I dare you to come up with a spec whose AoE rotation is worse than Arcane.
Fire mage?
I never figured out how to do AOE dps with fire spec outside of combustion. Either that or it’s just horrible dps output.
BM Hunter
They are pure st
On my fire mage fireball, Fire Blast x2 into hot streak pyro into phoenix then hard cast flame strike. When fire blast has 2 charges fb x2 pyro phoenix.
That sounds a lot clunkier than arcane’s AOE.
At least Arcane’s AOE rotation is fairly simple, and much of it is instant cast.
It is a pain but I have fireball precasting before tank pulls. But that is fire aoe for me at least. Also you want Flame Patch which leaves flames on the ground from FS.
or instead of flame patch try living bomb.
Sorry figured I would respond on my mage
From what I read your just supposed to hardcast flame strike but I dont quite follow that but then again my mage just hit 60 and not raiding or anything. But again the hard cast FS was from what I had read also that doing that your supposed to have flame patch.
Again I haven’t touched living bomb but the fact that it spreads itself when it goes boom and is only a 11 second cd sounds like something to do while hard casting fs. Living bomb being the fire mage version of afflic lock SoC
Depending on the number of targets and CD status, hard casting Flamestrike is the worst.
I would submit shadow priest as having a worse AOE rotation.
4 Likes
The rotation is fine. Being forced into melee range for it is not.
Havoc dh? press meta and leap on top of mobs to apply sinful brand then eyebeam to extend the dots. Afk until meta is back off cd.
It’s worse for Arcane for sure, but that’s a problem all Mage specs face if trying to be optimal, and it feels weird af.
1 Like
Agreed.
I tried this on the AOE target dummies in the convenant sanctum. Against 5 targets I was sustaining 9k dps. Compare that to around 20-30k on the same dummies with arcane or frost specs.
I don’t think Living Bomb is used in PVE this expansion. I recall they nerfed it and it is not worth using for dps. Flame Patch is the preferred fire mage AOE talent.
But even with Flame Patch, I just can’t do acceptable AOE dps with fire spec outside of Combustion. And Combustion’s cooldown is so long that unless I know the dungeon or raid VERY well, I’ll often be saving it for the next boss rather than using it on trash packs.
Arcane and Frost have shorter CDs than Combustion, which makes it easier to use those CDs on trash without having to worry about not having them up for the next boss.
I would just like to use my aoe without needing to be in the danger zone. I’m a ranged class for petes sake.
1 Like
“We need a ranged.”
“Cool, I’ll log over to my mage.”
“I said we need a ranged.”
The game literally gaslights you at character creation when you hover over the mage icon.
Role: Ranged Damage
1 Like
Arcane missiles to 18 stax
Radiant spark
Touch of the magi
Arcane Power/Images
Arcane explosion
Start casting arcane blast x1, interrupted because volcanic spawn
Start casting arcane blast x2, interrupted because needed to interrupt mob,
damage complete garbage now because I messed up my burst window.
Arcane explosion, arcane explosion, arcane barrage, arcane orb, Arcane barrage
2 Likes
No idea if it’s the correct rotation, but for AOE as arcane outside of CDs I typically just do AEx4 → Abar. Just like for previous expansions.
I interrupt the above rotation to cast AM, but only on clearcast procs. And when Orb is up I cast that after a barrage to instantly rebuild stacks.
If burning CDs, I typically pick the biggest target and do the full 18-stack single-target Kyrian rotation on it, before swapping to the AOE rotation after AP expires. This might not be optimum. Perhaps I should spam AE during AP. Especially on large packs where Barrage cleave won’t hit many targets.
Any thoughts on what the best arcane AOE rotation is? I’m very much an amateur so let me know what you do for arcane AOE.
6+ after using touch, radiant spark and AP, do > AEx2 > Arcane barrage > arcane orb > arcane barrage.
Anything lower you can just do single target rotation.
2 Likes