3.09 testings.

Went into game last night and tested my shot rotation with the changes.

Overall there was only a small drop in my damage between from my Arcane blasts stacks effect on my arcane missiles. Arcane barrage got a severe kick in the teeth though.

On a target dummy not burning cooldowns I went from about 2400-2800DPS to 1800-2200DPS.

I ended OS 25 with 2700 DPS, normally I would be getting closer to 3300.

Suffice to say in the end I decided to re-try Frostfire (2000-2400 on the dummies without cooldowns)

It seems pretty inconsistent at the moment, ill see how Naxx goes if Im in this week. I had 3.3k after the arachnid quarter as arcane pre-patch. Shall see how Frostfire goes with my new gear. I am tempted to return to arcane, but I have already respecced and re-glyphed twice to try to get a decent rotation, spending some 200G and intend to give it a chance.

I ticketed Blizz about – at the very least they should have offered a free respec with the changes… A little QQ… But come on – the changes screwed over the spec I was using, or at least I think it did… this in turn forced me to spend hours checking and chopping and changing glyphs and talents, I just wanna scream.

Just gotta wait for the opinions from others to flood into the blogs I follow, maybe someone will come up with a work around that doesn’t involve the arcane blast AND arcane missiles glyphs (I like my healy evocation and my super mage armour L)

I wonder if they plan to do anything with the other mage specs. Mages to tend to pull rather low DPS for their gear levels compared to most other classes. (e.g DKs in same gear levels doing double the damage :p but that’s to be expected, it’s a hero class after all.)

-V

P.S – The Ice Stone has melted!

3.09. More changes, more testing to be done. *harrumph*

Just caught some info on patch 3.09 which is due to go live this week, and as a result:

More theory crafting and rotation tests.

/facepalm

Why do you do this to me blizz? All I wanna do is provide good DPS for my comrades!!!

Ok, let’s get into it.

Here’s the changes:

Spells:

1. Arcane power damage bonus halved, and cooldown halved. (10% bonus damage, 1min CD -Needs confirmation. This could be painful on the mana bar, since Arcane Power causes your spells to cost more mana… if it’s the same mana consumption, you now have this triggered every minute eating through your mana faster…)
2. Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power = 15s cooldown, POM = 1.5s cooldown. (Means you cant POM something within 15s of using an AP, and I’m not sure, but does this mean POM activates the global cooldown? … That doesn’t sound like it’s a very useful spell any more, except for Pom pyro PVP players. (Say that 10x as fast as ya can!))
3. POM cooldown reduced from 3Min to 2Min – nice for PVP mages!

Glyphs:

1. Glyph of Arcane Missiles = +25% crit damage to arcane missiles (old glyph added 5 yards to the cast range)
2. Glyph of Mana gem = 40% bonus mana when chomping on a gem, was 10% (Nice!)
3. Glyph of Arcane Blast – Damage bonus reduced from 5% to 3%. (Has this not already been implemented??)

Looking at the above, I think I would be a fool not to take the Arcane Missiles glyph, this has 2 effects:

1. I lose my Glyph of Mage Armour, or my Glyph of Evocation. Both fantastic glyphs. *pouts*
2. If the experimentations with shot rotation prove that Ill be using Arcane Missiles more, then I will most likely need to talent into Arcane Missiles. Dang! I only used that on a missile barrage proc previously

Currently rotation:

Arcane Blast x3 (54% damage bonus (45% on arcane missiles with the current bug that stops the Arcane Blast Glyph affecting Arcane Missiles.)
Arcane Barrage (consumes the damage bonus, hits hard.)
Arcane Missiles any time that arcane barrage procs, followed with a Barrage tap.

I predict that with the change:

New rotation:

Arcane blast x3 (39% bonus damage with glyph instead of 54% L )
Arcane Missiles (consumes the buff, hopefully the glyph bug will be fixed or its only 30% bonus damage from the buff.)
Arcane barrage tap, then repeat.

What do I expect to see?

Overall I expect to see a drop to my DPS – this is expected, Arcane is overpowered in comparison to the other specs, and this is Blizzards attempt to bring it down to size. The drop in DPS will come from less damage bonus from stacking Arcane Blast, and the cast time for Arcane Missiles when we don’t have a Missile Barrage proc. On the other hand, I think this will be a bit more mana efficient since less spells are being spammed out.

One thing I would try to pay particular attention to: Clearcasting procs…

+50% crit chance on a clearcast spell, and the spell costing no mana. If you are very very lucky your 3rd Arcane Blast will trigger this. In that event, your Arcane missiles costs 0 mana, has (in my case) an 80% crit chance, a 39% damage bonus and when it crits: it crits for 275% damage instead of 250% - which could prove vurry nice… (I may be off with the % here, but I think talented arcane does 250% crit damage instead of the usual 200% talented damage, and 150% untalented crit damage.)

If after testing, the Arcane Blast glyph is still not working for arcane missiles, and this rotation proves the best: I’m going to drop the Arcane Blast glyph. That 9% bonus damage is never going to get seen unless I keep my current shot rotation. Keep the mana regen or heal-ocation glyphs as they are fantastic utility. Unfortunately this will be un-testable until the patch goes live.

I have read that some opinions are that this is a PVP nerf without affecting PVE – but as far as I can see it, the effect on PVP is not that huge. (Little less burst damage, but more availability of it) an Arcane Powered POM PYRO is still more than feasible – you just have a 1.5s cooldown on the POM before you can activate AP (lob an Arcane barrage at the target maybe between activations? Assuming AP is not on the GCD)

Frostfire --> Arcane

I actually meant to put this post up yesterday, as I now have a follow up, but here it is!

Its been a long time since I delved into the arcane tree any depth, but after reading all the info from Euripides at Critical QQ – I decided to take the dive. After tonight’s raid, I plan to glyph up, respect and hit the target dummies.

Glyph of Arcane Blast stacks… I did not know this. That’s a 60% damage bonus to you when you have 3 stacks going. Throw in an arcane shatter combo with this (Arcane Missiles promptly interrupted at the end by Arcane Barrage) and both get the damage boost. With a Missile Barrage proc I would hazard a guess at 10k of damage from the missiles in 2.5 seconds, followed by a 10k crit Arcane Barrage.

Holy crap!

As FFB build, I do some nice damage. With a warlock at my side I can get 2.5k – 3k DPS on a tank and spank boss fight – regularly seeing Frostfire bolts and instant pyroblasts hitting in the region of 11k, with my fireblasts and Living Bomb detonations hitting 6-8k, or thereabouts.

I shall do some tests with FFB before changing, and record the data for all to see…

Do I sense a boost to my output in raids? *grin*

Hell… this is a PVP spec… I may even hit the battlegrounds!

Oh, note to self: Check the mind-flay macro for your priest! This stops mind-flays being overlapped and reduces mana wastage – it might work for arcane missiles + arcane barrage combos. (Barrage wont launch until missiles finishes channeling, assuming this doesn’t result in the buff dropping off.)

Glyphs:

Glyphs of Arcane Blast.

Glyph of mage armour. (got)

Glyph of Evocation.