Frost Mage DPS... Terribly low for ilvl...

[EvilSniperXV]

EDIT: Sorry my title is Frost mage... out of old habits from playing frost for a year. I'M ACTUALLY ARCANE. Sorry. Can't change the title for some reason?

Hey ladies and gents, I'm looking for some help. I'm the raid team leader of one of my 3 teams in my guild. When i'm with my team, I do absolutely terrible dps for a 663 ilvl... and when I'm pugging, it's slightly better at around 21-23k.. But I need help with my own team. Unfortunately MMOChamp won't let me post links, so if y'all would be so kind as to search for me on Warcraft logs...

Warcraftlogs > Vis Vires [Stormrage - Alliance] > Charts listed for this weekend (Thurs - Sat) > BUCCIMAGE ... Please ladies and gents, I'm desperate for some help. Like I said I'm 663, and am terribly low.

Character is Buccimage, and ANY help is appreciated. Thank you.

Here is my rotation!

Rune of Power
Arcane Blast ty'll Arcane Missiles procs for 3 charges
Arcane Missiles for all 3 charges
Arcane Barrage
Two Supernovas
Rune of Power every now and then on a single target (when it pops for multiple targets)

And then rotating cooldowns of:
Arcane Power, Alter Time, and Presence of Mind. When I use presence of mind it's arcane for the spell I use.

[flinchy]

what's your rotation?

[EvilSniperXV]

Rune of Power
Arcane Blast ty'll Arcane Missiles procs for 3 charges
Arcane Missiles for all 3 charges
Arcane Barrage
Two Supernovas
Rune of Power every now and then on a single target (when it pops for multiple targets)

And then rotating cooldowns of:
Arcane Power, Alter Time, and Presence of Mind. When I use presence of mind it's arcane for the spell I use.

[MerinPally]

Rune of Power
Arcane Blast ty'll Arcane Missiles procs for 3 charges
Arcane Missiles for all 3 charges
Arcane Barrage
Two Supernovas
Rune of Power every now and then on a single target (when it pops for multiple targets)

And then rotating cooldowns of:
Arcane Power, Alter Time, and Presence of Mind. When I use presence of mind it's arcane for the spell I use.

This rotation sounds incredibly off and explains a lot.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

Here's your log, I was looking at the Butcher heroic kill. Here's your armory too.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...image/advanced

I actually out dpsed you as frost in 620 ilvl the other day and I have a log to prove it. Please don't take that as a "hurr durr u suck" thing but rather as an indication we're looking at a rather fundamental flaw somewhere in your arcane that I'm going to try and help, as I too am learning mage currently! If I can help someone else then maybe I can help myself, notice problems in my own play of which I'm sure there are many.

First thing I notice is that you are specced Prismatic Crystal but you didn't use it once on a 5:20 fight? How come? With speccing Supernova the burst damage you get is truly insane and you can get some truly fantastic numbers. You had the Rune of Power buff up for 87% of the fight which sounds pretty good to me but then I'm no expert, so that's a good start. I imagine with the knockbacks that it's not too bad.

Arcane has a burst phase and a conservation phase, it sounds like you're sitting in conservation essentially the entire fight as you only cast evocate twice and one of those was almost negligible, so we'll go for once. That means your mana never really got low (which is bad, as it means you never burst - but your rotation would suggest you went below 80% on mana for a while which means your mastery means you're doing less damage than you should be hence suboptimal). Your general gearing looks pretty good though, I'm incredibly jealous of some of those items.

I'd recommend reading the guide on this forum but the general gist of the rotation is you get to 4xAB stacks and then fire off missiles and once all missiles are gone, hit barrage. Repeat. It's that simple, it doesn't really matter if you have 0 stacks or 3 stacks of missiles, just get them gone and barrage. The burst phase involves spamming AB and when you're at 4 stacks, hit missiles every time it procs. Do not use Barrage yet. Keep spamming AB and using missile procs as soon as you get them and keep going with AB until you hit 50% mana at which point, Evocate, and in 2 ticks you'll be at 100% mana again. Then, go back to the first little rotation.

Supernova and Prismatic Crystal complicate things a bit more, you want to use 2x Supernova on each Crystal if possible. The timing works out that you can use 1 Supernova between each crystal and then 2 on the crystal itself. That's what I've been doing, I think it might be suboptimal though as whenever you're sitting at 2 stacks you're losing dps, so hopefully someone else can clarify. You can use your Presence of Mind to get an extra AB during the burst phase (preferably on the crystal I think, burst phase is what you go into starting with the crystal, using Arcane Power too) and you use your Arcane Power at this time too.

Alter Time only does health as far as I know so every GCD you spend on that is one you're not spending on Arcane Blast and thus a dps loss. If your dps is struggling then it's probably not a stretch to say you aren't using Alter Time optimally either, so don't use it. Go for Flameglow, it works, it's reliable, and it requires no GCD losses.

Hopefully someone else can provide some more information than I can, but good luck on improving.

Edit: Just a thought, are you running on Butcher? As that would make things different. I mean, you're still doing low numbers but would explain why they're that low. I only just thought of that. If you are running on Butcher, you should probably go for Ice Floes so that you don't have to lose casts.

[EvilSniperXV]

Thank you for your suggestions. Yes I and the priest are the ones swapping on the stacks. So that's why I imagine I'm a litlte lower on Butcher considering it's just a DPS race. But thank you for helping me out. I'll give those changes a shot!

[Torian kel]

I will hope this is a troll post, otherwise it's very sad.

First of all, your gear. Arcane is ill suited at low ilvls, I'd strongly recommend you stay frost until later gear levels.

You have a strength cape ... I can't even start imagining why. You also have low level enchantments, even on your legendary ring, and no enchant at all on your staff, even the low level ones...

Talent wise : You pick what I assume you've seen other mages pick, but you don't use them. No crystal? Really? Fucks sake. You should also have casted 12-13 SN, yet you only cast 9. Moreover, you have incredibly low missile damage, meaning you cast missile when it procs and not at 4 charges; and you also melee the boss? Really?
Alter time isn't very good, except maybe on Tectus and possibly M ko'rag, otherwise you're always better off having ice barrier. And AT now only restores position and health, read your damn tooltips .

You also don't have any glyphs, I mean, come on, try the bare minimum at least Jesus christ ...

Rotation wise :

Ok, let's assume I didn't read anything because that's just awful.

While standing in RoP, your rotation should be : Burning on PC, then conservative until cooldowns. Burning goes => Ab*4, cooldowns, PC, double SN, spam AB til the last second, then PoM AB. Continue spamming AB and using AM when proc until you're about ~45% mana, then evocate. While you're at full mana, do the simple AB*4, all missile procs, barrage, repeat, nothing more easier.

Also, 87% RoP usage on Butcher is terrible. With 8 yard range, even while switching, you should never be out of double rop range, lower than 99% is strange.


I can't stress enough how switching to frost and learning how to play would improve your dps, arcane is annoying to use when learning new fights and doesn't work well at low ilvls.

[flinchy]

oh yeah arcane not frost, no

your dps will suck on a movement fight (imp, tectus)

your ilvl is kinda too low ish to have arcane better than frost anyway.

unless you prefer arcane, i really suggest frost... personally am 672ilvl and do 30K+ on every flex fight.

[MerinPally]

I honestly didn't even notice the strength cloak. I blame the fact that it was 7am and I'd stayed up all night watching IEM Taipei (began at 3am for me) and I was rekt.

oh yeah arcane not frost, no

your dps will suck on a movement fight (imp, tectus)

your ilvl is kinda too low ish to have arcane better than frost anyway.

unless you prefer arcane, i really suggest frost... personally am 672ilvl and do 30K+ on every flex fight.

Seems like a good place to ask as it's for the benefit of both myself and OP - at roughly what ilvl would you say that Arcane overtakes Frost? Reason I ask is that on the training dummy (which I understand inflates arcanes numbers) I'm pulling a good 1-2k dps more as Arcane than I am Frost, and I'm only 641 ilvl now (will probably go up to 643 as I'm about to replace a green with a crafted item).

Despite being undergeared I think I'm going to begin BRF on my mage rather than paladin in order to learn the fights as a ranged first as it's more help to the guild, so just wondering.

Edit: Ok yeah maybe it's not that much of a difference, just retested it. But my original question remains, wondering if there's a rough level at which one overtakes the other or should I just sim it? Thanks

[EvilSniperXV]

I will hope this is a troll post, otherwise it's very sad.

First of all, your gear. Arcane is ill suited at low ilvls, I'd strongly recommend you stay frost until later gear levels.

You have a strength cape ... I can't even start imagining why. You also have low level enchantments, even on your legendary ring, and no enchant at all on your staff, even the low level ones...

Talent wise : You pick what I assume you've seen other mages pick, but you don't use them. No crystal? Really? Fucks sake. You should also have casted 12-13 SN, yet you only cast 9. Moreover, you have incredibly low missile damage, meaning you cast missile when it procs and not at 4 charges; and you also melee the boss? Really?
Alter time isn't very good, except maybe on Tectus and possibly M ko'rag, otherwise you're always better off having ice barrier. And AT now only restores position and health, read your damn tooltips .

You also don't have any glyphs, I mean, come on, try the bare minimum at least Jesus christ ...

Rotation wise :

Ok, let's assume I didn't read anything because that's just awful.

While standing in RoP, your rotation should be : Burning on PC, then conservative until cooldowns. Burning goes => Ab*4, cooldowns, PC, double SN, spam AB til the last second, then PoM AB. Continue spamming AB and using AM when proc until you're about ~45% mana, then evocate. While you're at full mana, do the simple AB*4, all missile procs, barrage, repeat, nothing more easier.

Also, 87% RoP usage on Butcher is terrible. With 8 yard range, even while switching, you should never be out of double rop range, lower than 99% is strange.


I can't stress enough how switching to frost and learning how to play would improve your dps, arcane is annoying to use when learning new fights and doesn't work well at low ilvls.

It's not a joke, and it wasn't a troll post. I was genuinely asking for help. Like I said, I'm in bad shape and I'll use your advice. Thank you!

[Polarthief]

Thank you for your suggestions. Yes I and the priest are the ones swapping on the stacks.

Unless you're frost (Even then it's a bad idea), your raid leader is an idiot. Making an ARCANE Mage swap stacks? Some people will never understand Mages, I swear...

Rune of Power
Arcane Blast ty'll Arcane Missiles procs for 3 charges
Arcane Missiles for all 3 charges
Arcane Barrage
Two Supernovas
Rune of Power every now and then on a single target (when it pops for multiple targets)

And then rotating cooldowns of:
Arcane Power, Alter Time, and Presence of Mind. When I use presence of mind it's arcane for the spell I use.

This is definitely why you're having issues.

1. Rune you obviously keep up always unless you're moving. If you're moving, why the hell aren't you using IF or Frost?
2. Supernova should ALWAYS have one charge refreshing. ALWAYS.
3. Missiles you don't use unless you meet one of the two criteria:
- 3a. You have 3 procs; use ONE of them
- 3b. You have 4 stacks of Arcane Charges and either your mana is below 93% or you have 3 charges of Missiles (cast Blast if your procs are below 3 but your mana is above 93% so you don't waste Mana Regen)
4. Blast you cast under the following situations:
- 4a. You have < 3 charges of Arcane Missiles and < 4 Arcane Charges
- 4b. You have < 3 charges of Arcane Missiles, are at 4 Arcane Charges, and your mana is above 93%
- 4c. You have < 3 charges of Arcane Missiles, are at 4 Arcane Charges, your mana is above ~35%(?), and you have Evocate off of cooldown [NOTE: I haven't played Arcane in a bit; this might only be for 2P]
5. Arcane Barrage you ONLY cast when:
- You have 0 Arcane Missile procs
- You are at 4 Arcane Charges
- Your mana is below 93%

Arcane Power is preferable to use on the pull of a fight and when you know you'll have a steady amount of standing-still time.

Also, as others have pointed out, you probably should be using PC.

Also, 87% RoP usage on Butcher is terrible. With 8 yard range, even while switching, you should never be out of double rop range, lower than 99% is strange.

Assuming the knockup/back knocks you out of RoP (I don't know, I'm just assuming), even for a second or two, it could be understandable why uptime would be under 99%.

[Deleted]

Go to youtube and type ''Rikh's Basic Arcane Mage Guide'' It helped me alot.

Im same ilvl as you and on Butcher i do 28-30k dps

[EvilSniperXV]

Go to youtube and type ''Rikh's Basic Arcane Mage Guide'' It helped me alot.

Im same ilvl as you and on Butcher i do 28-30k dps

Alright I'll give that video a look. Thank you or letting me know about it!

[EvilSniperXV]

Wanted to give an update for all of you who helped... I went from 12-15k dps per boss up to 25-31k. My rotation still needs work as I mostly hover around 25k when I'm not doing everything I'm supposed to at the rate at which I'm supposed to be doing it... But every advice helped me big time. Thank you so much!