Manly, can you plug in what losing 100 spell damage and 100 haste does if you gain 1 minute cooldown evocation?

If Vontres calculations are correct, or even if there close for that matter, do we not lose by default to fire? In TBC our dps increased as a result of faster and faster kills, while fires, although not by much, went down. With no significant "spiking" abilities to boost front end damage our damage output is much more steady than previous patches. 3.1 has been promised to bring more difficult and challenging fights. If the difficulty is defined by longer fights, then a fire spec with molten fury should pull ahead considerably, also taking into account the need for precision mana management skills we have inherited.

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Check the first post. The answer is almost entirely tied to DPM tradeoffs.

Lets give an example.

Lets say that the fight length is such that you would only use the rotation (affordable MPS being exactly 190):
AB AB AB ([mbarr] or abarr) 5132.355 190.8791

That means that, no matter what the fight length is, if you could have had only afforded to spend 190 MPS over the entire duration, that would be your optimum cycle. Needless to say this is a simplification that assumes you will go fully oom at the end of the fight, and also ignores cooldowns, but still.

Now lets say that using 2pct3 jumps your MPS to 300. That means now you can afford 300 MPS with 1 min evocation. Well, the next best cycle becomes
AB3+ [mbarr] 5495.957 387.9541

Now this is where you want to use DPM tradeoffs to calculate how much of a dps boost you would have gotten from switching the rotation. In this case, you would have: (5495.957 - 5132.355) / (387.95.41 - 190.8791) = 1.85 dpm tradeoff. In other words, it means that for every 1 extra mana, you will deal an extra 1.85 damage by switching to that rotation. That means that if you have an extra 10000 mana from that extra evocation, you will gain 18500 more damage total. How much extra dps that gives you depends on fight duration (and of course, I'm ignoring here the evocation cast time).

In other words, the mana-to-dps conversion rate is very bad, and generally why you want to avoid it. It is, I believe, also the reason why rawr suggests molten armor over mage armor.

Just also throwing out another angle to the arcane discussion beyond just the numbers.

The burn/burst cycle with all CDs used seems to have been hardly affected by the changes. As noted previously, changes to AP coupled with the AM glyph, amounts to a very minor DPS loss. The burn/burst (ABSpam3Mbarr) isn’t affected by the ABarr nerf either.

So, among all the DPS specs, it seems to me like Arcane still retains the best ability to deal ‘burst-on-demand’, when needed. Now of course this is situational, but it is also a point of differentiation – and I might argue that it is perhaps a very distinct point of differentiation as well.

The reality is that there are a lot of other things that are situational within a raid; composition, other player skills, differing gear levels, different raiding strategies etc. In some situations, you may not even want to use arcane even if it was doing better DPS (having raided the past 2 weeks with our only survival hunter and spriest away has made mana a strained resource as far as arcane goes – we also only had 1 paladin judging wisdom), in other situations you may have the luxury of choice or you may be required to spec for the raid as opposed to yourself.

I’m definitely not discounting the amazing work the TC’s here have done. It’s good that we all know where each spec stands in terms of bottomline numbers. But I think that at some point the ‘intangibles’ also come into play.

I guess one other question we can sometimes ask is, assuming all 3 mage specs are equal in terms of DPS, and all other factors (Rotation dynamics, RNG, MPS, Mobility etc) are still at play depending on spec, then what spec would you as a player be most comfortable playing?

Sorry if this is a little off-topic but just putting it out there

One quick question/clarification. And I apologize if I am reading the rotation cycle incorrectly. If Mbarr procs on the third AB or Abarr during the AB AB AB ([mbarr] or abarr) cycle, then do you wait till AB is stacked to 3 again to use the Mbarr proc? or would you use it on a 0 stack? in order to optimize dps? And if you would use it on a 0 stack would you follow it up with a Abarr and continue the Mbarr-Abarr cycle as long as procs allow?

Again thanks for your work here it is much appreciated.

Double Post

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I think I am finally getting used to arcane even with all these changes. However, In Naxx this past evening, anytime I tried the ABspam burn cycle (Im horrible with these abbreviations, basically ABspam unless you proc MBAM, and only use MBAM with AB stacked 3 times) and use Evo on the last tick of IV, my overall dmg/dps was less then when I just stuck with the normal AB3([MBAM] or ABarr). I have seen more than a handful of people talking about using the burn cycle, but it just doesn't seem to be working for me. I was able to top the meters most of the night just sticking with AB3([MBAM] or ABarr) and using my CDs properly.

I use my POMs with MBAMs that have ABx3 stacked, and I use my first AP+IV+Mana gem once I'm about 4.5k mana less than full.

Is it really better to use the burn cycle of constant AB3([MBAM] or ABarr), I feel like I don't have the mana to sustain it. Should I be using a more mana conservative cycle after a burn cycle? Like AB2([MBAM] or ABarr) just so I can still use the burn cycle, and not run out of mana?

edit: screwed up the abbrevations.

Manly, just a little clarification about the cycle update you've posted on the page 47.

AB = Arcane Blast
ABarr = Arcane Barrage
AM = Arcane Missle
MBarr = Missile barrage (proc)

so the cycle is :

under Arcane Power


then


or
>>

without Arcane Power


then


or
>>

So, if I understand what you mean : if we aren't under arcane power, arcane barrage is no more necessary in the cycle.

Is that right?

They have since, oh, about 2.4. It's Power infusion and BL that don't stack.