***************************************************************
15 Jul 09 -

The TCoM will be down until the evening of the 16th / Morning of the 17th while I physically move the server it runs on to another state. I apologize for the downtime and will try to have it up and running as soon as I can.
***************************************************************










As some of you may already be aware, Lhivera has decided to no longer continue with his WoW career ( http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=11296420412&sid=2000&pageNo=1 ), which also means that the Theory Craft-o-Matic will no longer be hosted on the Man Out of Time website ( http://www.manoutoftime.org/staticpages/index.php/tcom ).

I have secured the latest copy of the TCoM source and will be hosting it on my site ( http://zaldinar.bounceme.net/tcom/ ). I will be spending time over the next few weeks attempting to finish what Lhivera started in preparing the TCoM for WotLK Modeling, and would like to put out an official request of what you, the users of the TCoM, would like it to be able to do.

While considering what features you would like to be available, please take this into account:

What I feel the TCoM truly excels at, is being simple to configure, and simple to read. Its output is in a form that is simple for even a beginning user to pick apart and identify. I would like to leave the more complicated effects (such as graphing combat over a simulated time, etc) for Vontres Magegraf ( http://magegraf.com/ ) or eventually my spell graph util, once I finish working the kinks out of the backend ( http://zaldinar.bounceme.net/graphs/index.php ).

I would like this to be an easy tool to grab your armoury from, then tweak a few things, and see which trinkets benefit you the most, and how two specs would stack up against each other with your specific gear.


Does the community agree? What buttons do you want to be able to push? What displays would you like to exist?



Edit:

http://zaldinar.bounceme.net/tcom/

The WotLK TCoM is LIVE!

Current Functionality:
- Allows for grabbing of Armoury stats, or raw input of Int/Spi/Spell Power/Crit Rating/Hit Rating/Haste Rating
- Allows for comparing two set of stats, and two specs
- Allows for comparing of *STATIC* rotations for DPS/DPM/MPS values, values are sortable by clicking the header of the tables.
- Allows for comparing stats relative values

Notes on the Interface:
- To make the second set of stats available check the 'copy' box and press 'Calculate!'
- The green rotation is an arbitrary one I chose for the spec to be the sort of baseline normal rotation, this will be user selectable soon (tm)
- The 'save' option at the top will let you link others to your results, just check the box, press save, and then copy the link that comes up afterwards
- The "Navigate" button and menu will bring you to either the TCoM, or my comparison graph system (which is shiny, check it out!)
- Rotations actively consider the durations of DoTs such as Fireball, Pyro, FFB, Flamestrike, and Living Bomb. Rotations that spam the spells will lose DoT time, rotations that allow spaces between repeated spells will gain the correct amount of DoT time, haste will make you lose DoT ticks eventually.
- Living bomb is appropriately clipped if you cast it more than once every 12 seconds
- Selecting specs or pushing "Copy" will submit the form for you.


In the near future:
- User selected green rotations
- Stock stat selections (10 Man-T7 Mage, Dungeon Mage, Naked Mage, etc)
- User inputted character spec into the menu.
- Dynamic Rotations

I'm pretty well fed up with RAWR at this point, so go for it. And I refuse to use Magegraf on general principles.

---

Q u o t e:
I'm pretty well fed up with RAWR at this point, so go for it. And I refuse to use Magegraf on general principles.

---

Magegraf is very very pretty, but I can't get past its interface. TCoMs appeal to me is its user friendly simple nature, and I hope to maintain that while bringing it up with the new mechanics.

Rawr... I don't trust Rawr, I haven't played with it too much, but it seems to have way too many hidden assumptions that aren't immediately apparent, and may not accurately represent assumptions made by mages.

RAWR is goofy and gives goofy results. I flat out do not trust it.

My objection to Magegraf is different: I'm still sore at Vontre for his role in the arcane blast fiasco, still unresolved at present time. He can take it and shove it.

TCoM was quite useful to help me get started in PvE, that's for sure. I was a pvp guy with no knowledge of pve whatsoever and I picked my dps up from 700 to 1200 just from TCoM alone.

(That sounds like a terrible commercial advertisement. XD)

Also by the way, I still haven't the bloody foggiest how the blazes Arcane is supposed to work, if someone wants to save me some time and either link me to an exposé on the way Arcane is supposed to work in WotLK, or write me one so I can work on getting the modeling for it working, it would be greatly appreciated.

Zaldinar, no worries, you are in good company: Blizzard doesn't know what they want to do with arcane pve either.

---

Q u o t e:
Zaldinar, no worries, you are in good company: Blizzard doesn't know what they want to do with arcane pve either.

---

Touché. Point, Deedre.

Bump for information spreading.

Can I obtain a copy for the TCoM?? Not to undermind what you are doing but I'd like to mess around with some of spec designs myself.


My_email address

---

Q u o t e:


My objection to Magegraf is different: I'm still sore at Vontre for his role in the arcane blast fiasco, still unresolved at present time. He can take it and shove it.

---

Arcane Blast needed to be changed becuase it outperformed every mage spec by 1k DPS and trivialized the other spells in the Arcane Tree. Your hatred should be toward Blizzard for over-reacting, not Vontre and other mages for pointing out the obvious.

---

Q u o t e:
Can I obtain a copy for the TCoM?? Not to undermind what you are doing but I'd like to mess around with some of spec designs myself.

---

Mate, I'd recommend editing out your email address.

Thank you so much for picking this up Zaldinar.

Lhivera's TCOM was an invaluable resource that I used a lot in TBC. I'm glad its continuing.

Armory was recently updated and now gives a score for haste. The TCOM should be updated to automatically pull out the haste rating, rather than having the player enter it manually.

---

Q u o t e:
Also by the way, I still haven't the bloody foggiest how the blazes Arcane is supposed to work, if someone wants to save me some time and either link me to an exposé on the way Arcane is supposed to work in WotLK, or write me one so I can work on getting the modeling for it working, it would be greatly appreciated.

---

Having tried various different arcane rotations, the best rotation seems to be:

ABar --> ABx1 --> repeat. (AM on missile barrage procs, AP+POM+fireball when available. At level 80 fireball can be replaced with pyroblast).

When missile barrage procs immediately cancel rotation and cast AM. Always finish each AM with a cast of Arcane Barrage.

Goals of this rotation:
Arcane Blast adds 35% spellpower per second unstacked when fully talented. Even at 3 stack it only adds 50% per second, while costing a ridiculous amount of mana.
Arcane barrage adds 59% per second.
Arcane Missiles fully talented on a missile barrage proc adds 77% per second.

Since arcane blast is so bad its not a good idea to try to stack it. Casting AB more than once at a time drastically lowers your mana efficiency and slightly lowers your dps.

There are a couple reasons your dps goes down when you try to stack the AB debuff:

(1) More time spent casting AB reduces your rate of fire with arcane barrage. The net result is that your average spellpower added per second goes down. Since AB only adds 35% and 40% of your spellpower per second at 0 and 1 stacks, compared to 59% for arcane barrage, its best to maximize the number of casts of arcane barrage you do in a raid fight.

(2) with a higher rate of arcane barrages, you're casting more spells in the same period of time than if you'd tried to stack arcane blasts. As a result, you will get more missile barrage procs. This is good because at 77.4% spellpower added per second, missile barrage procs are the highest dps spell available to an arcane mage.

The rotation of ABar --> ABX1 (AM on missile barrage procs) is also the rotation that was recommended by Ghostcrawler in this post:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10972033531&pageNo=2&sid=2000#21

---

Q u o t e:

We normally don't want to go too far into how to play your class, but alternating Blast and Barrage with the occasional Arcane Missile when the fast cast procs, makes a pretty decent rotation.

---

There's too many numbers and I dont know what most of them mean.
:(
Is it possible to ask Lhiv for the TCOM source and continue it?
Assuming of course you actually want to do that though.

---

Q u o t e:
There's too many numbers and I dont know what most of them mean.
:(
Is it possible to ask Lhiv for the TCOM source and continue it?
Assuming of course you actually want to do that though.

---

That's my plan ;) http://zaldinar.bounceme.net/tcom/

---

Q u o t e:
Thank you so much for picking this up Zaldinar.

Lhivera's TCOM was an invaluable resource that I used a lot in TBC. I'm glad its continuing.

Armory was recently updated and now gives a score for haste. The TCOM should be updated to automatically pull out the haste rating, rather than having the player enter it manually.

---

Yep, auto-haste snag is on my growing list of to-dos. That and figure out how the blazes Lhivera made this work in such an enlongated script format. I may just work my own backend from my utility into his frontend for simplicitys sakes.

And thanks for the Arcane info! I'll look into it more in depth once I've got the structure rebuilt to accept TCoM mechanics.

I love you <3

Bump.

You sir are a gentleman and a scholar.