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

[Clouds]

I know that there has been 1-2 posts about it but I could not find the correct information I seek in those.

I have a question regarding the Conserve phase as Arcane with quickening and NT.

So you start your burn rotation, burn down to ~<20% with 1 AM banked, the last cast before evocate drop NT, then Evocate to 100% and cast the AM to keep quickening up. Now at this point we can burn to ~80% if we want to. From here is where I am confused.

The goal is to cast ~1 every 6 seconds to keep stacks up. So do you spam NT when quickening is above 2.5 seconds. And after that AB or AM~ the last second or if you need to AE to keep the stacks up. From there, just keep stacks up until evocate is about to come off, just burn to 0% again like normal and evocate back up.

This is the really confusing part to me. So we just completed our second burn phase, we are at 50 stacks and 100% mana, I assume we continue to keep quickening up? However, I am running into the problem of the stacks just falling off themselves, Does this happen automatically? And if so, what do we do. Do we just start a new quickening stack during this conserve phase, then burst, then conserve again to 50, and do one last burn phase before it falls off again? This is where I am confused.

[Mtspiral]

I know that there has been 1-2 posts about it but I could not find the correct information I seek in those.

I have a question regarding the Conserve phase as Arcane with quickening and NT.

So you start your burn rotation, burn down to ~<20% with 1 AM banked, the last cast before evocate drop NT, then Evocate to 100% and cast the AM to keep quickening up. Now at this point we can burn to ~80% if we want to. From here is where I am confused.

The goal is to cast ~1 every 6 seconds to keep stacks up. So do you spam NT when quickening is above 2.5 seconds. And after that AB or AM~ the last second or if you need to AE to keep the stacks up. From there, just keep stacks up until evocate is about to come off, just burn to 0% again like normal and evocate back up.

This is the really confusing part to me. So we just completed our second burn phase, we are at 50 stacks and 100% mana, I assume we continue to keep quickening up? However, I am running into the problem of the stacks just falling off themselves, Does this happen automatically? And if so, what do we do. Do we just start a new quickening stack during this conserve phase, then burst, then conserve again to 50, and do one last burn phase before it falls off again? This is where I am confused.

To answer a few questions. Your quickening stacks upon reaching 50 will not refresh and thus completely disappear after 6 seconds. Your first burn is considered a medium burn, the second being a high burn. Also you don't get any chance to proc AM from NT if it is already up on the target, so spamming it for a few seconds would be useless, and probably also munch some of it's own damage as you will probably refresh it before it does any damage. While you are in between burns it is considered a throttle phase, where you cast AB at ~2 secs remaining on quickening, or ~0-1 secs cast AE if you are in melee range or AM since that refreshes as soon as you cast it and not when it completes like AB does. You want to ideally have around 40-42 quickening stacks when your EVO and AP come back off CD, so that you can have your full 6 secs of 50 quickening stacks during AP and RoP, then EVO back to full since you won't need to refresh a quickening atack and you then go into a a more traditional conserve phase until your cooldowns are up and you start over at the medium burn phase again. That is currently the suspected rotation optimization. There has been a bit of talk about. It needing to baby your quickening stacks, but results are not complete yet.

[Clouds]

So what is a medium burn phase considered? Like 40%? Do you still blow your whole mana bar then evo or do you just stop early.

Lastly, I am right in assuming this is the ahead rotation assuming good play and not messing up?

[Mtspiral]

So what is a medium burn phase considered? Like 40%? Do you still blow your whole mana bar then evo or do you just stop early.

Lastly, I am right in assuming this is the ahead rotation assuming good play and not messing up?

I haven't quite perfected the rotation myself, but I'd say during your medium burn going down to about 20% and then EVO would be a good point so that it doesn't take the very last second of EVO to fully refill your mana so that you can maintain the quickening stacks from your nedium burn to set you up for the high burn with the most quickening stacks available, a lot of numbers will depend on your mastery rating which will determine how much mana you regen during the low casting throttle phase, but essentially it's a 4 cycle rotation based entirely around optimizing your high burn phase.

As I mentioned in the last post, a lot of people are going this route because of the incredibly high burst potential with arcane charges and massive damage increase to AB and high haste increase from quickening. Which is why the 100 stack quickening days were short lived, and now once capped they fall off after a few seconds. Hard testing in how close the viability is for a very different rotation, that doesn't require high and low burn cycles along with periods of not casting, are not very common.

I really hope they address the arcane mages rotation through talent and ability tuning/changes. Because ~3/4 of mages right now are fire everyone is just taking about how flame on needs to be baseline because it's the only talent anyone takes, I don't think anyone realizes how pigeonholed arcane mage talents are due to insufficient viable variety.

[Clouds]

I will try to give it more practice.

Sorry for the questions just trying to get my facts straight. What trinkets are we kind of aiming for. The spreadsheet kind of confuses me as I thought haste wasn't very high on our list.

[x1xruex1x]

Thank you Mtspiral for helping Clouds.

Yea, The overall rotation looks like this:

LQ Burn > Throttle > HQ Burn > Conservation > Repeat

Where LQ is Low Quickening Burn and HQ is High Quickening Burn.

Depending what happens in the beginning of the fight, that LQ can become a MQ burn (Medium Quickening).

Typically during Throttle and Conservation, the goal would be to not allow Quickening to fall off, but to allow for your Mana to regen as well so you're prepared for your next burn. Typically it's Quickenning above 3 seconds - Refresh NT, Supernova, Mark of Aluneth/Rune of Power. When Quickening is Less than 3 seconds, then it's about determining what you have time for and/or available:

Preferred List:
Arcane Missiles (@ 0.5 seconds remaining)
Arcane Explosion (@ 0.5-1.0 seconds remaining)
Arcane Blast (@ 2.0-3.0 seconds remaining)

This is because AM refreshes Quickening the second it starts casting. Arcane Explosion refreshes it the moment you cast but is range reliant (gotta be very close). Arcane Blast refreshes at the end of the cast, so ensure you have it completed by 0.5 seconds would be ideal.

The biggest problem with this whole Throttling is that it's VERY tedious to keep management on and messing up one little thing can mess up the entire rotation.

I've done a new video for this, I need to edit and get some talk-over going on it. I hope to have it out by end of this upcoming week by Saturday night latest.

[Kabat]

Hi,

I am not entirely sure about the throttle phase.
Should I always wait with casting Arcane Power for 40-42 Quickening (and for that matter for Evo to be near coming off cd)? Or should I try to get as much Quickening as I can while staying high on mana and enter Arcane Power when it comes of cd? And if I happen to be at no Quickening at low mana just go with normal conserve while waiting for Evo to be ready?

I am 870 ilvl got no legendary and I am pulling something like 300+k dps on dummy for fights longer than 100M, and 320+k dps with BL at start. Got 48% mastery (can go lower by 4% by equiping Sephuz, but both my rings have high mastery so its probably better this way).

I changed to Arcane, as I got no crit gear but heavy on mastery one, so I am doing more in Arcane even if I fail, compared to Fire when I don't fail. Was considering frost too but that sweet t19 for Arcane pushes me to go fully focued on Arcane to be ready to pwn the meters once Nighthold opens. Will the boss fights there be more suited for Arcane gameplay than EN is now, how was it on PTR?

[x1xruex1x]

Hi,

I am not entirely sure about the throttle phase.
Should I always wait with casting Arcane Power for 40-42 Quickening (and for that matter for Evo to be near coming off cd)? Or should I try to get as much Quickening as I can while staying high on mana and enter Arcane Power when it comes of cd? And if I happen to be at no Quickening at low mana just go with normal conserve while waiting for Evo to be ready?

I am 870 ilvl got no legendary and I am pulling something like 300+k dps on dummy for fights longer than 100M, and 320+k dps with BL at start. Got 48% mastery (can go lower by 4% by equiping Sephuz, but both my rings have high mastery so its probably better this way).

I changed to Arcane, as I got no crit gear but heavy on mastery one, so I am doing more in Arcane even if I fail, compared to Fire when I don't fail. Was considering frost too but that sweet t19 for Arcane pushes me to go fully focued on Arcane to be ready to pwn the meters once Nighthold opens. Will the boss fights there be more suited for Arcane gameplay than EN is now, how was it on PTR?

@Kabat,

Hey there! So, with regards to AP and whether you should get to 40-42 Q stacks before utilizing it, I think it comes down to the encounter itself and the needs of the dps on it.
Example: When you're at Cenarius, I would suggest utilizing AP when it's available, instead of building Q stacks. Especially during the burn portion. This would allow for the best burn imo. If you were to continue biding yourself, then you might run into burn too late and then the fight could hinge on it.

Now granted, that's a very specific circumstance that I personally feel it's not worth it to build up Q stacks by biding yourself on AP.

Ideally, if you can enter AP with about 40-42 Q stacks, and be around 75%~ mana, then I think you can do a proper HQ burn and really end AP with 50 stacks falling off, and Evo fully ready to go.

Again, it comes down to the fight, and with Arcane, you have to adjust to what's going on. I have not yet met anyone who has confirmed to me that they do not drop their Q stacks during the ToV Odyn fight. Between the transitions, I don't think there's a way to maintain them, but as I said, no one has confirmed a way to me yet.

If you try to play Arcane to it's most pristine, you're going to be let down by your damage. I've found that sometimes I do best when I'm not paying full attention to myself and just casting as I see necessary. I've hit 287+ on some normal fights like Renferal and Xavius.

As for the Nighthold, I don't have any experience with it, but I will say this, the set bonus sounds great, and regardless if the fights cater to Arcane or not, I think the set will allow leniency.

[Kythos]

Heroic Odyn from Trials of Valor for an Arcane mage is insane.

according to logs there are only 147 arcane mages that have logged a parse on warcraftlogs at this point...... the top being the top, Pushing 350k, and yet average DPS looks to be around or under 200k, ...even 100k?

1. this is still very new, the mechanics/timing are not flushed out yet. Arcane is a fluid spec/ requires heavy min/maxing and learning new fights can be taxing, but as we know failure leads to success.

any Arcane mages have advice for Heroic Trails?
tips? tricks?

below is some notes: Hope we can help the community overcome these new trails. ;D

H Odyn:

1st. this is a 7-10 minute fight with burn at the end... prepare.
2nd. with all the AoE your Arcane familiar gets REKT. high advise swapping to Words of Power.

there is a short window of downtime between phase 1 and phase 2... there will be mechanics to soak and spread but if you can blow your first EVO early, it will be ready again for the transition.

RoP feels like a big target sign... mechanics on this fight make it so you cant stand in place that long, I suggest looking to Flows, or even Mirror Image (might be great when you get fixated to a rune)

Also, what gear do you suggest? since it is a long fight are we looking for more throttling/mastery? or since its a long fight we go more haste and drop Q stacks more often?

thoughts?
I will note that my guild was short 1-2 healers for this fight... they dropped the group to a 10 man and cleared it in 2 attempts. is it just overtuned rn?

[x1xruex1x]

Kythos, I go back into ToV on Friday at 8p est. I'll record my data with warcraftlogs and upload right after raid ends (latest about 11p est). Odyn is annoying as ever. Oh, I do only do Normal, but from my understanding, any variant is hell for Arcane.

[gurudox]

H Odyn: ... is it just overtuned rn?

This fight is pretty punishing, as is the rest of Heroic Trial. Many 7/7M guilds are struggling with H Helya, for instance. I'd say it's slightly overtuned, or just challenging, unlike EN.

Was able to defeat H Odyn by bringing an additional healer over what we normally do, but that was obviously for progression and could potentially not be needed in future attempts.

I'd say arcane mages that are pulling 350k on this encounter are probably being given the go-ahead to tunnel on Odyn rather than do "unnecessary" mechanics. Swapping to adds alone seems prohibitive to maintaining over 300k dps. Also, mind that the top parses will usually have at least 1 or 2 of the BIS legendary items.

ROP isn't impossible, just make sure you're timing it correctly so that you don't get burned by mechanics too much. Sometimes it means that you won't pop it right when it's off CD, if it means waiting until add marks go out or until right after whirlwinds are dropped.

[Vorrum]

Just keep rotating your conserve and throttle phases. You can keep stacks without trouble if you're on top of it well enough, should be easy with words of power even. I tried it Tuesday and was able to keep up at 300k+ dps but we didn't clear it...then I stopped playing wow for a bit so I'm not quite sure what else about the new raid concerns arcane.

[Grazer]

When we killed Odyn Heroic last week, i felt the fight to be "okay" for Arcane. A possible downtime between Phases 1 and 2 wasn't really an issue, since i was pretty much finished with my HQ burn just before the two big Adds despawned. Handling Mechanics and killing adds requires a lot of attention, but is possible.

The good thing about the throttle Phase is that we have time to move around. It just takes a bit time to know when you can stand still for RoP, but that is pretty much the theme for Arcane anyway. The better you know the fight (and how your group executes it, how the timing works out), the better the performance becomes.
I pretty much just burn when AP becomes ready and try to make the best of it. The time window for a HQ burn is really small, so just have at least two stacks of ice floes ready.

So just keep trying, it will get easier and more comfortable after a few more pulls. Here is my kill from last week, I only pulled ~305k, which I was slightly disappointed about. I think there is quite a bit room for improvement, at least 350k should be quite doable.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/QX ... amage-done" target="_blank

And sorry for my bad English, it's not my first language.

[x1xruex1x]

SIDE NOTE

Not sure about you guys, but I'm thrilled about this upcoming legendary!

http://ptr.wowdb.com/items/144274-gravity-spiral

[x1xruex1x]

NOTICE

I will continue working on my guide revisions, but after seeing some of the tentative changes to the Arcane Mage's talent structure, I will be holding off on making a full fledge 7.1 video like I was going to do.

*REMINDER THIS IS ALL TENTATIVE AS ITS ON PTR*

Presence of Mind is now rank 30, in the rank 15 spot where it was is Temporal Flux (AB gains 5% haste per AC stack)

Rank 75 no longer has Ice Flows, but instead has Chrono Shift where ABarr slows by 30% and increases your speed by 30%.

Rank 100 -- Overpowered has changed: When you cast Arcane Power, your spells do 100% more damage, and reduces mana cost by 100%.
Quickening has changed: AB & AE hits grant 5% haste and increase mana cost of spells by 3% for 10 seconds. Effect stacks and clears when you cast Arcane Barrage.


Now, I'm sure Overpowered probably isn't done, 100% reduced cost for 12~ seconds would be insane. but regardless, these are some big changes if they all go through.

Quickening is getting a "Nerfuff" if you ask me. They're removing AM proc'ing it, but increasing the duration by 4 seconds. However, increasing mana costs by 3% per stack. So the buff to duration is nice, and no stack limit means you can go as high as you have mana for...but yea.

[Vorrum]

Quickening is dead. I feel that a normal rotation will be in order with overpowered being our new choice. Remember: The low burn high burn rotation was only about 15-20% better than a standard rotation that actually used Abarr. So now in my opinion quickening is gone, you dont want to deal with the increasing mana cost, it will become unsustainable. The possibility of having 100% more dmg and less mana cost with rune up for 40% more damage, plus a potion, plus lust, plus any other buffs makes for a really nasty burst phase.

I feel that arcane will take over in earnest now. It will be simplified to a burn > conserve phase again using abarr as normal and conserving as your mastery allows. Plus I think that 100% less mana cost and 100% more damage actually beats 80% haste burn phase that we currently have.

Let's also be aware that that the first tier talent for Ab to get 5% less cast time for each arcane charge. THEORETICALLY - this talent is better with the less haste you have. I also believe it will replace quickening in a sense and out pace words of power and arcane familar. This new arcane this patch will be like previously iterations really, so expect to revert to something familar.

Something I'll watch with great interest is the 500% spell damage arcane orb, that honestly looks wonky and maybe too strong.

[Kythos]

7.1.5 ptr.

Wow. This is amazing and scary at the same time.

Big changes. Will post more after some ptr.

Biggest take away no more ice floes for evo.

[Mtspiral]

I'm really interested in the extent of how much this will effect our rotations and capabilities. I think the ice floes prune was uncalled for, but we'll see how we get around that, I found it interesting not only did they extend the length of the quickening buff (was essential imo) but also increased the effect per stack from 2% to 5%, only require 20 stacks of it to get the same effect as 50 stacks on live, but 60% increased mana cost on a 4 stack arcane blast will probably be frightening. Looking forward to some of the new builds and rotations this encourages. Meanwhile fire mages are screaming the sky is falling LoL

[Causese]

so new overpowered talent doesn't synergize well with rhonin's
guess gravity spiral+shard/trinket will be BiS legendaries once you have 4pc

weird that arcane barrage will play such a small role in arcane's rotation

seems like they are heading for a 24/7 burn rotation -- like arcane barrage won't be casted once until 3min+ into the fight (with legendary head+4pc)

[Jhazz]

I've just been playing around on the PTR with Overpowered and found something interesting.

I was running Temporal Flux, Shimmer, RoP, SN, Chrono Shift, Unstable Magic and Overpowered as my talents, and I never once left the burn phase.

Pre-pot, 4 x Arcane Blast, MoA, RoP and burn to 40%. RoP, Activate Arcane Power, free spells for 10 seconds, back up to high mana. Burn to zero and evocate. Continue to burn to 40% as above, by which time Arcane Power will back.

Rinse and repeat, and never leave the burn phase. Seems broken, but I'm happy with it.