I don't plan to write here how to be the best mage in WoW as I am no authority in the matter, just a player who has dedicated the past 4 years to playing a mage and improving with each patch and change of spec that subsequently comes out, like the one that was released live with yesterday's patch.
For the better part of vanilla WoW mages were known as vending machines and one button DPS, we were also on the top 3 DPS classes in the game. With TBC and the damage output of weapons re-done, melee went up in the meters while mages had to struggle with fire finally being a viable raid spec for all ocassions and then the rise of arcane as the top DPS spec by the end of TBC.
WoTLK has been much more complicated as a mage. First we had the Frostfire era in which every single mage was FFB and the few dedicated ones were pure fire. Then came the rise of fire with glyph changes, but the domination of FFB/fire was strong.
Then came ToC and the rise of arcane.
Once more arcane mages started dominating the PvE scene, the logs showed people up to 17000 dps in Valkyr twins and the arcane craze remained.
Personally, arcane is possibly one of the most difficult specs to master. This is because the arcane spec is not written in stone (sure, Arcane Blast (AB) x3-4 and get an Arcane Missiles (AM) proc or write off the stacks of AB with Arcane Barrage (ABarr)) seems like a very logic and easy thing to do. Mash one button 3 or 4 times and then mash the other one (I hate 1,2,3,4,5, bindings, so it's Q (AB) E (AM) and F(ABarr) for me, with 2 and 3 being different macros) and win at DPS. The people who think that are usually on the low end of the DPS meters as a result.
Ghostcrawler wrote this on March 19th:
"Players like to wave this banner, but it's just not true. If all you do is look at their damage logs, yes, a lot of damage comes from Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles. Does that mean any Arcane mage can faceroll his way to 12,000 dps? Hardly. The good mages have a lot of things to manage in the way of mana and cooldowns.
"Requires skill" does not mean 20 sources of damage. It can also mean you have to juggle a lot to maximize the damage from 2 sources. That is the design of the mage in a nuthsell: a dominant nuke with a lot of infrastructure to prop up that nuke"
What I understand from this, and I agree with, is the intuitive value of the arcane spec. You can't just hope to spam AB and then AM and beat those pesky rogues or the always annoying hunters. You need to actually look at your screen, cooldowns and keep an eye on what is up on the boss, how your mana is doing and what you can aim for.
First, AB spam with the old Incanter's Absorption could end up being godlike. Valkyr twins logs can show how much a mage could put out with AB spam (here comes into play the intuitive part of watching your mana closely) and the use of AM in a timely manner.
When to burn your images+trinkes+Arcane Power and Icy Veins? Well that's a whole different debate. Of course, if you pot pre pull, right at the start of it you can nuke your way to 30 seconds of high damage with no fear of aggro. But here is the tricky part, if those missdirects or tricks of the trade don't come even close to your sudden burst of godlikeness you will still probably be way ahead of other people, including the tank, on aggro. Then you face the possibility of losing 10 seconds of dps because you had to iceblock or breaking your rotation to click invisibility or even worse, not fully using those 30 seconds you have with your images to go crazy.
There's a number of solutions to this problem that a lot of up and coming mages in the arcane tree can face:
1.-Don't go crazy, utilize your IV, AP and on use items wisely for the 20 seconds you have, then utilize the last 10 seconds to let your tank catch up in aggro and you regain some mana.
2.-Spend 2 talent points for 40% less threat.
3.-Don't use all your cooldowns on prepot, just go with prepot+images, last 5 seconds of your pot but all your cooldowns and go to town (the 10 second advantage should give your tank, rogues and hunters enough time to build sufficient aggro that you won't have to stop at all until evocation).
Now, mana can be a huge pain in the ass when playing an arcane mage. Sometimes a mana potion ends up totalling more DPS than a speed/wild magic potion. And unless you are clipping yourself during heroism+IV time, this is the exact moment in which you'll be going the craziest with 1.2/1.1 AB casts. Here of course comes you using your brain rather than just your fingers to decide what to do. You know heroism comes in 10 seconds, your mana is at 35%. Do you use evocation already with a gem to be maximized and with the GCD ready to pop everything up as heroism hits or do you use the initial seconds of heroism to use evocation? Or just say "fuck it" and use your mana and cooldowns and worry about mana when the time comes?
Ideally the third one is never your option, that works for instances and heroics, but not for raids. If the third scenario is your common option, you need to head to elitisjerks.com and read up the mage discussions.
But the first 2 are a consistent debate. Do you hold for a bit to be full and not worry about mana/be able to burn it all during heroism with all your cooldowns or do you use the initial seconds of heroism to use a sped up evocation and gem and then go to town? That's where the brain comes in.
Both are viable options, as long as you don't pop all your cooldowns and then hit evocation, in which case you are probably an idiot, and much discussed ones from time to time. Of course, you can just pop a mana potion along with your gem right before heroism and go to town, leaving your evocation up for the tail end of heroism.
So many choices to choose from and the only right one is the one that seems more viable and useful for the encounter and situation.
Something that happens often in my case is that I need to save everything but images during BQL encounter because I have not been bitten yet, I use my images to keep my threat in check, so I don't blow everything up as soon as heroism hits the table unless I have been bitten or got the initial bite (when I get the initial bite it's because I pre pot and have managed to get up to 18k DPS in the seconds before the initial bite), if I am not bitten, then I keep thinking "hold it, hold it, hold it" but as soon as the bite lands I blow up every cooldown and potion I have available. This is when evocation comes in place of course, I regain as much mana as possible when I hear someone "I will bite Minimage next" and see that person coming over.
This will be the end of this entry for now. I know the entry itself is not a "How to play the mage" but it gives you points to ponder before you go re-spec into arcane thinking that the big DPS is coming.
There are a lot of mages with much more authority than me to "teach" you how to play an arcane mage, these are just questions that have raised several times with fellow guild mages and discussions we have in our mage channel.
Hope you enjoyed, any insight/comments are appreciated.
Minimage
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