Arcane Mage 5.0 simplified

[Shangalar]

It cannot work because our spells are not powerful enough by themselves without mastery and there is no way to get acceptable amounts of crit anyway... Likewise, we would still be forced to have conserve phases because our mana gets wasted incredibly fast which in turn again means that mastery outweighs crit in every sense. I didn't really explain it in an amazing and coherent manner, but that's how it is.

[ns66]

no, stack mastery or crit is about the same in terms of total output, otherwise blizzard can remove crit all together
minor difference depending how you play it yes, but major difference? no
but
mastery has a big string attached, which is you need to maintain high mana pool, you can't let it drop, otherwise it will be much worse than crit stacked play
so, use full mana pool range and stack crit, is one possible way to play it, can burn more at stack 6, will that work? i don't know but worth a try

[Emenius]

So is it going to be basically like Wrath where we would dump at 4 stacks?

[Sattori]

no, stack mastery or crit is about the same in terms of total output, otherwise blizzard can remove crit all together

No, 100% false.
It takes about 89 Mastery rating for 1% mastery (increasing your damage by 1% at 100% mana). It takes about 180 Crit rating to increase your crit by 1% (increasing your damage by 1% all the time, on average). Assuming you can stay above 50% mana for most of the fight, Mastery will always give you more damage than Crit as Arcane, since 180 Crit rating is +1%, and 180 Mastery is +2% at full mana or +1% at 50% mana.

(lvl 85 numbers of course, though they'll scale identically to 90)

[Sattori]

mana adept benefit goes to crit), and use evo if mana goes to 0, anyone got sims can try that see if that works

:- /
no
Read the above. Point for point, Mastery rating gives more damage than Crit rating as long as you're above 50% mana. So it's ALWAYS better to stack Mastery and stay at high mana than to blow your mana and evocate.

Arcane can't burst anymore, sorry. Please send all letters of disappointment and/or rage to the official forums.

[ns66]

No, 100% false.
It takes about 89 Mastery rating for 1% mastery (increasing your damage by 1% at 100% mana). It takes about 180 Crit rating to increase your crit by 1% (increasing your damage by 1% all the time, on average). Assuming you can stay above 50% mana for most of the fight, Mastery will always give you more damage than Crit as Arcane, since 180 Crit rating is +1%, and 180 Mastery is +2% at full mana or +1% at 50% mana.

(lvl 85 numbers of course, though they'll scale identically to 90)

that's what i said, you need to maintain mana at high level to do the same dmg as crit, your calculation just say above 50%, below that mastery is worse than crit
for example in pvp i don't stack mastery, since most of the time mana can't be kept at high level, so crit or haste is better

[Sattori]

that's what i said, you need to maintain mana at high level to do the same dmg as crit, your calculation just say above 50%, below that mastery is worse than crit
for example in pvp i don't stack mastery, since most of the time mana can't be kept at high level, so crit or haste is better

Ok then, allow me to rephrase.
The only way that Crit could be better than Mastery is if you spend more than half your time below 50% mana...
And even then, you're better off staying at high mana because of your baseline Mastery (even with 0 Mastery rating).

[ns66]

Ok then, allow me to rephrase.
The only way that Crit could be better than Mastery is if you spend more than half your time below 50% mana...
And even then, you're better off staying at high mana because of your baseline Mastery (even with 0 Mastery rating).

i forgot the math, but if i recall correctly the break even point is at around 75%, not 50%, i may be wrong haven't played for quite a while

[Sattori]

i forgot the math, but if i recall correctly the break even point is at around 75%, not 50%, i may be wrong haven't played for quite a while

It's surprisingly difficult to confirm the numbers without logging in (which would be frowned upon at work), but here's what I'm basing it on:
It's 180 Crit rating for 1% crit -> http://www.wowwiki.com/Critical_strike
I -think- you get ~890 Mastery at 85 from Mage Armor, which equals 10% Mastery, which means 89 Mastery rating = 1% Mastery for Arcane spec

Therefore, 180 Mastery rating gives you +2% damage at 100% mana, dropping linearly to +1% damage at 50% mana, +0.5% damage at 25% mana, etc.

Your baseline Mastery (I think) is +16% damage at 100% mana. So even if you do drop down to where crit>mastery, you're sacrificing a TON of baseline Mastery +dmg in the process. As an aside, this (and the massive mana cost of 6 stack Power) makes it impossible to burst in Arcane spec anymore.

[ns66]

Mana Adept - "Increases all spell damage done by up to 12%, based on the amount of mana the Mage has unspent. Each point of Mastery increases damage done by up to an additional 1.5%."

from this item we can calculate the rating values:
http://www.wowhead.com/item=71560

180 crit=1% crit chance=1% dmg increase

180 mastery=1 mastery point
dmg increase due to mastery=(0.12+0.015*mastery point)*(mana %)

for them to equal:
(0.12+0.015*mastery/180)*(mana %)=crit/180
we have
(mana %)=(crit/180) / (0.12+0.015*mastery/180)

so if we ignore 0.12 (mastery,crit=infinity) and let crit=mastery, we have 66% for crit and mastery to break even
the exact value depends on the actual value of crit/mastery

assume mastery,crit=2000, result is 38.8%, is my math right?