Berlinia's Arcane Mage Guide for T17 (Highmaul Update)

[Berlinia]

Nice interaction with PC and no longer have ridiculously long Burn phases.

[Berlinia]

Guide is updated as of today. Will add extra's as I read through it!

[Wilderness]

Nice interaction with PC and no longer have ridiculously long Burn phases.

It does line up perfectly with PC that way, but you can't burn everytime PC is up anyway. Its also easier to have fight times impact how many uses of AP you get when you have it unglyphed as well.

There are a few things about the guide that I noticed.

The first is your discussion of stats and their value. I don’t think it’s a good idea to say things like “Haste is a very good stat” or “Multristrike is a good stat, roughly equal to haste”, as those values can vary wildly from roughly similar to quite far apart depending on talent combinations. Making those kinds of statements rather than simply explaining how those stats impact Arcane is counterproductive to the new Arcane mage.

I understand that this guide was created and likely is maintained for Icy Veins, but I think it’s a really poor idea to link to a warlock guide for trinket comparisons. His analysis of trinkets is not at all applicable to Arcane mages (Copeland’s Clarity is not in fact anywhere near BiS for us through Highmaul and Foundry), and we have a thread on these very forums dedicated to current trinket rankings, which I have no doubt will be updated to include Foundry trinkets once those are available. A guide on Altered Time needs to be taking advantage of the theorycrafting and knowledge posted on AT, not linking to incorrect information on Icy Veins.

I think that at times you get too subjective while inserting your opinion in places that it doesn’t belong in a guide to how to play a spec. A good example of that is “I have not bothered with Evanesce at all because I am a proclaimer of handling mechanics, not cheesing them.” Yes, Ice Floes, and then Blazing Speed are pretty much better options than Evanesce for this tier, and probably in the future too. That’s because of what they allow you to do, and because of Evanesce either not working on useful things or being bugged on useful things. But that has nothing to do with cheesing anything – if Evanesce worked on more things in Highmaul, you can be 100% certain that mages would be using it left and right. Its not cheesing mechanics to make use of the tools at your disposal, or should we walk through Force Nova instead of blinking through it because that makes it trivial for us mages?

Your analysis and details about the last 3 tiers of talents should include how they interact. Yes, both NT and SN have pros and cons that can be more or less useful on certain fights or certain situations, but their value is also directly impacted by if you have PC or one of the other level 100 talents. This sort of synergy and interaction is important to know about.

I’d like to know what “There is one specific case when you should keep track of your Incanter’s Flow stacks. If you have selected the level 75 Supernova you should always cast that at max stacks of Incanter’s Flow.” is based on. While that statement makes sense on its face, it may not be the case. I know that previous analysis of “gaming” IF that I’ve seen – which was for Frost and nor Arcane granted – seems to put it as not worth it. It may be worth it for Arcane, but just as your statement seems logical, so does ensuring that you use SN at 4 stacks of AB rather than watching IF stacks to give you more time to regen mana and another chance to proc AM. So what are you basing it on?

Your descriptions of the level 100 talents do not add up. You say that PC falls behind OP, and that AO falls behind the other two, and yet your Highmaul Talent paragraph says you’ll be switching between PC and AO. Sims show PC as the best single-target talent, with AO as the 2nd best, and AO as your best cleave or 3-target option – which is why you’d switch between the two for Highmaul fights, but OP is not ahead of either of them single or multi-target, nor is AO behind the other two, so I’m not sure where those statements to that fact comes from.

In the extended knowledge section you mentioned a couple of times about your PC being the start of your burn phase or always being in your burn phase, but that’s not possible given the CDs of PC and Evocation, unless the ideal use of PC is to hold it off until Evo will be coming off CD, but that will mean holding it off for 30+ seconds every time you use it and I’ve yet to see any math or sims on that being the best option.

[Berlinia]

Much of this guide was written back in october from beta knowledge/testing. I however agree with most of your criticism and am now in the process of rereading/reediting the guide.
Thank you for your time to provide this feedback.

Btw keep in mind you do not want to start burning when evocation IS off CD but rather when it WILL be off CD.
Also from my knowledge the avoid gaming IF theories were not centered around having picked IF and Supernova and holding it off for high stacks.

[TLTeo]

I'm fairly sure Komma simmed banking one charge of IN and casting it at 4-5 stacks IF in frost spec somewhere.

[Berlinia]

I didn't say banking Supernova gods no

[Wilderness]

Btw keep in mind you do not want to start burning when evocation IS off CD but rather when it WILL be off CD.

Yes, but that's irrelevant, because the CDs of PC and Evocation are 30 seconds apart, and you can't change that. Even if your average burn phase lasts 30 seconds phase that doesn't bring them together - because you cast PC the 1st time, burned your 30 seconds, then cast Evo, so your Evo comes off CD 2.5 minutes after your first use of PC, meaning you have to wait 30 seconds after PC comes off its CD until you can start your 2nd burn. And really, if your average burn phase lasts 30 seconds, then starting burning 30 seconds before Evo's CD is up is putting yourself at risk to having some below average RNG and being unable to use Evo when you should, so realistically if you know you usually take 30 seconds then you'd probably wait until 20-25 seconds left on Evo's CD.

You cannot get a 1.5 minute and 2 minute CD to sync up. This fact is only made worse when you get good RNG during one of your burn phases. If you're 1st burn phase lasts 40 seconds rather than the usual 30, now your Evo CD is put off even further, but you can't start burning 40 seconds prior to it being off its CD b/c you can't guarantee that you will get good procs again.

[TLTeo]

Evocation has a 90 second cooldown with the levelling perk.

Also Berlinia, i feel like you should include some info on using (or not) the AP glyph!

[Berlinia]

Yea glyphs are on the to do list.
And yea wilderness thet re on the same cd.

[Wilderness]

Evocation has a 90 second cooldown with the levelling perk.

Also Berlinia, i feel like you should include some info on using (or not) the AP glyph!

Yeah, I don't know how I overlooked that.

All the sims I've run of my own character, for fights of lengths 2 minutes through 10 mins, had glyphed/unglyphed as either about the same, or glyphed came out ahead when the fight time would make you miss a use of AP. Its possible fight mechanics could impact that, but I've yet to run into a problem in Highmaul with that happening.

[TLTeo]

Those are the same results i had as well, so i figured glyphing AP isn't worth since that way it's more likely you'll have AP up for a phase when you need burst (like Imperator transitions or blue shrooms).

[Ogo]

I'm just asking, is it possible to get a sim of the different racials compared to eachother? It'd be great

[Dustwhisper]

What is the logic behind evocation at 50%!?

My burn phase can go twice as long if I don't (with AM proc luck).

Also in a burn phase if AB is higher dmg why use AM at all unless at 3 procs, especially on PC.

[Chev]

What is the logic behind evocation at 50%!?

My burn phase can go twice as long if I don't (with AM proc luck).

Also in a burn phase if AB is higher dmg why use AM at all unless at 3 procs, especially on PC.

The logic is 50% gives a good alround result where you get the extra damage from casting more AB x4's but you don't lose too much damage from your damage bonus from the Arcane Mastery which depends on mana levels. If you keep burning further you will lose damage from your mastery bonus, if you don't burn enough, you lose damage from not casting enough ABx4's. 50% is not hard and fast. As you will see below, it is not the end of the world if you go a bit further or finish a bit earlier.



AB is not higher damage than AM. AM will always do more damage than AB, but you want to save these where possible until you have 4 stacks of AC to make sure you are getting the most from AM (unless you get to 3 stacks and risk over writing the stacks). Another reason you want to use AM on PC over AB is AM is a channel compared to AB which has a cast time. If you manage to get 4 hits onto PC from AM before the crystal de-spawns, that is better than getting to 90% of your AB cast and then the cast being canceled as you no longer have a target.

P.S. Here is a sim showing the difference between using Missiles during a burn and not using missiles.

[Chev]

I'm just asking, is it possible to get a sim of the different racials compared to eachother? It'd be great

I have done this for you. http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1086" target="_blank

[Wilderness]

Hey Chev, would it be possible to see percentages lower than 40? Like 20-25 and up? I'd like to see how much it drops off from the 50% numbers.

A problem I sometimes run into during my 1st burn with hero up is that depending on procs I will get to 50% with say 10 seconds left on hero. In that case it seems to me that the benefits of continuing to burn for those 10 seconds, using Evo at the last moment before hero expires, would outweigh the option of wasting hero time evocating and then building back up charges for a conserve rotation, but if the drop off down to 25-30% is more substantial, then perhaps that isn't the best option.

[Dustwhisper]

The logic is 50% gives a good alround result where you get the extra damage from casting more AB x4's but you don't lose too much damage from your damage bonus from the Arcane Mastery which depends on mana levels.

Ah thank you this is where my lack of knowledge had me going wrong. I was not aware we got more dmg from mana =D !

I was struggling with hitting 31k on butcher, maybe i'll do better now! Thx!

[Chev]

Hey Chev, would it be possible to see percentages lower than 40? Like 20-25 and up? I'd like to see how much it drops off from the 50% numbers.

A problem I sometimes run into during my 1st burn with hero up is that depending on procs I will get to 50% with say 10 seconds left on hero. In that case it seems to me that the benefits of continuing to burn for those 10 seconds, using Evo at the last moment before hero expires, would outweigh the option of wasting hero time evocating and then building back up charges for a conserve rotation, but if the drop off down to 25-30% is more substantial, then perhaps that isn't the best option.

I will do you one better. Here is a sim that will continue burning until the last 3 seconds of Timewarp / Hero / Bloodlust but all other burn phases it will go to 50%. The numbers are higher as the gear it using BR BiS but you get the idea.

[Wilderness]

I get the idea quite clearly that I was doing it wrong!

Thanks for running that, its good to know.

[Berlinia]

added anchors on MMOC, doesn't seem to work here. Is HTML available?