Your images account for an almost meaningless amount of damage. Looking at a few random WWS' for Patchwerk, you're talking about maybe 2% of your total output on a fight that is absolutely ideal for them. The amount lost to one miss is even less.

Hypothetically, say you swap gear out such that you gain ~100 hit rating (3%) and lose 100 spell damage. That means you get no misses on their badass 400 damage frostbolts. Meanwhile, every spell you personally cast is hitting for 100 less before any talent modifiers. From there it is pretty easy to see that it's a horrible trade in any situation where you're casting more than a handful of spells.

Considering that Arcane does not cast fire or frost spells against boss level mobs, it would be completely pointless to pick up an additional 3% spell hit unless there were a talent that provided a greater DPS increase than Arcane Focus. The amount of spell power, crit rating, or haste rating you would lose to gain 3% hit is not worth it considering minor increase it would provide to your Mirror Images' damage.

Hi, I'm a long time reader of elitist jerks and I must say it helped me alot over the years.

I've mostly been, fireball or frostfire spec, but now with dual specs I'm thinking about going arcane. while keeping ttw fb spec.

I have a few questions and they might have all been answered here before but I don't have the time to read trough all the 78 pages.

So here goes.

Is there an optimal gear set from ulduar for arcane spec, or how can I find it or make it myself, tried rawr yesterday but its not making much sence to me and thats another how to i should read?

What macro's are interesting for arcane?

how to manage your mana efficient? first mana gem when it would almost fill up mana bar again and then every time it is of cd, evocation when you get low and mana gem isn't ready yet? or start with evocation when it will fill bar up again and then mana gems?

I'm a total nub on arcane so any help would be very much appreciated, i'll also keep looking myself and start reading this entire post from the start but it will take a whole lot of time to get to know arcane like I know fire.

thanks in advance

Hi, I am trying learning to use the Rawr program for my toon. The problem I am running into is, our guild does really bring the same group of people on raids everytime. Sometimes we have to bring who is able to show up. Now what would be a safe list of buffs to have checked to get a fairly accurate result when optomized besides my own? Please if anyone could help me.

There is no official best in slot set yet because we don't know all the gear from Ulduar. We also don't know if the 4p t8 will be worth using for arcane or not. According to Kavan (I believe), the proc rate would need to exceed 20% to have any effect on our rotation. Meaning, even if it proc'd we'd still stack 3AB before using the Mbarr which drastically reduces it's value.

The only thing I can say with some degree of certainty is that the boots from FL hard mode will probably remain best in slot for arcane since they are itemized more or less perfectly for it and are ilvl 239.

I only used two macros; 1 with all my cooldowns and another with just AP and hyperspeed accelerators (engineer enchant).

For mana gem, you'll want to use it with your cooldowns if you are using the 2pt7. If not, then use it as soon as you can gain full benefit from it and then every time it's off cooldown to maximize your total mana. Don't wait for evocation to start mana gemming. As for when to use evocation. The absolute best way to do it would be to use a very high burn cycle at the beginning and then evocate early on, then switch to a lower burn cycle that you can sustain until the next evocate. This will usually benefit you in that you can burn through and usually evocate on the last tick of IV for a haste evocate (that also won't get interrupted). Alternatively, you can use one of the 2 accepted roations (AB3AM or AB3[Abarr or Mbarr]) and just use evocate when needed. The first one is better, but the 2nd is easier and safer.

Safe list of buffs would depend highly on your raid. I can assume safe buffs would include AI, DS, MOTW, Fort, Wrath of Air totem, etc. If you just want to compare your results to what Rawr says you can do, there is nothing stopping you from running Rawr once your raid forms and selecting the buffs available. This is also probably the best solution as well.

I've been using my POM by itself and then using a macro for AP+IV+Mirror Image+Trinkets. Have I been doing it wrong?

I go OOM so fast now should I be stacking spirt for mana regin or what I am at a loss on where what has changed. I use the standared rotation and glyphs are fine but my regin is down and I go oom so fast its sad this new patch has really got me confused.

Then you may want to scale back your rotation.

The key buff in regards to Arcane and Rawr, is do you get either Misery from a Shadow Priest or Farie Fire from a druid. That could have a big impact on your gear (3% hit cap difference). There are a couple items which if you can get your hands on are good for when these key buffs are missing.

Also for Arcane, make sure the mana regen buffs are relatively accurate. Failure to have mana regen to be accurate can really change the results significantly.

POM....I save it for POM Sheep now.

I like playing Arcane, but the outlook is grim for this spec, mainly due to random AoE in Ulduar.

Proposed solution:

Make Evocation an instant cast that silences the caster for 8 seconds.

What do you think?

Tested this three times each on two different melee only mob types (so they would'nt stop to cast something while I was channeling, for the sake of science, it was Azure Scalebanes and the walking non-elite tree things in Crystalsong Forest). They all managed to hit me twice during the part of my Evo that comes after IV has run out. All six times (not the biggest dataset, but I found the results conclusive enough) the first hit caused no appearant pushback, but the second hit caused 1.1-1.4 s pushback, sometimes cancelling the cast cause there was no cast time left to pushback, sometimes giving pushbacks and then having evo tick once more. I got the haste buff on all six casts as well so it was not me clicking Evo "too late" and missing the pushback/haste alltogether.

EDIT: Not only am I tired and made two immense typos (exchanged six for three and evo for IV for some reason... ), I kept testing and noticed that the first hit can give pushback as well (although it doesn't happen that often). Myth about possible existance of "first tick of Evo after IV has run out is ghosted to be immune to pushback while consecutive ones are not" definately busted.

Conclusion still seems to be that if you want your Evo to be fully pushback immune, you need to keep the entire cast within IV uptime.

Clearcast works fine.

Where can i find clearcast mod at? I think i got mfever working i just had to reinstall it.

I simply use ElkBuffBars, and I set up a separate set of buffs that is filtered to only the buffs i want to see. That allows me to watch for clearcasting, missile barrage procs, plus it allows me to see the time remaining on my Ivy Veins and Arcane Power.

I second ElkBuffBars. Someone here recommended it awhile ago and it's perfect for what I need it for.

I have one group set to show:

• Arcane Power
• Icy Veins
• Presence of Mind
• Passive trinket procs: Sundial ("Now is the time!") / Broodmother / Embrace of the Spider / Essence of Life (Egg proc back when it worked on AM)
• Heroism
• Mana Surges (mana gem)
• Haste (Crazy Alchemy Potion proc)
• Power Spark (malygos)

I also have another group set near the target unitframe to show debuffs for Torment the Weak:

• Frost Fever
• Infected Wounds
• Slow
• Thunder Clap

Another brilliant addon to dispay buffs and procs and CDs is Power Auras. Blends so wonderfully with any UI, any class and if you´re the kind of player who likes playing with a hud Youre going to absolutley love this one since it allows you to place the textures much more visible than regular buff frames without being intrusive making the screen feel cluttered.

Power Auras Classic - Addons - Curse

The problem then is that we can't break it early.

I was thinking a possible solution would have been to have it so we cast it then it gives us mana regen until we cast another spell. They could put a time limit on it & I assume they would as I'm sure it would be OP in a way I don't understand or care about in PVP :P


*edit*

Someone took offence to the above post, they seem to have misunderstood irreverence for PVP as not actually thinking through my suggestion... but anyway.

Mike's Scrolling Battle Text has triggers when different you receive different procs. You can customize it to filter things and change sounds to your liking. It's a mod I'd consider using and it updated for 3.1.

An 8 second silence is a bad idea, as johndmann mentioned. You can't break it early but it also doesn't scale with haste like Evocation does. You can't pop IV during a BL and reduce it to about 3 seconds.

Or maybe the proper fix is to scrap evocation entirely and tack it directly unto gems. Although it wouldn't quite work for the 'using a gcd' part.

My submission for BiS Arcane items based on slightly modified stat values for TTW/Fire and LootRank.

I valued Spell power, Haste, and Crit the same as you would for TTW/Fire because Arcane and TTW/Fire both value Spell power and Haste the most, Crit is valued after those. I valued Intellect higher than TTW/Fire would because Arcane gains some spell power from Intellect. The value may be wrong, I just sort of guessed with it. I don't think it made a large difference between items anyway.

A lot of the Arcane items have blue sockets and useful socket bonuses, like spell power. However a Purified Twilight Opal will not match the amount of spell power a Runed Scarlet Ruby would. I personally doubt the spirit from the gems could eventually make up for the loss in spell power.


[Collar of the Wyrmhunter] - [Chaotic Skyflare Diamond], [Runed Dragon's Eye], [Arcanum of Burning Mysteries]
[Pendant of Fiery Havoc] - [Reckless Monarch Topaz]
Conqueror's Kirin'dor Shoulderpads - [Runed Scarlet Ruby], [Greater Inscription of the Storm]
[Pennant Cloak] - [Runed Dragon's Eye], Lightweave Embroidery* / Greater Haste
[Robes of the Umbral Brute]- [Runed Scarlet Ruby], Powerful Stats
[Unsullied Cuffs] - [Runed Scarlet Ruby], Exceptional Spellpower
[Handwraps of the Vigilant] - [Reckless Monarch Topaz] [Reckless Monarch Topaz], Greater Spellpower
[Sash of Ancient Power] - [Runed Dragon's Eye] [Runed Scarlet Ruby] [Runed Scarlet Ruby] [Eternal Belt Buckle]
Conqueror's Kirin'dor Leggings - [Runed Scarlet Ruby] [Runed Scarlet Ruby] [Brilliant Spellthread]
[Boots of Fiery Resolution] - [Runed Scarlet Ruby] [Reckless Monarch Topaz]
[Signet of Manifested Pain]
[Pyrelight Circle]
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
[Scale of Fates]
[Staff of Endless Winter] - [Runed Scarlet Ruby] [Runed Scarlet Ruby], [Formula: Enchant Staff - Greater Spellpower]
[Scepter of Lost Souls]


Relative Stat Values:
Spell Power: 1.71
Haste Rating: 1.62, Crit Rating: 1.5
Spirit: 0.97, Intellect: 1.2

Very nice list. Putting the Dragon's Eyes into the Cloak and Belt would net you a 12 spellpower bonus, while you only get 9 spellpower from the staff, so I would exchange those two.
Seeing that you only use two pieces of T8 confirms my thoughts taht the 4-piece bonus is not that great for arcane. Too bad the two pieces are not the ones for emblems

Apparently, [Spark of Hope] does indeed drop your base mana cost, so an AB 3 stack costs noticeably less than without using the trinket edit: roughly 450 mana less (Thread on Subcreation).