Question on Arcane Mage

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Hello, I got some questions regarding Arcane spec as a mage. I play a mage in the 19 bracket as frost which I find fun. Though I have to admit that I'm a little sick of playing frost and would rather not want to do it at lvl 70 as well.

How "bad" is arcane compared to frost and fire, is it viable to some extent?
 
amazing damage, but pretty bad survivability

sort of like a glasscannon, sit in background spamming arcane blast, type of class

roved CS is very good tho
 
threesets said:
amazing damage, but pretty bad survivability

sort of like a glasscannon, sit in background spamming arcane blast, type of class

roved CS is very good tho
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Sounds like something I might want to try out. I'm more of a person that enjoys BG's more than arenas anyway. I found chardev 9 in the BiS-PvP thread -- is that chardev accurate? Talents & Glyphs - Game Guide - World of Warcraft this is my current spec, feel free to criticise it.
 
you def want the arcane concentration talent, because you get a 15 % increase in crit when you get clear casting
 
I don't think that chardev is completely right since its not spell pen capped- but in a pvp scenario, you'd want a tad bit more resil, I like sticking with 400-500+, I dont play a mage personally, but I can tell you that they get blown the f up as arcane. For bgs, if you have a pocket healer- i'd go decked to the teeth intel and little resil because you'll kill everthing within seconds of arc blast spamming- in an arena situation, you'd want a lot more resil for obvious reasons. Sorry if im kinda out of it on my explanations, i just got up, but arcane is imo the weakest spec but a relatively high skill cap- so if you are an exceptional player, you could easily make it work since mages are so faceroll to begin with.
 
Dagamela said:
I don't think that chardev is completely right since its not spell pen capped- but in a pvp scenario, you'd want a tad bit more resil, I like sticking with 400-500+, I dont play a mage personally, but I can tell you that they get blown the f up as arcane. For bgs, if you have a pocket healer- i'd go decked to the teeth intel and little resil because you'll kill everthing within seconds of arc blast spamming- in an arena situation, you'd want a lot more resil for obvious reasons. Sorry if im kinda out of it on my explanations, i just got up, but arcane is imo the weakest spec but a relatively high skill cap- so if you are an exceptional player, you could easily make it work since mages are so faceroll to begin with.
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Sounds good then :) i'll experiment a bit with gearing^^
 
I'd go with something like this chardev 9
You need pretty much all the resilience you can get as arcane. Many people think that full pve gear with int gems is bis for mages, this is not true. Mages are really squishy in the end, especially as arcane when you lose your 8k absorb. As I said, try to get as much resilience as possible, if you're planning to go arcane. You are going to need it. Your 4 stacked blasts with arcane power on should still hit 5k+ on resilience targets.

About talents. I find Arcane Concentration and Arcane Potency trash. More RNG to RNG, arcane does not rely on crits like frost. Besides there are better ways to spend your points. If you wish you can move 1 point from Focus Magic to Incarter's Absorbion, but I'd keep focus magic because it offers extra dispel protection and 3% crit chance is always nice for your partner, and to you. Incarter's Aborsbion exists mainly for the knockback effect anyway.

If you're planning to go arena I'd suggest playing with either dpriest or rogue. As arcane setupping burst is even more important as frost. You might find yourself playing defensive for a long time before you manage set up your burst, but if you do it properly something is bound to die. If you're a type who just likes to play crazy offensive, arcane is not for you.

For BGs you can just pick full pve gear with int gems and stay behind.

Anyway, with 5.0 patch coming live in less than a week I'd suggest you to wait. Arcane is getting revamped and will become entirely different spec from what it is now.
 
Friyn said:
I'd go with something like this chardev 9
You need pretty much all the resilience you can get as arcane. Many people think that full pve gear with int gems is bis for mages, this is not true. Mages are really squishy in the end, especially as arcane when you lose your 8k absorb. As I said, try to get as much resilience as possible, if you're planning to go arcane. You are going to need it. Your 4 stacked blasts with arcane power on should still hit 5k+ on resilience targets.

About talents. I find Arcane Concentration and Arcane Potency trash. More RNG to RNG, arcane does not rely on crits like frost. Besides there are better ways to spend your points. If you wish you can move 1 point from Focus Magic to Incarter's Absorbion, but I'd keep focus magic because it offers extra dispel protection and 3% crit chance is always nice for your partner, and to you. Incarter's Aborsbion exists mainly for the knockback effect anyway.

If you're planning to go arena I'd suggest playing with either dpriest or rogue. As arcane setupping burst is even more important as frost. You might find yourself playing defensive for a long time before you manage set up your burst, but if you do it properly something is bound to die. If you're a type who just likes to play crazy offensive, arcane is not for you.

For BGs you can just pick full pve gear with int gems and stay behind.

Anyway, with 5.0 patch coming live in less than a week I'd suggest you to wait. Arcane is getting revamped and will become entirely different spec from what it is now.
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Thanks for the great reply. But I'm not sure about the resi stacking... I mean, if I were to survive I could might as well just go Frost. I'll just play around a bit and see what my coclusion is :) thanks for everyones' inputs!
 
Well frost survivability is pretty nice, but I'd still roll with ~400res frost also. If your shields get spamdispelled globaling you isn't really that hard.
 
I play mainly a mage as well and have to say, arcane is total crap atm. Even full stacks arcane blast doesnt hit that hard, they define squishy, and they attract way too much attention. 1v1 you can set up some great kills on tough classes, but the damage while being attacked drops to very little.

That said, if you stay in a zerg, with heals that pay attention, you can stick in the back and do some massive tab-targeting. But this requires targets that are all blind, as almost everyone will B line it for the arcane mage.

Also very easy to counterspell, so mage vs mage i feel its the easiest to counter. One counterspell and everything you have to get away/stop/give damage is gone. At 70 as well you cant get into the other talent trees for really nice and helpful frost or fire talents.


But really, mop talents hit in less than a week (i believe) so everything is changing. Combustion is very OP right now, but fire loses living bomb at 70, so might not work well. you can take some more defensive spells, and mix and match a lot more things. Its going to be interesting to see.
 
I'm dog at disc, mage I played with is pretty dog. This game was a mirror, except our mage was Arcane.

Conclusion: arcane>frost

wiskelol.jpg
 
Every since arcane became viable it's been superior to frost in most mage v mage scenarios.

Also @ Karr, at some point of this season highest mage in US 3s was arcane King Abni(2.7k or something). Set up your burst, if it fails turtle like there's no tomorrow till you can set it up again.
 
Was about to say what the dude over me said about frost vs arcane...
If you want some lols in the BGs you could also try haste gear.
Been running around with 40%ish and nice int(squishy as hell yeah), but quite fun to sheep stunn and manage to pump tons of AB before they can do anything:)
 
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