Arcane Mage PvE Guide

[Shangalar]

So I just finished writing a giant post on Tier gear and VP gear and mastery and stuff and accidentally deleted it and now I'm going to sleep at 4:20 AM frustrated lol.

The short version of the post is: Legs will be off-set for us, we'll be aiming for some Mastery legs if there are any which drop in the raid.

Our Shado-Pan Assault item purchases will most likely be focused on Mastery gear which isn't for the same slots as the set items = Necklace and Neutral, Bracers at Friendly (+ Ring if there aren't multiple raid rings), Cloak at Honored, Belt at Revered.

It would seem that we have it cheap.

Remember, this is all not counting raid drops.

[Deleted]

You should dl the addon "Lazarus". Keep tracks of everything you write and you can get anything saved and backed up if you accidentally delete it all.

happened to me a few times, now, its lazarus to the rescue !

Chrome : https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...mgopdkppkifgno

Firefox : https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefo...form-recovery/

[Deleted]

Yeah what eihwaz said, or just use Word or any program of the sorts when doing big posts auto saves ftw

[Deleted]

Last time I checked Blatty was going Frost, is Arcane still the best spec right now in 5.2?

[jtmzac]

Last time I checked Blatty was going Frost, is Arcane still the best spec right now in 5.2?

5.2 pve specs are Fire>Arcane>Frost right now on the ptr.

[aycheff]

Last time I checked Blatty was going Frost, is Arcane still the best spec right now in 5.2?

He's going fire.

I'm still conflicted as to what I want to do for 5.2 The RNG of Fire does not appeal to me, the stat capping on Frost sucks, and Arcane is just ds;ffl;ks.

[Shangalar]

What RNG of fire? After item level 500 there is no more RNG.

[aycheff]

Maybe then I guess I just don't like fire :P

[Deleted]

What RNG of fire? After item level 500 there is no more RNG.

RNG will always be present in Fire until we can hit crit softcap. Of course, Blizzard will never let that happen :P

[Shangalar]

I know what you are saying, but getting one crit when you have a 40% and more crit chance is hardly RNG heavy anymore. I even dare to say that as far as RNG dependency goes, frost is currently highest almost tied with arcane and then fire is lower.

But we digress from this thread. I will update the guide as soon as I have some more definitive PTR data, but I don't see a lot of people playing arcane in the current version of 5.2.

[zomgDPS]

Who knows. If zomgDPS acts cool and doesn't get banned again on our forums, he'll probably fill us in on a lot of testing results he keeps doing on the PTR.

Not really holding my breath on that one :S is there not anyone else also testing it out?

Thanks for the vote of confidence voltaa, I <3 you too.


@shangs:
Your guide for the most part is fine for now Shangs. It mostly covers higher level concepts anyway, and those are not going to change much (e.g. whats this glyph do, whats this talent do, etc etc).

You might want to nuke the trinkets section and put up the new trinket results (when they are out), and (obviously) update the spell descriptions with the 4 stack change.


But other than that, mostly everything else should still hold.



Arcane is not dying in 5.2, so the rest of you can calm your tits. Most of you will, however, still go fire but for those diehard Arcanists out there, you might actually be able to pull 5.2 off, given enough 'skill'.

That being said, Invocation Arcane might indeed be 'straight up dead'. It just cannot compete with RoP Mastery (the DPS delta is too high).


This past few days, however, I have been testing my 'live' arcane build. This mage of mine has always been and will always be a 'traditionalist' Arcanist, i.e. with IW. I am doing heavy testing with IW right now and there are some good results. For sheer throughput though, most Arcanists might have to go RoP. I am just waiting on SimC to get its latest build out and we can have confirmation.

The testing thread did help, especially in finding the correct action lists to use for SimC. I think I have a fairly good idea on how the 3 different Arcane's will play out. I'll run them through SimC when I get a chance.

[Deleted]

-snip-

OK, when you say RoP Mastery I assume you mean the "original" intended design of Arcane, whereby it's AB to 4 stacks, Missiles (if any), Barrage off, rinse repeat?

Also, with recent changes, possible Arcane will still be good come 5.2 release? As someone who would typically go for the more optimal spec I'm currently collecting gear for Fire, but w/ CM change (once again) and reverting the latest set of Arc nerfs, wondering if Arcane would still be fine to ENTER the patch with. With gear I think it's fair to say Fire will pull ahead.

[Deleted]

Pople they tweaked us a bit again Go to the latest PTR notes wich will be applied soon . Have a look at mmo first page.\
Arcane Missiles damage and SP scaling increased by 2%.

Arcane

Arcane Blast damage and SP scaling increased by 3%.
Arcane Missiles damage and SP scaling increased by 2%

[zomgDPS]

OK, when you say RoP Mastery I assume you mean the "original" intended design of Arcane, whereby it's AB to 4 stacks, Missiles (if any), Barrage off, rinse repeat?

Correct. ABx4 AM (x2) ABr. Very cyclic.

Also, with recent changes, possible Arcane will still be good come 5.2 release? As someone who would typically go for the more optimal spec I'm currently collecting gear for Fire, but w/ CM change (once again) and reverting the latest set of Arc nerfs, wondering if Arcane would still be fine to ENTER the patch with. With gear I think it's fair to say Fire will pull ahead.

At this point, they will have no choice. People will enter 5.2 with whatever works for them right now, gear wise. If you have a lot of mastery gear, go Arcane and start gearing up crit.
If you are haste heavy, go frost (Arcane - haste - Invocation is somewhat 'dead'. For Arcane, it really becomes go RoP or go home).
If you are already heavy crit, go Fire and enjoy the ride.

The rollercoaster of balance is obviously not over yet.
The recent nerf to Fire has thrown the numbers out whack. Previously however, Fire was very leading (which is prob why they nerfed it).

[Deleted]

Correct. ABx4 AM (x2) ABr. Very cyclic.

Cheers.

At this point, they will have no choice. People will enter 5.2 with whatever works for them right now, gear wise. If you have a lot of mastery gear, go Arcane and start gearing up crit.
If you are haste heavy, go frost (Arcane - haste - Invocation is somewhat 'dead'. For Arcane, it really becomes go RoP or go home).
If you are already heavy crit, go Fire and enjoy the ride.

The rollercoaster of balance is obviously not over yet.
The recent nerf to Fire has thrown the numbers out whack. Previously however, Fire was very leading (which is prob why they nerfed it).

I have enough gear to go either Fire or Arcane. Arcane I've gone Haste to a cap (Troll and NT breakpoint), then Mastery. I have no fucking clue what I'm going to do

[voltaa]

Thanks for the vote of confidence voltaa, I <3 you too.

sryy bb, you know how the drill goes around here, someone says something dumb/you don't agree with, rinse repeat :P

also, am I the only one who saved crit gear for when I was hoping fire would get un nerfed? time to patch together those pieces with new drops

[Deleted]

sryy bb, you know how the drill goes around here, someone says something dumb/you don't agree with, rinse repeat :P

also, am I the only one who saved crit gear for when I was hoping fire would get un nerfed? time to patch together those pieces with new drops

I would have done if I didn't get banned >.>
Fire will (almost) always be viable as time passes due to gear scaling.

[Deleted]

Still talking 5.1 here.

I am using a haste/invocation build.

My question is what scale factors people are using for this spec. I know it won't fit excatly for me, but anything that can give me a guideline will be very helpful. I'm not so good with SimCraft, so any numbers you can give me would be very helpfull.

I'm at about ilvl 500.

[Deleted]

You're talking about stats weights right ?

Just go to AMRobot, the build here is mastery focused, just switch the stats weights of both and you're good to go

[Deleted]

You're talking about stats weights right ?

Just go to AMRobot, the build here is mastery focused, just switch the stats weights of both and you're good to go

That's actuelly excatly what I did, just hoped to get closer with some tested numbers.