Gone arcane - many questions

[Jenkat]

I made a new thread as the topic has now gone from fire to arcane.

Thank you soo much again for helping me. Your comment about my downtime on critical mass debuff was very helpful. Check out the kills on these logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-zkxmzedlkozvklrz/
I'm happy to report back a considerable improvement. If you have any comments about my performance from these more recent log, I'd be interested in hearing them.

After trying Ragnaros with fire spec last night, I'm convinced to try using my new arcane spec. With fire I could not get the burst dps to take down my add during the intermission phase. I have a question about this and then many questions about arcane in general. Would it be a good idea to glyph into Arcane Barrage to be able to use that instant spell to get my add down fast? Or how do you deal with it? I'd also be intersted to hear any tips for Ragnaros.

Here are my general questions about arcane:
1. I have read that I should try to stay around 90% mana during my conservation phase of my rotation. How can I do that. I find it very hard. For example two stacks keep me anywhere from 80-100% and three stacks keeps me from 70-90%. What would you advise me to do?
2. I would like to hear how you use Presence of Mind? Do you use it situationally or as a part of your rotation?
3. I've read that an arcane mage should use Flame orb as part of their rotation after the burn phase. I'm not exactly sure I understand this. Could you explain this to me?
4. What about AOE in arcane spec? Should I just use blizzard or should i put Ring of Frost down and use Arcane explosion? What do you do?
5. I'm assuming that I should reforge all my crit to mastery? But then I read on this site that crit comes before haste for arcane http://www.noxxic.com/mage/arcane/re...-stat-priority. Is this true?
6. Do you time your burst rotation with internal cds or do you just time it in relation to evocation without regard to internal cds?
7. What about trinkets for acane? Would you advise me to go for the Moonwell Chalice?
8. What about movment. Do you use mana on Arcane Barrage (perhaps even Fire Blast and Ice Lance?) or do you just quickly get to where you are going without casting and resume your rotation? What to you do if you have to move during your burst rotation (for example to detonate a trap on Ragnoros) and your cds are off by the time you get back to normal rotation but you have not burned all your mana? Do you burn the mana down and evocate or do you return to the conservationa rotation. I guess what I'm asking is, is it worth spamming arcane blast with no cds?

[mielikinna]

1. Use a mix of AB and ABarr when MBarr doesn't proc.
2. I use it when starting a burn phase for the 15% crit buff on 4-stack AB's during arcane power.
3. Flame orb procs Mbarr, and so by using it after a burn/evocate, you can get chain MBarr procs to allow you to get back to full mana.
4. Stack AB and use Arcane Explosion. Arcane explosion receives the same damage buff as AB and does not consume the buff. Recommend speccing into 2/2 Improved Arcane Explosion. You can do 3-4 arcane explosions (based on haste) then cast AB to keep your 4 stack. Also, the threat drop is very useful.
5. The exact stat values are highly gear dependent. I recommend using a program such as http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php to find out what is optimum for you.
6. Time your burst in relation to cooldowns. I typically find myself starting a burn as mana gem comes off cooldown from my previous burn phase. If your trinkets are on CD or about to be, I might delay a few seconds to try and proc during burn.
7. I would advise you to use rawr, as linked in #5. If you are using two on-use trinkets, the moonwell chalice does not play well with them and I would advise against it. Otherwise, use a simulation program to optimize your character.
8. Any DPS > no dps. I use Abarr and Ice Lance as my preferred movement spells. Use the glyph of Arcane Power and blink to help with movement. I would also burn even without CD's. It isn't optimum, but those CD's won't be up again until your next burn phase, and ABx4 is much more dps than conservation, even without CD's.

[leethaxor]

Here are my general questions about arcane:
1. I have read that I should try to stay around 90% mana during my conservation phase of my rotation. How can I do that. I find it very hard. For example two stacks keep me anywhere from 80-100% and three stacks keeps me from 70-90%. What would you advise me to do?

I find it more about getting a feel for your mana pool size. Practice makes perfect. On a dummy its hard to pratice for your 'rotation' because your missing ALOT of mana that your raid will give you. Just keep glyphed mage armor up, and grind away. Eventually you will get a feel for it. Around your ilvl I believe it was something like 95% try to get 3 AB's around 93% only 2. Generally you want to watch your clear casting procs so you can wipe the stack with an Abarr or steal an extra AB in for free.

2. I would like to hear how you use Presence of Mind? Do you use it situationally or as a part of your rotation?

It depends, most fights that are stand and dps. You just use it on CD, well... 2 casts after Clear cast procs so not to waste stacks of AP (arcane potency). On fights like domo, i normally get the first on CD, then blow the second either as we restack for second scrop or if I have to move. Fights like rag I delay a second use in p1 and p2 so I can solo a add down to 50% health in 1 AB spell cast.

3. I've read that an arcane mage should use Flame orb as part of their rotation after the burn phase. I'm not exactly sure I understand this. Could you explain this to me?

Flame orb on CD its still your highest damage per execute. There really isn't a point to delay it, it will scale with any internal CD's that go off while its up. Just blow it every minute.

]
4. What about AOE in arcane spec? Should I just use blizzard or should i put Ring of Frost down and use Arcane explosion? What do you do?

Spam arcane explosion, preferably keep 2 specs, one for more single target damage, one for imp AE. This is what I do, but then my specs change more the a girl changes clothes.

5. I'm assuming that I should reforge all my crit to mastery? But then I read on this site that crit comes before haste for arcane http://www.noxxic.com/mage/arcane/re...-stat-priority. Is this true?

Ehh. Crit starts to be better then haste (only very very slightly like .1 or .15 dps per point) after you reach 1 second AB's at 4 stack under blood lust. Use something like simcraft or rawr to find your real stat weights.

6. Do you time your burst rotation with internal cds or do you just time it in relation to evocation without regard to internal cds?

Waiting for internals will normally just make you wait longer for you next burn phase, a 2 minute cooldown I think you only have ~15/20 second window in which you can blow it and still get your maximum number of uses. Its nice if you can pull it off. But if you gimp for burn cycles your DPS will really suffer.

Normally you delay Arcane power until mana gem comes up, and you have maybe 15 seconds (or more) on evocation, it goes back to practice makes perfect.

7. What about trinkets for acane? Would you advise me to go for the Moonwell Chalice?

Passive int trinkets are in my opinion godly amazing. Moonwell is just amazing, I believe it is 5th BiS after Shard of Woe, H rag trinket, N rag trinket, H twin dragons trinket. You want to use its CD during a conserve phase I believe... I'm still experimenting with it myself, like it was better to burn it with my CD's on h bal, but on H domo it might be better to use it during my conserve phase because of damage buff... Arcane's crazy.

8. What about movment. Do you use mana on Arcane Barrage (perhaps even Fire Blast and Ice Lance?) or do you just quickly get to where you are going without casting and resume your rotation? What to you do if you have to move during your burst rotation (for example to detonate a trap on Ragnoros) and your cds are off by the time you get back to normal rotation but you have not burned all your mana? Do you burn the mana down and evocate or do you return to the conservationa rotation. I guess what I'm asking is, is it worth spamming arcane blast with no cds?

Honestly this is a good question. The short answer is Yes, just keep burning until you reach your 35% mana ish. The long answer is No, if your delaying evocation to long. I've had 'burn phases' last for 90 seconds on ragnaros, then I run in to the issue of waiting for evocation's cooldown to burn again, and wasting a burn phase in the process.


TL;DR Arcane is a 2 button spec, but doing the maximum dps with those 2 buttons is harder then most people think. Just keep practicing it makes ya closer and closer to prefect.

[Jenkat]

Thanks so much, Leethaxor. This is a lot of information and I will take some time studying it and incorporating it all. =) Thanks to you too Mielikinna. =) I'm sure I will be returning with more question.

I am so happy to report that I did ok with arcane on Ragnaros last night. At first, I did terribly - I kept dying and my dps was around 13k. It was just so hard to do the tacs and do my new rotation. But by the end of the fight I was very stably at 22k and not dying AND getting my add down very easily and helping others on theirs. It was great!!!

Unfortunately, we did not get the logs working last night. But I will post some next time I raid.

Actually I do have a question now. Do you guys use "Tell me when" addon? I want to use it to track Arcane Potency and Incanter's Absorbtion. I got it all set up but it is not working correctly. It seems like a bug to me.

[mielikinna]

I do not use Tell Me When.
I use NeedtoKnow - you can set up custom bars on there. You could also use PowerAurasClassic if you prefer icons. If it truly is a bug, you might think about contacting the mod creator.

[Jenkat]

Do you get Incanter's absorbtion to show on NeedtoKnow? It is really the only thing that I truely love about arcane spec so I would just love to see it activated! I never look up at the upper right hand of my screen to the the wow icon there. I can make arcane potency work fine. But it seems to bug out on the internal cds. I guess I will try to contact the mod creater.

[leethaxor]

You should know when IA procs, mindless using mageward or mana sheild on cooldown is bad.
Using IA is a dps loss (even with mageward), period. The only thing IA does is make shielding yourself not AS much of a dps loss. But death is a far larger Dps loss, I use IA in my domo spec.

I like power aura's alot myself. I use it a decent amount in my UI Linky. My AB stacks are across my toons feet like little combo points (not pictured), but they go right between my mana and HP bars. My keybinds (are/arn't) visable, I don't bind AB to everything that was a joke for our kill video.

Use a boss mod to keep track of when to burn and when not to, that's fairly important like you don't want to blow all your cooldowns then molten seed in 2 seconds and you just run with your raid group raging under your breath.

I use need to know for internal cooldowns namely lightweave and power torrent. Great GREAT! addon

Also icehud, I don't see how you can play arcane with out it, but that's just me. Frankly I can't see how you can play wow without it :P

[Jenkat]

Thanks Mielikinna - I use NeedtoKnow now and it is much better for me. =)

Thanks again, Leethaxor again for sharing all of your knowledge and experience. I'm really learning a lot. I love IA and use it only with mage ward when I know that I will take dmg like dentonating the traps in Ragnaros.

I'd be interested in hearing more about how your experimentation with the Moonwell Chalice is going. Do you still use it differently depending on the fight? Can you explain in detail what you mean when you write: better to burn it with my CD's on h bal, but on H domo it might be better to use it during my conserve phase because of damage buff... I'm not sure I understand why you use this trinket with your other cds on Bal but not on Domo - what is the damage buff with Domo and why does that make a difference?

I have never heard of Icehud. I will check that out. Thanks again.

Love your UI! =)

[leethaxor]

I'd be interested in hearing more about how your experimentation with the Moonwell Chalice is going. Do you still use it differently depending on the fight? Can you explain in detail what you mean when you write: better to burn it with my CD's on h bal, but on H domo it might be better to use it during my conserve phase because of damage buff... I'm not sure I understand why you use this trinket with your other cds on Bal but not on Domo - what is the damage buff with Domo and why does that make a difference?

To go a bit more indepth.

You want to you chalice with your other cooldowns (gem, arcane power, etc.) when you are likely to remain at a higher percentage mana for the duration of your burn. I could drop chalice with my cooldowns normally on farm content because our druid (<3 kiff) is giving me intervate when I burn, meaning that I will spend about 2/3 of moonwell's duration at around 90 to 80 percent mana (depending on their reaction, vent lag, etc.) and do VERY large arcane blast crits, it like gaining an extra arcane power almost.

When I'm not getting intervate. I prefer to use it outside of the burn because the bonus from the chalice will decrease as your burn does. You start your burn lets say at 92% mana (prepot), and you pop the chalice your only getting now 1592 mastery from it (due to how arcane's mastery works, less mastery less mana). So as you burn your mana will decrease.

Warning: Math
Provided the decrease (of mana) is linear 'constant' (which it isn't, but if I was to include the integration necessary to model mana loss during a burn phase I would loose people really fast). And you start your burn at 100% mana, and end at 35% doing so in 20 seconds, moonwell chalice goes from 1700 to 595 mastery bonus. So now each execute of the moonwell is only worth ~1147.5 mastery, instead of its full 1700. And at 1147.5 mastery the moonwell is now only going to give you ~191 mastery (on average passively), instead of of ~282. While if you use it during a conserve phase, and float at 95% mana it will give 1615 of its bonus, averaging out to ~270 passive bonus.
So to just look at the 'get the maximum affect from your gear' you most likely want to use chalice during a conserve phase.

[mielikinna]

Have you also considered how the value of that mastery stacks with Arcane Power's bonus? I tend to stack Moonwell with Arcane Power/Burn due to the additional multiplier on the damage.

[leethaxor]

Ok so if you burn with it and get a 20% bonus, it will give you about 229.2 passively

With AP - 229
On Conserve - 270

Naturally this just napkin math. the 'real' value maybe higher or lower.

[mielikinna]

This is also going to change depending on gear level. At my current gear level, after a full duration of Arcane Power burn, I'm still over 50% mana.

If you look at this as a gaussian curve, then you can say that the midpoint value can be used to represent the average value. So if you burn to 30% mana during arcane power's 15 second duration, then look at the the midpoint which would be 65%, that gives you a value of 1105 mastery average value, multiplied by the 20% bonus of arcane power gives 1326. If you only go to 50% mana during the 15 seconds of AP, then you evaluate at 75%, which gives a value of 1530. If you are using this during your conserve phase with an average mana value of 95%, then you are comparing to a value of 1615 mastery.

Now, this is looking at only the values of this trinket and arcane power. Personally, I tend to use my mana gem at the same time as I use Arcane Power, and use this trinket. That extra spellpower then gets increased benefit from this trinket.

The TL: DR version is that if you are stacking more buffs than just arcane power and moonwell chalice, then depending on your gear level it is likely more dps to activate this trinket in time with the activation of the rest of these buffs.

[leethaxor]

Its more complex then a normal distribution.

For an initial burn, I normally will have AP+Mana gem+pot+power torrent+lightweave then lightweave, torrent, and pot will fall off during the burn returning some mana, increasing chalice's value slightly.

Which means you have three returns. Based on my current character over a 'average initial burn'. I will gain about 8% mana from the potion falling off, then another 5% from the lightweave falling off, and 3% from power torrent falling off.
I originally stated that

Provided the decrease (of mana) is linear 'constant' (which it isn't, but if I was to include the integration necessary to model mana loss during a burn phase I would loose people really fast).

You would have to model a line that is decreasing from 100% to 35% or when ever you evocate, then take into account int procs that would end buffing your %mana, and increasing the trinkets value to find your real 'average' mana during a burn then that would be your real mastery bonus.

Now on top of that you would need to demonstrate that the 'burn phase' chalice is going to give you 16% more on average bonus then the conserve chalice.

Also the stat values of crit and haste (under softcap) are greatly inflated by arcane power (and mana gem) while mastery is almost completely worthless during a burn.

[Bigbad]

Wouldn't you do about dubbel the amount of dps in burn compared to conservative and have more then 50% mana on average? Just trying to keep it simple cause if you want to do it accurate its quite complicated. Depends alot on gearlevel I guess and T12 4set would have a significant impact as well.

[leethaxor]

Wouldn't you do about dubbel the amount of dps in burn compared to conservative and have more then 50% mana on average? Just trying to keep it simple cause if you want to do it accurate its quite complicated. Depends alot on gearlevel I guess and T12 4set would have a significant impact as well.

To keep it simple, no. Chalice isn't a 100% damage bonus.

[Bigbad]

To keep it simple, no. Chalice isn't a 100% damage bonus.

Thats not what i said. I was thinking 40k dps in a burn phase and 20k dps in conservative and you keep average of 50%+ mana while chalice is up during a burnphase.

[leethaxor]

Thats not what i said. I was thinking 40k dps in a burn phase and 20k dps in conservative and you keep average of 50%+ mana while chalice is up during a burnphase.

Your totally losing me.

But I think your trying to say that you are going to try to be at and average mana of 50% for your burn phase. But your average mana will be higher then that already (for the figures I used). Because for a 'normal' burn you go from 100% to 35%, which averages to 67.5%, to get a 50% average you would have to burn to 0% mana.

And if you are talking about stopping burning to conserve mana during your 'burn' phase then that's completely off base. Burn phase is about maxing your dps, and trying to stop going below X value of mana during a 'burn' means your just gimping your burn and gimping your average dps by lowering your burn dps.

[Bigbad]

Chalice proc is just a modifier on your dps depending on the manalevel you have. So if you have your dps in both phases and the average manalevel in both phases you can determine in which phase its best to use chalice. It has nothing to do with how you perform those phases. This a bit more clear?

In short we do more then dubbel the dps in a burnphase while keeping higher then 50% mana on average(your 67,5% sounds about right) so its best to use chalice during a burnphase. But my mage is just an alt so correct me if im wrong here.

[leethaxor]

When I use chalice with my CD's my burn peaks at around 74k to 76k dps (that's without receiving an external). Then I evocate and hit about 22k for my conserve.

When I don't use chalice in my burn I peak at around 70 to 73k dps. Then when I pop chalice after my burn I float at 35k for about 20 seconds before falling by to normall 22k

Chalice gives me a small (but albeit) noticeable increase to my dps during my burn, but using it post burn gives a MASSIVE damage bonus to your conserve phase.

[Bigbad]

1700 mastery rating=9,5 mastery=upto 14,25% extra damage done. That will in no way increase your dps from 22k to 35k thats just bullshit. 22*1,1425=25,135 and that's not even correctly calculated since the mastery proc is additive with already existing mastery and not multiplicative so the actual number is slightly lower depending on the amount of mastery you already have.