Little bit lost with Arcane.

[Coruthas]

Hi All,

So I've been swapping my spec, I just seem to enjoy arcane more for some reason, but having been fire for the last few months I'm sometimes a little weeee smidge lost. I had a good solid look at the guide on here and it improved my viability a lot, I did, however, get a little lost on the stat priority, Simulation Craft tells me more versatility, some on here say crit, others mastery as per 7.2.

I think I've got my rotation kinda down by now and I'm starting to get to the finer points like saving my PoM for when Whispers in the Dark has a slow mode or evocate right before it goes slow if low on mana and so on, but stat prio is still baffling me a bit, and all input is welcome.

Here is my character: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/f ... has/simple" target="_blank

All the Friday morning love,

Coru

[Bupawo]

Get the neck from arcway increasing mana pool by 5%. It's pretty op on arcane lol. I think it's been proven that whisper does reduce GCD too, so no keeping PoM for whispers. There's no stat prio since you need a balance of everything tho. I basically have Crit>haste>versa>=mastery. You absolutely want 20% for more spells into rop. Mastery helps with rotation quite a bit but isn't to good at actually increasing your damage.

[Coruthas]

It's what I'm looking for thank you, now if someone could point my noob arse towards a guide to what talents to use in what fight in nighthold that would be good?

[Bupawo]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/1 ... pec=Arcane" target="_blank This is what top parsers take. Keep in mind that charged up should only be taken if you have the kilt since it synergies quite well. As you can see talent diversity is a problem right now lol.

[Coruthas]

Oooohh logs are goo for the soul.

[testacular]

Few things here from my own long term experience:

1) Whispers in the dark debuff
PoM + Whispers debuff = OK. While it does affect GCD it is still better than hardcasting anything. Though I often use things like barrage + charged up + 1 cast + barrage during debuff. But this is really minor thing.

2) stat priority
Now this is so very much unlike fire where you just grab one stat. With Arcane, you need to find a level of comfort while playing and it all revolves around Mastery which, however, you don't want to have! The general idea is that Mastery makes your rotation viable and you can cast at 4 charges - obvious, right? Not really because it also has the worst dmg scaling ratio so you want to have just enough to enable your rotation.
Now if you don't have arcane legendaries, you need more Mastery. Same if you don't have NH 2-piece set. That's why many guides say you need a lot of mastery, because they don't take into consideration legendaries and other stuff which makes you save your mana or generate it faster. For instance just having the Kilt legendary, you can drop like 15% mastery, maybe more.

So go ahead and try experimenting with how much mastery you currently need to make it feel comfortable while still dealing out enough dmg. Don't forget that some movement phases mean direct mana regeneration as well and you can drop it even lower.

As for other stats, Haste should be at about 18% (the level where you squeeze in one extra Arcane Blast into Arcane Power), but you can go even higher if you like. Checking in SimCraft and confirming that with my own experience all stats (except mastery) have almost identical effect on your dps with crit being a tiny bit better than the rest.

3) talents
Amp/Slipstream/RoP/CU/Chrono/Ero/OP
-> yes, CU can be good without Kilt too
-> slipstream versus shimmer does not matter, choose what you can play with better
-> this works for all NH bosses as a "universal template" (except Skorpyron where full AOE is better) but your mileage may vary and logs can help you dig deeper if you are tryhard

[Forrader]

Few things here from my own long term experience:
3) talents
Amp/Slipstream/RoP/CU/Chrono/Ero/OP
-> yes, CU can be good without Kilt too
-> slipstream versus shimmer does not matter, choose what you can play with better
-> this works for all NH bosses as a "universal template" (except Skorpyron where full AOE is better) but your mileage may vary and logs can help you dig deeper if you are tryhard

Hi,
could you provide some logs referring to your long term experience? I'm doubt a bit about CU without Kilt -
generally it's a dps loss on almost every fight in NH except maybe Krosus just because there is always a moment where you can barrage multiple targets. Resonance is a better choice without Kilt.

Another question about 18% haste and squeezing additional AB into AP - this theory just not really relevant. You are usually squeezing several Arcane Missles thus rotation with the number of ABs just doesn't work. Additionally such things like Metronome and Wishpers devaluate haste. 18% is more psychological barrier in most cases which makes you feel more comfortable playing with arcane.

[maynord]

Few things here from my own long term experience:
3) talents
Amp/Slipstream/RoP/CU/Chrono/Ero/OP
-> yes, CU can be good without Kilt too
-> slipstream versus shimmer does not matter, choose what you can play with better
-> this works for all NH bosses as a "universal template" (except Skorpyron where full AOE is better) but your mileage may vary and logs can help you dig deeper if you are tryhard

Hi,
could you provide some logs referring to your long term experience? I'm doubt a bit about CU without Kilt -
generally it's a dps loss on almost every fight in NH except maybe Krosus just because there is always a moment where you can barrage multiple targets. Resonance is a better choice without Kilt.

Another question about 18% haste and squeezing additional AB into AP - this theory just not really relevant. You are usually squeezing several Arcane Missles thus rotation with the number of ABs just doesn't work. Additionally such things like Metronome and Wishpers devaluate haste. 18% is more psychological barrier in most cases which makes you feel more comfortable playing with arcane.

TBH there are many top 100 M Krosus/Augur logs with non-Kilt users using CU, it's not just there for refunding mana with Barrage and is actually really handy if you want build AMs with low Charges, and then jump into a short burst phase. It also gives you more control over Chrono Shift.

I totally agree with the Haste comment though, there isn't really a benchmark for it and I personally try not to focus too much into it.

[Coruthas]

Few things here from my own long term experience:

1) Whispers in the dark debuff
PoM + Whispers debuff = OK. While it does affect GCD it is still better than hardcasting anything. Though I often use things like barrage + charged up + 1 cast + barrage during debuff. But this is really minor thing.

2) stat priority
Now this is so very much unlike fire where you just grab one stat. With Arcane, you need to find a level of comfort while playing and it all revolves around Mastery which, however, you don't want to have! The general idea is that Mastery makes your rotation viable and you can cast at 4 charges - obvious, right? Not really because it also has the worst dmg scaling ratio so you want to have just enough to enable your rotation.
Now if you don't have arcane legendaries, you need more Mastery. Same if you don't have NH 2-piece set. That's why many guides say you need a lot of mastery, because they don't take into consideration legendaries and other stuff which makes you save your mana or generate it faster. For instance just having the Kilt legendary, you can drop like 15% mastery, maybe more.

So go ahead and try experimenting with how much mastery you currently need to make it feel comfortable while still dealing out enough dmg. Don't forget that some movement phases mean direct mana regeneration as well and you can drop it even lower.

As for other stats, Haste should be at about 18% (the level where you squeeze in one extra Arcane Blast into Arcane Power), but you can go even higher if you like. Checking in SimCraft and confirming that with my own experience all stats (except mastery) have almost identical effect on your dps with crit being a tiny bit better than the rest.

3) talents
Amp/Slipstream/RoP/CU/Chrono/Ero/OP
-> yes, CU can be good without Kilt too
-> slipstream versus shimmer does not matter, choose what you can play with better
-> this works for all NH bosses as a "universal template" (except Skorpyron where full AOE is better) but your mileage may vary and logs can help you dig deeper if you are tryhard

Stuff like this was exactly what I was looking for!

[testacular]

TBH there are many top 100 M Krosus/Augur logs with non-Kilt users using CU, it's not just there for refunding mana with Barrage and is actually really handy if you want build AMs with low Charges, and then jump into a short burst phase. It also gives you more control over Chrono Shift.

That's pretty much what I meant. It happens quite a few times that your amount of charges is "out of sync" with current encounter - there is a deadly minion you need to burst and you are just at 0 charges meaning next few seconds you won't do much damage. With CU, you can easily manipulate your charges. Plus the chrono shift goodness ofc

I totally agree with the Haste comment though, there isn't really a benchmark for it and I personally try not to focus too much into it.

It's not a pure theory it is based on amount of blasts in one AP assuming you don't get over 3 missile procs. Which is unlikely, granted, but still might happen. Anyway, I agree, that it's more a threshold which, if crossed, makes the playstyle smoother because you feel you are actually doing something. Try playing with lower haste - it is about as entertaining as watching a snail race. Some weaker adds/mobs (or lower M+) die so fast, you can't even pull off a blast and you are down to mashing explosion only. So yea, on paper, other stats might prove paper. But with real mechanics in play, you need to move and you cannot cast AB while moving. So having certain amount of haste proves really worthy overall.