Arcane Mage 5.2 (74 replies to this topic)

So does arcane just become compleatly unuseable for the next  month(as in it does considerably less dammage than it does now) or just preforems poorly compaired to fire and frost?

I disagree on saying that using Rune of Power is the best way to go for Arcane. While i agree that this is the one which gives the best damage output, it cannot be used effectively in almost any boss as this requires you to stand on the rune.

Several boss mechanics make it impossible to get the full use of RoP, making Incanter much better and maybe invo in some fights.

Probably, this post will explain better my point:
http://us.battle.net...069?page=17#325

Even though he is testing with frost, i think it can be applied to any spec.

Question on Greater invisibility: By looking at the tooltip it says 90% dmg reduction. I think this may be a good spell to survive mecanics like HOT on ultraxx HC ( Shadowpriest dispersion / iceblock /AMS)  Greater Invisibility

What do you guys think?

Having a wild ride of it, what with a custom-built super computer (thanks to my brother the computer genius!), learning Windows (Mac boy here!  lol ), WoW on Windows, MoP, how to use a gaming mouse (Razer Naga) and Nostromo keypad....
All in all, without Icy-Veins.com to give me such incredible help, as well as the experts who contribute with their posts, I'd be lost.
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Hi
I just signed up to discuss a little bit and give my point of view. If I'm wrong, please tell me.

First a few punctualizations. Maybe they can help someone:

-As you say, the main stat after intellect and hit cap is still Mastery. As long as you keep your mana over 70% your DPS will be higher than with haste.

-Haste increases the mana regeneration so that everything remains the same way but faster, I mean, if you can cast AB 15 times in 30 seconds in which mana has regenerated arround 50%, when your haste level allows you to cast the same 15 AB in 20 seconds, mana will have regenerated also 50%.

-Spirit increases mana regeneration in combat, about 40-50% more than haste. Not a main stat but, keeping in mind that intellect does not increase mana pool anymore, perhaps it might be helpful for purple gemming when you have reached your hit cap.

And now the discussion. Rotation for me goes like this:

-Keep Nether tempest / Living bomb / Frost bomb alive
-AB spam: Spam Arcane Blast until you have 6 arcane charges. Use 1 arcane missiles during AB spam only if you have acumulated two of them, and have three or more arcane charges.
-Use all the arcane missiles you have when you reach 6 arcane charges.
-Use arcane barrage.
-If mana is under 85% when starting a rotation, use the former steps with 5 or 4 arcane charges instead of 6 or use a mana gem to mantain mastery bonus high.

Let me explain:
During the AB 1, 2, and 3 mana regenerates up to 100% (or almost). It's a waste to use the missiles here, as damage is still to low and they won't help regenerating mana. after No.3 mana won't reach 100%, so you can use arcane missiles to let it regenerate, but keep at least 1 for the end, because AM damage is bigger than AB, and will increase your DPS, and also will regenerate mana for the final strike. If you have two of them in this moment, and mana reaches 100% you'll achieve maximum rotation damage.

Please, try and tell me what you think.

EDIT:

Note that Nether tempest / Living bomb / Frost bomb also procs arcane missiles, so if possible, try to use it just before Arcane barrage and if it procs AM, use them and then release Arcane barrage.

They boosted the mana regen in combat up by dubble it but still that's not enough to get spamming AB in my PoV. The only thing you can do is try it with the trinket from sinestra (the one that reduces base mana cost by a little bit) but i don't have it on my mage so can't test it out badly enough

To reflect what you said on Arcane Missiles, I added a section in the guide to explain why people should delay casting them until they are about to drop their charges with Arcane Barrage. That said, I think that when you have two procs of Arcane Missiles, you should use one of them, so that the next proc does not go to waste (this is basically the only thing on which I'm slightly disagreeing with you here )

Right, that's what I tried to say, but perhaps I didn't express myself correctly. If you have 2 procs, you should use one, but I think that it is more profitable to use when having 3 or more arcane charges, so that it helps to regenerate mana (mana in AB 1, 2 & 3 regenerates up to 100% or almost) and also damage is higher.
To be concrete, you should use AM with 3 or 4 charges if you have enough mana but not 5, so that proc 2 may still recharge (try playing arround with magic bomb also to trigger procs), but this is only my opinion and the way I like it.
If you need to regenerate mana then you may want to use both procs on charge 4 & 5 so you can fire Arcane Barrage with 6 (or perhaps earlier). Rotations like this end with a little more mana than they started.

About Spirit, sorry, It does NOT regenerate mana in combat. Perhaps I was looking at the non combat statistic when I checked it the other day. I'll edit the former post so that no one confuses. Thanks!

Given the bump in manna regen would you no longer recomend avoiding arcane until lvl 90? I hope this would be the case, as it seems hard to imagin how arcane will be doing much better at lvl 90 than it is now (relative to fire and frost i mean). This is because, in manna regen terms, the 100% buff to regen that we get now (which will scale down by 20% every level over 85 to and return to the normal rate at lvl 90) is equivelent to having continious uptime in the lvl 90 talant rune of power. Please correct me if I am mistaking, but unless another lvl 90 talant ends up being better for arcane's manna regen (than the verry hard to achive 100% uptime in RoP) it would seem that our manna regen is the best it will ever be (particularly because atm we retain evocate, while also getting RoP's regen)