Woah, what the heck happened to put Elemental Shaman essentially tied at the top?

Argh. I need two profiles for the top-end Shaman. With the change to the Fire Elemental CD, we started including it in our sims. However, it is like the Warlock Doomguard in that we really need both with and without.

Ah, makes sense.

For the arcane mage:

I just noticed that the damage per resource of arcane missiles is not infinity, and it should be. That means that at some point the simulation is casting an arcane missiles without missile barrage up, and that's incorrect. The correct rotation is to fish for missile barrage, even past 4 stacks of AB, because it's better DPS and DPM to cast a free MBAM, even if it means you have to cast a few extra 4 stack ABs. This has been proven with in depth calculations on the EJ forums.

To clarify, the correct rotation is to cast arcane blast until missile barrage procs and then stack AB to 4 (if not already) and THEN arcane missiles. Never ever arcane missiles without a missile barrage proc.

The correct cast rotation should look something like this:

1) Cast Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage = 1 and AB stack >=4.

2) Cast Arcane Blast

Right now, it looks like the arcane mage is actually casting missile barrage'd arcane missiles anytime missile barrage procs regardless of the current AB stack. That's not correct, that is essentially the DPM rotation.

It also looks like it will cast a non-Missile Bbarrage Arcane Missiles (MBAM) if the AB stack gets to 4 without a missile barrage proc. This is also incorrect, as it's been proven to be more DPS and DPM to continue to fish for missile barrage, even if it means you cast a few more 4-stack ABs.

If you get really screwed by mana, you revert to your DPM rotation, which is casting MBAM at AB stacks of 2 or 3, or in severe mana depletion situations, at AB stack of 1 even.

Am I just reading the priority list wrong? Sorry for the nuissance - especially if your module is already doing the correct rotation (only casting AM on MB procs, and never casting a MBAM with less than 4 stack AB). However, considering that the Damage per Resource of Arcane Missiles is not infinity, that tells me that the sim is casting a few AMs without MB.

/start aside

There's some further tweaks you can do during arcane power that the sim isn't doing also. I put it in an aside, because it's a minor tweak, nothing major like the rest of my comment. I personally don't think it's correct to missile barrage and re-stack AB during an arcane power, so I will continue to spam AB and finish the Arcane power with the missile barrage. I'll only deviate from that if I can MBAM with 4-stack AB right at the start of AP. It looks like your module is doing this, but without getting that MBAM in under the AP, which it really should try to do, since it's free mana during a time of increased mana cost. Note: the first AP should be cast in this manner, by waiting for AB to reach 4 stack with a MBAM up, then pop AP on the MBAM and restack AB, holding AB until the last second, where you launch the 4 stack MBAM again (under AP still). That tweak may be difficult to code, but it should probably result in a significant (200 or so) dps increase, both due to better rotation and due to more mana efficient tweak, which could save some time in the DPM rotation.

In terms of coding the arcane power tweak, it should be something like this (forgive my incorrect syntax)

1) Cast Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage = 1, and AB stack >=4, and AP duration > 10.

2) Cast Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage = 1, and AB stack >=4, and AP duration < 2.

3) Cast Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage = 1 and AB stack >=4, and AP = 0.

4) Cast Arcane Blast.

/end aside

/edit

I just did a little math based on the count, DPE, and DPR of arcane missiles. It looks like the sim is spending 36877.28 mana on arcane missiles over the duration of the fight, where it actually should be spending zero on it. That should help show what the issue I'm trying to identify. The sim will actually spend a little extra mana on 4-stack ABs, and it will actually be more than 36k that it will spend, however, it's spending that on ~16k dps arcane blasts (the 4 stack AB should be around this), and regaining it due to some time in mana efficient rotation and/or evocating. It should be again noted that detailed math has indeed proven this situation to be ideal.

Thanks for the analysis Keith. It has been a while since I revisited the Arcane priority list. I'll dig in.

I noticed something else that may be wrong in the sim. Your mage is spending 36k mana on arcane missiles, and is casting 40.9 sets of missiles. AM is around 1k mana, which means 88% of your AMs are at full cost. The probability of having missile barrage by the time you hit 4 stack AM (at which point I believe the model is incorrectly casting a non-MBAM to clear the AB stack) is 87%. So even under these incorrect cast rules, only 13% of your arcane missiles should be charged mana. The sim has charged 36k mana to missiles for 40.9 sets of missils, where it should only be around 5.3k mana, even under the error of casting non-MBAM. So something is definitely up.

This leads me to believe that maybe the simulator is not representing that missile barrage'd arcane missiles are actually free mana? Is the sim still charging mana for Arcane Missiles cast during Missile Barrage?

The simplest way to check would be to modify the cast priority as is should be, i.e.:

Cast arcane missiles only if missile barrage is up AND only if AB stack >=4, else cast arcane blast.

Then check the resources spent on arcane missiles. If there is any mana spent on arcane missiles at all, the sim is incorrectly charging mana for arcane missiles cast under missile barrage.

I have a feeling this may be the case, since the current cast priorities are accurate for pre 3.2 patch, which is also before MBAM was free mana. There's a good chance that this is where the issue is (along with the outdated rotation).

My only fear is that this will add ~3k dps to the arcane mage. Although, looking at world parses, with arcane mages dominating almost every parse, this is probably reality.

It looks like when introduced the Tier10 2-pc bonus we screwed up the mana-savings part of Missile Barrage. I'll put out a release shortly and update the wiki pages.

The result is not as huge as I thought it would be. One thing I noticed was that a simple "if-MB-then-cast-AM-else-cast-AB" was pretty much as good as anything complicated I tried.....

Anychance you could include both rotations in two different cases? It's been quite extensively mathed out in EJ forums that MB on 4 stack AB is the best rotation, so I'd be interested why AM on MB regardless of AB stack is competitive. I can't imagine it would ever be correct to AM on a 1 stack AB, since the DPS of a 1-stack MBAM is lower than the average DPS of the arcane spec ~10k.

The only thing I can think of that would ever allow that was if mana was so constrained that the mana savings pushed you into a higher DPS rotation uptime. And if that's the case, it could be only the case due to the assumptions of the model, but incorrect for 99% of the real world applications (i.e. non 6-minute patchwerks).

Anychance you could include both rotations in two different mages, much in the same way that there are doomguard casting affliction locks? It would help for analysis.

I'm very surprised that AM on any MB is even remotely close. It's been quite extensively mathed out in EJ forums that MB on 4 stack AB is the best rotation, so I'd be interested why AM on MB regardless of AB stack is competitive. For example, I can't imagine it would ever be correct to AM on a 1 stack AB, since the DPS of a 1-stack MBAM is lower than the average DPS of the arcane spec ~10k. That is like casting a lower DPS spell than a filler spell. That just screams of "something screwy is going on".

The only thing I can think of that would ever allow that was if mana was so constrained that the mana savings pushed you into a higher DPS rotation uptime. And if that's the case, it would be only the case due to the assumptions of the model, but incorrect for 99% of the real world applications (i.e. no fights are 6-minute of nonstop casting against patchwerk).