im trying to learn mage specs andim having a hard time to findout a great way to aoe as arcane, is just arcane. someone could help a mage apprendice ?
Assuming you are Night Fae and on 4 charges and running Resonance:
Pop Arcane Power (drops RoP), then:
- Barrage
- Arcane Orb
- Barrage
- Touch of the Magi
- Barrage
- Shifting Power
- Arcane Orb if up again, if not fill in with Arcane Explosion + Barrages
- Barrage
If you’re not looking to burst on AoE just Arcane Explosion into Barrages, fill in with stuff like ToTM + Arcane Orb where applicable
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Nah, barrage doesn’t even hit more than 5 targets, my rotation is, rune of power, touch of the magi, arcane missle x3, barrage, arcane orb, blink, arcane explosion x infinity.
You should compare the damage of Arcane Barrage with Arcane Explosion, Flexyfatty. Also Arcane Barrage does more damage with more targets with Resonance and Arcane Explosion’s damage falls off with more targets because of the soft target cap.
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of course you use barrage after charges are full, my explosion x infinity comment is just joking, also I don’t spec for resonance, because of poor single target.
Arcane Explosion doesn’t hit the soft-cap until 20 targets according to Wowhead.
Arcane Barrage at 4-stack also typically hits much harder than Arcane Explosion. And there are legendaries to boost that even more.
Without doing any math, my gut feeling is that for most AOE, casting barrage at 4-stack is better dps. But for large groups of maybe 10 or 15+, spamming just arcane explosion will work better.
Note that due to the way soft-caps work if you AOE 50 targets with arcane explosion, you would do the same damage you do to 20, just redistributed over all 50. This should still be more damage than barrage.
Also note: Casting barrage isn’t just about the burst damage. It also substantially increases the amount of time you can sustain your AOE due to the mana regen and occasional reset of AB debuff stacks. If all you do is spam AE, your mana will probably run dry pretty quickly.
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Arcane AoE is fairly easy to learn.
First you need to ensure you’re correctly talented.
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Amplification buffs Arcane Missiles, but it’s a substantial damage increase for most functional AoE scenarios. It’s a DPS gain to cast Arcane Missiles with Clearcasting on 4 and less targets, which is MOST AoE situations.
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Resonance is superior to Echo at the moment in everything but pure Single Target, so it’s a good talent to run.
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Arcane Orb is the best talent in its tier by a mile. Always run that.
Your priority is as follows:
- Touch of the Magi
- Arcane Power (if available)
- Arcane Explosion (8+ targets)
- Arcane Missiles with Clearcasting (1-4 targets)
- Barrage (4 charges)
- Arcane Orb
- Arcane Explosion
Basically for MOST AoE situations you cast Touch of the Magi to get 4 charges, throw the barrage at the target, cast Arcane Orb, throw the next Barrage, and then start building with Arcane Explosion. Use damage amps like Arcane Power and Rune of Power to maximize your throughput.
With covenants things get a little more complicated.
Mirrors has no rotational change.
Shifting Power lets you squeeze an additional Barrage in Touch of the Magi via Arcane Orb cooldown reduction. So you do the above rotation except instead of cast Arcane Explosion, you cast Shifting Power then Arcane Orb into Barrage.
Radiant Spark lets you maximize barrage damage on the priority target (which gets the full damage of Barrage while other targets are hit for 40%). You can either cast Radiant Spark at 0 charges and build to 4 then barrage with max stacks, or if you’re bursting, cast it 3 Arcane Charges followed by an Explosion to get a 10%, 20%, and 40% buffed Barrages (more with conduit).
Deathborne makes it so that you cast Arcane Blast on 3-4 targets instead of Arcane Explosion.
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The gist of it, with any setup is:
*Touch of the magi /Orb/Arcane Explosion until 4 charges
*Arcane Barrage at 4 charges
*Rinse and repeat
If night fae is your covenant then you use Shifting Power after spending your charges and orb and touch are on CD.
If you have the arcane armony legendary then you spend a maximum of 2 clearcasting procs on Arcane Missiles (yes, on a single target) while at 4 charges in order to get the AB buff and then drop the Arcane Barrage.
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Everything I posted uses Barrage when your charges are full. It’s just faster to get to 4 charges with Arcane Orb/ToTM before AE.