Rune of Power

[jjuls 0]

I'm a bit confused because it says in the arcane mage guide that all the tier 6 talents are viable and then at the end it says you can only use Rune of Power. My question is, are they all viable or do we have to use Rune of Power? I ask because I really, really, hatehatehate Rune of Power and I might have to try out fire if I have to use it. I'm not 1337 at wow and so I try to use a spec and talents that are not really hard, but I kept seeing everybody else using rune of power while I was using incanter's ward. So now every time I have to move, I have to stand there and s-l-o-w-l-y c-a-s-t rune of power instead of killing stuff. Then of course my mouse pointer is down at my feet instead of up by the stuff I need to kill.

If this is the only one we can use, why would Blizzard always put more bad than ever on the ground that everybody has to move out of and then give us a mandatory talent that is such a pain to re-cast?

Edited July 13, 2013 by jjuls

[Oltier 471]

The 3 choices as you know are the following:

Invocation: Bad, because you cannot benefit from Mastery: Mana Adept as much as you would like. It makes it much harder to stay close to 100% mana.

Incanter's ward. Not a bad choice however, you cannot really allow yourself to stand in fire in raid, in order to get it consumed fully. If you do, you will most likely die (at least, on normal and HC difficulty). If it is not consumed fully, you will not get the maximum effect, and you will not be able to refresh the shield while it is on cooldown. The only fights I could imagine it's usefulness is Garalon and HC Will of the Emperor.

This leaves us with Rune of Power. which is actually not that bad.. just optimize your movement. Plan ahead where you want to stand next. Which spot has the lowest possibility to get an aoe stuff on the floor. It's also not a pain to recast in my opinion ^^ You just really have to use your brain and learn every fights' own abilities.

In connection why Blizz does this ... to us is not up to us to decide. T6 talents will probably be revamped in the next expansion.

[Aliervo 0]

This is where I disagree with the guide. While Rune of Power may generally provide slightly higher DPS than the other talents, I do not believe that it is the "only viable Tier 6 talent for Arcane Mages." I believe that Incanter's ward, when used properly, can be just as viable as RoP.

As Oltier pointed out, you can't exactly stand in the fire in raids. But if you creatively use some of your other talents, such as Ice Flows or Temporal Shield, you can burst your shield without killing yourself. Furthermore, Incanter's Ward does not replace Evocation like RoP does. Plus it's passive effect is only slightly worse than standing in your Rune, you are essentially trading 10% mana regen and a constant 15% damage boost for Evocation.

That's my two cents. Feel free to disagree with me, I'm always open to suggestions to increase my magical potency, so long as the suggestion is not "switch to Fire."

[Oltier 471]

This is where I disagree with the guide. While Rune of Power may generally provide slightly higher DPS than the other talents, I do not believe that it is the "only viable Tier 6 talent for Arcane Mages." I believe that Incanter's ward, when used properly, can be just as viable as RoP.

As Oltier pointed out, you can't exactly stand in the fire in raids. But if you creatively use some of your other talents, such as Ice Flows or Temporal Shield, you can burst your shield without killing yourself. Furthermore, Incanter's Ward does not replace Evocation like RoP does. Plus it's passive effect is only slightly worse than standing in your Rune, you are essentially trading 10% mana regen and a constant 15% damage boost for Evocation.

That's my two cents. Feel free to disagree with me, I'm always open to suggestions to increase my magical potency, so long as the suggestion is not "switch to Fire."

Yes, I agree with you about it being viable. But I would rather say, it changes from fight to fight, deciding where you can have a higher uptime of their buffs. The following section is purely my logic and is not set in stone.

Ie.: On Jin'rokh you cannot always predict if the tank will guaranteedly get a static shock on them, so that you can consume your shield and there isn't too much movement anyway.

On Horridon normal, standing in stuff is okay. On HC you get one shotted most of the times and apart from moving between doors there isn't a lot movement. Winner: HC: RoP Normal: Either.

Council normal, and HC you can usually just stand in a spot and pewpew. But you can always go into a sand trap for quick shield consume, so either of them.

Tortos: Ward. Although with proper positioning (side of the cave) last time I only had to move once with RoP. So I would again say that both are viable.

Megaera: RoP. Definitely. Ofc, if you have to move with the beam you are doomed. But you'd be doomed anyways. Standing in fire is big nope. It can easily 1 shot you on later phases. Although, with many greens, you might be able to consume the shield all the time. But again, if you don't get blue beam, there is almost no movement in the fight.

Ji'kun: Imo, both. In 10 man normal though, there might be times, when you don't have anything to stand into. On the other hand, there isn't much movement anyway. apart from Down Draft.

Durumu: Hah, big, ward plus :D However, there is one big downside. You spend half of your heroism at the start, without 15% buff. This might be a huge enough drawback, against the movement phase, where you couldn't cast too much anyway...

Dark Animus: RoP. U don't have to move a lot, if u have it it's very occasionally, standing in stuff will definitely almost kill you even on normal.

Iron Qon: RoP. Not much movement if the raid is organized, you cannot always guaranteedly consume the shield. Especially in wind phase, when you have to be spread in order to make the debuff go away.

Twins: Not much movement, you cannot always consume shield: RoP

Lei Shen: Due to the last phase mechanic, I'd wonder if Ward is better here. It's almost impossible to stand on the rune all the time in last phase, and you could always get your ward consumed by a thunderstruck and ball lightning. I cannot confirm, but I would say Ward here.

Basically, think it through, which talent's uptime you can keep the highest. Move a lot, but guaranteed predictable raid damage? Go ward. Move a lot but there is no raid damage? Ewh you are doomed. Move occasionally (about every 45-60 sec), predictable raid damage? whatever..:D Move occasionally, no raid damage always? RoP. Don't have to move? Guess what..?:D

[Tarazet 144]

RoP is good, but here's the kind of situation I experience a lot:

- 3 targets are up

- I refresh Living Bomb on all three

- I now have 2 charges of Arcane Missiles, so I go ahead and use them both

- It's almost time to refresh LB again, so I throw in a Fire Blast as filler

- I refresh Living bomb again

- I now have 2 charges of Arcane Missiles again

...and so on. It happens quite a bit especially in T14, but it also applies to Horridon, Council, Tortos and Lei Shen after the first intermission, which are also among the fights that require the most movement. It's not frequent at all, on such a fight, that I am unlucky enough to have to blow all my Arcane Charges and start over. I will of course be stationary to channel my missiles, but other than that, I can move around freely and usually will need to. And because I'm barely using Arcane Blast, I'm not spending a lot of mana.. so RoP no longer becomes your automatic choice.

[Oltier 471]

RoP is good, but here's the kind of situation I experience a lot:

- 3 targets are up

- I refresh Living Bomb on all three

- I now have 2 charges of Arcane Missiles, so I go ahead and use them both

- It's almost time to refresh LB again, so I throw in a Fire Blast as filler

- I refresh Living bomb again

- I now have 2 charges of Arcane Missiles again

...and so on. It happens quite a bit especially in T14, but it also applies to Horridon, Council, Tortos and Lei Shen after the first intermission, which are also among the fights that require the most movement. It's not frequent at all, on such a fight, that I am unlucky enough to have to blow all my Arcane Charges and start over. I will of course be stationary to channel my missiles, but other than that, I can move around freely and usually will need to. And because I'm barely using Arcane Blast, I'm not spending a lot of mana.. so RoP no longer becomes your automatic choice.

I understand what you stay however, I have to ask: do you get the same/better results with IW than RoP?

[Tarazet 144]

I understand what you stay however, I have to ask: do you get the same/better results with IW than RoP?

If you never activate the shield, it is half decent but you won't get better results. At best it will be close, but far less annoying, which is fair. RoP provides a great DPS benefit at the expense of being unconscionably horrible and abysmal to use. I would say if you have to move so much that you're consistently casting RoP 4+ times a minute, IW could possibly improve your performance. But the movement usually happens during specific phases and not for the entire encounter.

Invocation is unusable because it hurts mana regen so much, unless you're literally doing nothing but spamming your Mage Bomb to fish for Missiles procs for the entire fight. And there are encounters where you can do this, so you can enjoy the full 15% spell power and stay at full mana even with the nerfed mana regeneration. Wind Lord Mel'jarak and Primordius (if you're not doing it the Patchwerk way) are examples of encounters where this could work beautifully.

Edited July 16, 2013 by Tarazet

[Akomagus 8]

This is where I disagree with the guide. While Rune of Power may generally provide slightly higher DPS than the other talents, I do not believe that it is the "only viable Tier 6 talent for Arcane Mages." I believe that Incanter's ward, when used properly, can be just as viable as RoP.

As Oltier pointed out, you can't exactly stand in the fire in raids. But if you creatively use some of your other talents, such as Ice Flows or Temporal Shield, you can burst your shield without killing yourself. Furthermore, Incanter's Ward does not replace Evocation like RoP does. Plus it's passive effect is only slightly worse than standing in your Rune, you are essentially trading 10% mana regen and a constant 15% damage boost for Evocation.

That's my two cents. Feel free to disagree with me, I'm always open to suggestions to increase my magical potency, so long as the suggestion is not "switch to Fire."

I 190% agree with you. Incanter's ward gets talked down so badly on these forums...and when i say badly instead of people saying "not as much dps" they will readily say, "it's a bad choice" which I call hating, lol. There is nothing wrong with Incanter's ward and just because you can't use it in certain parts of the fight doesn't mean it's not a good fit because many of the pros on here completely ignore the PASSIVE EFFECT. So it's still doing a job even if it's not being used. I love my Temporal Shield/IC macro. It's the best thing ever and only 1 button press. My healers don't even have to touch me on Tortos' stomp and i'm blasting turtles right from the bat. Sure there are some fights it doesn't matter AS much but due to the passive effect it is never useless and there is no long cast time like invocation.

So put me in the IC fan club....I hate the wasted cast time of Invocation when I could be pew pewing and RoP is like leprosy to me I can't avoid it ENOUGH I hate it!! IMO IC will always be the way to go....

[Oltier 471]

I 190% agree with you. Incanter's ward gets talked down so badly on these forums...and when i say badly instead of people saying "not as much dps" they will readily say, "it's a bad choice" which I call hating, lol. There is nothing wrong with Incanter's ward and just because you can't use it in certain parts of the fight doesn't mean it's not a good fit because many of the pros on here completely ignore the PASSIVE EFFECT. So it's still doing a job even if it's not being used. I love my Temporal Shield/IC macro. It's the best thing ever and only 1 button press. My healers don't even have to touch me on Tortos' stomp and i'm blasting turtles right from the bat. Sure there are some fights it doesn't matter AS much but due to the passive effect it is never useless and there is no long cast time like invocation.

So put me in the IC fan club....I hate the wasted cast time of Invocation when I could be pew pewing and RoP is like leprosy to me I can't avoid it ENOUGH I hate it!! IMO IC will always be the way to go....

To correct you: IW will always be the way to go for people, who are not familiar with optimizing their movement and in certain fights, where it would be nearly impossible to stand on the rune.

Could you link a WoL file where you used IW on Tortos especially, please? I would like to check something.

[Akomagus 8]

To correct you: IW will always be the way to go for people, who are not familiar with optimizing their movement and in certain fights, where it would be nearly impossible to stand on the rune.

Could you link a WoL file where you used IW on Tortos especially, please? I would like to check something.

I'm still a WoL noob but here's the link http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/b7g0gu4nzc1iibnh/details/10/?s=6025&e=6312

I don't think it's going to help you much though considering i'm the turtle kicker ;-) Anyway, character is Akomagus on Area 52 US and guild is Once and Again so you can check it all out. I'm sure you will say invocation is better for dps, and are probably still right, it's just I don't think IW is a "bad" choice like many suggest.

Also, I am spec'd for frost so maybe I shouldn't have chimed in at all, lol. In fact, I think with all the excuses it's better for me to say I don't know what the hell i'm talking about, but still agree with the other guys thoughts on IW ;-)

[Oltier 471]

Yeaaa, the turtle kicking fact messes up a bit.

But you'll understand why I asked for this: Your uptime of incanter's absorbtion was 43,4% on a fight where that is considered better.

A random arcane mage's ( http://www.worldoflo.../?s=3964&e=4186 ) RoP uptime was 83,9% on a fight where that talent is considered very bad and he did 186k which is pretty okay..

Many people can't have this uptime on other encounters with less movement.

IW is again... not bad, but RoP still has much higher potential, and you will see much higher numbers. This is kinda the "higher risks, higher benefit" and I strongly believe that the annoyance of casting the Rune 3 times is much more worth it, than executing your rotation perfectly and you still see low numbers.

That is also true that IW has a passive mana regen factor BUT! You can also stay on max mana with RoP but you will also have 15% increased damage all the time, while there is no guarantee that you will be able to consume your IW.

Lets try to have a statement, that fits for both of us: If you want to see decent numbers and you accept the annoyance of Rune: RoP.

If you don't care about your damage output and want to lay back and stand in fire, IW? :D

[Akomagus 8]

Yeaaa, the turtle kicking fact messes up a bit.

But you'll understand why I asked for this: Your uptime of incanter's absorbtion was 43,4% on a fight where that is considered better.

A random arcane mage's ( http://www.worldoflo.../?s=3964&e=4186 ) RoP uptime was 83,9% on a fight where that talent is considered very bad and he did 186k which is pretty okay..

Many people can't have this uptime on other encounters with less movement.

IW is again... not bad, but RoP still has much higher potential, and you will see much higher numbers. This is kinda the "higher risks, higher benefit" and I strongly believe that the annoyance of casting the Rune 3 times is much more worth it, than executing your rotation perfectly and you still see low numbers.

That is also true that IW has a passive mana regen factor BUT! You can also stay on max mana with RoP but you will also have 15% increased damage all the time, while there is no guarantee that you will be able to consume your IW.

Lets try to have a statement, that fits for both of us: If you want to see decent numbers and you accept the annoyance of Rune: RoP.

If you don't care about your damage output and want to lay back and stand in fire, IW?

Haha, I wouldn't go that far! I think a better statement is : If you want to push for the most DPS possible you will have to struggle with the annoyance of RoP, but if you would like to have slightly lower dps with less hassle take IW. Maybe we will never agree lol....

[Vladamyr 169]

The real problem with using IW is the spiky nature of the mana return for Arcane. It results in IW being about 10% behind ROP. I miss old IW

[Tarazet 144]

The real problem with using IW is the spiky nature of the mana return for Arcane. It results in IW being about 10% behind ROP. I miss old IW

The best way to use IW as Arcane is to not use the shield. This way you have the same mana return and about 9% lower damage compared with sitting in your Rune of Power, which can be a DPS increase if you need to move very frequently (4-5 times a minute). On the other hand, if you're moving that frequently, you're not spending a lot of mana because you have a lot of innate recovery from Haste, so you still might as well take RoP so that you have the full effect when you are able to plant and turret away.

Edited July 22, 2013 by Tarazet

[Vladamyr 169]

Playing that way it will actually be a bigger loss than 9% due to the multiplicative way in which damage bonuses work. (It's the same reasoning as why classes stack cooldowns) You are 100% correct on the movement though. It all depends on how well you can maintain uptime on ROP. If you aren't good at keeping ROP uptime high then honestly Fire is a much better option currently. Personally, I do terrible at planning my ROP (i pvp'ed and played fire for too long so I'm used to constantly moving). Sadly the lack of mobility is one of the major downfalls of Arcane and why it only trumps fire on a few fights. I do love the multi-dotting power of arcane and from what I've read that will fit nicely with some of the new 5.4 raid encounters. Hopefully they can keep all 3 specs competitive (well.... within 10% would be nice). In the end it all depends on what your definition of viable is? I would say all 3 specs are viable and could be played with any talent choices you want for most guilds and players. The dps difference isn't game breaking or anything.

However, if you are a high end progression raider (the 5%ers) you are unfortunately stuck with the cookie cutter builds to pull proper dps .