3.3 Arcane - points Arcane Stability?

[Bjt]

Noticed that Kyth and Stalah have 3/5 Arcane Stability while Jarlyn and Inza are 4/5 into this talent.

Was curious to hear the reasoning behind it? Is it because of the amount of hit we can current find ourselves easily swimming in? Marrowgar is the only ICC fight I've noticed pushback on so far.

Does the pushback reduction on one ICC fight outweigh the mana savings from Arcane Focus?

Thanks in advance.

Offtopic: Jarlyn do you still raid on your mage as your main or the pally? :)

[Stalah]

The few "easy mode" fights out right now couple probably be done as 0/0/0. As far as arcane spec the whole tree still has a TON of bloat. Most arcane talent points are obvious picks why you would want them but we cant always get them all. The bloat in the arcane tree with so many "Have to get talents" and a bunch of and then a bunch of "good situational or good survivability" talents causes a high variability in how about 3-5 talent points are spent.

Specifically addressing tier 1 arcane talents was actually talking with kyth about her spec this last week (which she had 4/5 earlier in the week). To get 0 push back (with conc aura) you need 4/5 arcane stability as 3/5 will only put you at 95%. How many fights does this matter though? The fights that will cause push back, is it enough to out weigh spending a point somewhere else?

Arcane Subtlety is a talent most mages take 2/2 or 0/2 on (and I may even be 2/2 atm I forget), but taking one point here vs two still gives you 20% threat reduction which 2x better than fire for half the points and allows you to spend this point somewhere else. Take 0/2 makes it too likely you will have to stop or slow dps at some point which is a very large dps loss.

Arcane Focus - to me whether I take this or not, and how many points is somewhat gear related but also based on what points I "need" in the above 2 talents. With ICC gear and our Ashen Verdict rep ring giving so much hit it is still very easy to hit cap with 0 points in this talent making it just a 1-3% mana savings. If its just down to mana to this minuscule mana savings for most fights will not translate to any extra dps

Then after tier 1 there are so many more situational talents that spending more than 5 points in tier 1 is often very hard to justify. Talents like magic absorption, Incanters absorption, magic attunement (although I consider this required points 98% of the time), arcane mind (often the good place to drop points from as far as dps talents if you need to pick up other situational talents), and some even drop arcane barrage.

When hard modes are out and specs matter much more you will see all of us (except jarlyn who plays pally) change specs pretty often to account for some of these variables for each individual fight during progression.

**typed quick on way out door, likely a mistake or two

[Jarlyn]

I switched to my paladin (Philcolins) a few months ago. I play the mage for alt raids and such now, but I haven't looked at Jarlyn's specs pretty much since I main-switched. Don't use his specs as an example of anything except how lazy I am about my alts.

[Bjt]

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on this topic. Will take this into account when I respec this week.

[Kyth]

Specifically addressing tier 1 arcane talents was actually talking with kyth about her spec this last week (which she had 4/5 earlier in the week). To get 0 push back (with conc aura) you need 4/5 arcane stability as 3/5 will only put you at 95%. How many fights does this matter though? The fights that will cause push back, is it enough to out weigh spending a point somewhere else?

I respec'd because our paladins now have 1 point in imp CA (concentration aura), so we can rely on getting 40%, so I can go to 3/5.

Before blizzard nerfed raidwall, they were subspec'd in prot and had fewer spare points so only one of them had imp CA and I didn't want to make my spec rely on which paladin was logged in, raiding that boss, and happened to be running CA.

Due to how AM works, 95% is as bad as 80%. Pushback makes you lose a tick either way.

[Jarlyn]

I actually run with 3/3 Imp Conc all the time now, have since shortly after I switched :)

[Kyth]

I actually run with 3/3 Imp Conc all the time now, have since shortly after I switched :)

Ya I know you do.

But as I said in my post, it requires you:

(a) online,
(b) in the raid for that boss, and
(c) running CA

Now (c) may be a given if (a) and (b) are both true, but they are not guaranteed to be true.

Given that you all have at least 1/3, mages can go 3/5 which is fucking awesome.

[Bjt]

I respec'd because our paladins now have 1 point in imp CA (concentration aura), so we can rely on getting 40%, so I can go to 3/5.

Before blizzard nerfed raidwall, they were subspec'd in prot and had fewer spare points so only one of them had imp CA and I didn't want to make my spec rely on which paladin was logged in, raiding that boss, and happened to be running CA.

Due to how AM works, 95% is as bad as 80%. Pushback makes you lose a tick either way.

I just learnt that our paladins do not have points in imp CA. So I guess I would need to go 4/5 into this talent.

How much pushback does one "tick" add to your cast? It seems to cap out at +0.5 sec on my cast bar (two ticks?).

[Kyth]

I just learnt that our paladins do not have points in imp CA. So I guess I would need to go 4/5 into this talent.

How much pushback does one "tick" add to your cast? It seems to cap out at +0.5 sec on my cast bar (two ticks?).

Right but the problem for arcane is that one pushback = 1 missiles lost from AM. Which is why 95% protection isn't any better than 80%.


You may want to ask your paladins if they have a spare point. As I said, ours do now.

[defenestrate]

I noticed that you changed your spec to 0/5 Stability. Was that to test something or has something changed?

EDIT: This question is directed at Kyth.

[Stalah]

Does it look bad to quote myself?


When hard modes are out and specs matter much more you will see all of us change specs pretty often to account for some of these variables for each individual fight during progression.


Its not hard modes... but

There is probably 5 different arcane specs I would bounce between depending on what fight we are currently working on and our level of progression within that fight. Depending on the fight its really a choice of 3/5 or 0/5 in arcane stability. Most the later fights in ICC push back hasn't been an issue, but you can bet we all will have it when working on hard modes in the first wing.