Seen a lot of posts on this.
Just a heads up, Arcane Mages will be the top DPS spec in Classic TBC. Fights are going to be really short, and no one is topping Arcane Mage. They are already topping short fights on Private Servers, and no fight in Classic BC will last longer than on a Private Server.
Dont reroll your mages gents
I have been preaching this forever.
All the private server warriors are talking about 8+ minute fights.
It won’t be like that.
Hinges on how Blizzard tunes the encounters, and knowing how poor quality the TBC private servers are in regard to scripting, take that data with a grain of salt.
Honestly if anything it makes me believe Arcane Mages will perform even better than they did on Private Servers. I was watching Arcane Mages dominate in 2.0 itemization / raid mechanics - so I think the notch will be even higher
Most private servers also buffed boss health.
Even endless did that.
They were good, especially with the set bonus, it will be interesting to see how things go later on as fights do get longer. At a certain point mana becomes a problem, and that’s dependent also on your comp so maybe if you stack a bunch of arc mages?? Kinda like Voltron the more you stack the better it gets? Would be amusing to see the locks get benched in favor of mages, hell I would pay to see that forum flood of tears.
They will just be reliving their classic days.
Think the real variable is the comp / how many Mages you bring. We were running 2 Arcane Mages in our comp and it worked out quite well since we could get them all the buffs / support they needed (R sham with 2pc, spriest etc).
I dont think we will see Arcane Mage Stacking like we saw with Warriors/Rogues in Classic though due to the support network being more limited
Private servers are based on nerfed 2.4.3, so buffing bosses and then failing to put mechanics back in that were pruned is not exactly impressive. I cant remember the patch, but a lot of content got globally nerfed even before wrath prepatch, lots of the PVE is just easier because of that in 2.4.3.
My point was that it just made boss fights longer which is really not in favor of Arcane Mages.
If those boss fights are in fact shorter in classic I can definitely see Arcane may be a number one
Yes and no. Most Private servers do patch progression, but with 2.4.3 talents. So all the mechanics / health values were based off say, 2.0 for example, but with 2.4.3 talents (which is a huge buff in of itself)
Now, how accurate those figures were is highly debatable for sure
Will be interesting to see how things work out in TBC proper.
We’ll have 2.4.3 talents too. Mages simply having Ivy Veins from the start will boost them up a few spots on the meters. Along with the prevalence of crafted gear and the general min-max nature of Classic, I’m expecting Fire to be the dominant spec in T4 with Arcane taking over with the set bonus later on. They’ll start to drop off in T6 when fights get longer and other classes just scale better, although I believe Fire will remain a solid spec for the entirety of BC.
Issue with fire is elemental precision gets nerfed to 3% hit
Meanwhile arcane gets 10% hit with talents, I think just going arcane at the start of raiding will be better as arcane because you can basically gem all int since on alliance goats will also give 1 hit.
So with a goat shaman you will have 11% base hit as arcane.
Not sure how much you need but that’s pretty solid to start off with. Meanwhile frost and fire will only have 4%.
I don’t think hit cap is an issue if people are in pre-raid BiS/Kara gear. Fire’s cap is 164 rating which isn’t taking external buffs into consideration. Most of the Mage guides I’ve read for TBC have them as Fire early. It could be we see the racers going Arcane for that extra hit until they’re in Heroic and T4/crafted gear.
Yeah that’s what I don’t know is how much hit rating 1% hit is.
So how much hit rating is 11% hit?
1% hit is like… little less then 15 hit rating so 11% hit would be what… 160 rating
1% hit is 12.6 hit rating at 70.
138.6
ahh yeah im thinking of melee hit… spell is 12.615
So depending on the gear arcane can basically free gem all int.
You will make up the 40 hit rating to be capped as arcane in pre bis.
If you can get the tailor sets crafted that’s even better.
I can def see a case for going arcane in tier 4 on your first raid.