Nighthold Raid and Arcane Mage

[loonatiq]

Hello everyone,

As we are getting closer to Nighthold, I would like to get some advices and your thoughts on how to spec for that Raid.

I've been watching some videos on youtube and seen Arcane Mages at some bosses, but there were none on the other ones. I wonder how should we spec to fit in?

First one Skorpyron seem to be add heavy fight so I was thinking on going ress plus AO what do you think? I was wondering running Ress and AO for aoe heavy fights and switch to CU(i have kilt) and OP for single target.

Do you think we will be viable in that raid or some spec will be superior?

[Conatus78]

I definitely think we are viable for most raids. There are plenty of windows that are ideal for burst damage and/or 5+ target AOE: two areas in which we shine. This is especially true for us kilt wearers with charged up.

My guild got 7/10 N last night, and are raiding nightly through Friday with the goal of 10/10 H. These are just some initial thoughts based on my experience, and I'm sure better strategies will emerge. I'll learn much more on Heroic when mechanics hit harder-- I know I was sloppy on a lot of mechanics, but at Normal in 885-888 gear, it just didn't matter in a lot of cases.

I have kilt, so I am using charged up in some cases where I may have used resonance otherwise. My standard build is amp-slipstream-RoP-chronoshift-charged up-erosion-overpowered

In general, Slipstream was a clutch talent in every fight. Shimmer feels completely obsolete now, but it may still have its uses.

Skorpyron: Some movement, and lots of low hp adds. You want a good burst for when Skrorpyron's exoskeleton is down, so OP is preferable. Resonance seems like a good choice. Since adds go down quickly, I wonder if unstable magic or NT is better than erosion.

Trilliax: As ranged dps, we are great candidates for running to the cakes. Save 1-2 AM procs and PoM so you can cast while running. Maybe position yourself near the back circle to minimize movement for cake runs. Basically a single-target fight with some adds.

Chronomatic Anomoly: Moderate movement, and a high demand to switch targets and burst down a single powerful add from time to time, and move out of somewhat complicated AOE attacks.

Aluriel, Spellbinder: Lots of high priority, moderate HP adds that should be clumped together. Resonance is a good choice here.

Krosus: Pure single-target. The simplest fight. Slipstream can guarantee that you are always casting, so save charges.

Tel'arn, High Botanist: The most complicated fight that we've encountered. Moderate movement needed to get out of fast moving AOE attacks, but not much need to cast while moving if you have a good position. Maybe Shimmer is a better talent than Slipstream for this reason. You need to switch low-hp single target adds quite a bit during this fight, so Unstable may outperform Erosion or NT. NT may be best if you can keep it up on the boss the whole time, but that is too tricky for my skills.

Etraeus, Astromancer -- Slipstream is key. Remember that once your Arcane Missiles starts channeling, you can run and face in any direction, and the channeling continues. A lot of movement requires moving from the inside to the outside of the circle, so Slipstream allowed me to continue casting even when facing directly away from the boss. Although there are quite a bit of movement requirements, I was able to position myself near the outside of the ring and almost treat this as a single-target fight. Furthermore, in the final phase, a large high-hp add has an ability for which you need to face away from him, while still maintaining solid DPS on it. There are a lot of smaller adds around the boss as well at this time. For this phase, position yourself near the boss. Single-target the big add, and save 1 proc of AM. When the add starts its ability, begin your AM channel and face away. When the channel finishes, spam AE a few times to help kill the smaller adds. When the Add's ability ends, turn back around and single target the add once again.

Tichondrius: ???

Elisande: ???

Gul'dan: ???

[DocileCraig]

I ended up doing Skorpyron on both heroic, and normal (we forgot to set it to normal for our first go) and used the arcane orb build I use for M+ it did quite well with burning adds and I found no issues with it. I'd be interested in giving OP a whirl for burst phase, may need to test next week and see how it goes.

[jimmyo]

We went 9/10N (only did one pull on guldan before it was time for progression raid) and 7/10 Heroic (Botanist, Elisande, Guldan remaining) last night and I played arcane on every fight. I never wavered from RoP/Resonance/OP. I tried AO on first two bosses in normal and was dissatisfied with it even though I love AO in M+. Overpowered is just too strong, even in AoE.

At 883 ilevel and 40 points (I rerolled for this instance) I was consistently middle of the pack while raid leading in our group which averages over 890. I also have 0 dps legends (Prydaz and Chest. I didn't wear chest most of the night though because I got tier chest in normal). I got 2p normal, which feels really strong. Having 5 free Ethereal Sensitivity traits is amazing for mana throttling, and makes me want to start stocking AP duration traits.I will have 4p as soon as Blizz fixes a bug for me (I got a second cloak out of a shoulders token), and can give impressions later.

I died early on Spellblade and told the raid not to rez me (so I could raid lead more effectively). But apart from that fight, Krosus which I fucked up a conserve phase, and Ticho (where I couldn't get an orb), I felt really good about arcane's toolkit. Arcane felt really well suited for the fights with intermittent add spawns like Chronomatic, Augur P3, and Spellblade. Slipstream, Chrono Shift, and Displacement combine to give you a lot of flexibility on the fights. DPS is a little undertumed compared to locks and boomkins, but we look to be competitive with Fire on all the cleave fights other than Skorp. I think you will see Arcane rankings go up over the next couple weeks as more top players start using it.

It is worth noting that I beat our fire mage on all fights except Spellblde where I died. Now, our fire mage is not superb, but he outgeara me by a substantial margin.

[Mage]

I did 13 bosses tonight, 11 as arcane. Even got a rank 1 Krossus normal parse (yeah, important stuff hehe). Played fire so far in the expansion but wanted a change.
My impression from a first evening was this:

- arcane is much more straightforward and mobile (slipstream, plus I use Norgannon's+Kilt) which is good for progression
- fire has a higher potential when played (or padded, your choice) perfectly on most bosses. I use bracers+helm for fire and it gives both high sustain and great burst AOE, which most bosses have. Maxing fire is much more difficult IMO because it requires perfect use of cinderstorm on most bosses.

Arcane on-demand burst potential is higher than fire, which might come handy on mythic progression. However, with bis legendaries, fire will beat it on overall damage and frost will beat it single target.

[loonatiq]

Thanks for the comments guys. I am also very convincved that Arcane is fine for these Raid.

However Ressonance seemed to work wonders for me for most of the fights since there are a lot of adds so even though I have kilt I still used ress.
Worth noting is that I got Whispers in the Dark trinket and oh boy this thing is epic. When it procced during Tichondrius when I picked up dmg and mana buff and we used heroism it was crazy fun.

After last nights runs my guild finally stopped asking me to switch to fire Cant wait for that 2p set bonus which will equal 49% chance to proc AM on AB which is sick.

[Asara]

Our guild cleared 6/10 N last night, and i spend the whole raid as arcane. I also never switched from my initial talents, with slipstream, rop, erosion and overpowered, never felt the need to switch.

What i noticed though, that even if i had to run around a lot, and didnt time spells correctly, and AP and evocation got staggered (this happens a lot now, cause you just dont burn any mana with AP) i still had a baseline dps op around 300k. Even if its the first time youre doing a fight, i feel that arcane is way more forgiving now and the ceiling has been raised. But in order to break a bit of a barrier, you need to time everything perfectly to get dps even close to shadow priests or warlocks. So its viable, for some fights fire is just better though.

[loonatiq]

On the other side - when do you pop your CDs at scorpyron fight? At start, at first adds, or maybe when he loses his armor?

[Asara]

At start, and then when he loses his armor and TW or BL is probaly used. If you want to cheese the meters you can however do it when a lot of adds spawn.

[Effia]

Clearled 9/10 Heroic last night with minimal wipes, just ran out of time for Gul'dan which I'm sure we'll get tonight.

Arcane is fine for most fights, lagged like fuck on Skorp and people pad so that boss is whatever, it's also a complete joke of a fight.
Honestly had no idea what was going on on Anomoly, boss just did shit, dump the debuff off outside the raid which Blink + Displacement handles and kill adds using single target or AoE depending on the add, minimal movement, bank AMs for movement.
Trilliax is again, bank AM for movement, blink + displace to eat cake, get on with it. Spam AoE for the beam phase since you can't really get hard casts off.
Spellblade Aluriel is disgustingly good for Arcane. Save cooldowns for when the adds spawn and blow them up with Arcane Explosion, bonus if you can get Auriel in on the AoE. It's also not padding since adds are top priority.
Krosus is just stand and nuke, keep an AM banked for beam movement, blink + displace for Orb or soak puddles, get on with it.
Tichondrius is again, blink + displace to hide behind pillars, AoE/Single target as appropriate, make sure you have an orb coming out as it provides huge mana regeneration and damage.
Botanist is fine, we have good mobility and when he splits into 3, switch to Explosion spam, (This won't work on mythic but for Heroic it's fine).
Star Augur is a great fight for us. Bank Am for when you have to move with Frost/Fel debuff, channel AM before you have to look away from add or switch to Star Augur for one Blast and return to add, AoE the small adds, jobs good.
Elisande is a real test of maximising your timing. Blink + Displace gives great mobility for all the fight's mechanics, soaking Orbs, grabbing speed buffs, getting over the ring spell. Good fight overall, a nice enough challenge.

No idea about Gul'dan atm, but since you stack the adds in phase 1, explosion spam will be amazing and then we are great at single target which is most of the rest of the fight.

My talents were 2 2 2 3 1 3 1 for the whole night and it was fine, despite me having legs. Resonance is just a great damage increase.

I ranked anywhere between 70-90th percentile without ever having done any of the bosses and contending with sporadic lag so I was happy. Looking forward to mythic.

[Songette]

Clearled 9/10 Heroic last night with minimal wipes, just ran out of time for Gul'dan which I'm sure we'll get tonight.

Arcane is fine for most fights, lagged like fuck on Skorp and people pad so that boss is whatever, it's also a complete joke of a fight.
Honestly had no idea what was going on on Anomoly, boss just did shit, dump the debuff off outside the raid which Blink + Displacement handles and kill adds using single target or AoE depending on the add, minimal movement, bank AMs for movement.
Trilliax is again, bank AM for movement, blink + displace to eat cake, get on with it. Spam AoE for the beam phase since you can't really get hard casts off.
Spellblade Aluriel is disgustingly good for Arcane. Save cooldowns for when the adds spawn and blow them up with Arcane Explosion, bonus if you can get Auriel in on the AoE. It's also not padding since adds are top priority.
Krosus is just stand and nuke, keep an AM banked for beam movement, blink + displace for Orb or soak puddles, get on with it.
Tichondrius is again, blink + displace to hide behind pillars, AoE/Single target as appropriate, make sure you have an orb coming out as it provides huge mana regeneration and damage.
Botanist is fine, we have good mobility and when he splits into 3, switch to Explosion spam, (This won't work on mythic but for Heroic it's fine).
Star Augur is a great fight for us. Bank Am for when you have to move with Frost/Fel debuff, channel AM before you have to look away from add or switch to Star Augur for one Blast and return to add, AoE the small adds, jobs good.
Elisande is a real test of maximising your timing. Blink + Displace gives great mobility for all the fight's mechanics, soaking Orbs, grabbing speed buffs, getting over the ring spell. Good fight overall, a nice enough challenge.

No idea about Gul'dan atm, but since you stack the adds in phase 1, explosion spam will be amazing and then we are great at single target which is most of the rest of the fight.

My talents were 2 2 2 3 1 3 1 for the whole night and it was fine, despite me having legs. Resonance is just a great damage increase.

I ranked anywhere between 70-90th percentile without ever having done any of the bosses and contending with sporadic lag so I was happy. Looking forward to mythic.

I cleared 7/10H and 8/10N, with some nice parses in most of the fights: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 70/latest/" target="_blank

Had some trouble with Auriel, didn't time my cd's very well, and had bad movement planning on chronomatic. I'm thinking IF for Trilliax, since I lost my rune buff a lot. Maybe just bad movement planning, so I require more practice.

Anyway, we're going for Botanist, Elisande and Gul'dan tonight. Is AE spam really a DPS increase when they split into 3?

Elisande also looks like a heavy movement fight, what do you think of IF for this fight?

Thank you in advance

[Effia]

3 is the breakpoint for AE to become higher dps and you will often catch Plasma Sphere/Plants in the AE spam as well so it's usually better.

I've thought about IF for Elisande and Gul'dan but you have buffs which synergise with Rune too well so I'm not using it, it's just an exercise in maximising your dps timings, but they are there. I still have huge areas I can improve as well.

[Visk]

I cannot wait to try NH myself from this weekend on (as I had to miss the start-start) and honestly looking at logs and reading forums we look to be at quite a good state and I have a very good feeling about the spec.

1 thing I am very unsure about is about trinkets - I have read quite a few different opinions on that which are good and which are bad and would love to get like a some kind of "tierlist" I should aim for from NH. Would it be stat sticks, int. proc trinkets, secondary proc... I would appreciate a lot any kind of info on that matter.

I am currently with 875 Urn, 855 Spiked Tongue and 860 socketed Aran's ruby.

Thanks for the info in advance!

[Kintoun]

3 is the breakpoint for AE to become higher dps

AE is 2% mana, 75% sp * 1.10 from traits, and instant cast (GCD 1.5) = 55 sp per sec
AB is 3% mana, 192.4% sp * 1.06 from traits, and 2.25 cast time = 90.6 sp per sec

Math. APLs agree.

[jacobsmage]

3 is the breakpoint for AE to become higher dps

AE is 2% mana, 75% sp * 1.10 from traits, and instant cast (GCD 1.5) = 55 sp per sec
AB is 3% mana, 192.4% sp * 1.06 from traits, and 2.25 cast time = 90.6 sp per sec

Math. APLs agree.

So your maths is saying that we should AE at 2 targets?

[Effia]

3 is the breakpoint for AE to become higher dps

AE is 2% mana, 75% sp * 1.10 from traits, and instant cast (GCD 1.5) = 55 sp per sec
AB is 3% mana, 192.4% sp * 1.06 from traits, and 2.25 cast time = 90.6 sp per sec

Math. APLs agree.

Then if my 7am brain is reading it correctly, 2 is the breakpoint for higher dps, anyone else feel free to validate the claim and excellent, we're even better on some NH fights.

[Neostorms]

Feel relly good in Arcane spec.

I never use splitstream and never had big probleme - Shimmer is the best imo. Look at deadly boss mod, you will know when its time to evocate.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... st/#boss=0" target="_blank

here my try on Etraeus, manage to kill it in a pug the night after

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a4NHd9FMBJXjPpnG" target="_blank


Arcane X-plosion is best skill has you can see

[Kythos]

lots of burst cleave.

going to try Flow, Resonance, ErSn and ORB tonight on Normal (think it will shine on skorp, Trilliax, tich, botanist, Guldan) ...

AE is your new best friend.