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drclawsarcanetbcguide · 4 years ago

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On gems

One can examine what is the best gem using the stat weights as I calculated or by testing them at https://cheesehyvel.github.io/magesim-tbc2/

I tested with no shaman in party, and tier 5 gear, and got the following (there are 7 yellow gem slots in total, no red, and the blue remain fixed) +8 int: 1817.85 DPS (crafted) +6sp+4int: 1821.73 DPS (heroics) +6sp+5haste: 1811.25 DPS (crafted from raid gems, added 2.4) i.e with 6 yellow slots you can gain 3.9 DPS from grinding gems in heroics over buying them at the AH (although this should be ~2.8 given the stat weights below, hmmm~). If we consider a single gem slot, that gives no bonus for correct gems (i.e. cuffs of devestation): Don Julio's Heart 14 sp :1824 (red) Runed Ornate Ruby 12 sp: 1822 (red) (9.46 stat weight) Runed Crimson Spinel 12 sp: 1822 (red) Infused Fire Opal 6 sp / 4 int: 1822 (9.1 stat weight) Brilliant Dawnstone 8 int: 1821 (8.72 stat weight) Potent Pyrestone 6 sp / 5 crit: 1821 Potent Ornate Topaz 6 sp / 5 crit: 1821 Potent Fire Opal 6 sp / 4 crit: 1820 Runed Living Ruby 9 sp : 1820 Unstable Topaz 5 sp / 4 int: 1820 Blood of Amber 12 crit: 1820 Fluorescent Tanzanite 6 sp / 4 spi: 1820 (blue) Potent Noble Topaz 5 sp / 4 crit: 1819 Veiled Pyrestone 6 sp / 5 hit: 1818 (when hit capped in arcane) Shining Fire Opal 6 sp / 5 hit: 1818 (when hit capped in arcane) Gleaming Lionseye 10 crit: 1818 Gleaming Ornate Dawnstone 10 crit: 1818 Glowing Tanzanite 6 sp: 1818 (blue) Glowing Nightseye 5 sp: 1817 (blue) Veiled Noble Topaz 5 sp / 4 hit: 1817 (when hit capped in arcane) Gleaming Dawnstone 8 crit: 1817 Great Lionseye 10 hit: 1815 (when hit capped in arcane) Great Dawnstone 8 hit: 1814 (when hit capped in arcane) If we compare Glowing Nightseye to Don Julio's Heart we get a DPS increase per sp of (1824.37-1817.23)/9 = 0.79 meaning an empty socket should be 1813.26 DPS. This makes it easy to calculate the stat weights (using 100000 sims for each gem):

+sp = 0.79 (1824.37-1817.23)/9 +int = 1.09 (1821.95-1813.26)/8 +crit = 0.48 (1818.05-1813.26)/10 +spi = 0.53 (1820.11-6[+sp]-1813.26)/4

These values generally agree with the values in my solver.

Something is odd with haste in the sim. A little bit of haste appears to pass some threshold value and give a large benefit. Possibly an interaction with IV and/or AP. These results do not add up with the conclusion from replacing all gems above. +haste = 1.29 (1824.55-1813.26)/10 (something is wrong with this) Reckless Pyrestone 6 sp / 5 haste: 1827 (11.19 stat weight) Quick Lionseye 10 haste: 1824 (12.9 stat weight)

The meta gems are as follows: Chaotic Skyfire Diamond 12 crit / +3% crit dmg: 1801 Ember Skyfire Diamond 14 sp / +2% int: 1780 Insightful Earthstorm Diamond 12 int / Chance to restore mana: 1790 Destructive Skyfire Diamond 14 sp / 1% Spell reflect: 1771 Imbued Unstable Diamond 14 sp / 5% stun resist: 1771 Swift Skyfire Diamond 12 sp / Minor run speed: 1770 where Insightful Earthstorm Diamond is likely to perform better if you have innervates/a shaman, since the non-arcane spells you cast benefit more from the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond than AB does (see equation in other post).

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drclawsarcanetbcguide · 4 years ago

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Dr. Claw's guide for arcane mages in TBC

This is a guide for those that want to play an arcane mage in phase one of TBC classic. It is not intended to convince you it is better than fire. Also, if there is a typo in my simulation code, this will affect the results :P.

This is an analytical approach, and does not include procs or trinkets, as these are difficult to handle analytically. The simulation-based aproach of Osthyvel (https://cheesehyvel.github.io/magesim-tbc2/) is better for optimizing individual gear pieces, and includes trinkets and procs.

Introduction

Arcane mages in TBC get a new spell called Arcane Blast (AB). When cast it gives you a debuff that increases the mana cost of AB by 75%, and reduces the casting time by 0.33s. The debuff stacks up to 3 times, and lasts for 8 seconds. The default casting time is 2.5s, and this goes down to 1.5 on 3 stacks.

Note that cast time is calculated when you click the button, but mana cost is calculated when the spell is cast. If you start casting while the debuff has less than 1s left, you will cast it fast for cheap.

Also note that the AB debuff increases the mana cost by 70% of the base mana, and is applied after other modifiers (arcane power, tier 5 set). This makes AB benefit more from arcane power than other spells.

Basic premise The basic premise of the arcane mage is that you have two rotations. One save rotation and one burn rotation. You balance these so that you go OOM (out-of-mana) at the same time as the boss dies. The burn rotation will be an arcane blast spam

The save rotation will differ for arcane-frost and arcane-fire: arcane-frost: 3xAB->3xFrostbolt arcane-frost: 3xAB->Frostbolt->AM arcane-frost: Frostbolt spam arcane-fire: 3xAB->Scorch->AM arcane-fire: 3xAB->scorch->2xFireball arcane-fire: Fireball spam (keeping up scorch debuff)

The differences are not huge, but 3xAB->3xFrostbolt is the best possible rotation with arcane-frost, while a Fireball spam or 3xAB->scorch->2xFireball is best for fire (FB spam is slightly weaker, but easier to maintain, the difference is slight). 3xAB->scorch->2xFireball will be significantly better once you get 2 pc tier 5 set. (with any arcane-fire spec you will have to cast scorch to ramp and keep up the scorch debuff).

Note that if you are arcane-frost, you can optimize your 3xAB->3xFrostbolt rotation by casting AM when you get a clearcasting proc, so long as you don’t drop the AB debuff. This has minimal effect on your DPS (detremental if you have high latency) but is good tip for conserving mana if you spend too much in the beginning of the fight.

Switching between rotations

Typically you will use your burn rotation relatively early while popping all CDs and trinkets. Using your CDs together with an AB spam gives you the most benefit. Once they arcane power, icy veins and your trinket buffs have faded you may mix and match the rotations as you see fit for the rest of the fight.

A god tip is to try to match your mana to the boss HP. You do this by inserting extra AB into your rotation to burn any additional mana you may have.

If you get a second Icy Veins (by cold snap) or heroism not matched with arcane power and/or trinkets, you may use the burn or save rotation during this as you see fit. You may think you get more benefit if you use AB spam, but since you balance you mana so that you go oom at the end of the fight anyway it does not matter. (think of heroism/icy veins as increasing the fight duration). However, cycles such as 3xAB->3xFrostbolt rotation does not work with icy veins because AB debuff no longer drops due to the shorter casttime of FB. I have found no obvious way to deal with this, and you may find that you have to do a frostbolt spam or fireball spam, if you don’t have the mana for AB spam.

Balancing your rotations

If you know how long the fight will be, you can calculate how much time you should spend in each rotation. Mathematically this is not complicated, and I have plotted the amount of damage you do from each rotation in the plot below. The x-axis is the total time you spend casting. The blip at 60s is from evocation. Before this the optimal play is to not use evocation, while after this the optimal play is to use evocation. (I do not included wand-dps after you go oom, although that is not shown in this plot. I also do not let you use AP etc. twice)

In practice you will start with the save rotation until the boss is at low HP and then switch to the burn rotation.

If we divide the total damage by the time, we get the average DPS:

As an arcane mage your average DPS will be higher the shorter the fight is. (although this is also true for other classes/specs due to cooldowns).

Talents and gear: The above plots are calculated with the following talent spec: https://legacy-wow.com/tbc-talents/mage-talents/?tal=2520050300030150330125000000000000000000000000535000310030010000000

and pre-raid, no PVP gear with crafted gems: https://seventyupgrades.com/set/c37P41hxKGNvQkh36a9UYD (I mean this to be an example of early gear, and I ignore the difference in +spllpower for different schools, and the set bonus from the spellfire set. The code supports it, so you may include these yourself.)

Optimizing your gear means finding the right stat weights. I did this by calculating the derivative of the damage done with respect to the different stats. This will also depend on the fight duration, as you can see in the plot below:

Note how high intellect is. You can see the stat weights I used for the gear at the link above. (spirit will be lower in molten armor)

Arcane fire vs Arcane frost Here arcane fire uses the same stats as arcane frost and the following build:

https://legacy-wow.com/tbc-talents/mage-talents/?tal=2520050300030150330125050500201230000000000000030000000000000000000 You may observe that arcane fire outperforms arcane frost for fights longer than ~160s. This is primarily due to Icy Veins, which you can use twice with Cold Snap. I am assuming you get maximum benefit from this, which may not be possible in fights where you have to move, where maintaining a fireball spam is easier (even if you have to keep up the scorch debuff)

Comparison to Fire

I am assuming you are raid buffed (Blessing of kings, blessing of wisdom, improved mark of the wild, improved divine spirit, curse of elements with malediction, and judgment of wisdom on the boss). You are also using your mana emerald and a single mana potion. (I am using molten armor. At this gear level the choice of armor makes no difference to the DPS of arcane specs, but is significant for fire. At better gear the arcane mages want mage armor) The fire build includes Icy Veins: https://legacy-wow.com/tbc-talents/mage-talents/?tal=0000000000000000000000050520201230333105312510235000010000000000000 With conventional stat weights: https://seventyupgrades.com/set/rognn7N3mUmUT53xFzzxxM

It appears that the difference is not huge. It is easier to see the difference if we just plot the % difference, here with respect to fire.

The optimal spec depends on the fight duration, and we can see above that arcane is superior for fight durations shorter than ~160 s or longer than ~200s.

Realistically, I expect fight durations between 90 and 180 s (+movement and other phases). I base this on the number of casts our mages do during various bosses in naxx, but other ppl in the community can probably estimate this better than me. We don’t know how this will shake out in TBC classic. For Arcane Fire, the difference to Fire is less than ~ -4% on the negative side. At this point the player matters more than the spec.

Shadow Priest and Innervate

It is somewhat likely that you will have a shadow priest in the raid, and if you do, it should be placed in your group. It is also somewhat likely that a druid can innervate you. The following plot shows the DPS you can expect with one innervate and a shadow priest 1000 DPS (you get 5% of this as mana)

At this point the fire mage will never go oom, and never use evocation. There is a single crossover point at around 180s. We can see more detail in the relative plot.

Again all three configurations appear reasonable for reasonable fight durations. The take-home message from these plot should be that fire-mages also benefit from SP, as it means they don’t have to use evocation (and take the DPS hit that gives). But arcane mages benefit more. Another thing to note is that arcane-frost is only better than arcane fire due to cold snap. If you don’t use cold snap (and/or if you have the spellfire set) you should consider arcane fire.

Frost spec In TBC frost mages get water elemental, which is a huge DPS up combined with cold snap If you can keep it alive. I am also making the assumption that the WE has enough mana to cast continuously. I am not sure if this is true. (frost mages use same gear as fire)

On paper frost looks decent. However, I don’t expect you to be able to follow this curve exactly, since it assumes 2x icy veins and 2x water elemental, without the WE dying. (but if you can, all the more power too you!)

Why do some players say that arcane is only good after you get t5? Not everyone has realized how important intellect is to an arcane mage. If you gear your arcane mage with focus on +spelldamge (like a fire mage, or as you did all of classic), you get the following result instead:

You can see how fire now outperforms arcane in all (basically) fights. The key to playing arcane is to select gear with a lot of int! My arcane mage has 497 int, while my fire mage has only 333. A lot of this is from gems. The arcane mage uses Yellow +8 int gems. (these will probably be dirt cheap, compared to red gems...) On the topic of t5: This is what it looks like if we simply add the 2 piece t5 bonus:

Why should you trust this?

You shouldn’t trust this blindly. I have verified my code against a spreadsheet i found online from 2008, and it agrees generally with osthyvls sims.

You can download my source code here https://github.com/ClawDoctor/TBC_GUI_sim. You may run it with python3 or the executable (TBC_mage.exe included here https://www.dropbox.com/s/6gi620649sdfmdy/TBC_GUI_sim-main.zip?dl=1) on windows. (but you probably shouldn’t trust a random .exe you download from a shady site on the internet...). It looks like this,

Where the talent configurations are in text files (see the file browser on the left) and the stats are in separate text files in the same folder. You select the mages you want to compare and click ‘run’.

You can also select and compare different buff states, by selecting different configurations:

There may be bugs i still haven’t found, and I will update this post if I discover some

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