Arcane, good dps but low damage done

[cachemaster]

Okay, cache since you seem to be good at arcane, im just asking since you gotta stay at high mana all the time and arcane blast is 85% of your damage what rotation are you using then? i guess you are spamming AB during burst phase untill 40% ish mana but otherwice, thought missiles would do more damage.

The trick to Arcane is maximizing uptime on your burn phase. I do something a little bit different than the standard 'burn/regen/conserve' rotation. I use flame orb as a mana regeneration tool to give me another burn phase after my first burn phase.
Basically on a fight:

2 seconds before fight: prepot, flame orb
Combat: ABx4, PoM AB, pop all cd's and mana gem AB spam till ~30% mana (first burn phase) ~30 secs
Evocate 5 secs
AB Spam to ~55% mana (mini burn phase) 20 seconds
Flame orb, use all available missile procs (you'll get a bunch). This takes about 15-20secs to get back to full mana if done properly
This leaves me with 1min20 seconds on evocate and I only need to do the 'conserve phase' for about 35 seconds before my next burn phase
rinse and repeat.

[errosync]

I am glad that arcane gets buffed because it could use one, especially for AOE. Oh and as for the mobility part, there is one other option besides Arcane Barrage for casting on the move, well two really. THe first one is of course Presence of Mind with an arcane blast, but since it has a 1-minute CD not really useful, but let's not forget a favorite from the Frost tree, Ice Lance, it may not be a bosskiller in damage but still it beats casting nothing. So while ABarr is on CD pop an ICe Lance or 2, won't cause mana issues anyway so why not...

But it's nowhere close to Scorch-spamming while running, especially since Ice Lance is in no way buffed by Arcane. It needed the changes they're putting in because it had no mobility, and a bunch of mages running around saying they've outskilled the need for mobility or found the 'magic rotation' is ridiculous. If it didn't need mobility, Blizzard wouldn't bother placing these changes in because it would be 'working as intended'; clearly, that's not the case.

[Zavri]

Arcane mage using icelance? seriously? LOL

[baelon]

Arcane's high apparent dps is solely a function of how combat log parsing works, and means absolutely nothing. Always sort the meter by damage done, not dps.

[U1000]

If you know the fights you know when to burst, when to move so how is it such a problem for you? For when you want adds yea fire is best for damage atm, but only because of range, 12k talented arcane explosions crits will soon be well over 20k plus as fast as your fingers cans spam.

even if you know when youre gonna need to move, you're still gonna need to move and most likely be doing 0 dmg during that time as arcane ( while as fire, not only wud ur dots be still tickin but you can also cast scorch on the move)

reason arcane is still competitive in single target is how ridiculously hard arcane blast hits for. in my current gear, with raid buffs and during procs, my arcane blast will crit for about 120k. in the meanwhile, with same buffs and procs, my fireball wud crit for 58-60k. that is a HUGE difference, especially considering the cast time of arcane blast (with x4 debuff) is like 1+ sec less than fireball

[Deleted]

For those short periods where there is movement say air phase atremedies, you have other spells you can use, Fire blast, ice lance, Arcane barrage, even a arcane missile proc. So you should never ever have a moment on movement phases where you have to stop casting as arcane.

So U1000, you would never being doing 0 damage.

[Sinister Knight]

Obviously some people completely missed the point I was getting at with my post. It wasn't in reference to the argument of Fire vs. Arcane, it was simply to point out that most progressive raids will have people spec the spec that does the most damage, be it Fire, Arcane, Elemental, Combat, etc etc. More dmg = faster boss death. I personally prefer Fire over Arcane, more fun, more interesting. Look at how many guilds basically forced players to learn new tradeskills that gave the maximum benefit (Wrath BS/JC combo anyone?) despite what the player might have "wanted" their skills to be. You do what it takes to provide the most benefit to the raid. We all know about class stacking, sitting certain classes in favor of more of another because they flat out outperform others, so on and so forth. Same goes for healing and tanking. Everyone's seen the raid comps and commented on "why is X Class left out? Why are there 4 of Y Spec?" There will never be true Class/Spec balancing, all raiding guilds know this and deal with it accordingly.

[Pieterman]

The only way your problem can be explained is you having insane downtime during all the fights. By which I mean you're just standing there doing nothing for the first minute.

[Fountaiinn]

Damage done is all that really matters. High dps can be a good way to know you have great burst dmg but that can be misleading also. If they asked you to switch arcane I would start looking for a smarter raid group. Sure arcane is getting more buffs soon but thats then not now unless they want you to be well practiced by then.

ITT Casuals giving misleading information. Arcane is the best single target spec. If your guild is pushing for hard modes, especially on fights like Sinestra then Arcane will be better. They may also not have a ret pally.

[Badmage]

I saw a few times where people said about dying 45secs into the fight etc.

do people not realize you can blow your wad with mirrors up, pull an assload of threat, the tank can taunt and recieve all that wonderful threat, then you invis?


thats what my tank does lol, mirrors w/ double potting and massive burst is > tricks/misdirect anyday of the week and twice on sundays.

Twice.

[Pumpking]

Skada records DPS correctly as it starts tracking it from the second the boss is engaged til the point everyone is dead. Recount does it all wrong and classes like Arcane Mages will see much higher dps values then when using Skada. WOL shows two different values; dps and dps(e). Dps(e) is correct and dps is just how recount tracks it, with many pauses to exaggerate the numbers for classes like arcane mages. Why doesn't recount just track dps the correct way? Why does WOL even have a column for the incorrect dps numbers? The definition of dps lines up with how skada and WOL's dps(e) tracks it but because of recount everyone is set on saying "dps doesn't mean anything". It's true the way recount tracks it doesn't mean anything but the correct way of tracking it is accurate and is something ppl could use.