[BfA] Arcane Mage Guide for Battle for Azeroth (8.0)

[Dutchmagoz]

Helo, thanks for this guide.
I have a question about caps:
Crit, haste and mastery?
How much is the ideal?

There are no caps for Arcane Mages for any of those stats. The best way to figure out your optimal set of gear is via https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/topgear. If you want to know your own personal stat weights, you can use https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/stats.

[Bonoboi]

Which prepot is better for arcane
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=279163/ba ... -intellect or https://www.wowhead.com/spell=252344/po ... sing-death

[Notorioustjw]

I’m also very curious about stat priorities with arcane. I’ve read through several guides and have seen some different opinions on what is optimal. For instance noxxic suggests this stat weight:

Intellect [9.06] > Versatility [7.56] >= Crit [7.41] >= Haste [7.26] > Mastery [4.56]

I’m curious as to you opinions on this and if you’d be able to dive deeper into your recommendations on stat priorities that would be great!

[Demoreon]

So I used simc and raidbots. One gave me crit, mastery, vers, haste; the other said crit, vers, haste, mastery. Kind of confused on which is the better to follow. I did use the same settings on both.

[antabuz]

I’m also very curious about stat priorities with arcane. I’ve read through several guides and have seen some different opinions on what is optimal. For instance noxxic suggests this stat weight:

Intellect [9.06] > Versatility [7.56] >= Crit [7.41] >= Haste [7.26] > Mastery [4.56]

I’m curious as to you opinions on this and if you’d be able to dive deeper into your recommendations on stat priorities that would be great!

Sim yourself and dont read Noxxic.

[nickseng]

So I used simc and raidbots. One gave me crit, mastery, vers, haste; the other said crit, vers, haste, mastery. Kind of confused on which is the better to follow. I did use the same settings on both.

Raidbots is merely a web frontend with Simc at the background. Your simc is probably outdated (you need to get the nightlies).

Or you could just use raidbots.

[hershey0051]

How do you use Rop's outside burn phase ? aND what % of mana can we spend in conserve phase before the next burn ? Can i just 4 x AB and barrage (and using clear casted missiles) till next burn ???
like can i fall down to 50% mana before next burn or can i be even higher like at 80% ?

[Eidos]

Dutch I have been benefiting from your clear and accurate guides for years. Thank you. I have three questions.

1. Why use Presence of Mind after using Arcane Power? Wouldn’t it be a dps increase to spend the global outside the arcane power window, and go into it with two Instant ABs qued up?
2. Does both the damage and the % chance to gain 2 arcane charges stack when using more than one piece of azerite gear with Galvanizing Spark?
3. When I simmed my character for top gear (patchwork, all default parameters) raid bots output that a shoulder piece with thunderous blast was better than one with galvanizing spark. This *seems* to conflict with your recommendation to triple stack galvanizing spark for Single target. Regardless, what should I make of that recommendation? I am inclined to stack galvanizing spark anyway.

Thank you!

[Dutchmagoz]

Dutch I have been benefiting from your clear and accurate guides for years. Thank you. I have three questions.

1. Why use Presence of Mind after using Arcane Power? Wouldn’t it be a dps increase to spend the global outside the arcane power window, and go into it with two Instant ABs qued up?
2. Does both the damage and the % chance to gain 2 arcane charges stack when using more than one piece of azerite gear with Galvanizing Spark?
3. When I simmed my character for top gear (patchwork, all default parameters) raid bots output that a shoulder piece with thunderous blast was better than one with galvanizing spark. This *seems* to conflict with your recommendation to triple stack galvanizing spark for Single target. Regardless, what should I make of that recommendation? I am inclined to stack galvanizing spark anyway.

Thank you!

1. Presence of Mind does not use a global, which is why it is used at the end of Arcane Power to fit 1 extra Arcane Blast in.

2. No, only the damage part. (But it's still BiS when stacked)

3. Do you have a link to this sim? It might be because of a certain trinket or talent set-up that causes thunderous blast to be better. Although i must say, thunderous blast is actually very close to Galvanizing Spark now anyway, so there is the chance it is better for certain gearsets.

[Mistress9]

Good evening, I just rerolled into a Iron dwarf and I was wondering if my new racial ability changes my rotation (in terms of presence of mind)..
It says that we cast POM at the end of arcane power but if i use the iron dwarf racial at the beginning w/ all my other cooldowns, does that change anything or do i cast POM at the beginning w/ arcane power so it synergizes w/ the iron dwarf racial ability.

my 2nd question is if you are fighting lets say a dungeon boss with low hp and you do the burn phase and then evocate but the boss has low enough HP that you could likely kill him by spamming arcane blast (burn phase without arcane power) instead of the Arcane blast x4 --> arcane barrage, would it be smarter to do a 2nd burn phase (without the arcane power) or should you still be sticking to conserve phase.


Thanks and love from Canada!!

[Blackmage90]

Hey quick question. What weapon enchant are Arcane Mages using? I was thinking about Deadly Navigation.

[Dutchmagoz]

Hey quick question. What weapon enchant are Arcane Mages using? I was thinking about Deadly Navigation.

Torrent of elements

[Dutchmagoz]

Good evening, I just rerolled into a Iron dwarf and I was wondering if my new racial ability changes my rotation (in terms of presence of mind)..
It says that we cast POM at the end of arcane power but if i use the iron dwarf racial at the beginning w/ all my other cooldowns, does that change anything or do i cast POM at the beginning w/ arcane power so it synergizes w/ the iron dwarf racial ability.

my 2nd question is if you are fighting lets say a dungeon boss with low hp and you do the burn phase and then evocate but the boss has low enough HP that you could likely kill him by spamming arcane blast (burn phase without arcane power) instead of the Arcane blast x4 --> arcane barrage, would it be smarter to do a 2nd burn phase (without the arcane power) or should you still be sticking to conserve phase.


Thanks and love from Canada!!

1. The PoM usage doesn't change based on racial.
2. Yes, you just continue burning until the boss dies in that case. You should end the fight on as low mana as possible.

[Bôw]

Hello everyone,

Sorry if my english is bad, i'm French.

I'd like to ask : recently Galvanizing Spark has been nerfed and i wondered if the Azerite Traits Sim were updated cuz we still see Galvanizing Spark on the top (HeroDamage/IcyVeins/WowHead).

[Dutchmagoz]

Hello everyone,

Sorry if my english is bad, i'm French.

I'd like to ask : recently Galvanizing Spark has been nerfed and i wondered if the Azerite Traits Sim were updated cuz we still see Galvanizing Spark on the top (HeroDamage/IcyVeins/WowHead).

Galvanizing Spark is still the best trait after the nerfs, yes.

[Bôw]

Galvanizing Spark is still the best trait after the nerfs, yes.

Thx for answering.

[sniperfeast]

Galvanizing Spark is still the best trait after the nerfs, yes.

Should we even consider the Uldir traits for the reorigination array? Or just stick with 3x Galv spark?

[Imaishi]

This guide is up to date, right?
Do I understand well and I'm not supposed to cast arcane missiles during arcane power at all? And only use PoM at the very end of it (why?)?
From my experience Amplification has been doing little bit better than Rule of Threes, though it might have to do with short fights thus far, allowing me to be on 4 charges for most of an encounter.
Also, when I sim myself haste is muuuch worse than everything else. I know it depends on your current stats and shit but I wouldn't expect such a difference from the guideline in here which places it as second best.

[TLTeo]

Do I understand well and I'm not supposed to cast arcane missiles during arcane power at all?

Yep, that is also my understanding. AB does far more damage and AM is just a mana management tool right now, so it makes sense you'd want to cast the hard hitting spell only during your main cooldown.

And only use PoM at the very end of it (why?)?

Also yes. This allows you to cast one extra AB in the AP window.

Also, when I sim myself haste is muuuch worse than everything else. I know it depends on your current stats and shit but I wouldn't expect such a difference from the guideline in here which places it as second best.

With my current gear (https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/chara ... nor/Aleema) it varies a LOT. Recently I had to replace the crit enchants with haste as it somehow skyrocketed all the way up to my #1 secondary even matching SP. I ran a bunch of sims and got the sneaky feeling there's some sort of soft break point where at certain levels of haste and with Overpowered talented it allows for one extra, really hard-hitting AB during AP; that's the only explanation I have come up so far for those stat weights.

[Dutchmagoz]

TLTeo answered the questions already, so I'll only explain a bit further on why haste suddenly spikes and drops in value:

There are haste breakpoints which allow you to fit in additional Arcane Blasts during Arcane Power. These breakpoints are important when running Rune of Power + Overpowered, because so much of your damage comes from these 10 seconds of Arcane power + RoP.

I planned to add some info about these breakpoints last night but I've had very little time recently to work on this.

Around these breakpoints you will see haste jumping up and down a lot in value, depending on if you are right below or right above it.