HellaBooya

General rule about arcane, you MUST have 2 piece play as arcane. With that being said, the badge gear/Belt of Blasting is better than spellstrike/spellfire go that route.

Without 2 piece T5 you should always be fire.

 

demibaka

Thanks for the reply. Guess I will just have to determine how much I wanna craft that is gonna be replaced by badge gear. I will go fire till the T5.

 

xiaoxin21

It should be both applied to the base damage and not multiplicative.

On the topic of spell rotation, when you start ramping up AB, do people a) spam AB or b) press AB and wait for debuff before applying the next AB etc. I find the second approach sometimes faster than just spamming and is interested if anyone else do that.

 

Keldarn

Depends on your latency really. Just spamming it is (non-hasted) 0.5 seconds of extra time when ramping up. Hitting it after the buff applies is <latency> + <reaction time> extra time when ramping up.

 

Wizeowel

That's a bit of an oversimplification Keldarn. The problem with the ramp-up bug is not the extra 0.5 seconds, it's that the server charges you the mana as if you'd had the extra debuff. Which means that if you are dropping AB a lot on a fight, spamming AB to ramp up is very mana inefficient. Whereas weaving your ramp up is very mana-efficient: usually it's the best type of filler.

The only exception to this is when you are at full mana then weaving will be counterproductive, since your mana gain would be clipped anyway. I.e. start the fight with PoM-AB because otherwise you are wasting at least 2 ticks of mana regen.

 

Light4

In fact, if you are fast* enough, start your fight with AB-PoM_AB to get two AB with the same debuff-stack, thus stacking faster at no mana cost.

*depends on latency, though

 

fivesixtwo82

Good Morning to All,

I have been following the EJ forums for quite sometime now and actually started rocking the 40/0/21 after reading the forums. Lately on the server i play on, Kul Tiras... a few mages been gemming Intl and Spirit, and want to get everyones insight.

 

Saizul

There was quite a bit of discussion on this in the last couple pages. I have also switched to this gemming scheme and noticed a significant difference. The idea is that int is a powerful stat for arcane and has an effect on almost everything you want - it gives spell damage, crit, regen, deepens your mana pool (thereby gaining several more spell casts directly and increasing regen from mana tide / evocation), and scales with arcane mind / blessing of kings. Spirit is not as strong, but is actually a more powerful influence on your mp5 regen than int, and stacking the two to meet socket bonuses has resulted in a huge increase in regen for me. I have found after regemming after this model that fully raid buffed I sit at around 650 mp5 while not casting, 450+ while, which greatly increases the value of an innervate (over 10 k mana).

Basically the conclusion is that you should gem for int / spirit until you can maintain at or very near 100% AB spam throughout the duration of the fight. At that point, you should gem the rest of your gear towards dmg. Obviously the conundrum is..."Well, I can spam AB 100% through akama no problem...brutallus, however...". Basically you need to choose what "sweet spot" you are going to aim for. The more you focus on int / spirit, the lognevity stats, the better your DPS will be on long, stand-and-nuke type fights. And the weaker your individual hits and thus total DPS will be on fights where you have "too much" regen - the shorter fights or those with lots of OOC regen time.

 

Wizeowel

No, as I said, the server will charge you for the AB debuff, even if the client didn't receive the information about it yet. The AB-ramp-up bug only affects the casting time of AB and not the mana cost. So it won't be 'no mana cost', in fact it will cost you one or two passive mana regen ticks that you missed because you were at full mana while casting the the first AB.

 

Light4

Oh, thanks Wizeowel for clearing this up. I see, I've been running around with a misconception. Too bad it doesn't work that way, though.

Btw, what about AB-Sc Ramp-up cycles? Is there a way to specifically get the Manacost and dps of ramp-ups in rawr?

 

Kavan

Next version shows info for the nondebuffed AB. Since all nonfully debuffed AB have the same tradeoff that should give you a good indication of its mana to damage conversion.

 

pugs355

I finally pulled the trigger and tried out arcane...wow lots of fun. I havent gone full intellect gems in everything quite yet but will probably end up going that route.

Anyway my question is about Neck pieces. The new Guardian's PVP necklaces could have alot of intellect with the right gem in them. They also have nice damage and other stats. But which one would be best for an arcane mage?

I know spell haste is kinda avoided for arcane right? So would you go with the one that has more int/damage and no other stats or the one with Crit/Damage?

I already have the spell haste one as I plan to PVP as 17/0/44.

 

Wizeowel

Spell haste is good for arcane. The reason people tend to avoid it is not because it's less valuable than spelldamage but heroism and icy veins on AB spam starts to approach 1.0 seconds which is the cap on the GCD. Certainly you shouldn't have any problems with up to, say, 200 passive haste, as long as you don't try to stack heroism and IV together.

 

HellaBooya

I would say that while spell haste innately on your gear isn't bad, but socketing haste as opposed to spell damage is a bad idea. Haste is only good in short fights, where as spell damage will help out both in short and long fights. Socketing spell damage will not make you go oom faster as well.

 

Light4

For me, Rawr brings the neck piece with crit significantly ahead of the one with haste, so I got the crit one. I suggest you use Rawr to determine the value of both for your specific equip.

Edit: punctuation & grammar to my best knowledge - I am no native speaker

 

Zaylin

Is there any reason to spec Arcane without 2/5 T5?

 

Rathward

Hey everyone, I have some questions about arcane mages. Dont hate me if they are repeats.

1) What is a good % for spell crit. (without arcane impact, no buffs)
2)What is the amount of spirit/Int I need to sustain AB spam (with a shaman in group)
3)Is a +10 int gem better then a +5 SD +4 crit, gem? (for all my yellow sockets)
4)Xi'ri's Gift or Blessings Deck or Shiffar's Nexus-Horn?(To keep me going before i get my serpent-coil braid)

This is for hyjal/bt raids.
Have been Arcane, but never have been serious about it until I got into a raiding guild.
Dont laugh, if you look at my armory profile. I dont have 2p t5,so i did not even bothered to link it, cause of that. Hoping on t5 this week if i can get into a pug, Also getting badge spirit/hit robes so i can resocket all my hit gems to +10 int or +5 SD, +4 Crit

Thank you all for sharing your knowledge to me.

From my experience, Zaylin, reason to go arc without 2p t5, crazy burst damage, not hard to beat a equally geared fire, in anything lower then BT /Hyjal. Also it is a fun spec to go, to farm heroics, heh.

 

Anedris

1) Doesn't matter, just choose the best gear available. There is no crit threshold you need to reach and you will never socket crit, so your crit is going to just be whatever there is on your gear.
2) Rawr will answer this for you.
3) You should never socket crit. Ever. Haste is better. Intellect is probably better than haste. Rawr will give you an exact answer.
4) Again, see Rawr.

 

Wizeowel

Indeed. Haste is not, in terms of item budget, as good as spelldamage for arcane specs. However, it's better than crit, so in cases where you want to keep the gem bonus, you can better take a reckless pyrestone than a potent. However, what you say about haste being better on short fights isn't true. The comparative value of haste to spelldamage over a six minute fight is much the same as over a four minute fight. As was discussed earlier, it is intellect not haste which fades in comparative value the longer the fight.

Which means: if you are gemming for Brutallus, you'll want to gem reckless instead of brilliant. If you're not worried about Brutallus or your total health, take intellect or spelldamage gems.

 

Gediablo

Let me get this straight, because I don't quite follow what you are trying to say. You are saying that in a long 6 min non-stop spam fight you would value a gem with haste above one with intellect, but in shorter burst fights you would prefer intellect gems? Or is it the opposite you mean?

 

Wizeowel

Actually it's a bell curve, where on 2-minute fights intellect has comparatively lower value, on 4-minute fights intellect becomes as good as spell damage, and on 6-minute fights it's once again better to stack spelldamage. This is of course presuming T6-gear, 300mp5 from VT, JoW, mana totems, etc.

There are really two sides to this. Intellect adds to your mana pool and also to your personal regen. The mana pool being large will help you in short fights because you won't need to evocate or switch to filler spells, but the longer the fight, the less the initial pool matters and the more your regen starts to matter. This is why intellect is good for medium fights and is comparable to spelldamage for most of MH/BT fights, i.e. big mana pool, high regen. However, on very long fights (say Council and Brutallus), what happens is that you are going to be using more and more filler spells. In this case, the benefit of more haste/spelldamage should be apparent. You cannot achieve 100% AB whatever your initial mana pool nor regen. Therefore intellect once again loses its comparative value.

 

Gediablo

Assuming you tank at Council (being arcane you should), that leaves Brutallus where I rarely do above 20 filler frostbolts. Gemming haste makes you go oom faster forcing more gimped filler spells and it is often 100% wasted on heroisms or drums and icyveins. On top of that you loose extra regen from int, magic absorption, evocation, innervates and the extra crit and +damage. On all boss fights I think I would prefer Int to Haste.

On trash yes haste would probably often be better if you pull really really slow, but as arcane mage no one should be able to keep up with you on raid-trash-damage anyway. If you often has to use lots of filler spells arcane isn't for you anyway. Gemming for filler spells seems wrong to me, and I'd rather respec to fire if I had to use many filler-spells in standard raid scenarios. If anything I would replace some hitgear with haste gear on trash.

 

Kataali

I am a 40/0/21 spec with the Shoulder and Leg T5 pieces and my guild runs SSC/TK/MtH.
Last night we downed Kaz in MtH and we will soon enter BT. My question is: With the assumptions that Vashj and Kael are never downed/I never win from them, then I only have 3 T5s to choose from. Should I use DKP on Leo's gloves so that I can replace the pants? I read here that the T5 pants are awful but more importantly the Legs of Channeled Elements are now within reach. Since I was saving my DKP for VR's helm and currently wear Spellfire, I have passed on the gloves plenty before. Our guild treats SSC/TK as same DKP and MtH and BT a different set of DKP, so only VR hat would be affected by this decision.

Here's my armory since I am open to any feedback

 

Zinaida

Which T5 pieces are best will depend on the other pieces you have at the time, but you should find that shoulders/gloves is usually the best combination once you're into MH/BT gear. This also generally holds true for sunwell gear.

Pre sunwell you should be looking at getting something like T5 shoulders/gloves, T6 chest/helm, leggings of channeled elements.

Don't worry about the VR hat as it is very poor for arcane (Assuming ofcourse that you have 6% hit without it), even T4 is better.

 

Rathward