Dear Devs,
Just finished a run below the tank in DPS, really solid feeling of “sucks to be you” coming from you all. Can you do some balance at all for us?
Thanks,
The Arcane Mage
3 Likes
Well without any context that’s far too vague to make any deductions.
- What was the tanks dps?
- What was your dps?
- What was the key?
- Did you have one of the utterly trash healers that seem to infest S4 dungeons and force the mages to spend 1/2 their dps time self-healing or saving their own rear?
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Ive been feeling better about the spec, the more things you check off the list, the stronger you become.
A few suggestions:
Make your crafted gear. The lining gives you like 5% mastery when above 90% health. Its a pretty decent buff.
You have the proc on fire damage ring, but its not great if you dont have the head enchant from last seasons raid, and the shadowpatch lining that goes in your other ceafted item. These two things will do more damage on their own and also cause the ring to proc a lot more.
Id replace your other ring with the scalebane option. Its mastery + crit. I noticed a big difference in dps once i shed some vers in favor of crit.
Id also switched up illiminated thoughts for arcane familiar and improved clearcasting.
Are you trying to keep up the 2pc set bonis between pulls?
For aoe I evocation as the tank is pulling, pop touch of the magi, nether tempest, cast arcane surge, barriage and orb spam.
Single target ill evo before the pull, touch of the magi, nether tempest, double lust, trinket, arcane surge, arcane blast spam. I use clearcasting arcane missles procs when i have three charges or when i need to refesh the 2pc bonus. When arcane surge is about to fall off (like 2 seconds) ill use all my clear casting missle charges, then cast shifting power.
No way youll be below the tank using these two openers
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It was a +9 HOI. No major let downs from tank or heals and we still timed it, but I was falling flat. I was trying to run with Spark again (thinking maybe I should have it), but that didn’t pan out.
I just changed my talents again to focus more on Clearcast and missiles. I also crafted Amice of the Blue to try and trigger more Tome procs. I’m also thinking haste would be nice. My last run Tome was over 30 M in damage and I’m trying to see how far I can go with that.
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Simple fact is Arcane is not as strong as other classes in M+ … however you should never be out DPSed by the tank. Balancing does need to occur I agree. But if you’re being out DPSed by the tank it’s not a balancing issue it’s a skill issue. You chose arguably the hardest class in the game too play. You need to spend time learning how to play your class before you come to the forums and ask the devs to do extra work on your behalf. If you only want to click three buttons and not have to think I suggest switching to BM hunter or Ret pally.
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Hes actually quite active in this forum and is constantly trying to improve.
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Speaking of improvement, I am doing lots better today. I went all in on clearcasting and missiles (dropped back out of Spark and dropped arcane familiar) and got Amice of the Blue which seems to proc Tome a lot more. I also added the haste weapon enchant to give me more spells per minute. Oh and since it’s Fort week I put Heart back on for those execute procs which are pretty sick.
I agree. All i’m saying is rather than requesting changes to the game. Request advice on how to improve your gameplay. Arcane mage isn’t easy. I personally do not like it in it’s current state.
I highly suggest switching to Frost for this tier and then switching back to Arcane when TWW comes out.
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I disagree, stick with arcane. Frost is boring and doesnt look as cool.
Im usually always top of the meters. Ive grouped with dozens of mages this season was only out dps’d by a frost mage once. 500k-700k overall and 400-500k single target is acheivable with arcane.
The two biggest peices of advice I wish someone had of told me early on are:
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dont listen to guides - theyre patchwork assumptions, or theyre assuming you have perfect group compositions and tanks pulling for you. In the real world (of warcraft) using different talent builds can be more beneficial. Your play style, your gear, and your group composition all impact your dps output. By using a cookie cutter build you may do worse dps. Your play style, gear, and pugs could all poentially make the standard build/rotation do less damage than a more simplier build. I dont run a spark build for this reason. I pug my keys and i sim higher when i take spark. When i play a key with spark my dps goes down. It doesnt work well for my play style and the fact that im pugging my keys.
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Practice is more important for arcane than basically every other spec. You need to know when to use your cooldowns to get the most out of them. Dont pop all your cds the pull before a boss. This can be tough in pugs. In av, for example, during the first pull if that tank does a triple pull of lashers instead of activating the golems, I go from 3m dps to 800k. In general though, you’ll want to know every pull of every dungeon intimatly if you want to do well. We dont put up good numbers outside of evo/surge windows so not knowing when to properly use your abilities is almost more detrimental than not executing the rotation perfectly.
These two things are what makes arcane difficult. People go to wowhead or icey veins and look up a cookie cutter spec, learn the rotation, and wonder why theyre below the tank on a trash pull when they did everthting the guide told them to do. You can play the perfect spec and do the rotation perfectly and still do terrible numbers if its 3 mobs and theyre dead before radiant spark charges are consumed.
Its not so much the rotation, its knowing which build (and rotation) works best with how you play, who you play with, and how well you know the dungeon. A rogue can pop cds every pull and do 400k dps just in blade fury damage. They can do it every pull so they dont have to worry about the routes, pull size, etc. They just blast. Arcane doesnt have that luxury.
It sure does feel nice when you top the meters playing one of the hardest specs and grouped with all meta classes.
3 Likes
Yea I think if you can stick with stuff when it’s bad you’ll be that much better at it when it’s good.
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I’m not touching your DPS, but just finished a run on top, which for me is ~300 DPS overall, even with hitting the affix ghosts every time, so I’m happy with that.
Honestly, biggest factor is tank and healer, they make me look good. I’m also playing in close for Explosion more. I used to use blast to regen charges, but they are too slow and wreck my barrage/orb cycle, so those explosions refill the meter quick and I can get more juice.
You need more crit and mastery, 26% verse is too much for the keys you’re doing. And like previously mentioned craft two blue silken. I know you love trying to get trinkets to work better but I think maybe you’re too focused on that lol. Craft a shadowflame and blue silken or two blue silken and be done with it. Then focus on getting 30+ crit and around 50% mastery. I know sims always say less haste but I feel like the spec flows so much better with 24%+ and it’s almost like orb barrage procs more for me with extra haste. I havnt really had the chance to sit down and play a lot of keys this season but I havnt been out damaged by a tank yet and normally beat out most players around my ilvl or higher.
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300k isnt bad, maybe for uld or aa its not super great.
I dont ever use arcane blast on an aoe pull, unless theres one mob left and everyones dead. Sometimes ill use presence of mind and do a couple instant arcane blasts if im fully buffed and theres less than 5 mobs.
Evo+ToTM+NT+ArcaneSurge
You get clear casting usually after casting arcane surge. If you can go into the pull with 2pc set bonus and a battery proc youll do 1m+ damage right out the gate by consuing the clearcasting charge from arcane surge.
If not use arcane missles anyway to build to a battery proc, refresh your 2pc bonus, then barriage and orb spam. Always be in melee to build charges with arcane explosion. Never arcane blast on aoe.
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Can’t emphasize this enough. A lot of players don’t take this into account and beat themselves up when they can’t perform at those levels which are unrealistic in real world (of warcraft) circumstances.
I try to be around 20/30/50 haste/crit/mastery myself. At higher mastery values you can afford to run more haste. But Arcane’s interaction with haste is a major pain point of the spec and has been since forever. No other spec in the game has a potentially detrimental interaction with haste and benefits greatly from major haste buffs like PI or Hero/Lust. But with Arcane, because of the outdated and ever increasingly vestigial mana aspect, it can lead to a lot of problems.
All of that it to say that while there are best practices and a level of skill involved, performance can and is affected by the current state of the spec which has been in desperate need of a complete overhaul for years.
Yea I’ll start honing in on stats tighter as I get more crafted pieces and can pick and choose the stats. When I run with Fragment on my Mastery is around 45% right now, but was as high as 60% at one point. I stacked vers cause I was dead all the time and getting frustrated. But since getting higher ilvl, my stamina is quite a bit better now, so will walk that stat down.
And you’re right my big flaw is likely my obsession with trinkets (and Tome in particular). I am getting about 30+M from Tome per run, which makes me happy, haha. Heart’s ‘execute’ this week is pretty hot too, glad I have the weak aura to track it.
I’m also a total PUG guy, so I’m not running with people who tend to know what I’m about to do. When I play with a really good tank that doesn’t run the mobs all over the place, it lights up. I also need to get in the habit of evocation when it’s up, because I find sometimes I forget to bring that into the mix, it is makes a big difference.
You are hitting exactly what I “try” to do. I am more or less successful at it. My crux lots of times is picking the wrong guy in the pack to focus and they leap away, or run, or stop for a long cast and get separated from the group. Effectively keeping a lot of crowd damage out of the crowd. I need to map in my mind the “correct” target from each pack and with dungeons I’ve run a lot that gets easier. But again, some good tanks will make up for my ignorance, and bring them all together no matter what, which makes a big difference.
There’s no reason to nether tempest after touch of the magi, at the very least use it before. Also you can surge into totm with arcane familiar and full mana since surge is capped at the default mana amount or so. Essentially, you waste 4s of totm duration in your rotation when you could NT → Surge → ToTM for the same result. Which at that point you should just do the actual rotation of NT → Surge → Barrage → ToTM.
Casting ToTM early is always a dmg loss, unless your goal is to have it explode early, which will happen if the target dies anyway. And if you are looking to have it explode early due to key level your burn will certainly kill the main target fast enough.
Looking at this, yea I also surge, then immediately hit ToM/NT (which is on macro with presence of mind as well), then start into them with barrage/orb.
I did decently today (even broke the 2500 rating line WOOP, WOOP), but finding I still default to single target type rotation when orbs run dry (trying to slap my hand there, because throwing blast while ToM is up on a big group is too slow a cast and wastes the time). I really think orb barrage should be like 50% or 60% chance to make it on par with other AOE classes/specs.
I highly recommend going to the official mage discord, Altered Time, and asking for some feedback on a M+ log. There are a lot more well versed arcane mages on there who can pick out all the things you might be doing wrong in a given key/ encounter. They can also help with any other questions, the Blizzard Forums aren’t the best spot for getting good feedback.
2 Likes
I usually do what youre suggesting when i have four charges going into the pull.
If i dont ill totm first to get full charges.
Depending on the key its also nice to have the early explosion.
I have tried basically every iteration of an opener and I found the way I do it does a lot more damage.
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That’s good.
Update: last run I was about 350K, realized what I was doing wrong. I have a habit of worrying too much about 2-piece bonus falling off (which doesn’t get regened from barrage or orbs), so I was cycling in too many single target piece on the packs, like Blast and Missiles, but if I stick to Explosion close in, that DOES generate Clearcast and sorts me out, just tough retraining my reflexes. Had one pull where I was like 1.3M. I’m tightening it up.
Update: the next run 388K, I’m getting it. I just need to relearn some of the tools to be more effective. This is actually how I “used to” play when Orb barrage first came out.
Thanks guys for the tips!