General Arcane Question

[Starpeen]

So I have been raiding on my Arcane mage for a while now and a simple question arose as I had been fighting Heroic Gul'dan as I realized I had been in this situation a lot. As I had been focusing on mechanics more and not perfectly achieving each individual second of my rotation as an Acane Mage, I started to see that after using Arcane Power, it would often be close to coming off cooldown before I was able to fully burn my mana. I was wondering if, in that situation, I would want to continue bursting still and then use Evocation before using Arcane Power, or if I would want to hollup a second and conserve just a bit until I can use Arcane Power again and THEN use Evocation.

[maynord]

It's a bit complicated, I hope I can explain my thoughts well!

I would use AP ASAP, mainly because of the new Mark of Aluneth trait which refunds mana. Even if you're at 20% mana, MoA will explode before you OOM during AP, and you can finish your AP burst at near zero mana.

If you Evocate, then AP + MoA, the mana refund will go largely wasted.

To avoid the awkward synchronisation of these CDs, I have a WA which clearly shows my Evocation CD, and I try to dump extra AMs (with 4 set) and use all my mana so that AP is 6+ seconds BEHIND Evo.

This awkward sync is also why I really like Gravity Spiral, and use it with Kilt often -- it makes it so that you never "waste" Evocation, as a second charge will always be ticking when needed.

[Forrader]

Never postpone AP if there is a risk that by the end of the fight you will miss another AP due to earlier postponements. Otherwise if you are confident about fight length and you have another 30-60 seconds to postpone - feel free to wait for evocation and then burn.