Need some Arcane advice on Denathrius heroic

[Shelly]

So my guild is struggling on the Big D heroic. Quite a few of us have PuG'd AotC but we are just kinda getting to about 9% and unfortunately wiping.

Overall it's a boomer guild, we enjoy playing with each other and have always done heroic, but frankly CN has been a cut above and the assignment of random abilities/debuffs onto various folks that take weeks of farming to learn a mechanic has been really rough.

Anyway, enough whining.

My friend is an arcane mage, sims at 4.5k dps, loves the arcane spec so getting him to go frost or fire isn't in the cards.

His actual raid DPS though often tops at 1.5k.

I think a lot of the loss is due to two things; movement and having to target swap to the adds.

Because of this I'm encouraging him to play an off-meta build - going with incanter's instead of rune (might even have him go focus magic since he sometimes dies to massacre or impale and that way the 5% crit buff would go on.)

I've also told him to stop target swapping and instead just tunnel Big D.

I think he's losing a lot of dps just in moving from one side of the walkway to the other even if he blinks and as such would be better off just pumping into Sire.

So are my suggestions off-base at all? I don't really play mage, I'm just going by what I can read in the logs.

[metroidgirl]

I don't play arcane these days but Sire is very punishing, tons of movement. I think your suggestions are good. Massacre is easier the further you are away from the boss. Do you know which legendary he's running?

[Sageless]

Assuming he is appropriately geared for heroic Sire Denathrius he probably is doing a lot of things that are not optimal.
Without a log or even an armory link it is difficult to give advice though.

It might be good to go for Incanters Flow as you mentioned as it seems unlikely he is getting the best use out of Rune and this gives you one less thing to think about. Perhaps also using Slipstream if he isn't already might help as it is possible that he times his evocations poorly meaning he has to move during its channel = no mana = no dps. This also gives some added mobility as you can move and cast missiles.

There are a lot of other things that can help improve dps like conduits, covenant, legendary etc but those are marginal increases. I reckon the largest increase would be to cast more spells and optimize his burn and conserve phases.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Go buy boost for 40k. Why even bother wiping on heroic? Save your sanity and time. I have done first kill with the pug then I just couldn’t bother wasting time redoing it and wiping all over again. When it comes to Arcane though, you can use legendary ring to pop hero twice on last phase, use arcane explosion on adds. Arcane harmony works well too to cast barrage while boss is at 35% health. You can also use split stream for the missiles to move while you cast.

[Azerox]

Well sire is a bit stupid since you can top meters by doing major AOE dmg on the adds.
Wait till the lill adds spwn and pop CD's and AOE (blast) the fuck out of em.

I do this on my frostmage, veins > orb > blizzard > arcane blast.
But the DPS on the phases after that is way more important.
Only thing is if you do not AOE the F in on those adds you will be on the lower part of the meters no matter how good you do later.

[Thelxi]

He has some big fish to fry with 1.5k dps so I'd just nudge him in the direction of taking all-passive talents and keeping things as simple as possible for him.

[Araya]

did not see the date of post please ignore

[epigramx]

Go buy boost for 40k. Why even bother wiping on heroic?

Don't waste your gold. Start making groups yourself.
It's incredibly easy if you know some basics.