Speaking specifically regarding Sartharion, Arcane is arguably inferior in DPS to a Fire or FFB spec in my opinion. The frequent amount of movement required in the fight, combined with the upfront cost of AM and the relative lack of instant and <1.5s casts, means that a lot of mana is wasted for little or no damage. Fire has LB, HS Pyro, or even Fire Blast and Scorch, which can be snuck in before having to move out of a Fissure or a Tsunami, but Arcane has only Barrage for mobile damage. We downed Sarth3D last week (when I was FFB) but failed yesterday (as Arcane), so it's possible that once the third drake falls and it becomes more of a single-target fight that Arcane may pick up and perhaps surpass FFB, but in the midst of dodging so many fissures and waves it's destroying my damage and mana efficiency (for what it's worth). It's common for me to have to move out of a fissure or out of the way of a wave just as an AM cast is starting. Coupled with the fact that this is fight is considerably longer than most of the Naxx bosses, meaning mana becomes an issue, has anyone had great success with Sarth as Arcane?
Yeah we killed him today for the fifth o sixth times with his 3 minions up. We use the strategy where you down Tenebron w/o bloodlust, then lust, ignore the portals and burn Shadron down.
In my opinon arcane is clearly superior on Sar3d. Here is why. As Arcane your burst damage is even higher than the high burst of the FFB build. You may not be top 3 overall but you do your damage when it counts (primaly on the first and to a lesser extend the third add).
For example did I do the most Tenebron damage on about 18 of our embarassing 25 attemps (before and including the kill). Over all attemps i did 7,1 Mio dmg to Tenebron the next best dmg dealer did 5,4 MIO dmg. On good attemps I did 150% damage to Tenebron compared to the second best damage dealer, on bad ones it was a close race for the first spot.
On Shadron it looks a bit different, because here I have do evocate at some point, but I am still in the top 3.
Now to the way I play here. I do literally nothing until Tenebron shows up, maybe one or two rotations, but most of the time not even that, I don't want ICDs on both of my trinkets. Then Tenebron gets the mighty ArcaneBlastSpam, with Am on Missile proc, there is no cats longer than 2 secs, with IV not even that, so having to move is really no problem, because I know it before hand. If the flamewall comes and I have to move I consume the AB stack with a Arcane barrage and then spam until he is dead. Evocate before starting to burn Shadron, maybe toss a one or two Blizzards at the whelps.
As a conclusion, I had the feeling that Arcane was clearly superior You had better thread controll, the results were more consistent across the attemps and I didn#t had to rely on the RNG to burn Tenebron down as fast as possible, it was a decision I could make as a player, by cjoosing my rotatioon.
Im trying to figure out how much mana would be needed to sustain a ABx3=>Am=>Abarr rotation indefinately, including the extra mana that would be used during AP... I know having it all written down somewhere would help myself and possible others determine what combo of Int/Mp5 would be needed to keep up the 2 minute rotation revolving around Evo/Ap/Mana Gem/IV... but in any case math isnt my strong suit, so i was hoping i could get some help...
I wont bother showing my calculations(since i used rawr to help me with most of them), but i was getting that the rotation cost me about 24k mana, but i was only was getting back 23k or so via regen/gem/evo, to me this seems that i should be able to keep this up for 23 cycles or so, which is more than enough... but i was having problems putting it into practice.
My opening sequece was to AB spam to get 4900 mana, still using MBAM procs, then Popping all my cooldowns and my gem which put my back to full mana... then id ab spam using MBAM when it proced, and hitting evo at the end of my IV to put myself back near full mana.
The problem was that i didnt have enough mana to make it back to my mana gem, much less the 24 seconds later that icy veins came up.
With all that text behind me, i guess my basic question is how you manage to stack the Mana gem with IV/AP, put your evo at the end of IV for the shortest cast time, and still manage to have enough mana left to do it all again 2.4 mins later.
On a separate note, i was wondering if casting Arcane Explosion has any merit if you already happen to have 3 stacks of the Arcblast debuff up. Does it compare with Blizzard or is it a waste of the ArcBlast debuff. I could see something like this coming up with whelps/fire ele's on Sarth, Spiderlings at Maxenna or other fights with similar spawns of adds.
I am reading this as: it is not beneficial to clip on hasted AM (given 50% combo rate). Are you saying the combo window is longer, and that the combo rate goes up in this case?
You are reading it correctly. In the analysis I used the same combo rate on hasted and non hasted AM which may or may not be the case. When I looked at my Patchwerk parse (I was trying to execute the combo, not clipping) I've noticed that even for MBAM the success rate actually tended to be very high, so my personal preference will probably be not to clip at all.
Is it even possible to manage it without clipping with 300ms ping that has some variance? Anyone managed to get a clue about what the actual requirements to pulling the bug off? From what I've tried so far I had a hard time figuring out exactly when I need to hit ABarr (unless I just decide to clip), which may or may not be due to ping.
Is it even possible to manage it without clipping with 300ms ping that has some variance?
You want to hit Abar the instant the 5th missile goes off (use the first 4 to get the rhythm for nailing the 5th). I think that missiles going off, is calculated server side; meaning that by the time the missile goes off on your end (after ping), the server is already queuing the request for debuff fade. If that is the case, even people with 150ping should have a hard time getting the 5th missile in. But I may be wrong.
PS: I'm still curious to know if trinketing on the (shatter) Abar isn't a better idea than doing so on the 3rd AB. Any thoughts? :-)
Is it even possible to manage it without clipping with 300ms ping that has some variance?
I'm not sure about 300ms, I usually play at around 50-100ms. It may be because I've played arcane my whole wow career and I'm kind of intimate with the missiles, but I think it is best to learn the timing from the sound, trying to fire ABar at exactly the moment when you would hear the last missile going off. In the heat of the battle it's usually harder to rely on sound alone and latency cast bars like Quartz usually help.
What I wonder is how accurate you actually have to be. That is, how long is the time window you actually have to hit your ABarr, or in other words how much are you allowed to miss the perfect timing. After all there needs to be some amount of error you're allowed to have, or else nobody would've been pulling it off at all. Of course this value might not be constant but considering people manage to reliably get this done there should be some error you can usually afford to have without failing the combo. If that error is bigger than your latency variance, you'll fail a large portion of your combos no matter how hard you try, and if it's smaller, you'll be able to pull it off rather consistently. The real question is how big that allowed error normally is.
For example, if my spell cast request registers, say, 0.1s before AM is finished, do I lose the last AM tick? If it registers 0.1s after, do I lose the combo effect?
For example, if my spell cast request registers, say, 0.1s before AM is finished, do I lose the last AM tick? If it registers 0.1s after, do I lose the combo effect?
My wild estimate, with a 30ms ping (=D), was something around 200ms before I'd start missing it.
Tested the AB AB AB AM ABarr rot in Naxx and OS yesterday and I notice a 500-1000 dps increase compared to my ffb dmg. I was able to burn all my mana every 2 min and recharge it to 100% using Evo and Mana Gem. I also used a pot every fight (almost).
I also had the chance to swap out a lot of hit gear as we got 6% extra hit, this has to be taken into consideration too.
Still I belive that I'll run OOM too soon in certain fights while upgrading my gear (still got alchemist stone etc). But even then we will have done more dmg than we used to. My 2 cents.
This spec is about using evo and gems, you have to be OOM every 2 min and recharge back to 100% or you play it wrong, you can't have mana left.
DPS is insane and the rotation is 300% more fun than ffb. Yet a scorch mage in raid or maybe even a frost mage (crit AND mana (ele)) will be a big plus.
Im still a little confused as to the value of haste on the sample simcraft output in the 3.0.8 thread. Simcraft has it valued lower than crit. This seems counterintuitive considering the paltry crit modifier of arcane. However if this is what the math shows then thats what it shows. It just seems odd to me.
I believe my re-spec to arcane was on wednesday, during such time I tested out the rotation and such on target dummies and in a few heroics.
If I remember correctly the Arcane Blast buff tooltip did read as 20% -> 40% -> 60%.
However, tonight taking the spec into our 25-man runs I noticed the buff tooltip now reads 15% -> 30% -> 45% (where as the tooltip for Arcane Blast still reads as 20% increases.)
Am I just remembering incorrectly? That it is just a clerical error or did blizzard ninja drop the stacking buff?
I apologize if this issue was answered somewhere else, however checking the other threads I see nothing about it. I also lack many of the math skills seen here by others and wouldn't even know where to begin in testing this.
Also, I would like to hear more talk of AOE and AOE rotations you lads are currently using. (Regardless of trash being non-important for DPS e-peening it still is something we have to get through).
Using my old FFB macros, I've still been doing Flamestrike -> Flamestrike (rank 8) -> Blizzard, with PoM on the second Flamestrike and Arcane Power thrown in for extra taste.
I'm wondering how people handled the AB debuff during their runs so far. While getting the Paladins and Priests to not dispell it during trash waves and on most fights was okayish (it still happened though as they are not used at all to run raids with an Arcane Mage), the Heigan fight was a pure disaster for me. Either I had the casttime debuff from Heigan on me for a long time as the dispellers assumed it was my AB debuff or they dispelled so quickly and often that they removed my AB debuff aswell.
I know that certain raidframes can blacklist specific debuffs so I might have to beat our dispellers to put the AB debuff on it, which will not be easy.
I'm really wondering why Blizzard didn't make it a buff instead of a debuff, what is the logic behind it? I don't really see any situation where dispelling the AB debuff would be of any benefit for an Arcane Mage.
The theoretical DPS of AB AB AB AM-clipped-ABr should be the best but is it when we come to real fight? It is really hard to catch the 5th missile with IV + hero + MB + 150-170ms. Can someone confirm that it is still usefull to stop AM at 3th or 4th tick then go ABr for %60buff? or AB AB AB ABr - AM at MB rotation can still over dps other specs?
Is there any calculation done right now (with Simcraft or Roywyn's calcs ) regarding the DPS loss not having improved scorch/winterchill in a 10-raid ? 25-raid ?
In 25-man, I think there is no point of contention : imp scorch/winterchill is needed
But in 10-man, even caster-heavy raids, I would like to confirm my thoughts it is still interesting to spec arcane if 10% crit debuff is no more present.
My first time posting on EJ so please don't bust me up to bad, but I was wondering if any of you have taken a look at a possible spec such as 58/13/0 ? I personally tried it out in 25 man Nax tonight (lag aside) and did very well. The rotation is as follows....(Boss fight starts) PoM Pyro-ABx3-FBlast-ABar-ABx3-FBlast-ABar When MBar procs you fill between FBlast and ABar clipping 5th, obviously using PoM Pyro when it is available, ignite is a good plus and you get the essentials from Arcane, but with that little extra oomph. I do honestly think it can be a viable spec that if tested properly (I do not have the ability to do so) should prove to be quite impressive, at least thats my opinion, I could be wrong.
My first time posting on EJ so please don't bust me up to bad, but I was wondering if any of you have taken a look at a possible spec such as 58/13/0 ? I personally tried it out in 25 man Nax tonight (lag aside) and did very well. The rotation is as follows....(Boss fight starts) PoM Pyro-ABx3-FBlast-ABar-ABx3-FBlast-ABar When MBar procs you fill between FBlast and ABar clipping 5th, obviously using PoM Pyro when it is available, ignite is a good plus and you get the essentials from Arcane, but with that little extra oomph. I do honestly think it can be a viable spec that if tested properly (I do not have the ability to do so) should prove to be quite impressive, at least thats my opinion, I could be wrong.
Losing IV + Elemental Precision for a harder hitting Fireblast and Bigger lolPoMPyro and slamming in an extra low DPM spell in the rotation just doesn't seem good at all.
Losing IV + Elemental Precision for a harder hitting Fireblast and Bigger lolPoMPyro and slamming in an extra low DPM spell in the rotation just doesn't seem good at all.
I would have to agree, i just put the spec into rawr, with buffs i would expect to see from a 25 man raid, on my current gear set (not amazing, but not bad) in a 4 min patchwerk style fight (i.e. all out dps, few if any interupts) 58/13/0 came up with 3698 dps, where as 57/3/11 was 4213 dps. Quite a difference there.
P.S. I did not include a specific spell cycle in rawr, im unsure how to do this properly yet.
As many mages did, I respecced arcane (57/3/11) after the patch a few days ago. And I truly love it, from being the worst mage dps-wise in my guild I climbed to the number one dps spot all-around :-) I'm running my char in Rawr and put in all the settings (buffs, glyphs, ..) and it surprises me that rawr points me towards gear that would suit healers more than me... I know mp5 comes in handy now as a arcane mage, but it chooses haste over crit, and this I dont understand. Can someone explain this pls, I haven't found an answer in this thread on this question so far, or I must have overlooked it. Thx :-)
Sigh. You will have missed out on some buffs, or you will have the fight setting on for too long. The only time RAWR will recommend MP/5 gear is when it is on a piece of gear that has spell power + one other DPs stat, and you don't need the hit from the 3 dps stat gear pieces.
Haste is better than crit for arcane because arcane crits are only 175% of your normal damage, rather than 200%+ for all other mage specs. the values change depending upon your other gear choices, but neither ever approaches pure spellpower in terms of usefulness.
In the future, there's a "simple questions / answers" thread at the top of the forum which is the place for this sort of stuff.
Anybody found that, even timing the Arcane barrage right, if you read the combat log, "Arcane Blast dissipates". no matter what you do, the arcane barrage does not get the buff from "Arcane Blast" according to the combat log.
Not sure about the combat log, but you can't go wrong with seeing the barrage hitting for way more than it would've if the AB debuff would not have been counted.
It seems that the clipping technique require a good latency. After cancelling yesterday malygos due to heavy lag we run last 5 in 10 man Naxx. I see some other Mage's have the same problem, clipping even short after the 4th AM was pretty unstable and lucky. Is there a solution? A casting bar? Or is it better than to run AB AB AB Abar and only hasted AM when id procs instead of ABar (Clipping with hasted AM is even harder with bad latency) ?
Not sure about the combat log, but you can't go wrong with seeing the barrage hitting for way more than it would've if the AB debuff would not have been counted.
Im trainning ABarr right after 5th missiles, to max dps, and here is a hint for those like me:
Recount shows for each spell the min, avg and max hit/crit, so you can figure out whats your average sucess percentage with simple math:
S= (avg-min)/(max-min)
this is not accurate, but its better than reading all combat log
About someone questionning the latency to do it... Ive experienced about 70% sucess with ~200ms
about mana issues, in naxx25 running with molten armor, Ive got oom just in Thaddius fight, but im really considering glyphing mage armor, cause its kind hard keeping the mana high for 2min to use it in another IV+AP cycle.
mage armor (glyphed) would give me around 350 MP5 in my actual gear and counting raid buffs, so what do you think: 350MP5 (mage armor) or 230 critical rate (molten armor)
01/22/09, 9:07 PM
) regarding the DPS loss not having improved scorch/winterchill in a 10-raid ? 25-raid ?
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