4.1 Arcane Guide

[Felspark]

Before I get flamed, anyone have a good list/priority/etc etc like we have for frost and fire on the board here.


In before 11111211112 etc...

[Tanoria]

In my experience gearing wise I prioritize mast>crit>haste, I am fully epic geared though so I already have 8.7% haste after reforging out along with 4 set. This is because your goal is to spam ab as much as possible. Mastery makes you hit like a truck, and crits make you gain mana back, and on avg hit harder overall. All haste does is make you burn out mana faster, so it isn't ideal, especially with ab being a fast cast as it is.

Rotation wise I spam ab, then cds at 4 stacks, along with mana gem after losing about 12k mana and then on cd. Burn out mana with ab til 30% mana, evo, spam ab til 70% mana, and then abx2 or 3 then missiles\barrage to gain mana back til evo is almost up. Your goal during the time with evo on cd is to use a rotation to maintain decent dmg, and get back to 100% mana to spam away with ab by the time evo is almost back up.

[zentenforius]

In my experience gearing wise I prioritize mast>crit>haste, I am fully epic geared though so I already have 8.7% haste after reforging out along with 4 set. This is because your goal is to spam ab as much as possible. Mastery makes you hit like a truck, and crits make you gain mana back, and on avg hit harder overall. All haste does is make you burn out mana faster, so it isn't ideal, especially with ab being a fast cast as it is.

Rotation wise I spam ab, then cds at 4 stacks, along with mana gem after losing about 12k mana and then on cd. Burn out mana with ab til 30% mana, evo, spam ab til 70% mana, and then abx2 or 3 then missiles\barrage to gain mana back til evo is almost up. Your goal during the time with evo on cd is to use a rotation to maintain decent dmg, and get back to 100% mana to spam away with ab by the time evo is almost back up.

Exactly this. I agree with the stat priority too. Mastery makes you hit very very hard as well as crit. I'm not entirely epic geared and seeing 95k+ crits in full guild group dungeons (no damage buff) is not uncommon. Just knowing when to burn and how to gain mana back is the hardest thing to get used too.

[Tanoria]

Yeah, main issue is in raids if you get lucky you get a ton of 100-150k crits ina row, and unfortunately that is greater than taunt lol

[Muliercula]

My only concern about arcane is the reforging ill have to do between fire and arcane. Might go frost instead for single target.

[Deleted]

I prioritize mast>crit>haste

So you ignore hit? Or do you reforge in this way after you reached the 17% hit cap?

[Tanoria]

So you ignore hit? Or do you reforge in this way after you reached the 17% hit cap?

well i stated mast crit and haste with the obvious int and hit being before those, but yeah, gemming and gearing you want int and hit first before those other secondaries

[zentenforius]

So you ignore hit? Or do you reforge in this way after you reached the 17% hit cap?

hit and intel are of course top priority but second to those being your two "main" stats would go mast>crit>haste

[zazuch]

One thing i have to say is about what you do is get 4 stacks pop all cds you have BUT the mana gem you use when you have the most amount of int procs up. On my mage and i can get up to about 160k max mana which when speced into mana gem you get 2% of that this is when you use your mana gem to get the most sp. Other then that i agree with the rotation. Also if you see your close to oom or your evoc point and you have some int procs up like lightweave and power torrent evoc and you will get more mana back. A well timed evoc i can go from oom to full.

As far as gemming and reforging gem only pure int UNLESS you have a red socket and a blue/yellow with a 20 int socket bonus. Then you can do a 40 in and a 20(mastery or hit)/20 int gem. If the bonus is not 20 int or more then do just pure int. You use stump of time or reforging to get hit.

[Deleted]

I tried out my new arcane spec last night for first time since 4.1. I left my toon set for its main fire spec and did a cata HC sustaining 18k average and hitting single targets for 26k... pulled 20k on the first boss in BRC which I though was good since u dont move much.

Over a 5-6min fight on dummies I saw 15k (5min) and 14k (6min).

Brought back my old macros for mana gem, AP, lifeblood and MI and the same without MI.

I then tried reforging back into mastery and lowered my crit. Kept the haste the same pretty much. Mastery obviously make a big improvement, think I only had around 1100 mastery too...


Not sure if im having as much fun as fire though... Single target is funny though when you nuke for under 30sec...
We will see after i test it in raids on Chimeron and Omnitron etc. Kept fire the heavy movement bosses.


So I guess my testing continues....

[Naoto]

Barely ever tried arcane and can't say I like it, but swapped my frost for it since PVP is depressing these days, I'm on 8.04% haste, 15.64% hit, 15.40% crit and 19.66 mast with 6628 SP with mage armor and int buff obviously, but what armor do you use? I'm guessing you use molten till you burn cds and evo then mage when your reserving mana waiting for evo/gem?

IMO haste seems to be completely useless for arcane since ab has a short cd anyway and barrage is instant, but on the dummy I'm only getting 58k blasts and 19k dps with just ab spam which obviously gets less when I have to reserve mana, I'll try a heroic later. Also need a wee bit of luck with procs, I got 4 things that can proc to give me a ton of SP and with mana gem that's 2% extra aswell.