The Enigma Order

eh.. actually, no.

guess since we're getting new talents tomorrow, maybe I should just see the video guides cryo linked.

thy are destroying my class /cry

Bumping and hijacking the thread as I find myself dangerously clueless about the class I've spent close to 200 days playing.

A few questions about arcane PvE and mage PvE in general - frost and fire likely to follow once I've had a chance remember how they work and learn why what I remember is not true anymore:

First, how much +hit do the raid buffs of an optimised or close to optimised raid group give?

Second, I've been using a mana efficient general rotation of barrage when not on cd and arcane missiles when they proc using blast only as a kind of a filler combined with an active blast spam and cooldown useage to get mana down quickly for evocation and mana gem.
With that I've managed to get around 5k dps on a lvl 80 dummy in fights lasting all the managem charges plus the time it takes to nuke my mana away after.
Would my DPS significally increase if I were to adapt the blast spam proc missiles as the general approach? And would the increase justify the lessened control of my mana useage? With my current rotation I can stay close to full mana for most of the time burning my mana pool quickly - though not very DPM-effectively - should the need arise.

Here is the recount date from one such fight, but do bear in mind that my gear - though decent for its time -  is now at least 1.5 years outdated.

Wrion 1642925 DMG, 5103.5 DPS

Ability                    Crit           Count                    Damage              %
Arcane Blast           29.6%           108                   1323917            83.4%
Arcane Missiles       32.2%             90                     139164            8.8%
Arcane Barrage      34.8%             23                     125275            7.9%

All replies are appricated, helpful ones even more so. And feel free to point out if I've misunderstood something fundamental about arcane play or how terribly I fail as, though painful it is to admit, I most likely do.

EDIT; Me - Mana:             21813
                Spell Damage: 2168
                Crit Chance:    23.92%
                Haste Rating:   521

Last edited by Wrion (2010-11-01 02:13:02)

No more three sets of gear for different raid setups to optimise your hit chance? No more regemming when a progress raid's boomkin doesn't show up? And even switching between builds doesn't affect the hit you need? And you can actually get 100% hit for really really real? Amazing stuff, I can hardly believe this.
Although it does leave my hit rating lacking quite a bit I can't help but to love it.

As for the arcane play, seems like I got the basic idea right though the execution could use some work, I'm sure.

Appriciate the reply, real helpful.

EDIT; Now that I think of it, the 100% cap may have been included even in the early WotLK, not quite sure though.

Last edited by Wrion (2010-11-01 15:14:58)

Aye, obviously the priorities still exist, however since hit is pretty much a "must" cap for for any serious raiding, having its requirements vary from raid to raid was rather annoying. The rest of variables are all fun and give gearing a nice flavour.
That's how it is in theory anyway, we'll just have to see if Blizzard might finally make multiple viable PvE specs from the beginning of an expansion.

You got it pretty much right.

For single target, you might on occasion want to throttle your pyroblasts a bit, if they come back to back. By waiting a fireball or 2 before casting the second pyro. This will stretch your 2pcs bonus a bit further, but the longer you go without using it, the higher the risk you run of overriding the proc, and thus losing a hotstreak.

For single target combustion, you'll want to have a good ignite rolling, and a fresh LB on target before using it. Normally I simply use it after one of my hotstreaks while all my CD's are popped in the start of the fight, and then again at <35% boss health. So FB Crit -> FB Crit -> HS Pyro -> refresh LB -> combustion.
This should ensure that you have a fair amount of dots up, before applying it.
There are some addons available somewhere, that will give you an overview of active dots, but I find it easier to simply use the HS proc as an indicator, and it seems to produce fairly consistant results in the 80-120k range for me.


For AOE, you rarely want to spam Flamestrike. Blastwave should ofcourse always be used when ready, but flamestrike should realy only be used 1 time in between blastwaves (unless you need to cover more areas, because tanks are far apart).
The rest of the time, you'll want to find a tough mob in the pack (make sure it's properly tanked though), and use a single target rotation on it, while spreading your ignites/LB/combustion whenever possible.

So Blastwave -> single target dps for 7-8 secs while spreading dots -> Flamestrike -> single target dps for 7-8sec while spreading dots -> Repeat.

For boss  fights with adds close by. It really depends on what priorities you have. If you want high damage on boss, you should only spread dots with impact, and not use blastwave/flamestrike. If you want to put your focus on adds, you pretty much do an aoe rotation, with the boss as your main target.

The only fights where this seems relevant though, is currently only LK, and RS HC. On all other current fights with adds, they're either too far away to keep anything other than LB rolling on boss (like Deathwhisper), or you want to focus 100% on 1 add at a time (like putricide).


Proper use of LB is a bit more tricky. It's very broken atm, especially when used with impact. So I rarely bother to maintain it on more than my primary target, then let impact do it's buggy business, and refresh it when it falls of.

A bit on LB and Impact:

LB can only be applied to 3 targets. Upon applying it to a 4th, it will randomly remove 1 LB from 1 of the previous 3 targets. (very frustrating behaviour)

LB explosion itself, will only hit 3 targets.

Refreshing LB too early will cut off the explosion.

Another mages impact, can remove YOUR LB from the target - it does not spread, it simply dissapears.

Impact will spread your LB to ALL targets, and then remove LBs at random, untill only 2-3 are left (it should leave 3, but sometimes only leaves 2 for some reason).

Last edited by Busm (2010-11-08 14:21:10)