The Learning Curve

[Latonius]

Pretty much every mage I know is transitioning into Arcane and Fire from Frost. The sims, rankings, and overall data don't lie. If you want to improve your DPS as your ilevel increases, respeccing must be on every mage's mind. Frost is pulling the weight but for the more ambitious of us who resent Survival hunters at the top of the charts (I mean, they don't have half our challenges as a ranged DPS), we're going Arcane and Fire. So I switched to Arcane from Frost yesterday and the learning curve is absolutely punishing. I used to top DPS on Butcher, Kargath, and Ko'orgh but now my DPS dropped significantly. On fights with any serious movement, I'm dead last. My ilevel is 675 and I have the two tier bonus. I do about 21.5K sustained DPS on a target dummy, unbuffed. I managed to get 30K DPS on LFR Kargath. Fire, the DPS yo-yo's but I'm usually close to the top on Operator and sometimes do top DPS on Beastlord.

I'm seriously disillusioned and a little nervous if I made a mistake. Not every spec is for everybody. I'm gonna get lots of practice in and my brain is slowly starting to condition itself to think in terms of Burn/Conserve phases but... Damn! Arcane is incredibly difficult compared to Frost. I'd love to hear transition experiences from other mages here. What was the learning curve like for you?

[Kver]

To be fair, you'll always have some adaptation issues when switching specs. Some people have it more than others. I seriously sucked at Fire in 5.4, actually played Frost until I absolutely had to change(That was 5.4.8 farm, ultimately).

If you really want to be bleeding edge and/or the best then yes you'll have to switch specs. Practise makes perfect, so don't worry

[Frostfeierqt]

I personally loved the whole process of respeccing: After several months of playing frost 24/7 (since frost is also our main pvp spec) it felt awesome to try new things, to build up a new setting for another spec. But I didn't have problems at all. I think it took me around 2 - 3 days of watching vids, reading guides / blogs and comparing logs to get to a better DPS-Output than I had before. I personally find Frost more difficult than Arcane, but that's just my personal experience I guess.

[TLTeo]

Having played a mage for so long (started in 1.12), at this point respeccing for me is fairly easy. I initially have a few pulls where i mess up because my muscle memory isn't there or i need to adapt to new things, but then it's just smooth sailing.

I guess i'm lucky like that

[Chev]

I have always been Arcane (I love the animation for Arcane Missiles) so my experience is always the opposite and I am always surprised by how mobile the other specs are.

Everyone says that Arcane is easy and a two button spec and while it is easy to play, it is difficult to master. The biggest thing to get your head around is the 93% Mana target. Get a good addon which shows your mana percentage or there is a weak aura in the WA thread which will show your mana percentage. Practice on a Dummy doing your burn to 50% and then Evo, AB to below 93%, reset and keep doing that for a bit and then start working in your Arcane Missiles to extend the burn and conserve rotations. From there start building your other abilities. E.g. popping CD's or Ice Flows to move. It will take longer to get going this way but 95% of time we get asked to look at logs, the issue is either Mana usage or munching AM procs / ticks. If you can get these under control before worrying about anything else, then you will have a much better foundation.

With regards to movement, you really need to plan your movement rather than react to movement. This will come from knowing the fights and watching timers. Ice Flows helps but is not as useful as it used to be as it now only works on the next cast rather letting you finish your current cast and the next cast. Big distances you will use blink. Take Incanter's Flow for your first couple of fights, even if all the guides say Rune of Power is best as Rune of Power is only best if you are standing in it 90% of the time. If you forget to refresh it or the fight moves you out of it and you are too busy focusing on your rotation to put down a new one, IF is now more powerful than RoP would have been.

[danksch]

I was in the same spot a few weeks ago, when I was just switching specs from pure Frost to Arcane / Fire.
Toughest challenge for me is mastering the positioning in fight as Arcane, thats what makes the spec actually more difficult than Frost to me. Arcane's rotation / priority system might let the spec seem braindead at first glance, but I feel its limited mobility demands a much smarter Ice Floes and instant casts management (well, the few it has with SN / NT, with lucky timing ABarrage) as well as "ahead-planning" in boss fights.
The fact that more and more people seem to look at SimCraft's sample analysis doesn't help either, as Arcane used to come out on top by a large margin (pre 6.1 boosts to Hunter BM/MM and other specs), since these sim-profiles assumed 100% stationary fights with like 100% RoP-uptime etc, so I often see players underwhelmed by Arcane's performance because you don't reach SimCraft goals, while all it takes to make our dps suffer is basically 0 charges of Ice Floes.

So, in essence, I'd say mastering Arcane definitely makes you a better player, at least a better caster in every aspect, as in the end you will learn to move as little as possible and watching boss timers, thus predict fight mechanics like you haven't before.

And btw, you'll surely make progress, just stay with it and practice, mastery (heh) will come overtime automatically.

[Juravieal]

One of the things I seem to have a lot of trouble with, when it comes to arcane, is the burn phase itself. I feel like it always takes longer than it should to get to 50% mana, even if I stop using missile procs around 70% mana, so that my crystal is always ready way before my evo is.

It's been a fairly hard adjustment for me, because I have always preferred fire, and have played it mostly exclusively since release. Outside of a bit through ICC when I felt I had to play Arcane anyway, but that was a long time ago. Playing frost (Which for whatever reason I just cant stand) for so long this expansion before I was able to play fire, and now going back to learn arcane as well, has just been painful.

[gameorg]

One of the things I seem to have a lot of trouble with, when it comes to arcane, is the burn phase itself. I feel like it always takes longer than it should to get to 50% mana, even if I stop using missile procs around 70% mana, so that my crystal is always ready way before my evo is.

It's been a fairly hard adjustment for me, because I have always preferred fire, and have played it mostly exclusively since release. Outside of a bit through ICC when I felt I had to play Arcane anyway, but that was a long time ago. Playing frost (Which for whatever reason I just cant stand) for so long this expansion before I was able to play fire, and now going back to learn arcane as well, has just been painful.

Arcane has a higher learning curve, because its the only spec you have to regularly check your mana bar. Even if you are experienced in the spec, you have to check it here and there. It draws attention away from the rest of the fight. And if you are not used to it, you will certainly drop too low with mana. For me it took like a week to play an acceptable arcane mage, but iam still nowhere near of my ranks with frost. (that beeing said, iam now way more behind on gear aswell

[swoon]

All the specs are pretty simple honestly.

Arcane you keep mana high and burn it every time your cooldowns are up basically which is every 90 seconds or so, don't cap missile procs and don't blast under 93% mana outside of burn phase, you run SN/PC on on pretty much everything so there isn't much to learn really, keep at least one charge for PC and you're good.

Fire is all about timings, knowing when adds are going to spawn so you can be ready to spread your dots, knowing when to combust without wasting too much time having it on CD, getting huge combusts and not wasting them with small ignites.

~With fire 2pc it makes it way easier and gives you a little bit of room for mistakes when learning the spec, 4pc just helps with opener if it procs and resetting combust CD with kindling and the rare time it procs when combust is coming off of CD.

Frost is just really brainless and doesn't require much thinking honestly, just stick with it and you'll get it eventually.

[Frostfeierqt]

I don't know, if you see learning a spec this way, it nearly sounds like pretty much every class / every spec is "honestly simple" to learn. But I doubt that someone is going to deal big deeps (compared to his gear) with just knowing how to do what you just described. What's about movement management? CD-/Potion-Usage and Timing? Priorities?

In my opinion calling Frost brainless isn't really toughtfull either. I also consider Frost overall as an more difficult spec than Fire. There are just more things to be aware of, to lineup, to "use-in-the-right-way".

[TLTeo]

The specs are easy to explain, but nailing every movement/cooldown timing and generally maximizing damage is certainly not easy.

Also, i don't see how you could possibly call Frost brainless.

[Latonius]

Good news is that I am improving. Movement, however, does kill my DPS by like a few thousand which can get disheartening. But practice makes perfect. I don't know how you can play Arcane without Weakauras and add-ons. I think what TLTeo said about "easy to explain, difficult to execute" is spot-on. I had a Survival hunter who tops our charts rag on me about how brainless and easy Arcane is.... I blew up at him. Not my finest moment...

[Bashlow]

What helped me a lot executing movement dps in arcane is using the same buttons for icy floes/frosbolt than for icyfloes/blast. You just have to learn combining floes with missiles then

[TLTeo]

I thought that ice floes thing was fixed? If not, i probably should learn it >.>

[nickseng]

What icy floes thing are you referring to?

As of last night, it still works with all MAGE spells, including chanelling spells like Missiles and Evo.

[TLTeo]

Iirc you could use Ice Floes one two spells instead of one, but i don't really know how.

[Chev]

You had to cast ice flows when there was less than a second on your current cast. That would let you start moving with out interrupting your current cast or use up the buff so you could then use it on your next spell as well. Now it will only apply to your next spell and only combat abilities. E.g. People were using it to DE items between trash packs or to mount while moving.

But this I now greatly off topic.