others, is that AB3AM with molten armor is still less damage then AB3MBAM3Abarr with mage armor.

EDIT: spelling

Great, glad to see my Arcane spec will survive the 3.1 changes. I personally enjoy arcane because as you have stated, during the sparks on Malygos, I can put out about 8k DPS with double stack/heroism/Cool downs

One more question: Is it better to proc my cool downs all at once, IV, AP, Mirror Image, or is it better to do what I have read, and pop AP early on, and save IV for heroism, and then pop AP every time it comes up, switching my rotation from maybe ABx2AM during non AP, to ABx3AM while AP is up? I usually do the last tick of IV/Heroism for my evocation if I'm low, but again, I have 3 druids who give me innervates throughout most boss fights.

Mage armor is effectively nerfed because with the new system you'll need more than 100% regen while casting to get the same regen you get right now with meditation+glyphed mage armor. Mage armory and meditation actually give that amount (patch scaled down OOC regen and scaled %regen while casting talents/abilities up to compensate), but since the game caps it at 100% atm you'll actually get less actual mana than you do now, making mage armor even less attractive (not that it's worthwhile on live but at least it's not far behind molten).

As for cooldowns, you want to have them all up during heroism, but that doesn't mean you can't use them at the start - depending on when you heroism. Keep in mind, though, it's usually better for the raid to just heroism at the start anyway due to how "execute" talents work and how people are not going to manage lining all their cooldowns up properly with a late heroism.

Your point is that in your experience you're failing to use the spells you're supposed to use to get optimal DPS more often when using molten armor than while using mage armor, and therefore you're getting less DPS with molten armor. This doesn't necessarily make molten armor better. What exactly you're doing wrong is hard to tell without knowing exactly what you were doing. Check rawr for more information.

Unless you play on a Mac of course

Even if you play on a Mac, you should use Rawr. If you can Boot Camp or emulate it, that'd be better, but if those arn't an option, you can still use Mono.

Well even with the nerf of Mage armor I personally still think it's better because it allows you to burn for longer. I usually have 750 mp5 in full raid buffs, and I don't need that much I only need about 500 mp5 to make the rotation work so the mage armor nerf shouldn't have a dramatic effect. But thanks for the advice i'll look into rawr and get back to you.