I’ve found so far Aedred that for those bosses that are mostly ST I do far better as arcane than frost. Obviously frost is better at cleave and mythic+ and can effectively do both at once, but for pure ST I think arcane is still ok. Don’t quote me on it, as it could just be years of arcane vs much less time as frost. I just can’t fire…
Yeah I may have to switch soon.
We’re hitting a DPS wall on Ashvane. We’re close, but not quite there yet.
The fire mage just got 430 Azshara trinket and a 445 Leviathan Lure. He made DPSing look stupidly easy and beat me by a huge margin.
Icy Veins will tell you the meta.
If you want some intuition on how arcane scales, here is is:
AB spam at max charges is barely more damage than any one else’s and you can’t keep doing it forever.
Max charges AB is 13750 mana, drains ~9.8k per second with no haste. My mana regen as best I can approximate is ~2.7k/s without factoring in evocation. You run out of mana pretty fast spamming AB at 4 charges.
Lower than 4 charges you’re not doing more damage than anyone else, even though you can sustain it. So the best way to actually do damage is to capitalize on as much free damage as you can get your hands on (and throwing your burn phase damage as through the roof as possible). Rule of 3s makes spamming a conserve phase of building up to 4 charges sustainable (and even builds a little bit of mana) and is the only case under which haste actually helps you. Without rule of 3s haste just chews you out of mana that much faster and gives you a longer conserve phase.
The damage from equipoise is really high because it scales with charges, the only problem being in order to get that damage all the time you have to stay above 70% mana, locking you into conserve phase that much more. This is why rule of 3s is required with this trait, you want to get as many charges as you can in conserve for free.
The only traits that scale with both single target and AoE are ones that proc effects that benefit both (not haste) because we still go oom in our aoe rotation.
Also note the mana discount from Equipose, extra charge chance from galvanizing spark and clearcast chance from arcane pummeling traits don’t stack. In general the numbers portions of traits stack, the effect portions don’t.
Initially in BFA, I was honestly unimpressed with the conserve side of arcane even with equipoise and because that’s your damage floor thought “meh”. I only recently got re interested in arcane when I realized how strongly the damage from arcane pummeling scaled (with my current gear (415) each trait is worth ~7.5k without amplification, ~11k with) and got 3 extra pieces with that trait. That’s a ton of free damage on clearcast procs. Ever since then i’ve been trying to make builds that perform well in mythic+ that revolve around mastery and regenerating as much mana as possible because clearcasting procs on how much mana i spend: My damage essentially scales on how much i regenerate. This also helps me sustain AOE as well. It seems to be working well for me so far but i’m not hardcore. I also really like being able to do all of that clearcast damage on the move with slipstream.
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I know it won’t produce top numbers but I also find a build like this to be much more fun than a focus on Arcane Blast. I’m collecting Azerite pieces for a meta Arcane build and will probably get Fire pieces too just because I don’t wanna hold my raid group back in Mythic progression.
On my own time I’m loving the Pummeling trait and playing Amplification and slipstream, and just crossing my fingers for a good 9.0 look at Arcane.
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Again I’m not attempting to tell you how to play, you do you. But the point I’m making is, like it or not, 3x EQ is better than anything else for pve. If someone asks what’s more “fun,” then that can be debated. Whether or not we like EQ stacking or how the burn and conserve phases of arcane mage work is moot. It is what it is. We can hope they fix it in 9.0 but we did that in 7.0 and in 8.0 and they didn’t.
I’d LOVE them to go back to letting missile procs stack to 3 then unleashing rapid fire missiles. Until then it is what it is. But play how YOU want, it’s your $15/mo.
This was a response to the OP, not you.
I realized i hadn’t addressed the OP directly. I was giving them basic theory and explaining how I ended up where I was. I also haven’t disagreed with you at all either, I very clearly stated icy veins was meta.
Here are some numbers if you want to reason about the two traits against each other:
I’m going reason about this in terms of free damage Let’s look at this in terms of damage over a conserve phase rotation (with rule of 3s):
3rd charge AB is free, for me that’s 5663 * (1+ .75*3) = 18404.
Chance to proc AM (no pummeling): 33% (3rd charge costs nothing)
Am Damage: 25395
Total AM contribution: 8380
Now let’s add the equipoise damage from all 4 ABs (596 * 3):
0 charges: 1788
1 Charge: 3129
2 Charges: 4470
3 Charges: 5811
Total Damage with equipoise gained from traits (+rule of 3s & AM): 41,982
Now, to reason about pummeling, you have to reason about it in terms of proc chance & mana cost, on average, you get 1 proc for every 50000 mana spent (without pummeling, 45000 with). Over the course of the conserve phase you spend (with amplification instead):
0 charges: 2750 mana
1 charge: 5500 mana
2 charges: 8250 mana
3 charges: 11000 mana
Total: 27500
Chance to proc clearclast: 61%
Am Damage: 25395
Pummeling damage: (509 x 3) * 15 (total amount of damage stacking based on progression, add 1,2,3,4,5,6): 22,905
Total: 48,300
Average damage gained over rotation .61 * 48300 = 29516.6
The difference here is 10k over ~10s rotation (I’m estimating conserve cast time here)
Now, let’s look at burn phase (without AP):
3x Equipose at 4 charges: 7152
AB: 22652
Total (for reference, not relevant for immediate comparison): 29804
How much damage do we gain, on average per 4 charge AB from 3x pummeling?
4 charge AB cost:
13750
Chance to proc (13750/45000) = 30.5% chance * 48,300 = 14,758
3x pummeling is giving you 2x the damage of 3x equipoise when burning with no AP factored in. Let’s look at DPS:
4 charge Equipoise AB cast time: 1.4
29804 damage/ 1.4s = 21288 DPS
Non equipoise 4 charge AB:
22652 / 1.4 = 16,180 DPS
3x pummeling DPS (clearcasted, AM is 20% faster, it shows at 1.9 on cleacast:
48,300/1.9 = 25421 DPS
So a pummeling AM cast isn’t a DPS loss against an Equipoise AB cast. Over the course of a longer burn 4charge equipoise AB would be more DPS because each cast is higher DPS than a non equipoise 4 charge AB, but let’s be honest here, you can’t do more than like 3 4 charged AB to keep the damage so you’re burning a lot more with pummeling, so it scales better on that end. The best comparison is added damage.
Really the only thing that separates the value of these traits is how often you’re in burn vs conserve. if you’re running around a ton such that your bar is full after a mechanic (from 70% minimum on equipoise), you’re probably losing damage on Equipoise because that lost mana equals lost damage. However talents like overpowered let you squeeze out more ABs over that 30% mana bar, so its burn phase is more efficient with AP. Time Anomaly works great with pummeling because you usually get more mana to burn and your mana bar is actually empty enough that you can benefit from a random regen proc (and extra AP is nice too, you just don’t have control of when that procs either). Having the extra regen procs keeps you in burn longer too. I would argue that pummeling 3x is at least 2nd best but it’s probably actually situation and gear dependent. Haste works better with Equipoise and rule of 3s. Scaling off of mana regen is probably better for me because I have to AOE alot because I mythic+ alot. Haste might increase my AOE damage but would leave me dry that much sooner.
These numbers don’t include my crit chance. Also note that the ABs here are much higher than icy veins would suggest as they deprioritize mastery. Icy veins is telling you to build a really strong conserve phase and stay there most of the time (and execute an epic burn phase).
That all sounds nice but unfortunately doesn’t match real world conditions or any of the actual sims. Part of the problem is hoping rng gives you enough AM procs to make it work and that’s often not the case. Again, if it’s working for you at the level of content you’re doing, that’s awesome and keep it up. But when you get into higher mythic plus keys and raiding, you’ll find that the majority of your damage is done during those burn phases via AB. If your goal is a more productive conserve, so be it. But the burst spike from the burns are where it’s at. There’s nothing wrong with having 3 AP traits, but they still won’t do the damage 3 EP will on single target and TA is a novelty trait that’s unreliable at best.
But again play your way.
3x Equipoise plus a Galvanizing Spark is rather fun.
During Arcane Power I regularly see Arcane Blasts critting for over 150k. And when I use Rune of Power, I’ve seen them crit for almost 200k.
If I could ever get the trinket from Azshara I think it would be easy to see 200k+ arcane blast crits if you have the right talents, traits and gear level.
Sorta hard for Arcane Pummeling to match that.
I’m not a random 20 void elf and I can tell you, that you are wrong. I mained arcane in legion, went up to doing keys up to 22, timed an upper Kara or was it lower at a 21. If arcane was were it was at then, I would say you are right, but that isn’t the case.
You do great numbers for arcane, but as others pointed out, you won’t be beating any other classes if any. Fire and frost are vastly superior.
Our parses are almost the same, but my damage is far higher. Doesn’t that tell you it is the spec? That it isn’t up to par with the other specs of the same class? Let alone every other class in the game.
I’m leveling a Nightborne arcane mage for the armor. I’ll probably keep playing her as a fun toon just to get my arcane fix. Won’t do anything hardcore on her … Warfronts, WQ’s, low level keys.
Just need to scratch that arcane itch once in a while.
I laugh everytime I see posts on WoWhead about how popular mages are in Classic. Hardly ever run into them in pug groups in retail and I’m the only one on my raid team and there aren’t that many people alt’ing mages in my guild.
Very telling …
I’m running a DPS meter. Maybe it’s because I’m against people in PuGs, but I normally outdps people around my ilvl and can give people higher ilvls a run for their money, sometimes I outdps them, sometimes I don’t. The only exception to this rule is if I’m dumb and die (or like in LFR the other day, the tank pulls too soon and half of us get locked out).
So don’t worry. Once I feel like I’m useless, I’ll just switch to frost.
I can’t honestly claim this is better than the meta because i haven’t run the meta. But you are comparing mythic ilvl numbers against normal numbers (if you’re comparing your AB crits against my pummels) and 6 traits against 3.
AB only accounts for just over half my damage. Spark isn’t worth it in that context. The rest of my damage is AB or procs. And this build is about consistent damage over burst windows.
Serious question: Why for so many of you does last place mean garbage. I see so much “it’s in last it sucks”. Since specs cant be 100% even something is gonna be in last place, but that doesn’t by definition mean a spec is bad, just not as good as the others.
Because arcane has been at or near last place for quite a while.
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I still think you’re missing my point. I’m not in any way suggesting you’re a bad mage, bad player or bad person because you stack pummeling. If you’re doing well at the content level you’re playing, more power to you. What I and others are saying is once you get to what’s considered higher content (heroic/mythic raids, mythic+10, +15 and above) you’ll see that it’s inferior. Of course arcane as a whole is inferior at the highest content, but that’s another story. The vast majority of arcane mages end up with like 80% or more of their dps from AB (which of course is a source of contention for the spec) and you won’t be as competitive in that content with that build as you are now. That’s all were saying.
Pvp on the other hand almost requires you to stack pummeling and quick thinking, but that’s another topic entirely.
I disagree.
Being in last place IS pretty much the definition of “garbage”.
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That and it’s been the single most ignored spec in the entire game about 8 years running. If anyone doubts this, go count the blue posts on it over that period.
People don’t enjoy having the spec they play constantly being near the bottom whether it’s due to undertuning or more likely bad class design almost every xp. We had a couple moments in the sun (HFC but only because of two very broken trinkets and then in Antorus because they finally figured out how to make arcane explosion good then naturally immediately nerfed it in 9.0) and other than a few niche fights like the bonus damage ones in the first raid of BFA, we’re lacking. Not having cleave really kills it, especially in raids where 75% or more of the bosses have adds. That and the outdated mana reliance system combined with the burn/conserve phase they’ve repeatedly stated they don’t want makes for a lot of looking up at the meters.
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Okay. Well I appreciate the discussion and i’m pretty much done now. I think this made me look harder at mastery and forced me to realize it is probably actually garbage even for my chosen build (need a good way of simming it). Crit and vers may actually scale better. But like i said if i’m a drag i’ll switch.
Arcane is one of those specs where everything is good, but it still relies on crit and vers. You basically NEED those ABs to crit during your burns. There’s a huge difference between a burn where you have bad luck and get 1 or no crits and one where you get say 3,4 or even 5. As Mist said, you can hit over 200k ABs if you get decent procs.
One last thing I’ll suggest to you, get yourself an on use trinket, either a balefire branch or even the compass from the world quests. They usually offer that at 380-390 IL now and you can get a TF on it. It’s HUGE for the burn.
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That’s good advice. An activated stat-boosting trinket can be a huge boost to your burn phase.
I’d be using myself, but my highest activated stat boosting trinket is a 400 Balefire
Branch. It unfortunately it sims well below my 430 and 450 passive trinkets.