Arcane Mage PvE Guide

[Shangalar]

Based on the mana cost decrease, Mastery is supposed to be much higher. I've changed my gemming to full Mastery but haven't been able to test it yet, though. Will see today.

[Rinoa]

I just did a run through ToES Looking for Raid in full mastery gems and reforges and did surprisingly well. Not anywhere close what I did as fire before the nerf but still very respectable. Ended up doing around 130k on Protectors, 90k on Tsulong, 85k on Lei Shi and 121k on Sha of Fear. I'm positively surprised - can't wait to try it out on HC WotE progress tonight.

[adnre]

i was a bit suprised too, didnt touch arcane since the prepatch in cata and only for a short amount of time but did ~89k at zorlok hc (first kill) today

- youre right thats nothing compared to decent fire dps before (even pre 5.1) but its a start

i was in mixed int / int-hit / int mastery gems - so i had like 3500 mastery less, did just gem to mastery now

[moonfaceddr]

Based on the mana cost decrease, Mastery is supposed to be much higher. I've changed my gemming to full Mastery but haven't been able to test it yet, though. Will see today.

I will truly appreciate it if you can update the stat analysis of arcane mage for patch 5.1.
Since the big fire nerf, many mages have decided to switch to frost or arcane. But more mages get confused on the complex rotation and the change in the latest patch.

[Rinoa]

Did a respectable 96k dps as Arcane with Incanter's Ward on Will of the Emperor 10 man heroic last night, which parsed #1 as Arcane and would have been #3 as Fire if I did the same damage in Fire spec. It's not nearly as bad as I thought - rather good in fact. I never thought I'd be using IW for anything but it's pretty darn good on that fight when you have to move a bit. (I was on blink duty for the Courage sparks to soak them).

Edit: Going for full mastery. 10488 with Mage Armor.

[Deleted]

Did a respectable 96k dps as Arcane with Incanter's Ward on Will of the Emperor 10 man heroic last night, which parsed #1 as Arcane and would have been #3 as Fire if I did the same damage in Fire spec. It's not nearly as bad as I thought - rather good in fact. I never thought I'd be using IW for anything but it's pretty darn good on that fight when you have to move a bit. (I was on blink duty for the Courage sparks to soak them).

Edit: Going for full mastery. 10488 with Mage Armor.

Playing as dot class with mastery boosted Nether Tempests?

[Valardohaeris]

I played arcane for the first time tonight with a haste focused gem/reforge.

/reports/rt-03tm7yw1yw11mkym/

There is a link to the logs (Valardohæris is my toon name (if that wasn't obvious))

Being new to this spec I was wondering your guys thoughts on what I can do different and some things I could improve on. I think I need to barrage more often, but because I wasn't mastery based I thought that it may not be as important.

I was watching Blatty from Method stream earlier and he was playing a haste based Arcane spec and he would just keep his stacks up and use missles on proc, but I'm not sure that would work with my gear level.

Sorry for the novel, thanks in advance!


EDIT: and now that I go back and look at Blatty's armory, it looks like he decided to go mastery, so i shall be too...

[Rinoa]

Playing as dot class with mastery boosted Nether Tempests?

Somewhat. Multidotting with NT gives quite a lot of Arcane Missiles charges which I used to keep my stacks at 6. Whenever I didn't get lucky with procs I just threw in some Arcane Blasts as my mana was at full whenever that happened anyway.

[adnre]

anyone here able to test various simcraft setups? like one with haste one with mastery etc., its really confusing atm

[Shangalar]

I can guarantee that the latest changes made the value of Mastery skyrocket and even before it was better than haste after ~3200 Haste but Simcraft had a bad rotation active for Arcane and it's possible that it still does. I'll run a sim today with Mastery heavy gemming and Rune of Power.

I've done some in-game dummy testing and it showed me this (ilvl 485, only Relic of yu'lon as an epic trinket, second was Flashfrozen Resin Globule, had a flask by accident):

Scorch Invocation rotation - 62k stable
Regular Invocation rotation - 63k stable
Rune of Power with 6-stack camping - 85k stable

I won't run Invocation through Simcraft.

[adnre]

I can guarantee that the latest changes made the value of Mastery skyrocket and even before it was better than haste after ~3200 Haste but Simcraft had a bad rotation active for Arcane and it's possible that it still does. I'll run a sim today with Mastery heavy gemming and Rune of Power.

I've done some in-game dummy testing and it showed me this (ilvl 485, only Relic of yu'lon as an epic trinket, second was Flashfrozen Resin Globule, had a flask by accident):

Scorch Invocation rotation - 62k stable
Regular Invocation rotation - 63k stable
Rune of Power with 6-stack camping - 85k stable

I won't run Invocation through Simcraft.

6 stack camping by scorching?

[Imnick]

You don't need to Scorch to do that any more

[Shangalar]

With Invocation you do, but with Rune of Power you camp with Blast. Check my post higher here for my optimal Rune of Power cycle.

[Deleted]

With Invocation you do, but with Rune of Power you camp with Blast. Check my post higher here for my optimal Rune of Power cycle.

Post 5.1 is it literally all out Mastery (with RoP/IW, I don't use Invo) or still Haste to a point and then Mastery?
Not gonna lie, having AB's @ 1.7s casts feels annoying :<

[Shangalar]

You still need an amount of Haste that gives you an extra NT tick and that allows for less skull-bashing cast times of Blast. I'm currently at 3400 Haste, Blast is at 1.85 (or 1.83, can't remember atm) and I'm comfortable with it.

Also, currently running sims for various builds, will report back when I finish that along with some uni assignment. I won't report on my uni assignment.

[Deleted]

With Invocation you do, but with Rune of Power you camp with Blast. Check my post higher here for my optimal Rune of Power cycle.

Your example earlier used Barrage. But by weaving couple scorches now and then its maybe possible to never use barrage and stay at 6 stacks whole fight. Any idea if that is worth doing?

[Shangalar]

I would think that it isn't. A lot of our power during the 6-charge camping phase comes from Arcane Power's superbuff to Missiles and Blast. Barrage still does more damage than several Scorches would do and you'll be back at full mana and six charges with a lot more damage than you would have done had you continued with Scorch.

Scorch is used with Invocation as a means to stay at high mana to be able to stay at 6 Charges, not as a means to *only* stay at 6 Charges if you understand what I'm trying to say.

[Deleted]

Uhm, so is the Mastery over Int, just as crit > int for fire?

[Shangalar]

I am running the tests right now, stay tuned and come back in half an hour or so.

[adnre]

for me haste rating version of my gear came ahead 800 dps

now 9150 haste rating --- 109856 dps
10060 mastery before --- 109065 dps

25000 iterations - with rop & nt

haste version feels pretty cool but anyway still non raidbuffed im having problems camping 6 stacks by AB'ing sometimes im coming down to 200k mana still no missile procs