The “Help!” Post

Given that I’ve had an influx of people asking for advice recently, I’m going to try and consolidate questions and answers into posts every now and then. If you have any questions about the arcane playstyle in a raiding environment, feel free to reply to this post or drop me a private message on the forums.

So, let’s get this started!

Question: Do you really need 2 pieces of Tier 5 to be arcane?

• Yes and no. The 2 piece set bonus is amazing for arcane as your primary nuke gets 20% increased damage. You do not necessarily have to have the set bonus but your potential DPS is going to be gimped by not having it. If you’re just entering SSC / TK, I highly recommend gunning for those pieces before anything else (the legs and the shoulders are cakewalk to get with a decent guild). With 2.4’s release and the dying of a lot of Tier 5 level guilds it can be hard to come by… but I strongly urge you get them. A friend of mine, Shino, waited 6 months to get his.

Question: I have mages in my raid gemming for Intellect and Spirit. WTF?

• The goal of the 40/0/21 spec is to spam arcane blast for as long as you can. This means popping mana potions, mana gems, drums of restoration, innervates, shadow priests, gear with spirit / mp5 and to some extent (usually in extremity) stacking Int and Spirit gems. Why? Because the longer you spam Arcane Blast, the more DPS you do. It’s that simple. Sure, you can rotate in some frostbolts here and there or other spells, but the point of the 40/0/21 build is simple: keep up your mana and and Arcane Blast. As a raid leader, you can help out your mages a bit as well: give them a shadow priest and/or shaman(s) and to a more extreme degree, if your druids aren’t using their innervates, have them give it to an arcane mage that’s low on mana (they’ll love your healers forever). If they’re gemming for Int and Spirit, they either don’t have a large enough mana pool or improper raid support for their spec.

Question: Why 40/0/21? I am doing 50/0/11 in 4 MH/4 BT and enjoying most of my damage coming from AB spam and only using AM to drop the AB debuff when mana is getting low. I am using IV, but with loads of AB spam my DPS isn’t too improved by that. Therefore I am very perplexed about 40/0/21 build. Please elaborate the differences between 50/0/11 and 40/0/21 and why do you think the latter is better.

• Comparatively, AM to Frostbolt (due to the points in your traditional 40/0/21 build) will yield more damage per mana. While spamming frostbolt with enough spirit / mp5, you’ll be able to regain mana in order to continue AB spam. Plus with a 40/0/21 build if you grab Cold Snap, you get the added benefit of back to back Icy Veins. While the jump from a (fully debuffed) 1.5 to 1.2 second cast time isn’t huge, it certainly is a DPS increase. You gain 33~ (assuming you’re standing still) Arcane Blasts over well timed (40 seconds total, back to back) Icy Veins whereas you get 16~ with just one. Plus on fights like Teron Gorefiend where spell pushback is a pain (thankyou Doom Blossoms!), Icy Veins is quite the DPS increase (since it gives you no pushback). I feel it gives you more flexibility while giving a lot of strong points (150% crit damage) to your secondary nuke, Frostbolt.

Question: What spell rotation do you use in a fight that sucks your mana dry?

• I spam Arcane Blast until I have to use a potion or a gem. If I know that mana is going to be tough due to group makeup / fight mechanics / etc. then I’ll usually settle with Arcane Blasting and Frostbolting a few times to keep the AB debuff up and just continuing to AB spam as much as possible. For example, on the Illidari Council encounter, I blow everything at once on Garithos and then just use a pseudo rotation of however many ABs I can fit in until I need to frostbolt a few times. The lowest I’d ever go would be ABx3 > Frostbolt x2. Even then, my DPS is still fine.

Question: Should I use my cooldowns at the start or as my raid leader says, save them for the end of the fight?

• That’s up to you. I personally use everything I have within the first minute of the fight to make sure I have them again throughout the fight when needed. I’ve been able to get off two evocates before in one fight (Kael’thas). In the end, the way I see things is if I save them for the end of a fight that’s lost DPS that I could’ve contributed during the entire encounter … which inturn, may have been what was needed between that last 1% or not.

Well, that’s all for this post. Feel free to ask your own questions and I’ll reply to them in a future post.

~ by neythas on August 11, 2008.