So just coming back to WoW after 8 months, last playing at Heroic LK wipes for two months. I've stumbled upon the scrupulosity query of why my Arcane hates me.
I've been back for just around a month and in that time of actual play, I've farmed and spent way to much gold on gear and now without going into the T11 content I've been accepted into a 10 man guild that is willing to help me catch up a bit so I can help them down Ragnaros. Pretty understandable until I got to Majordomo tonight and couldn't even out dmg the tank. Out Dps'd yes, but barely at only 17k. That's unacceptable and here's the gear:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/i ... imi/simple
It's eating at my soul why this is happening because I'm playing Arcane the way it seems most pathological to follow.
Encounter Start:
Flame Orb
1.1Arcane Blast x5
1.2AM full use
1.1-1.2 repeat
5th Cleave
Time Warp
Sync 4 stack with at least Power Torrent or Lightweave/etc. if time<4s.
If >4s AP/Arcane Torrent/Trinket/Mana Gem/AB
AB cast-> MI/AB
3rd Volcanic Potion/AB
AB til OOM
Evo/Flame Orb
AM
1.1-1.2 repeat
On the movement of the fight I blink, I keep CD usage lined up. Not with MI, but I don't use AP without trinket. So instead of 1.4m CD I use it on a 2m CD to line up with Trink/Gem dmg. MI whenever it is up from there. And run around and leave flame pools when dropped.
Ok this is still just one fight but you can see the burn phase/conservation phase clearly illustrated. For the earlier instance I was fortunate to break 20k. This has enraged me as I've never seen my play this gruesome from a break in play. It's lead me to think I have to be wrong in my assumptions yet wherever I go I see mages using the same explanations. AB at 4 stack, don't clip AM ever. F Orb for AM spam in mana conserv, or heavy situation etc. EVO after burn. Burn is Burn derp. Ok not hard.
I'm built around Hit>Int/Mastery>Crit>Haste. I got to my hit cap and I build into Mastery where I can, reforges, with a priority to Int when it's available.
I can't see where I'm wrong, I mathematically am dividing fights up for CD usage when I see them to get 3-4 uses on average. Quicker fights I work hard to squeeze 3 uses, and will break the AP with other Cd's rule on fights like Baelroc and burn as intensely as possible. Still line up everything to be used under Time Warp however at 30% in my guild.
The point I want to highlight here is the overall play to Arcane needs to be answered fully and I thought no place better than on the world leader forums. A guide perhaps to some, but it only takes one person with the confidence to say what is more important stat wise. What is more important weight wise in casting.
Everything in this game be written as an if then statement. My basic just dps statement is as follows.
If AP is off CD with Trinket/Gem/AT and 4 stack AB, then use and cast Arcane Blast
If under TimeWarp then use 1 instantly and Volcanic Potion
If AP is active then MI/AB
If the proceeding is done, then AB til 15-20% mana
If mana sub 20% then Evo
If Cd's are used and after Evo then AB x5
If ABx5 then AM full no clip
If then Repeat
If Moving, Flame Orb>AM AB>Arcane Barrage>Fire Blast> Ice Lance
If ever below 80% mana and unable to build to 95-100% mana after a 5 use AB (Always one at full power, I've seen that I'm able to get back to 95-100% mana easily with 5 uses then AM) AM. Then use Flame Orb and use AM til at that level, or use AM procs if they're readily available.
I prioritize Clearcasting to AB always, with emphasis on going a little deeper to 6 AB's usually if I've had one beyond the 3 stack debuff.
Ok so where in this perfect world that I have setup as Arcane is the flaw? I can't attain a 4 piece T11, going to try to pug it, however wearing it in the best places still costs me nearly 200 SP and the hit cap no matter how I reforge, making me waste enchants on Hit or worse the flask.
Consumables Int Flask/Int Food/Volcanics
So can somebody take everyone to school on Arcane for a bit, because even roaming through this board and seeing multiple Arcane questions and answers, no one stands up confidently and just says what the answers are, don't hide behind 'I don't know the exact math'. Let's talk about the math and work through it.
And my bleeding question is, When does Fire become viable?
I've tested Rawr with Excel tables and my best guess is 7500 dmg unbuffed with the ability to hit 20-22% crit self buffed only and hit cap. I'm pretty far off here I believe.
Personal Question:
Is this really all attributed to gear? I understand I'm 1500-1700 spell dmg lower than people in Heroic T12. Nearly 7% crit less and roughly the same haste level. I can't judge mastery since people don't build into it in Fire. So I have heavy Mastery they do not.
And actuallty just looking at the Armory people in Fire T12 have about the same Mastery as me 17-18 and I'm heavily gearing for it with reforges. I don't see them doing it.
Freshness of Arcane?
Re: Freshness of Arcane?
13 Aug 2011 17:32
-
Guromin
- Posts: 190
Yukimi,
This is gonna be a long post because you went into a lot of detail and I see exactly where you went wrong. First thing I want to point out is that your dps is not that low. Your gear is pretty bad right now. Your wearing a few pvp items (which is okay if you have nothing better, but should be replaced relatively fast as you get into firelands). Your reforging is good, but there's a better way you could do it with the use of a computer that gets it perfect. Your missing your t11 4 set bonus which I would still go after in your possition. I just now replaced my t11 4 set with 2 Heroic t12 items and 2 t12 normal set items. Until your about there in progress the t11 set is better. There's a few more things I will cover in detail as we get into this.
First off I ran some calcuations on your gear and on a fight with no movement when your fully buffed you can only do about 25k dps. If your doing 20k on a fight with movement your doing pretty good. SimulationCraft shows I do about 30k dps and on Majordomo I do about 24-27k. Often what hurts my dps there is taking an orb so far away that I can't hit the boss, which is more important than damage while your paladins work out the kinks in taking all of them at once. To fix this problem you need better gear. Try running some t11 raids for trinkets like Theralions Mirror and of course the t11 4 set items. Your dps will benefit a lot from replacing that 333 ilevel trinket your using now.
Your reforging is good, but it's not perfect. Since this is the paragon forums and people here do strive for perfection I will show you to get your reforging perfect. Right now your .15% over the hit cap. Being this far over is a loss of dps points you could be using in other places. You can attempt to calculate the best way to reforge yourself or you can use a website that will do it for you. I have posted several times about http://www.AskMrRobot.com and here I am posting about it again. You should go to the website load your character and see what it thinks you should do differently. If you have any questions on the website it has some great info on how to use it and of course you can always ask me.
Moving on to your play style, rotations and fight execution. I said above that your gear is hurting your damage, but that's not the only thing I see that you could do better. The burn phase is pretty simple.
Burn phase:
Start burn phase when Evocation is almost off CD, you have 4 stacks of Arcane Blast, and you know that you will be able to fully benefit from the time your spamming arcane blast under the Arcane Power buff. Once that buff and others ware off it doesn't really matter if you get interrupted or need to move. Finish the burn phase when your mana reaches sub 30% mana. Going down to 20% is a bit low because with 4 stacks of arcane blast you'll be doing about as much damage as you could in the conservation phase while keeping your mana steady. It's more important to get back up to 90%. We evocate at 30% mana because it gives us a 5% buffer from 100% mana. You get 65% mana back while evocating because Mage Armor will tick once and give you 5% back and Evocation gives you 60%. Ultimately this puts you at 95% mana, where you can start your conservation phase.
Make sure to take note of how long you spam Arcane Blast before using evocation. When evocation has that long left on it's CD you should start your next burn phase. Make sure your test doesn't have you under Blood Lust because you won't have that every burn phase and the number you get wont work very well.
Here's what I do on Majordomo:
*way before fight start* Use PoM to create mana gem and get 2 stacks of crit buff
*3 seconds to pull* Use Mirror Images
*2 seconds to pull* Flame Orb
*1 second to pull* Volcanic Potion
*pull*
*boss comes in range* Start Arcane Blast spamming
*reach 4 stacks of arcane Blast* Blood Lust and pop CD's all in one Global. then keep spamming Arcane Blast
*Mirror images a few seconds from disparaging* Cast Invisibility
*mana reaches 30%* Use evocation
*after evocation* start conservation phase
Conservation phase:
Let me start by making this clear. There is no rotation. No rotation. This phase works off of a goal, not a series of buttons you press. Your goal in the conservation phase is to keep your mana as high as possible without ever getting to 100% or over 100% (with procs like Power Torrent). This comes with practice and and the better you get the easier it becomes to keep your high. I strive to keep it around 90%, but I'm not afraid to go lower is something happens or is going to happen. If I know that I will be unable to attack for several seconds coming up I dip with my mana so that it doesn't reach 100%. On Majordomo for example, he does that stun when he changes forums and I try to be closer to 85% mana so that I don't cap out on mana. Additionally I will use more mana if the boss is taking more damage at one point (like Magma) and I don't have CD's up to start a burn phase.
One more time I want to say there is no rotation. It's just whatever keeps your mana even.
Movement:
Here's the list of things to use while moving:
Presence of Mind --> Arcane Blast *use when you need to keep stacks up or for a nice crit buff*
Flame Orb *The best spell to use while moving unless you need to keep AB stacks up*
Arcane Barrage *3rd on the list because it costs some mana and is expensive*
Mage Armor *helps reduce damage taken and buffs your spellpower. 4th on the list to be used for survival and short distance moves only*
Ice lance *Last on the list for it's low damage*
Fire Blast costs a lot of mana so I don't use it. Mana is dps in arcane!
Stat Weights for arcane and their relative values:
Intellect (5.16)
Hit (3.21)
Spell Power (2.80)
Mastery (1.4)
Crit (1.34)
Haste (1.28)
As you can see intellect is the best by far. Intellect is 3.6 times better than mastery. Intellect is the stat you want to go for above all else.
Do not ever go for hit over intellect. Being at hit cap is important, but never at the expense of intellect. When you get your t11 4 set you will hopefully have a few other items with hit on them to make up for the lost hit rating. Get the valor ring. It will really help your hit problem. Then of course there's the ring from shannox if you can get that. Let me just repeat that you should never sacrifice intellect for hit.
Fire Mages in t12:
They are bad. When you see fire mages armories they are generally MS arcane which means they reforge for arcane. There is only one fight in firelands where fire will beat arcane and thats only if you get a special job. Alyrazor star fox duty. Probably the most fun job out of any fight and fire beats arcane on it. You might be wondering why people play fire on that fight reforged to arcane. The simple answer is that mastery is the best stat for fire on that fight. When your in the air and grab rings they give you haste. Enough haste to cast Pyroblast as your main nuke. They also give you crit when you reach 24 stacks. 100% crit so any reforging to crit that you do is worthless. Since the fight gives you crit and haste the only thing left to reforge to for maximum benefit is mastery! Which is why mages on Alysrazor reforge to mastery.
When does fire become Viable:
When blizzard buffs it. Sounds really silly of an answer, but I mean it. Fire will not beat arcane in single target damage until blizzard buffs fire. Arcane damage scales better with gear than fire because of how good intellect is for it and this just ended up leaving fire in the dust. They then burried fire in a coffin when Shard of Woe came out. Shard of Woe is from t11 heroic and is an Arcane mages t12 Heroic BiS trinket. Shard of Woe is better than the heroic trinket off Ragnaros. They kinda jumped the gun on giving us such a powerful trinket so soon. This trinket doesn't work for fire because a mana cost reduction does nothing for fire's damage.
I love fire and want it to get buffed, but right now I won't use it for anything but trash farming and Alysrazor star fox duty.
If you have any more questions feel free to ask,
-Guromin
This is gonna be a long post because you went into a lot of detail and I see exactly where you went wrong. First thing I want to point out is that your dps is not that low. Your gear is pretty bad right now. Your wearing a few pvp items (which is okay if you have nothing better, but should be replaced relatively fast as you get into firelands). Your reforging is good, but there's a better way you could do it with the use of a computer that gets it perfect. Your missing your t11 4 set bonus which I would still go after in your possition. I just now replaced my t11 4 set with 2 Heroic t12 items and 2 t12 normal set items. Until your about there in progress the t11 set is better. There's a few more things I will cover in detail as we get into this.
First off I ran some calcuations on your gear and on a fight with no movement when your fully buffed you can only do about 25k dps. If your doing 20k on a fight with movement your doing pretty good. SimulationCraft shows I do about 30k dps and on Majordomo I do about 24-27k. Often what hurts my dps there is taking an orb so far away that I can't hit the boss, which is more important than damage while your paladins work out the kinks in taking all of them at once. To fix this problem you need better gear. Try running some t11 raids for trinkets like Theralions Mirror and of course the t11 4 set items. Your dps will benefit a lot from replacing that 333 ilevel trinket your using now.
Your reforging is good, but it's not perfect. Since this is the paragon forums and people here do strive for perfection I will show you to get your reforging perfect. Right now your .15% over the hit cap. Being this far over is a loss of dps points you could be using in other places. You can attempt to calculate the best way to reforge yourself or you can use a website that will do it for you. I have posted several times about http://www.AskMrRobot.com and here I am posting about it again. You should go to the website load your character and see what it thinks you should do differently. If you have any questions on the website it has some great info on how to use it and of course you can always ask me.
Moving on to your play style, rotations and fight execution. I said above that your gear is hurting your damage, but that's not the only thing I see that you could do better. The burn phase is pretty simple.
Burn phase:
Start burn phase when Evocation is almost off CD, you have 4 stacks of Arcane Blast, and you know that you will be able to fully benefit from the time your spamming arcane blast under the Arcane Power buff. Once that buff and others ware off it doesn't really matter if you get interrupted or need to move. Finish the burn phase when your mana reaches sub 30% mana. Going down to 20% is a bit low because with 4 stacks of arcane blast you'll be doing about as much damage as you could in the conservation phase while keeping your mana steady. It's more important to get back up to 90%. We evocate at 30% mana because it gives us a 5% buffer from 100% mana. You get 65% mana back while evocating because Mage Armor will tick once and give you 5% back and Evocation gives you 60%. Ultimately this puts you at 95% mana, where you can start your conservation phase.
Make sure to take note of how long you spam Arcane Blast before using evocation. When evocation has that long left on it's CD you should start your next burn phase. Make sure your test doesn't have you under Blood Lust because you won't have that every burn phase and the number you get wont work very well.
Here's what I do on Majordomo:
*way before fight start* Use PoM to create mana gem and get 2 stacks of crit buff
*3 seconds to pull* Use Mirror Images
*2 seconds to pull* Flame Orb
*1 second to pull* Volcanic Potion
*pull*
*boss comes in range* Start Arcane Blast spamming
*reach 4 stacks of arcane Blast* Blood Lust and pop CD's all in one Global. then keep spamming Arcane Blast
*Mirror images a few seconds from disparaging* Cast Invisibility
*mana reaches 30%* Use evocation
*after evocation* start conservation phase
Conservation phase:
Let me start by making this clear. There is no rotation. No rotation. This phase works off of a goal, not a series of buttons you press. Your goal in the conservation phase is to keep your mana as high as possible without ever getting to 100% or over 100% (with procs like Power Torrent). This comes with practice and and the better you get the easier it becomes to keep your high. I strive to keep it around 90%, but I'm not afraid to go lower is something happens or is going to happen. If I know that I will be unable to attack for several seconds coming up I dip with my mana so that it doesn't reach 100%. On Majordomo for example, he does that stun when he changes forums and I try to be closer to 85% mana so that I don't cap out on mana. Additionally I will use more mana if the boss is taking more damage at one point (like Magma) and I don't have CD's up to start a burn phase.
One more time I want to say there is no rotation. It's just whatever keeps your mana even.
Movement:
Here's the list of things to use while moving:
Presence of Mind --> Arcane Blast *use when you need to keep stacks up or for a nice crit buff*
Flame Orb *The best spell to use while moving unless you need to keep AB stacks up*
Arcane Barrage *3rd on the list because it costs some mana and is expensive*
Mage Armor *helps reduce damage taken and buffs your spellpower. 4th on the list to be used for survival and short distance moves only*
Ice lance *Last on the list for it's low damage*
Fire Blast costs a lot of mana so I don't use it. Mana is dps in arcane!
Stat Weights for arcane and their relative values:
Intellect (5.16)
Hit (3.21)
Spell Power (2.80)
Mastery (1.4)
Crit (1.34)
Haste (1.28)
As you can see intellect is the best by far. Intellect is 3.6 times better than mastery. Intellect is the stat you want to go for above all else.
Do not ever go for hit over intellect. Being at hit cap is important, but never at the expense of intellect. When you get your t11 4 set you will hopefully have a few other items with hit on them to make up for the lost hit rating. Get the valor ring. It will really help your hit problem. Then of course there's the ring from shannox if you can get that. Let me just repeat that you should never sacrifice intellect for hit.
Fire Mages in t12:
They are bad. When you see fire mages armories they are generally MS arcane which means they reforge for arcane. There is only one fight in firelands where fire will beat arcane and thats only if you get a special job. Alyrazor star fox duty. Probably the most fun job out of any fight and fire beats arcane on it. You might be wondering why people play fire on that fight reforged to arcane. The simple answer is that mastery is the best stat for fire on that fight. When your in the air and grab rings they give you haste. Enough haste to cast Pyroblast as your main nuke. They also give you crit when you reach 24 stacks. 100% crit so any reforging to crit that you do is worthless. Since the fight gives you crit and haste the only thing left to reforge to for maximum benefit is mastery! Which is why mages on Alysrazor reforge to mastery.
When does fire become Viable:
When blizzard buffs it. Sounds really silly of an answer, but I mean it. Fire will not beat arcane in single target damage until blizzard buffs fire. Arcane damage scales better with gear than fire because of how good intellect is for it and this just ended up leaving fire in the dust. They then burried fire in a coffin when Shard of Woe came out. Shard of Woe is from t11 heroic and is an Arcane mages t12 Heroic BiS trinket. Shard of Woe is better than the heroic trinket off Ragnaros. They kinda jumped the gun on giving us such a powerful trinket so soon. This trinket doesn't work for fire because a mana cost reduction does nothing for fire's damage.
I love fire and want it to get buffed, but right now I won't use it for anything but trash farming and Alysrazor star fox duty.
If you have any more questions feel free to ask,
-Guromin
Re: Freshness of Arcane?
16 Aug 2011 03:54
-
Guromin
- Posts: 190
In my guild they call me the immortal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu16eUQwCWU
Defiantly one of my favorite episodes and furthermore one of my favorite quotes.
They don't really call me that and I'm do indeed have a pretty good life outside of the game. I've just learned this stuff like the back of my hand so I can type it pretty quickly these days. I was able to finish that big block of text in about 30 minutes. Pretty good right?
-Guromin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu16eUQwCWU
Defiantly one of my favorite episodes and furthermore one of my favorite quotes.
They don't really call me that and I'm do indeed have a pretty good life outside of the game. I've just learned this stuff like the back of my hand so I can type it pretty quickly these days. I was able to finish that big block of text in about 30 minutes. Pretty good right?
-Guromin
Re: Freshness of Arcane?
18 Aug 2011 17:49
-
Yukimi
- Posts: 4
Hey man sorry about the lengthy response. R/L has really gotten a hold of me with 70 hour work weeks and all I've been doing is sleeping/working/raiding. However your post did immensely help the situation. By removing the older way of thinking BC/WotLK, cap hit or die, everything is a rotation etc etc. I instantly saw a 4k dps increase without any new gear that night on MajorDomo easily pulling into the 21k range.
The burn phase is ideal as we both knew it would be, but I like the tip on using PoM before a fight for the initial crits, pretty dope stuff. Mr.Robot is an awesome site too thanks for that one immensely. I'm finding that I still burn myself down to 25-30% mana on the burn phase as with mana regen/Power Torrent I find that evocating from 25% is still putting me to the 100% mana pool at times, other times I'm scraping to 80% so it's sort of hit or miss there until I tweak my Forte to show hidden Cooldowns as well. Still just being lazy on that one rofl.
Now then the conservation phase ideal was brilliant in every sense of the word though here. I've seen the major gains from playing with this style, no more double arcane missiles because I dipped sub 70%, there are times when CC procs at a 4 stack and powet torrent fades simultaneously that in the conservation phase I'll AB 8 times in a row and not go below 85% mana, it's pro. I absolutely love the new style of play and have you to personally thank for it Guromin. All this stuff I wouldn't have figured out on my own, since coming back to the game and going to a new server I have no old friends, and I'm the only mage in this guild so it's just sort of hit or miss.
However, like you, I strive for perfection, whether my guild can't kill Ragnaros and nobody flasks because we're awesome casuals having shit tons of fun, or if I were Siiz with the world first Staff. I'm just stoked to push myself further always, it's the type of player I've always been.
With that in mind I want to open this up to you, Mage Armor. I think it's a GCD that should be used more often, I've even macro'd it to an F key for myself as I find that I practically use it on CD on most fights. The critting Arcane Blast damage difference under Incanter's Absorption is nearly 12k from what I've seen in a raid. With 1 aoe spell dmg hit always taking the entire shield down I tend to pop it when I see Power Torrent up or one of those procs. I'm trying to figure out the mathematics behind this though.
For instance we see a GCD 1.3-1.4s giving us 2k spell dmg for 15s. We could be spending that GCD on an Arcane Blast, and let's say for shits sake that the AB cast would equal the GCD for math purposes. Let's assume that AB would crit 100% of the time to give us the most impossible figure to beat with the Mage Armor usage, assuming a 70k crit averagely. So can we gain more than 70k dmg in 15s from Mage Armor? In realistic terms it would be even less as AB doesn't cast that fast, and it doesn't always crit. I'm figuring 5k extra dmg on AB static and 12k on crits, 1k on AM ticks.
0.00: AB 5k
1.9: AB 5k
3.8: AB 5k
5.7: AB 12k
7.6: AB 5k
10.8: AM 5k
12.7: AB 12k
14.6: AB 5k
16.5: AB No Gain
With an extremely conservative view of criticals here, and not taking into account at all the fact that AB's dmg would be amplified further due to it's debuff stacking, we see a gain of 56k dmg in that GCD usage. I personally think you can time Mage Armor better than just using it on CD like this little example shows and gain even more damage. Also take into effect that the 'not using Mage Armor' dmg was severely buffed up by assuming that AB casts in a GCD, which we dont, and it will crit always, which it wont. Realistically I think this is enough to prove that Mage Armor should be used alot more often than just defensively. Almost every fight aoe's something fire up our arses lol.
I like the moving graph of attacks as well, and agree on the fire blast deal, when I looked at the mana I was expending for 4k dmg I lol'd. Now onto Fire, I was really assuming Blizz was doing the same they've always done with expacs, Arcane awesome at opening tiers, Fire is win with luxury stats usually around the second raiding tier. Not doing any math on it, aside from looking at dmg weights which obviously are outdated when you show me the actual arcane weight on int over hit, my excel spread has it nowhere near those levels so I've trashed it entirely.
So ignoring the fire ideals for now as they're useless and we're here to min/max like G's we'll keep on Arcane. I have a question pertaining to blink's GCD. I have the AP glyph and I find every other fight it seems that when using AP on it's own the one time in between the other cd's.
0.00 Explosion of awmg awesome
1.4 Only AP
2 Trinkets everything comes up but isn't used
2.8 AP and everything is used together now
4.4 AP is up but save it as this is where bosses are low on hp, bloodlust is close, and maximizing cd's under bloodlust>priority
4.8 All is up, wait for BloodLust then explode.
5 Most fights are done
Is how I manage my cd's. But what I find is that on that filler AP usually it's a bit thrown off and have to blink out of aoe or an add attacking me, or something like the flame leaps on MajorDomo. So when I blink and try to instantly cast AB there's normally still about a 0.5s gap where I can't do anything as I get the messages 'Another Ability is in Progress' or w/e it is when you try to cast under the GCD. So I'm looking for a macro that will blink/cast but I can't make one that works for some reason. I assumed:
/stopcasting
/cast blink
/cast Arcane Blast
Would work because the mirror image/AB works under AP, but I'm still findign a problem. Also if you know how to work into a macro to change your characters facing or the camera view 180 degrees on useage, because when I blink, I find that sometimes I shoot through the boss etc, things like that, removing the 0.1-0.2s of human input lag to spin the camera around ya know?
Anyways these are just some thoughts, I'd love to hear your opinion on them, also please recheck my armory and dig the new gear.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/i ... i/advanced
I got to the 2piece T12 deal and can't get the helm/shoulders to drop in T11 so I believe I'm going to stay away form building T11 4 piece and just continue gearing firelands as it turns out I'm one of 2 caster cloth dps in my guild and the other is stacked to the hilt already and I'm being defaulted gear essentially. So what do you think of avoiding the T11 deal, I feel like in 3-4 weeks I'll be beyond it anyways, and it would just simplify things.
Great talking to you as always Guromin, thanks again for the intellectual conversation, I miss it dearly!
~Yuki
The burn phase is ideal as we both knew it would be, but I like the tip on using PoM before a fight for the initial crits, pretty dope stuff. Mr.Robot is an awesome site too thanks for that one immensely. I'm finding that I still burn myself down to 25-30% mana on the burn phase as with mana regen/Power Torrent I find that evocating from 25% is still putting me to the 100% mana pool at times, other times I'm scraping to 80% so it's sort of hit or miss there until I tweak my Forte to show hidden Cooldowns as well. Still just being lazy on that one rofl.
Now then the conservation phase ideal was brilliant in every sense of the word though here. I've seen the major gains from playing with this style, no more double arcane missiles because I dipped sub 70%, there are times when CC procs at a 4 stack and powet torrent fades simultaneously that in the conservation phase I'll AB 8 times in a row and not go below 85% mana, it's pro. I absolutely love the new style of play and have you to personally thank for it Guromin. All this stuff I wouldn't have figured out on my own, since coming back to the game and going to a new server I have no old friends, and I'm the only mage in this guild so it's just sort of hit or miss.
However, like you, I strive for perfection, whether my guild can't kill Ragnaros and nobody flasks because we're awesome casuals having shit tons of fun, or if I were Siiz with the world first Staff. I'm just stoked to push myself further always, it's the type of player I've always been.
With that in mind I want to open this up to you, Mage Armor. I think it's a GCD that should be used more often, I've even macro'd it to an F key for myself as I find that I practically use it on CD on most fights. The critting Arcane Blast damage difference under Incanter's Absorption is nearly 12k from what I've seen in a raid. With 1 aoe spell dmg hit always taking the entire shield down I tend to pop it when I see Power Torrent up or one of those procs. I'm trying to figure out the mathematics behind this though.
For instance we see a GCD 1.3-1.4s giving us 2k spell dmg for 15s. We could be spending that GCD on an Arcane Blast, and let's say for shits sake that the AB cast would equal the GCD for math purposes. Let's assume that AB would crit 100% of the time to give us the most impossible figure to beat with the Mage Armor usage, assuming a 70k crit averagely. So can we gain more than 70k dmg in 15s from Mage Armor? In realistic terms it would be even less as AB doesn't cast that fast, and it doesn't always crit. I'm figuring 5k extra dmg on AB static and 12k on crits, 1k on AM ticks.
0.00: AB 5k
1.9: AB 5k
3.8: AB 5k
5.7: AB 12k
7.6: AB 5k
10.8: AM 5k
12.7: AB 12k
14.6: AB 5k
16.5: AB No Gain
With an extremely conservative view of criticals here, and not taking into account at all the fact that AB's dmg would be amplified further due to it's debuff stacking, we see a gain of 56k dmg in that GCD usage. I personally think you can time Mage Armor better than just using it on CD like this little example shows and gain even more damage. Also take into effect that the 'not using Mage Armor' dmg was severely buffed up by assuming that AB casts in a GCD, which we dont, and it will crit always, which it wont. Realistically I think this is enough to prove that Mage Armor should be used alot more often than just defensively. Almost every fight aoe's something fire up our arses lol.
I like the moving graph of attacks as well, and agree on the fire blast deal, when I looked at the mana I was expending for 4k dmg I lol'd. Now onto Fire, I was really assuming Blizz was doing the same they've always done with expacs, Arcane awesome at opening tiers, Fire is win with luxury stats usually around the second raiding tier. Not doing any math on it, aside from looking at dmg weights which obviously are outdated when you show me the actual arcane weight on int over hit, my excel spread has it nowhere near those levels so I've trashed it entirely.
So ignoring the fire ideals for now as they're useless and we're here to min/max like G's we'll keep on Arcane. I have a question pertaining to blink's GCD. I have the AP glyph and I find every other fight it seems that when using AP on it's own the one time in between the other cd's.
0.00 Explosion of awmg awesome
1.4 Only AP
2 Trinkets everything comes up but isn't used
2.8 AP and everything is used together now
4.4 AP is up but save it as this is where bosses are low on hp, bloodlust is close, and maximizing cd's under bloodlust>priority
4.8 All is up, wait for BloodLust then explode.
5 Most fights are done
Is how I manage my cd's. But what I find is that on that filler AP usually it's a bit thrown off and have to blink out of aoe or an add attacking me, or something like the flame leaps on MajorDomo. So when I blink and try to instantly cast AB there's normally still about a 0.5s gap where I can't do anything as I get the messages 'Another Ability is in Progress' or w/e it is when you try to cast under the GCD. So I'm looking for a macro that will blink/cast but I can't make one that works for some reason. I assumed:
/stopcasting
/cast blink
/cast Arcane Blast
Would work because the mirror image/AB works under AP, but I'm still findign a problem. Also if you know how to work into a macro to change your characters facing or the camera view 180 degrees on useage, because when I blink, I find that sometimes I shoot through the boss etc, things like that, removing the 0.1-0.2s of human input lag to spin the camera around ya know?
Anyways these are just some thoughts, I'd love to hear your opinion on them, also please recheck my armory and dig the new gear.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/i ... i/advanced
I got to the 2piece T12 deal and can't get the helm/shoulders to drop in T11 so I believe I'm going to stay away form building T11 4 piece and just continue gearing firelands as it turns out I'm one of 2 caster cloth dps in my guild and the other is stacked to the hilt already and I'm being defaulted gear essentially. So what do you think of avoiding the T11 deal, I feel like in 3-4 weeks I'll be beyond it anyways, and it would just simplify things.
Great talking to you as always Guromin, thanks again for the intellectual conversation, I miss it dearly!
~Yuki
Re: Freshness of Arcane?
02 Nov 2011 19:58
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Frostfire
- Posts: 1
Yes Mage ward and mana shield are awesome ways to boost your spell power. On fights with predictable raid damage like taking traps on Rag, it's a nice way to boost your dmg. I find the mana lost from mana shield to be worth it. The addon spell power adept is really usefull and can give you an idea of the benefit of using these incanters absorption abilities. It give you a real time SP equivalent by factoring in IA and the benefit from mastery.
6 posts -