The end of Arcane Mages?

Or to be more specific, the end of arcane raiding mages? 3.0 is to be released tonight and while I’ve spent a lot of time on the public test realm playing with each spec… I feel arcane is dead. Why? Arcane blast has been depleted as a nuke spell (ie: frostbolt, fireball). The spell that gave life to arcane as a defined raid spec that could complete against the other two has been changed signifigantly. Potion Sickness keeps us from chain chugging mana potions through encounters.

Let’s examine the details:

Arcane Blast on live currently scales with cast time and mana cost. As of the patch, arcane blast will scale up in damage instead of cast time and the debuff has been shortened to 3 seconds… meaning the debuff will drop if you cast any spell besides arcane blast in succession. While Missile Barage is being brought into play, the most damage you can do is via Arcane Blast spamming with the debuff up for as long as you can. Now it’s cast AB or don’t bother. That debuff takes 9 seconds to get back up instead of 3-5.

The cost has gone up signifigantly as well. 200% per stack. 3 casts will burn through most mage’s mana pool in even tier 6 gear. So… why mess with the spell period? All it is now is a mana dump (unless that encounter is ever needed in a raid… I see no use for it whatsoever, mages need mana).

So… we get no more haste from the spell but more damage? Given that the Arcane Barrage spell will use 1 second from the GCD and that Frostfire Bolt (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=44614#comments) requires 3 seconds to cast… what else could we stick in there between rotations and keep the debuff up? It looks like Blizzard doesn’t want us spamming AB anymore:

• Current AB Spamming Yields:
  Cast 1: 2.5 Seconds, 4500 dmg
  Cast 2: 2.0 Seconds, 4500 dmg
  Cast 3: 1.5 Seconds, 4500 dmg

Totals: 13500 dmg, 6 Seconds yielding 2250~ DPS

• New AB Change Yields:
  Cast 1: 2.5 Seconds, 4500 dmg
  Cast 2: 2.5 Seconds, 5175 dmg
  Cast 3: 2.5 Seconds, 5850 dmg
  Cast 4: 2.5 Seconds, 6525 dmg

Totals: 22050 dmg, 10 Seconds yielding 2205~ DPS.

With Netherwind Presence talented 3/3 (6% haste):

Totals: 22050 dmg, 9.4 Seconds yielding 2345~ DPS.

This puts us closer to what AB spam is currently at theoretically.

That’s not taking into consideration the mana cost. Theoretically, as haste is near worthless with the Arcane spec now due to the high amounts needed to affect the cast time on AB (ie: Bloodlust, Drums, Veins) this does give us the opportunity to stack haste with Arcane and see a much larger benefit (yay for Haste). I suppose AB spamming would still be viable if not for the increased mana cost. By the way, the numbers above are just theoretical numbers assuming you hit for the same damage in a row and all… they’re there for the math calculations alone just to flesh out how the AB change looks. It does appear that the AB debuff will still affect the +dmg also, so you’d get more damage from Arcane Blast per debuff.

• No Debuff / 1 Debuff / 2 Debuffs / 3 Debuffs
  0% +dmg / 15% +dmg / 30% +dmg / 45% +dmg

Theoretical Arcane Mage Raid Build for WotLK:
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0qcu0hqIfRihAoZVV00o

I only have Empowered Missiles talented for Missile Barrage procs. The 2.5 missile casting would be sleak on that proc due to it fitting within the 3 second debuff dropoff. Otherwise I’d just spam AB as usual. I’m really happy that I leveled leatherworking now for drums as the haste will really help out on the arcane spec as before it’s been iffy.

The rest of the talents are self explanatory I believe.

Netherwind Presence gives 6% haste to all spells. This would reduce Arcane Blast to a 2.35 second cast time. I also toyed with talenting a bit more and I’d go for the following spec if they released this live before Lich King is released:

Using the same numbers and talents above… let’s see how Icy Veins has affects Arcane Blast now and in Wrath (I’m assuming that the debuff is up maxed here on both accounts as I never blow Veins until I have 3 stacks of the debuff currently):

Current Arcane Blast / 20 Seconds of Icy Veins = 1.2 Second Cast Time; 16 Casts Possible

New Arcane Blast / 20 Seconds of Icy Veins = 2 Second Cast Time; 10 casts possible

Putting in some raw numbers, let’s assume you currently hit for 2800 dmg per average Arcane Blast and that you do not crit at all when using Icy Veins to give us the lowest theoretical damage possible:

• Arcane Blast currently
  Average DMG / Casts Possible / Duration / Total DPS|
  2800 * 16 / 20 = 2240

• Upcoming Arcane Blast
  Average DMG / Debuff % Modifier / Average DMG with Modifier / Casts Possible / Duration / Total DPS(2800 * 100 / 45 + 2800 = 4060) * 10 / 20 = 2030

So… you see the math.
Arcane would be awesome if not for the mana cost increase I believe as well as a talent to increase mana regen/spirit.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Arcane Brilliance: Patch 3.3 PTR changes for mages

~ by neythas on October 13, 2008.