WoD Arcane Guide *not updated for 6.2*

[Crys1s]

Good guide, many thanks

[Veiled Shadow]

Is the Timewalking trinket "Sundial of the Exalted" (+241 crit, 1200 intellect on proc at ilevel 675) underbudgeted? What is the ICD on this proc?

[Sallist]

Will this guide be updated?

[denzildk]

Will this guide be updated?

not much have changed since 6.1.
new stuff is when you get T18-4p you want haste>mastery, the 2 BiS trinket's is from Archie and mannoroth. UM is now the best talent (with the afformentioned items) from that tier and you dont want to glyph Arcane power anymore when using the class trinket.

[Sallist]

not much have changed since 6.1.
new stuff is when you get T18-4p you want haste>mastery, the 2 BiS trinket's is from Archie and mannoroth. UM is now the best talent (with the afformentioned items) from that tier and you dont want to glyph Arcane power anymore when using the class trinket.

Thanks a ton for the little things that were missing.

[Deleted]

On the topic with UM people always forget to mention that this specific tallent becomes "best" after you reach certain haste rating amount. Now i don't remember the exact numblers. As far i as i remember there were 2 numbers the highest one was 2130 rating(?!?), but again as i always recommend to people playing arcane spec - do not trust 100% on the guides and recommendation from other people. Arcane is heavy gear dependent and just because someone told you that when u get certain items you have to switch to certain talents/gameplay is not 100% accurate for your toon. Test it yourself!
For example my mage. It does not have the "right" gear for this type of gameplay(heavy MS gear, less haste or mastery), so so far i get even or better results when i play with SN. Then again this tier arcane is such RNG spec that it compete with Fire in that aspect and dps swings.

[Atamosk]

Hi Everyone,

Great guide!

Can someone advise when the damage from mastery is calculated into AB, is it when you start the channelling or when the spell hits?

I am asking this, because sometimes I start my AB channel in the conserve phase when I am on 90-92% mana. When the spell hits I am above 93% mana.

[Deleted]

Iirc it was at the moment the cast "leaves" your hands but before mana is taken away from your pool.
But the question is nearly irrelephant: You only start an AB with lower then 93% mana after a ABarr to build up ACs. Only this first 2-3 ABs are manapositive. After you hit 4 stacks AC never start to cast an AB if u have less than 93% mana (at the start of the cast).

[Arril]

Unstable Magic may be the best theoretical talent (once you have the Archi and Mannoroth trinkets and 4-piece), but I'm finding that Supernova is never a bad choice, and the ability to cast it on command very often makes it continue to be the better choice for many fights. It's nice to have an on-command damage dealer when so much of your damage becomes based on RNG.

[Deleted]

Unstable Magic may be the best theoretical talent (once you have the Archi and Mannoroth trinkets and 4-piece and 2k+ haste)

There I fixed it for you. On the topic - yeah nova is good for on-demand bursts. The point for UM to be best tallent (theoretically or not) is the class trinket. AB is dealing basically 52% increased damage during AP, so this make UM procs during it very powerful, more powerful than SN, because they are out of the GCD (this is what many people dont get into account when comparing both tallents). Couple that with ring use and SN will be left in the dust.
At the moment i personally don't have that much haste, but so far whenever i switch between those two talents the damage done is equal. So i prefer to run with SN for the moment. Anyway if you manage to get the "recommended" gear UM will come on top of SN.

[Naedrim]

There I fixed it for you. On the topic - yeah nova is good for on-demand bursts. The point for UM to be best tallent (theoretically or not) is the class trinket. AB is dealing basically 52% increased damage during AP, so this make UM procs during it very powerful, more powerful than SN, because they are out of the GCD (this is what many people dont get into account when comparing both tallents). Couple that with ring use and SN will be left in the dust.
At the moment i personally don't have that much haste, but so far whenever i switch between those two talents the damage done is equal. So i prefer to run with SN for the moment. Anyway if you manage to get the "recommended" gear UM will come on top of SN.

I'd sim to be sure if SN was actually still better for you. Even in the second week of this tier UM started to sim higher for me as soon as I got a class trinket. At that point I was still super stacked on mastery from BRF.

I just find it strange that you mention UM frees up GCDs, which is 100% correct and indeed what most people miss, but then say you run it even though they're doing equal damage for you.

[Deleted]

Its been 2 weeks since that post of mine. Anyway here is my further thoughts on the matter:
1. There is difference between simulation and the real fight;
2. SN give me something that UM cant give me in the following scenario - PoF procs and i have 0 AM procs. If i have a charge of SN i can cross my fingers and pray for AM proc when i use the charge. It happens in a lot of the cases i got into so far. UM cant give me that and also the talent tend to proc off on multistirikes too. With the already low 15% chance of procing its again all about the RNG gods mercy if that talent deals proper damage or not.

[Deleted]

OK, yet another question about arcane single target scale factors.

I have the folowing stats currently:
haste: 2146
multi: 1610
mastery: 1542
crit: 580

Everything is enchanted and gemmed for haste.

I did a SimC simulation single target.
IF
UM
PC

non-glyphed AP

SimC came up with these scalings, which doesn't excatly like up with the current concensus, so what am I missing?

Scale Factor
Normalized
Int 1.00
spell 0.91
mastery 0.81
haste 0.71
crit 0.69
multistrike 0.68
vers 0.64

[Shangalar]

Haha I can answer this because I spent a few hours running simulations the other night just because of this.

What I understood from my tests is that Mastery is still our most important secondary and that by getting more we increase our dps, even at the expense of Haste. Now, the new updated guides say that we're supposed to have 2.1k Haste or more to optimize for the set bonuses, class trinket and unstable magic.

I played around reducing my haste and increasing my mastery (two new items plus gems and enchants) and my dps continuously increased with mastery until I got to 1800 haste. Going under 1800, even with increasing Mastery, resulted in a dps loss. So I went from 2250 Haste down to 1800 and gained nearly 600 Mastery with the new items and changes.

That brought me to the conclusion that sacrificing Mastery just to reach the Haste breakpoint dictated by optimal stats is a loss of dps and should be avoided.

Additionally, I'm not raiding Mythic this patch (yet), so my gear is fully heroic. With Mythic gear I guess you get a lot of Mastery, so you can also have more Haste. Now, in my Heroic setup (719 item level), it seems that 1800 Haste + max mastery is what the simulation was looking for.

[Deleted]

Wondering if I should go for mastery wep enchant then.

[Shangalar]

No, Warsong is better because it affects both the 2-set minions, Unstable Magic and mana regeneration.

[Deleted]

@Shang could you explain this?
I recently switshed to more mastery, as I exeeded 2300 by far. got some high haste myth items by luck. and was thinking the mastery enchant might be performing better...

[Shangalar]

You need to either run simulations, or give me your character name and region (just link armory) so I can run them for you. It's literally impossible for me to explain it without sims.

[Deleted]

I do not trust simulation. I trust logic. And Logic is the key stone on which the algorithm of the sim is based.... So wheather it is an advantage to go mastery/haste is already to be seen in the theory of the algorithm.
You say Warsong is better. Becasue sims say so? Why is sim saying so? Or do you have other reason?

[Shangalar]

I wrote that in the post above your question.

Haste works with Unstable Magic, mana regeneration, Tome of Shifting Words and our 2-set bonus minions.