***Post edited on the 28th of August with such changes for arcane ahead***

There are countless threads nowadays in our boards asking for advice as to how to raid with arcane and after posting in 3-4 of them and see a couple others being created, I've decided to try and help out as much as I can so all the questions can be summarised in one post. I'll either type it or paste stuff that I've myself written on other threads. Here goes! :)

-Advantages of being arcane:

Your hit needs are far lesser than that of a fire/ttw or frostfire build. That leaves you room to gear for more haste/crit with ease.

Controllable burst: unlike fire-based builds whose burst is random and based on crits/procs an arcane mage will decide when and how he wants that burst applied. It's the one advantage you have to exploit if you want to push competitive numbers.

No threat worries whatsoever - unless the tank dies or it's a threat sensitive fight with threat resets, it's nearly impossible to pull threat as arcane with a good tank, unlike fire builds.

Reactive playstyle: unlike fire builds whose rotation is a priority system arcane mages can tweak their rotation according to how much mana they can afford and how much HP their target has.

-Disadvantages of being arcane:

Mana, mana, mana. The blue bar will always be the first of your concerns. Unlike fire, you will have to use evocate at least once on every bossfight. If you can't guarantee a safe one your dps will go down. Replenishment is a must to keep up with heavy mana rotations and so is having a decent spirit rate.

No utility whatsoever. Leaving intellect/tables/focus magic aside arcane mages don't even bring crit buff so if it's utility what you are after you may consider other builds.

AoE capacity. Although fire/ttw isn't a great build either in this sense, the main AoEing spell arcane has requires you to get close to the target which can be both frustrating and dangerous. You will find yourself using frost/fire spells when AoE is needed.

-Build:

This is the build I'm using: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#ofoVcu0IzxGuMxedcZbhf0o:Nzwo0m

Explanation: Bear into mind, arcane talent tree is pretty bloated at the moment so while there's a few "must" talents that every mage will pick - torment the weak, missile barrage, etc - there's not enough points to pick everything that could possibly improve your raiding. For instance, I've left Arcane Stability out of my builds because during raids I'm hardly in a situation where I'm missing it. I've also left Magic Attunement out because I find range isn't a concern at all except for some situations.

But you have to understand these were my personal choices. If for example you find increased range a necessity then by all means go for it, so long as you don't drop any fundamental talent!

I would add as tip to use the filling points in frost tree and spec Frost Warding instead of Ice Shards. What would you prefer as arcane, higher crits on blizzard AoE or a 30% chance to negate a fire/frost based damage spell and restore as much mana as that spell would've caused? In fights such as Ignis, Hodir, Mimiron, Razorscale, it's an invaluable talent... Pop it before Ignis uses Flame Jets and watch how you absorb all the damage and regen 5k-6k mana for free!


-Glyphs and armor:

You should use Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast and Molten Armor glyphs. You will be using Molten Armor during bossfights. As for Mage Armor, never glyph for it - with Arc.meditation and Mage Armor up you'll be capped at 100% regen already without the need of a further glyph - but don't hesitate to use it at lower gear levels or during long fights if you find mana an issue. As gear gets better, though, you will find using Molten Armor is more than enough.



-Gearing:

These are the steps I usually follow when gearing up as arcane:

Getting hitcapped: 11% off gear without raidbuffs, 8% with raidbuffs and even 7% if there's a draenei in your team, if the balance druid/spriest dies tho I'd have a weapon with hit ready - I use a staff from Freya 10 man - to be equipped as losing 3% hit midfight will mean dps will go down.

Here comes the hard part: have to balance your gear so you have high spellpower, high haste - haste > crit for arcane - decent spirit rate all while keeping a decent crit rate. (I aim for around 20% crit unbuffed) Luckily for us arcane mages there are plenty of items with high spellpower, haste and spirit - for instance, check Lifespark Visage off Flame Leviathan - Ulduar 10 man. That kind of item is brilliant for us.

So a quick recap: hitcapped > spellpower / haste > crit all while keeping a decent spirit rate.


-Gems:

These are the ones I normally use:

Red: Runed Scarlet Ruby (19 spellpower)

Yellow: Reckless Monarch Topaz (9 spellpower - 8 haste)

Blue: Purified Twilight Opal (9 spellpower - 8 spirit) - although you could also use a Glowing Twilight Opal (9 spellpower - 12 stamina)

Meta: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (21 crit rating and 3% dmg increase in crits) - been theorycrafted to death and this is by far the best meta for mages regardless of spec.

As for the epic gems which came out when 3.2 was released, the choices remain the same gems-wise: Runed Cardenal Ruby (23 spellpower) for red sockets, Reckless Ametrine (12 spellpower - 10 haste) for yellow sockets, and Purified Dreadstone (12 spellpower - 10 spirit) for blue sockets. Meta gem choice remains the same: Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.


-Rotation (3.2.2 updated):

These were the changes announced by GC a few weeks ago:

* Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 130% instead of 200%.

Let's see, with the new changes, this will be the mana cost for Arc.Blast on each charge:

0 stacks = 215
1 stack = 591
2 stacks = 967
3 stacks = 1343
4 stacks = 1720

* Missile Barrage: The effect from triggering this talent now removes the mana cost of Arcane Missiles. In addition, the chance for Arcane Blast to trigger this talent is now 8/16/24/32/40%. All other listed spells continue to have a 4/8/12/16/20% chance to trigger it.

Yeah, you read that one right! The new effect for Missile Barrage talent, by the way, isn't replacing the old one - making the missiles fire in half the duration - but being added to it. Good news for us arcaneheads.

The rotation will now be the following: Use Arc.Blast 4 times and since each cast now has a 40% chance to proc Missile Barrage you'll have the proc up nearly for sure. Fire those Arc.Missiles! To sum it up, Arc.Blast x 4 --> A.Missiles, repeat.



-A concern for the arcane mage come 3.2.2: is it worth to push more dps at the cost of a less fun-to-play spec?:

See these numbers to check the dps calculated for each rotation according to Simcraft from EJ:

AB spam: 7130.751 dps, 752.7504 mps
ABx4+AMissiles (With Missile Barrage proc): 6988.205 dps, 227.2016 mps

Traditionally, an arc.mage juggles with mana in the sense that the more mana he uses, the more dps he pushes. But as shown by simcraft, with 3.2.2 changes, spamming Arc.Blast increases mana-per-second greatly where as the dps increase is but a measly 150ish dps. Why would you spend three times as much mana for slightly 150 more dps? This means arc.mages have no choice but to use ONE rotation and as such destroys what made this spec fun to play to begin with: the fact you could adjust your rotation to how much damage you wanted dealt - and how much mana you could afford.

However, GC has acknowledged this in a post one week ago. Here's the linkie: http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/19110160602-the-new-real-top-mage-questions.html

To sum up what he said, they realise that dealing with mana was what made players feel attracted by arcane so they will try to make some changes before 3.2.2 is released so this "fun" factor when speccing arcane remains. We shall see about whether those words turn into something real so I'll leave this section open for updates. :)


-Evocation: the blue "whoosh!" and you:

Evocating safely is a must to push numbers as arcane. Actually - contrary to what people say about arcane being bad in long fights - if you can evocate when needed you can keep a heavy mana rotation forever. Generally speaking what you should do is learning boss abilities - i.e. the ones who will ruin your evo - and time evocation accordingly.

For instance, wait for Ignis to cast Flame Jets before using it, or when doing Sarth with drakes up wait until the drakes have spawned their voidzone somewhere before popping evo - so it doesn't spawn ontop of your sorry mage arse while you are evocating.

It usually helps to have a discipline priest shield you before you evocate in high damage fights and I have a whispering macro ready for that. Not only do those bubbles absorb up to 6k-7k with raidbuffs but they get mana back when casting them thanks to Rapture talent.

Another tip - thanks Cinondra - is profiting of casting speed buffs - icy veins, heroism/bloodlust, procs from trinkets - to evocate even quicker to reduce the chance to have it interrupted. As a rule try to use the last second of such procs so you squeeze the most dps out of it.


That was it, hope it helped, good luck for all the arcane-heads out there. :)

Well done. There are some things I disagree with, but I'm not sure they're even big enough to be worth mentioning.

I'll settle with:
1) I don't think crit is something you need to ever worry about, with its low rewards as arcane just stick with what you "inevitably" get and go SP > haste > crit
2) If you skip the mana gem during your cooldown phase it's possible you'll reach 40% mana with IV still on you, if this happens you can shave a second or two off your Evocation. Especially noteworthy if you're not using 2xT7

Thanks Cin! Adding 2) to the post as I agree with it but silly me, I forgot about it. :)

Well done! :D

I've been Arcane mage myself since 3.1 and never looked back! I usually out DPS most classes except for Warlocks >.<

DoT intense fights FFB might win me as well :P

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Q u o t e:
This has been added to the compilation of great guides atop the mage forum. Nice work, Wrathyr!

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Woot, thanks. :)

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Q u o t e:
This has been added to the compilation of great guides atop the mage forum. Nice work, Wrathyr!

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Woot!

A blue poster on the Mage forum?!
Quick! Grab him and let's feed him our collective tears while tied to a plank upside down!

Also, nice effort Wrathyr. Commendable through the eyes of my own laziness:)

Grats to sticky mention, Wrathyr. I was busy chasing a druid around boxes when you PM'd me. :D

nice

Do one for FFB now

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Q u o t e:
nice

Do one for FFB now

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I haven't used a fire-based build for raiding in months, can't write a guide about something I'm not an expert in, sorry! :)

Thanks for sharing that Gadzina. :)

By the way, I never said you have to evocate during cooldowns, I said it's good to profit of a casting speed boost's last second to pop evocation so as to reduce the chance to have it interrupted. Did you even stop to read what was written?

I am getting those arcane barrage crits in every fight, by the way, not just in "some" and when there's no missile barrage proc, casting Arc. Barrage at the end of Arc.Blast x3 is higher DPS than using non-hasted AM. So if my mana can sustain it I actually get benefit out of casting Arc. Barrage in that situation. If your mana can't sustain it, it's your own problem.

You seem to know very little about raiding as discipline priests are currently casting PW:S on cooldown because they get mana back through it (and a spelldamage boost with t8 x 4 setbonus) so asking for a PW:S through a whisper not only doesn't require the raidleader to personally come and tell me what to do but also it makes the disc.priest happy.

Now is there anything else you wish to comment on? And what's more important, could you do it without getting personal?

There are only a few things out of place with this tutorial but overall it is very good and well-intended.

My grievances with it:
- Arcane's hit is not an advantage, it's a problem. With Ulduar BIS gear we are overcapped even with 0 hit talents. I already dropped Arcane Focus because I was horribly over-capped. You can't really dodge Frost's Precision since there's nothing better to get.
- Mana is not a problem for Arcane with proper experience and decent gear. Only if you over-do it you'll get OOM and become useless, but if you don't stretch it for like 4 AB's + ABarr you can't really go OOM.
Glyph of Mana Gem isn't really needed. Just go with pure dps.
- As for ABarr / AM to finish off ABlast Stacks.. I've found it to be depending on the situation. 80% of the time I use Arcane Barrage but there are times like the last second of a proc (lightweave / t8 bonus / trinket) that give a significant boost of SP. In case there's one of these buffs close to being finished, I use AM.

As for the above alt's comments, some are founded but this is just stupid in most cases:

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Q u o t e:
during Arcane power its best just to cast arcane blast till missile barrage procces

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Having a mentality like this can get you OOM in 10 seconds. 3-stack ABlast makes another Arcane Blast cost ~1800 mana. With Arcane Power that makes it ~2200 mana / 2 seconds. At best, use 4AB + Abarr but for the love of cake, Mbarr has a 20% chance to proc.. if you get unlucky you could go OOM in 10 seconds right after an evocate and that makes you do your wand's DPS for the rest of the fight.

EDIT:
The best thing I love about arcane is:
- Frost Warding. There's quite a lot of frost or fire splash damage in Ulduar.. this talent makes most fights seem trivial mana-wise.
- Incanter's absorption. On most fights, due to splash damage and priest shields or fire / frost ward, you'll get 5% of your HP as spell power. Even with 20k hp, that's still a MASSIVE boost.
It still works with spellstealable shields like the one from Iron Council. I just steal that, stay in an overload to break it, get a 1k SP boost and 50% damage boost because it broke.. shazaaam.

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Q u o t e:
My grievances with it:
- Arcane's hit is not an advantage, it's a problem. With Ulduar BIS gear we are overcapped even with 0 hit talents. I already dropped Arcane Focus because I was horribly over-capped. You can't really dodge Frost's Precision since there's nothing better to get.

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Oh I'd never looked at it that way, but that's probably because I've been lucky with drops thus far and been able to gather lots of gear with spelldamage/haste/spirit and no hit at all! But I guess it could be the case, especially if you are using more than 2 pieces off our t8. But now I've got a really balanced set of gear, swap bracers with hit in and out according to whether there's a spriest/balance druid in the raid or not. (in 10 mans, for instance, there's not always either of those)

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Q u o t e:
- Mana is not a problem for Arcane with proper experience and decent gear. Only if you over-do it you'll get OOM and become useless, but if you don't stretch it for like 4 AB's + ABarr you can't really go OOM.

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Oh but this guide is also intended for people starting out with raiding and not all of them got the "proper experience". Having been arcane for long tho I agree that when you get used to it, mana management not only isn't hard but also great fun. :)

But you gotta get started off somewhere and I thought it was wise to warn newcomers that speccing arcane means you gotta worry over your mana and manage it properly, otherwise it becomes a "disadvantage" - had to list that somewhere, hehe.

Edit: As for incanter's absorption... I wish I could get it but I never seem to be able to find enough points, such a bloated tree. :/

Arcane Power, Icy Veins, Trinkets etc. should all be used during Bloodlust/Heroism for maximum performance.

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Q u o t e:
Arcane Power, Icy Veins, Trinkets etc. should all be used during Bloodlust/Heroism for maximum performance.

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Aye, was planning to add a "Cooldowns management" section but thanks for reminding. :)

Due to my own lousy planning there's not enough space for the cooldown sections so I'll just add it on this post. Excuse the sloppiness, I hardly do this guide-creating stuff. :)

-Cooldowns management:

As arcane the biggest advantage you bring to a raid is having possibly the highest burst as a caster and that's thanks to cooldowns. Those cooldowns are however on different timers: Arcane power and Presence of Mind are on a 1.4 minutes timer, icy veins is - talented - on a 2.4 timer and I have the additional difficulty of squeezing another 2 minutes cd in - from a trinket of mine. As such, your cooldowns won't always be up at the same time. I usually divide fights into two types with regards to how you gotta manage cooldowns:

Special fights where burst is needed in a very precise moment or where you get special buffs increasing your damage. There are tons of examples for this: XTT when heart is exposed, Vezax when there are patches of shadow on the ground, Mimiron p3 when the flying machine is bound to the ground, Razorscale, Kologarn when he grabs somebody, Hodir with all the damage increasing buffs, Iron Council where Molgeim may - or not - spawn a rune of power near you that will boost your damage. In all these fights, try to wait until the boss becomes vulnerable or you get all the possible damage boosters before popping your cooldowns.

Normal fights: Usually Heroism/Bloodlust is popped right at the beginning of the fight once threat's settled. Once heroism is up don't hesitate and use your AP/IV/optional trinket macro!

-Alright, I now know when to pop them first, but how do I use them afterwards given that they're on different timers?

After IV/AP have faded, the first one to come up again is AP. I recommend to use it right away when it's up even if IV is still on CD and to use it a third time along with IV when both cooldowns are up again. So a quick recap: 1.- Fight starts, heroism is used, pop everything! 2.- After 1.4 minutes, use AP just by itself. 3.- Use AP/IV again when both are ready again.

That is always in those fights when you don't need burst in a concrete moment. If you're facing one of those, I will point you to the paragraph above about such "special" fights. :)


-How do I use Presence of Mind?

Generally the best use for it single target nuking-wise is chaining 2x Arc.Blast then use this macro:
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Arcane Blast(Rank 4)
That way, you will add the 3rd charge instantly and bring some burst.

Another two uses off the top of my head would be when AOEing trash, pop PoM - you will get Arcane Potency Buff thanks to this - channel a single Blizzard spell - which will benefit from the Arc.Potenty buff - then use an instant Flamestrike then another Blizzard on top of it. Also when sheeping stuff it comes in handy to be able to poly things instantly - especially if you are sheep pulling. Either way, its short cooldown means you can use it with ease.

Simple and good guide.

Very good guide for arcane mages.

I'll add my 3 cents by saying that the playstyle I found doing better than the normal one is

Mage Armor + Mana Gem glyph
Keep spamming AB and use AM on MB (only on 3 stacks of AB) at all times.

With 4xT8 and Pandora's Plea this is way ahead of the game and I have been sustaining this in Ulduar (well Vezax aside obviously). It's been treating me better than Fire or FFB which I'm testing currently.

Also I prefer to have only 1/2 Arcane Sublety and use Ivisibilty midfight and have 2/5 Arcane Concentration.
Even if you're arcane specced Blizzard sadly is better for AoE than AE unless there is not hostile aoe and you have 40% threat reduction in Arcane.

As a newish 80 arcane mage, just starting raiding (yet to see naxx, but my guild farm OS and i do pretty well there-3.7-3.9k dps in blah gear) I love this guide. helpful, informative without being condescending, 90% of it releveant to me and the other 10% interesting for in the future. Gz, thank you and please post more :D