Arcane mage guide for raiding by Dutchmagoz! [6.2 updated]

[Wilderness]

do i want to spam ab if i have a certain amount of temporal power buffs?
(during burn phase)

Why wouldn't you be spamming AB anyway during your burn phase? Did you mean during the conserve phase? Your buffs shouldn't affect your rotation - one more AB with 2-3 temporal buffs that dips you lower on your mana isn't going to be a net gain.

- When below 65% mana, stop using arcane missiles and only cast arcane blast until 50% or lower mana, then cast evocation and let it tick twice to go back to 90% mana, and start the conserverotation

Sometimes I just get extremely unlucky and do not proc any AMs during the burn phase while Arcane Power is up. In such scenarios I usually continue burning without Evo, until AP runs out even if I have to go as low as 20% mana. Is that the right thing to do?

Also, is the 65% mana threshold for stopping AM a guideline or a rule? I currently have 4-pc so I'm not sure if it's a DPS gain if I just keep casting AM whenever it procs and only stop when I have to Evo.

Guideline, not a rule. The point of the guideline is just so that you don't burn too long with good AM luck and end up getting Evocation out of sync with your other CDs. If you get a bunch of AM procs early on then you can start ignoring them before that, and if you have very few procs then you can keep using them as they come up all the way through your burn. Although with the class trinket you generally just burn AB and ignore AM (if PC isn't up) so its not quite as relevant this tier.

[Curnivore]

with the class trinket you generally just burn AB and ignore AM (if PC isn't up)

Huh? I don't think that's true. And it's not on the OP.

[Wilderness]

The difference was slight, but Frosted simmed it towards the beginning of the tier and it was better to ignore AM during AP if you have the trinket and PC has already expired.

[Curnivore]

Never when AMs are X3 by the way.

[Wilderness]

No, it was including capped at 3.

[Curnivore]

That doesn't seem to be on the script now.

[Mejn]

Greetings mages

I came back to game 5 days ago and it's a lot of caching to do. Since I haven't progress HFC at all I still dont know on what bosses is best talent choice to go. If some1 can write for example each boss best talent choice for max dmg would be rly helpfull.

Second thing I got my hand on class trinket and prophecy. I just need smt like confirmation if this is right about opening. If PoF procc on first AB and I continue to stack to 4charges then I dumb missile on boss use crystal (if spec) and use cd's on him with super nova then if missile procc switch to boss if Trinket is up then back to pc ?

I'm talking about mythic btw.

Thx in advance.

[Searix]

unstable magic/prismatic crystal are your talents in heroic+ gear

Second thing I got my hand on class trinket and prophecy. I just need smt like confirmation if this is right about opening. If PoF procc on first AB and I continue to stack to 4charges then I dumb missile on boss use crystal (if spec) and use cd's on him with super nova then if missile procc switch to boss if Trinket is up then back to pc ?

This really depends on when legendary ring is proccing. If PoF procs on boss on first AB i get it to 3xAB, then missiles, drop crystal while in mid-air

However im popping Arcane Power pre-pull because we ring immediately into the fight, your results may vary

[Searix]

I already updated the trinket section of the arcane SimC thread.

I don't care much about racials (their influence is trivial), so I haven't bothered looking into it.

Don't want to make a new thread about it, but i need to understand if im breaking the haste cap and if so, by how much

This occurs during progression fights:
Bloodlust
Troll Racial
Tome of Shifting Words
Demon Trinket (+675 haste)
Weapon haste enchant

According to my character sheet that's 95.23% haste, but when you add upgraded to Tome of Shifting im getting down to 0.5 second arcane blasts.

Problem is that i swear it feels like there's 0.2-0.3 second deadtime between casts

[Methusula]

I already updated the trinket section of the arcane SimC thread.

I don't care much about racials (their influence is trivial), so I haven't bothered looking into it.

Don't want to make a new thread about it, but i need to understand if im breaking the haste cap and if so, by how much

This occurs during progression fights:
Bloodlust
Troll Racial
Tome of Shifting Words
Demon Trinket (+675 haste)
Weapon haste enchant

According to my character sheet that's 95.23% haste, but when you add upgraded to Tome of Shifting im getting down to 0.5 second arcane blasts.

Problem is that i swear it feels like there's 0.2-0.3 second deadtime between casts

Then you're capping. Tome reduces the gcd, it doesn't eliminate it.

[Frosted]

I already updated the trinket section of the arcane SimC thread.

I don't care much about racials (their influence is trivial), so I haven't bothered looking into it.

Don't want to make a new thread about it, but i need to understand if im breaking the haste cap and if so, by how much

This occurs during progression fights:
Bloodlust
Troll Racial
Tome of Shifting Words
Demon Trinket (+675 haste)
Weapon haste enchant

According to my character sheet that's 95.23% haste, but when you add upgraded to Tome of Shifting im getting down to 0.5 second arcane blasts.

Problem is that i swear it feels like there's 0.2-0.3 second deadtime between casts

Arcane SimC APL thread I think has some posts on the minimum GCD when you are using Tome, if you want to check it there for exactly how far below it you are going.

[Searix]

I already updated the trinket section of the arcane SimC thread.

I don't care much about racials (their influence is trivial), so I haven't bothered looking into it.

Don't want to make a new thread about it, but i need to understand if im breaking the haste cap and if so, by how much

This occurs during progression fights:
Bloodlust
Troll Racial
Tome of Shifting Words
Demon Trinket (+675 haste)
Weapon haste enchant

According to my character sheet that's 95.23% haste, but when you add upgraded to Tome of Shifting im getting down to 0.5 second arcane blasts.

Problem is that i swear it feels like there's 0.2-0.3 second deadtime between casts

Arcane SimC APL thread I think has some posts on the minimum GCD when you are using Tome, if you want to check it there for exactly how far below it you are going.

hate to bump this, i think i recall what you're talking about but after 10 minutes of looking i couldnt find it

[Komma]

Literally 30 seconds after posting that I couldn't find it, I actually did...

http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic ... 727#p17727" target="_blank

hate to bump this, i think i recall what you're talking about but after 10 minutes of looking i couldnt find it

I remember writing the details somewhere, but I can't find it anymore Here's the post in the SimC APL thread.

http://altered-time.com/forum/viewtopic ... =40#p17776" target="_blank

[Curnivore]

It might not be the GCD being altered there but the spell delaying to start. This is because the method of testing does not directly query for the GCD but for the time difference between Arcane Blasts. To be honest I had that idea because I was getting the impression lately that Arcane Blast gets "stuck" between casts and after the GCD is free (I had an obvious indication of GCD downtime on screen so it's easy to notice), though it might had been a mirage.

If client lag is an issue it might be interesting to look into delay and network settings on client.

[Komma]

Er...what? No, the method of testing queries directly for the GCD. It's a static value that doesn't change between casts. The client lag is just the buff application timing.

[Curnivore]

Sorry, I had in mind another unrelated issue. Remove the last messages if you feel it's right.

[LaplaceNoMa]

Going to try Xhul mythic today.
I really wonder about how the whole haste stacking shennanigans apply to this fight, seeing so much of our damage will be coming from AoE - SN and AO.

I currently have a *lot* of various mythic pieces, including different weapons and offset pieces. Even though I have various 725 weapons (gorefiend staff, 1handers from Killrog, Iskar and Socrethar, but no 725 offhands yet), I have never yet seen it fit to replace my 720 (now 730 with upgrades) Edict of Argus. I also have a 735 Archimonde offset helm with a socket, but 3 of my tier pieces are still heroic (legs, chest and shoulders), so I can't see using this offset helm as an upgrade yet.

When trying to play with AMRs 'best in bag' stuff, it all comes down to stat weights I'm using: I've tried the 'haste to 2100' and the 'default' profiles, and it kinda feels that neither of those is what I should be looking for in terms of fights like Xhul mythic.

Except for Xhul (and except for progression and first kill) I'll still be sticking to Frost, becaust I don't like the steering wheel of my car thinking that when I rotate it right, I want to turn left. HFC arcane is even more absurdly random and chaotic than Cata fire, and I prefer being in charge of my numbers, not my trinkets. So, I'm saying this now not to start some holywar about specs, but to specify that I *only* need arcane for Xhul right now, so I'm not looking for some cookie-cutter solution that would be okayish for Xhul and other fights.

Can anyone who has already done this fight as arcane and tried tweaking their numbers there share some insight with me? Thanks.

[Wilderness]

I think you're overestimating the amount of AoE you're really doing on that fight - its not that much. Yeah, SN is nice to help on the imps and it interrupts them, but they will mostly be killed by other classes that are more suited for it. On our kill yesterday my SN damage was 12% of my total and that was without our ele shaman who normally wrecks them so they were actually up longer than usual. You should be using SN on imps as you can, but other than basically ignoring them and focusing the shadow adds (can't think of their name) when they are up and otherwise just doing damage to the boss and big adds.

If you really want to play Frost, then play Frost. You don't get the interrupt on the adds with IN vs SN, but your raid shouldn't be relying on that anyway and there should be a stun/interrupt rotation from the people focusing on them. You'll do nice cleave damage throughout the fight and with the ilvl upgrades the burn at the end isn't a big issue so being lower there as Frost rather than Arcane isn't going to make much of a difference. Once people handle chains and black holes correctly it will be a kill.

[Curnivore]

You seem to look so much into ilevel and secondary stats and you missed spell power, the most important.

[Dreaper]

I know this has been previously stated in the guide but just to clarify at around high ilvls 740~

During burn phase w/ lust +AP+ PC+Ring
Do you still 1. Missile at anytime above 60% instead of of AB spamming or start ignoring missile procs during this situation?(This is also assuming no doom nova procs are on the crystal or boss).

And even during regular burn phase with only just AP+PC+RING

Do you still missile anytime above 60%?


How about Kilrog's burn w/ lust+PC+AP+RING as well still use missiles above 60%? or just burn ABs tll crystal dies.

Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks