Arcane Mage PVE Guide?

Classes Mage
102

When you consistently argue points that i over and over say im not even debating, me saying you lack reading compehension isn’t an insult, it’s a demonstrable fact. Just the fact that you make it seem like im arguing points im not and then try to paint me as a know it all, and then insult my intelligence says volumes. Now, whether that is a result of willful ignorance, trolling me, or just being a special kind of stupid is for you to work out.

It’s ok though, i see you doing the same thing to other ppl in other threads so i guess it’s a patternfor you. Maybe you just aren’t secure in your intelligence so you feel the need to insult the intelligence of others.

Any way you slice it, you lack the ability to follow basic conversations so, meeting adjourned.

103

You are trying to be respectful so i will return the favor and try to get on the same page with you one more time.

Your summation was accurate. If you acknowledge your points 1 and 2, im not sure why you would proceed to type the entire rest of that post.

Someone way up by my first post said it was in last place and therefore was BY DEFINITION garbage. It doesn’t matter WHAT spec is being discussed, that statement is, on its own, fundamentally flawed and incorrect and has nothing to do with my opinion of whichever spec. You and the other one arguing with me, however, took my response as an argument to the contrary of the “arcane is garbage” viewpoint, which it was not, at ANY point in time.

TLDR: ANY spec being at the bottom of a dps list is not enough information in and of itself to make the determination that said spec is “garbage”. There is always more to it than that.

I sincerely hope this clarifies my position.

104

Thank you very much for being both respectful and informative.

I can see that. Subjective points aside such as whether rotations and such are fun or engaging, if things like scaling and azerite are its biggest issues, is there really much reason from a technical standpoint to not play it pre endgame? Further, if fire is being propped up by traits and essences, is it really great from the same thechnical standpoint pre endgame?

105

I’m not sure what you mean by pre end game, but the most useful spec will probably still be determined by the gear you have available.

Most people don’t consider M+ below level 10 challenging, but i couldn’t clock a level 7 as fire a couple weeks ago that i didn’t have any issues with arcane on (i think i have better gear for arcane). Your personal best is still what you should bring to content you do and it will make or break you when you’re doing something harder. I got really lucky and the Nazjatar world boss int trinket titanforged for me and Arcane scales really well off of int.

Now i’m one who says only do a meta build if you’re good at it. It’s okay to change your build based on what you’re good at as long as you actually are doing better.

But there are hard caps to performance based on build configuration.

106

Says the person who checks every box of a bad troll:

Needs to prove supposed intellectual superiority - check
Results to name-calling rather than actual debate - check
Adds absolutely nothing to the discussion - check
Hides behind low level alt - check
Confuses personal opinion with fact - check
Assumes anyone who disagrees has no idea what they’re talking about - check
Dismisses counterarguments without actually countering them - check
Continually repeats insults - check
Fails badly in attempts to accuse people of doing to him what he did to them - check

Congratulations, you’re bad troll. 9/9

I’m done wasting time with immature cowards who think 2 semesters of JC qualify them as superior in anyway to anyone.

4 Likes
107

Lmfao keep attacking intelligence lvls, its your goto move. Screams insecurity. You feel so attacked and you feel like i have to prove intellectual superiority and yet you are the one continually making incorrect assumptions (surprise surprise) about my education lvl as if it were ever a part of the conversation. If you were half as smart as you think you are and a quarter of how angry you are, you’d probably feel less insecure. Life skills yo.

Though you may feel like it, not everyone is trying to dominate you intellectually. It seems to just happen as a natural course of events.

108

arcane is dead spec =(
wow-dps*com/wow-dps-ranking/

109

Sure, if the list of DPS were like this:

assassin rogue 1000 dps
fury warrior 999 dps
retribution paladin 997 dps
.
.
.
arcane mage 990 dps

Then you are correct, logically speaking, being in last place does not mean garbage. However, in reality, in the encounters that matter most, arcane is far behind the pack. So much so that the top parses of arcane are in line with average parses of everyone else.

What this means is that if your raid group is struggling to beat the final raid encounter, but getting very close time and again, then YOU BEING ARCANE is the reason why. Being arcane is a liability to your group. They would be better off with literally anyone else in the group.

In fact, plain average fire mage DPS is better than top performing arcane DPS, so if your group is getting close in the final fight, but not quite getting there then you not switching to fire is like purposefully tying a boat anchor to a drowning man.

Couple this with the fact that not only is arcane simply terrible in the last 2 fights, the most important fights, but they are bad in EVERY fight, and have been for this entire expansion and the ENTIRE EXPANSION BEFORE IT!

There’s no logic in that. Sure, nobody can expect to be at the top of the dps meter every single pull, but you shouldn’t be mandated to the bottom of every pull by your choice of class/spec.

— one more thing —

Arcane is DEMANDING AS FRIG! In order to get those top parses that are in line with everyone else’s average parses you have to play perfectly and get SUPER LUCKY! ONE TINY MISTAKE can crush your dps as arcane. Get CC’d in your EXTREMELY SHORT power phase… hang it up, you’re done. Anything that happens during your power phase, boss moves out of range, you have to move out of fire, you have to slow an add, you have to throw up your shield, you have to soak something, basically if you have to move for any reason then your DPS for the ENTIRE ENCOUNTER is going to be average at best, and average arcane parses are bottom barrel parses for everyone else.

1 Like
110

The spec doesn’t deliver good results on any fights.

Gets neutered if you miss any of the burst window.

Has 1 good ST trait.

Gets out-damaged in St while other specs can passively cleave and aoe.

Is mind-numbingly boring, has a horrible rotation.

It has many, many more glaring issues, you can try the spec in anything relevant, not “attack the wq mob hero” and figure it out for yourself.

Nothing is catered or designed to its style of play. Arguing its a good burst single target spec to burn a priority add or pushing a dps check is trivial when fire does it arguably better with so much more in its kit.

The spec is garbage, any arcane mage should grab the trashmaster title in accordance with the theme of the spec for the last 2 FULL expansions.

This level 12 mages hypothetical situations are nothing but words describing something they have’t actually brought up yet, don’t worry, every other mage has for you. Take some of your own advice and read a few books to brush up on your reading comprehension instead of bringing up everyone else. It’s you.

4 Likes
111

I don’t take anyone seriously when they say how arcane isn’t an awful spec this expansion. Usually when you check their profile they:

  1. Are on a low level alt
  2. Don’t play arcane endgame in either raids above lfr or M+ keys
  3. Are looking for a mindless spec that requires minimal skill to play and love that they can spam one spell to do their damage

For anyone who’s mained arcane over multiple expansions, the BfA version is the worst of them. Not only did they not address the existing issues (lack of cleave, talent selection, mastery/haste scaling) but they removed everything that was good about the spec (missile procs for big timed damage, AoE functionality).

Even if the game play was fun or the mechanics were smooth (instead of the chaos they are now with charges only affecting blast, clear casting only affecting missiles and explosion) and the dps was laughable I’d still play the spec. The fact that it plays terribly, it has the worst selection and arrangement of talents of any of the 5 specs I play, AND is the lowest dps spec for 3 raid tiers in a row is the definition of a garbage spec.

And what’s their answer been: a damage buff to spells. Oh yeah … that fixes everything. Even with the last damage buff, arcane is still bottom of the list for performance overall.

Why would you choose an arcane mage over frost or fire? Frost and fire both have better talent selection, azerite traits that are functional for both ST and AoE, handle movement better than arcane could ever hope to, are able to perform cleave damage … hell arcane is supposed to be the burst damage spec but fire now owns that title.

I’ve met 4 other mages not including myself so far this expansion who all mained arcane and hopped ship in BfA to other mage specs or new classes entirely. If a spec is so bad that people who have mained it for years walk away from it not because they WANT to but because they feel they HAVE to, what would you call it?

Garbage. That’s what.

2 Likes
112

Thinking I might give fire spec a try tonight on mythic Ashvane progression.

Not sure how well I’ll do with it though since my mainspec gear and azerite is all set for arcane. My offspec fire azerite is much worse and I don’t have the Mechagon bracers. I’m also only ilevel 441 in my fire gear compared to as high as 447 in arcane gear.

Yesterday on heroic first boss in TEP I averaged around 41k dps as arcane. Not top-tier, but not bad either. However, that boss on heroic is about as close to a single-target tank-n-spank as it gets in TEP.

In my target dummy testing with fire, I saw burst phase dps approaching 100k, but sustained dps was only around 33k… less than I do with arcane. Guess I’ll see how it goes.

Previously, when I tried fire or frost offspec, I always did worse than I did with my arcane mainspec. Result is I tended to swap back to arcane and that’s the spec I’ve use for basically every mythic TEP kill I’ve been in so far.

2 Likes
113

Yeah I couldn’t go more than 28k with fire. I kept screwing up the rotation. That was at ilvl 430. I did better as arcane but all the movement in EP just made the spec feel so bad.

Guild stopped raiding till next tier (thanks Classic) so who knows: I may just go back to arcane for fun … though will probably stick with frost for M+. As bad as I find arcane to play in raids, I hate how it plays now in key runs. Explosion is too much of a mana sucker now.

As usual, I miss arcane. That little voice in my head when I stay away from it too long says “Play what you like. Stick it out. Maybe it’ll get better in 9.0.”

The other tempter is having the staff from Azshara: I’ll never get the mana proc playing fire or frost but it’s guaranteed with arcane. End of burn, extra deeps, heal the peeps, lather/rinse/repeat.

114

The staff proc has a 10 minute cooldown.

1 Like
115

Oh I didn’t see that. Thanks.

116

I haven’t tested it as my version of the staff is only 420.

But is there a cap on how many charges it can build up? If not, as arcane you could just keep your mana over 10% and then do a controlled release near the end of the fight when you have a ton of stacks for gigantic damage.

117

Don’t say that too loud, Blizz might detect some fun. And we all know what happens when Blizzard detects fun…

2 Likes
118

Cap is ~250 charges but it takes forever to stack it that high.

119

Good to know.

250 is basically unlimited since you’ll never get there.

It does sound like for an arcane mage the strat with the staff should always be to keep mana above 10% until near the end of the fight. Then let loose the once-per-combat blast.

120

What is wrong with my arcane mage? I have 37k dps sim. 432 ilvl 65 hoa

121

Probably your crit being 17%. Arcane needs to run with some decent crit cause it’s all about those crittin’ 4 charge arcane blasts.