Hello!
This character is my main as arcane spec and have been playing this spec the entire expansion! In this time, experience has helped me become better at positioning and timing my cds to do better damage. Really, it’s satisfying to continue to meet goals and keep pushing.
Currently I’m entering higher mythic + levels (for me) in the 13s and up. I’ve attempted some 14s, timed 2 13s and am still acquiring more and more experience at these levels currently.
One of the more difficult challenges I’m coming across is survivability! Naturally everything hits harder and harder as we enter harder content but I feel as if I’m in more danger than others for some reason as my spec doesn’t handle incoming damage very well.
So with practice I’ve become increasingly better at using my defensives but still am failing. There is definitely room to improve in this area personally.
So I come here to inquire if you guys have any advice on how to handle this part of stepping into these levels of mythics as an arcane mage, defensively? Any tips or anything is fantastic.
Tbh watching streams has never been of much interest to me although I’m starting to feel maybe I should if I like to keep progressing.
I dunno! Thanks for reading and any feedback.
Tbh I normally just spam barrier on cooldown so I’m not forgetting to press it. I’ve gotten into a better habit of timing my barrier more when I know I am being targeted with spells and abilities. with our current stamina levels it’s a 2m+ shield which is powerful. I also try not to overlap personal barrier with mass barrier. I know using barrier is quite obvious but with the weakaura that shows targeted abilities on you it becomes even better. Otherwise yeah most dungeon weakaura packs have good indicators of incoming aoe damage, I’ve normally cycled through all my defensives at least 7 times each throughout an entire dungeon. This is my alt this season as well, currently working on 14 resilient on my warlock
Also if you don’t have OmniCC for tracking party cool downs it’s very helpful to tell when your healer is ramping or knowing you’ll be safe because a lot of heals are going out. Obviously just doing the dungeons over and over you learn which abilities are less dangerous and aren’t worth using a defensive on, which again saving a simple barrier for less dangerous boss mechanics or trash packs really helps overall instead of burning up a big Defensive when a mob won’t drop your health to 0 in a few seconds
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Didn’t know that was a thing! I’ll take a look at this.
I also am typically hitting my cds around 7-8 times also. It’s about what I can squeeze in effectively.
Don’t forget to mass barrier before the key starts, you get your CD back and lots of keys start with a big pull.
Cavedellers share a cooldown with battle pots, they are nice to keep onhand if you need a second healing pot over a dps pot.
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The obvious one is just use barrier especially when out of combat (short cd, lasts 60s and you wont lose damage to do so).
As arcane its usually advisable to use mirrors image prior to a pull where you are bursting at the start, as it prevents you from getting aggro. Good dual purpose use since in addition to the threat dispersion it also provides 20% dr for 40s.
Really we just have no passive defensives and all active. If you know what does damage, then you just use one of your defensives prior to it, and then you live. Easier said than done.
Even at a 13 or so most packs dont live exceptionally long, something I like to do when learning what to be scared of is just alter at the start of a mob pull if I’m full hp and just sit the full duration. Odds are high something dangerous will hit you in that 10s window and you’ll eventually learn what it is or adjust. You should be able to activate Alter off the gcd, so its really your best reaction button aside from Ice Cold.
For defensives its good to know your priority. You have the long lasting defensives like Mirrors Image and Barrier which are great to press pre-pull or for Images sake, when you know you’ll most likely take several hits over its duration. You have the extremely strong damage reductions in Greater Invis and Ice Cold, which usage can be swayed by what you are doing at the time - in Arcane Surge its far better to ice cold than Greater Invis for instance. And Ice Cold lasts longer. Alter Time is similar to barrier except without the big gcd downside, so you should always be looking for an excuse to use it. There are weakauras that can show the health you altered at so you can tell if you will gain or lose health re-activating it.
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It took me a while to find an efficient way to do this. Here is my process.
I open up MDT in-game, and warcraftlogs. I open up a log of either my own run or a top player, and click on the role I’m playing (or myself), and “Damage Taken”
While I do this, I use MDT to get a better idea of each mob. I probably have bigwigs open as well and will change the sounds to something that makes more sense to me (and mute a ton of them). I also keep track in a weakaura personally but that’s not necessary (it helps me plan which CD to rotate through based on CD times and how the CD works). I’m happy to share the WA if someone wants it, it’s not published since it’s not done.
Finally as said above you pretty much need something to tell you when something is casting at you to survive. Causese makes " Targeted by Damage Spells (English client)" which is a weakaura that will tell you when something is targeting you most of the time.
They also make a one-stop-shop weakaura pack for dungeons that is quite good. if you get it, you will need to install the anchors aura first. It does tell you when the biggest AoE and mechanics are happening but I like to go through it all myself so that I know what’s happening
going down the rabbit hole a bit more, while this takes some effort to learn, many abilities work extra well with some defensives. And some won’t work well. For example alter time is brilliant on so many things but it won’t protect you from getting one-shot. So better to save it for ticking AoE/DoTs. Invis at the perfect moment can save the whole party damage (e.g. the end boss of mechagon’s mega-zap abillity will be fully skipped if you invis/vanish/shadowmeld/feign it). often the last tick of aoe will do more damage, or leave a dot, and it is when people are the most likely to die so learning how many ticks of something there are and popping mass barrier right before the last tick can be a real party-saver
Finally there is crowd control and spellsteal. for both of these, the simplest way is to get plater and, crucially, get a plater profile that has the mods already included. all of the top plater profiles will clearly show when a mob has a spell that can be stolen/dispelled, and they will also make important casts more visible. most of the top ones use similar mods so it is more a matter of preference. Whichever one you pick, you’ll want to set the movement speed to basically zero (I have 0.01 set). I like stacking nameplates, a V nameplate overlap of 1.4, and H overlap of .9
Good luck!
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Absolutely wonderful suggestions. From everybody so far. Thank yall so much. I’ve already seen an improvement in my ability to react to damage. I will read through your chat more throughly in the morning and get some of these things set up better. Plater I have, but if there is a way to enhance it more, or more weakauras to use, imma grab them. Thank you!
Yall have helped me get my 3k and over already. Ty ty
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