I’ve come back after a fairly long break. My ilevel is about 440 and I have a rank 6 cloak.
Which spec is the best to run Horrific Visions solo?
Thanks!
Arcane best spec in the game for visions (imo 
)
Truthfully any mage spec is great for them, but fire is probably the toughest at lower ilvls.
I didn’t have much problem with my fire mage, but he was geared to overgeared for the beginning of visions. but like they said below. Arcane.
I run visions as arcane.
3 masks is easy. 4 masks is moderate difficulty. Haven’t tried soloing a 5-mask. I think I’d need perfect execution and would have to drink the little potions around the zone.
With arcane I go in with an AOE spec. I have 2 gearsets: one for AOE and one for single-target. I use the AOE set for trash packs and swap to the single-target for elites and bosses.
I’ve tried the +20% movement speed food, but find the 2%/second healing food to just be less stressful as a mage.
I’m excited to hear that Arcane is good for Horrific Visions. I haven’t played Arcane in a bit, but it feels the most “mage-y” to me.
But, can you help to explain to me why the spec is well suited to the visions? Any gameplay tips, or direction where I can find them? Thanks!
I believe you want gear with quick thinking (a heal for all instant cast spells) and explosive echo (buffs arcane explosion)
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I run fire mostly, only gotten through 2 mask solo thus far. I have an aoe arcane set but I feel like I have no idea how to take down even small bosses when I’m arcane aoe spec and switching back and forth constantly to fire seems very annoying. I’d appreciate advice as well.
My AOE set has 3 pieces of Quick Thinking on it. Plus 3 explosive echo and at least 1 barrage trait. I can wade into crowds and AOE them down without even bothering to check my health.
For single-target bosses, I find quick thinking is less needed. I tend to equip higher ilevel gear with Equipoise on it and blast away.
Arcane’s biggest weakness is mana. Having to sit and drink to replenish mana really sucks when your sanity timer is ticking down.
Pull bigger. Arcane is one of the easier specs to 5 mask with.
Between quick thinking and ghastly food you won’t die. You can even swap in one of those that heals you when you kill but really shouldn’t need to be drinking all that much, maybe a couple times per zone if that.
Also, time really isn’t the issue in 5 masks. It’s failing mechanics. Sanity loss from 400% modifiers and half sanity is what kills you, not running out of time.
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Arcane is very good at bursting down priority targets. Fire needs gear to do this, and Frost doesn’t burst well and rather relies on kiting and consistent damage. Arcane is also good at quick movement and bypassing unwanted zones/mobs since you have Chrono Shift, Greater Invisibility, and Shimmer + Displacement to move in and out.
I don’t recommend Frost.
I manage it, but it was not always fun and I’ve had to rely on outgearing the hell out of it.
In my opinion the main problem with Frost is that it relies on slows/kiting for soloing stuff, and bosses in Visions are immune. Thrall, Rexxar, and Shaw are all pretty tough, especially if you’re doing Glacial Spike builds since it’s hard to get the separation to effectively Shatter the Glacial Spike against the melee bosses that whack you the whole fight. At least the trash isn’t bad, but all of Frost’s AoE is also cooldown-based so you pull big, hope to position the mobs and your spells right, then pull smaller or go for a boss. Maybe Thermal Void or Frozen Orb builds are better for bosses, but haven’t tried it.
Ghastly food, and 2% hp per second potions in there. No boss can kill you with their dps, but failing their mechanics can.
If you haven’t already, get weak aura for the potions. But there isn’t a single boss who will kill you by just hitting you. You die when you fail a mechanic though and lose sanity.
Idk Rexxar hits pretty hard and it’s noticeable on lower ilvls. Was carrying a friend (over double HP mobs) through a 5-mask on a 460 mage and could not survive Rexxar’s melee for that long, even with the goulash. Granted it was an alt mage and had no quick thinking traits lol… But still, Rexxar has a lot more unavoidable damage than any other fight.
You sure your friend wasn’t getting hit by mind trap, etc.? Barriers, Ghastly food, and the restore hp/take less damage potion, I have never died to a boss’s auto attacks in visions on 450 ilvl+.
Even 450 ilvl has at least upper 300s/400k hp, so 2% every second is 8k hps, then potion is another 8k per 5, plus you take 5% less damage, and have a short CD barrier for ~25% of your hp. I just don’t see how anyone takes any meaningful damage outside of failing mechanics when you passively heal around 10k hps before barriers and traits that heal.
Truly arcane. Built a 2x equipose 1x arcane pressure 1x reverberating set with cauterizing blink and quick thinking and you run through the things explding and baragging, while benefiting from the speed boost talent that barrage gives instead of the double frost nova. When you get to an elite, do the classic equpoise burst phase, evocate if needed, then move on exploding and barraging. Usually after the 5th or 6th explosion its time to barrage so you don’t oom. Use resonance so those barrages hit super hard and finish off whatever trash is left. Try to get at leastone infinite stars and one crit% corruption piece as well. I go through them now and just pull whole areas into a building, drop purification protocol while blasting and barraging and like 15 mobs are dead in seconds. An echoing void piece is also really good for arcane in ther because you spent the whole time in melee range.
Also NO to shimmer. Use blink. It’s better because it will break any of those channeled stuns that accidentally get cast on your because yo couldn’t interrupt everyone. Remember, it’s arcane. Even with blink you get three blinks at a time.
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My friend was fresh 120 with a rank 1 cloak so he was dead by thralls room just waiting for me to pick him up at the end lol. I was looking at the logs and it was almost entirely Rexxar’s melee. Boars got off a few casts total, but because of everyone’s HP boost, I was only doing 1 boar at a time. I didn’t find any of the HP potions on that run and I was a little pressed for time so didn’t spend too much energy looking. Oh well, SW was an easy carry last week. Guess I will try it again this week.
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pre-pot an empowered proximity before engaging rexxar, you’ll et more and more stats as the boars appear, timewarp on pull, wait for the room to fill with boars, frost nova them, drop a purification, focus rexxar, blink as necessary to heal, and he’s down in seconds. go drag, rexxar, not spirits wisdom that way yo will have timewarp again once you get to thrall and can do the same thing to his boars. They can also be sheeped.
I mean I don’t have trouble with the thing in general, been 5-masking it for months. Just was noting that his melee does an actual noticeable amount of dmg on a toon where gear is such that I can’t cheese him down when his health is scaled to a group. Great idea about empowered prox though, I like it!
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I use arcane with a set for AOE and ST as well and it works great. I also find taking mirror images helps take the focus off of you in tough situations when doing 5 masks.
When I was less geared and running up to like 2 masks, I was soloing with arcane. I ran 3x quick thinking and 3x explosive echo for all the trash and just spammed ae and barrage. Swapped to 3x equi for bigger hp adds/bosses for the ST spam.
As I got more gear and cloak levels, I found it far easier and faster to run no IL frost with 3x Flash for everything outside of the final boss and any mini boss that I may want to really burst quickly. For those situations, I just swap to fire and eat one of the 100 sanity foods if need be. I’ve been doing solo 5 masks this way since around rank 14 cloak was first available.
I should say that for frost, I also run iris major, and lucid+spark+breath minors. The reason for this is to essentially alternate packs with iris beam and frozen orb, since spark brings iris back up a lot faster. When there are larger hp mobs, using your stored up spike with pet freeze for instant shatter is very helpful, especially on things like tentacles in SW or two large hp adds next to each other for cleave. For reference, my glacials crit for between 500k-700k, depending on int and mastery procs. That is basically an on demand, cleavable 1-shot to all of those types of adds.