Netherblade

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!

 

• Navaash

Are you talking about a hard Arcane spec, or a hybrid (Arcane/Fire, Arcane/Frost)?

 

Phalanx

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.

 

Tempestra

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.

 

◊ Vontre

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.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

Stein

It helps the non-AB part of most rotations though. Some popular AB cycles:

AB*X -> Fireball*2
AB*X -> AM+Scorch
AB*X -> Frostbolt*2+Fireblast?

If they leave tier5 2 item bonus like it is, I will have 2 tier5 equipped for the rest of my life. (once i finally get 2 >.<)

 

Antiphonal

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.

 

Phalanx

This.

I know they're going to change it eventually.

 

Netherblade

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)

 

◊ Vontre

Fire mages can't last 10 minutes... not of straight fireball spam, anyway. I don't know this particular fight but there could be a lot of downtime?

Anyway, here's the catch. ABx1 is the most efficient spell we have by far. Scorch is the second-most. And you can get arcane potency and switch to missiles on clearcasts for mad nexus-horn procs. Our first nightbane kill took long enough that I used arcane power 3 times, aoe'ed down the adds, and still came out 2nd on dps without going oom. If mana is your only limiter then arcane is the best build you can get.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

Antiphonal

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.

 

Peekaboo

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.

 

Ghando

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.

 

Antiphonal

I went out to Dr. Boom and tested the tier5 stuff. According to my parser, my average AM volley was over 1k damage. So, just with AM that's over a thousand DPS. I didn't really test out the ABx2, AM, Scorch sequence since I was just tickled pink over the AM output.

 

Zeku

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.

 

• squiffy

Looking at my sadly neglected level 60 mage, is arcane spec viable for leveling with?

 

Kavan

Some notes from the pure arcane perspective. I finally did some Dr.Boom tests and ABx3+AM+Scorch indeed outperforms ABx3+2xAM and I've used it successfully in raids. AM is actually higher dps than the ABx3+AM+Scorch cycle, but the cycle has better dpm characteristics. If you're mana limited (i.e. you can't just spam AB) then a mix of the AB spam and ABx3+AM+Scorch cycle will give you better performance than mixing AB spam and AM. Still if you're getting hit switching to AM is your best option.

When you're going for efficiency cycles (meaning if you don't have a shadow priest in your group) then along with reducing AB to 2 casts you should also downrank AM to rank 8. If for some reason you need extreme dpm mode your best bet is ABx1+AM8 cycle and fishing for clearcasts.

Another thing to keep in mind is that pure arcane has the highest proc ability. This means that Judgement of Wisdom and trinkets like Lightning Capacitor, Nexus Horn and Mark of Defiance are a lot more powerful.

 

Netherblade

Such a simple tip, but something I didint actually realise even after alot of reading in the other thread - thanks!

I have another question to throw around - how does the viability of Arcane builds (lets assume its primary arcane: 48/13) change as you increase +damage? If you start getting to the +1000 damage club does this affect things much? At all? Is there some sort of (proven mathematical) peak where Arcane simply stops being good, above a certain +dam and fire pulls ahead?

Ive read some speculation on the Theorycrafting thread but again I wasnt able to get a clear answer/didnt envolve alot of math =)

The poster was referring to the benefits of a 48/13 arcane build - but what exactly does the above comment mean: 'is just shy of a 5:1 fireball:scorch rotation'?

 

Teenee

It's viable. I wouldn't recommend it however. Frost is largely considered the leveling tree for many reasons (front loaded damage, kiting for those tricky mobs). Frost also gives you more leeway in terms of bad groups (thinking Ice Block, and the greater control you can provide via quadruple Frost Novas).

 

Antiphonal

I plugged in my gear:

10/48/3 - 5x Fireball, 1x Scorch cycle - 788 dps, 3:33 time, 204,348 total damage.

2/0/59 - Frostbolt - 650 dps, 3:35 time, 167,359 total damage.
2/0/59 - Frostbolt and Water Elemental (averaged) - 727 dps, 3:35 time, 183,872 total damage.

48/13/0 - AM only - 737 dps, 2:45 time, 132,485 total damage.
48/13/0 - Fireball only - 624 dps, 3:13 time, 124,274 total damage.
48/13/0 - ABx2, AM, Scorch - 722 dps, 4:00 time, 173,303 total damage.

AM is not as efficient as Fireball, but it's damage is competitive with 5:1 Fireball:Scorch. The benefits for using it are the low threat, low burst, no interruption from damage. Plus you can turn on a dime and do AP+AB if needed for pretty amazing burst. And you get Slow, etc... If those things are important to you, AM will hold up to Fireball fairly well, just not with the same efficiency.

However, the real shocker is 2/0/59. That's actually pretty amazing for the "low dps" tree.

 

Phalanx

It's going to take a few kills with each boss to know when you can start spamming AB (it does for my retarded ass). The more times I can pop my AP/PoM/Pyro macro during the fight without wanding for mana at some point, the more damage you're going to squeeze out.

The good thing to remember is that it doesn't take long to dump your mana if you're worried about not doing enough damage. Especially with the PoM/AP or even Heroism/Bloodlust. The trick, again, is to figure out how many times during a fight you can afford to do that.

Remember that you have Evocation and three gems. Consider that part of your base mana. Then, figure Blessing of Wisdom, Mana Spring, Vampiric Touch, Mana Tide, Mageblood, Mage Armor. Any combination of these, or all if you're lucky, is your supplemental mana.

You could work the numbers, if you wanted, but I typically just monitor my mana as it's being used. That's part of being the Arcane mage, a bit more micro-management of your mana. On a farm fight, I can judge by how quick the boss is going down how much time is left and say to myself 'I can probably pop my macro now, spam and Evoc' or 'I'll wait a bit'.

Depends on the fight, really. The one 10/48/3 Mage we have who usually tops the damage meters in my guild has the Tailoring epic gear, Prince dagger, Heroic off-hand and is a very good player. Unless he dies early on (or if I Shatter kill him.. muahahaha!), I won't catch him on the damage meters.

My gear is pretty shitty right now, if I ever get some of the items I want to drop, the gap will close, but Deep Fire is raid damage king.

And also, the tip about starting the cast of the first AB of your next rotation before the AB debuff expires and have it finishing after it expires is key. This is where the latency comes into play, sometimes I can squeeze out 4 Scorches, sometimes just 3.

 

Netherblade

Thanks for the helpful comments =)

This is one of the things i never really realised until I tried arcane spec myself. Alot more micro-management with my mana/being aware of what spells casted than fire, where I can happily/mindlessly spam fireball/fireblast for many fights.

Another question.. as a deep pve fire mage, I always preferred to stack max damage. How does the value of crit/+dam compare to a arcane mage (lets say a49/13 talent spec mage) compared crit/+dam for a fire mage. Does +crit have a bigger value in the arcane mages playstyle because of the spellpower talent? or is +dam still king across all the specs

 

Phalanx

I like +damage and +crit. I don't need much +hit, though it does help with the Fire spells I cast. I think I normally run around with 5% +hit on bosses.

BTW, since you're thrown a bunch of +crit-related things in Deep Fire, it's actually better to stack +hit than it is +crit. I think it is, atleast.

You have a much bigger +hit gap to make up on bosses with Deep Fire.

 

◊ Vontre

It would potentially be higher if you had master of elements. Also might ignore mob-level resist but we're not sure.

You should try your arcane build with improved scorch.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

Sapphrina

As arcane mage damage scales with how fast you pour your manabar into it, obviously things like VT, JoW, and also innervate are really helpful.

Edit: And power infusion to use back to back with AP while innervate is running hehe. Good luck getting your raid convinced to put you in that group and give you those buffs though.. Maybe if you were the raid leader.. =p

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