I’m curious what Arcane gamers have to say about stats and their experience in M+
I have been maining Arcane for the fun of it this season and noticed that playing with low haste felt really bad. Needing to DB during the rotation was very punishing for example.
I did some testing, and while it sims worse, playing with high haste feels much better to me and I do top dam while doing mechs. Yeah mana management is more of a thing but I think it’s worth it, and there are a couple of ways around it like sacrificing some siphon storm CD uptime while in single target.
Has anyone else out there experimented with this?
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High haste is fine as long as you have a good amount of mastery to not cause any problems. I’ve ran up to 34% haste for a few weeks and did just fine. In which case at that level TA should be taken 
Although, low haste does make it feel sluggish mainly in raid, atm.
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I’ve been running low haste, no problems. The problem with high haste is hitting GCD cap during double lust, plus mana issues. I suppose you could run sophic devotion instead of wafting to give you a bit more room, but it doesn’t seem worth it to me.
In my current gear I rarely need to enter conserve rotation on single target. I can chain 4 charge arcane blasts (w/ missiles procs etc) until evo is ready again.
“Community has it wrong” I assume by community, you mean guide writers and top mage players? I don’t think they are wrong, but I do think it’s completely fine to do whatever works best for you, even if it’s not exactly following a guide.
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There is a vast gulf between M+ and raiding. Most sims are at based on raid encounters because the variables are much more controlled. M+ is a whole other animal. If your group is killing things fast, regardless if it’s because the key level is lower or the group is good, you can get away with with more haste because mana conservation is less of an issue. A 10-15 minute final boss fight in a raid is another matter which is why they don’t favor haste as much.
But at the end of the day Arcane is the ONLY DPS spec in the entire game that has the potential for a negative interaction with haste and that’s because of the outdated mana management aspect. So it’s always something you have to be aware of and keep an eye on. Generally speaking, if you can get away with more haste while also having enough mastery at the same time, go for it.
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What do you do during bursts when there are mechanics that need interaction? Like if it is your turn to DB or an incorp needs to be poly’d?
Also I find that the ramp is so long that sometimes the cast time of Arcane Surge isn’t worth it on certain trash packs with low haste. The one way around this that I’ve found is blast weaving but that’s not always ideal, either.
What you say about the GCD cap definitely is a loss but there are 6 other burns that don’t benefit from that and I find the benefit there from having big haste (right now I’m at about 37%) overtakes it. I think the gain I get from the mini burn after the double-lust big burn is enough to compensate for the 20% or so of haste that is “lost” from the GCD being capped.
The other thing is that double lust usually happens when there is a boss, so the GCD cap kinda gets absorbed because we still have to cast, and to my knowledge the cast time reduction isn’t capped. (maybe I’m wrong?)
And yeah I didn’t want to call anyone out specifically so I just put “community”. But I don’t think the guide writers are actually playing Arcane on a daily basis and I think they may have missed this.
You almost ready to break from metaslavery. Keep on it. DPS is a dump stat, Fun is BIS.
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It seems like one issue here is the difference between lower and higher keys. It looks like the guides tend to be written assuming higher key gameplay, where several things are different, such as trash packs living long enough for your entire surge burn.
Either stop dps to deal with the mech or use shimmer / pom / alter time / missiles / evo to keep dpsing while moving.
For DB if it’s my turn, I wait for the first cast in the pack to start, then I just sit there and wait until that cast is almost done then hit DB. It’s usually not worth trying to get an extra global of damage. In theory, stacking haste might let you get an extra damage GCD, but I don’t think it’s worth it.
Incorp is just stop whatever you’re doing and poly, if you’re on incorp duty. It sucks to lose damage, but that’s just the affix sucking, not a high haste vs low haste concern.
There is a minimum GCD, which is the whole problem. If you hit it you’ll notice an awkward pause between arcane blasts because it’s casting faster than the minimum GCD. It might be a DPS loss (?) because you can’t queue it effectively, so you might have to eat the latency cost between each cast. (I’m not sure how the game handles it)
I’ve had this happen to me many times getting PI during double lust.
Anyway I just want to restate, if you’re finding haste working better for you, just keep doing it. I don’t think the differences will be huge in optimal scenarios, and it might even be better in some lower key situations.
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Yea, haste makes a big difference and anything below like 22% for me feels like in the mud. I do like both Vessel of Searing Shadow paired with Tome and the crafted helm (Hood of Surging Time), which I still need to make for this season, but which is a good haste boost. I prefer to stack Mastery/Crit on the gear and compensate for haste on the boosts (like trinket or helm as my examples here, but also getting PI’d by priest can be super hot).
Yeah I have no plan on changing back to low haste after experiencing how well high haste works in keys. I’ve been able to goof off in the tournament realm this season and in testing in general it seems to work in all levels of keys quite well. I guess part of my post is just that I think it is so strange that people are so rigid about what is BiS.
I think this is harmful to the game, because when people say there is a “right” way to do things, but that way is really un-fun to play, it’s going to turn a lot of people off from an otherwise quite fun spec. Or maybe they just think that they’re bad at the game and don’t want to try.
Yeah diminishing returns, and yeah losing some haste value during double lust, and it doesn’t look good on paper/in sims, but the only place that counts is in the actual game. I definitely suggest anyone reading this give it a try, swap out some rings or something for a test 
I did notice the current top Arcane mage is rocking much higher haste than the guide would suggest
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How do you play Arcane without a bunch of Haste? I can’t see that being very cash money.
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Low Haste is preferred in raids because when you double lust, you don’t want to get more Haste than it would put you under the GCD for Arcane Blast casts and that’s around 23% I think but I’m not too sure. It’s completely different in M+.
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I guess I understand that. I don’t take the Temporal Warp talent, so it’s not a concern for me.
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