Arcane Mage PvE Guide

[Shangalar]

When you have BiS Normal trinkets, a good Normal weapon, full Normal T15 4-set bonus and loooooaaaads of Mastery. I miss only the set bonus. Got nearly 19k Mastery fully buffed.

[mrgreenthump]

When you have BiS Normal trinkets, a good Normal weapon, full Normal T15 4-set bonus and loooooaaaads of Mastery. I miss only the set bonus. Got nearly 19k Mastery fully buffed.

I haven't paid a lot of attenchion for arcane yet as I got no mastery items at all atm, but I thought arcane would go for the 12684 haste point and then all out mastery atm?

[Shangalar]

I'm not really sure about this, because of my high focus on mastery I'm struggling to get to 6414 without losing on any amount of Mastery. I'll see about it these days, but it honestly smells like too big of a sacrifice.

[Vaelkder]

Hi everyone,

I spent the last two days reading this topic line, and it gives me hope that I might be able to go back to Arcane, which is my first love (hoping that Blizzard pulls it's collective head out of some collective whatnots and actually makes the CLASS truly viable and competitive again!).

I'm on US Sargeras, Guild SLOW MOTION and my toon is VAELKER, for those who want to Armory, use Wow-Heroes dot com, World of Logs, etc.

I was asked to change race from Night Elf to Worgen, for the Crit enhancement, and to change Spec from Arcane to Fire, to be a contributing member of the 25-man raid team (we just went 12/12 Normal for ToT last night, with a lot of 10-man successes on Lei Shen previously).

For the Tier 15 Gear, I have the LFR Helm and the Normal Shoulders, Gloves and Legs, with the Thunderforged Robes of Mutagenic Blood. If I can ever get the Normal Chest, I would swap that out and use the 522 Flamecaster's Burning Crown in my bags.

Now.... If I went back to Arcane Spec, right now with only my current gear, trading out my Shimmershell Cape for the Shadowspike Cloak in my bags, reforge and re-gem, my theoretical numbers are:

Average ilvl 521
Intellect 20,794
Mastery 67.26% (9,377)
Spell Power 32,681
Spell Hit 14.98% (5,094)
Spell Crit 21.80% (5,809 -- I think that, being a Worgen, it would go to 22.80%, due to the racial buff)
Spell Haste 17.59% (5,094)

With these numbers, using Rune of Power and Mage Armour (I know, I know, but I'm still a noob and I will have to learn how to use Incanter's Ward and remember to switch over to Frost Armour), I was wondering what the opinion of everyone was, regarding my being viable in a raid encounter and being a contributing member of the raid team.

Thanks to all in advance!

[Blivy]

When you have BiS Normal trinkets, a good Normal weapon, full Normal T15 4-set bonus and loooooaaaads of Mastery. I miss only the set bonus. Got nearly 19k Mastery fully buffed.

This just doesnt sit well with me. Im not saying what you say is incorrect. But i ran Incanters ward with a fire gemmed/Reforge and did fine. No 4 set either.

Altho when i do get 4 set i will of course be testing what you say, for a comparison.

[jccallah]

I was wondering if it was viable to run arcane with frost gear. My frost gear is int gemmed not haste gemmed. I have noticed a couple mages (one in my guild) running strongly haste gemmed dual specs with the same gear. I absolutely hate fire so just wondering if arcane was viable with a int gemmed char because I might just try it out for fun in some lfr. If not I will just stick with frost for the time being.

[Deleted]

I was wondering if it was viable to run arcane with frost gear. My frost gear is int gemmed not haste gemmed. I have noticed a couple mages (one in my guild) running strongly haste gemmed dual specs with the same gear. I absolutely hate fire so just wondering if arcane was viable with a int gemmed char because I might just try it out for fun in some lfr. If not I will just stick with frost for the time being.

For Singletarget Haste-stack works just as good as Mastery-stack. If you have 2x PPM trinkets + Legendary Meta it's even better than Mastery

[Tebla]

For Singletarget Haste-stack works just as good as Mastery-stack. If you have 2x PPM trinkets + Legendary Meta it's even better than Mastery

Would you roll with ROP or Invo in that case?

[Deleted]

Would you roll with ROP or Invo in that case?

RoP is ideal, but can ofc only be used if the fight lets you. If it doesn't, Invocation or Incanter's Ward are both fine aswell.

[biermanjason]

would like to see some numbers that back up haste build being better than mastery build.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kmonkey/simple

[Zavri]

would like to see some numbers that back up haste build being better than mastery build.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...kmonkey/simple

You won't see any because there aren't any true single target fights this tier outside of Jin'rokth.

[Deleted]

It depends on what numbers you are looking for. Its hard to compare theoretic patchwork-fights to actual fights, but you can get alot of numbers and information by looking at and analysing Logs.

For me, I allways get better result going full haste on singletarget fights, but it might just be because it fits the way I play alot better (whatever that means).

[Zavri]

Simcraft has been favoring haste, and using full haste setup with RoP for patchwerk. Seems like you would gradually get lower and lower on mana with full haste though using RoP. Would the 2m mana gems be enough to offset that?

[Deleted]

Simcraft has been favoring haste, and using full haste setup with RoP for patchwerk. Seems like you would gradually get lower and lower on mana with full haste though using RoP. Would the 2m mana gems be enough to offset that?

Haste increases mana regen overall; it's the reason why Haste Arcane w/ RoP worked in 5.1

Also, due to increased proc rate on Meta, it's even more Haste and more time spent under BL conditions, meaning more time with steroids and thus higher DPS.

Personally I'm still rolling Mastery Arcane. The second even 2 targets come into it, it instantly pulls ahead.

[Soulstrike]

Haste increases mana regen overall; it's the reason why Haste Arcane w/ RoP worked in 5.1

Also, due to increased proc rate on Meta, it's even more Haste and more time spent under BL conditions, meaning more time with steroids and thus higher DPS.

Personally I'm still rolling Mastery Arcane. The second even 2 targets come into it, it instantly pulls ahead.

dont forget more haste also increase the proc rate of these new PPM trinkets

[Zavri]

I went full haste for Iron Qon heroic attempts. The rotation system feels "better" with the frequent meta procs. The only problem is outside of 1 target fights mastery pulls ahead very quickly. And there really is no point in fully reforging / regemming / enchanting for a single target fight outside of Ra-Den, since mastery is not far behind full haste for 1 target fights. Via Simcraft full mastery vs haste for 1 target fights ( patchwerk ) is only a difference of 1700 dps on average via 25k iterations.

[Blivy]

Are you suggesting a Full Mastery Reforge/Gem Invo is the way to go, out of all the possible Invo builds? I have no time what so ever for ROP.

[Deleted]

Are you suggesting a Full Mastery Reforge/Gem Invo is the way to go, out of all the possible Invo builds? I have no time what so ever for ROP.

No, you really want to look at ROP, or alternatively IW. Invocation with a mastery build will simply not produce the numbers to be competitive

[Zavri]

Mastery with RoP and reforging for haste tick's on NT is the way to go. If you don't have the ability to cater boss specific roles to allow you to turret as much as possible and take advantage of arcane's strengths, then you might as well just go Fire or Frost, because you won't do very well.

I messed around with Invocation and IW, RoP beats the shit out of both options most of the time. The only time I would consider using anything outside of RoP is on Durumu heroic.

[jtmzac]

I've been trying arcane a bit since I was bored. I tried using mastery gemming and reforging and was 12k mastery without mage armor or the mastery buff and found the results pretty average.

I also tried mastery reforging using my haste gemming from frost and with 9k haste and 7.5k mastery actually got better results.

Overall I'll be sticking with frost as even compensating for my lack of experience with arcane I just can't see it outperforming frost at normal (522) ilvls except when there's a fair bit of multi-dotting e.g. council.