Just rolled Arcane.

[Rio]

And wtf. I've been Fire for years and I finally decide to test out arcane.. I've always heard it's and 'easy' three-button class but.. I just don't get it. Is Arcane Blast the ONLY spell we use for single target? What do we do at four stacks? Keep spamming it or throw in an AB or AM?

So yea I just don't get it.. A bit of help please?

[Dully]

Arcane Blast is the only spell you use for single target or aoe situations because... it's not worth aoe'ing as arcane. You have two phases for arcane: A burn phase and a conserve phase.

The burn phase is pretty much using your cooldowns and spamming arcane blast until you get around 30% to 40% mana. Then you evocate and enter the conserve phase.

Conserve phase is different for different gear levels because of the amount of int/mana you'll have at higher gear levels, which in turn will give you better mana regen through Mage Armor, but what you want to ideally do is stay as close to 100% mana as you can. You can usually stay mana neutral by stacking Arcane Blast up to 3 and then clearing the stack with missiles or barrage, but again, higher gear levels, larger mana pools, and clearcast procs will allow you to maybe throw out some 4 stack Arcane Blasts before you need to clear your stack. Once evocation is off or close to coming off of cooldown, you can enter the burn phase once again.

Arcane is pretty easy to play but it suffers from any fight which requires a lot of movement or aoe. Its pretty fun to play for some bosses like Magmaw, but fire is a better overall spec still.

[cachemaster]

If you can spam Arcane Blast without going oom, then yes, it would be our only button. The problem is spamming AB will make you go oom in about 30 seconds.

Basically there are three cycles for arcane:

1. Burn Phase (Pop all your cooldowns, spam AB to 40% mana)
2. Regen Phase (Evocate)
3. Conserve Phase (Use a mana neutral rotation, usually ABx2 AM, to stay above 80% mana until next burn phase)
rinse and repeat

[Rio]

Gotcha.. It's making a bit more sense now, so it seems it's centered around CD management and conserving mana.

[Yoonalol]

burn rotation = 4x Arcane blasts , if u get missle proc then missles + A barrage or if u dont then just the 4 A blasts + a barrage and rinse and repeat. to conserve mana just get A blasts to 3 stacks then missle or arc barrage

[Somaa]

burn rotation = 4x Arcane blasts , if u get missle proc then missles + A barrage or if u dont then just the 4 A blasts + a barrage and rinse and repeat. to conserve mana just get A blasts to 3 stacks then missle or arc barrage

No.... The burn 'rotation' consists of spamming Arcane blast until you have just below 40% mana, then you Evocate to full and go into the conserve phase, which varies. I can usually go to 4x Arcane blasts and then clear in my conserve phase without using mana.

[Deleted]

All these people telling you to burn to 40% are wrong. Go to 20%. The mana return from evocate and flame orb with missiles flowing all through the orb will bring you up to 100% again.

[Pernel]

All these people telling you to burn to 40% are wrong. Go to 20%. The mana return from evocate and flame orb with missiles flowing all through the orb will bring you up to 100% again.

In addition to what Akiie said, you will also get passive mana regeneration with Mage Armor and this will contribute to getting back to 100%.

[Estrellia]

All these people telling you to burn to 40% are wrong. Go to 20%. The mana return from evocate and flame orb with missiles flowing all through the orb will bring you up to 100% again.

EDIT: I remembered my point #5 and added it in. =D

Yes, what Akiie said. I've been playing Arcane for years now, and you want to burn down to 20-25%. I basically keep spamming AB until I see that I've dropped below 30% for sure, and then the current cast I'm doing when I notice that I'm below 30% will finish and bring me below 25%. Then I start the evocate, and there are enough ticks of mage armor during the evocate and the first few casts of the next AB stack that I'm back at 99% by the 4th cast of the new stack of AB.

A few more things:

1. When you're in Conserve mode, cast ABs until you drop below 90%, then clear your stack. If you're ever at exactly 100%, you're wasting a chance for an extra max-AB cast. If you cast AB till you're below 90%, then Mage Armor will bring you back up to almost 100% in the time it takes you to cast the next 3 ABs post-clear, and you'll be at ~98% when you cast your next 4th AB. Then you get a 5th (or 6th, if you have a lucky Clearcast in there) before you're below 90% again and need to re-clear.

2. On heavy-movement fights, you want to AB to a lower target percent, like maybe 80%. That's because you'll have plenty of regen when you're dodging fire or whatever, so you want to increase your max-AB casts to account for this. Remember, if you're riding 100% mana, you're wasting max-AB casts.

3. Watch your Evocate cooldown. You want to be back down to 25% mana when its cooldown finishes. That means you need to start your burn phase again when it's at like 30s left. If you're above 25% when it comes off cooldown you've wasted some max-ABs. This can be tricky to catch, but it's better you over-cast and have <25% mana when Evocate is ready than not, since you'll have another 1.5 minutes to throttle your ABs to bring yourself back up to that 88-98% Conserve zone.

4. Use your mana gems when you're just below 80% mana during the burn phase. That +damage talent is best used when you're casting 4-stack ABs and have high mana, but you don't want to waste the actual mana return. It's significant, and scales with your max mana. Be careful that you don't have a temporary Int boost about to expire when you do use it, because when that boost drops you'll lose the mana you just recovered.

5. If you still have mana at the end of the fight, then you've failed. That's a little harsh, but there's a point near the end of the fight where no matter what point you're at during the Conserve phase, you can switch over to full burn to finish it off. There's no reason to end a fight with mana left over when we can translate that to pure damage. And that's especially critical when you're on progression content or when you're teetering on the edge of a wipe, because unlikes pretty much all other classes, arcane mages can dramatically boost their dps when it's needed the most. This is one of the "utility" aspects of playing arcane that I think people overlook when assessing arcane vs. fire.

Good luck!

[toit]

4. Use your mana gems when you're just below 80% mana during the burn phase.

You're making it sound like you pop arcane power, hit 80% mana, then use mana gem. Isn't it better to stack the two together? What I do is to make sure I have max AB and am at ~80% mana entering the burn phase, which, as you've pointed out, should start ~30s before evocation comes off cooldown. I use both arcane power and mana gem (and other cooldowns I have) to start the burn phase. Is this what you mean?

Also, where does POM come in the cycle? I usually use it during burn phases but also to conjure mana gems when I use up all my 3 gems. Do you tend to need more than 3 gems per heroic fight? Or am I doing it wrong?

[Estrellia]

You're making it sound like you pop arcane power, hit 80% mana, then use mana gem. Isn't it better to stack the two together? What I do is to make sure I have max AB and am at ~80% mana entering the burn phase, which, as you've pointed out, should start ~30s before evocation comes off cooldown. I use both arcane power and mana gem (and other cooldowns I have) to start the burn phase. Is this what you mean?

Also, where does POM come in the cycle? I usually use it during burn phases but also to conjure mana gems when I use up all my 3 gems. Do you tend to need more than 3 gems per heroic fight? Or am I doing it wrong?

Yeah, for the mana gem I was thinking about the opening of the fight, when everything's off cooldown. I think the mana returned from the gem would do more damage than the AP boost to its damage boost. In other words, at the opening, don't pop the mana gem till you know you'll be able to get and keep the mana. For me, with my current gear, that seems to be right at the tail end of AP. At other points in the fight, though, if you can synch the two, you should.

You could probably do the math for each boss fight to determine its length, and then see how many mana gem uses you can squeeze in that time, and then you'll know how much spare time you'll have left in the mana gem rotation to use on waiting for them to line up. For example, if the fight was 8 minutes and the mana gem was a 3 minute cooldown, then you could only use it 3x in the fight, maximum (once each at the beginning, minute 3, and minute 6). That means you have 2 minutes of slack that you can use any time during the fight to wait for them to synch. However, for me, I don't bother with that. It's a lot of work for minimal gain. There have only been a few times in Cata where we wiped with ~100k health left on the boss... and there were probably other things I could have done better to make up for that vs perfectly synching my mana gems.

Regarding PoM, I usually pop it right after AP is done, but only for a fully stacked AB. Sometimes it's good to hang on to it for heavy movement fights, though. If your AB stack is about to fall off but you need a few more seconds to run, you can PoM an AB in order to keep the stack up while you're running.

---------- Post added 2011-04-01 at 12:05 PM ----------

FYI, I just edited my original post (#9) with my fifth point. It's basically that you should end every fight with 0 mana, or as close to it as you can get.

[Fojos]

I either save PoM for movement or use it at the start of a "build-up" since arcane blast got a longer cast time at 0 stacks.

[shaft4783]

Start of fight:

1. AB x 4
2. PoM AB
3. Macro AP, Gem, any other CD's like engineering trinket, pop that macro
4. Burn AB to 35% or so
5. Evocate
6. Begin conserve phase, which for me is AB x 3 then missles or barrage