7.1.5 - Arcane Mage Guide - Updated: 02-16-2017

[Kythos]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 066020/10/" target="_blank
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... s/advanced" target="_blank

Feel free to message me on discord FlowMage#8037


TLDR:

been arcane for months now and I feel like they nailed it.
it look months of target practice to get the quickening style down... now forget all that complexity/heartache/and empty mana bars from burning too hard...
890 ilvl - ~300+k dps st without CDs/ 800+k burst ~~~~~500+k dps ST


if you are looking for a place to start;

put on your highest ilvl gear

ST; AMP, Slip, RoP, Chrono, ErSN, OP
burn AMs in AP
sprinkle in more barrages
- barrage at end of AP and when you need mobility (can get Charged up for Barrage, CU, AM while moving)

[Sol]

Damn how did fire end up that strong, and here everyone thought they were getting gutted

[Kythos]

everyone else got 8 or 12% increases fire got 27% ...

[x1xruex1x]

Any particular reason we're looking to do ABx2 > ABarr while fishing for AM procs and not ABx3 or x4? We aren't at risk of running OOM during AP any more so I feel like we could be a bit more cavalier with our mana. And once I get up to 3 AM procs, am I looking to AB up to 4 charges to dump stronger 3-string missiles or am I dropping AM procs at 2 charges until RoP/AP come up again?

@Calaim,

I think it's instinctual honestly to try to preserve mana during conservation phase. Given that OP gives -70% mana cost, then you're right, we should be able to progress the bar further, and maybe get away with 3-4 AC before clearing at times. As long as you have enough to finalize a full burn, and then evo right after (if the aim is to end with low mana). Elsewise, it seems like it could be an inter-phase burn. just burn, then evo only when needed to suppliment the mana level.

Something to check into tho and see how it fleshes out against the other thoughts.

As for AM, the idea is go for ACx4 before AM cast w/ Amp. 3 would be good still, but obviously 4 is better.
However, with how weird things are right now, our typical rule of thumbs aren't exactly applying anymore (see previous statement about conserve phase). So I'd say it's best to try both methods, and see how your dps stacks up.

[x1xruex1x]

It's not really subjective anymore, across the board in all percentiles it's bad, even worse if you don't have at least 1 dps legendary cuz logs don't lie, unfortunately.
The following links show this pretty nicely, and wether you put in 1day or a week (even though 715 hasnt been out that long yet), it makes no difference, we are on the bottom.

Burn Phase with RoP cool high dps and then you drop atrociously, might change with 2set, but as of now, ...

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#sample=7" target="_blank (ToV)
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#sample=7" target="_blank (EN)

And hunters are rightfully pissed too, especially since MM was the only way 2 go, people have legendaries and all if not most AP in there and now they are gutted.

@M3nsky,

So, I know we won't see eye-to-eye with regards to logs, as I tend not to see eye level with others on it anyway. I have to state that Warcraft Logs is a very good place, but not a perfect representation either. It is dependent on the amount of arcane mages actually being logged since the update, as well as how many are actually playing as correctly as they can. I find it funny that Noxxic has em in the top 5, and Logs has em in the bottom 8.

In all reality though, the class is what you make it around the people you encounter. If you're putting yourself up against hardcore mythic raiders who have top tier gear and barely make mistakes,..you're going to always be feeling like you're low on the totem pole if you not putting out what they are.

Same goes in reverse, if you're great at what you do, but are surrounded by low ballers, then you get a skewed perspective on how well you actually do.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything by any stretch. Numbers don't typically lie, but they may not tell the full story.

The best I can say is keep your head held high, and don't let the logs, noxxic, or any other site tell you that your class is the best or worst of them all. I have a buddy who's Marksman Hunter and he's falling apart right now because he keeps looking to the logs and how "poor" the class is. But it is what you make of it.

I've kept with Arcane from back when it had 1 attack, Arcane Missiles. I've seen the highs and lows of the class, and I can say this, we're definitley better off than we were in MoP & Draenor. We're feeling better than the 7.1 patch, whether the damage numbers reflect it or not, we have variety and have better choices that we can make.

I think we will be perfectly fine, I just don't want people looking to log books and simcrafting and getting all down about the class because a pristine environment, or a questionable census. It is what you make of it. That's all.

^_^ Enjoy it and run with it, find out what works and let us know

[m3nsky]

It's not really subjective anymore, across the board in all percentiles it's bad, even worse if you don't have at least 1 dps legendary cuz logs don't lie, unfortunately.
The following links show this pretty nicely, and wether you put in 1day or a week (even though 715 hasnt been out that long yet), it makes no difference, we are on the bottom.

Burn Phase with RoP cool high dps and then you drop atrociously, might change with 2set, but as of now, ...

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#sample=7" target="_blank (ToV)
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#sample=7" target="_blank (EN)

And hunters are rightfully pissed too, especially since MM was the only way 2 go, people have legendaries and all if not most AP in there and now they are gutted.

@M3nsky,

So, I know we won't see eye-to-eye with regards to logs, as I tend not to see eye level with others on it anyway. I have to state that Warcraft Logs is a very good place, but not a perfect representation either. It is dependent on the amount of arcane mages actually being logged since the update, as well as how many are actually playing as correctly as they can. I find it funny that Noxxic has em in the top 5, and Logs has em in the bottom 8.

In all reality though, the class is what you make it around the people you encounter. If you're putting yourself up against hardcore mythic raiders who have top tier gear and barely make mistakes,..you're going to always be feeling like you're low on the totem pole if you not putting out what they are.

Same goes in reverse, if you're great at what you do, but are surrounded by low ballers, then you get a skewed perspective on how well you actually do.

I'm not saying you're wrong or anything by any stretch. Numbers don't typically lie, but they may not tell the full story.

The best I can say is keep your head held high, and don't let the logs, noxxic, or any other site tell you that your class is the best or worst of them all. I have a buddy who's Marksman Hunter and he's falling apart right now because he keeps looking to the logs and how "poor" the class is. But it is what you make of it.

I've kept with Arcane from back when it had 1 attack, Arcane Missiles. I've seen the highs and lows of the class, and I can say this, we're definitley better off than we were in MoP & Draenor. We're feeling better than the 7.1 patch, whether the damage numbers reflect it or not, we have variety and have better choices that we can make.

I think we will be perfectly fine, I just don't want people looking to log books and simcrafting and getting all down about the class because a pristine environment, or a questionable census. It is what you make of it. That's all.

^_^ Enjoy it and run with it, find out what works and let us know

Noxxic has been notoriously wrong in many aspects of the guides in the past (stats prio etc.), and those are complete "never happening" sims. Reason why I trust warcraftlogs as they are actual numbers from actual gameplay of humans .

I can provide you with some logs of my own.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/mY ... amage-done" target="_blank
Here it was a near "perfect" play + luck, didn't get targeted, barely had to move, some lucky AM proccs, the fight was only 3min so it ended right with a burn phase. I could have used CU as opposed to Reso but I don't have the kilt so meh :/.

Even though I got awful legendaries, the stars aligned as perfectly as they could, and I barely pulled off 500k.
Whereas this is where I should be hovering around, shows how big of a difference legendaries make, which in return makes me truly jealous and mad of the RNG.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/1 ... pec=Arcane" target="_blank

So in regards to SingleTarget this is my Max, any other singletarget on Mythic apart from Ursoc you gotta move more, avoid more.

Then you get to this (only represents this weeks run),
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 941498/10/" target="_blank
By no means all perfect but if you require my 2 legendaries on Warcraftlogs and filter out the good ones you'll see this is pretty accurate.

Cenarius I knew would suck, told healers I can't burst on thorns, "we'll manage", 5seconds later dead

I'm ranking in the mid to mid-high tiers and those DPS numbers are absolutely atrocious.
On M Odyn you start with burst to 1.xM and drop to ~300k dps, most of the time even below, until the end which is laughable and sad :*(

I'm sticking to Arcane either way but as of now, my only hope is 2set and a decent legendary cuz believe me I am trying everything I can to figure out how to edge some dps and as soon as the fight exceeds 2-3 burns and has only slight movement it's disheartening watching yourself drop and drop and drop.

P.S. Still haven't found a log with gravity spiral pff =)

[Asara]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 066020/10/
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... s/advanced" target="_blank

damn man mythic titanforged and socketed gear and 2 of the best legendaries, nice gear man

[Asara]

I'm ranking in the mid to mid-high tiers and those DPS numbers are absolutely atrocious.
On M Odyn you start with burst to 1.xM and drop to ~300k dps, most of the time even below, until the end which is laughable and sad :*(

P.S. Still haven't found a log with gravity spiral pff =)

I find Odyn to be a horrible fight for mages, since you need to bank a AM at all times or youre pretty much screwed on the high mobility the fight requires, even with ice floes it was hard to maintain solid dps

[Kythos]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 066020/10/
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/a ... s/advanced" target="_blank

damn man mythic titanforged and socketed gear and 2 of the best legendaries, nice gear man

/flex

[x1xruex1x]

Alrighty, just finished our ToV - normal mode for tonight. Here's the logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Ag ... fficulty=0

Here's the previous damage checks I had versus tonight.
I was playing around with a few different talent choices therein so some things differ from pull to pull. I did end up reverting back to Charged Up over Resonance as I found myself not using ABarr all too often.

Odyn
208 > 255

Guarm
242 > 300

Helya
231k > 299k

I also tried a Temporal Flux build, but I dropped to below 200k~ dps by the end, but I also kinda botched a blink and landed in front of Guarm and got nom nom'd to death.

So yea, definitely a difference between burst fights and lengthy fights.
I was also playing with Mirror Images tonight, so I'll say, it's fun, but doesn't seem to be as functional as I thought it'd be. Still more testing needs to be done, but it's interesting none the less.

Going to go talk logs with a few persons, and Ill report back with what I got.

[Deckzor]

Nice sum up Kythos.
I play Arcane for several month in 90+ Mythic Ranks and play the same like u summed it up.

Some few questions remain but overall thats the way to play.

[Ataraxey]

I played Arcane through our Mythic clear on Thursday this week, have to say the damage was pretty disappointing compared to what Fire is still putting out. The run was by no means clean w/ the buyers we had, but I expected to be much higher on average based on sims and my tests on dummies.

I have both the Arcane Kilt, as well as Fire bracers, along with the Time Warp Ring. I'm Arcane for every fight except Dragons, where I was fire.

I seemed to be ranking ~80% percentile as Arcane, where as Fire on Dragons was 96% percentile.

Logs are here: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Z4 ... amage-done" target="_blank
And my rankings as Arcane in EN M/H are here: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 700865/10/" target="_blank

Current Arcane gear is here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/b ... xie/simple" target="_blank
Only difference for Fire spec is is obviously the Fire bracers, and these pants + my Decimator JC neck

I can definitely be playing Arcane better, but it currently feels like im constantly dropping damage between AP phases.

I'd like to continue with Arcane into our heroic Nighthold raids next week, but it's seeming like Fire is unfortunately pulling ahead for me at least.

Additional, a final point about CD Usage:

It feels like damage could be improved by using PoM/MoA/CU outside of AP with a Rune. However with APs cooldown being 1.5m it means that by the time you finish your burn its already ~45 seconds to being finished, and MoA and PoM are coming off CD in the next 15 seconds

To use PoM/MoA/CU outside of AP you'd have to do a mini burn and then delay AP usage until either the next time they're all up, or just use AP without them.

I'm not sure what would be the better damage option, but im leaning towards just using AP on CD with Rune and only lining up MoA/PoM/CU when they are within 10 seconds or so of AP.

[m3nsky]

Also forgot to say that Arcane is good in normal and heroic if you are a mythic raider/geared as the numbers are inflated due to the fact that the fights are so short as evident here, these numbers are no way achievable in Mythic.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 941498/10/" target="_blank
Just gotta click the difficulty to normal or heroic to see the inflation.

But once you are doing Mythic content it is all downward from there :p

[m3nsky]

I played Arcane through our Mythic clear on Thursday this week, have to say the damage was pretty disappointing compared to what Fire is still putting out. The run was by no means clean w/ the buyers we had, but I expected to be much higher on average based on sims and my tests on dummies.

I have both the Arcane Kilt, as well as Fire bracers, along with the Time Warp Ring. I'm Arcane for every fight except Dragons, where I was fire.

I seemed to be ranking ~80% percentile as Arcane, where as Fire on Dragons was 96% percentile.

Logs are here: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Z4 ... amage-done" target="_blank

Current Arcane gear is here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/b ... xie/simple" target="_blank
Only difference for Fire spec is is obviously the Fire bracers, and these pants + my Decimator JC neck

I can definitely be playing Arcane better, but it currently feels like im constantly dropping damage between AP phases.

I'd like to continue with Arcane into our heroic Nighthold raids next week, but it's seeming like Fire is unfortunately pulling ahead for me at least.

In those cases, since you overgear EN you have the 2 BiS items, kilt/ring, and you still can't compete with the top even though you are playing in the top 80+ percentiles, so you are doing very well, and thats what is sad. Still jealous of them legendaries :p

Ofc there are fights in EN where it's all about padding to rank, AOEing Eviltree, AOEing spirits on dragons and so on. High ranked Arcane Mages are usually easy to figure out as most of their damage comes from AE as opposed to AB/AM. So that has to be taken into account but nontheless you are not making many mistakes and are still low on damage compared to other classes.

As of you dropping between AP, nature of the new OP playstyle, what fire was before is now arcane. Burst window high dps, after that - low dps, smooths out overall to an average of X. Where it gets really bad is if for some reason your burst window gets ruined due to some mechanic. Starting your burn phase during BL when you have to and boss mechanic randomly picks you for something.

[Visk]

I have made a post in the Blizzard forums, as hopefully someone will see it and add something for us as well the next hotfix/tunning, but I also decided to post my thoughts here as to keep a discussion. Down are my thoughts on the few days of personal testing and logs observation and things do not look bright at all for Arcane to me.

Let's start with logs. We are literally last in ToV out of all the other specs and classes and almost last in EN (links below). My biggest concern is not that we are particularly on the bottom of the logs (there has to be someone there after all), my problem comes from that fire outperforms Arcane (and Frost in that instance) by a huge margin. Some logs go to a 100-200k difference in DPS. (471k is Arcane top mage for Helya Mythic and top Fire mage is 687k DPS), and the lowest difference in ToV Mythic is 40k on Odyn.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#" target="_blank

In EN the things do not look much brighter between Fire and the other 2 specs which are hugely outperformed. Il'Gynoth seems to be a big outlier as the Arcane spec is higher than Fire for the top of the logs, but it is important to notice that the first Arcane mage is at 586k DPS and the second one is at 512k DPS, while fire's top performer is at 525k with a rather steadier drop down the line. Elerethe Renferal is a new curious case. The top fire performer is at 839k and the second one is at 708k, yet between the top Fire and Arcane the difference is as much as 220k DPS (???). I can continue comparing logs and DMG meters, but I think that the point is getting more clear now. It is not a simple 10-20k DPS difference, but one that is ridiculously huge between the specs.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10" target="_blank

Another thing I have noticed while practicing on a target dummy is that between AM procs my DPS can drop for a matter of a second up to 140k DPS down, which does sound problematic as well (burst is huge, but the steadiness seems go be lacking a lot).

I would not be as annoyed and disappointed for investing into arcane if, let's say, all 3 specs were equally low on the logs (like hunters now, yet they are all getting a significant buff to all specs), but the problem is that 1 spec is performing extra good and the other 2 seem to be very left behind. Even though the EN and ToV logs cannot be taken as 100% accurate as the time for testing was extremely low between the patch 7.1.5 application and now, yet the initial data is very worrisome. And the truth is that I cannot see how Nighthold gear would be able to fix this huge gaps between the specs, as the top performers will also get their hands on that gear and the set bonuses, so logically the gap should stay or even increase depending on scaling (assuming that fire should scale rather good with crit stats rising).

I really hope that the devs look on these things and really take into consideration some kind of a buff for both Arcane and Frost so that we can at least be relevant until we get 2 legendaries for Fire and change the spec (I personally invested all in Arcane and if I go Fire now will be stuck with 2 legendaries which will not be anything else than "stat sticks"). I really hope that this reaches the responsibles for these matters and that there are some Arcane and Frost adjustments as well for next reset's hotfix/tunning before Nighthold.

Please share your thoughts on the matters as I already have put my lootspec to Fire...

[Ataraxey]

In those cases, since you overgear EN you have the 2 BiS items, kilt/ring, and you still can't compete with the top even though you are playing in the top 80+ percentiles, so you are doing very well, and thats what is sad. Still jealous of them legendaries :p

Ofc there are fights in EN where it's all about padding to rank, AOEing Eviltree, AOEing spirits on dragons and so on. High ranked Arcane Mages are usually easy to figure out as most of their damage comes from AE as opposed to AB/AM. So that has to be taken into account but nontheless you are not making many mistakes and are still low on damage compared to other classes.

As of you dropping between AP, nature of the new OP playstyle, what fire was before is now arcane. Burst window high dps, after that - low dps, smooths out overall to an average of X. Where it gets really bad is if for some reason your burst window gets ruined due to some mechanic. Starting your burn phase during BL when you have to and boss mechanic randomly picks you for something.

Yeah, the new arcane really feels similar to pre-7.1.5 fire where 90% of my damage is in the burst window and any screw up (my own or by mechanics) totally tanks my overall damage. This is compounded by only using all 4 of our cooldowns during the same window.

Thanks for the info as well on my playing - good to hear i'm not totally garbage at it :p

I feel like there's more to do in understanding how we can better use those cooldowns to take maximum advantage of it and thus raise overall dps. My Arcane weapon is at 44 now and Fire is at 39 so I think I'll just max out Arcane first and continue to see how it does in Nighthold, but if anyone wants me to test anything on dummies or submit more logs/sims let me know and I'll be happy to do so.

[Ataraxey]

I have made a post in the Blizzard forums, as hopefully someone will see it and add something for us as well the next hotfix/tunning, but I also decided to post my thoughts here as to keep a discussion. Down are my thoughts on the few days of personal testing and logs observation and things do not look bright at all for Arcane to me.

Let's start with logs. We are literally last in ToV out of all the other specs and classes and almost last in EN (links below). My biggest concern is not that we are particularly on the bottom of the logs (there has to be someone there after all), my problem comes from that fire outperforms Arcane (and Frost in that instance) by a huge margin. Some logs go to a 100-200k difference in DPS. (471k is Arcane top mage for Helya Mythic and top Fire mage is 687k DPS), and the lowest difference in ToV Mythic is 40k on Odyn.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#" target="_blank

In EN the things do not look much brighter between Fire and the other 2 specs which are hugely outperformed. Il'Gynoth seems to be a big outlier as the Arcane spec is higher than Fire for the top of the logs, but it is important to notice that the first Arcane mage is at 586k DPS and the second one is at 512k DPS, while fire's top performer is at 525k with a rather steadier drop down the line. Elerethe Renferal is a new curious case. The top fire performer is at 839k and the second one is at 708k, yet between the top Fire and Arcane the difference is as much as 220k DPS (???). I can continue comparing logs and DMG meters, but I think that the point is getting more clear now. It is not a simple 10-20k DPS difference, but one that is ridiculously huge between the specs.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10" target="_blank

Another thing I have noticed while practicing on a target dummy is that between AM procs my DPS can drop for a matter of a second up to 140k DPS down, which does sound problematic as well (burst is huge, but the steadiness seems go be lacking a lot).

I would not be as annoyed and disappointed for investing into arcane if, let's say, all 3 specs were equally low on the logs (like hunters now, yet they are all getting a significant buff to all specs), but the problem is that 1 spec is performing extra good and the other 2 seem to be very left behind. Even though the EN and ToV logs cannot be taken as 100% accurate as the time for testing was extremely low between the patch 7.1.5 application and now, yet the initial data is very worrisome. And the truth is that I cannot see how Nighthold gear would be able to fix this huge gaps between the specs, as the top performers will also get their hands on that gear and the set bonuses, so logically the gap should stay or even increase depending on scaling (assuming that fire should scale rather good with crit stats rising).

I really hope that the devs look on these things and really take into consideration some kind of a buff for both Arcane and Frost so that we can at least be relevant until we get 2 legendaries for Fire and change the spec (I personally invested all in Arcane and if I go Fire now will be stuck with 2 legendaries which will not be anything else than "stat sticks"). I really hope that this reaches the responsibles for these matters and that there are some Arcane and Frost adjustments as well for next reset's hotfix/tunning before Nighthold.

Please share your thoughts on the matters as I already have put my lootspec to Fire...

As someone who is playing both specs in Mythic EN and ToV I would say that my previous post above goes into more detail about why Arcane is underperforming so much right now. In short I think that it is due to:

• -Very short fight times in EN, with more people cheesing mechanics for maximum damage rather than kills. This is why Arcane is high on fights like evil tree.
  - For Fire's dramatically higher dps, fights like Renferal are cleave fights due to the spiders and cooldowns lining up around their spawn - with a single living bomb/CiS you can get an insane amount of damage on them
  -Constant movement requirements in ToV (which also hurts Fire, except Helya). Helya phase 2 is literally fire's dream and is where most people are doing 50%+ of their damage with ignite, flamestrike and LB.
  -Not an easy "best way to play" for Arcane rotation, as opposed to Fire's extremely simple rotation - even with CiS it's very easy to play at a higher level.
  -Fire bracers are still insanely strong and contribute a ton more DIRECT damage than the Kilt or Arcane bracers
  -An overall lack of people playing Arcane right now due to not having the right legendaries for it. At last check there were 37,000+ Fire logs for Mythic EN, and only 7kish Arcane ones.

And finally, I do agree on your point about the burst nature of Arcane, as I mentioned above. It feels even worse than Fire was in 7.1 where SO MUCH of our damage was focused into that window.

I would really like it if we lost some power in the burst and gained a lot more consistent damage - this would reward good play, but not mean that a single mechanic interrupting your AP cycles completely tanks your damage.

[Deckzor]

Yes Fire is still on top of most Encounters but we are not far away, most Top Mages stay fire in Nighthold for a reason.

But remember that there are 10x more fire mages than Frost or Arcane therefor much more good players with much more BiS legendaries.

Give me 2 Set Boni and i think we ll outshine Fire in many Nighthold Encounters. No other Spec has our Add burst potentiel. Frost will shine on pure ST, Fire will outperform on Cleave fights but in ST Encounters with adds(which nighthold has several) we can compete.

[Visk]

I have made a post in the Blizzard forums, as hopefully someone will see it and add something for us as well the next hotfix/tunning, but I also decided to post my thoughts here as to keep a discussion. Down are my thoughts on the few days of personal testing and logs observation and things do not look bright at all for Arcane to me.

Let's start with logs. We are literally last in ToV out of all the other specs and classes and almost last in EN (links below). My biggest concern is not that we are particularly on the bottom of the logs (there has to be someone there after all), my problem comes from that fire outperforms Arcane (and Frost in that instance) by a huge margin. Some logs go to a 100-200k difference in DPS. (471k is Arcane top mage for Helya Mythic and top Fire mage is 687k DPS), and the lowest difference in ToV Mythic is 40k on Odyn.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/12#" target="_blank

In EN the things do not look much brighter between Fire and the other 2 specs which are hugely outperformed. Il'Gynoth seems to be a big outlier as the Arcane spec is higher than Fire for the top of the logs, but it is important to notice that the first Arcane mage is at 586k DPS and the second one is at 512k DPS, while fire's top performer is at 525k with a rather steadier drop down the line. Elerethe Renferal is a new curious case. The top fire performer is at 839k and the second one is at 708k, yet between the top Fire and Arcane the difference is as much as 220k DPS (???). I can continue comparing logs and DMG meters, but I think that the point is getting more clear now. It is not a simple 10-20k DPS difference, but one that is ridiculously huge between the specs.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10" target="_blank

Another thing I have noticed while practicing on a target dummy is that between AM procs my DPS can drop for a matter of a second up to 140k DPS down, which does sound problematic as well (burst is huge, but the steadiness seems go be lacking a lot).

I would not be as annoyed and disappointed for investing into arcane if, let's say, all 3 specs were equally low on the logs (like hunters now, yet they are all getting a significant buff to all specs), but the problem is that 1 spec is performing extra good and the other 2 seem to be very left behind. Even though the EN and ToV logs cannot be taken as 100% accurate as the time for testing was extremely low between the patch 7.1.5 application and now, yet the initial data is very worrisome. And the truth is that I cannot see how Nighthold gear would be able to fix this huge gaps between the specs, as the top performers will also get their hands on that gear and the set bonuses, so logically the gap should stay or even increase depending on scaling (assuming that fire should scale rather good with crit stats rising).

I really hope that the devs look on these things and really take into consideration some kind of a buff for both Arcane and Frost so that we can at least be relevant until we get 2 legendaries for Fire and change the spec (I personally invested all in Arcane and if I go Fire now will be stuck with 2 legendaries which will not be anything else than "stat sticks"). I really hope that this reaches the responsibles for these matters and that there are some Arcane and Frost adjustments as well for next reset's hotfix/tunning before Nighthold.

Please share your thoughts on the matters as I already have put my lootspec to Fire...

As someone who is playing both specs in Mythic EN and ToV I would say that my previous post above goes into more detail about why Arcane is underperforming so much right now. In short I think that it is due to:

• -Very short fight times in EN, with more people cheesing mechanics for maximum damage rather than kills. This is why Arcane is high on fights like evil tree.
  - For Fire's dramatically higher dps, fights like Renferal are cleave fights due to the spiders and cooldowns lining up around their spawn - with a single living bomb/CiS you can get an insane amount of damage on them
  -Constant movement requirements in ToV (which also hurts Fire, except Helya). Helya phase 2 is literally fire's dream and is where most people are doing 50%+ of their damage with ignite, flamestrike and LB.
  -Not an easy "best way to play" for Arcane rotation, as opposed to Fire's extremely simple rotation - even with CiS it's very easy to play at a higher level.
  -Fire bracers are still insanely strong and contribute a ton more DIRECT damage than the Kilt or Arcane bracers
  -An overall lack of people playing Arcane right now due to not having the right legendaries for it. At last check there were 37,000+ Fire logs for Mythic EN, and only 7kish Arcane ones.

And finally, I do agree on your point about the burst nature of Arcane, as I mentioned above. It feels even worse than Fire was in 7.1 where SO MUCH of our damage was focused into that window.

I would really like it if we lost some power in the burst and gained a lot more consistent damage - this would reward good play, but not mean that a single mechanic interrupting your AP cycles completely tanks your damage.

I very much agree on all the points, especially keeping in mind the low amount of time people had to try out the spec and its changes and also the lack of good legendaries for the mass of the Arcane players (which is not that big of a mass anyway).

I also know that the logs for ToV and EN are not the best example and the test will be Nighthold, just some numbers really started to worry me. I really like Arcane now and feel very satisfied playing it to be honest. I just want to be relevant for raiding and not be smashed by the other mages. I will see how my personal raid tests go after I come back to raiding in a week and also max my AP tree, it was just that the initial logs and statistics did not change for the better for us in the last days and wanted to keep the discussion going about the issues I notice.

Actually, thinking about my dummy testing, a huge portion of our damage also seems to come from AM procs (super big drops in DPS on dummy when I am unlucky with AM procs), which means that the 2set bonus should be a really huge deal for us.

[m3nsky]

The reason why Arcane Mages are high ranked on eviltree is cuz they completely blow all CDs on the 2 big packs of 8 blobs. You'll see under damage done that a huge portion of the overall damage is AE, even though that's the most irrelevant part of the fight, that simply done to pad meters and to rank, it has nothing to do with normal gameplay.

Same goes for Helya, any high ranking Arcane Mage is blowing all CDs on ph2 and is super average on ph1 and ph3. So overall damage really doesn't say enough, gotta look into exactly why and when the damage happens.

Keep in mind, while our 2set is good, others will get their set boni as well and improve their dmg, granted some 2set are worth more than others but we won't catch up as much as you'd think.

The reason fire is still so good is simply their mobility and apart from 1 spell that all can be cast while moving or are instant. Ofc you can argue that only AB for mages is the 1 spell that needs casting, but using our instant spells hurts our damage greatly compared to fire. Spamming AE/ABarr even though you should be AB/AM, huge difference.

If you look at PTR and the Nighthold fights and I will simply assume people are specced specifically for that encounter and not 1 talent choice through all of it.

Skorpyron:
Nonstop AOE fight, I don't see how we can win against fire or frost (gale/bomb specced) here as there are more than 5 adds coming in constantly so keeping the AE spam is higher dps without ABarr, however that now gets us oom just as well whereas the other 2 speccs don't worry about mana or have downtime for that matter.

Chronomatic Anomaly:
You are going ot run a lot, and even if you try and bank AM to compensate, you will never have the proccs all the time as compared to icefloes frost, their instant spells flurry/lance or simply scorching/pyro/fireblast on the run so here I see a lot of disadvantages.
If the fast-time up our then increased burst window might be able to compensate some but that will not happen during BL so not sure if this counter-acts. Already slow cast times with slow-time will be tearing us apart from the insides :p

Trilliax:
Based on phases its medium to high movement fight with a lot of avoiding and running.
Same points as Chronomatic Anomaly.

I know this is all sounding like a major rant, but these are the problems this specc has, in Mythic and why I think we are losing dps, certainly not for the lack of trying.

I'm 41 points into Arcane and 35 into Frost (just to have an emergency scenario), then again they adressed hunters already, maybe we get lucky ?

P.S. Behold! I found a Log with Gravity Spiral
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Gq ... s&source=4" target="_blank
Eviltree ranks from purely AOEing but nevertheless a log.

So Evocation used 5x in an 8min44sec fight, granted eviltree is the worst fight to try and figure this out as there is so much downtime - Evo CD 90sec.

Casted at:
01:54 (Normal Evo)
03:20 (Normal Evo)
05:02 (Normal Evo)
06:45 (Normal Evo)
07:33 (Gravity Spiral as the Time Intervall is too short)

To me this looks like Gravtiy Spiral simply gives you 1 extra Evo and it is not on it's own re-charge.

Still too early to judge, I'll wait to confirm this until I found a log of a different boss than eviltree