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Is new patch really all that great for arcane?
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Post by
291671
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Post by
nickseng
Preliminary theorycrafts has Arcane being viable at the very least. Meaning that you should be able to do good damage without holding your raid group back. Whether it becomes the top spec remains to be seen, and on whether the AB glyph makes it to live.
The reason Arcane was not viable previously was because that it lacked a good filler for Arcane Barrage. Untalented Fireball was not very attractive, and Arcane Blast just didn't pull it's weight. With the changes, Arcane Blast becomes a very good filler, as it boosts all Arcane spells by as much as 45% (60% if glyphed).
Other changes to consider
Torment the Weak now includes Arcane Blast, and is triggered by any slowing effect. What this means is that it will always be up in raids, and will affect all spells an Arcane mage uses (as opposed to only 1 for Fire or Frost spec). This is a flat 12% damage boost for Arcane.
Evocation down to 2 minutes, allowing Arcane to burst every 2 minutes, sacrificing mana for huge amounts of damage, and then gaining it back through Evocation. While Evocation is traditionally a DPS loss, it remains to be seen whether the burst outputted by Arcane can offset that loss.
HTH.
Post by
Ethix
I'm totally trying it. Tired of my dps being almost totally subject to RNG. Getting a 33% crit rate on 25 man Patchwerk when raid buffed I'm almost at 52% is just horrible.
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Post by
JesterSK13
I dunno, I think that there's also something to be said for the fact that Arcane spells will now have a 6% base hit including Elemental Precision and Arcane Focus. Being FFB currently, I have a hard time gearing for an appropriate amount of hit, crit and spellpower. If I gear for hit and crit, I can get 15~16% and 30% respectively but only manage 1200~1250 spellpower. This is looking at Pre-Naxx gearing and it's worth noting that my guild's raid group had no spriests or boomkin and I didn't know about the FFB hit glitch. Still I think that it'll be arguably easier to find haste and spell power gear for arcane mages considering each reputation faction carries at least one item fit for that. As well, because arcane provides a respectable amount of hit, spell power, and haste it would make an ideal heroic run build. On the whole, 3.0.8 will likely make arcane the spec for mages who have just hit the endgame while FFB will remain the premier damage spec in the latter parts of the endgame, i.e. Post-Naxx.
A proposed build.
This build would treat Slow in a fashion similar to Scorch and Living Bomb, i.e. cast it to start off a rotation. Then the rotation should be
Blast > Barrage > Blast > Barrage.
The only exceptions would be if you proc Clearcasting or Missile Barrage. In the case of Clearcasting, macro PoM and AP to an AB and add it into the rotation:
Blast > Barrage(Clearcasting) > Blast* > Blast > Barrage.
If you proc Missile Barrage, replace the next Barrage in the rotation with Missiles:
Blast > Barrage(Missile Barrage) > Blast > Arcane Missiles.
Icy Veins was placed in the build as a sort of catch-all. Realistically you could macro Icy Veins to any number of spells to either increase damage output between procs or to increase damage once they do proc, i.e. Clearcasting macro would contain PoM, AP, and Icy Veins. Considered taking Improved Frostbolt 2/5 and putting 3 points in Ice Shards on the off chance that someone likes putting Ice Lance on the end of their Arcane Blasts rather than Fire Blast. With increased haste and a lower GCD this may be feasible but it is not likely. Recommended glyphs are Mage Armor > Arcane Power > Mana Gem, likely replacing Mana Gem should more arcane glyphs surface in the future.
Edit 1: Run-on sentences.
Edit 2: Suggested build with rotations.
Edit 3: Further explanations and glyph suggestion.
Post by
150866
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Post by
JesterSK13
Slow is no longer necessary, stop casting it and stop speccing into it.
What snare do you anticipate being on the mob at all times? If nothing else, when there is no probable or likely snare you have Slow to provide your own. Not saying your wrong, but it's an easy place to put a point so that you KNOW you'll always have TtW even in Heroics. Like I said, this isn't a late-raiding-environment build, this is more of a getting-started-raiding build.
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150866
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Post by
JesterSK13
Tank-specced tanks have the snares, every DK has the snare.
Doesn't even have to be late-raiding-environment.
Using Slow is a DPS loss because you have to keep it up. 1.5 out of every 15 seconds is 10% of your DPS time wasted, almost as if you hadn't specced into TTW in the first place.
If you're having to keep up Slow after the patch hits, you might as well not have specced Arcane at all.
The point of the change is to make other snares trigger it and to not rely on Slow mages.
If that's the case, go ahead and suggest a new build. Made that one up off the top of my head and I hadn't heard about the full extent of the changes they were making to TtW's requirements. Maybe you could go ahead and provide an example build or at least one you're working on. Wouldn't hurt to contribute, eh?
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