Keeping up the Arcane Blast debuff, possible?

[Deleted]

I was playing with my mage on the beta servers yesterday, and I found it particularly hard to keep up - or even stack it - the Arcane Blast debuff.

The debuff has been changed to grant us more spelldamage for each stack, to a maximum of 3 stacks. In return, the Arcane Blast casting time doesn't reduce anymore with each stack. That's a good deal.

But...

The duration of the Arcane Blast debuff has been reduced to 3 seconds. With a cast time of 2.5 seconds, that leaves you exactly 0.5 seconds of time to cast your next Arcane Blast.


This leads to the following problems:

1) Lag. The beta server is extremely laggy. Averages of 300ms if you're playing in Europe. With lag like that - luckaly this isn't the case on live servers - it is impossible to even stack the debuff to two, let alone 3 stacks.

2) Interruption. Get interrupted once in your casting of Arcane Blast and you can forget about stacking the debuff. You can start all over again.

3) Rotations no more. Don't even think about having any other rotation than Blast, Blast, Blast & repeat. Put any other spell in between there and you can start re-stacking the debuff, which in the end, leads to a drop in DPS. Might aswell not use Arcane Blast at all.


There is a sollution to this, ofc. Haste rating. Get enough haste rating, get the 3 point talent which increases your haste rating by 6% (can't remember the name of the talent) and then you might actually have a decent shot of stacking the debuff. If you collect enough haste, one might actually achieve throwing in another spell once in a while.

Sadly, that leads to another problem. In my guild there's an arcane mage with loads of haste gear. He does awesome DPS. His mana potion useage is also awesome.
WotLK introduces Potion Sickness, which limits any player in any bossfight to 1 potion. Maximum 2 if you can put yourself out of combat long enough (invisibility).


So, if you're thinking about staying Arcane at 80, what would your rotation be? Will Arcane Blast be a part of it?

For me personally, I'm starting to say my goodbyes to my beloved Blasts.

:'(

[Guran]

You're also going to get 10% haste from shamans btw.
Imo, if that change is coming through, it's gonna be full arcane spamming blast untill I get an Arcane Missiles proc (last talent, I suck at names as well :P) and then let one of those rip. Not sure if the DPS is worth it, would have to do the math first.

[HImaniam]

Not even mention incredible spellpushback in pvp causing ABlasts useless.

[Roxton]

I think you're doing the maths a little wrong. The debuff is applied when the spell finishes casting. So we cast a 2.5 second spell, and get the 3 second debuff. This is long enough to throw in an arcane barrage (1.5 with gcd) or another instant, and then cast blast again. This would stack extremely well, especially if you did 2 blasts to start with. It does make it hard to work arcane missiles into the rotation, but I'm guessing that's what the missile barrage proc is for. So my rotation would be: Blast, Blast, Barrage, Blast, Barrage, Blast, Barrage ect ect until the MB proc, at which point I use arcane missiles instead of a barrage, and then return to a blast to keep up the debuff. This also gives some flexibility for movement, though not much - you may have to skip bits to reapply the debuff. Also, you may have to replace a barrage with a Focus Magic at some points, if it wears off or something. It's still not clear how that's going to work.

[Deleted]

The debuff duration doesn't increase though, it's capped at 3 seconds.

So if you do Blast, blast, barrage then you'd have 3 seconds 2-stacked debuff after your second Blast. That leaves you with 3 seconds to do an Arcane Barrage + GCD + Arcane Blast, which would be 4 seconds in total without any haste rating at all.

You'll lose your debuff, thus lose your increased damage.

[pilch]

From reading EJ, it is possible with 33% haste, 22% of which you can obtain through various raid buffs (totems, ret pally etc), which leaves 11% from gear, which really isn't that hard to get, and should be easy in wrath as well, despite needing more points of haste per %.

[Delijica]

What I am wondering is, when you start to cast your post-arcane barrage Arcane Blast and the debuff has 1-1.5 sec left, will you get the bonus damage from it even though it faded, but you started casting Arcane Blast while it was up, just like with current Arcane Blast where you could cast AB 1 sec before the debuffs fades but still get the increased cast time without the added mana cost. If not, I think Blizzard will tweak the debuff a bit, maybe increase it's duration to 4 seconds to allow this kind of rotations.

[Inoue]

What I am wondering is, when you start to cast your post-arcane barrage Arcane Blast and the debuff has 1-1.5 sec left, will you get the bonus damage from it even though it faded, but you started casting Arcane Blast while it was up, just like with current Arcane Blast where you could cast AB 1 sec before the debuffs fades but still get the increased cast time without the added mana cost. If not, I think Blizzard will tweak the debuff a bit, maybe increase it's duration to 4 seconds to allow this kind of rotations.

Was thinking the same, however the short debuff might be how blizzard intend it to be since AB will cost so much mana to keep up when you've stacked it fully. You'll probably run out of mana very fast even with the massive manapool you should get in wotlk, especially with the new potionsickness.

[Amgyn]

I think spell damage is calculated once you start casting, not when you finish.

[Delijica]

I think spell damage is calculated once you start casting, not when you finish.

^This. Arcane Blast would be perfect if it worked like this. Example: 3rd Arcane Blast->Debuff 3 secs now->Arcane Barrage->GCD->Debuff ~1.-1.5sec->Arcane Blast, debuff ends but AB still does 45% more damage without the added mana cost.

[Inoue]

^This. Arcane Blast would be perfect if it worked like this. Example: 3rd Arcane Blast->Debuff 3 secs now->Arcane Barrage->GCD->Debuff ~1.-1.5sec->Arcane Blast, debuff ends but AB still does 45% more damage without the added mana cost.

Indeed, this would make a lot of sense, since keeping a fully stacked AB would drain your mana pretty fast, this way you have a rotation of:

AB > AB > ABarrage > AB (stacking reset) > AB > ABarrage > AB (stacking reset) > AB > ABarrage, and you see how it goes :P

And at the end of fights if you have enough mana you just skip arcane barrage out of the cycle and spam AB to nuke the mob down, finishing off with a welltimed arcane barrage.

[coif]

I think they will tweak the debuff time again. Because event with a good rotation, we often have to move in raid and it will be almost impossible to benefit from the 45%.

[Nuronv]

"Maximum 2 if you can put yourself out of combat long enough (invisibility)"

Sadly i don't think this will work, Hunters used to be able use use feign death to go out of combat to drink however that as been changed so i assume even if you use invisibility it won't take you out of combat, not on a boss anyway.

[Stenhord]

I think spell damage is calculated once you start casting, not when you finish.

damage buffs on you are calculated when you start casting, like arcane power, trinkets etc. but dmg buffs on mobs (arcane blast debuff, imp scorch etc) counts when spells land.

[Asmo]

I had always been under the impression that Spell Damage buffs were calculated when the cast finished. Taking an example from live, I have the Moonfire spell damage proc idol for Balance. When I go to cast Wrath with the buff up they hit for about 1400-1500. But when the buff drops mid-cast they always seem to drop back down to the standard 1200-1300. Same with SF. Goes from 2400-2600 with to 2200-2400 when dropped mid-cast.

[Delijica]

damage buffs on you are calculated when you start casting, like arcane power, trinkets etc. but dmg buffs on mobs (arcane blast debuff, imp scorch etc) counts when spells land.

You are forgetting that the Arcane Blast debuff is not a debuff on a mob, but on the player.

[heeps]

You are forgetting that the Arcane Blast debuff is not a debuff on a mob, but on the player.

Anyone that's EVER used a +damage trinket knows that if the buff fades mid-cast, your spell gains nothing.

[Guran]

I made myself a spreadsheet for Mage DPS (actually all casters, but Mage is completely done, Boomkin misses a talent or 2, rest needs a lot of work :P)
Did some numbers and specs, and here is what I came up with:

Assuming Arcane Barrage still receives 3s cast scaling (and it should imo):
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0...cfRV0AofVb0Rhb
Is the best Arcane spec I can think of and does the best DPS when you just switch between Barrage and Blast the entire time, as Arcane Barrage will be your highest damage move. It scales less with talents, but far more with base spellpower, so you just can't go around not taking it as Arcane spec.
2 Blasts instead of 1 actually nerfs your DPS aswell as DPM due to the imba Arcane Barrage.

In case you want to know how good Arcane is compared to other specs:

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0...f0RhIuVubhst0h
Is the best Fire spec I could find, giving ~10% DPS less and only around 5% more DPM, but with far more AoE-possibilities.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0V0zZZVAGckcxoVzEbst
As Frost spec gives around an 18-20% DPS loss and 10% DPM gain.

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=oZf...bZbAGcocxoVzob
As Elementalist FFB spec gets the same DPS loss as Frost, but ... with a 35% DPM gain compared to full Arcane.

As a result, Arcane Barrage/Blast combo and Frostfire will probably be the only 2 spells used in end-game raids. Arcane as pure DPS build will rely on his spellpower scaling and try to keep up the mana, while Elementalist will most likely want to go for crit builds, as FFB will gain 180% crit damage bonus. If you take a third Mage to a raid, he could be Fire for AoE fights, but that would be wait & see at what lvl 80 raid instances will give.

Note:
I assumed 1200 spellpower and 25% base crit for all calculations and assumed all Mage buffs were on (Focus Magic, imp Scorch, Winter's Chill). 6% from a boomkin levels out with the imba scaling the FFB spec gets from his aura + ToW.

PS: Anyone know a good site to upload my spreadsheet? Don't feel like paying for some crappy server on some deserted island.

[NymPhox]

Anyone that's EVER used a +damage trinket knows that if the buff fades mid-cast, your spell gains nothing.

^/agree

Yea I can tell you for sure that bonus effects are calculated either at the end of the cast, or on the actual spell hit. I almost want to say its for spell hit, as in post "fly time". Not 100% on that last part. But I've noticed it before on my mage with arcane power and trinkets. So honestly I would expect the debuff timer to be changed, because 3s does seem rather short now.


edit: And no idea where you could load that spreadsheet =( sorry.

[ant1pathy]

+Damage is evaluated as the spell hits, +haste is done as the spell starts.