I copied and pasted this from a discussion on my guild's forums about nether vortex
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I just happened to catch this post on Elitist Jerks to see if there was anything new about haste breakpoints for arcane and stumbled on this little bit of information.
The background
Arcane missiles
Launches three waves of Arcane Missiles at the enemy over 2 sec, causing X Arcane damage per wave. Each offensive spell you cast has a 40% chance to activate Arcane Missiles.
Nether Vortex
Gives your Arcane Blast spell a 50/100% chance to apply the Slow spell to any target it damages if no target is currently affected by Slow.
Apparently slow is eligible for arcane missiles activation according to the thread, as it is an offensive debuff we place on a target. Since Nether Vortex automatically applies slow when we cast arcane blast, that means that a talented arcane blast (via nether vortex) greatly increases our arcane missiles proc chance.
I don't think this is as much of a big deal for the standard 2 minute burn-conserve model that EJ posts, but because our mages tend to use a smaller miniburn-conserve model, the mana we get back in between our burn phases is more important to our overall damage output with our hardest hitting spells. We spend less time sitting at 100% mana in between those burn phases, so trying to get back as much mana as we can is even more important.
The table thing
The table below details the simcraft output from this post:
Code:
0/2 Nether Vortex
ABSpam: 28174.8419707902 dps, 2554.03552367501 mps
ABSpam234AM: 17888.8847693709 dps, -221.693661635818 mps, 3.70567750479859 dpm tradeoff
ManaNeutral: 18710.4099842511 dps
1/2 Nether Vortex
ABSpam: 28174.8570123072 dps, 2554.03484471684 mps
ABSpam0234AM: 16133.7494357584 dps, -720.584173745193 mps, 3.67710182731549 dpm tradeoff
ManaNeutral: 18783.4108177714 dps
2/2 Nether Vortex
ABSpam: 28174.8570123072 dps, 2554.03484471684 mps
ABSpam0234AM: 15373.6457902912 dps, -948.313926634473 mps, 3.65503610797645 dpm tradeoff
ManaNeutral: 18839.7674338371 dps
What does that mean?
The gain for the first point is 73 DPS and the second is 56 DPS, so a maxed out Nether Vortex will award 129 DPS to our conserve phase.
Contrast this what we are presently doing, which is putting two points into Firepower, which according to RAWR, awards only 97 DPS. So the difference between the two is 32 DPS. In the world of min-maxing, this is pretty big.
There apparently is also a delay between when the arcane blast hits and when nether vortex is applied, so it is entirely possible for one to chain cast arcane missiles without the use of flame orb, which we only really use during our conserve phase anyway outside of the two obvious exceptions (the start of the fight and when we have to move) as casting anything but arcane blast during a burn phase is a DPS loss.
Anything else?
Slow only has a 35 yard range, so it would be a smart idea to pick up the glyph for slow to give the extra 5 yards so that nether vortex will always apply slow on every arcane blast cast.