Summary: I want to be a good arcane mage, but I don't know where to start! Llike alot of pve mages, I was strong PVE fire for most of Naxxramas and its all i've known for a long time. Even tho alot (myself included) switch to frost to level, Arcane has always been the 'other spec' I was apprehensive to try - and never really understood what potential it has. Now that we have fire immune bosses again (/wave A'lar) and a curious Tier 5 set bonus (+20% damage/mana cost to arcane blast) im really interested in exploring the playstyle of an arcane mage.

I was hoping we could set up one thread just dedicated to discussion on Arcane mages. It is discussed in parts (sporadically) in the theorycrafting thread, but can we consolidate a discussion here? Theres a massive amount of info in the Theorycrafting thread , but its simply too much on too many topics: offputting for a newcomer to sift through 3000+ posts. Alot of the information is on tangential topics, especially talent choices across the other three trees (eg fire vs frost dps, itemisation, frost talents etc) and I want to learn just about arcane mages and their playstyle. Ive had a look at Vontres spreadsheet and read alot of the maths theorycrafting but generally from browsing the Theorycrafting thread I noticed three main points which summed up are:

1 - Arcane mages need to manage their DPS (aka mana usage) carefully to sustain themselves for the length of a given fight
2 - To achieve (1) Arcane mages will need rotate usage of their spells in cycles which best suit their needs for a given type/length of encounter.
3 - Given knowledge of (1) and (2) an Arcane mage has awesome DPS potential. (<---but knowing how to do this is the secret..?)

With those two simple points said. Id love to hear comments from Arcane mages, about anything relevant to the playstyle. Have you found the PVE performance of arcane is impressive to you? What spell cycles do you feel work best for you? What spell-cycles do you prefer? With tier 4/5/6 bonuses and upcoming itemisation, do you feel Arcane spec is going to be the new spec for mages in the future (like how fire was for Naxx)? So many questions, id love to hear some opions of other mages on this!

I'm a 41/20/0 spec. Link to my Armory profile is in my character name.

I have three basic 'modes':

1. Arcane Blast/Scorch Mode - I use this on boss fights. It's typically 2 Arcane Blasts and 3 or 4 Scorches depending on my latency. My general method for this rotation is just carry it until I feel I can drop the Scorch, hit my PoM/Pyro/AP/Icon macro, spam Arcane Blast, Evocate and/or pot/gem then continue to spam Arcane Blast until the mob dies. If it dies when I have 0 or close to 0 mana, I feel good.

However, if I'm comfortable with a boss like HKM/Gruul/Karazhan, I start off with this rotation, pop my macro once I have 5 Scorches and dump my mana. Evocate and gem and/or pot and use my rotation until my macro is up again.

Adjustments: Sometimes I'll make it 3 Arcane Blasts if I have a Shadow Priest. I'll also pop my macro and spam a bit sooner.

2. Arcane Blast Spam Mode - Trash, Heroics, Normal 5-mans. I just have lots of water handy since I'm drinking after every pull.

3. Fireball/Scorch Mode - I use this for grinding and Arcane Immune mobs. Less Scorch on the grinding part.

It's the first mode that I am always changing or modifying depending on the situation. The key is little to no damage on the table via Evocation and gems. I try not to use mana pots when I can help it, but that, too, is more damage.

I'll be interested to see how some of the currently-T5-geared mages like the 2-piece set bonus, and whether or not they feel it makes AB even more raid viable (and how much so, if it does).

I'll agree with the OP's point that the 2-piece T5 set bonus makes arcane intruiging, however the 4-piece T6 bonus does nothing to benefit AB - meaning fireball spam will once again be king.

You could have both bonuses.

Anyway, ABx2 Fireballx2 with improved fireball is really good. Always have improved scorch up. The tier-5 bonus is obscenely good, I'm not sure what they were thinking there.

Just to put more into the discussion, there are actually 4 PvE-focused arcane specs (click on the talent build for a link to a sample).

1 - 48/13/0 - Pure Arcane. Main spell is AM or in combination with an AB cycle. When range is really important or the mob has arcane resistance, Fireball spam takes over. Has Pyro for fun PvP tricks. You get the benefit of ultra-low threat AM that outpaces frostbolt and depending on gear is just shy of a 5:1 Fireball:Scorch rotation.

2 - 41/20/0 - Classic Arc/Fire. Fireball is great, as is a rotation with AB. Can go into super-efficiency mode with improved Scorch. Replace Slow with Blastwave as your preference dictates.

3 - 40/0/21 - Classic Arc/Frost. Falling out of favor due to the need to leech Winter's Chill. The change to Arctic Winds puts this spec further behind, though having monster AB rotations and spam combined with IceBlock still makes it attractive for some.

4 - 33/0/28 - From what I can tell it plays like a standard 10/48/3 fire build but scales differently with different gear and swaps cooldowns (PoM and AP instead of Combustion).

I'm pretty tempted to try the first one when 2.1 goes live since AM will be fixed. Nice to have everything in one tree.

This.

I know they're going to change it eventually.

Thats the spec I stumbled into when I first picked out an Arc spec (with no real research). I like most of the talents coming from one tree, with the option to use Fireball/scorch to increase efficiency/range if needed.

My main issue with this spec is, despite the fantastic potential of AM/AB spam.. even with good regen/int pool, Im a little lost in how to manage my mana pool over long fights.

Fires alot easier from my experience to manage. I can just spam scorch + some fireballs when trying to be efficient, or fireball+fireblast when you wana start going 'all out'. However in the arcane spec, suddenly I cant spam my main high dps spell (AB or AM) but I still need to use it to remain competitive on DPS.

The whole rotation thing is a bit new to me, at least how to optimise it.

Your comments help alot =) So basically your trying to be efficient only as long as u need to, before you can go all out dps (with huge mana inefficiency) and aim to be OOM just as the boss dies.

Im just a little apprehensive with fights like Magtheridon/Lurker, which are so long - say 10 minutes. Won't I (as arcane) be spending most of the fight (like 9 out of 10 minutes) in 'efficiency' mode, which is somewhat lower dps? Sure I can go dps crazy for 1 minute and go oom, but over the course of a 10 minute fight, would that extra DPS from that 1 minute of spam, compensate for 'being efficient' in the other 9 minutes - compared to a fire mage whos been going steady for all 10 minutes? (Hope that makes sense)

Im curious, when your in this mode - how does your DPS compare to PVE fire mages of similar gear to you? Are you quite competitive/considerably lower or higher on DPS? Im referring moreso to long 8+ minute fights (Mag, Lurker etc)

The general rule of thumb for optimizing the cycle is something like this:

1. Efficiency - ABx2, Then other stuff, then ABx2, then other stuff, etc...

2. DPS - ABx3, Then other stuff, then ABx3, then other stuff, etc...

Any more than 3 AB's will cost you the same and give you the same benefits as if you just spammed them in the end.

So, an efficiency rotation for Arc/Frost would be AB, AB, FBolt, FBolt, AB, AB, Fbolt, Fbolt. If you can do stopcasting well, you can fit in the third FBolt in there. A DPS rotation for Arc/Fire would be AB, AB, AB, Fireball, Scorch, Scorch, AB, AB, AB, Fireball, Scorch, Scorch, etc... Efficiency for pure Arcane would be AB, AB, AM, Scorch, AB, AB, AM, Scorch. You can see how it works from there.

The goal is to cast Arcane Blast during the debuff, but have it finish casting after the debuff has faded. That way your AB cycle has you getting your AB's cheaper than they should be.

Has anybody tried out real game AM builds on the test server and have dps rsesults? I'm interested in an all-arcane build when the patch comes.

----

Personally, given the length of the fight I'm AB spam. 3xAB 4xscorch. 2xAB, 4xscorch. Scorch spam.

This works pretty well. The pure AB beatsdown firemages bigtime. The scorch spam...not so much, lol.


The one thing I find is if you do any sort of tricky delaying etc to catch the end of the AB debuff it ends up costing you dps. Basically find out what rotation you can do using /stopcasting with your normal latency and stick to it. A good rhythm is more important than trying anything special. Even stopping for clearcasts costs you a bunch of dps, so only do it if mana is an issue.

On my Mage I did a bunch of damage trials on Dr. Boom, with a 33/28/0 build. Went ABx2, Scorchx4, then ABx2 Fireballx2 (improved Fireball) for 2 cycles, then swapped out a Fireball for 2 Scorches every third rotation. I was able to do about 140k damage in 3 minutes without using consumables (just Evo/Mana Gems). This is with crappy gear (633 Fire damage, 570 Arcane damage, 17.3% crit). I thought this was pretty good, but my question is this: does better gear lend itself more to deep fire? I don't know why it would, I'm just curious as to whether 1000 +damage and 30% crit would skew things more towards deep fire. Just intuitively it seems like crafting a Spellfire set and going with this build/rotation would yield huge dividends.

It's a pain, but if you want the full story, you just have to dig through the mage thread.

Mostly due to Vontre's spreadsheet, the conclusion is that deep fire wins clearly on raid length fights with good equipment, assuming full raid buffs, shadow priest, judgement of wisdom, and consumables.

With that having been said, that's a very specific scenario.

On trash or any quick boss, arcane blast will humiliate any class or spec in the game, especially after you toss in arcane power. It will do this without pulling aggro, even with a crappy tank.

With sub-par raid conditions, an ABxN, scorchx4 cycle will allow you to extend your mana almost indefinitely.

While grinding, AB to pull and scorch to finish up requires almost no drinking.

While AOE grinding, the boost to IAE is noticable, and allows you to just spam it. Very useful against fire immunes.

Slow is in fact useful, allowing you to kite/annoy 2 targets at once. Very easy to use in heroics. Not godlike, not bad.