2/2 Nether Vortex, be or not to be ? (Raid)

[Saegno]

If your progressing on heroic ragnaros, you should without a shred of doubt pick up IA. Theres so much movement involved and using Mage Ward + possibly Mana Shield as an extra cd while moving is a sick dps increase..

Yeah on our last few attempts I noticed a drop in my damage during seeds phase as this is when I would always pop it when blinking back into the group. I think I'll go ahead and pick it back up, too fun of a talent.

As for NV, I really don't see any point in picking it up. I fly on alys so pointless there, sons phase on rag isn't an issue so not needed there, I sit out on beth since I don't need loot, same with rhyo. Any reason I would even bother with it then?

[SpecialVillain]

If your progressing on heroic ragnaros, you should without a shred of doubt pick up IA. Theres so much movement involved and using Mage Ward + possibly Mana Shield as an extra cd while moving is a sick dps increase..

IA can get you in trouble when the raid stacks in seed phases though. Two or three times I've forgotten about the knockback and sent all the adds flying away from the bulk of the aoe.

[Saegno]

IA can get you in trouble when the raid stacks in seed phases though. Two or three times I've forgotten about the knockback and sent all the adds flying away from the bulk of the aoe.

I never use mana shield, ever. I only use Mage Ward and only while moving. I've had bad mana shield knockbacks like you and it just eats up so much mana.

[Deleted]

Not to mention the DPS increase you get in P1 by using Mana Ward just before a trap is popped, when dancing with engulfing in both P2 and P3 - or when moving from one breadth to another in P4.. About the knockback in P2, it shouldn't really be an issue unless you pop Mana Shield after the explosion. If you use mana shield before the seeds explode, it wont knock any adds back.

Oh, and if your lucky it can be an extra knockback during transitions. Not that you should rely on it, but every bit helps right? Just make sure you dont accidentally knock any adds into the hammer :P

[Saegno]

Not to mention the DPS increase you get in P1 by using Mana Ward just before a trap is popped, when dancing with engulfing in both P2 and P3 - or when moving from one breadth to another in P4.. About the knockback in P2, it shouldn't really be an issue unless you pop Mana Shield after the explosion. If you use mana shield before the seeds explode, it wont knock any adds back.

Everything I have come to understand about IA says it's a dps loss to stop casting to use it UNLESS you are moving. I would precast it on the pull so it's up for the first trap but unless I had to move I wouldn't stop casting AB/AM to use it.

[Deleted]

Everything I have come to understand about IA says it's a dps loss to stop casting to use it UNLESS you are moving. I would precast it on the pull so it's up for the first trap but unless I had to move I wouldn't stop casting AB/AM to use it.

It's all about timing. You don't have to stop casting to do it - there's alot of movement involved in Heroic Ragnaros, so with some practise there's plenty of good times to do it without loosing dps. I tend to use Mage Ward in situations like these;

Mana Shield and Mage Ward before the pull (hi 5k extra spellpower if you get wrath)
Before a trap is sprung in p1
If i get a trap on me in P1 (and thus having to move out of it).
If i get wrath and havn't previously used it (you can use it while your mid-air)
While moving to my side during transitions
When dancing with engulfing (i go with mage ward > fireblast.. i never use arcane barrage unless im at 0 stacks)
When I'm moving to my side in p3 after meteors spawned (blink>mage ward)
When im kiting meteors in p4 - or whenever im not in breadth, helps mitigate superheated damage and gives me extra dps when i can stand still and nuke again. Again, i only use Arcane Barrage unless I'm at 0 stacks.

I use the general rule of thumb, that if I'm moving, i use Mage Ward. Helps my healers and gives me a crapton of extra spellpower. In the initial burn during P1, my ABx4 crits go from around 150k to 170k, if i get hit by wrath and thus proc IA.. I know it's not a 20k difference when everything isn't procced, but I've noticed alot of times my ABx3 hitting harder than the subsequential ABx4, just because IA ran out.

[Phair]

You don't really need it, you can actually just go with 0/2, put the points elsewhere and be perfectly fine.

[mrgreenthump]

My 2 cents.. 10 man go with 1/2 and 25 man skip it, if you have 1 or more mages with 2/2, also you might want to consider speccing fight specific specs to make your life easyer, sure it costs a lot, at least if you pvp with the same char^^

[Shobab]

IMO I skip NV because anything that the 6% will really matter on will have a slow on it for TtW. The Sons of Flames will not matter if they have the slow for the 6% dmg anyway, they all will die/get to 50% quick enough anyway.

As for mana shield knock backs, on H rag the only add you can knock back are teh flames which will not matter if you stay in front of them; at which point you will be doing a boomkins job so that would be awesome.

It is just better to spend those points else where like IA/Imp Blink/ AE/ Pris Cloak (6% dmg reduction is very useful, dead dps does no dps)

[Daninkai]

I copied and pasted this from a discussion on my guild's forums about nether vortex

---

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:

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.

[Renegader]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Blueobelisk]

I have it 2/2 definitely. It's more comfortable.

[Makoblade]

Depends on the fight, and if you have shard of woe. No shard? Consider at least 1/2 vortex.

[Phair]

Daninkai's post

While I don't discount the fact that an extra AM proc would be useful after you've finished a mini burn, I'd like to see the actual math that was used to calculate the 50% probability that there will be a 40% chance to proc an extra AM. Is it just assuming that you'll always receive the extra AM proc after slow is reapplied?

Is it assuming Patchwerk style conditions as well? Would it's value be diminished for heavy moment encounters over say Imp blink?

[Disgruntler]

Even on adds that require only a couple casts to take care of, 6% means around a 6% chance of taking care of business with one less cast, or 12% if you manage to crit.

Food for thought.