Arcane Mage Question

[Borza-medivh]

I’ll be digging into my combat logs later tonight, but I wanted to throw this out here in the meantime.

I’m maining Arcane Mage this season, and once I hit +8–9 keys I’ve been shocked at how low my DPS feels. My ilvl is 708. Current stats: Crit 19%, Haste 26%, Mastery 47%, Versatility 15%, Avoidance 3%.

I always put in the time to learn rotations, study guides, and fine-tune things. I know the key is syncing up cooldowns for the full fight (which can be tricky—one mistimed Touch of the Magi mini-burn can really mess things up fast). I’m also working on movement… using Shimmer properly so I’m always casting.

The one mistake I suspect is poor Touch of the Magi usage. I haven’t been focusing on tagging mobs with high HP pools, and that might be hurting me. Other than that, I’m staying at 4 charges nearly the whole fight, using Nether Precision consistently, and burning procs as they come up. Using Barrage in only best case scenarios. Always use consumables, mana oil on weapon, etc. And yet I’m still getting outpaced by classes a few ilvls below.

Any tips from more seasoned Arcane players? (I’ll be analyzing logs tonight, but figured I’d ask in the meantime.)

[Viku-zuljin]

Idk I don’t play arcane mage.

[Knottynoodle-emerald-dream]

I suggest putting this in the mage forums and checking out the mage class discord.

[Borza-medivh]

Thank you, will do.

[Tinklewinkle-firetree]

Sunfury or spellslinger? keep in mind Arcane isnt the best at overall, its to kill prio targets and funnel, it makes keys smooth with a good group.

I would shuffle more into haste, easy to do with your cape and a ring or ammy.

murlok. io is a neat site to see what others are using.

[Borza-medivh]

Sunfury. Thank you for the suggestion. Will do!

[Failedwizard-frostmourne (Failedwizard)]

@Borza-medivh

I’m maining Arcane Mage this season, and once I hit +8–9 keys I’ve been shocked at how low my DPS feels. My ilvl is 708. Current stats: Crit 19%, Haste 26%, Mastery 47%, Versatility 15%, Avoidance 3%.

Stop stop stop, stop thinking about stats and overall, you’re doing low keys as Arcane, of course you have low DPS because you’re playing a target capped spec and everything is dying before your cooldowns end. As for stat weights this is an outdated concept.

@Borza-medivh

The one mistake I suspect is poor Touch of the Magi usage. I haven’t been focusing on tagging mobs with high HP pools, and that might be hurting me. Other than that, I’m staying at 4 charges nearly the whole fight, using Nether Precision consistently, and burning procs as they come up. Using Barrage in only best case scenarios. Always use consumables, mana oil on weapon, etc. And yet I’m still getting outpaced by classes a few ilvls below.

Things dying fast and gaps in casting are the two main culprits in just about every single log review someone asks for when learning Arcane, times where you aren’t casting results in doing no damage during this time.

@Borza-medivh

Any tips from more seasoned Arcane players?

Don’t delay your Surge because you cast Touch of the Magi for miniburn late, it’s better to just hold Touch for Surge if using it means you’ll be sitting on Surge for a pack or boss, Touch without Evocation and Arcane Surge is actually barely more damage than just not using it inbetween Surge windows.

I’d also recommend not trying to keep up with uncapped AoE specs on overall and just focus on killing the big guy of the group and the bosses, we’re capped at 5 targets and only use our funnel to buff our main target damage as that’s what we do. We let the uncapped people just focus on doing massive AoE.

[Borza-medivh]

Thank you, very helpful. I don’t think I really understood the strategy behind this class as well as I needed to. Have read a lot since asking this question. Makes sense.