Today's topic is: Arcane!
Widely known for being a very good burst dps build, Arcane brings a lot to the table. Between giving you a mana pool that others would give their left nut for, and the ability to suddenly buff your damage by 20%, arcane is the spec for introducing mage's to the pain game!
The Arcane mage has a range of artillery spells for showing a boss what pain really means. Their most known and best friend is called: Arcane Blast!
Discription from Wowwiki:
Arcane Blast is a mage spell that deals direct arcane damage, with increasing damage levels and mana costs when cast in succession. With careful management, the mage can use this spell to trade off damage per mana verses damage per second.
Arcane Blast places a debuff on the mage each time they use it. It increase's the damage of arcane spells by 15% and the mana cost of Arcane Blast by 175% PER stack.
| # of Buffs | Reported in Buff Tooltip | Reported in Spell Tooltip | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Damage done | Mana Cost Increase | Mana Cost | ||
| 0 | - | - | 7% of base mana | |
| 1 | Base damage + 15% | Base cost + 175% | 19% of base mana | |
| 2 | Base damage + 30% | Base cost + 350% | 32% of base mana | |
| 3 | Base damage + 45% | Base cost + 525% | 44% of base mana | |
| 4 | Base damage + 60% | Base cost + 700% | 56% of base mana | |
This buff gives us good and bad perks. More dps output and burns the users mana like no other.
Now there are major conflict's of interest on how many stacks would be the most ideal. Many argue that keeping your mana conserved would be the best choice. Some say burn the mana, stack it to 4 and wait for Missile Barrage to proc. That's why you have a 2 min evocation!
My personal opinion has to go with the mana draining. There is a reason blizzard gave us a 2min evo. USE IT! And use it often. If you have the ability to see a % of your total mana, use it right at 38%. You will use more and more mana and it helps.
Next ability is: Arcane Missile's (Everything Arcane has the name Arcane in it! Isn't Blizzard unique?)
Arcane Missiles is a channeled mage spell that shoots a series of missiles at the target, one each second over a period of time, dealing direct arcane damage.
There are 2 talents that are worth mentioning with this spell:
Arcane Empowerment
Increases the damage done by Arcane Missiles by 45% and Arcane Blast by 9% of your spell power, and it increases damage done by 3% for all party/raid members.
Missile Barrage
Gives your Arcane Blast a 40% chance, and your Arcane Barrage, Fireball, Frostbolt and Frostfire Bolt spells a 20% chance to reduce the channeled duration of the next Arcane Missiles spell by 2.5 secs, reduce the mana cost by 100%, and missiles will fire every .5 secs.
This basically makes Arcane Missiles into Arcane Nuke's, Major nukes, like 5 of them, in like a second!
Now my personal preference is going to be just these 2 spells. But there is another to keep your AB stacks from ruining your mana pool.
Arcane Barrage
Launches several missiles at the enemy target, causing 936 to 1144 Arcane damage.
You would basically use this to drop your AB stacks and get a strong hit in to boot!
I do NOT spec into Arcane Barrage, simply because I don't think using ABarr will cause you to do the same amount of DPS. Sure, if you don't drop the AB de-buff then your losing mana like crazy, but your hitting for a major amount. Thats just my personal opinion.
Now for the talent specs! As a rule for these spec's remember, if I leave any points those are considered free points. Place them anywhere you want. You wanna place them someplace that will help you on boss fights.
The most cookie cutter of all spec's. This is the basic spec for starter's. Work with this if your starting out getting your gear up.
This is my build. Built to not have any push-back and to allow, when I do use my wards, to give me a boost in dps.
Use this only if you have good enough gear. I would say when buffed you have 33k mana and have at least 900haste. It's a high mana intensive build. You either keep using AB or use Missiles to allow your stacks to drop. But thats just me!
Anyway thats it for me! Knowledge of the Arcane is all about practice and hoping for the right proc's. Keep it up, and work with it and you will see an improvement!
Next Topic: The Power of FIRE!!!! MWAHAHAHAHA.....sorry....lost the happy...BUT THE HAPPY'S BACK! ^_^
good post, but the text changed fonts halfway through. did you copypasta from notepad?
ReplyDeleteotherwise, like where it's going. arcane ftw