Stolen Time AB vs FB

[Quarantinedwow]

Are there numbers out there from sims showing either a loss or gain from using arcane blast to stack stolen time vs fireball in the beginning of a fight. There was a thread about this earlier but I feel that it wasn’t really answered fully or justified with the numbers behind it.

After reading the elitist jerks thread on fire mages it really has me intrigued on what is the better to get more combustions out of a fight. The final post on the EJ thread is this:

Thank you for explaining the mage to me. I also recently noticed that AB wasnt a fire spell. Now, back on topic, I tried some very rough calculations:

Given a normal gearset, stacking up the buff should take around 13 seconds with AB. In this time as fire I would cast ~6 fireballs and a HS-Pyro, adding up to a generous value of 350.000 DMG. I would have triggered my Combustion at ~3 Stacks of my setbonus, resulting in a CD-reduction of 10 seconds.

Casting the 10 Arcane Blasts during this time would get me ~200.000 DMG. I would have 10 stacks of my setbonus, resulting in a CD-reduction of 50 seconds. Taking another few seconds to ramp um a combustion reduces this to effectively ~38 seconds.

This means I have to weigh the ~150.000 DMG lost against the value of having:
- Combustion available ~28 seconds earlier the second time.
- Reliably having stacking trinkets activated for Combustion (relevant in this content).
- Proccing trinkets might go either way, proccing the first 10 seconds (bad) or after (good).
- Having the 500 haste available during Combustion, gaining either 1 tick (if you dont have 2005 on gear) or freeing up 500 haste to be reforged (if you have them right now).
- Apart from Combustion, higher uptime of the bonus, slightly increasing the value of the 2pc.

This so far is radically speculative. My guess would be that it would likely be valuable if 28-30 seconds less CD on Combustion actually gain you another cast of Combustion, this obviously depending on fight length. Also, 500 statpoints freed up in a way seem decent. Stacking again after the initial Combustion would obviously be less effective, unless bad RNG doesnt let you stack the buff till the cooldown comes up again.

This is quoted from Ilyawen on Elitist jerks and I’m going to be honest when I say that number crunching and running sims isn’t something I am particularly good at. I’m good at reading what other people do and then testing it myself either on dummies or in a raid setting. Is there any actual numbers showing that using arcane blast at the beginning of a fight is a net DPS gain or loss? Are we able to pump out more combustions if we use arcane blast at the beginning? If so will it make the dps gain better at the end of the fight?

[Deleted]

Are we able to pump out more combustions if we use arcane blast at the beginning?

Uhm, why would be able to pump out MORE combustions? I experienced that stacking stolen time with FB takes more time but is still fast enough to be stacked before combustion is ready. I think the focus is on the beginnning of the fight where you simply CAN'T have stolen time to be effectively stacked for a proper combustion.
In fact spamming AB in the beginning sounds interesting. Really need to test this one. Any experience written will be appreciated (and sorry, not a native english speaker)

[Tobedeleted123]

Uhm, why would be able to pump out MORE combustions? I experienced that stacking stolen time with FB takes more time but is still fast enough to be stacked before combustion is ready. I think the focus is on the beginnning of the fight where you simply CAN'T have stolen time to be effectively stacked for a proper combustion.
In fact spamming AB in the beginning sounds interesting. Really need to test this one. Any experience written will be appreciated (and sorry, not a native english speaker)

Erm, having less cd on the second combustion = possibly one more combustion before the end of the fight?

[Deleted]

Erm, having less cd on the second combustion = possibly one more combustion before the end of the fight?

I experienced that stacking stolen time with FB takes more time but is still fast enough to be stacked before combustion is ready.

[Disgruntler]

On the other hand, it's a lot of mana being thrown for subpar damage; 72530 is a lot of mana to spend over a little less than 14.64 seconds during which you're not doing an optimal dps rotation.

[Tobedeleted123]

I experienced that stacking stolen time with FB takes more time but is still fast enough to be stacked before combustion is ready.

But your first combustion is ready right as you start the fight, isn't it?