New Player Needs Help (Arcane Mage)

Classes Mage
1

Hello, everyone. I’m probably the worst Mage in the history of WoW and that includes the ones that no one plays any more.

When I first started playing, I was more interested in collecting battle pets. Which actually confers a decent amount of experience. Consequently, I leveled without getting level-appropriate gear. As you might expect, when I came to BfA to do some questing outside of battle pets, the results were disastrous.

I had to eat conjured food after every fight with a trash mob. And if a second trash mob joined the fight, I was dinner. Rares were out of the question, unless someone else was killing one and I could assist.

I also had no knowledge of the talents I was selecting. I just took stuff that sounded good, without any real knowledge of the mechanics. Consequently, I’m a 60th level Arcane Mage (who has thankfully gotten more level appropriate gear), who knows nothing.

Basically, I just quest and kill mobs that happen to get too close. (I don’t feel right doing dungeons without knowing how to play my toon. I do them sometimes, but I want to be a useful participant; not someone to be carried.)

Essentially, when I’m faced with a mob I need to kill, I start with Prismatic Barrier to protect myself when the mob gets too close, then Frostbolt, then I just spam Arcane Blast, using Arcane Missles whenever it procs.

The problem happens when I’m fighting rares in Nazjatar. I tend to run out of mana too quickly. I mean, survival is not a problem. I have a Shaman companion who casts heals on me, I have Prismatic Barrier, and I’ve selected talents that allow Ice Block to heal me back to full if need be.

But I need to conserve mana somehow, so I can keep fighting. Because towards the end of the fight, the mob I’m fighting is at around 20% health and my mana is gone, so I have to wait until I can fire the next Arcane Blast, and pray that Arcane Missiles procs so I can have a free cast while storing up mana for another Blast.

What do I need to do in the way of talents, spells, gear, etc. that will allow to conserve mana? Any advice you can give me would be much appreciated.

2

I doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything overtly wrong and you seem to have the basics down. It’s probably just a question of gear. Do you have access to heirloom gear? If this isn’t your first character you can unlock and upgrade it to use on all of your current and future alts.

Also keep in mind that mages typically have a harder time to solo elite and rare mobs in the open world than other classes because mages can’t heal, tank, or have access to pets that can. That is intended and not something you can really change regardless of how good or bad you are at the class.

As for the talents, you can find everything you need here, including a cookie cutter leveling build that you can directly copy and paste into the talent interface in the game.

1 Like
3

Thank you for your guidance. This is indeed my first toon. And unfortunately, I don’t have heirlooms. Not a rich Mage by any means, but I did grab my first piece of it at the Darkmoon Faire and will certainly add more before the Faire closes.

4

I highly recommend switching to Frost until TWW comes out. Frost is in a really good place right now. It’s easier to understand the basics of a Mage. Arcane as of right now is probably the worst subclass in all of WoW for somebody to learn how to play properly. Honestly even if you do… the dps is just not worth it. Fire is in a similar boat but Fire starts to shine at higher M+ key levels. Arcane performs OKAY.

TWW is solving this problem a great deal for both Arcane and Fire. I personally switched from Arcane, to Fire to Frost within a week. Mind you I can pretty much pickup a class and any subclass and learn how to play it efficiently in a day or so. Arcane is just not fun right now IMO. It’s visually very pleasing but the reality is you’re putting in twice the work for less results. Whereas Frost is also very visually pleasing, has a lot more crowd control and survivability and the rotation flows a lot easier.

I understand the desire to play Arcane I really do. I plan on switching to Arcane as soon as TWW releases. Right now the best way to learn this class and have fun is with Frost.

2 Likes
5

Thank you very much for explaining the situation to me. And I will give it a try.

Arcane was just so easy at lower levels. I could pretty much Arcane Missiles anything to death at low levels. But at upper levels, it’s like I never want to use Arcane Barrage, because it starts me back at square one with Arcane Blast, with it’s significantly lesser damage and longer cast time.

6

Get a cool Wizard hat, its the wizbang every mage needs to be top tier, everything else is frippery.

1 Like
7

It will be interesting to see what changes are coming. The thing that perplexes me the most about Arcane Mage is Arcane Barrage. Why would I use it?

After building up my Arcane Charges to full (which takes four casts) so that Arcane Blast has a respectable cast time and damage output, one cast of Arcane Barrage, and I’m right to zero Arcane Charges, and Arcane Blast is back to it’s languid cast time and lackluster damage and it will take four casts to get it back up.

8

I know what you’re saying but you should never really be casting arcane blast below 2 charges anyway, you need to use orb to gain your charges back or of course explosions in aoe. For the most part in single target you don’t cast barrage unless conserving mana around 30% or below until siphon storm comes back hopefully around the 5 seconds left before completely going oom. Understandable that barrage is used to dump charges but it’s almost like you get punished for it even though it’s our spender and meant to be our big hitter

1 Like