Arcane Rotation with Mystic Kilt 7.1.5 UPDATED

[Nefershep]

Updated for 7.1.5.
Update again after first night of raiding, January 18, 2017

Hi everyone, this is my updated guide for the arcane rotation with the Mystic Kilt of the Rune Master legendary. I honestly didn’t expect this post to get as much attention as it did, so I didn’t really look back at it, as no one left any comments or questions, but I’ll try to update it more often, since it seems it was relatively well viewed.

This first build will be for those of you with both Mystic Kilt of the Rune Master and Cord of Infinity legendary items. Overall, I don’t expect the belt to change the rotation too much, but it will reduce the conserve/eliminate the need to conserve if you get lucky with AM procs.

Stat Priority:
Intellect
Haste to 15% (5400 rating)
Crit
Versatility
Mastery

Current Stats:
Crit: 30% (8802)
Haste: 15% (5438)
Mastery: 35% (8351)
Versatility: 1%

Note: Reading up on what Mythlos has posted, I would agree that we no longer need an abundance of mana or mastery, and can focus on being more well-rounded in terms of stats/gear. To this end, I have dropped my mastery from 56% down to 36%, and have noticed a DPS increase since doing so. Looking at the logs for Tuesday raids, it seems as though a lot of mages with the kilt are going Crit/Haste, and ignoring mastery completely. One of the mages I looked at, Chillerzz, has dropped a significant amount of mastery in favour of the other stats. As I pick up gear, I’m going to work on adjusting my stats accordingly, and will also be dropping mastery in favour of other stats.

If you do not have the kilt, then the general stat makeup seems to be similar to my original train of thought,
Intellect
Haste to 15% (5400 rating)
Mastery to ~35% (8300 rating)
Crit
Versatility

Talents:
Amplification
Slipstream
RoP
Resonance
Chrono Shift
Erosion
Overpowered

Notes:
I was planning on using Mirror Images the most, but I found that it doesn’t synergize as well with the flow of arcane at the moment. As a result, I changed my mind and will be using RoP. MI is still an option, and is wonderful because it requires minimal maintenance. Simply pop your PP prior to summoning them to get the bonus stats, and they’ll go and do their thing. This means that you don’t have to time your rotation around one more variable, which can be useful in learning the initial arcane rotation. Once you get the hang of it, then moving on to using RoP will grant you better returns due to the heavy AoE/Cleave in NH. I've chosen IF over RoP for NH due to the heavy amount of movement present in most of the fights.

Overpowered is currently the best one for raiding, as we do not have the mana or mastery to sustain Temporal Flux. Arcane orb is significantly weaker, as many of the fights in the Nighthold center around a single enemy, plus it’s a weaker spell on its own anyway. I imagine once people get their set bonuses, we’re going to be moving over into the talent,Temporal Flux, that drains more mana and will keep our CDs lined up nicely.

Rotation
Since we’ve lost quickening, we need more haste to get through our spells. This is where the haste breakpoint comes from. Arcane will likely feel very slow to you now, compared to 2% ramping up haste with every cast, but on the plus side, it works a lot more smoothly. You won’t go OOM as fast, nor will you be as punished if you mistime a cast or have to move out of a boss ability. On the plus side, it now means we can AB more freely, every 40s if you’ve taken Charged Up, and when bosses are going to go into an intermission phase. Being able to use AB more freely also means that, with the Mystic Kilt of the Rune Master legendary, you can get 12% mana back throughout the fight. If you can pair this with the regen from the Cord of Infinity, you’ll find you get quite a bit of mana in return.

While I now would recommend using RoP, if you are using Incanter’s Flow, here’s how I time some of my spells. The exception is for the opening rotation.

MoA: Cast when IF is at 2, counting down.
AM: Begin channel when IF is at 3 counting up or 4 counting down. The exception is if you have 3, and may munch a proc.


Opening Rotation:
1-2s before pull: Pre-pot.
Here you will cast Arcane Blast until you hit 2 charges of AM or reach ~30% mana. Once at this bracket, you will:
Cast MoA
Cast RoP
Cast AP
Cast PoM
Use any on-use rings and trinkets.
1 AM
1 Arcane Blast
1 AM
Spam Arcane Blast until AP ends.
Cast any AM that proc during AP.

Once AP ends,

Cast 1 AM only when you have 3 charges so that you don't munch a proc or if you’re about to cast OR
If Touch of the Magi procs.

If Touch of the Magi procs, then you want to dump all your AM into it before it falls off for max damage. If this occurs during AP, I would suggest continuing to spam Arcane Blast to gain the maximum benefit of AP. Cast 1AM during AP only if you have 3, and then use the rest once the buff drops off.

Once OOM, cast Evo.

Since the adds in the NIghthold seem to come out at regular intervals, I would suggest holding onto a RoP when you’re close to adds spawning to help nuke them down.

After using Evo, you will enter into a maintenance phase.

This is where the rotation will differ if you have the Cord of Infinity as well. If you have it, then this is what I currently recommend.

Spam Arcane Blast until you hit 40%, then use up your charges of AM. This regens your mana during casting, as the belt will proc once you have 40% mana remaining. Using your AM here allows you to regen enough mana for 1-2 extra casts of Arcane Blast. By this time, AP should be getting close to being off CD, around 20s remaining. Depending on how many AM procs you got, your Evo may or may not be close behind.

If they are relatively close in timer (within 15s), then the amount of mana you start your burn with doesn’t really matter, as there are no quickening procs to worry about. If you have a short amount of time between the two spells coming off CD, then aim for around 35% mana remaining before casting AP.

Burn your mana down with Arcane Blast, then cast AB to gain 12% mana. I still favor using AE to gain stacks quickly, as it is instant and cheaper to cast. The amount of times I cast AE is relative to my mana regen and the gap between AP and Evo.

If you have a longer gap, >20s, then aim to get a higher amount of mana to start off your burn. When this happens to me, I am for around 70% mana to ensure I can continuously cast into Evo.

Once you hit here, it’s rinse and repeat.

If you do not have Cord of Infinity, then you will simply enter into a conserve phase once you burn through your second round of mana. This means casting either AE or Arcane Blast to get to your 4 stacks, then casting AB to gain mana. If you choose to use Arcane Blast, then you are only going to go to 2 stacks before casting AB. Once you hit here, it’s rinse and repeat.

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, and I will do my best to answer them. Still working on figuring it out, so I appreciate any insight or comments people may have. Thanks for reading!

[magictricks]

what kind of dps are you getting on something like ursoc?.

[Nefershep]

On our Ursoc kill, I got 210k dps.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Mz ... 1#fight=20" target="_blank

[Forminasage]

Presumably AE is being used as it's instant cast and only limited by GCD? Seems like being in essentially melee range as often as this requires would outweigh the benefits of slightly faster charge generation, not to mention unfeasible on ranged-mechanic heavy fights (although you used this on Ursoc where this isn't really an issue).

Have you tried AB in place of AE, or did you find it didn't work as well?

[Nefershep]

Presumably AE is being used as it's instant cast and only limited by GCD? Seems like being in essentially melee range as often as this requires would outweigh the benefits of slightly faster charge generation, not to mention unfeasible on ranged-mechanic heavy fights (although you used this on Ursoc where this isn't really an issue).

Have you tried AB in place of AE, or did you find it didn't work as well?

You are correct about my AE usage. It's just more efficient in terms of mana cost, building quickening stacks, and time spent building charges. For most of Emerald Nightmare, being in melee range is either A) the same as being ranged or B) more beneficial. Arcane blast simply takes too long to cast, and costs more mana per cast than AE does.

I will say that I have done this on every fight on normal, and it hasn't posed a problem in terms of taking additional damage or swaying my DPS much. Between Ice Floes and Blink/Displacement, my movement can occur while casting for most fights without interrupting a cast. The one fight I did struggle with was the dragons of nightmare, but that was more with predicting what would happen. If you are going to be stuck on a flower, then it's obviously better to cast Arcane Blast.

[Arcanosaur]

I do not like this rotation you have given. I also have the Kilt of the Runemaster and I will describe what I have learned.

First off, I would like to discuss the implications of the Kilt.

Why you cannot continuously burn your mana and regen with barrage:
The first thing that comes to people's minds is that you can:
1)Burn your mana
2)Evocate
3)Burn your mana
4)Arcane Barrage to full mana
5)Burn your mana
6)Evocate
7)Repeat

However, in practice this rotation is not practical, primarily due to the fact that you will not have enough time to do regenerate your mana (step number 4) before Arcane Power is available due to Arcane Missile procs gained during step 3.

Reasoning: There is a certain amount of time to burn your first mana pool in order to do step number 3. As you burn mana, you will likely gain many procs of Arcane Missiles. You should never cap Arcane Missiles, and so after regenerating mana with evocation. If you decide to deplete your mana again, you are likely to gain many procs of missiles burning your 2nd mana pool. The time it takes to cast these additional missiles reduces the amount of time you have to regenerate mana (step 4) before your 2nd Arcane Power.

I have calculated in other places that the highest net mana regen per second (using mana consuming abilities**) is to use Arcane Explosion x2 -> Barrage -> Arcane Explosion x2 -> Barrage.
4x AE-> Barrage is a small positive gain, but smaller than 2 explosions.

However, it will take 10 Barrages to gain 80% mana or ~30gcds plus a little extra depending on your haste because the cooldown of Barrage is decreased by haste. Therefore, after burning your 2nd mana pool, you need 30+ seconds to regenerate (which doesnt happen, ever). You simply dont have enough time to regenerate with this technique.

Plus Arcane Explosion x2 -> Barrage is no fun and does bad dps, Therefore, we do not need to look at the kilt for ways to achieve highest net mana regen per second but rather highest sustained dps over the length of a fight.

There are some work arounds to achieve a rotation where you constantly burn your mana, but its a rather complicated. I will have to teach you some ideas before I discuss the fastest way of regenerating your mana from empty with the kilt.

Talents:
First i will list the pre 7.1.5 talents and then the post 7.1.5 talent builds I plan to use:

Live: For nearly all circumstances I use this:
Words of Power
Shimmer
Rune of Power
Charged Up Bread and Butter with Kilt
Ice Flows
Nether Tempest
Quickening

7.1.5: I will likely be using this until I get the set bonuses:
Temporal Flux
Presence of Mind
Rune of Power
Charged Up
Chrono Shift
Unstable Magic
Quickening

Stat priority:
Arcane does not have a trump stat... in fact, your stat choices and rotation are heavily legendary dependent.
For only having the Kilt of the Runemaster, itemization precedes like so:

First acquire 40% minimum mastery.
Then acquire at least 10% haste, up to 15% is good but other stats are better right now.
Then, acquire versatility equal to 1/5 of your mastery.
Then, stack critical strike.

You can choose to have some more mastery than 40%. With current gear, you should strive for at least 40% or up to 45% but stacking mastery higher than 45% requires losing other secondary stats which compliment mastery and provide more dps than an increase in mastery.
Mages who do not use Arcane Barrage will value mastery more than we do, but currently, mastery is there to buff our damage done and increase the amount of damage bonus provided by versatility.

Due to how arcane charges work, versatility is factored into your damage a little over 3.4 times. I have done many in depth calculations to derive the above stat priority. When people have mastery greater than 60%, then versatility is being applied to your base damage 4 times.

Here is the secret to the Kilt of the Runemaster:

Hover over your tooltip for Arcane Missiles, and PLEASE READ THE FINE PRINT!
"Chance doubled for Arcane Blast"

Now consider Words of Power, a 4% increased proc chance of missiles across all of your spells indicates that Arcane Blast will have an 8% increased proc chance for Arcane Missiles. 1% Missile Proc trait bonus = 2% for Arcane Blast

Therefore, we use Kilt of the Runemaster in order to maintain high mana to proc Arcane Missiles with Words of Power.

You must think of it this way: Consider people who never use Barrage in order to maintain quickening into your second Arcane Power.
All this does is increase the number of Arcane Blasts and Missiles during your next cooldown, however, there are 3-4 1 minute periods in a fight where these mages are barely doing any dps in order to maintain their mana for the next burst.
Therefore, these mages will cast fewer 4 charge spells over the fight, but more of them are concentrated in the cooldown window. To compare the damage between these rotations, simply take the number of arcane charges that a mage who does not use Barrage in their rotation is able to cast during their cooldowns, and subtract the damage that these arcane blasts did by an equivalent number of arcane blasts without cooldowns. This damage is the extra damage provided by Quickening. This damage bonus can be rewritten in terms of # of 4 charge spells. If the damage from the number of 4 charge spells that are able to be cast from Kilt of the Runemaster exceeds the damage from being able to cast more spells during your cooldowns, then you should use a rotation which does not involve abstaining from Arcane Barrage.

On live, depending on your RNG, you can slip into your 2nd Arcane Power without using barrage, however in 7.1.5 this is going away until endgame when mastery and missile proc chances are high enough to negate the increasing mana cost of spells from 7.1.5 quickening, so get used to the new rotation now because its good dps, and will be doing even MORE dps in 7.1.5.


Standard Rotation before beginning the Kilt rotation:
Below happens like clockwork on nearly every fight:
First, you should open like so:
2s before pull: Prepot, Mark of Aluneth, Rune of Power, Charged Up, Nether Tempest, Arcane Power, *Arcane Missiles* if available, Arcane Blast spam (Use your Arcane Missiles as they appear!!) *Note do not refresh nether tempest during Arcane Power*
After your first rune of power you have 3 seconds remaining on Arcane Power unless you have a relic which extends the duration. In this last 3 seconds, you should switch to Arcane Blast x2 -> Arcane Missiles on the last second, unless you would cap missiles. When Arcane Power finishes, use Rune of Power. (If you do not use it here, you will cap RoP after evocation and waste about 10-15 seconds on your 3rd Rune of Power due to the fact that you are not trying to burn your mana after evocation so we want to use RoP while we are still bursting) The third RoP is ALWAYS saved for 2nd Mark of Aluneth.
Burn your mana, using Arcane Missiles as they appear until you are at 15% mana.
Sub 15% mana, you no longer want to use Arcane Missiles (unless capped) in the hope that you will be able to go into your 2nd Arcane Power without having used Arcane Barrage. The reasoning is that these Arcane Missiles will have an additional 4% increased chance to proc another Arcane Missiles if they are used after Evocation. Likewise, after your evocation, your Arcane Blast has an 8% increased chance to proc missiles, and the missiles you had gained before evocation will allow you to stall at high mana a little longer before you need to barrage. Primarily though, these missiles are critical in allowing you to sustain your Quickening until your 2nd Mark of Aluneth, because we have about 30 seconds to wait (in a fight without lust at the start). Usually, in a fight with lust at the start, Aluneth has 45 seconds after your evocate so you should make use of Lust to proc many words of Power while you have crazy haste to benefit from Arcane Blast's double proc chance.

Basically, we dont want to start using Barrage until our 2nd Mark of Aluneth if you can help it. Sometimes you will not get enough Arcane Missiles procs to do this and you will need to Barrage if you begin to dip below 60% mana and Aluneth has >15 seconds. 60% is our cutoff because we are using Charged Up, and it should be available at this point. Arcane Barrage -> Charged Up -> Arcane Barrage = 32% mana Therefore, make sure you do not overcap mana.

IMPORTANT: Save your freakin 3rd Rune of Power for Aluneth. The third rune is ALWAYS right there after evocate and its so tempting to use, but its not worth it to use because we have finished bursting. Instead, you should begin using arcane barrage, and in the 30s before Aluneth, your goal is to acquire 3 arcane missiles by the time Aluneth is coming off cooldown so you can do Mark of Aluneth -> Rune of Power-> Arcane Blast x1 (in hopes to fish Touch of the Magi) -> Arcane Missiles x3

After Aluneth explodes, the real rotation begins.
So how do we DPS using the Kilt?

Basically, the 12-15% haste makes the Kilt Rotation viable, otherwise, your casts will take too long to make use of how the Kilt works. The kilt rotation is highly dependent on reacting to your Arcane Missiles procs.

******Because Arcane Blast costs little mana at few Arcane Charges yet maintains double the proc chance for Arcane Missiles, the goal is to use the Kilt to stay within an acceptable mana range for Words of Power to proc as many Arcane Missiles as possible, and then (ideally) only using them when we have 4 Arcane Charges. ********
ALSO, we want to use as many 4 Charge Arcane Blasts as possible without going below the lower mana threshold.

When Charged up is on cooldown, your mana threshold is between 66-90%, because 66%+16%= 82%
82%+8%=90%
The second equation represents the fact that after burning to 70%, I will barrage, then Arcane Blast x2 -> Barrage Again. REMEMBER earlier I said that the highest net mana regen per second was Arcane Explosion x2-> Barrage. Arcane Blast x2-> Barrage is the highest net mana regen per second for Arcane Blast as well, but has double the proc chance for Arcane Missiles.

Whats more important however, is the fact that when you get skilled at the Kilt, you will be able to dip lower and lower. You will want to burst, build quickening, dump missiles, barrage, Arcane Blast x2-> Barrage.
IMPORTANT SKILL PLAY HERE Consider you just dumped your missiles before barrage. If you gain a missiles from these next 2 Blasts, then you can use the missile before using Barrage. What this does is give you a net mana gain of 4% right off the bat because Arcane Missiles costs no mana, thus negating the increasing mana cost of Arcane Charges, but still giving your 3 charge Kilt mana return.

Therefore, you can decide whether or not to cache an arcane missiles after your little burst or use them all. If you decide to cache 1, you will do slightly less damage, but you will be able to regenerate more mana and thus dip lower into your mana pool to begin with. If i do the latter, the new threshold is now 62%. As mastery increases our mana pool, the 4% net mana constitutes more Arcane Blasts than 4% mana with a smaller mana pool. Thus, the yield of 4 charge spells is larger even though we are using an Arcane Missiles with only 2 Arcane Charges.

In this way, you can design a method of Regenerating your mana astonishingly fast. However, note that this method is counterproductive to Words of Power so its not really worth it in my opinion, but maybe you like it:
After burning your 2nd mana pool, if you have 3 Arcane Missiles and Charged Up, you can do:
Barrage -> Charged Up -> Ice barrier (because you have to wait for Barrage cd but you dont want to generate any Arcane Charges or use any missiles) -> Barrage -> Arcane Blast x2 -> Arcane Missiles x2 -> Barrage -> Arcane Blast x2 -> Arcane Missiles (x2 if available) -> Barrage.

The reason we use 2 of our 3 saved Arcane missiles to gain 4 charges after Charged Up is because we will be increase the proc chance of Arcane Missiles sooner. Therefore, when you use the 3rd Arcane Missiles from your original stored 3, it is much more likely that you would have procced another Arcane Missiles to repeat the process.

This method does considerably more damage than just Arcane Explosion x2 -> Barrage and restores mana faster.
I prefer to just remain at high mana though and soak missiles until my next Arcane Power, using my missiles to gain an extra Arcane Charge here or there for mana to burst more.

Anyways, thats all for today folks maybe Ill revisit and discuss some other strategies but this post is long enough. Gooday.

[Arcanosaur]

When 7.1.5 comes out I will post an additional guide, and maybe I will include discussion about multiple legendaries.

Cord of Infinity will be especially interesting with the kilt due to the fact that you can burn below 40%, proc the regen, Barrage above 50%, go below 40%, barrage above... etc.

Rhonins would still be good because you would be able to fish for many Arcane missiles procs like I said above and benefit from more 4 charge arcane blasts from the bracers.

[kamui]

Hey Arcanosaur,

Do you have a simc profile for your rotation? I'm using the standard simc profile and I don't think the stat weights are accurate for this playstyle; haste is valued highest while mastery (sitting at 33% mastery/26% haste) is by far the lowest.

[Nefershep]

I'm surprised people are still reading this, the forums seemed rather quiet and no one had commented on it, so I didn't bother updating it after new patches or for ToV. Obviously, it's somewhat different now, and will change more with tomorrow's patch. I'll update my new rotation once I get settled in with it comfortably. It will likely be similar to the current train of thought, with minor differences based on my specific gear availability.

[poker]

I'm surprised people are still reading this, the forums seemed rather quiet and no one had commented on it, so I didn't bother updating it after new patches or for ToV. Obviously, it's somewhat different now, and will change more with tomorrow's patch. I'll update my new rotation once I get settled in with it comfortably. It will likely be similar to the current train of thought, with minor differences based on my specific gear availability.

Hey thanks for this! just got kilt +cord! looking forward to a 7.1.5 guide

[loonatiq]

Yes it would be very helpful if you could update it, even some draft version for rotation. Got the kilt yesterday and I feel like im not using it to its fullest, almost making me regret that its not shard of exodar or new trinket which probably wrong feeling.

[Nefershep]

Hi guys, we finished our raid week on Thursday, so I'll be doing a bit more testing then will aim to update my guide by the end of the weekend.

I recently got the belt as well, but I will endeavour to do both just kilt and kilt+belt guide. Stay tuned!

[Nefershep]

Updated!

[Deckzor]

With your opener you wont get the MoA Explo into AP most of the time. I would cast it a Little later you only use 1 GCD witout any Penalty.
Since we are the new Fire Mages with Overpowered, most of our dmg comes with our AP Phase and thats why RoP will result in higher Dps than IF.

At least with RoP you want to cast the amplified missles in your AP Phase. The sick dps makes up for the loss in Mana reg afterwards. In the worst case you have to do one more Barrage cycle when you use all your missles in AP and thats not that big of a deal. But the amplified missles with 40% RoP and 70% AP are too huge.

Still early in 7.1.5 and maybe i am wrong but most theorycrafting tends towards the Statements above.

You are right with dropping Mastery, i dropped it to 26% and would go even further down but my Items wont let me.
Even with 26% i dont have any problem spending mana between evocation cycles.

[Nefershep]

My main reason for choosing IF over RoP is due to the movement of fights. I'm aware that it sims higher, but I currently have my doubts whether you'll get the full duration out of it. If you can't get all 10s out of it every time, then IF will be better.

I will try putting MoA a bit later though, and see how that works out, thanks for the suggestion!

I'm going to go into NH with this build, and then I'll update it as I progress through the fights. I will try out all three talents to see which works best.

Updated my main post with the proposed change to MoA and casting AM during AP.

[achobanov]

Hey Nefershep!
Nice guideline, thanks for your efforts. I also wanna thank Arcanosaur, because I learned a lot from his post as well. Going to read more on how versitility works with arcane charges.

I just just got my Kilt as 3rd legendary. Also have Cord and Sephuz. I mainly wanted to ask: Is Cord of Infinity's effect really that significant, when used with its proper rotation? Because Even if you stay at 40% mana and get the buff uptime ~90%, that nets in 9% increased mana regen. Now, of course, that is helpful, but in my case - I believe Sephuz will provide higher performance, since 7.1.5 buffs. Cord has always been just a stat stick in my mind, just because It simply does what mastery do. And as you said above - with Kilt you don't need to stack mastery anymore.

[Steamie]

I dont see why you would burn down to 30% mana before using MoA+PoM+RoP+AP. I also dont see why you would use IF over RoP. Also why do people always aim for Abar -> 4stacks -> Abar -> 4stacks. I feel like 2stacks is enough, if you get a AM proc, you build up to 4 and use the AM procs.

[achobanov]

It depends on your goals Steamie.
1) I believe he says that you should not start your burn with less then 30% mana. Also you might be referring to the Cord of Infinity rotation, which utilizes the extra mana regen buff u get under 40% mana.
2) About the 4 stacks - barrage - 4 stacks. This is optimal damage rotation. Since AM procs are close to 50% you should be able to maintain 4 stacks - barrage rotation even without mana-saving legendaries ( kilt, rhonin'st ). If you, however, get the Kilt.. You can maintain it with not no problem at all. It simply means less mana regen, more damage.

[Binkenstein]

Can you elaborate more on your 15% haste target please? It seems a little hand wavey/feelycrafty.

[testacular]

Can you elaborate more on your 15% haste target please? It seems a little hand wavey/feelycrafty.

Because it is so., more or less. Or not at all. Depending on what you rather believe in - SimCraft of personal experience.

SimCraft first, because statistics:
If you have below 15-18% haste and you sim your character with plots, you will see a significant bump in dmg once you reach this cap. The reason is that you will be able to fit in one extra AB in your burn phase (15-18% difference is probably based on whether you got relic increasing AP duration). Similar cap is then at around 24% I think, but that really depends on a lot of factors.

Personal experience:
Just try some mythic +15 with volcanic and you will see this clearly. Haste lowers cast time, e.g. gives you more time to pull off a cast and then move. While it may not be top stat in pure dps increase, in any movement intense fights, you WILL appreciate it. 15-18% is also when the playstyle gets soooo much smoother.

Personaly I am now at 21% haste and I have Whispers in the Dark and Erratic Metronome (cause Intel). They both booth haste/cast speed so I oftentimes sit even higher and I can assure you that you would love it