compared to using traits that boost arcane blast, arcane pummeling is showing as a higher dps improvement. So i did a test and it really is higher st dps. However, with your AB traits can make you hit high pretty high crits.
Has been for awhile. When I have the time I’ll do some build experimentation… because pummeling and equipose are both pretty large flat damage increases, I’ll mess around with stacking higher on mastery and haste – basically get a massive mana pool and burn through it quickly. Idea is to sustain roughly as long as the current meta or longer, but generate a ton of clearcasting procs with 3 pummeling traits + 3 equipose, and proc cloak/trinkets/corruptions more often.
if i find gear with equipose and pummeling i’ll be set
Many of the residuum vendor pieces have equipoise/pummeling combos. Given the raid ones aren’t that hot, it’s best to shoot for mythic+.
Higher than what? With what setup? With that particular combination of sub optimal talents and gear? Maybe.
Pummelling is terrible for normal setup though.
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Also, I assume you’re talking about the non-equipose traits?
maybe my new found dps boost is from the new trinkets i got
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You have amplification and resonance talented instead of rule of threes and charged up
It sims higher at higher mastery levels.
Makes some sense – spending more mana means more clearcasts, and it’s a sizeable dps gain over arcane blast with 3 pummeling traits + amplification, when you’re under 70% mana. Rule of of threes also carries less value with more mastery. There are some interesting scaling things that can be looked into. Right now I think most people are playing last season’s meta, which may or may not be optimal this season.
Then the onus of proof is on those people, because so far there is absolutely no reason to believe that you should forsake conventional builds and sims in favour of missile traits/talents. This gets brought up every patch, and so far no one has succeeded (either in actual dps, or in writing an apl to effectively use this logic) in beating 3x equi + 3x raid trait with default talents. Mastery also doesn’t even buff missiles directly like it buffs blast.
I personally don’t see it being worth re investigating unless you maybe have had the strangest possible rng with what corrupted items drop for you.
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I don’t think anyone’s saying the current meta should be abandoned because this one individual running amplification happened to sim higher one time with pummeling instead of galvanizing spark or (I assume) heart of darkness. It’s still an interesting concept that could be tinkered with.
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My point is that he can sim with that combo and, yeah, pumm might sim better.
But then he could also swap back to normal talents and other traits will result in a sim that is higher than that previous pumm sim. Finding ways to optimize one area while starting from a sub optimal baseline is pointless. I pointed that out to OP because he might not be aware of what talents are best, or he might not be aware of the effect that talent choices have on other areas such as traits. Or he might accidentally have pvp talents on (I’ve seen that too).
I’ve been running 3x Pummeling/3x Heart of Darkness with Incanter’s Flow and finding it to be pretty adequate. It may not be as optimal as the standard build but I don’t think it’s far off. Was doing mid 70ks on single target fights in heroic last week with pretty lackluster corruptions and non-spectacular gear.
It’s also a lot easier to pull off, less annoying to play, and pretty flexible on mobility with Slipstream. Personally I can’t stand the chain of 3-5 globals required to set up the burst phase, and with this build it’s only 2. You can also freely AoE without tanking your dps, which is harder to do with Equipoise due to the high mana requirements.
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The current arcane meta is pretty much just a mish-mash of a few things that happened to work together in the previous patches. There isn’t that much synergy or consideration behind the build, because there isn’t much synergy between many traits/talents/stats in the spec. It’s been one of the biggest complaints about arcane that I’ve seen repeated over and over again… and it’s why when someone says they do things a little bit differently than what’s considered standard, it’s not really a big deal. Probably didn’t break anything because there isn’t much to break.
Sometimes “ease of use” can make a slightly inferior spec perform better than the best meta spec. At least in the hands of an average player like me.
For example: Rune of Power consistently sims at 3,000 dps upgrade for me over Incanter’s Flow. However, in actual practice I do not get better results with Rune.
The slight dps upgrade is countered by my less than perfect play. Sometimes I have to run out of rune of power due to mechanics or fail to get the full benefit. Or maybe I don’t activate it in time saving it for arcane power and as a result get 1 less Rune fo Power cast in the fight than the sim predicts.
Since Incanters seems to get similar results with less effort and attention, while providing more mobility, it’s my go-to for arcane spec on progression fights.
It is possible that a similar effect might hold with Arcane Pummeling. If it can come within 90% of the theoretical dps output of a conventional Equipoise build, then ease of play and mobility might make it superior for some fights. Especially in the hands of a less than perfect player.
AM build still won’t work if it is massively inferior to the meta build. But if it close, it sounds like it might be worth further investigation.
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Your logs are actually decent so props for that. The synergy between wv/vop minor/double proc trinket and good fight timings was working well. I’d still say you were playing well enough that you’d squeeze out more damage with equipoise setup, however, I have nothing against choosing an easier playstyle on purpose. That works for some people. Can’t agree with slipstream over shimmer for this raid though 