You may want to add the info about the new living bomb glyph coming soon. I think it lets damage ticks crit.
Pretty sure it's in one of the updates at the bottom of the OP. If not, I'll make sure later. I think a new PTR build goes up today (may be tomorrow or Friday), so I'm waiting to see on that.
In practice, how much does Living Bomb help a mage's dps? I mean, I can run the numbers myself, but since I don't have a 60+ mage, I wonder if I am unaware of anything.
In practice, how much does Living Bomb help a mage's dps? I mean, I can run the numbers myself, but since I don't have a 60+ mage, I wonder if I am unaware of anything.
It makes enough of a difference that it's part of the Frostfire Bolt and Fireball talent build spell rotations. According to WoW Wiki, the final explosion of LB gets 40% of your spell power, and the DoT portion gets 80% (20% per tick).
In practice, how much does Living Bomb help a mage's dps? I mean, I can run the numbers myself, but since I don't have a 60+ mage, I wonder if I am unaware of anything.
It makes enough of a difference that it's part of the Frostfire Bolt and Fireball talent build spell rotations. According to WoW Wiki, the final explosion of LB gets 40% of your spell power, and the DoT portion gets 80% (20% per tick).
The final explosion can also trigger hot streak.
TheTish on
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
And it also has an awesome spell effect when it explodes! <.<
It is significant though. It's basically scorch up twice, living bomb, and fireball / FFB spam with Hot Streak Pyroblasts thrown in, refreshing LB when it goes up, and scorch when it's nearly done too.
In practice, how much does Living Bomb help a mage's dps? I mean, I can run the numbers myself, but since I don't have a 60+ mage, I wonder if I am unaware of anything.
It makes enough of a difference that it's part of the Frostfire Bolt and Fireball talent build spell rotations. According to WoW Wiki, the final explosion of LB gets 40% of your spell power, and the DoT portion gets 80% (20% per tick).
In practice, how much does Living Bomb help a mage's dps? I mean, I can run the numbers myself, but since I don't have a 60+ mage, I wonder if I am unaware of anything.
It makes enough of a difference that it's part of the Frostfire Bolt and Fireball talent build spell rotations. According to WoW Wiki, the final explosion of LB gets 40% of your spell power, and the DoT portion gets 80% (20% per tick).
The final explosion can also trigger hot streak.
Will the ticks be able to with the new LB glyph?
Nope... just the final explosion.
TheTish on
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
Yeah so would randomly nerfing Arcane Barrage because other people whine that they actually saw their health move in PVP. Or listening to Resto Druids crying about PVP after almost half an expansion of being ridiculous.
Can you guys recommend pre-raiding lvl 70 armor? I really need the spell damage bonuses btw
Are you levelling to 80? If so, you can grab some of the netherweave and low frostwoven tailoring pieces. Other than that your best bet is just to grab quest rewards - going from 70-72 will replace the vast majority of your gear.
Unless you're planning on staying at 70 for a while (and there really is no reason to, especially if you don't have twinked out 70 arena or raiding gear) then there isn't much point to going out of your way to do pre-WotLK group quests or dungeons - just keep on questing. The one exception would be the Nagrand Ring of Blood if you can get some guildies to help out real fast - it's a big XP dump and the weapon will probably be a big upgrade for you.
Arcane seems interesting but I'm not really clear on some stuff.
Do you basically need a raid fully stacked with all the mana regen buffs to make it work?
Is haste worthwhile for arcane? If you can dump your mana faster than you can generate it, is haste actually doing anything for you? Is haste useful because the rotations with lower mana consumption have higher damage per mana and your using haste to maximize the damage from the mana and then spamming arcane blast to burn off excess mana at a less favorable damage per mana ratio? Or should you just stack spell power and crit while avoiding haste?
How important is stacking int to increase your mana regen from evo and replenishment? That seems to be what the spec is all about, right? Maximum mana generation with the ability to convert all of it into damage.
I did a heroic VoA pug today with the minimum possible replenishment (some hunters, I think one Paladin? And that was it. Priests were all healing) and it worked fine. It's a bit mana intensive and my DPS probably suffered from chugging potions (as well as the fact I wasn't "SRS RAID" flasked/fed/etc. but still)
Arcane seems interesting but I'm not really clear on some stuff.
not a problem! i know quite a bit about arcane, seeing as it's my raid spec.
Do you basically need a raid fully stacked with all the mana regen buffs to make it work?
nope! you just need the mana regen talent and mage armor, with an option to glyph Mana Gem or Mage Armor for even more delicious mana regen action. do note however that patch 3.1 will be invalidating Glyph of Mage Armor (unless they change it).
Is haste worthwhile for arcane?
yep. it and spellpower.
If you can dump your mana faster than you can generate it, is haste actually doing anything for you? Is haste useful because the rotations with lower mana consumption have higher damage per mana and your using haste to maximize the damage from the mana and then spamming arcane blast to burn off excess mana at a less favorable damage per mana ratio? Or should you just stack spell power and crit while avoiding haste?
basically, arcane is the fastest spellcasting spec and thus gets the most use out of haste. our longest spellcast without haste is 2.5s, and it only goes up from there.
How important is stacking int to increase your mana regen from evo and replenishment? That seems to be what the spec is all about, right? Maximum mana generation with the ability to convert all of it into damage.
sort of. you have some misconceptions - arcane is mana-hungry, yes, but it also has the best mage mana regen of the three specs with the 2-minute cooldown evocation.
to compare the two primary raiding specs, arcane is less burst and more sustained damage, while FFB is very swingy and crit-dependent. this basically means that while FFB has higher numbers at the top end of the gear spectrum due to stacked crit chance, Arcane is much more consistent and forgiving at the lower gear end, due to how synergistic its spells are.
it's all about tradeoffs, basically. arcane requires a good head for mana management and rewards a smart player for deploying the right rotations in the right situations with consistently high DPS no matter the gear level, whereas Frostfire has a simpler rotation and underperforms without lots and lots of crit.
Super Namicchi on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
An arcane spec that utilizes a sub-frost spec for icy veins also provides two buffs for dps increase: Icy Veins and Arcane Power (which with arcane flows has a cooldown of 1.4 minutes - this is very very good).
I think Arcanis should've specified just a tad bit more about FFB - By "very swingy," aside from the damage, it also relates to threat. You'll be plugging out a couple FFB's for over 2k damage, and all of a sudden you crit and pump out 6k FFB's. And you will do it often.
So what you're looking at is this: arcane spec, you'll have to manage your mana regenerating abilities well to get the maximum potential out of it. Your spell rotation, if I've followed mage advice right, is two arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (some say that as soon as Missile Barrage procs, even with just one arcane blast buff, use AM anyhow).
With FFB spec, you have to pay attention to your threat generation. I wasn't geared up properly for FFB spec, as I lacked a lot of crit, but I still managed to steal aggro off my tanks in various situations because of rolling crits. I never popped combustion out of a fear about rolling crits screwing over the threat table.
Edit - I would argue about the FFB rotation being simpler. It may be about on par with Arcane. Arcane is about using cooldowns, but mostly two spells outside those. FFB you have to scorch every 30 seconds-ish, throw out PB with the right proc, and keep LB up amongst your FFB casts.
Henroid on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
An arcane spec that utilizes a sub-frost spec for icy veins also provides two buffs for dps increase: Icy Veins and Arcane Power (which with arcane flows has a cooldown of 1.4 minutes - this is very very good).
I think Arcanis should've specified just a tad bit more about FFB - By "very swingy," aside from the damage, it also relates to threat. You'll be plugging out a couple FFB's for over 2k damage, and all of a sudden you crit and pump out 6k FFB's. And you will do it often.
So what you're looking at is this: arcane spec, you'll have to manage your mana regenerating abilities well to get the maximum potential out of it. Your spell rotation, if I've followed mage advice right, is two arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (some say that as soon as Missile Barrage procs, even with just one arcane blast buff, use AM anyhow).
With FFB spec, you have to pay attention to your threat generation. I wasn't geared up properly for FFB spec, as I lacked a lot of crit, but I still managed to steal aggro off my tanks in various situations because of rolling crits. I never popped combustion out of a fear about rolling crits screwing over the threat table.
Edit - I would argue about the FFB rotation being simpler. It may be about on par with Arcane. Arcane is about using cooldowns, but mostly two spells outside those. FFB you have to scorch every 30 seconds-ish, throw out PB with the right proc, and keep LB up amongst your FFB casts.
Those 6k FFBs are actually closer to 7-9k, easily, and yes, there will be times as FFB where you will randomly crit like 5 times ini a row and it's possible to pull aggro, you really have to be quick on Ice block and have good tanking sometimes, but for the most part it's not an issue.
An arcane spec that utilizes a sub-frost spec for icy veins also provides two buffs for dps increase: Icy Veins and Arcane Power (which with arcane flows has a cooldown of 1.4 minutes - this is very very good).
I think Arcanis should've specified just a tad bit more about FFB - By "very swingy," aside from the damage, it also relates to threat. You'll be plugging out a couple FFB's for over 2k damage, and all of a sudden you crit and pump out 6k FFB's. And you will do it often.
So what you're looking at is this: arcane spec, you'll have to manage your mana regenerating abilities well to get the maximum potential out of it. Your spell rotation, if I've followed mage advice right, is two arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (some say that as soon as Missile Barrage procs, even with just one arcane blast buff, use AM anyhow).
With FFB spec, you have to pay attention to your threat generation. I wasn't geared up properly for FFB spec, as I lacked a lot of crit, but I still managed to steal aggro off my tanks in various situations because of rolling crits. I never popped combustion out of a fear about rolling crits screwing over the threat table.
Edit - I would argue about the FFB rotation being simpler. It may be about on par with Arcane. Arcane is about using cooldowns, but mostly two spells outside those. FFB you have to scorch every 30 seconds-ish, throw out PB with the right proc, and keep LB up amongst your FFB casts.
Those 6k FFBs are actually closer to 7-9k, easily, and yes, there will be times as FFB where you will randomly crit like 5 times ini a row and it's possible to pull aggro, you really have to be quick on Ice block and have good tanking sometimes, but for the most part it's not an issue.
Also after getting a couple crits, you are probably going to throw off an instant pyro in there too... which has a nice chance to crit too. It's definitely possible to dump over 40k of damage into something within just a couple seconds.
TheTish on
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
An arcane spec that utilizes a sub-frost spec for icy veins also provides two buffs for dps increase: Icy Veins and Arcane Power (which with arcane flows has a cooldown of 1.4 minutes - this is very very good).
I think Arcanis should've specified just a tad bit more about FFB - By "very swingy," aside from the damage, it also relates to threat. You'll be plugging out a couple FFB's for over 2k damage, and all of a sudden you crit and pump out 6k FFB's. And you will do it often.
So what you're looking at is this: arcane spec, you'll have to manage your mana regenerating abilities well to get the maximum potential out of it. Your spell rotation, if I've followed mage advice right, is two arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (some say that as soon as Missile Barrage procs, even with just one arcane blast buff, use AM anyhow).
With FFB spec, you have to pay attention to your threat generation. I wasn't geared up properly for FFB spec, as I lacked a lot of crit, but I still managed to steal aggro off my tanks in various situations because of rolling crits. I never popped combustion out of a fear about rolling crits screwing over the threat table.
Edit - I would argue about the FFB rotation being simpler. It may be about on par with Arcane. Arcane is about using cooldowns, but mostly two spells outside those. FFB you have to scorch every 30 seconds-ish, throw out PB with the right proc, and keep LB up amongst your FFB casts.
Those 6k FFBs are actually closer to 7-9k, easily, and yes, there will be times as FFB where you will randomly crit like 5 times ini a row and it's possible to pull aggro, you really have to be quick on Ice block and have good tanking sometimes, but for the most part it's not an issue.
Also after getting a couple crits, you are probably going to throw off an instant pyro in there too... which has a nice chance to crit too. It's definitely possible to dump over 40k of damage into something within just a couple seconds.
7k is the highest I got on my poorly-geared mage with FFB, sue me. :P
In raids, I was critting for around 12k as FFB spec... but that was with most of the gear I have now. Funny thing is, my fireballs are critting for just as much since i switched to fire/ttw spec. :winky:
TheTish on
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
7k is the highest I got on my poorly-geared mage with FFB, sue me. :P
In raids, I was critting for around 12k as FFB spec... but that was with most of the gear I have now. Funny thing is, my fireballs are critting for just as much since i switched to fire/ttw spec. :winky:
I've gotten a few 11-12k crits with Fireballs, but not with the same regularity as I was experiencing with FFB. Fireball seems much more consistent than FFB, like I've done 5.2k DPS on Patchwerk some nights, but I've also barely topped 4k on a night when the RNG is against me. I ended up at 4.5k with Fireball/ttw last night, and that was my first experience with the spec. I'm curious to see how it goes in the future.
I've got FFB down pretty well. I'm just sort of bored of it.
The only tricky bit is making sure you don't waste combustion charges on living bombs or scorches. That and padding the end of your FFB with a scorch refresh or LB when hotstreak is up to prevent ignite munching (did they ever get around to fixing the ignite munching when a FFB and Pyro hit at the same time and both crit?).
So with Arcane, on like patchwerk for example... Would I open the fight with {3x AB -> MI -> IV -> AP -> AB spam until I've used 66% + 4900 of my mana}, then Arcane Torrent + mana gem + evo back to full, and then do rotations of {AB -> AB -> (missile barrage and restart rotation) OR (AB AM)} until AP is up, at which point I ramp up to rotations of {AB -> AB -> AB -> (missile barrage) OR (Arcane Barrage)} until I'm down to 34% - 4900 mana and then Arcane Torrent + Evo + gem?
I'm a little nervous because gearing for FFB resulted in having a pretty dinky mana pool since its its mana consumption is so low. My char is here: I'm a mage. I'm not at the hit cap, but right now 1 hit is only worth 1.08 spell power for me, so the 19 SP gems are just better than the 16 hit gems.
Is there any realistic way to get Imp Scorch while still being primarily Arcane spec? I know you'd have to forget about Icy Veins and Precision, but besides those two, is it possible to do without overly destroying personal DPS?
I threw this together in five minutes but I have no idea if this would really work out, or if it would be better to just forget about having a scorcher in the raid at all (mages are a super-rare breed on my server, or at least raid mages are).
Ledneh on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
Is there any realistic way to get Imp Scorch while still being primarily Arcane spec? I know you'd have to forget about Icy Veins and Precision, but besides those two, is it possible to do without overly destroying personal DPS?
I threw this together in five minutes but I have no idea if this would really work out, or if it would be better to just forget about having a scorcher in the raid at all (mages are a super-rare breed on my server, or at least raid mages are).
Unless your raids don't cast spells, Imp. Scorch is too good to pass up. My recommendation is to stick with one of the Fire specs, with Arcane you'll have to give up some of your DPS missing out on Icy Veins, and then some more gemming/enchanting to reach the hit cap without Precision, not to mention disrupting your rotation keeping up a debuff that usually isn't part of that spec.
Well I speced arcane and did two instances with it. I like it so far.
The damage is ok. I'm still getting the hang of it, but I managed 3.2k on Palehoof and 2.6k on Ymiron, so it can at least get the job done. Mana really isn't proving to be a big issue so far, but the stuff is dying so fast that I'm not sure its an accurate reflection.
They do need to trim down the arcane tree though. You just flat out don't have enough spare talent points to take any of the cool arcane talents. I mean, yea they apparently don't want arcane to be able to take frost channeling or master of the elements, but adding a massive number of point sinks to the arcane tree to prevent it just makes things boring.
Well, arcane isn't the only tree/spec where you don't get to take any "fun" talents if you're trying to maximize your damage, so that's probably the intent.
forty on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
Can anyone point me in the direction of one of those damage meter things?
7k is the highest I got on my poorly-geared mage with FFB, sue me. :P
In raids, I was critting for around 12k as FFB spec... but that was with most of the gear I have now. Funny thing is, my fireballs are critting for just as much since i switched to fire/ttw spec. :winky:
I haven't really been doing anything in WoW lately, though I still read threads and such. I've been kind of theoretically interested in switching my Mage to a Fire/TTW spec like you have... However pretty much all of my current gear is *very* deep Arcane focused. My crit isn't great and my haste is over the top, so I'm not sure it'd work out very well.
An arcane spec that utilizes a sub-frost spec for icy veins also provides two buffs for dps increase: Icy Veins and Arcane Power (which with arcane flows has a cooldown of 1.4 minutes - this is very very good).
I think Arcanis should've specified just a tad bit more about FFB - By "very swingy," aside from the damage, it also relates to threat. You'll be plugging out a couple FFB's for over 2k damage, and all of a sudden you crit and pump out 6k FFB's. And you will do it often.
So what you're looking at is this: arcane spec, you'll have to manage your mana regenerating abilities well to get the maximum potential out of it. Your spell rotation, if I've followed mage advice right, is two arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (some say that as soon as Missile Barrage procs, even with just one arcane blast buff, use AM anyhow).
With FFB spec, you have to pay attention to your threat generation. I wasn't geared up properly for FFB spec, as I lacked a lot of crit, but I still managed to steal aggro off my tanks in various situations because of rolling crits. I never popped combustion out of a fear about rolling crits screwing over the threat table.
Edit - I would argue about the FFB rotation being simpler. It may be about on par with Arcane. Arcane is about using cooldowns, but mostly two spells outside those. FFB you have to scorch every 30 seconds-ish, throw out PB with the right proc, and keep LB up amongst your FFB casts.
Those 6k FFBs are actually closer to 7-9k, easily, and yes, there will be times as FFB where you will randomly crit like 5 times ini a row and it's possible to pull aggro, you really have to be quick on Ice block and have good tanking sometimes, but for the most part it's not an issue.
yeah, my bad pertaining to threat - as arcane i never have to deal with pulling threat in a raid since our tanks are awesome and i have 2/2 in the arcane threat reduction talent. but yeah, with the damage FFB puts out you also have to watch your threat table (invisibility wipes your threat so keep that spell in mind).
that said, i can't really stress enough how much fun arcane is. i mean if you want to top the charts and have the gear, FFB is fun also, but if your gear level is low-midrange, arcane is pretty much where it's at.
Mirror image also does some wacky things with threat that drop it overall.
Explain please.
Henroid on
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
I'm gonna toss this up in the OP. Blizzard still has plans for making spirit attractive to mages.
It is still in the plan. The goal is to make it so that a mage who avoids all the gear with spirit does not have significantly higher dps than the mage with the (more common) gear with spirit.
Regeneration itself is just something we're going to have to test more, especially on the PTR. We've made it clear that we think it is too easy to ignore mana as a resource currently on live. While this may be fun (in the sense that running around in a video game on god mode might be fun), we don't think it's ultimately good for the game. We don't want to go to the opposite extreme however where you use 3 spells and run dry.
My "god mode" comment was refering to being able to play (any class) with unlimited resources. When I have said before that we wanted to make the risk of running out of mana less trivial, there have often been responses of "Why? Worrying about mana isn't fun. Make the game challenging while still leaving us unlimited mana!" I was trying to ward off those comments this time.
We don't intend to balance mages as a class that can do decent damage but then quickly runs OOM.
I hope I don't get the ban-hammer for quoting here, but there is a fundamental problem with how mana, as a resource, is being treated with these regen changes.
You only get the ban hammer for cursing, insulting people, or otherwise making inappropriate posts. Disagreeing with us is not inappropriate or we would have long ago banned the lot of you.
Rogues and warriors are balanced around their resources as well. They are infinite over the course of a long fight (but few fights are really that long) but they can be limited in any given second. Mana classes generally have the luxury of not having to worry about mana at all early in a fight, unless you are just trying to pace yourself. You don’t often hit a button and have it not go off due to lack of resources, which rogues and warriors do all the time. The various resource models all have their inherent advantages and disadvantages. Being in a perpetual state of infinite mana lets you avoid one of your disadvantages.
I am sorry to those players who perennially run out of mana now. I’m not sure what you are doing differently, but we are often dealing with the opposite extreme.
It does sound like Blizzard is still focused on the only use spirit has for mages is as a regen stat.
That isn’t in fact what I said though. However, I also didn't say that we are going to give you 200 additional spellpower for free.
Honestly, I don't fucking understand what they're intending. They're saying they want to make spirit more useful, which at the moment it boosts mana regen, but they also don't want us to have too much mana at our disposal, or last too long before going OOM. My fear is that we're going to see a rise in mana cost for our spells.
increasing mana costs across the board for mages would really hurt arcane while leaving the other two raid specs in a 'so what?' position.
EDIT: you know what'd be rad though? if spirit added a small amount to haste or something. i dunno, i think if they want to push spirit on us they need to make it do something else that isn't just 'mana lulz'.
even if it's like 200 spirit = .01% haste, i think it would make mages consider grabbing gear with some additional spirit on it. as it stands, i never even look if it has spirit or not. shows how much i give a shit about it. for me and every other mage i've talked to spirit is a non-stat, take it or leave it.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
I'm no expert on gear, but I've seen a ton of stuff with haste have spirit as well, and often vice-versa. It'd be kinda silly, but then again I guess intellect also adds to crit and is alongside crit rating. We'll see. Good idea, but what if there's something better?
Also, OP is updated with news and a couple links for Recount and Omen, and fixed a couple typos.
Henroid on
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AlectharAlan ShoreWe're not territorial about that sort of thing, are we?Registered Userregular
edited March 2009
I feel like them adding a clause like "25% of your Spirit as crit rating/haste" to Molten armor would be really awesome.
Posts
Pretty sure it's in one of the updates at the bottom of the OP. If not, I'll make sure later. I think a new PTR build goes up today (may be tomorrow or Friday), so I'm waiting to see on that.
It makes enough of a difference that it's part of the Frostfire Bolt and Fireball talent build spell rotations. According to WoW Wiki, the final explosion of LB gets 40% of your spell power, and the DoT portion gets 80% (20% per tick).
The final explosion can also trigger hot streak.
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
It is significant though. It's basically scorch up twice, living bomb, and fireball / FFB spam with Hot Streak Pyroblasts thrown in, refreshing LB when it goes up, and scorch when it's nearly done too.
Will the ticks be able to with the new LB glyph?
Nope... just the final explosion.
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
Blizzard would never do this.
Are you levelling to 80? If so, you can grab some of the netherweave and low frostwoven tailoring pieces. Other than that your best bet is just to grab quest rewards - going from 70-72 will replace the vast majority of your gear.
Unless you're planning on staying at 70 for a while (and there really is no reason to, especially if you don't have twinked out 70 arena or raiding gear) then there isn't much point to going out of your way to do pre-WotLK group quests or dungeons - just keep on questing. The one exception would be the Nagrand Ring of Blood if you can get some guildies to help out real fast - it's a big XP dump and the weapon will probably be a big upgrade for you.
Do you basically need a raid fully stacked with all the mana regen buffs to make it work?
Is haste worthwhile for arcane? If you can dump your mana faster than you can generate it, is haste actually doing anything for you? Is haste useful because the rotations with lower mana consumption have higher damage per mana and your using haste to maximize the damage from the mana and then spamming arcane blast to burn off excess mana at a less favorable damage per mana ratio? Or should you just stack spell power and crit while avoiding haste?
How important is stacking int to increase your mana regen from evo and replenishment? That seems to be what the spec is all about, right? Maximum mana generation with the ability to convert all of it into damage.
not a problem! i know quite a bit about arcane, seeing as it's my raid spec.
nope! you just need the mana regen talent and mage armor, with an option to glyph Mana Gem or Mage Armor for even more delicious mana regen action. do note however that patch 3.1 will be invalidating Glyph of Mage Armor (unless they change it).
yep. it and spellpower.
basically, arcane is the fastest spellcasting spec and thus gets the most use out of haste. our longest spellcast without haste is 2.5s, and it only goes up from there.
sort of. you have some misconceptions - arcane is mana-hungry, yes, but it also has the best mage mana regen of the three specs with the 2-minute cooldown evocation.
to compare the two primary raiding specs, arcane is less burst and more sustained damage, while FFB is very swingy and crit-dependent. this basically means that while FFB has higher numbers at the top end of the gear spectrum due to stacked crit chance, Arcane is much more consistent and forgiving at the lower gear end, due to how synergistic its spells are.
it's all about tradeoffs, basically. arcane requires a good head for mana management and rewards a smart player for deploying the right rotations in the right situations with consistently high DPS no matter the gear level, whereas Frostfire has a simpler rotation and underperforms without lots and lots of crit.
I think Arcanis should've specified just a tad bit more about FFB - By "very swingy," aside from the damage, it also relates to threat. You'll be plugging out a couple FFB's for over 2k damage, and all of a sudden you crit and pump out 6k FFB's. And you will do it often.
So what you're looking at is this: arcane spec, you'll have to manage your mana regenerating abilities well to get the maximum potential out of it. Your spell rotation, if I've followed mage advice right, is two arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (some say that as soon as Missile Barrage procs, even with just one arcane blast buff, use AM anyhow).
With FFB spec, you have to pay attention to your threat generation. I wasn't geared up properly for FFB spec, as I lacked a lot of crit, but I still managed to steal aggro off my tanks in various situations because of rolling crits. I never popped combustion out of a fear about rolling crits screwing over the threat table.
Edit - I would argue about the FFB rotation being simpler. It may be about on par with Arcane. Arcane is about using cooldowns, but mostly two spells outside those. FFB you have to scorch every 30 seconds-ish, throw out PB with the right proc, and keep LB up amongst your FFB casts.
Those 6k FFBs are actually closer to 7-9k, easily, and yes, there will be times as FFB where you will randomly crit like 5 times ini a row and it's possible to pull aggro, you really have to be quick on Ice block and have good tanking sometimes, but for the most part it's not an issue.
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Also after getting a couple crits, you are probably going to throw off an instant pyro in there too... which has a nice chance to crit too. It's definitely possible to dump over 40k of damage into something within just a couple seconds.
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
Yeah...yeah it is. I love that spec.
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Already in the works, my lawyers have been chomping at the bit.
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In raids, I was critting for around 12k as FFB spec... but that was with most of the gear I have now. Funny thing is, my fireballs are critting for just as much since i switched to fire/ttw spec. :winky:
-- Gnome mage enchantress and inscriptionologist... er scribbler --
I've gotten a few 11-12k crits with Fireballs, but not with the same regularity as I was experiencing with FFB. Fireball seems much more consistent than FFB, like I've done 5.2k DPS on Patchwerk some nights, but I've also barely topped 4k on a night when the RNG is against me. I ended up at 4.5k with Fireball/ttw last night, and that was my first experience with the spec. I'm curious to see how it goes in the future.
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The only tricky bit is making sure you don't waste combustion charges on living bombs or scorches. That and padding the end of your FFB with a scorch refresh or LB when hotstreak is up to prevent ignite munching (did they ever get around to fixing the ignite munching when a FFB and Pyro hit at the same time and both crit?).
So with Arcane, on like patchwerk for example... Would I open the fight with {3x AB -> MI -> IV -> AP -> AB spam until I've used 66% + 4900 of my mana}, then Arcane Torrent + mana gem + evo back to full, and then do rotations of {AB -> AB -> (missile barrage and restart rotation) OR (AB AM)} until AP is up, at which point I ramp up to rotations of {AB -> AB -> AB -> (missile barrage) OR (Arcane Barrage)} until I'm down to 34% - 4900 mana and then Arcane Torrent + Evo + gem?
I'm a little nervous because gearing for FFB resulted in having a pretty dinky mana pool since its its mana consumption is so low. My char is here: I'm a mage. I'm not at the hit cap, but right now 1 hit is only worth 1.08 spell power for me, so the 19 SP gems are just better than the 16 hit gems.
I threw this together in five minutes but I have no idea if this would really work out, or if it would be better to just forget about having a scorcher in the raid at all (mages are a super-rare breed on my server, or at least raid mages are).
Unless your raids don't cast spells, Imp. Scorch is too good to pass up. My recommendation is to stick with one of the Fire specs, with Arcane you'll have to give up some of your DPS missing out on Icy Veins, and then some more gemming/enchanting to reach the hit cap without Precision, not to mention disrupting your rotation keeping up a debuff that usually isn't part of that spec.
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The damage is ok. I'm still getting the hang of it, but I managed 3.2k on Palehoof and 2.6k on Ymiron, so it can at least get the job done. Mana really isn't proving to be a big issue so far, but the stuff is dying so fast that I'm not sure its an accurate reflection.
They do need to trim down the arcane tree though. You just flat out don't have enough spare talent points to take any of the cool arcane talents. I mean, yea they apparently don't want arcane to be able to take frost channeling or master of the elements, but adding a massive number of point sinks to the arcane tree to prevent it just makes things boring.
google recount, should be the top link.
edit: or you can follow the link in the above post, since I'm apparently blind.
I haven't really been doing anything in WoW lately, though I still read threads and such. I've been kind of theoretically interested in switching my Mage to a Fire/TTW spec like you have... However pretty much all of my current gear is *very* deep Arcane focused. My crit isn't great and my haste is over the top, so I'm not sure it'd work out very well.
So yeah a fuckton of damage is being output.
that said, i can't really stress enough how much fun arcane is. i mean if you want to top the charts and have the gear, FFB is fun also, but if your gear level is low-midrange, arcane is pretty much where it's at.
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Explain please.
Honestly, I don't fucking understand what they're intending. They're saying they want to make spirit more useful, which at the moment it boosts mana regen, but they also don't want us to have too much mana at our disposal, or last too long before going OOM. My fear is that we're going to see a rise in mana cost for our spells.
increasing mana costs across the board for mages would really hurt arcane while leaving the other two raid specs in a 'so what?' position.
EDIT: you know what'd be rad though? if spirit added a small amount to haste or something. i dunno, i think if they want to push spirit on us they need to make it do something else that isn't just 'mana lulz'.
even if it's like 200 spirit = .01% haste, i think it would make mages consider grabbing gear with some additional spirit on it. as it stands, i never even look if it has spirit or not. shows how much i give a shit about it. for me and every other mage i've talked to spirit is a non-stat, take it or leave it.
Also, OP is updated with news and a couple links for Recount and Omen, and fixed a couple typos.
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