Arcane shot rotation update

With the changes to Arcane mages in the latest mini-patch abilities making my Arcane guide obsolete. (Well, the shot rotation part of it. Arcane Shatter is no longer possible and Arcane missiles is bugged to not take advantage of the Arcane Blast glyph) I have been experimenting to try to get the most out of my spec.

Of the many shot rotations, the one that proves the most reliable is a variation on the original:

Arcane Blast x3

Arcane Barrage

Repeat

Any time Missile Barrage procs fire it and end the volley with an Arcane Barrage.

We actually decided to try for the achievement on the second boss in Arachnid quarter, and this meant that the DPS went as hard as they could on the boss, whilst the tanks bounced the aggro between them across the room so the boss was running back and forth between them – I ended up using a modified rotation that was this:

Arcane Blast x4, Arcane Barrage – Missile Barrage on proc, tagged with Arcane Barrage.

This is VERY mana heavy, the x3 rotation gets the buffs stacked, but then consumes it for the Arcane Barrage nuke. The fourth arcane blast costs too much mana to really use in most situations, but in this one it came in useful. The fourth Arcane Blast costs about 1200 mana to cost, and gets the full 45% (54% glyphed) bonus damage, and is very quick to cast. This is then followed up with the standard Arcane Barrage for a big cheap hit before restacking the buff.

If your very daring you could theoretically just keep spamming Arcane Blast, but I think I can only get 19 off whilst chain casting with my entire mana bar. (about 20k)

I don’t have figures for how much more DPS this provides, but we managed to get the boss down – although something we done stopped the achievement from being completed.

At the end of the run (4 bosses and onto Haigan the Unclean) I had a DPS in excess of 2800 – so I am still pulling about 400-600DPS extra on average, which is a good enough boost for me to stick with the spec. When they fix the bug with Arcane Missiles and Arcane Blast glyph buff, then those missile barrage procs will hit harder as more often than not you fire it off with one or two arcane blast buffs on.

I was hitting 3k sustained DPS on some bosses – which is very nice in my opinion! Same bosses I was pulling about 2600-2800 with the previous spec on same bosses.

Oh, one other bonus of the spec: More instant casts. During the safety dance I actually continue to attack the boss with instant casts. In this spec I strafe through the dance alternating Ice Lance and Arcane Barrage at him on the platform – and at the end of each run dance run (when you get to the 4^th quarter, and turn back to run to the 1^st position and before you change direction again) I can squeeze off a missile barrage.

We will get him Friday. Everyone knows the dance – we just got unlucky, we only had one disease remover, and it was the priest who kept getting caught by the dance waves due to lag.

REALLY looking forward to Loetheb… When these spells crit, they crit mercilessly. Talking 7, 8, 9k for each Arcane Blast, 13-14k for the Arcane Barrage and 3-5k (I think) for each Arcane Missiles tick. (used to be over 6k with the glyph…)

-V

I can has an arcane monster?

Consider this a bit of a guide to Arcane. Below are as many hints and tips as I could pull together in my sitting last night.

I put together THIS spec last night after the raid. I grabbed the Arcane Blast glyph from the auction house. I let the tests commence.

Frost Fire Build results: 2200 DPS on one mana bar (this is blowing all cooldowns)

Shot rotation:

Activate macro that turns on Icy veins, combustion, trinket and Mirror Image.

Frostfire Bolt - Living Bomb - Frostfire Bolt - Fireblast - Frostfire Bolt - Frostfire Bolt - Living Bomb - repeat.

Throw in the free pyroblast whenever possible. This is the highest DPS shot rotation I have been able to work out (Dont stack scorch, it probably results in more DPS but I just dont work that way.)

Not too shabby. It can peak at 3k on Patchwerk with a warlock by my side.

Arcane test: 2600

Shot rotation:

Arcane Blast x3, Arcane Missiles (Or Missile Barrage which procs about half the time) and “Arcane Shatter” an Arcane Barrage alongside the final bolt. (this is tricky, I think I get it about half the time, but Im seeing the arcane barrage hit for up to 14k self-buffed for the cost of a global cooldown!)

I think I will stick with this spec for a while yet. With this damage boost off the cuff, once its optimized I expect to be regularly pulling 3k in a raid instead of 2.2k.

I got to give it a test run in Halls of Lightening heroic with some guildies – and my DPS was about 500 (that’s about 25%) higher than frostfire bolt build, and to evidence this – I was a clear 20% dps higher than the pally tank, when the last run I was only 5% in front of him (high damage AOE tanking is impressive!).

Arcane shot rotation tips:

This next section WAS going to be a follow up to the above, but its probably best fitting in here. Much of the base info, such as the shot rotation, is half-inched from Critical QQ. I consider him my instructor in such matters, and his experimentations have often had me respeccing to try new things out for myself. Much respect Sah /salute.

First things first, mana management.

In this spec you are going to have a massive mana pool. You are also going to have a number of tools at your disposal to keep you casting.

Your damage output and mana consumption vary directly with each other. The more damage you do, the faster you burn through your mana. Details included below will give some guidance to some mana regen techniques.

Spell Combo.

The most aggressive spell combo that I can see, is:

Arcane Blast x3, Arcane Missiles + Arcane Barrage (Technique dubbed Arcane Shatter by Euripides)

If you are not required to do max dps or your wanting to conserve mana, such as on long non-dps race boss fights (kael’thuzad for example?) you can reduce the mana burn by casting less arcane blasts. You do lose 20% damage bonus per arcane blast debuff stack you don’t put on, but each time you try to add to that stack the mana consumption gets huge.

From my own tests – I have managed to maintain almost 9 minutes of flat out aggressive casting – averaging 2500DPS on test. I had to slow my output when waiting for the last few seconds before being able to regenerate mana, but in a raid when you have mana tide totems, replenishment, shadow priest or a blessing of Wisdom – you will be able to hold out for longer with a good Mana regen technique.

Mana Regen Technique.

To sustain that length of aggressive casting, I needed to use all 3 mana gems, 2 mana potions (invisibility to drop from combat to start the pot timer cooldown) and I popped 4 evocations. Overall I done approximately 1.2 Million damage, that’s a good quarter of the health of most Naxx normal bosses. With some modifications to the technique I think it may just be viable to fight indefinitely – as long as you have a big enough supply of mana potions.

How to do it?

1) Mage armour:

I have a habit of always keeping mage armour up with the glyph of mage armour equipped– this provides 50% mana regen altogether. With this build the extra 30% mana regen whilst casting means that you are sat at 80% regen in combat (450 MP5 for me.)

2) Mana Gems

Make sure you have all 3 gems on you at all times – even if it means your having to stop casting mid fight to create a new stack of them, if it’s a long fight. Your mana pool will be so large, and your regen so good that you will regen the mana back during the gem creation cast time anyway, and if not, it wont dent your pool too badly – and will give you 12k+ of reserve mana.

3) Invisi-pot tactic.

When your evocation is on cooldown and your mana gem is on cooldown, feel free to pop a mana potion to get a chunk of mana back. Follow this up with invisibility to leave combat. This will start the potion cooldown timer – which I think is about 2 minutes.

Note: Invisibilitys cooldown is 5 minutes… it would have been possible to do this twice in that 9 minute period – which would have given me enough time to get a 5^th evocation off. If I paused to make more mana gems so they were ready, the cycle would start over – I would have been able to coast to the next evocation, and popped another invisi-pot cycle.

4) Aggressive use of evocation.

You will spend most of your time coasting between 75% and 5% mana – as soon as your evocation has cooled down and you are below 25% mana – Pop it! You want that cooldown to be ticking as soon as possible. It has a 2 minute cooldown.

With a slight juggling of talent points, it is more than feasible to have mana absorption in certain encounters, which will keep you going longer.

Overall, it’s a matter of practice – and a good supply of mana potions. I will test this tonight, my aim is to hit 15 minutes of non stop casting (aside from casting evocation or popping invisibility to reset the mana potion cooldown.)

5) Icy Veins + Arcane Power rationing.

Icy Veins reduces the mana cost of spells during its duration by 20%. It also reduces cast time by 20% - overall this is a balance, but gives a burst of damage. In a fight where splash damage is flying, as Euripides recommends, you can use Icy Veins to “shield” your evocation so it doesn’t get interrupted.

Arcane Power gives a huge damage boost, but increases the mana cost significantly. If your running low, hold off on using this. In a DPS race fight the boss will go down within the time period you have before your riding too low in mana with no cooldowns available, so it shouldn’t make a big difference, but on a long fight where your riding close to OOM, its not worth popping as youll spend time doing no damage.

Maximising your damage output.

Ok, so that covers shot rotations, and keeping that blue bar with a useable % value. Now onto getting the most out of your abilities.

1) Torment the weak

In a lot of fights, this is a tricky thing to maintain – but you will have slow as a backup if no one else is snaring the target with frost effects or other abilities. When the enemy is snared, you gain 12% damage against the target. It’s certainly worth burning a global cooldown for every 15 seconds to get the target Slowed for this bonus damage.

2) Focus magic

I did not realize just how useful this spell was until the Halls of Lightening run. Unfortunately I was the only caster DPS, so I was a bit stumped where to put this, but my wife suggested her, and after doing so – it proved a wonderful spell. She is resto druid with a regrowth fetish, which has a ridiculously high crit rate – so whenever we are in a battle where plenty of healing is flying, I almost never seen the 3% crit bonus drop from me.

Since we had an aggressive and high geared pally tank, and a high geared healer, we were more often than not taking several groups at once, which really plied the healing out which resulted in a lot of crits. The impressive thing is, that the 2600+ DPS I pulled on this fight was without much AOE – I did a few test blizzards and arcane explosions, which done nice crit damage, but overall I single targeted the mobs and nuked them down fast.

3) Clearcast

This one is a bit trickier in the above shot rotation. When it procs, your next spell is free, and has a bonus 30% crit chance. If your quick enough, its best to use this for the highest mana spell you have – Arcane Missiles. (Or blizzard if its situationally advantageous)

In addition, it may be possible that an Arcane Barrage shatter can be pulled off that will benefit from this bonus. I do have a sneaking suspicion that casting anything consumes this buff, unlike the arcane blast debuff – which will likely be nerfed to do so in a future patch. I have seen Arcane Barrage land for over 14K damage though – self buffed – after a Missile Barrage proc, with each bolt having the ability to crit for over 6k damage (that’s 44k damage in under 2.5 seconds if you have all the missile bolts crit, and your lucky to get an Arcane Barrage off within the required time period of that spell.)

4) Missile Barrage at 3 Blasts.

Again, I may be mistaken, but my DPS did drop when not doing this. Make sure that when Missile Barrage procs – you don’t use it until you have all 3 arcane blasts up. The buff will wait for you. By firing it off with only one arcane blast buff (or none sometimes) I noticed a significant dip in my DPS purely because the Missile Barrage did not have the damage buff. It’s the same as a rogues combo points. They aint going anywhere, so don’t waste the energy trying to build another stack when the big damage comes from doing that 5 point eviscerate – here, its getting that 3 stack Missile and barrage combo (44k in 1.5 s under heroism and superman’s reflexes remember…). In addition, the Arcane Barrage would be wasted as without all that damage bonus stacked on its simply a glorified fire blast, so WAIT FOR THE STACKS. Missile barrage proc’s often enough.

Macros

There are only a few macros I use, although I can think of many more.

Nuke

My Nuke macro is one that simply activates all my cooldowns (except for POM) at once, so I can get huge burst damage every 2-3 minutes.

/Cast Arcane Power

/Cast Icy Veins

/Use Cannoneer’s fuselighter

/Cast Mirror Image

Theres a few more lines around that but I think the simple version above would work fine. This activates my Arcane Power, Icy Veins, any trinkets I have (I add them in when I equip them.) and Casts my mirror Image.

I am not sure if Mirror image benefits from all the other buffs you get like your water elemental does, but it means that I get it cast, since I always forget to use it otherwise, and it’s a nice couple of hundred DPS boost for the 15 seconds they are around.

Pom anything

Presence of mind does not have a lot of place in the shot rotation above, but there are a few utilities or situational spells that may benefit.

Simple macro:

/cast presence of mind

/cast

• Frostbolt.

In PVP this would snare (possible root) a target, and hopefully do a nice chunk of damage in the process. This lets you get some distance, whilst spamming Arcane Barrage at them with a 12% bonus damage.

• Polymorph

As little as crowd control is used nowadays, its coming back in the future. Having a button available for an instant polymorph can prove invaluable for that mis-timed sheeping, or when an add breaks loose in close proximity.

• Arcane Blast

Why not cut the cast time of your first arcane blast to 0? Gets the buff up, and gets you onto the next faster casting blast.

Icy Evocation

On some fights it may be more beneficial to hang onto your icy veins for your evocates to stop it getting interrupted. Its better to get the whole evocate, than that momentary burst to your DPS. A simple macro should solve this.

/Cast Icy Veins

/Cast Evocation

That’s the end of my little hints list, I shall post again with further test results, and any other goodies I gather.

Just for fun: Try doing an arcane shatter combo when under the effects of heroism and a missile barrage proc. I swear, the missile barrage cant take longer than about 1.5 seconds to complete – barely enough time to get lined up for the arcane barrage. I actually squealed in panic over TeamSpeak with the group when this happened. Twice. Missiles-Voomvoomvoomvoomvoom Aarrghh Barrage, blast blast blast Voomvoomvoomvoom aaargh! Barrage.

Suffice to say I also pulled aggro, but the add died in the next hit!

P.P.S – Blizzard! Sort the names out! It’s a nightmare trying to discuss Arcane Missiles, Missile Barrage and Arcane Barrage, without getting them mixed up and spending half an hour proofreading. (Yes, probably my own fault for such long ranty posts… that’s not the point! :p )

-V

Frostfire --> Arcane

I actually meant to put this post up yesterday, as I now have a follow up, but here it is!

Its been a long time since I delved into the arcane tree any depth, but after reading all the info from Euripides at Critical QQ – I decided to take the dive. After tonight’s raid, I plan to glyph up, respect and hit the target dummies.

Glyph of Arcane Blast stacks… I did not know this. That’s a 60% damage bonus to you when you have 3 stacks going. Throw in an arcane shatter combo with this (Arcane Missiles promptly interrupted at the end by Arcane Barrage) and both get the damage boost. With a Missile Barrage proc I would hazard a guess at 10k of damage from the missiles in 2.5 seconds, followed by a 10k crit Arcane Barrage.

Holy crap!

As FFB build, I do some nice damage. With a warlock at my side I can get 2.5k – 3k DPS on a tank and spank boss fight – regularly seeing Frostfire bolts and instant pyroblasts hitting in the region of 11k, with my fireblasts and Living Bomb detonations hitting 6-8k, or thereabouts.

I shall do some tests with FFB before changing, and record the data for all to see…

Do I sense a boost to my output in raids? *grin*

Hell… this is a PVP spec… I may even hit the battlegrounds!

Oh, note to self: Check the mind-flay macro for your priest! This stops mind-flays being overlapped and reduces mana wastage – it might work for arcane missiles + arcane barrage combos. (Barrage wont launch until missiles finishes channeling, assuming this doesn’t result in the buff dropping off.)

Glyphs:

Glyphs of Arcane Blast.

Glyph of mage armour. (got)

Glyph of Evocation.

Running a social/raiding guild (beware the WOT!)

Apologies, this is one hell of a text crit.

Our guild has the joyous tag of social/casual raiding guild. We have aspirations to see all content that is released, and if possible, complete it on heroic. Most of us are willing to put in two or three good raid nights a week, are quick learners and know our classes.

I have seen a lot of blog posts over the last week regarding this kind of guild, and how difficult it is to run them. I really must concur with these comments.

We have 105 accounts – often seeing 30+ players online, and having more raid signups than we know what to do with. We have received requests for extra groups, extra nights on the calendar, and are regularly prodded by potential new members who want to raid with us.

From a class balance side of things, we have too many tanks (many who are upset as they have not gotten into raids yet due to the fact they would be getting carried, and were still trying to learn most of the fights on many of the current regular raiders.) and are shy on active priests and hunters.

One of the many catches we have is that we are a “social guild” and therefore most people get along and form bonds, and many people get friends/family into the guild – from a social perspective, we can’t really turn any of them away. These friends/family members then expect to get in on raids, which mean we have too many people wanting to raid, and it’s a hell of a juggling match.

At the current moment in time we have two 10-man Naxx groups going, and we regularly raid 4 nights a week – with the core raiders (main tanks, healers and officers) having little choice but to attend all these raids to lead, deal out loot and assist (we tend to be the better geared due to doing just this, so need to help for successful takedowns.).

We were originally running with one, but with the amount of swap out's we were doing to get gear and experience, we put the second one up as soon as enough healers were raid ready. The first group rolled with the hardest hitting and most experienced people – the result being Sundays Naxx takedown. The second group had some of the experienced players, and a lot of new raiders – who basically had to start from scratch – in 3 nights they managed to clear the Arachnid quarter. Not too bad, but some of the second group were regulars of the first group, and it was a very depressing week of raiding considering.

From this week, we are evenly distributing the geared and experienced people between the two groups, with the hopes of getting quite far, and getting lost of shinys for people.

Logistically this is a nightmare. We have some 7 or 8 tanks signing, (can take 4) are often a little shy on healers, and have craploads of DPS sign – almost entirely Death knights + rogues and druids.

It is hard to keep everyone happy, try to maintain a balanced group and try to evenly distribute skill, I have seen my wife – who has taken it upon herself to do all this work even though I was the allocated raid officer, spend upwards of 6 hours at a time trying to pick and choose raiders, for each and every run.

The results have been relatively successful raids, with happy raiders, but some unhappy souls on the sidelines who never get picked because they need to do pre-Naxx gear ups, or there just wasn’t space to cram in that third rogue/DK/Druid.

In a couple of weeks we will hopefully be starting heroic Naxx – this will mean we can get in more people to an evenings raiding, with a little less fuss.

We now have EOE as well as OS to contend with in addition to Naxx, and as such a 4th raid night is often going to be up on the calendar, again, this means that most of us officers and healers will be required to attend.

Over the last few weeks we have also had a discussion on the go on whether or not we should use a DKP system or a /roll system with optional loot counseling. At the end of a week of voting, the /roll system won. This should lift a lot of potential burden from the raid leading in the form of not keeping track of scoring, but it can be expected that there will be the occasional bit of loot drama – but to be honest, anyone that does this regularly does not have the right demeanor for our guild. We regularly see people passing for others, or people loot counseling amongst themselves, but at the same time there is that one person that yells “Hey! I have a blue/green!” and expects the loot should automatically be theirs.

In my opinion everyone is equally entitled, it’s a matter of generosity if someone passes for them – since they could have a better item from other sources. The officers will only loot council in a fashion that means people don’t get gear that they wont use by accident, or if a critical upgrade for say a warrior or a healer drops, they can push it in their direction – although at this point there is nothing like that kicking about to worry about. One concern is that the most regular raiders (the hardcore who have always been there on time ready to go, for every run posted) who are the best geared and the most experienced want a DKP system (of 11 votes, 5 were for DKP. Yes, this is a bad turnout for a guild with our number of raiders – but we shall assume the rest don’t give a damn.)

From a personal standpoint, I would ideally like to raid for two nights a week, and have more time to do other things – even if its just leveling an alt. (I’m an altaholic :p) We are trying to avoid burnout of the healers and officers, especially with the pending release of Ulduar that’s going to do all sorts of nasty things to our raid schedule. (Gear up runs in Naxx, trying to do Naxx and Ulduar on alternating weeks, etc.) The only issue at hand whilst doing this is keeping people happy that want to raid, both their time schedules and raiding desires.

We are all very proud of the community we have managed to build, and the raiding success we have achieved with relatively lax raiding rules (limited min requirements, no obligation to attend, unless you sign, and a large player pool to pick and please.) we have achieved a lot with a group of under geared players. Up until last week, when we could take down Patchwerk because we had the healers, we were getting a spread of DPS from 1200-2200 – averaging probably about 1500, and still clearing most of the content.

Gear is improving. People are getting experience, and soon there will be new challenges. Where to go from here I wonder? It should be a fun adventure, I just hope it doesn’t result in too much stress, or forced raiding. We wish to remain true to our goals, but remain relaxed. Blizzard has tailored the new content to suit us perfectly, which I’m not complaining about, so anything is possible.

-V

Naxxramas clear

As of Sunday night – we beat Naxx!

Sapphiron proved a tough fight, even with the frost resistance gear all around. Eventually, it just clicked and people stopped dying. Sapphiron was tanked in the right position, the healers kept the tank up on landing, curses were removed, and no one got swiped or cleaved. A nice, clean fight.

Kael’Thuzad proved a cake walk in comparison. On our first attempt we got him to 19% - when all 3 healers were ice-blocked due to an accidental chaining of the frost tomb, that was the end.

The second try was about the same but we lost a tank and then eventually a healer didn’t get rescued in time from an ice-tomb.

The third try we screwed from the get go – we were a melee heavy group and some unlucky maneuvering resulted in most being tombed and dying, including both tanks.

Our final shot was much clearer, but it did take a while… two tanks, 3 healers, and two death knights were left standing, but the DPS was enough to bring him to his floaty-bits (knees?)

Even with only 2 ranged DPS the first phase was not a problem. In fact, the takedown attempt the off tank accidentally aggroed a side wing running to the central ring, thankfully just skellies (AOE FTW) the retradin suicided on an untanked abomination (we 9-manned Kael…) Me and the warlock took down the ghosts/banshees, and the rest threw everything they had at the skellies – I fire blasted when available and AOE’d any that got too close (hectic fight for this lil mage! I loved it!). After that it was simply the standard tank and spank (whilst maintaining a 10 yard safety gap, dodging energy zones, and having someone off tank adds as he “enrages” at 40%)

We will have an explorative shot at Eye of Eternity tonight, and see what we can learn. I think we are under geared to avoid the enrage timer, but if we can get to it – were sorted, and just need gear upgrades.

-V