@ Sigurd, aggro isnt really an issue with the talent that gives you 30% less threat than a fire mage.

In general you tend to find people shy away from an AM rotation because of its horrible mana efficiency, if you found that spreadsheet floating around you can test for yourself but a rotation with either scorch or frostbolts comes out ontop. Although 'deep arcane' as its known can be only using arcane spells* you have to try and be more flexible and work around the duration of the arcane blast debuff in the best possible way. By putting much more talents into fire or frost to really get a workable rotation.

* I get slightly confused here when looking at your talent set up, you have gone for 3 points in elemental precision when you use arcane spells way more compared to the 1 point you left off arcane focus.

No, in magtheridon you will most likely be going to click cubes. In hydross you will constantly have to switch to AoEing and in lurker you have to jump around a lot. (these are your next three bosses most likely)

If its any use to you ill throw you some possible specs you could try out when you get the money (psst, bug your guild bank!)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Ri0Vc0fzxIziZZVq0cof0o (40/0/21)

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=ki0Vc0fzLIzbZxg0zfMsob (34/27/0) - Though granted this relys on fireball rotations because i think scorch rots dont pack as much punch in practice.

And finally, if you are lucky enough to bank a spriest in your raids for every go (ref to OP) then you can pump much more of your dps into arcane blast spamming since no one doubts the damage that it causes, but if you have the mana to back it up.

Hope ive been helpful

You should probably drop those points in improved arcane missiles and improved fireblast if you're that serious about raid damage. Picking up ignite for when you need to scorch to wait for ab debuff to wear off is good.

Sorry but I am pretty sure thats really really a bad idea. Fireblast is bad DPM. The whole reason to do 3x AB, missles, scorch is that you want to cram in 'filler' spells with high DPM so that you have mana left for your real DPS spell.

Remember: for an arcane mage, mana always means more damage, because the spec has the ability to burn all of its mana in no time, unlike fire spec, which most of the time I admit I finish with plenty of mana to spare.

EDIT: but yeah I do have to agree that at first sight improved missles do seem like wasted points.

No, I can't. I'm seeing a ~150ish spelldamage-plus (20% from 668 - 772) in my Theorycraft2 when equipping two T5-pieces. Regarding the feedback from the other mages from my guild I'm quite sure that the bonus works like that.

You are making the assumption here, that a Mage with that setbonus is specced into Arcane. Recently I've been raiding with 0/0/61 and 10/48/3 and the bonus did nothing for me. Even when I specced Arcane/Fire for a AB/AM/Scorch-build I did not feel like Arcane Blast was really my primary spell. It was one of two/three spells that contributed to my DPS.

Hi Jona. I've been at least 51 points in Arcane since 2.0, and while I haven't hit up Gruul or Mag raids yet, I've been through Karazhan so many times that I could likely do it with my eyes closed. http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...her&n=Sinazeel is my Armory profile. My Riding Crop is currently in the top slot, but that's usually a Lightning Capacitor, if you want a good feel of my total gear.

Well, I don't think your gear is all that great. I'm gonna echo the sentiments earlier on that you need to invest a bit more in stats. Stamina is going to help keep you up more, especially with most of the tBC content eschewing the traditional tank&spank fights and going for fancy AoE crap. It allows some leeway with fights, since you'll be able to screw up once or twice and not die. As the saying goes, a dead mage does 0 dps. Intellect is fantastic, since having tons of mana frees you up a bit what you can do, and it will also be increasing your crit chance and damage. To that end, I feel that the tailoring BoE sets don't have much to offer for an Arcane mage. There's a notable lack of stats on Spellstrike, and +hit isn't that high a priority due to Arcane Focus. Battlecast isn't too shabby, and is likely cheaper to buy, but the lack of crit is very meh. Spellfire however, is incredible and the lack of stats on those pieces is just fine, though I'd lean toward putting Stamina gems in every blue socket I have. Also, I personally avoid using gems in their non-syngeristic slots, but I suppose the whole socketing thing is to do what you want with gear.

In actual fighting, I've found that I rarely need to actually use non-Arcane spells. I usually use a AB+AB+AM rotation. My latency/whatever lets me get off the next AB right after the debuff wears off, but while still using the shortened casting time. If I'm trying to conserve mana, I'll do a single AB instead of two, and if I'm REALLY trying to conserve mana, I'll do AB, Scorch x3, then repeat. While it seems obvious, try to use AM when you Clearcast. Same with your rawr-Pyroblast macro. This will help offset the higher mana cost of AM.

If you're having trouble with mana, try using Mage Armor instead of Molten. Yeah yeah, we all love the crit bonus, but it does you little good if you're sitting there oom. Also learn to chain consumables. Even if you're spamming AM (very high -mana per second by doing that), it'll take you a minute to go oom. Evocate, then start chugging mana gems (make the highest three ranks you have) and mana pots. Once I've gone through a fight a few times, I find that I learn how to better conserve my mana (don't start AM if Moroes is about to vanish or Prince is about to Nova, etc).

Ohhhh, one more thing! Go hit the auction house and start looking for a bunch of green staves or daggers+offhands, and a wand, of the Of Spirit variety. Install Itemrack or something of that nature, and make a set to switch out that stuff. Throw them on before you start using Evocation for another thousand or two of mana. It really helps make it not suck so much.

Arcane mages really pick up once you start factoring in buffs from other players. Paladins are awesome for this, especially Protection. BoW is fantastic, as is Kings. Salv isn't much of a priority, but can help if your tank is learning/sucks/isn'tProt. JoW is where it really shines, since each volley of AM can (and often will) proc the mana gain from JoW.

Warlocks might be viewed negatively my some mages as competition, but an Arcane Mage counts as benefitting from Curse of Shadows, and helps to convince others of using CoS instead of CoA or whatever. Shadow Priests are also useful for this, with Misery increasing damage and VT feeding mana back into you. SPriests gain about as much from Salvation as you will from JoW; With both of them, you can actually almost even out your mana gain and mana usage.

Disc priests are nice as well, what with the Divine Spirit boosting normal mana regen and Evocation. Imp DS isn't that much damage, but anything is better than nothing. Just make sure they don't try to PI you when you're about to pop AP, since they don't stack.

Shamans are very good, but only if they're a castery-type as well. Windfury is crap for us, sadly. Wrath of Air grants the largest bonus, due to AM's favoring of straight damage. Totem of Wrath is pretty cool if you can find someone specced in it. BM hunters are nice as well, since Ferocious Instinct works on ALL damage.

Consumables are very good. I'd shell out for the new Wizard Oils, along with some Adepts and Draenic Wisdom pots. Until you get more Stamina I'd use either the 20 Sta/Spirit food buffs or the Blackened Sporefish (20 STA and 8 mp5). After that I'd use the spell damage foods if you don't expect to take much damage, but damage intensive fights (such as Netherspite's aura or if you're tanking the imps in Illhoof) would see priority to the stamina foods.

Lastly, I'd consider respeccing a bit. Yeah, I know you don't want to, but that's why I'm listing it last. I'd sooner take Impact than Imp Fireball, and put points into Ignite instead of Imp Fire Blast. I might also consider not bothering with Pyroblast, since you're basically spending a talent point for another 200 damage on your rawr-macro. Not to mention that using Fireball as a replacement isn't that bad, as long as you don't have the reducing coefficient from Imp Fireball.

Good luck out there raiding. In general, it doesn't matter that much about how you spec, as long as you enjoy playing your character. It'll give you incentive to play well and such. Remember that the guilds that got Kel'Thuzad down first were Horde guilds, when the popular opinion was that Paladins made raiding 'easier'.

My reading comprehension skills fail, ignore me.

I think you misunderstood, he said threat as arcane won't be a problem since it generates 30% less aggro then fire. 40% vs 10%.

Haha, I'm an idiot. Sorry.

I was trying to remember why I had points in Prismatic Cloak and I believe I put that spec together when I started tanking Krosh. I think we probably have that fight down to a science, though, so I could lose those points without causing my healers too much stress (I hope).

I do have the Lightning Capacitor, actually, but I think I fiddled with my trinkets before I logged out last. I was intending to use my Living Ruby Serpent and my Scryers Blood Gem for my main trinkets in Gruul's, though.

I actually did level frost, then went Arcane/Frost when we started raiding at 70 since my damage sucked. I was very happy with the increase in damage. I switched to Arcane/Fire later on after doing some math and realizing that Ice Block was just a crutch and I could do even better on damage.

I know I could stand to play better. In most boss fights I have quite a bit of a learning curve before I'm comfortable enough to really do my best. I'm not at that point yet with the Gruul's fight and I'm at a little bit of a loss as to how to improve, which is why I came here to get some input. I do have /stopcasting macros built in to both my Arcane Missiles hotkey and my Fireball hotkey. During the fights where I'm most comfortable, I kick ass, with little to no spell lag. But most of the boss fights I've been in don't require the endurance that Gruul does, and I came to realize that I need to change the way I do things a little bit to do better in that fight.

I guess I'm not really completely opposed to respeccing, and I do appreciate the input I've gotten in that regard so far. I guess I'm not so much bound to my specific spec as I am kindof hooked to being Arcane.... maybe it's just to be different... maybe I'm trying to prove something... maybe I just don't want to blow another 25 Badges to get the stupid Fire offhand

I'm working on understanding it right now. I actually did download your spreadsheet but I think I need to spend a little more time with it... some of it was a little confusing to me, and I couldn't find Arcane Blast in the options for the cycle builder. Is there a new version of the spreadsheet?

Finally, I've seen a few people comment that my gear isn't all that great. Keep in mind that my guild only just completed Karazhan and has downed Gruul once - I'm working on it! But I still don't think 12 epic items is too shabby considering where we are in raid progression. I'm over 1000 +damage unbuffed, have around 25% crit and 8% hit (which is as much as I need for my current spec). I forget what spirit is for... I thought only priests liked that stat

I also have about two bags worth of gear that I carry around with me at all times. I have a separate set of gear that maxes my crit for raid trash, I have the set that's in my current armory profile that maxes out my hit, I have a stamina set that's specifically for tanking Krosh, and a Curator set that's got arcane resistance, plus a whole slew of trinkets that get swapped out on the fly (including the Lightning Capacitor, which is my favorite trinket thus far). I would love to be able to streamline this a little bit, and I think I'm getting close... I just have a problem throwing stuff away

Arcane is a great Heroic/Kara/Trash spec, since most fights in there are very short, and you can get away with using AB almost all the time, esp on trash. You can't really express surprise that your damage is so good in Kara (which has loads of trash) while so poor in Gruul (which has minimal trash).

However Arcane Missiles will forever feel like a bastard child to me.

- Mana paid up front
- Poor crits
- Poor range
- Immobilizing
- No mage supplied debuff. CoS/Misery is all what you really get
- Horribly expensive. DPM is through the floor.

Arcane has alot of interactive options. The famed "switch to AM on CC" is one, the whole AB debuff is another. But the problem I see with that is that it requires yet more mental attention. Decent DPS as a firemage is not rocket science. And this enables you to really focus on other aspects of the fights (like staying alive). I also feel Arcane is too reliant on cooldowns for doing solid damage.

I'm looking at other spec options with arcane still being the main school. I noticed one of the builds someone linked includes two points in Imp. Counterspell. With that particular build, the two points are pretty necessary to reach the subsequent tiers in the tree - or else you'd have to put a couple points into Magic Absorption or Imp. AM (or Wand Specialization, god forbid).

The main reason I've avoided Imp. CS in the past is because it's my understanding that silencing is bad in the Shade of Aran fight (you don't want to lock out all schools or he flips out and we wipe... we've never tested this, however). I couldn't help but wonder if that's even an issue in that fight. I don't really use CS all that often, so those points could go anywhere (however I do have it on my hotbar macroed with /stopcasting so I can do it on the fly, need be). But we're not quite done with Karazhan so if silencing is an issue in that fight I don't want to put points in that talent just yet.

Also, I've noticed that almost none of the Arcane/Fire spec suggestions include points in Elemental Precision. I'm guessing this just means people are going crazy with +hit gear instead? (I've seen several armory profiles for mages that support this assumption, I just want confirmation, I guess.)

Here's a spec I worked out, taking into account several of the comments others have posted regarding which fire talents would optimize my current spec a little better for raiding. I would appreciate any feedback you folks have to offer.

43/18/0 Arcane Spec

I guess to me at least, a lot of it still comes down to clearcasting mechanics. If the aura popped on casting, reactively using it would make some sense. As it stands though you are at an absolute minimum in the hole latency times two + reaction time and that's simply not acceptable to me.

I've theorycrafted a lot on my own time about deep arcane builds and arc/fire builds though and as much as I'd like to say I have a solution, I simply do not. Other than obviating Immune targets or producing burst damage on demand, I just don't see a need for the possibilities and across the board I am getting better results with cookie-cutter. It's a lot more work (or fun, depending on how you see it) for frankly lessened results in my opinion.

Maybe some hard arcane dps numbers would be nice, instead of anecdotal experience. I'll start by posting this, which should prove that arcane damage actually does work (this is from our first gruul kill, he went down at 15 growths):



I was in a group with a moonkin (who shifted out to heal after about 50%), two fire mages, and a draenei elemental shaman, which means i had +3 hit/crit from totem of wrath, +101 dmg from wrath of air, +5 crit from moonkin aura, and +1hit from the draenei racial. No shadow priest in my group, but in the raid. Both CoS and CoE warlocks had malediction. In total i had about 1200 +dmg, 36% crit at peak times (with moonkin aura) and I was hit capped (which is easy as arcane).

I had the usual problems with arcane that other people described in this thread. Running back in after ground slam, limited range, staying rooted which made cave in and reverbation a pain in the butt, outside effects messing up spell rotations. But in the end, the insane burst of lucky clearcast+metagem procs coupled with AP x 2, and the lightning capacitor made up for it. I edged out two 10/48/3 mages by quite a bit, and their gear is about the same level. I had no major mana problems.

Good numbers. I'm a little surprised you didn't have mana problems though.

I've tried a proper arcane build for Magtheridon once. I had a shadow priest, an elemental shaman and JoW was kept up for at least part of the fight (5.5k mana back from it). The fight last 11-12 minutes. On Magtheridon himself I used ABx2 + AM and let latency and a small pause make up the gap (I didn't use scorch because I was draining mana fast enough). I was a bit more loose on the adds and used more Arcane Blasts to get them down faster. I used 4 super mana pots and 3 mana gems. I was on cube clicking duty (my cube was right next to Magtheridon so no range issues). I was completely OOM at 4%. I did ~485k damage. For reference I did over 100k more damage the next week in the same time with 10/48/3 and had no mana issues at all despite not using a single super mana potion. Gear wise the only changes I made were to swap heroic fire offhand for Magtheridon's offhand and either Nelth's Tear or Icon for Lightning Capacitor (can't remember whether I was hit capped with or without Tear). I wasn't using stopcasting on either kill although I've been playing about with it recently and will almost certainly start using it properly soon (getting out of the habit of spamming buttons will be tough though). Obviously I am a lot more practised with fire than arcane but even with familiarity I can't see it making up the gap especially on the mana side of things (admittedly my mana regen is pretty horrible even using a mageblood potion and buff food).

At this fight I had no JoW and shadowpriest, with both I could last longer. Still, mana is obviously an issue, but you can work around it. I haven't really done any math with mana regen, but I think arcane mana regen is not something to scoff at. I'm not sure how much spirit I have raid buffed, but it should be about 375. Arcane meditation and mage armor are 45% regen while inside the five second rule, and the trick is that you exit the five second rule when using arcane missiles, so you get one full tick of regen then. I'm not sure how the regen actually works, but I believe one tick of regen in the game is two seconds. That means when you cast a spell, proc clearcasting, and use arcane missiles, you get two ticks of full regen before you land your next spell. If you cast arcane missiles and proc clearcasting with this very cast, you get three or more full ticks before you land the next spell. The fact that AM pays there mana cost up front and AB on hit compliments this well. Because AM has its mana cost paid upfront, casting AM and proccing clearcasting with this very cast means that the buff will not be consumed until you cast the next spell (ideally another volley of AMs), so the clearcasting buff grants you +30% crit for BOTH volleys, both the one that procced it and the one that consumes it.
With lucky AM+Clearcast procs, I watched my mana actually shoot up on numerous occasions. Not to mention these very procs not only mean mana efficiency but also burst, especially with the LC. The synergy between mana regen, arcane missiles and clearcasting is what makes arcane spec strong imo, but it is also it's weakness, since you are relying heavily on a 10% proc. A mage set bonus that increases the clearcasting proc rate would be pretty imba...

I have to pay more attention to my regen addon next time so I can see how much I actually got back.

Bearing this in mind, surely there is no reason TO take Improved Counterspell?

I believe ignoring mana regen when switching from fire to arcane is the most common mistake. Most spreadsheets just show you the values for a fixed gear set, most commonly a fire mage will enter his gear, change spec to arcane and decide that switching to arcane is bad. Yes raiding as arcane in fire gear is bad.

Besides different +to hit ceiling the next most important thing for arcane is that more mana means more damage. That means spreading item value among more stats gets you more bang for your buck. You actually can make meaningfull damage increase from both int, spi, mp5, damage and crit as arcane mage.

For example if I enter my gear into Vontre's spreadsheet I get the highest damage if I'm using arcane build. Raid buffed I'm usually running with ~860 int, 340 spi, 1100 damage, 250 crit rating. Now I'm not saying that arcane is better than fire. All I'm saying is that when you're making comparisons gear plays a very big role.

I agree, Kavan. Even though Spellfire gear also has arcane damage, I believe it's not optimal arcane mage gear because it has such horrible stats. You do need lots of int for mind mastery, you do need lots of spirit for arcane meditation. Being a human or gnome is very beneficial. Min-Maxed fire mage gear that sacrifices everything for damage and nets an absymal mana pool and poor regeneration won't make arcane work. Gearing for arcane and fire is very different. For example, my gem selection hardly has any yellow gems in it, because I have built it around my mystical skyfire metagem which requires more blue than yellow gems. I'd have taken more yellow gems for crit and hit if I was fire. The metagem isn't as good for deep fire as it is for arcane, so this sacrifice wouldn't have been worth it as fire mage.

Voltan: Note that I casted only three fireballs, all of them when I had AP up. The second AP I use for arcane blast and AM. My average fireball damage when I spam it is about 2900, factoring in crit. The thing is if I want to spam fireball I have to load up on +hit gear, which is negating my spec and gear choices. If I don't use fire spells I can use crit and dmg gear, I had pretty much the same gear equipped that I have in my armory now. I tried stacking +hit and playing like a fire mage with my spec, it worked reasonably well but I obviously got smoked by the fire mages, with them having emp. fireball, fire power and molten fury. Even with Spell Power crits and some AP thrown in you can't touch a pure fire mage's damage if you spam fireballs as arcane spec, so there's no point in doing so, unless you have to because of range issues. If you spec arcane, use arcane spells. It means you have to gear towards it too.

The other thing to note about fireball damage against the AM and AB damage:

Fireball is 3 second cast. This means that the average damage (2774.3) comes out at ~925 dps.
AB is between 1.5 and 2.5 second cast - once the first AB is gone if you use a rotation where you start casting before the debuff wears off, but it casts post-debuff (to limit mana use but still get the cast speed bonus) it will likely be 2.0 seconds average, giving a DPS of ~1100 from it, ignoring 1.5 second casts.
AM is 1 second per tick, so that average damage (1117.3) is the actual DPS straight from it.

In fact, from that it looks like you'd be better off not using fireball at all. PoM Pyro is worth it, but AB/AM would end up with higher DPS during AP compared to fireball.

One question about the lightning capacitor - does it proc from each tick of AM if they individually crit, or is it capped at one charge per AM set? If it's the first, that must be pretty good for damage with the +30% crit on clearcast talent.

That's an interesting choice with the meta gem Jeru. I was deciding between Insightful and Mystical for quite a bit. From the theorycraft I've done Mystical wins in all except very short fights, but in the end I decided for Insightful because I love +8 int gems. Haven't done any thorough analysis of how much you lose from restricted gem choices to activate Mystical compared to higher value of the meta gem. Does anyone have any numbers for arcane?

Dukes: It procs off every individual tick, and it has no internal cooldown. That obviously makes it very powerful with AM.

Kavan: The main thing about the mystical is that it works on arcane missiles since last patch, and casting AM doesn't consume the buff. The buff lasts 3 seconds, so if you react quick and cast AM with using stopcasting macros, you can cast one full volley in 2.5 seconds, and you have a split second left on the buff to start another cast. Even if you have only 0.5 seconds left on the buff, the cast time reduction counts for the entire volley. In practice, considering lag and reaction times, you have time to start the first volley, cancel it after about 3 or 4 missiles, then fire off the next one. So it's not exactly double-dipping the proc but you can still get more bang out of it that what was probably intended.

Isn't that also at the heart of it? I'd say that raid DPS is about achieving consistency, and not just randomly doing well (or bad) because you happened to get alot of CC procs that one fight.

I'm pretty sure this is not how Arcane Potency works, or least it's the first I hear of it. Can other mages confirm or deny this?

Each individual missile in a single volley will proc TLC. TLC basicly excells with any fast hitting spell. Arcane Missiles fits that description to a T, and with CC crit rate, you can get some very high damage.

The haste buff from Mystical Skyfire Diamond sadly only lasts 4 seconds. If you're spamming Arcane Missiles, you can never get it's benefit, without cutting your cast short. And as always, haste effects have a nasty way of messing spell rotations. And not to mention that ultimately, you want to consume your haste buff with an AM cast, but as always with spell rotations, breaking your rotation is both mentally jarring, and messes it up beyond what the mere haste increase does.