[7.2] Arcane Talents, Trinkets, Racials, Stats, Legendary

[Shangalar]

I've run my character through the default profile and the NTspam profile, and for my current gear/artifact/stats set, I got 239k with the default profile (stat prio Vers = Crit > Mastery > Haste), and 271k with the NTspam profile (stat prio Vers > Mastery = Crit > Haste). My item level is only 844 as I was quite slow into the expansion, had to finish college yay. At 28, less yay.

My conclusion is that I might have too much Haste baseline at the moment and should get a bit more of other stats. The difference is at the same time huge and quite interesting. I'll test it again in a few days after I get some more gear with various stats.

For now it seems that the old/new NTspam, even with the fix to Quickening, is still the way to go, it just doesn't go to absurd levels anymore.

The two simcraft profiles have 840 item level and a weapon that's similar to mine, but it has all 3 MissilesProcChance relics. If I put that weapon into the sim, my dps goes up by a few k. I am going to guess that the disparity between the two sims in my personal case is because of how wacky my stats are (and how sub-optimal my trinkets are among other things) so the NTspam is more heavily preferred. I'm not really concluding anything innovative here, just reporting.

The best thing for each individual player, as always, would be to simulate their own characters to see what's best for them.

[Ponkster]

This is so weird from blizz.

The "skill cap" of arcane is keeping quickening stacks. Its very easy to get hit by a mechanic and lose stacks.

I myself proposed to half the stacks to 50, but it falling afterwards is a huge letdown.

At the moment the way fights are, Fire mages are doing obscene burst damage; arcane mages then catch up slowly as quickening builds. At 75 stacks or more the damage is just ridiculous, you pull ahead of fire as long as there is no cleave.

With the hotfix; you finally start catching up to fire and quickenings gone back to 200k dps. Best build that back up.

It was high risk/high reward now its high risk/mediocre reward.


I am genuinely hoping there is another play-style now that is best because keeping quickening stacks can be fight breaking and if you can't keep the stacks its GG on the meters. The suggestion to increase haste gain per quickening stack but stack it at 25 seems perfect at the moment.

[Unreal]

Not sure what you're on about, arcane burst is nearly as strong as fire right now and it'll most likely be stronger once the balance patch hits us tomorrow.

They're discouraging the nt playstyle. If you play the intented rotation the quickening nerf will not affect you in anyway with the current gear available. However you may still chose to build up stacks with nt for specific moments. Personally, I think blizzard did a pretty good and unexpected Job in balancing this out. You can still make use of nt spam for bosses like the heart of corruption or ursoc in order to push through important dps phases.

[Ponkster]

Not sure what you're on about, arcane burst is nearly as strong as fire right now and it'll most likely be stronger once the balance patch hits us tomorrow.

They're discouraging the nt playstyle. If you play the intented rotation the quickening nerf will not affect you in anyway with the current gear available. However you may still chose to build up stacks with nt for specific moments. Personally, I think blizzard did a pretty good and unexpected Job in balancing this out. You can still make use of nt spam for bosses like the heart of corruption or ursoc in order to push through important dps phases.

I must need to change me opener then because if i have no charges my opener is nowhere near fires even with pots.

Could you help?

[Ushy]

Didn't know where else to post this but I'm new to simming and I was wondering is it right or wrong to gem and enchant according to your current personal stat weights?

[Unreal]

Not sure what you're on about, arcane burst is nearly as strong as fire right now and it'll most likely be stronger once the balance patch hits us tomorrow.

They're discouraging the nt playstyle. If you play the intented rotation the quickening nerf will not affect you in anyway with the current gear available. However you may still chose to build up stacks with nt for specific moments. Personally, I think blizzard did a pretty good and unexpected Job in balancing this out. You can still make use of nt spam for bosses like the heart of corruption or ursoc in order to push through important dps phases.

I must need to change me opener then because if i have no charges my opener is nowhere near fires even with pots.

Could you help?

Just help yourself, Komma already posted the burst rotation. Here are some logs of arcane burst at pulls.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/jL ... e&source=9" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zw ... amage-done" target="_blank

600-800k burst is what a well geared fire mage gets, arcane is just a late bloomer because of the AC building and thats why it may seem as if his burst is low.

[Grazer]

Sorry for asking, but I was wondering if we can expect a Trinket comparison using EN Trinkets. I know that with all the WF / TF stuff it is difficult but I (and probably many more) are interested in a general comparison, e.g. just using the "standard" versions and comparing them to each other (and maybe comparing them to the non-upgraded 840 Pre-Raid BiS.

[Embro]

Not sure what you're on about, arcane burst is nearly as strong as fire right now and it'll most likely be stronger once the balance patch hits us tomorrow.

They're discouraging the nt playstyle. If you play the intented rotation the quickening nerf will not affect you in anyway with the current gear available. However you may still chose to build up stacks with nt for specific moments. Personally, I think blizzard did a pretty good and unexpected Job in balancing this out. You can still make use of nt spam for bosses like the heart of corruption or ursoc in order to push through important dps phases.

I must need to change me opener then because if i have no charges my opener is nowhere near fires even with pots.

Could you help?

Just help yourself, Komma already posted the burst rotation. Here are some logs of arcane burst at pulls.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/jL ... e&source=9" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zw ... amage-done" target="_blank

600-800k burst is what a well geared fire mage gets, arcane is just a late bloomer because of the AC building and thats why it may seem as if his burst is low.

Any chance you could make it a little easier on a guy and throw a link to Komma's post?

[Frosted]

Updated some sections. The EN trinkets are probably still overvaluing Twisting Winds a bit. it's dealing ~2% total damage, which is pretty close to in game I think. But people should be wary about using it in game, since it tends to me >50% of its ticks on small / medium sized bosses.

[testacular]

Just few lame questions from fellow arcane mage...
I cannot reach the DPS calculated with NT spam by no means since my gear is party crit oriented (felt better for classical non-NT rotation - 20% crit, 42% mastery ATM). And I only learned about NT exploit recently.

Nevertheless I have some questions regarding that playstyle:
1) With the nerf to Quickening, how do you effectively manage NT spam rotation? Getting to 50 is no big deal, but then what?
- the buff drops very quickly and depending on it can waste your rotation
- for instance you might be near the burn phase and you have 45 stacks ATM, that means you will loose it mid-way in burn phase
2) I cannot help but feel that the Arcane Explosion in NT spam is underwhelming. Is there a way to temper the rotation to still keep AB in?
- I know there probably isn't (unless 66% mastery) but still I am wondering
- it feels weird to jump next to melees and just keep using this boom boom spell as a "single target" dps

3) Last but not least - Mythic+ dungeons, would you recommend NT spam as well? Or will a classical rotation be better? It is a bit of a rush forward in these and I am not sure NT will work here, even though there are multiple targets hit by it.

[Amagezing]

if quickening didn't expire after 50 stacks and 6 seconds would it really be that strong? surely blizz is being a bit dramatic by making us go back to 0 stacks especially as the stacks don't sync up with anything in particular and its quite easy to be hit by a mechanic that forces you not to be able to land a AB/AM/AE and start from 0 again
maybe quickening could be a passive like incanter's flow but instead of a damage cycle it could be a haste one fitting a 1.5 min cycle to match arcane power or something smaller like 30 seconds

[testacular]

With the quickening nerf AND boost to mastery and our dmg I think it is meant as encouragement to not use NT spam. And if you ask me, it works. We are pretty competitive atm. And if we can sync our burn phase with something like 30 stacks of quickening - thats what I think was meant (granted, it is bloody difficult xD)

[Frosted]

Added EN trinkets. Updated OP in general to Heroic level raid gear.

[Embro]

With the quickening nerf AND boost to mastery and our dmg I think it is meant as encouragement to not use NT spam. And if you ask me, it works. We are pretty competitive atm. And if we can sync our burn phase with something like 30 stacks of quickening - thats what I think was meant (granted, it is bloody difficult xD)

Sure, we're competitive.... with the other classes/specs in the middle of the DPS chart but we're still a good 15-20k dps behind fire. That may seem insignificant but that's an extra 5 million damage on a boss that fire has on us. That's that 2% on il'gynoth or heroic/mythic ursoc, and all we'd need to do is switch specs and learn it which costs us nothing but a little time in the raid leader's eyes.

While I agree that changes to the spec needed to happen to reduce the attractiveness of NT spam. I think that the other adjustments were not enough to compensate and make the traditional rotation more attractive than simply switching specs to fire. I think it's going to take a bit more work than simply nerfing quickening to make arcane an attractive mage spec to a group. That being said... I'm so sorry for my frosty brothers.

[Frosted]

No real reason to NTSpam anymore. Casting NT on a target with NT already active has a lowered AM proc rate.

[Causese]

seems like rhonins is stronger than intended

trying to figure out this log
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/jL ... iew=events" target="_blank

my assumption is that he's keeping quickening stacks up with lucky rhonins/nt-spamm proccs.

so the difference to regular nt spamm is that you use rhonins procc to refresh quickening and not AB immediately
(and you probably want to refresh with AE instead of ab at high mana)

no idea how reliable it is compared to pre-nerf nt spamm

[Shangalar]

After trying out the NT-spam / maintain Quickening thing the last few days more actively, I've decided that I won't be doing it at all unless for some reason the advantage of doing it is really really too high to miss.

It's just plain and simple annoying and boring as hell. Feels like I'm wasting time (and patience) when I could just be resetting with Barrage and playing normally until the next burn phase, no matter the whatever difference in the damage output. Plus going into melee or staying there just to possibly use Explosion every 5 seconds, I'd rather pass.

They should just change NT to have a 50% chance to proc Missiles if you don't have NT active anywhere or if NT on your current target is in the epidemic refresh range, and to not be able to proc Missiles any other way. At this rate it's just torture for my sanity and my 5 key to which NT is bound. And torture for the spec in general.

[Kiyoku]

What's up with the massive discrepancies between the latest simulationcraft and the sims posted in the OP? I would figure it out myself but I don't have anything but a phone available to me at the moment. Thanks!

[Effia]

So I pretty consistantly sim my character to check my stats and yesterday when simming, I had Mastery > Crit >~ Vers > Haste so I geared accordingly. After simming my new gear setup, the stat priority remained largely the same, with Mastery decreasing a bit to accommodate the increased Mastery I had but the rest stayed the same.

Today after simming my character, the stat priority has wildly fluctuated to Haste > Crit =~ Vers > Mastery. What gives? Any reports on other people having wildly fluctuating stat weights between simcraft builds?

[Grumpdogg]

Is anyone else able to confirm a Mastery 'soft cap' at approximately 7000 gear_mastery_rating ?

# gear_ilvl=858.33
# gear_stamina=21374
# gear_intellect=20771
# gear_crit_rating=5862
# gear_haste_rating=3595
# gear_mastery_rating=7084
# gear_versatility_rating=2225
Intellect=8.30, SpellPower=7.73, CritRating=6.91, HasteRating=6.23, MasteryRating=7.00, Versatility=7.05
DPS = 295876

# gear_ilvl=858.33
# gear_stamina=21374
# gear_intellect=20771
# gear_crit_rating=6162
# gear_haste_rating=3595
# gear_mastery_rating=6784
# gear_versatility_rating=2225
Intellect=8.10, SpellPower=7.76, CritRating=6.78, HasteRating=6.21, MasteryRating=7.01, Versatility=6.98
DPS = 295890