Arcane Mage on Garrosh movement struggles.

[Greenroul]

Our Arcane mage usually does excellent on his dps. He is very knowledgeable on his class. But he is struggling mightily on Garrosh. He says the constant movement is killing his dps. Any suggestions or tips for him on Garrosh would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[schwarzkopf]

Two quick questions:
1. Is he RoP or Evo for the fight ?
2. If it is RoP - is it cast times, or RoP management that is the problem ?

PS: Disclosure - I've not done Garrosh.

[Greenroul]

Here is a link to his armory..... http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...awain/advanced

He has Rune of Power. I am not a mage, but cast time seems to be the problem. Thanks.

[voltaa]

Just wondering a few things

1. 10m or 25m

2. WHICH movements is he struggling on? Is it movement that isn't needed that can be fixed with more knowledgeable tanking?

3. Do you have a recording or stream of attempts (any perspective doesn't matter if it's your mages PoV)

Garrosh is one of those fights that with a solid strat and knowledge of the encounter, you can cut down almost all of the movement save for a select group that needs to move weapons out of the raid (which arcane shouldn't be doing).

[schwarzkopf]

He has Rune of Power. I am not a mage, but cast time seems to be the problem. Thanks.

Can I suggest he try two things (together and/or separately) and see what happens:
1. Use Frost armour to get a haste buff to see if that is enough to get things cast?
2. Use Evocation (temporarily) to see if his DPS is higher with evocation ?

I know on Thok I get pretty equal results as arcane mage using RoP and Evocation.

[Henzington]

At least for me I usually handle the engineers even as arcane sure it isn't optimal but with double blink and a lock portal you can reduce how much you have to move. The big key is having both runes and simply using blink to go into melee for mc then back out for the weapon.

[Zarandra]

If you have atleast 3 ranged (2 healers and 1 other movement class like a hunter) put them in charge of desacrate placement. you only need 3 (7 on 25) to do it and the mage can sit on the boss and never ever have to move expect for whirling unless you stack on top of garrosh or for intermissions

[Pyromelter]

Mastamage posted a video of him doing Garrosh Heroic as arcane on the video page. I'd suggest linking your guildie to the video, it gives a very clear strategy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoTpu09LxRU

..and while heroic does add some mechanics, they carry over well to normal garrosh.

You, as a guild/raid team, will have to adapt to the limitations of him as arcane. In the video I linked, the mage is in melee as much as possible, so you have to treat your guildie basically as another melee (meaning, he cannot be on the siegeworkers either).

If this is not an acceptable strategy for your group, he will have to switch to fire - end of story.

He also needs to have all expertise/mastery (keen) gems, not int/mastery (artful), right now he has 6 keen and 7 artful, it should be 13 keen.

[Deleted]

Mastamage posted a video of him doing Garrosh Heroic as arcane on the video page. I'd suggest linking your guildie to the video, it gives a very clear strategy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoTpu09LxRU

..and while heroic does add some mechanics, they carry over well to normal garrosh.

You, as a guild/raid team, will have to adapt to the limitations of him as arcane. In the video I linked, the mage is in melee as much as possible, so you have to treat your guildie basically as another melee (meaning, he cannot be on the siegeworkers either).

If this is not an acceptable strategy for your group, he will have to switch to fire - end of story.

He also needs to have all expertise/mastery (keen) gems, not int/mastery (artful), right now he has 6 keen and 7 artful, it should be 13 keen.

a) He doesn't "need" to have Keen Vermilion Onyx; he should only be swapping to Keen if he can make full use of the extra secondary stats.
- Side note, he should be gemming consistently, either go for all-Keen (if the situation is as above) or all Artful.
b) Both of his specs are Arcane, meaning it's entirely his choice to be playing it; as such it should be him adapting to the needs of the raid, not the other way around.

However, OT: he's running Presence of Mind as Arcane; this shouldn't be the case. He should be taking either Ice Floes or Blazing Speed. Personally I prefer Ice Floes for Arcane on Garrosh, but that's for Heroic, on Normal I got by just fine with Blazing Speed; but it's a preference thing and it's something he should get used to running, they'll alllow for extra mobility.
As well as this, once you get used to Garrosh as an entire fight, it becomes easier to think about where you have to move and when, and at what points you can get away with little/no movement, so forth. Just give him some time and try not to pressure him too much.

[Deleted]

If it is all about having to recast rune because he hast to move... I got 2 suggestions... (I myself play arcane currently 11 HC down, so trust me eventhough at first it sounds stange)

1. Don't use presence of Mind.... Using Ice Flows allows you to cast a rune to where you move or use Balzing Speed to reduce travel times..... if he/she can handle these spells it will improve the damage done...

OR
2. Just specc incanters ward instead of Rune.... But NEVER activate the shield.... The passive effect of IW is nearly as good as standing in the Rune but you can move free! And in addition you get an Evocation.... he/she could use it for a burst phase or glyphed might make your heals the whirlwind-ability a bit easier.... selfheal ftw ^^

I really reccomend option 2. For sure with perfect strategy you will pull more damage with rune.... but it is such an improvement of movementfreedom.... I admit I even did Spoils and Thok HC first killst with IW
And I use it on all fight we got on farm... QoL/Fun > DPS if the boss is killed ^^
I'd say Incanters Ward is a really underestimated talent, especially if you don't have to pull the max out of your char...

[Xkiller9000]

Just a heads up, my advice is coming from the xp i have on my blood dk, and the xp i have playing my mage through flex.

Especially with his legendary, fire will do 10x better on Garrosh than arcane for frost, simple because of the mobility and spreading dots to adds in P1. As for his spec, RoP is terrible because youre constantly moving between 3 locations, 4 if hes doing the engineer in P1 and always moving during the intermission, as for P3 again, moving, RoP is no good on garrosh, tell him to go with Invocation.

If he stays arcane get Ice Flows, if he goes fire get PoM

[Greenroul]

Thanks for all the tips and help. Our Mage read all the posts and is very excited about Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes.

[delk]

He also needs to have all expertise/mastery (keen) gems, not int/mastery (artful), right now he has 6 keen and 7 artful, it should be 13 keen.

This doesn't make any sense. That would put him at 5464 hit rating when reforging hit off every single item when he only needs 4760 (since he's a human with a sword).

a) He doesn't "need" to have Keen Vermilion Onyx; he should only be swapping to Keen if he can make full use of the extra secondary stats.
- Side note, he should be gemming consistently, either go for all-Keen (if the situation is as above) or all Artful.

This doesn't make any sense either. It's better to gem for expertise when you reasonably can, and int otherwise. You don't have to wait until you can swap every single gem over to expertise instead of int in order to make the switch.


Gemming expertise accomplishes the following:

Step 1, you swap the gem from int/mastery to expertise/mastery:
+160 hit
-80 int

Step 2, you reforge ~160 hit per gem you swapped to your second favorite secondary stat (since you likely either have or are reforging to your favorite secondary stat already):
-80 int
+160 haste

The net result is you trade 80 int for 160 of your second favorite secondary stat. But your gear has to have some hit on it to reforge out of, or some hit that you're reforging to to unreforge. The trade is ALWAYS good, even in small amounts, as long as your second favorite secondary stat is worth more than half of int. You sometimes won't be able to gem pure exp/mastery gems though since you only need so much hit and your gear is bound to have some hit on it.

[Pyromelter]

This doesn't make any sense. That would put him at 5464 hit rating when reforging hit off every single item when he only needs 4760 (since he's a human with a sword).

My mistake, I wasn't running him through AMR or any optimization, generally speaking since people aren't using wushoolay's anymore, I tend to think that over hit capping isn't as much of an issue - that would mean his gemming is correct.

- - - Updated - - -

a) He doesn't "need" to have Keen Vermilion Onyx; he should only be swapping to Keen if he can make full use of the extra secondary stats.
- Side note, he should be gemming consistently, either go for all-Keen (if the situation is as above) or all Artful.
b) Both of his specs are Arcane, meaning it's entirely his choice to be playing it; as such it should be him adapting to the needs of the raid, not the other way around.

However, OT: he's running Presence of Mind as Arcane; this shouldn't be the case. He should be taking either Ice Floes or Blazing Speed. Personally I prefer Ice Floes for Arcane on Garrosh, but that's for Heroic, on Normal I got by just fine with Blazing Speed; but it's a preference thing and it's something he should get used to running, they'll alllow for extra mobility.
As well as this, once you get used to Garrosh as an entire fight, it becomes easier to think about where you have to move and when, and at what points you can get away with little/no movement, so forth. Just give him some time and try not to pressure him too much.

Yeah my mistake, didn't realize that would put him over the cap with reforges.

But at the previous poster stated, mixing keen and artful is the correct gemming strategy.

Regarding your point in B - false, IMO. Anyone accepting an arcane mage into their raid must know that RoP is a mechanic that the raid will have to deal with, not just the mage. If a guild wants to put you on "faraway add" duty, then they should ask you to go fire or frost.

The video I linked should be proof enough that positioning strategy for the arcane mage is different from any general "ranged or healers."

[Deleted]

-snip-

Fair enough regarding Point A. Personally I prefer to gem consistently but that's just my opinion I guess, honestly the DPS difference you're talking about is so minimal it's actually almost not even worth it.

Point B - Yes OK the raid can make exceptions, but ultimately it's his choice as to what spec he plays, I raided this entire tier in a Top 10 guild as Arcane; you think they'll treat me differently than the other Mages just because I'm Arcane? No, of course not, it's a selfish attitude to say "I'm Arcane, play around me", it's a TEAM attitude to adapt your playstyle to that which the raid needs, especially if you're going to lock yourself to a spec. It's far from impossible to do any duties on any boss this entire tier as Arcane provided you go for the right playstyle.

I don't position myself much differently than other Ranged or Healers would on any fight, I just adapt my playstyle to fit around it.

[Pyromelter]

I don't position myself much differently than other Ranged or Healers would on any fight, I just adapt my playstyle to fit around it.

I can only go by what I've seen, and to me it's fair criticism that RoP (not necessarily arcane, but the requirement of RoP) requires extra strategizing on part of both the mage and the raid.

Do you have a vid of yourself on Garrosh? I'd be curious to see the difference between you and Minimage. Arcane always looks different from frost and fire when I see it played - not to mention all the reports on here like "lol adds? I just stand in the corner and nuke tortos" kind of stuff.

Edit: I know you haven't written anything like that, but many other arcane mages have said stuff like that throughout this expac (and I honestly don't know anyone in-game who plays arcane to tell me different).

[Deleted]

I can only go by what I've seen, and to me it's fair criticism that RoP (not necessarily arcane, but the requirement of RoP) requires extra strategizing on part of both the mage and the raid.

Do you have a vid of yourself on Garrosh? I'd be curious to see the difference between you and Minimage. Arcane always looks different from frost and fire when I see it played - not to mention all the reports on here like "lol adds? I just stand in the corner and nuke tortos" kind of stuff.

Edit: I know you haven't written anything like that, but many other arcane mages have said stuff like that throughout this expac (and I honestly don't know anyone in-game who plays arcane to tell me different).

I don't currently have one, no, but I'll be looking into getting one sorted soon enough.

Does Arcane require extra thought/strategies concerning movement compared to the other two specs? Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean that movement completely and utterly gimps it. It hurts, sure, but if you can do enough forward thinking it's perfectly fine.
I play/played Arcane as a progression spec for almost the entirety of the last two tiers, it's gotten me sat out on some fights (namely Siegecrafter) due to lacking overall DPS-mobility compared to Fire, but then again it's also come in strong when outright burst was needed, especially in AoE situations. Regarding Tortos, personally I found that as an Arcane Mage, Nether Tempest worked like a dream there even if you sacrificed some boss DPS. Not to mention Arcane AoE was decent on the bats, especially as CoC was an extra slow.

People who think of Arcane as this spec who can't deal with mechanics or literally just want to sit there and turret kinda frustrate me, sure it's limited somewhat by movement but IMO that just makes it more fun to optimise how to play it well on each encounter.

[Army Dreamer]

Are you sure it is about movement? Maybe it's just that other classes do a lot of cleaving damage om mobs.

[Deleted]

he can try fire movement is arcane killer and i don't see any reason to play arcane after t15 4set nerf on progress - DON'T BELIEVE TO SIMCRAFT it's total crap on MoP

[Deleted]

he can try fire movement is arcane killer and i don't see any reason to play arcane after t15 4set nerf on progress - DON'T BELIEVE TO SIMCRAFT it's total crap on MoP

Brainless posts with 0 evidence to back them up are really helpful...