[Arcane] Doesnt seem that bad!!

[Delath]

Before you start bashing me for being a warrior, note that I have a mage alt too . I ran across these simcraft results from PTR build 16650 (latest?) that show arcane significantly on top at high ilvl.

LINK REMOVED DUE TO UNRELIABLE DATA

Am I missing something?

[Deleted]

Anyone tried out arcane yet on rf/raid? How much real dps loss we have?

Around 490il, is frost FOR SURE a better option right now?

[Deleted]

I'm afraid nobody is going to take this topic particularly seriously until you provide some numbers rather than "I feel like this is ok"

WHERE THE F**K HAVE YOU BEEN.

OT:

Arcane isn't "not too bad"; it's straight up crap. While it may not be as bad as some feared, that doesn't make it good. Fire/Frost are only two options at the moment based on gearing strategies.

Before you start bashing me for being a warrior, note that I have a mage alt too . I ran across these simcraft results from PTR build 16650 (latest?) that show arcane significantly on top at high ilvl.

http://dread-gaming.com/simc/raid_mop_01.html

Am I missing something?

You're missing 2 things.

Firstly; you're going off SimC data. Sims haven't been entirely accurate lately (c'mon, they said Frost would be 2nd best overall spec in T14H), and secondly you're looking at T15 HC gear. Just because something is viable at the end of a tier doesn't mean it's viable at the beginning, before people even have T15 gear.

[Xzan]

Well the problem with this is that getting such gear won't be so feasible considering we don't perform well enough in our current gear. So what's the point of looking good on the meters AFTER the content is on farm? :|

And looking at the bloody monk and feral I'm not sure where is Blizzard headed exacatly anyways. Hybrids above pures, bleh >:O

[Guyo]

Everything changes at top ilevel. We're not at top ilevel. Given that the nerf at the current ilevel is RIDICULOUS (my dummy dps dropped from 75k to 50k), arcane is pretty much dead for the time being.

Moreover, as has been pointed out, simcraft results are for stationary, single target fights. There are none in this tier.

That also has ele shamans near the bottom. Pop into LFR, watch an ilevel 477 ele shaman faceroll 90k dps all through Garalon, and then come back and reevaluate those numbers. Then bring your mage alt and watch them dribble by with 45k.

This has been said a million times in forums, but balancing the game only based on top tier raiding is ridiculous. I don't care that once I've run the H10 on every boss 17 times I'll be doing top DPS, I care that the process of getting there is fun, expedient, and...possible. Given the insane amount of DPS checks this tier, there are probably small raiding groups who are now unable to progress because their 75k mages are now pulling 55k on a GOOD day.

Right now, the only reason to bring a mage to a raid is to get gear for them. Mages do terrible DPS, and have little or no utility/party support spells. A tongue in cheek response to the questions on the forums "what is the best raiding spec for mages in 5.2" was "affliction." Locks do far better DPS than mages, and bring healthstones, portals, and summons. Mages do about two thirds of the DPS and bring...polymorph? Remove curse? Mage tables?

No, at this point the only reason to play arcane is because you want to see purple attack animations. If you are in even a casual raiding guild, it is simply unacceptable. Given that it is also an inferior soloing and pvp spec, it is unclear what its purpose is at this point.

Add on top of this the fact that Frost could not be more focused on PvP. As a PvE frost mage, this is your rotation:

Tempest
Orb
Clear procs
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Proc
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt
Bolt

Hell, tonight I found myself throwing in flamestrikes just so I wouldn't bore myself to death. Contrary to Arcane, which had an engaging, demanding rotation that called for mana management, in which a single spell was never cast more than 5 or so times in a row, and offered an even greater challenge when mobility was required, Frost PvE consists of vast swaths of procless dead air spamming your filler spell and refreshing bombs while you wait for your cooldowns to turn over.

[zomgDPS]

Before you start bashing me for being a warrior, note that I have a mage alt too . I ran across these simcraft results from PTR build 16650 (latest?) that show arcane significantly on top at high ilvl.

http://dread-gaming.com/simc/raid_mop_01.html

Am I missing something?

As Serene mentioned, SimC is in a very broken state right now, not just for mages (especially Arcane), but for many of the other classes/specs too.

We will have to wait for a bit till they get a more stable and 'fixed' build of SimC before we can start using it in any real given measure of performance. The particular build you linked to doesn't even have all the changes that are live, which makes it wholly worthless tbh. At best, it is a pretty picture, at worst, it is misinformation (which should be curb-stomped asap).


I really do advise people to stay away from SimC at least until we get the all clear from its devs (which we haven't yet). We wont have to wait that much longer (though if it isn't done by next week I'll look into it personally).

[Delath]

We will have to wait for a bit till they get a more stable and 'fixed' build of SimC before we can start using it in any real given measure of performance. The particular build you linked to doesn't even have all the changes that are live, which makes it wholly worthless tbh. At best, it is a pretty picture, at worst, it is misinformation (which should be curb-stomped asap).

All right, removing the link to stop this from getting off track! Thanks for the information.

[schwarzkopf]

Have you done normal and heroic mode to say it? Calm down

Did some Normal ToT today, and my haste arcane build is awesome.

Burn phase is back with pretty close to instant mana recovery.

I'm doing around 20-30% more on burn, and pretty much the same for the rest of the time compared to 5.1.

My only concern is that the 2 second no CD evocation is going to get nerfed as it feels a 'little' strong

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 12:41 PM ----------

Anyone tried out arcane yet on rf/raid? How much real dps loss we have?

The key here is burn/non-burn is back. Getting similar total DPS to 5.1, but I can go burn like I couldn't in 5.1.

It also just feels better.... it doesn't feel clunky now.

[Xzan]

Interesting. Itching to test it on live tonight. The last PTR haste Invo burn build felt very weak...

[schwarzkopf]

That's a lot more than 9% nerf to one skill.

However your first AB now buffs your damage by 50% instead of 25%. You can now be at 100% withing 2 seconds of being at 0% mana. Basically - if you try and play arcane the same way you played it in 5.1 - it WILL SUCK.

You will need to CHANGE how you play for it to go well.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 12:47 PM ----------

The last PTR haste Invo burn build felt very weak...

It relies on a haste build. Mastery + RoP is the non-burn version combination. Which kinda sucks because it makes it hard to choose burn or normal easily.

I'm also finding movement not as penalising as 5.1.

[Fichek]

Did some Normal ToT today, and my haste arcane build is awesome.

Burn phase is back with pretty close to instant mana recovery.

I'm doing around 20-30% more on burn, and pretty much the same for the rest of the time compared to 5.1.

My only concern is that the 2 second no CD evocation is going to get nerfed as it feels a 'little' strong

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 12:41 PM ----------



The key here is burn/non-burn is back. Getting similar total DPS to 5.1, but I can go burn like I couldn't in 5.1.

It also just feels better.... it doesn't feel clunky now.

Feel free to post a log. I would be interested in looking at the actual data with a haste build.

[schwarzkopf]

Feel free to post a log. I would be interested in looking at the actual data with a haste build.

As soon as it is up, will do. However - don't try and compare a top notch player to me. I'm comparing me with me here.

The big figure for me tonight was 97.1% activity (from Skada) that is a significant change from 5.2. It also had me at >120kdps burn and 72kdps overall on Jin'rokh normal 10.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...arzkopf/simple

[Watermouse]

The key here is burn/non-burn is back. Getting similar total DPS to 5.1, but I can go burn like I couldn't in 5.1.

It also just feels better.... it doesn't feel clunky now.

What exactly do you mean by that? burn/non-burn?

Also, It is so weird without scorch, I sorta feel naked and like I have absolutely nothing to do except spam AB and remember to drop stacks before I run completely out of Mana.

[zomgDPS]

The last PTR haste Invo burn build felt very weak...

It is.
Ignore schwarzkopf. He has a tendency to go on 'the feels' without having much actual data to back up what he is saying. (though he does get excited fast).

Invocation Arcane haste is dead. It gets absolutely walloped by RoP Arcane, which in turn, looses out to the other two specs. There was a plethora of testing done on the PTR that adheres to this. There is a ~10 page thread on these very forums that confirms it.


As expected though, our mages last night got crushed pretty hard.. but it is still early days for 5.2, lets see what the next few weeks bring.

As far as this thread goes, I fail to see its point anymore. If there was some actual data or even some basic math to back up the OPs assertion, we could start digging our teeth into the topic, but as of now, its just a few random mages saying "Arcane is great! I used it in LFR last night and ranked!"

Not particularly helpful, nor insightful imho.

[Xzan]

I'm also finding movement not as penalising as 5.1.

What? How so? On movement heavy fights I'd just go with IW and spam Scorch while on the move to fish for AM procs to make sure I can unload the heavy stuff as soon as possible (while making sure my charges don't fall off if possible...)

Now I can just cast Fireblast and then Ice Lance... doh :|

I'm also not convicned the nerfed RoP will be better than IW at this point.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 02:04 PM ----------

...

Yea and my testing yielded the same results as everybody else's in the PTR test thread...
Oh well. Back to planning my Fire gear...

[schwarzkopf]

Ignore schwarzkopf. He has a tendency to go on 'the feels' without having much actual data to back up what he is saying. (though he does get excited fast).

Numbers in SKADA aren't feeling.

LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY.
1. Numbers were better - Skada numbers ... not feeling.
2. Feeling was about how the thing felt to play.

Invocation Arcane haste is dead.

Just like Scorch weaving was dead when I was the first to do it (among users here) and got people telling me it was useless.

---------- Post added 2013-03-06 at 01:11 PM ----------

What? How so?

Very short evocations - no cooldown how. On 4 stacks, I can get from 0 to 100% mana in just under 2 seconds. The buff lasts for a minute.

That means getting up and moving mid evocation is not as big a problem, 2.5 seconds to get a 15% buff compared to 1.25s non-portable with RoP.

[zomgDPS]

- snippedy doo dah -

Ok so its quite simple schwartz.


The trick isn't having any old numbers, those are easy to get. The trick is having relative comparison numbers, i.e. Invocation Haste Arcane vs, say, RoP mastery Arcane. That is what we spent the entire PTR testing, relative comparisons.

Results from that testing just put RoP Mastery above Invocation haste. This does not mean you wont get numbers on skada with Invocation Haste. Sure.. you will press your buttons and the meters will light up. What we are trying to say is that the meters will light up MORE with RoP Mastery, and on top of that, they will light up even MORE (wow!) with Fire/Frost.

Now sure, I'm pretty sure there will be mages out there still using Haste Invocation. And sure, they might even rank well in their own selective casual guilds. But those are the kinds of guild I could send my rogue guildy into and have him play a 0/0/0 mage and he would wallop them all on the meters by 50k DPS easy. Basically, 'worth' is relative in this sense.


But either way, if you wish to play Haste Invocation, do not let me stop you. But as a piece of advice, till the day you can produce a good set of relative numbers (showing the comparisons like I mentioned above) then at least try to understand when people do not take you seriously.


And as far as you "inventing" scorch weaving is concerned, I'm pretty sure it was around since one of the first builds of beta. I distinctly remember it from waaaay back, well before it became 'popular'. That was well before I knew you. But hey.. to each their own.

[schwarzkopf]

snippety snip

Good to see you agree with me

[Elegiac]

Arcane is in fact, that bad. I am going to reiterate what Zomg has said ad nauseum:

The benefit of Invocation Arcane, or rather what made it competitive, was the fact that Invocation provided a higher damage bonus than Rune of Power, which offset the loss of damage due to Mastery. However, in 5.2, with Invocation's damage bonus nerfed in addition to it consuming Arcane Charge stacks, this advantage is no longer present. You lose out on a huge chunk of additional damage by not taking Rune of Power since it provides the same damage bonus in addition to a high level of additional mana regeneration (which, contrary to the theory, is in fact enough to make the spec work using the standard ABx4 AMx2 ABarr rotation). The choice of talents has been utterly removed for Arcane. An already immobile spec now -has- to choose a talent that restricts mobility even further in order to remain competitive - which in itself is a difficult thing to envisage since Arcane's damage and scaling was nerfed even further. Why would you go Arcane when you can go Frost, providing superior damage and greater mobility, or Fire which scales far better than Arcane with gear and is just as mobile as Frost?

I'm not one to follow the highest-dps spec, I've pretty much always been Arcane because I enjoyed the visual identity of the spec, especially after it got Barrage. But at present, the quality of life for Arcane is just so poor compared to Frost that I can't find a good reason to justify playing it anymore. When Invocation was a 5 sec cast, it's shittyness made Rune of Power easier to stomach. Now that Invocation is short, and the buff lasts for longer, in addition to Water Elemental's Freeze being removed from the rotation, Frost is just more fun to play.

I really want to go back to Arcane, but until the spec is fixed, I'm going to have to stick with Frost.

[Firebert]

IW-Mastery-LB Arcane Mage here, and I'm resorting to weaving in Frostfire Bolt and Fire Blast to fish for AM procs.

It's certainly made the spec more interesting without adding too many buttons.