I feel like this is a misconception. Arcane Barrage alone is not good DPS and movement would imply that you have have a maximum of 1.5s to cast a spell (think Heigan).

Fire has Scorch, Fireblast, Living Bomb and Hotstreak procs at its disposal while Arcane only has Arcane Barrage. Arcane is certainly not bad in movement fights, but neither is Fire. I think they are very very comparable with no distinct advantage to either spec.

To make the issue clearer:

- Fire
PROS = #1 dps on paper, 3.1 FOTM
CONS = Requires Evocation, although up to ~50% evo failure is acceptable and doesn't hurt dps (25man).

- FFB
PROS = Not mana starved at all
CONS = 'only' #2 dps on paper, although by a very small margin. No Focus Magic for another raidmember.

- Arcane
PROS: Adaptable spellcycles, best controlled burst, 'different spec'
CONS = #3 dps on paper (3.5% behind Fire, and gap widens to 5% as we get more T8), no Imp Scorch, requires Evocation, and no evo failure is admissible.

My comment about Arcane FOTM time being over: far fewer people will spec it, because it's not the accepted top dps spec anymore, and any "intangible" advantages (like burst, etc) will be severely damped down by Evo unreliability. I don't see Arcane remaining a "good spec" unless its coefficients scale better, or Evo is improved.

I seriously fail to understand why Arcane would come in #3 after FFB? Molten armor change, overall crit reduction all helped arcane over fire specs while, in comparison, fire specs got LB glyph and +3% crit from Imp. Scorch talent, which imo, evens out in the long run.

Anecdotal, I know, but even only having had my mage to 80 for a couple of weeks I am fitting in more and more ABs on Heigan. I'm not getting one in every dance step, but I am getting a few, and whenever I get one the subsequent Abarr is that much better. I also occasionally can get an MBARR off if I feel comfy and have blink up for my next dance step.

Is it as good DPS as I can do on the run with my DK? No. Is it better than never ever dreaming of getting a Fireball in? Absolutely. For a predictable movement fight, I feel like Arcane does have a slight advantage (though I remember a couple of pages back someone posting numbers on the value of haste on movement fights being less than it seems; this just seems like an extreme case of that logic).

The flip side is high-movement fights where the movement is unpredictable. I feel like Arcane suffers unduly when at any given moment you might have to interrupt an AM cast immediately, jettisoning a considerable amount of mana. This has probably been discussed ad-nauseum when talking about Evocate design, so I won't elaborate.

The thing with fire spec and movement is you have to switch to a scorch/fireblast/lb/pyroblast rotation. If you are good enough at heigan to AB him during the dance, you are good enough to scorch/pyroblast/living bomb him.

If you do this with fairly typical raid gear and buffs you get ~90% of what you get with your main nuke rotation while actually casting (time spent moving at any time when you aren't just taking advantage of living bomb/fireblast/pyroblast gcd will cost you more dps)

Whether you'll get all the debuffs you normally expect in a raid may depend on how the others in the raid are coping with the movement, so it may seem like a lot less. The final fight in Nexus is a really good example of this, as you can reliably cast a scorch+instant while keeping the chill debuff off (sometimes the instant is blink when she freezes you). It's also pretty much how you do damage in PVP when not forced to move.

You really only have trouble with mobile fights fire if your 1.5s (less haste) casts are often interrupted or if the fact that scorch and especially fire blast are shorter range causes issues with bosses moving out of range, costing you more movement time.

In something like Thaddeus, where the movement is predictable, fire's at no disadvantage at all. Just do a normal rotation, but when near a charge change, pay attention to your hot streak, living bomb and fire blast cooldowns to see if it's better to drop one of them during the move, and cast a scorch instead of fireball if you're getting close to the timer.

Something like Sarth3d is not totally predictable, but you have periods where you can stand and nuke and normally get away with it with only minor tweaks...,with walls being thaddeus-like..only void zones really forcing you to abort a cast.

If as fire you stick to your normal rot though when 1.5s casts would be better, you can hose yourself for a lot more than the 10% you lose by shifting to scorch-based rotaitons. This is probably where the myth of fire being a bad mage spec for movement fights comes from. Or perhaps it is a holdover from BC, where fire WAS a lot worse when forced into a scorch rotation, lacking living bomb and more frequent hot streaks to balance out the worse scaling of the faster spell.

I believe as the dust settles more and items/changes are released we will continue to see the fire mage pull further ahead on theory crafting calculations.

Fire will scale much better than arcane itemization, with both spell power coefficients and superior critical strike damage multipliers favoring fireball. If the BiS gear does not include much spirit, this will benefit fire mages much more as well, since the vast majority of gear released so far replaces spirit with +hit instead.

However arcane mages are not going to be a flavor of the month in my opinion. If we have any stop-and-go or hi burn/slow burn rotational phases, aggressive arcane mages will be highly effective with dynamic opportunities thanks to better threat management as well as mana dump/burst potential.

No doubt fire will eventually look superior on paper, but in practical game play, it is possible fire and arcane may be very comparable for single target Dps in Ulduar. Only experience with the actual encounters will be able to say for sure.

Also, if there are many AoE intensive battles, I think we will see extensive use of the new dual spec feature to switch between single target and AoE maximizing modes during the course of a raid. Should that be the case, frost raiding might not be dead after all!

Indeed my current idea is using my dual specs for a fire boss/single target spec, and a frost with torment trash/aoe spec. The efficiency, survivability, and superior aoe of frost seem to make it ideal for trash slogs IMO. And if there are boss fights with important aoe burndown phases it might not be bad to have at least one frost mage to put winters chill up via blizzard, even if it is down to 5%. It is a shame that frosts single target dps is not more competitive, but it does have enough situational advantages that I think it is worth using as a dual spec.

When doing comparisons, including which spec you personally find more 'fun' really adds nothing to the conversation. Which spec on the list that this would apply to will vary wildly from person to person.

I'm pretty sure we won't be getting any further changes to Arcane this Patch. Arcane got some attention already since Wotlk. I get the feeling we'll have to wait our turn for it to come back around.

That said what CAN be done to quickly turn Arcane back around? Would undoing the nerfs fix Arcane?

1. Return the Arcane Barrage co-efficient to what it was before. It didn't need nerfing in the first place. Lots of Arcane mages ran around BGs spamming it but Arcane was never massively viable at high end PvP. Definitely playable but in no way dominant and certainly didn't need the nerf.

2. Return the Arcane Blast glyph to what it was before. 5% per stack instead of 2% per stack.

3. Give Arcane the 5% crit debuff or some other form of raid utility.

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Would the above changes bring Arcane back in line with fire in terms of dps?

I think a far, far larger concern for Arcane is the state of evocation and Ulduar's increased raid damage/movement. This one thing has a much larger effect on DPS than ABarr coefficient and ABlast debuff combined.

Unfortunately, I agree with a previous poster who said we're unlikely to see further Mage changes, and that most likely means Evocation is staying the way it is.

The numbers confirm that. (Using the BiS across Ulduar items that Rawr currently includes.)

The catch is that stop-and-go favors Arcane only as long as its highest burn cycle is better than the Fire/FFB rotation. But as things are now, Fire/FFB is close to baseline ABspam3MBAM, and the main bursty advantage of Arcane is Arcane Power / IV. With that in mind, that gives FFB some 'intangible' points over Fire, for having IV.

Besides fixing Evocation (which GC mentioned they'd try to do sometime), I believe reverting the Abarr coefficient is the only easy change they'd be willing to consider this late before patch. Not groundbreaking but it would help a bit.

They really need to do something about evocate if they wanna keep Arcane Competitive.

The spec relies so heavily on getting that 60% mana back from Evocating.

A suggestion I saw on here a few (hundred?) posts back about making it a cast time (maybe 2 second cast time) to get back 15% mana and throwing a small cooldown on it (I dunno 30 seconds? i'm not quite sure what would be balanced at this point) seemed like a really good way to fix it.

Of course, like I said the numbers would definitely have to be tweaked, but I still think that's a good solution.

We don't lose it if we gotta move, there's no real interruption save raid damage pushing it back, it can be kicked in PVP.

I don't really know just throwing out a suggestion I thought was a good idea.

Easiest solution would be to ADD a cast time spell that does the same thing, has the same cooldown and shares cooldown with evocation. Or do any of a bunch of other ideas, really - there are so many that they just need to pick (same thing I said in the "fix frost raiding" thread). Another one of them is designing fights that let you evocate, but there are seriously endless options to solutions here.

This. The topic of how to fix Evo is beyond beating a dead horse at this point. Blizzard has already stated that they're aware of our concerns. If they want to fix Evo, they will.

Would changing evocation to a more constant mana regeneration model, similar to the way drinking water works, help? That way we would still get some mana back rather than missing a tick if damage is taken, etc.

If it's one thing almost all mages agree on is this.

I struggle to keep up with mana without the Mana Gem glyph at the moment sometimes depending on how good raid dps is as 18-53 fire/totw, I'd probably have to use evocation on most fights If I did not have the mana gem glyph so my question is how the hell are we supposed to swap in the LB glyph for it while using 1. Glyph of Molten Armor, 2. Glyph of Fireball. 3. Glyph of Mana Gem in Uludar when the fights are supposed to actually last longer than what we deal with now. I am going to assume that LB crit ticks ruin your ignites so whats the point of even having it?

(I mana pot before even thinking about evocate always)

Which Glyphs might be recommended with 3.1 für the 18/53/0? On live i'm running on improved scorch, fireball and molten armor. if another one gives scorch, i can change it of course. But if i might be the only mage with scorch, which one should be overwritten for the benefit of ? I think i might switch molten armor for living bomb. What do you think?

Unless your scorch stack is dropping repeatedly, the LB glyph is a long-term damage boost, while the Scorch glyph just increases your first few seconds of damage. Even as the scorch bitch for the raid, I'd rather have LB glyphed.

Sorry because of this question being a bit distractive from the threads initial topic, but could you please tell me in which way you specc other than the common 20/51/0 when you say 18/53/0 ? I assume you do not take arcane meditation, but both master of the elements and flame throwing, is that correct?

The 18/53/0 build is the common of the two, since the 18 in Arcane are purely to reach TtW.

Hi folks , Im usual to just read topics n dont post any reply but i would like to ask an easy question.
From what i read seem the most usefull specs once 3.1 comes live should be 20/51/0 and 57/3/11 , correct me if im wrong ofc.
About the 57/3/11 is now better to put 3 talent points on SoM? If so i was wondering where to take these points.