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

[Ponkster]

Arcane is good, I'm doing excellent damage. I got the bracers which helps but is proc reliant (I only had 5 procs on Nyth this week) the kilt might even be better now because the conserve phase is pretty brutal. I got 14th on mythic nyth and 1st for my ilevel.

No tricks or gimmicks just 4AB - MoA - RoP - NT - AB - AM(s) - Rotate AB and AM until OOM (save 1-2 AM procs for after evo) Evocate - AM (keep stacks). I dumped to 60% then Barraged.

I was behind our fire mage who got 99th percentile but he has bracers and ring (2 legs) so it's difficult to judge if fire is flat out better; but its probably easy to say arcane and fire are not far from each other. I didn't get any bracer procs in the middle during conserve which are when they are most important but damage was still good.

edit: my ilvl is pretty bad aswell 866

[Joban]

Some top logs are still using the "No Barrage" strat quite effectively. 465k on Ursoc, with no Barrages casted. This is disappointing. It was only a 4 minute fight, and they have legendary bracers, but only 48% Mastery.

[seoh]

@joban

Do you think you could link some of those logs? I'm curious.

[Ponkster]

Some top logs are still using the "No Barrage" strat quite effectively. 465k on Ursoc, with no Barrages casted. This is disappointing. It was only a 4 minute fight, and they have legendary bracers, but only 48% Mastery.

880 plus ilvl and some crazy AM procs.

[Vhella]

@Vachadavid Great post & impressive logs. I'm a long time lurker too and i had to answer your post: I had a bad time yesterday in HM EN. A really really bad time. I looked at your logs because we are in a really close situation (866-869Ilvl), Leg with no dps benefit, same lenght fights... But I'm quite far behind, and you seem to be performing tremendously in your raid. The mana increased was really a tough hit to my playstyle and I'm quite confused right now, so I need your help!

For exemple let's take 2 Xavius heroic Kill

Vachadavid: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Z4 ... amage-done" target="_blank
- Fight Lenght 5:54
- 345k Dps
- 257 AM casted
- 109 AB casted
- Arcane Power casted x4
- Arcane Barrage casted 7

Vhella: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/W1 ... amage-done" target="_blank
- Fight Lenght 5:49
- 267k Dps
- 172 AM casted
- 92 AB casted
- Arcane Power casted x5
- Arcane Barrage casted 11

I looked at Ursoc HM kill also (even though our gm used time warp right off the bat aha) we had a similar fight but I'm also lacking around 55k+ dps!

You might say there is multiple factors going on in a fight and that it's not "fair" to compare, but I looked at many other heroic kills and I'm quite far behind you in each. I was performing well so far with my arcane mage but I don't know, it felt really clunky yesterday. I found myself casting ABarr more and starving a lot in mana. The major difference I can spot are about our stats I'm lacking around 2k+ Int & mastery compared to you.

Tldr: I must be doing something wrong and I can't spot it right now. Maybe the playstyle, my stats, I don't know, if you can help me figure it out that'd be great

[x1xruex1x]

@Vachadavid Great post & impressive logs. I'm a long time lurker too and i had to answer your post: I had a bad time yesterday in HM EN. ...................
Tldr: I must be doing something wrong and I can't spot it right now. Maybe the playstyle, my stats, I don't know, if you can help me figure it out that'd be great

@Vhella,
I am curious as to this as well. The difference is pretty vast, and even at that, I'd love to know what your conserve rotation tends to flow like. I can see there that your a good amount behind on the AM casts which are all proc based. So between the two fight details, (since I can't see the logs from where I'm at currently) could get get a glimpse into the first tier talent choices? Arcane Familiar / Presence of Mind / Words of Power.

I'm seeing people say that right now, WoP is working much better since you can count on getting more AM during conserve, and thusly not having to cast Barrage as frequently, and in turn keeping higher quickening and arcane charge stacks longer. I need to test this in a raid environment, but I won't be able to until this friday.

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Re: Arcane Mage - PvE - 7.1 - Updated: 10/25/2016
Post by Boomop » Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:11 pm

Feels like Blizz halfway "fixed" Arcane. Like they don't really want to commit to one strategy and instead Arcane is somewhere in limbo.

One big problem with the recent change is that the conserve rotation 4AB > Abarr is mana negative (unless you have quite a bit of Mastery, and even then...)

Just general food for thought:

1) Mana Regen scaling has always been a BAD THING for Arcane in terms of balance........

@Boomop,
I'm trying to better understand what you're sharing with us.
From my understanding, you're stating that scaled mana regen is actually a bad thing versus having a static regen. Could you provide a bit more detail into why this would be the case? I mean, imo, if the cost for AB and AE (as i previously didn't notice that AE got the +25% increase as well) are going up, you'd think you'd want to have more mana regen to compensate for this increase. And in turn, become more gear dependent. If you have higher mastery, then you have more regen, with more regen, you can keep your stacks of AC longer especially with good procs of AM.

So yea, if you could elaborate a bit more into your thought that the regen scaling is a bad thing, that'd be fantastic.

I guess along with that, could you also expand on the reason the AB/AE +25% increase mana is a good thing as well, since they tie together with the previous?

The only good thing I could turn out of that is that the opening burn phase did last way too long in 7.0.3 and in turn skewed your cooldowns of AP and Evo to be far off. Right now they're coming up very close which I like, but at that, the conserve and subsequent burn phases seem to be more problematic because of this increase. Until someone has a really good solid suggestion for conserve management in 7.1, I don't know how else to combat the mana constraint issues to allow for decent burn phases mid-fight.


Thx ~Rue~

[Vorrum]

Some top logs are still using the "No Barrage" strat quite effectively. 465k on Ursoc, with no Barrages casted. This is disappointing. It was only a 4 minute fight, and they have legendary bracers, but only 48% Mastery.

880 plus ilvl and some crazy AM procs.

Is that really what it takes to do the "no barrage" strategy?

I have some serious issues with what to do after your initial evocation, Do I burn to 60% or 90%? Do I after barraging out of my quickening stacks at either of the aforementioned mana percentages, simply not do much and have a conserve phase where I just bank arcane missiles and use arcane explosion and every 6 seconds refresh quickening for my next burn phase? (I've even read somewhere of arcane mages auto attacking while doing this, really?) What is the best way to handle the conserve phase anymore? I feel that it has to do with just keeping quickening stacks doing some cheesy stuff like casting a spell every 6 seconds and then having 13+ seconds in arcane power where we do as much damage as possible.

This is just a sad state of arcane because I'm pretty sure this is the play style and I'm more or less asking for confirmation. This does not fit the class fantasy at all, I like the spec because the artifact is well designed and the spec has been pretty solid always.

[danieltang34]

my mage just hit 110 and after some researches there seem two strategies to DPS, classic conserve-burst / 4 AC entire time
however the 4AC strategy doesnt seem to work for me, is there a break point where i should switch form one another, like 11000 mastery to make the 4AC strategy worthwhile? i do virtually no damage when i try to bank mana while keeping the stacks

@Danieltang34

Could you elaborate a bit more on your full rotation? Classic Convserve-Burst / 4 AC entire time doesn't ring a bell. A classical conservation phase is topping to 4 AC via AB, blowing out any procs you have, refreshing any NT's you need to, and then clearing with ABarr, just to repeat again. In dire straights, where you need mana regen, you'd clear at 3 stacks of AC.

But yea, if you could elaborate a bit more, that'd be fantastic.

Sorry
basically both rotations i tried were " burst->conserve ->burst -> conserve"
I'm just not sure what to do during the conserve phase, some people are telling me to do the classic "3-4 blast + barrage " conserve rotation
while some are telling to me not use barrage at all, just use AM procs, AE and stuffs like that to maintain the quickening buff and stay 4AC at all time, however this rotation does not work for me at all

also the top players from warcraftlogs are not using arcane barrage at all, so im kind of confused what to do

[x1xruex1x]

880 plus ilvl and some crazy AM procs.

Is that really what it takes to do the "no barrage" strategy?

.......................

This is just a sad state of arcane because I'm pretty sure this is the play style and I'm more or less asking for confirmation. This does not fit the class fantasy at all, I like the spec because the artifact is well designed and the spec has been pretty solid always.

@Vorrum,

Yea, I agree 100%, but I do think that Blizzard is trying to create appeal of not using quickening and instead using Overpowered or Arcane Orb.

As I've said earlier, I want to trial a few variants of this where you either attack very slowly with your spells, in order to conserve mana and create mana regen moments. I also want to trial Overpowered instead of Quickening because of the amount of mana we're burning now. I know there's a plethora of arguments over these styles, but there's absolutely no harm in trying them I'll post back with my findings on the main post and at the end here.

[x1xruex1x]

........................
while some are telling to me not use barrage at all, just use AM procs, AE and stuffs like that to maintain the quickening buff and stay 4AC at all time, however this rotation does not work for me at all

also the top players from warcraftlogs are not using arcane barrage at all, so im kind of confused what to do

@Danieltang34,

It's cool, nothin to be embarrassed about or anything. ^_^
Right now Arcane is in a really awkward place. Warcraftlogs is showing people with near no barrages and high dps, but I haven't reviewed this personally yet as I'm still getting used to Warcraftlogs myself. I would like to assume that they're utilizing legendary procs as well. Not sure tho, so I wont expand on that here.

As of the moment, it is still a Burn > Conserve > Repeat build. Just the conserve phase is a lot more tedium than before. It's about babysitting your charges, quickening, and mana altogether at the same time, and ensuring you can have a proper burn at the next available cooldown. It's also about getting lucky with AM procs. Which is why I'm hearing a lot of people talk about Words of Power being used more now than ever before, and trying to maintain around 80-90% mana during conserve for that extra +% to proc AM.

Again, I'll be testing these methods later tonight

[winnerbilly]

........................
while some are telling to me not use barrage at all, just use AM procs, AE and stuffs like that to maintain the quickening buff and stay 4AC at all time, however this rotation does not work for me at all

also the top players from warcraftlogs are not using arcane barrage at all, so im kind of confused what to do

@Danieltang34,

It's cool, nothin to be embarrassed about or anything. ^_^
Right now Arcane is in a really awkward place. Warcraftlogs is showing people with near no barrages and high dps, but I haven't reviewed this personally yet as I'm still getting used to Warcraftlogs myself. I would like to assume that they're utilizing legendary procs as well. Not sure tho, so I wont expand on that here.

As of the moment, it is still a Burn > Conserve > Repeat build. Just the conserve phase is a lot more tedium than before. It's about babysitting your charges, quickening, and mana altogether at the same time, and ensuring you can have a proper burn at the next available cooldown. It's also about getting lucky with AM procs. Which is why I'm hearing a lot of people talk about Words of Power being used more now than ever before, and trying to maintain around 80-90% mana during conserve for that extra +% to proc AM.

Again, I'll be testing these methods later tonight

So i did some math and it seems this theory is legit for adding exactly 1 more arcane missle to a 5 minute fight at the cost of loosing the passive damage from familiar and 10% more mana...In this conclusion I would assume one additional arcane missle proc doesnt make up for that.

[winnerbilly]

The top damage arcane rotations currently for maximum dps after simcrafting are showing that refreshing downtime hurts dps too hard just to get mana back via legendary/barrage. SO everything fell into place when i relized the rotation that fits the build...you can stack 4 AR/ artifact power/roa with arcane power missle as you have them and spam blasts until you have 3 stacks of missles or arcane power falls off... then you roa for the 2nd time and use up arcane missles down to 1 then evo (if low mana) keep up quickening with missles then back to a conserve rotation...(key points to note always artifact power and missle during your roa phases to maximize dps since its the top damaging spells you want to use roa with the most casts as possible with those two spells...


http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/z ... tic/simple" target="_blank

[seoh]

I cannot remember what thread I was in, but I mentioned some problems I had with the "do nothing conserve" phase, and that I would try it out later. I thought I would link just about my only good pull (96th percentile @864) after our raid night:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zM ... &source=18" target="_blank

Here is my gear: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/d ... eoh/simple" target="_blank

I don't have many thoughts, other than on most pulls my 50 stack quickening was spent in evo or waiting 1-3 seconds for evo. I've also started dumping a little mastery for crit etc, but haven't found many pieces to make that work. I did however have a generally bad night that effected my pulls, except for this one which I'm relatively proud of.

Really hoping to get a good orange piece of gear soon. Feeling like I'm hitting a plateau and that this plateau is much larger because of the change.

[x1xruex1x]

Quick update on my end, Was able to test some mana conservation and quickening conservation tactics mentioned during the conserve phase and got a bit of a boost in dps output.

Basically, just banking spells til the last possible moment for a quickening refresh, then trying to jive up with the next AP burn is the goal. ie) hold AM until less than 1 sec remaining on Quickening would be ideal, and then using AB/AE only when you wont have a free cast item to refresh with. I pulled about 263k on Nythendra over 5min 14s with an 853 item level.

Still need to do more testing with it, but it seems promising at least for the meanwhile. Granted I'm not a personal fan of standing around really.

[Laniarty]

I really hope the "do nothing, no barrage" rotation doesn't become our best rotation, because it is stupidly boring. As it stands it is close enough that I can choose to stick with a traditional barrage conserve playstyle, but sitting around watching my quickening buff for 7 minutes is not my idea of fun raiding.

[Forminasage]

Unfortunately I've been having waaaay more success with the No-Barrage rotation than the "normal conserve" one. Bearing in mind I'm by no means playing optimally, here's some recent logs showing the downtime during conserve phases.

Elerethe Mythic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... amage-done" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... e&source=9" target="_blank

Ursoc Mythic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/96 ... ne&fight=9" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/96 ... e&source=2" target="_blank

Cenarius Heroic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... amage-done" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... e&source=9" target="_blank

If I'd taken advantage of the treant's mana restoration, I reckon the Cenarius one could've gone even higher, but I brainfarted.

This No-Barrage build is fairly consistently competing with equal or higher item level Fire Mages (in my guild at least), whereas before changing up my playstyle I was barely pulling 240k even on fights like Ursoc. Something's gone horribly wrong with Arcane, and I'm worried about what steps Blizzard are going to think to take to cull it.

Or maybe this build is intentional "emergent gameplay" and Blizzard are going to leave it be?

[Vorrum]

Unfortunately I've been having waaaay more success with the No-Barrage rotation than the "normal conserve" one. Bearing in mind I'm by no means playing optimally, here's some recent logs showing the downtime during conserve phases.

Elerethe Mythic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... amage-done" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... e&source=9" target="_blank

Ursoc Mythic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/96 ... ne&fight=9" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/96 ... e&source=2" target="_blank

Cenarius Heroic:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... amage-done" target="_blank

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2Z ... e&source=9" target="_blank

If I'd taken advantage of the treant's mana restoration, I reckon the Cenarius one could've gone even higher, but I brainfarted.

This No-Barrage build is fairly consistently competing with equal or higher item level Fire Mages (in my guild at least), whereas before changing up my playstyle I was barely pulling 240k even on fights like Ursoc. Something's gone horribly wrong with Arcane, and I'm worried about what steps Blizzard are going to think to take to cull it.

Or maybe this build is intentional "emergent gameplay" and Blizzard are going to leave it be?

Explain what you did for these if you could, I keep hearing no barrage but no one explains what they do.

[x1xruex1x]

Unfortunately I've been having waaaay more success with the No-Barrage rotation than the "normal conserve" one. Bearing in mind I'm by no means playing optimally, here's some recent logs showing the downtime during conserve phases.

..................

Something's gone horribly wrong with Arcane, and I'm worried about what steps Blizzard are going to think to take to cull it.

Or maybe this build is intentional "emergent gameplay" and Blizzard are going to leave it be?

@Forminasage,

Hey there! I won't be able to check out the logs until later tonight when I'm home, but if you would be so kind as to provide how your rotation looks and feels during conserve that would be fantastic. I second Vorrum in asking for this because it'll help us to better understand exactly what's going through your mind while this is going on.

Much thanks in advance!

[Integ]

the 'new' conserve rotation goes along these lines:
-keep refreshing quickening making sure to do so when it's about to expire
-keep refreshing NT
-nova on cd

the tricky part is the refresh part and i am currently playing sorta safe casting ab when 3 sec left, ae/missiles 1.5 sec left.

No barrage should be used as ur supposed to be at 4 charges all the time.

[seoh]

I just wanted to add to the conserve rotation that you should keep Frost Nova on cd where not otherwise applicable as well.