Arcane 948 ilvl looking for tips

[Neari 0]

Hi all! I'm getting back into WoW after taking a long (since Cataclysm) break. I'm having some trouble beefing up my dps on my arcane mage, and I was wondering if it's a matter of rotation, gear, or simply lacking the right legendaries? I've checked with a couple of guildies who say my legendary configuration isn't optimal (they suggest I equip Mystic Kilt of the Rune Master, but it hasn't dropped for me yet), but mostly, folks just tell me that I shouldn't play as arcane. While I'm certainly willing to check out other specs, arcane is my favorite (and I'm nearing 75 on my artifact), and according to my logs, I should be performing better relative to other arcane mages.

Here are my latest logs for this week:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FQcwA834gX9VDqJp/#boss=-2&difficulty=0&wipes=2&type=damage-done

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/r4dN9ZfzHMK2aXWy/#boss=-2&difficulty=0&type=damage-done

My armory profile: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/character/whisperwind/evyntyde

I try to stick to the rotation in the arcane mage guide as closely as possible, though I do notice that I make a few mistakes every fight. Should I focus on practicing my rotation until I get it down perfectly, or is there something else I'm missing?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Tehril 12]

Sadly, the kilt is almost required to play arcane at even a basic level, and even with the kilt arcane is just not as strong as frost or fire right now. Keep that in mind when asking for help, because if you care more about numbers, you'll swap the one or the other while you get your kilt, and even after that you won't be doing quite as much as you could focusing on the others(it's not unplayable, just lower).

 

Now if you choose to ignore my above advice and want to just power through as arcane, there's a few things I noticed wrong right off the bat. Your opener is less than ideal. You want to apply Mark of Aluneth, THEN drop RoP, hit Power, Charged Up and PoM. Casting Rune then mark is wasting precious seconds of your rune on boosting the DoT damage of Mark, which really isn't what you care about.

You're also not prepotting, which is wasting a bunch of damage on a Power phase, either the first on some fights, or later ones in others I looked at. Prolonged lasts for a minute, if you so desire you can hit it a full 10 seconds before pull and still get a huge benefit, since arcane has so much damage clumped in the burst phase(Not saying to do so, but you should be at least drinking it before the pull so you can drink it again later). Ideally you want a potion/hero/power twice in a fight with that wonderful orange ring you have, which brings me to my next point....

 

Your raids lust/hero timing blows. I don't know how much sway you have in how the raid is run, but that CD seems to just randomly be hit at arbitrary times in a lot of fights, Like on Garothi normal it was hit 23 seconds before the fight ending, wasting almost half of its duration and making your legendary basically a 1000ilvl stat brick. Generally lust/hero is hit on pull for a vast majority of fights.

Other than that, there's really not much left to say about your rotation, hit 4 charges, dump missiles, barrage to clear charges, repeat until CDs, then burst.

[Poromania 1]

hi, i have question too about arcane mage - while Arcane power is active, should i still use Arcane missiles ? because i am losing mana-less arcane blasts

[Neari 0]

Ok, thank you for the advice! I don't have a lot of pull in deciding when to hero, but I'll definitely try to incorporate these tips for our next run.

I'm considering switching specs since so many people are suggesting I do so. Two questions: should I go fire or frost, and how viable is it to pick up a different spec if I haven't leveled up the artifact for it too much?

[Woceht 0]

Dont forget to cast mark of aluneth BEFORE rune and arcane power. This way you still get the explosion at the end inside the 100% dmg buff, without having to spend any of the buffed up time casting it. And can instead fit in an extra blast.
cast it right before rune and power so you get most of the 6s dot buffed up for free aswell.

Switching is easy AP wise. Getting to 72 should take a week if you put your mind to it and 69 is a matter of days.
So at most you'll be missing like 2% dmg after that point, which shouldnt be an issue.
Not having legendaries (if u have any for arcane specific?) is a bit harder, but since you have ring also doable.
And there's ofcourse a new playstyle that you have to get used to, but (sorry for saying this) you seem to have to learn quite a bit about arcane too, so even that shouldnt stop you.

However, why would you switch away from arcane, BETRAYER!
(arcane isnt that strong ST atm, so f.i. picking up frost might suit you better if you care about dps meters. Although all mage specs seem to be a bit weak atm sadly)


 

[Neari 0]

Totally fair points! I'm thinking of sticking with arc for our next raid and trying the tips you guys have shared before making a final decision about whether or not to switch. Thanks for all the advice!

[Valks 2,375]

17 hours ago, Neari said:

Totally fair points! I'm thinking of sticking with arc for our next raid and trying the tips you guys have shared before making a final decision about whether or not to switch. Thanks for all the advice!

Another thing:

In a 4 minute Garothi fight, you used your Tome trinket twice. It has a 1 minute cooldown, meaning you missed 2 uses of it.