Cyclical Spell Power Coefficients

All casters know that more spell power equals more damage. However I want to step a little beyond the normal. For example Scorch has a 42.86% spell power coefficient. While this is correct, it doesn't show it effect on your spell cycle.

For my Argent Tournament quest grind I like to use the following cycle.

Frostfire Bolt + Arcane Blast + Arcane Barrage

Cycle coefficient is 85.71% + 71.43% + (71.43% x (1+15%+3%)) = 241.43% *

* Arcane Blast is buffing Arcane Barrage by +15% and +3% for the glyph and I have ignored the FFB DoT as the mob will be well dead before the DoT deals significant damage

Its not very meaningful like this so breaking it down into per second, I feel, gives a really good indication. So assuming no haste benefits that's

3.0 + 2.5 + 1.5 = 7.0 seconds **

** It my personal style to add the global cool down as the time cost of an instant spell. You have to still be aware that is natural cool down is still 3.0 seconds if you want to do two in succession

241.43% / 7.0 = 34.49% per second

(for the curious if you only had Netherwind Presence that would increase this by +2.07% to 36.56%)

So in this cycle for every +10 spell power you have its adding +3.4 damage per second for a total of + 24 per 10 spellpower.

The cycle's coefficient per second does not look very sexy. But now we can build other cycles and explore 'The best cycle for class X spec Y' in a different way. I think this king of analysis is interesting for arcane due to how the Arcane Barrage buff stack, especially now that it goes up to four times for a massive +72% damage.

To cut to the chase, I built a graph with three different spell cycles

1. Arcane Blast spam ending with Arcane Missiles cast on Missile Barrage proc
2. Arcane Blast spam ending with Arcane Missile, but no Arcane Barrage proc
3. Arcane Blast spam ending with Arcane Barrage

In terms of maximising your spell power it looks like getting your Missile Barrage off early is a clear winner, followed by ending on an Arcane Barrage if long term Arcane Blast spam is unsustainable. In fact it does appear that if you move beyond x10, Arcane Barrage will gain more benefit.

This does seam to be inconsistent with the currently accepted Arcane Blastx4 + Arcane Missile. Likely this is because Arcane Blast buff increase the base damage of a spell- this type of analysis completely ignores the effect of two spells have the same cast time and spell power coefficient but different base damage and talents haven't been included (like spell impact), trinket or set bonus procs, critical strike, raid buffs the list goes on.

So some work is definitely needed here.

As a final note, I think this also shows how bad Arcane DPS can be without
Missile Barrage or even Arcane Barrage, all that spell power means nothing
if you can't effectively tap into it.