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Thoughts about the Arcane Mage:
After raiding for a couple months as Arcane, here are my thoughts the good the bad and the ugly.

Mana management is the name of the game, if you can not manage mana this spec is not for you turn around and go back to fire or frost.

My generic spec found here

Tips

1. Be prepared to borrow, beg, cheat or steal mana injectors from any source you can get. You should know that you will use a pot every cool down on boss attempts (good tries and bad tries). Also try and get the Serpent Coil Braid. It can stack with other damage trinkets and makes your gems worth 3k mana.
2. Recognize when you have to use Arcane Blast and maintain the 3x stack. Arcane Blast is excellent for things like killing Thaladred the Darkener from the Kael’thas fight. It has a high rate of fire (if you can maintain the 3x stack) and High Crit rate. It is by far the highest DPS spell a mage has. But it comes at the cost of Damage Per Mana of around 1.11 (no spell damage included just the base spell).
3. Arcane Missiles are a static DPS spell. However it is very consistent DPS and is great for lowering threat.
   • What does Arcane Missiles do well? If you have trinket’s like the Lightning Capacitor it can be amazing. The rate of fire of Arcane Missiles has a greater chance to critically strike more often, however they are not large crits compared to Frost or Fire. But each time a bolt crits you can gain a Charge to unleash the power of TLC. In an average boss fight I have seen the TLC add an additional 19,000 to 28,000 damage.
   • Something else about AM that most people do not notice is the added bonus that you can Proc Clear Casting with each bolt. But wait it gets better. Say for instance if you gain clear casting on bolt 2 of 5. Bolts 3, 4 and 5 all gain 30% crit chance (Clear Casting -> Arcane Potency) . We are not finished yet, you must then chose your next spell to be free mana cost and gain 30% critical strike chance. Most people would just select Arcane Missiles, this is the wrong choice. Arcane Missiles will be free mana cost but will only have 1 bolt out of 5 gain the 30% additional crit chance. The correct answer is your direct damage powered Nuke: Arcane Blast or Frostbolt.
   • The biggest Problem with Arcane Missiles is the 5 seconds Self Root. You are stuck there, as soon as you press the button to cast 700 mana is gone. So time your Missiles well, if it is a hit and run fight, this spell will be a hindrance more then a bonus.
4. If you are running into mana issues switch your damage spells from being Arcane Blast x3 stack Arcane Missiles rotation to Frostbolt and Arcane Blast 1x stack rotations. This will be your mana regen rotation. Most important thing to remember is do not be afraid to switch to Mage Armor mid fight. You can always switch back to Molten armor later on.

Rotations Rotations Rotations!!!

There are so many Rotations that you can use. I personally go for highest DPS.

Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles -> Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missiles

rinse and repeat.

If you want to run on the wild side and unload all your damage out just spam Arcane Blast. Just doing that one spell should be around 1600 DPS in moderate gear.

If you Proc Clear Casting while casting Arcane Missiles your next spell has to be a larger Crit Nuke (Arcane Blast, Fireball, Frostbolt).

Regen mana?

Cast Mage armor and do the following casts Arcane Blast stack 1x will always be cast (which has the lowest DPM spell a mage has) and the Mana efficient Frostbolt. This way the debuff from Arcane Blast will always be expired after each frostbolt rotation. Note that if you are having lag delays you can drop one Frostbolt from the rotation to maintain decent DPS and regen mana.

Arcane Blast -> Frostbolt -> Frostbolt -> Frostbolt -> Arcane Blast

Great damage Combos?

AoE

Presence of Mind -> Arcane Power -> Flame Strike -> Arcane Explosion spam

Direct Damage

Presence of Mind -> Icy Viens -> Arcane Power -> Trinket(optional) -> Arcane Blast -> Spam favorite spell (note that Arcane Missiles will be around 1000 mana cost per and Arcane Blast will be around 800)

More to come later….

We will have rants and ravings from our members, class insight for individual play styles and thoughts on how things could or should work.

Did we mention rants?