Arcane Brilliance: What the MoP beta means for arcane mages
by Josh Myers 
Mar 31st 2012 at 8:00PM
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Arcane Brilliance for arcane, fire and frost mages. This column is usually brought to you by archmage and former Hogwarts headmaster Christian Belt, but rumor has it he's still stuck in an alternate dimension where playing World of Warcraft is state-mandated but only offers you 10 different classes of warlocks to play. Senior Understudy and Last Surviving Student Josh Myers is covering his class this week. Arm your spitballs.
Throughout Cataclysm, the arcane spec has been a strange beast. At the beginning of the expansion, it was solidly the worst mage spec due to the absurdly high cost of Arcane Blast. After some quick patch 4.1 fixes, it became our top-performing spec, especially if we had access to Shard of Woe. From that point on, arcane was a source of potent damage. While fire has become the vogue spec for Dragon Soul, arcane still is a very viable and desirable spec. Going forward into Mists of Pandaria, that all could change ... or the spec could be made even better.
Part of the source of arcane's potency this expansion has been due to how incredibly well the spec scales with intellect. While intellect provides the same spellpower to arcane mages that it does to every other caster, arcane mages' Mana Adept mastery makes the mana increase from intellect critical. Arcane Blast, the pivotal spell in arcane's rotation, has a static mana cost that is only based on mage base mana and not their mana after gear. Because of this, the more intellect you have means the more Arcane Blasts you can fit in at higher mana levels, meaning more damage through mastery.
No more scaling mana pools
This system is entirely changing in Mists of Pandaria. Intellect will no longer increase anyone's mana. Mana pools are becoming normalized, and spell costs are being adjusted to reflect that. (Arcane Blast is 5% of base mana on live but 1% in MoP beta.)
We're also losing the mana regeneration currently offered by Mage Armor but getting 300% increased mana regeneration through Mana Attunement. It also looks like haste might become our mana regeneration tool of choice, similar to spirit on a healer, due to the datamined ability Nether Attunement.
Spell and mechanic changes
Mana regeneration isn't the only thing changing for arcane come Mists of Pandaria. As Archmage Pants explained earlier this month, Arcane Charge has been added to arcane on the beta. It's built by casting Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles, consumed by casting Arcane Barrage, and increases the damage of all the above abilities by 25% per charge. It also causes your Arcane Barrage to hit an extra enemy per charge, meaning your AB will be able to hit up to five targets, and it causes your Arcane Blast to cost 150% more mana per charge.
In addition to that, there are other changes to our spells, such as the aforementioned change to Arcane Blast's mana cost. Arcane Missiles is still free, and as far as I can tell, it is active all the time. Arcane Barrage has the added AoE component and has been changed to benefit from Arcane Charges. It also seems to deal higher base damage, making it an actual potent damage-dealing spell for the first time.
If I'm right and Arcane Missiles doesn't actually proc from anything, this is what I assume will be the basics of our rotation in Mists of Pandaria: Arcane Missiles/Arcane Blast will be used to stack charges. Missiles will be used any time you need to manage your mana, such as when you bursted low and need to regen or if you're trying to stay above 80% mana. Arcane Blast will still be the highest priority spell, used either in burst phases or just to do more damage.
Arcane Barrage will have two main uses. First, as always, it will be our go-to mobile spell. Second, it will be used to clear stacks of Arcane Charge, hopefully doing respectable damage in the process. It seems to be mana-free in MoP, which means ArB is the only spell in our normal rotation that costs us mana.
The real trick of MoP damage dealing is going to be figuring out the sweet spot between mana consumption and maximum damage dealing. I'm sure different combinations of blast and missiles will be used at differing mana levels; you might four stack with Arcane Blast when you're at 100% mana, or weave two ArBs and two AMs when you're approaching 80. Tactical stack clearing with Barrage will be a must, as it's a fair assumption to assume Blizzard will balance so that using Arcane Missiles at four stacks will be a DPS loss.
All in all, the changes in store for arcane have me somewhat excited. This is shocking, as I've spent most of this expansion hating arcane and wishing PvE frost were somewhat viable. I believe Blizzard has done a really good job of keeping the feel of the spec while making some nice quality of life changes and doing a good job of addressing prevailing balance issues. Now, if Blizzard would only send me a beta invite so I could actually test my theories, I'd be a happy camper.
Every week, Arcane Brilliance teleports you inside the wonderful world of mages and then hurls a Fireball in your face. Start out with our recent beginner's guide to being a mage, then check out our three-part State of the Mage columns on arcane, fire and frost. Don't forget to look at some of the addons your mage should probably be using.Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, (Mage) Arcane Brilliance, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Quaza Mar 31st 2012 8:13PM
From what I've heard from my friend, Arcane Missiles is still proc-based. Mana managing is still done through stacks. The change simply means that if there IS a Missiles proc, you'll want to use it, and use Barrage to clear the stacks instead.
On a side note, I believe he mentioned something about the procs stacking up to 2.
Urza Apr 1st 2012 11:37AM
Is Missile Barrage still around?
Nate Mar 31st 2012 8:20PM
It says right in the tooltip that Arcane Missiles has a chance to proc from damaging spells. I'd bet that the best decision will be to use it every time it procs, since it saves mana, and since it, according to the Mists talent calculator, actually does more DPS than Arcane Blast (though this could change).
Dude Mar 31st 2012 8:26PM
I would not be surprised if mana attunement completely replaces nether attunement.
Imnick Mar 31st 2012 8:28PM
I don't want to be rude but this doesn't really match up very well with how most other people are reading the patch notes, Arcane Missiles still seems to be a proc (as there is a glyph that lets you stack the proc) and not only is that the case but it does more damage than Arcane Blast.
Not only that, but the increased mana cost of Arcane Blast means that we may well never spam four-stacked Arcane Blast again, according to the math on this http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t126895-mists_pandaria_all_specs/p3/#post2122748 Elitist Jerks post (though beta is of course beta and subject to change)
Common thinking for the arcane rotation of the future seems to be a priority list as follows:
Cast arcane missiles if you have two stacks of the proc to avoid wasted stacks
Keep up the DoT effect of your choice (though presumably one will be mathed out as the highest DPS increase, shame)
Arcane Missiles if you have 3 or 4 stacks of Arcane Charge
Arcane Barrage if you have 3 or 4 stacks of Arcane Charge but no Missiles proc
Arcane Blast
The jury is still out as to whether Invocation or Rune of Power will win out as the best choice of evocate replacement (with that 300% buff to mana regeneration, the fact that Invocation REMOVES all mana regeneration and thus also much of your mana benefit from haste becomes important), although I hope this too ends up being something without much DPS difference so I can use the one I like more
Josh Myers Mar 31st 2012 8:42PM
Definitely wasn't being rude. I missed the AM glyph, unfortunately, or that would have clued me in to there being a proc, which I did not see present on the spell tooltip when I wrote this.
As for the RoP vs the rest, I do hope they all come out to be balanced, as I really like the idea behind RoP and would hate to not be able to use it on standstill fights due to poor balancing.
warpknight6 Mar 31st 2012 10:48PM
Tis sad, how everything will most likely will end up cookie cutter anyway.
Which is why the talent system overhaul ends up being fairly pointless.
Unless, of course, Blizzard designs it with a mindset to avoid the theorycrafters discovering all the best possible choices, sneaky-like. I hope they do.
Jidan Apr 1st 2012 12:57AM
About invocation, small change on the calculator.
It seems it now only reduces mana regen by half. Maybe this is due to the haste interaction? At any rate, this may still be favored by haste heavy builds even if nether attunement doesn't pan out. I can imagine burning through *all* the mana, evocating, and then burning through all the mana again.
Michael Apr 1st 2012 3:37AM
Jidan:
I have to assume that playing like that is going to be suboptimal. Because of mastery making your spells weaker as you burn, as well as the fact that you'd suddenly start spending probably 1/4 of your time evocating...I doubt AB/evocate/AB/evocate is going to be a real successful style of play.
hcobb Mar 31st 2012 8:50PM
Not that there's anything wrong with Josh Myers' article, but I would like to wish Archmage Pants a speedy return to this column.
Tul Mar 31st 2012 9:07PM
Does anyone in beta have tested frost yet? Is it really viable?
aelders5124 Mar 31st 2012 9:29PM
I can only assume Blizzard decided the time needed for Warlocks to have green fire was hogging the time to make Friday viable, hence the delay on green fire!
But seriously, i hope frost is PVE viable. So, so bad.
Artificial Apr 1st 2012 4:41PM
It kinda doesn't matter if it is or isn't right now. They're still working on rotations and haven't tweaked damage numbers yet. DPS numbers on any spec on the beta right now are pretty much meaningless.
Notricus Mar 31st 2012 9:36PM
Will the new Nether Tempest DoT from the talents in beta go into the rotation at all?
http://mop.wowhead.com/mists-of-pandaria-talent-calculator#mD4
foust117 Mar 31st 2012 9:51PM
The cynic in me after five years of playing a mage up until last year still says arcane is still a shadow of it's former glory (Ulduar era arcane). Spec still seems as bland as it was two years ago.
Pyromelter Mar 31st 2012 10:22PM
If that haste ability makes it to live, I think this might bring it back to that ulduar level. I remember back at that time (it lasted through ToC as well as the first month or two of ICC), mages would be stacking haste like crazy, giving you that real awesome gatling gun arcane missiles effect. I remember going through rawr and all the different rotations that elitist jerks went through, was pretty fun at the time.
Of course, as soon as fire became viable, I switched over to that as my primary dps spec, and never looked back.
But yeah, haste-stacking arcane is definitely the most fun play-style for arcane in my opinion.
Iglet Apr 1st 2012 5:52AM
I loved that Gatling gun missile. I would spell steal the haste buff in the revamped ZG just to get that back. I hope that the haste buff does make it to live since it feels like they want missiles to be a big part of our rotation and having lots of haste would make it fun to play/watch.
Snuzzle Mar 31st 2012 10:37PM
When did frost become NON viable in PVE? I know it was at least up to 4.2. It was never top DPS but it could perform respectably. What happened between then and now to make people start griping about its viability? Or is this more people confusing "top spec" with "viable"?
Imnick Apr 1st 2012 3:47AM
It was good at the start of 4.0 until both Fire and Arcane were buffed ahead of it, got a brief resurgence as the best DPS spec in 4.2 if you did not have Shard of Woe but did have four pieces of heroic T12 gear and then dropped back down behind the other two again with the loss of the T12 set bonus
Naryn Apr 1st 2012 5:44AM
Viable in comparison to the rest of the Spec's but after 4.2 Arcane was at the very top on almost every fight barring Alysrazor which was fire at the top.
A Pure DPS should always be looking at the difference between their top spec and their desired spec as their only job is to deal as much damage as possible, if it's the difference of say 1-2k usually you have the choice, so in 4.2 Frost was viable but only in BiS gear and even then Arcane surpassed it by 3k dps in theory, much more in reality.
It's also a strange fact of the mage class that we tend to all group together whenever one of the spec's becomes the best, you don't really see it with other classes, but if say Fire gets a 5% buff and comes out 0.2% better dps you can bet that the majority of mages will swap to fire.