I had this happen to me twice last night while working on Heroic Shannox. The second time I even stayed invis for a good second or two waiting for my aggro to drop. When it did, I popped out and starting nuking again only to see my name suddenly appear at the top of the list again.

It's because arcane scales so much more( in regards to intellect) than any other class in the game. More int = more mana = higher mage armor ticks = more arcane blasts in burn phase = more dps.

Having more intellect doesn't correlate to getting more arcane blasts in burn phase. It leads to larger hits - more casts can only be achieved, temporal/encounter-specific haste buffs aside, by having higher haste rating up until the GCD. What it does in fact is prolong the burn phase itself, as it takes more casts to reach sub-40% mana.

In theory arcane would indeed have better scaling than other caster specs out of the same one point of intellect due to the above reasons. For other classes intellect increases the damage of their spells and the chance of a critical strike. Any increase in mana pool size is only useful so long as you are constrained by mana, ie. you're running OOM and have to sacrifice DPS in order to regenerate.

For the arcane mage, the same one point of intellect provides the above benefits, but also provides:

* Larger mana pool, leading to extra increased damage through mastery.
* Mage armor returns more mana. Given sufficient intellect gains this will eventually lead to a more damaging conserve phase by having enough mana return to remain mana neutral at a higher DPS cycle.
* At specific intellect gain 'breakpoints' an extra Arcane Blast is gained during burn phases: the mage has gained enough extra mana to fit an extra cast before having to Evocate.

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In very extreme cases the arcane mage would be able to sustain arcane blast spam as their conserve phase. This was already seen to some extent in late WotLK after the talent tree revamp, and on certain fights such as Sinestra, where mages pull ahead of other classes when given infinite mana to play with.

A minor point, but you seem to contradict yourself here. If you have more mana, it takes more casts to get below 40% mana, and thus you have more arcane blasts in your burn phase. It certainly doesn't lead to more casts during Arcane Power (which might be what you meant) but it will take more casts before you can evocate without wasting mana.

I played an arcane mage in Wrath and had to switch classes come Cataclysm, couldn't stomach raiding as fire just because it was better damage, I just loved the Arcane playstyle. But now that Arcane is back I'm back and starting to pick up steam and get my mage geared. I however do have a few questions about the new playstyle that I'd like some clarification on

- Flame Orb AM Spam. How is this done exactly? I don't seem to always have AM ready to go by the time the last one finishes channeling, am I doing something wrong in just throwing the Orb out there and hoping it procs AM often enough to chain cast?

- Related to that, what phase is this for, is this for a mini burn while evocations on cooldown. I want to use Flame Orb as much as possible but the idea of this seems to indicate it should be done with certain timing.

- The Burn Phase and gearing away from haste. I have reforged away from haste as much as possible leaving only about 7.5% at this point. Is this too low? I generally only get to about 50% mana before arcane power and Improved Mana Gem expire unless hero is popped at the same time. Is there a good place to be haste wise or is it just wiser to take what you can't get away from and put the rest into mastery. This is so contrary to what I know from Wrath as to almost be blasphemy, but it seems to be doing well damage wise when I can get the burn/conserve phase down right.

- Cooldowns. In wrath, I waited for all my cooldowns to be up and popped them all at the same time, Icy Veins and Arcane Power went great together and anything else you held on to for that point (like trinkets) was going to get more bang for the buck as well. Without Icy Veins is this still the case? Should I be popping Arcane Power on Cooldown or saving it for burn phase?

- I miss my AoE Power, my best geared character now is a frost DK. Am I missing something on doing good AoE damage or is arcane now relegated to getting close and beating your AE button like it owes you money?

The general rule of thumb is to, when possible, let other more capable classes in the raid handle anything AOE related. Others can do it better for a smaller opportunity cost. H Rhyolith is a good example, you're better off leveraging your superior single target DPS on Fragment+Legs - and letting your Boom/Spriest/Frost DK handle the AOE.

Standard Arcane AoE is done by ABx4 to build up a stack, then AEx4, then ABx1 to keep the stack up, then AEx4 again, etc.

Tricky parts are:
a) you need something to put that ABs on without pulling aggro
b) you should only move during AE. If you have to move after 4xAE, use PoM-AB to keep stack up. If that is not available, fall back to 3xAE/1xAB. The leeway you have for keeping the stack up depends on your haste, obviously.
c) you should be at 4 stacks when you start to AoE, so it needs some planning ahead.

Unfortunately, I don't know the exact breakpoint for how many targets you need to switch from single-target to AoE, but fragments on Ryolith are usually worth one AoE-Cycle.

I think you meant single focus the other add, the Spark of Rhyolith.

Arcane burst DPS is very useful on the Legs at the start of the fight when they are the least responsive to damage and getting him turned fast (assuming additional ranged DPS is required). I then swap to the Spark to help burn it if not needed on Leg.

It's still here It's just that threads go 'invisible' after a while of no new posts. To see them change the "From The" drop down menu at the bottom of the page and click show threads.

Note from moderator: I'm going to hijack Acerider's post here to clarify that we rarely delete anything at EJ. All old threads from previous expansions are still there. The forum defaults to only showing the last month of posts to reduce the load on the webserver. Even stuff that's been moderated isn't deleted - just moved to the dung heap. You can read and search back to 2008 in this mage subsection, and back as far as the beginning of 2007 in the old Class Mechanics subforum.

Could anybody on the final stage (Heart of Flame) of the legendary staff please clarify how are the Soul Fragments collected and if there are any tricks to doing them in just 1 week?

Hi all.

Not sure if this is the appropriate place to post this. If this needs to be elsewhere please let me know and I will gladly move it.

I'm truly, truly confused and while reading through many of these threads I would like to know if I'm doing something wrong or if it's the simulators.

My Armory page can be found here. I'm on the Antonidas realm if you want to check my stuff in rwar.

I've uploaded my toon into both Rawr and SimulationCraft and am very, very confused. Rwar lists my dps at a hair under 22K. SumulationCraft has me doing an avg dps of 23K with a max of 54K. If either of these were true I would be levitating right now.

My current rotation is AB4ABar234AM and it gets me about 12.5K dps. I start off with big numbers around 20k but after a few seconds I'm down to 12.5K.

After reading the Arcane Mage thread I'm trying to break it into two phases as described below:

During my initial burn phase I'm easily hitting 23-25k. For my conservation phase I'm spamming AB as needed and making use of the AM procs. I'm pretty much able to be continuously casting while mainting between 90-95% mana level.

Once there is about 10 seconds left on the Mana Gem cd I'll return to my burn phase with the 5 - 6 AB, Mana Gem, pop available cooldowns and spam AB for all I'm worth.

So here's the thing. During the conservation phase my dps drops to about 12.5K which is exactly where I was with my previous rotation. As I enter my next burn phase I can maybe make it lift up to about 14K but it never goes back to the 23-25K I experienced in the beginning of the rotation.

I have Mage Armor on and the only buffs I have on while testing are Arcane Brilliance and Arcane Tactics but even when I was just doing Nefarian in BWD I was still pulling about 14K dps.

So am I doing something wrong or is Rwar/SimulationCraft really that far off base? I would love to be pulling a sustained 18K. 20-23k would be a nerdgasm for me.

Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.