4.3 Arcane Compendium

[Izzabella]

Hi. I wanted to ask directly since I am confused. Every where I look tells me to reforge in a different way. I currently am reforged for Arcane according to Wowreforge.com. I didn't look at what I was doing till the end. It told me to reforge for mastery. I then tried mrrobot and it told me to reforge into all sorts of stuff mostly mastery,crit and get rid of hit rating? It also says I have 22% hit rating while for me it shows 17.02% hit rating. Is mrrobot unreliable? How should I reforge right now? Thank you

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...samelia/simple

[JohnnyQuest]

It also says I have 22% hit rating while for me it shows 17.02% hit rating. Is mrrobot unreliable?

It showed 22% when I first loaded your character, but after hitting the Reload button it went down to 17.02%. I guess Mr Robot had cached your character at some point in the past. But it is the worst of the available gear/stat tools when in a default state.

[Izzabella]

It showed 22% when I first loaded your character, but after hitting the Reload button it went down to 17.02%. I guess Mr Robot had cached your character at some point in the past. But it is the worst of the available gear/stat tools when in a default state.

Ok I was able to reload it this morning and its different. Still not sure about it. The stat weights for it are different than I read on this website and others. Is there any website that works properly for Arcane? My current reforge is from wowreforge.com. is that wrong too?

[Shangalar]

you could just do it by heart you know... get hit to 17%, get haste to 1268... and spec everything else into Mastery...

the difference is only if half of your gear is Heroic, then I suggest using a sim to see exactly what items are best for you... if you don't have Heroic gear, use 4-set plus Off-set Valor Points Helmet...

it's not really a tragedy to do it without complicating your life, especially if you know what you want...

[Izzabella]

you could just do it by heart you know... get hit to 17%, get haste to 1268... and spec everything else into Mastery...

the difference is only if half of your gear is Heroic, then I suggest using a sim to see exactly what items are best for you... if you don't have Heroic gear, use 4-set plus Off-set Valor Points Helmet...

it's not really a tragedy to do it without complicating your life, especially if you know what you want...

Thank you. That is what I had done in the past. I was told simcraft or rawr work but you have to download and set them up. Ill stick with doing it manually for now as this is just an alt and will only get Raid finder and valor gear.

[Restos3]

The difference between a 'burn phase' and 'conservation phase' is essentially the resetting of stacks. A burn phase is always ended with an Evocation (at 35% mana). The best way to initiate a burn phase is to AB until you're around 85% mana, use flame orb... then pop mana gem, arcane power, and any on use trinkets you might be using. In addition you should be popping mirror images after AP is popped (it shouldn't cost a GCD if glyphed). After that simply spam AB until you reach 35%, and Evocate.

During a conservation phase, you should be resetting your arcane blast stacks in order to stay around 85-90% mana until you can begin another burn phase. Depending on your gear level, you can cast 3-6 (sometimes more at higher gear levels and while using Shard of Woe) Arcane blasts before clearing your stacks with Arcane Missiles. You really have to manage your mana well in this phase. You don't want to dip too low or else your next burn won't be as powerful. Also note that the only time you should be clearing your stacks with an ABr is during movement.

So the whole conservation phase you should be doing Arcane blast > clear stacks with Arcane Missiles. You have to kind of 'eyeball' your mana usage in this phase. Mage armor should give you decent regen but not enough to allow for constant AB spamming, especially at low gear levels. You're going to want to begin your burn phase when your Evocation is at a point in the cooldown where it will be ready once you are finished with the burn. This is usually when there is 20-30 seconds lefts on your Evo CD (once again depending on your gear and the presence of Shard of Woe).

Arcane is one of the specs that can really vary depending on the mechanics of fights as well as the gear that you have. It honestly becomes much more forgiving at higher gear levels, but it's good to start out at the bottom so you learn the repercussions of bad mana usage.

Thank you for clearing this up. I was so damn confused aswell after reading the OP.
Now I know what to do

[Spleen]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...pleen/advanced

been off the forums for far too long, and have been skating by in raids rather than being the min/max whore I'd been before.

First off, after catching up on various threads, looks like I'll be dropping a point from imp blink and 2 from IA to get 3/3 Fire power for the FO increase.

Had been used to the mastery > haste (cap) > crit reforging (yes, hit capping is very nice, yes, I'll be reforging my head haste->Hit to hit the hit cap - had been lazily sharing my LFR helm between fire and arc sets).

On pull - pre-pot (not consistently) with mana cake top-off, FO (most times on pull), 10 stacks of stolen time before popping Gem + AP + MI + Bers, AB spam to infinity. Evoke (the present tense verb root of evocation), conserve with no deep fishing (nothing > 6 or so AB before using ABarr to clear), AP when it's up and Stolen time is 10 stacks, repeat, wait until gem is off CD and evocation is ~20-30 sec from CD, with FO on CD.

As far as I know, that is still theoretically the way we're told to perform.


I recently saw an arc mage reforge away mastery for mostly crit and some haste. I realize that without buffs, that's the only way to beat the preferred reforging (with lucky RNG).

I've read that stacking a bit of haste beyond cap may be preferred to crit, and now I'm wondering how much else I've gotten wrong.


When I was up on EJ daily and here daily, I was quite comfortable in stressing I was doing things the right way (btw, hey Swizz - they made YOU a mod? OMFG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE), but since I'm not comfy, I thought I'd poll you guys.


http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1664&e=2234

Last run - I was so dog ass tired at the end of it, I'm sure I was doing all kinds of crazy shit, but if you look back through other parses and looked at our Patchwerk of this tier, I've pulled ~38K on it (before current trink pairing) and am not sure where to improve.

Cheers and thanks.

[Shangalar]

38k on Ultraxion is good without the legendary staff. I did 41k tonight on Ultraxion Heroic and ranked 91.

However I suggest a slightly different pull strategy: pre-pot, 4 stacks of arcane blast, flame orb, presence of mind, arcane blast, burn macro, burn to 35% mana, evocation.

It is not important to get to 10 stacks of Stolen Time at the beginning, it's far more beneficial to have Power up for the remaining duration of the Volcanic Potion. The Flame Orb after 4 blasts is so most of the ticks benefit from Power.

[Spleen]

Thanks for the reply, and I get the reason why, but I'm typically able to get the full burn in before the first HoT, so I surmised that maximizing the AP cycles was appropriate maxing of DPS instead of maximizing the 18 sec of volc pot. Surely there must be more I can do. Hell, tear any of my parses to shreds, you might see something I missed.

I will, however, give that a shot tonight, thanks!

Granted, I'm the only DPS caster this tier, so I tend to get shorted on buffs/consideration (hence why I'm not likely to get the legendary). It's also why I'm arc instead of fire, though they do tend to force the hunter or rogue to provide 5% crit or 8% magic for me.

[Eschatonin]

My guild is currently progressing on H Blackhorn, and after one night of attempts as fire I have decided to go arcane for the fight for the reliable burst required on the drakes.
I was wondering if someone could tell me the plan for Part 1 of H Blackhorn as arcane? Looking for something like post 422 here;
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t118084-...7/#post2092005

[Nazathal]

I've imported my toon from my armory
(arcane mage 395 ilvl)

and did simcraft on Ultraxion fight
with my raid setup simcraft said 30k DPS for my toon

I've seen many post claim that
they could easily do 35-40k DPS around that ilvl

the question are ... How much could I trust simcraft?

if my actual DPS is a slightly better than simcraft
but not easily 35-40k DPS , should I just live happily with it?

[DreamSpyre]

My guild is currently progressing on H Blackhorn, and after one night of attempts as fire I have decided to go arcane for the fight for the reliable burst required on the drakes.
I was wondering if someone could tell me the plan for Part 1 of H Blackhorn as arcane? Looking for something like post 422 here;
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t118084-...7/#post2092005

It's late and I can't really go into too much detail, but here's a quick rundown of what I tend to do.

Start off on the main part of the ship, Attack the Dreadblades Drake with two AB's, hit the Slayer's Drake with 1. Get 2pc stacked to 10, go into a full burn, killing the dreadblade, getting into the Onslaught, and then continuing the burn on my Drake. If your raids dps is as high as ours, you won't come anywhere close to needing to evocate. Just twiddle thumbs until the second wave. This wave just keep your stacks up (Will always drops for me so I just AM twice) and use a full burn ( You should regen almost to full here if your raid dps kills stuff fast) on the drake and then your two humanoids. Evocate. Third drake will completely depend on your strategy, but you should be able to just do a mini burn on your drake and conserve on the humanoids until Goriona comes.

Phase 2 is a lot easier, Full Burn with Hero as soon as Goriona Lands, And just pop your cooldowns as they come up until he dies.

[Spleen]

I've imported my toon from my armory
(arcane mage 395 ilvl)

and did simcraft on Ultraxion fight
with my raid setup simcraft said 30k DPS for my toon

I've seen many post claim that
they could easily do 35-40k DPS around that ilvl

the question are ... How much could I trust simcraft?

if my actual DPS is a slightly better than simcraft
but not easily 35-40k DPS , should I just live happily with it?

I seem to be in a similar spot (398 Arc mage). I typically float between 28-34K depending on crits and fading light luck. Aside from pre-potting and potting during a burn during execute, adding /cast arcane barrage to your /use extraactionbutton1 macro, and cutting the timing as close as possible on FL and HoT, if you're doing your rotation properly, there's not going to be too much to change. RNG is RNG, and while Arc is somewhat immune from it, it's absolutely still present. Right now most ranked parses sans legendary are people getting really kind RNG numbers.

There's also a chance their "easy 35-40k" is recount DPS, and you don't want me to open that can of beans here

My opening burst phase typically gets me between 58-72K DPS which then starts levelling out.

Maximize 4pc T-13 use by using AP on CD (unless waiting to sync with gem use).


I didn't get to run last night to try the 4 stack PoM AB early burn on Ultrax instead of the stack Stolen time to 10 before burn, but it's on my to-do list.

[Hellarofl]

Playing around with arcane cause I'm bored.. but let me see if this is right.

AB to 4 stacks, mana gem, pop cds/trinkets, spam AB to 35%, EVO, then pull to 95% mana, ab + am and stay above 90% - wait for cds then repeat?

[Shawaam]

Playing around with arcane cause I'm bored.. but let me see if this is right.

AB to 4 stacks, mana gem, pop cds/trinkets, spam AB to 35%, EVO, then pull to 95% mana, ab + am and stay above 90% - wait for cds then repeat?

Or with gear you just spam arcane blasts the entire fight.

[Hellarofl]

Tried that once to see the rotation etc, and about halfway through was oom hard. :P

[Neichus]

I was wondering if people had any more subtle tips on how to play Arcane. I've always been mediocre at my Mage and with nothing to do at the end of the expansion I've been trying to improve her.

I've spent a lot of time researching basics; I know about the cycles, stat priorities/simming, and "rhythm" of most DS fights. I minimize/eliminate movement, smoothly target switch and continually cast, and utilize Mage Ward/Incanter's Absorption where applicable.

I experimented with several things. I tried the mini-burn phase with the flame orb, but it didn't seem to do me much good while providing more complications. I tried extending my AB train a bit under the effect of procs/IA on the conservation phase to eek out a bit of extra damage (although never to an extreme). I've also worked under the assumption that you want to coast to 0% mana just as the boss dies, although I'm unsure of this one

However, after having tried all this I still just do alright**. I'm at iLevel 391 (armory) yet for reference I did 28k on Morchok, 30k on Ultraxion, 27k on Warhorn, and 53k on Madness in the LFR I did this morning. I can reliably do about 4k more on all those fights on my Feral druid in comparable gear; since I believe in blaming the player and not the class, I figure I must either be doing something really right with Feral or really wrong with Arcane. My only other thought is that my weakest slots happen to be the most important (weapon and trinkets), but that doesn't seem to account for the DPS gap I'm seeing.

So any thoughts?

**Well, I'm usually near the top but perhaps in my arrogance I'm used to being at the top. I've put more time into researching and practicing my Mage than any other character than my main and still can't seem to quite get that last bit out of the class.

Edit: won Will of Unbinding so that was nice.

[Oloden]

My question is...Is the shard of woe worth it? After simming and using rawr it looks like it accounts for less dps than both other trinkets i have available which are VPLC norm and heroic and WoU norm...

[Aquamonkey]

My question is...Is the shard of woe worth it? After simming and using rawr it looks like it accounts for less dps than both other trinkets i have available which are VPLC norm and heroic and WoU norm...

If you don't have it, it's definitely not worth farming for. You're better off spending that time progressing through DS. If you do have it, it's equivalent/behind some of the DS normal/heroic trinkets.

[Pyromagik]

Sorry, I don't have to time to read through all 14 pages to see if this was already addressed. I wanted to say that I think crit gets a bad rap from your guide, Swizzle. The mana return from critical strikes shouldn't be ignored...

I think stat priority should be haste until cap, then mastery, then crit, with any extra haste reforged to mastery, and and if there's already mastery on the item, definitely crit instead of leaving the haste on. Extraneous haste is weak because it throws off the burn/conserve cycle (and keep in mind that Stolen Time is giving you 500 extra haste most of the time).

Also, I think it's worth addressing when/if to use Arcane Power with the four piece bonus (I use it every time but have to really cut down on AB usage while it's up. I also make sure I have 10 stacks of Stolen Time if I'm going to use it during conserve phase, and I DON'T use it if it won't be back up in time for my next true Burn phase.)

Also, it's worth stating that some fights lend themselves excellently to having conservation-free rotations. In fights where adds spawn and die (lots of down time in between) like Beth'tilac or Warlord Blackthorn, or fights with long interruptions like Haggara, your mana will likely be regenerating way faster than you can get rid of it, so you can pretty much spam AB the entire fight, but punctuate it with cooldown-using burn phases at key moments (Like Hagara's stun that makes her take 100% extra damage), or whenever cooldowns are up.