[ARCANE] Shards of Nothing. Tossing Ideas When to Use

[Rou]

Hey all,

This is my first xpac rolling mage as my main though I've played one on and off since WotLK. I recently acquired the heroic trinket from Twins (increase haste 2min CD) http://www.wowhead.com/item=113835&bonus=566" target="_blank . There seems to be 3-4 possibilities that could occur, which is why it seems that the trinket usage seems situational depending on the fight and gear, but I don't know if there is a cookie cutter way of using it. So here's what I've come up with...

And here's my armory and some basic logs
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/f ... u/advanced" target="_blank
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/r8 ... K#fight=31" target="_blank

Sorry for posting only Margok wipes, but it was the only time I got to use Shards last night as my guildie killed me with his trample on Koragh >_>

These scenarios are all assuming Arcane: SN, RoP, PC on a patchwerk style fight but varying times.

Scenario A)
You hero on pull with http://www.wowhead.com/spell=56991" target="_blank 5min fight. You either

1) have too much haste at the beginning using shards during burn phase where you burn your mana too quickly even after consuming all your AM's forcing an early evocation and no AMs for conserve phase. Shards can line up for 2nd AP.

2) You use shards after hero expires to get a standard burn phase with longer increased cast time. Shards may or may not line up with 2nd AP due to 40 seconds of bloodlust evoke etc.

Scenario B)
You hero on pull without http://www.wowhead.com/spell=56991" target="_blank 5min fight. You either

3) Use shards on pull to try to burn in 15 seconds which would cause you to stop at 50% mana burn and go about your day assuming your AP doesn't expire before 50% (15 seconds is retty short). This also causes your shards and AP to line up around the 4.5min mark of the fight (no point in poppin shards earlier with 2 min CD you cant squeeze 3 of em in so might as well wait for third AP). However, it's pretty tough to burn 50% of your mana in 15 seconds even with that much haste so it may be inefficient.

4) Wait to use shards after heroism, but this seems like a waste because you won't have enough AP uptime without the glyph to burn to near 50% towards the end of it so it seems like the weakest choice.

Last words: How I've been using the AP Glyph is solely based on boss fight. For example: if boss fight is 3min long (a la butcher) , I'd go without the glyph because it gives me another AP to use my 2nd Pot with PC and SN line up etc. However, Margok I go for the glyph because the fight is so long with several important burn phases (least with our guild kill I had AP for every transition phase) that it is nice to get the extra 15 seconds.

Please leave thoughts and thanks for welcoming me into the community as I've been a long time lurker and feel free to move the post if it belongs somewhere else. Logs I linked for this week are only somewhat reliable for a few bosses as I was trying different builds and had hiccups. The week prior was a more consistent log if you're incredibly curious.

[Komma]

As you've discovered, CD planning is pretty involved and depends very much on fight duration.

In general, I always used glyphed AP. Not all fights have predictable lengths, and the glyph simply guarantees the highest amount of uptime for any duration. Burning with glyphed AP is sometimes an annoyance, as you mentioned; occasionally your mana would dip low really early, due to a lack of AM procs. There isn't much you can do about it.

When optimizing cooldown usage, the number one factor to take into consideration, prioritized before everything else, is uptime. The rule of thumb is "if it causes you to lose uptime, don't do it". There are some exceptions, but they are very infrequent. The reason for this is straight forward: most of the time, delaying abilities so they can be used together is due to gaining "synergy". For example, synergizing AP with a potion would give you "20% extra" on the potion. But that's the thing; "synergy" is usually measured at a scale of 10%-50%. Uptime, especially when talking about extra uses, is measured in wholes of 100%. This also explains why Frozen Orb + Prismatic Crystal is an exception, because you gain "more than 100%" of a Frozen Orb using it on Prismatic Crystal.

Going by the above rule, it's fairly easy to list a few common scenarios:
1. For a fight just below 3 minutes, it's not clear. 30 seconds of AP combined with Bloodlust seems like a strong option, but there's also the option of saving 15 second of AP for when 2 min clickable and ICD trinkets are available again, and combo it with PC. I lean towards the former option.
2. For fight length = 4 mins (ie. Butcher), the obvious choice is to glyph for maximum uptime, and save 2 min trinkets for 2nd AP at 3 mins.
3. At longer fight lengths, unpredictability in fight length and uptime gains makes the glyph more and more preferable.

Regarding Shards and AP specifically, I don't consider early evocations as huge issues. Evocation during haste effects also mean that it benefits from Nether Attunement, allowing you to gain more mana per tick. Seeing as how Shards + Bloodlust isn't enough to give us AB/AM GCD capping haste yet, I also don't see the problem with using them together. Burn phase ending before AP ends isn't a disaster, because the conserve rotation doesn't really "benefit less" from AP and haste effects.