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Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Arcane Mage Guide for Patch 5.0.4

Nymphy is an arcane mage who logged into the post 5.0.4 patch World of Warcraft and noticed two very huge things. 1.) Her UI wasn't as broken as she feared! Yay for quick addon updates, she salutes the addon writers for being super prepared! 2.) Uhhh, her spec however, WAS broken, and broken beyond repair.


(Important Note for the Reading Impaired: Arcane mana regen has totally been fixed. For an actual Arcane mage guide please see the link at the bottom of the post.)

So! Here is my super handy guide for surviving as an arcane mage until Mists of Pandaria is released in a month.

1.) Run to the target dummies or perhaps even a heroic dungeon to test out new rotation.

2.) Immediately commence QQ because OMG MANA?! WHERE DID IT GO?!!!

3.) Realize that you don't get your major mana regeneration talent until level 90.

4.) Respec into Frost as right now there is simply no way you can sustain an arcane rotation on the fixed mana pool without mana regen.

5.) REFORGE ALL THE THINGS! Then QQ when you realize that you have to reforge ALL that lovely, sexy mastery into...<sigh> haste.
       5a.) Then REGEM ALL THE THINGS! (Not really ALL the things, just like 4 gems for me)
       5b) REGLYPH ALL THE THINGS!!!!

6.) Go searching for a Frost guide to help you figure out what the hell to do. Find one and slowly figure out a rotation.

7.) Organize your casting bars so they seem to look like they make sense.

8.) Grab a group of your guildies and convince them to accompany you to a Hour of Twilight heroic and eye your Water Elemental suspiciously. (PET BAR?! Uhh, I guess I put him on assist and leave it right?)

9.) Realize with a sinking heart that you can't go back to arcane until level 90 and you might as well get used to playing another spec that you do, hey, actually halfway decent DPS on surprisingly!

10.) Still countdown the month until you can respec Arcane though!

Frost isn't that bad to be honest <gasp!> But Arcane is where my heart stays and lives and it is where I have found the most enjoyment in playing my mage. I look forward to the Day of Pandas when I can level and respec back into it, but for now I am enjoying playing around with something new.

So hopefully you didn't come here looking for a REAL arcane mage guide for the latest patch, because I am not a huge theorycrafter and you should go here instead. If you did, then I apologize. This "guide" was meant to be a humorous, QQ, mage thing instead of a real thing. Please go to the linked guide, they have super helpful information in an easy to read format. And if you want to L2FrostMage(Nub) then go read Jed's excellent post here.

9 comments:

  1. They really killed the arcane mage huh?

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  2. Having no trouble keeping mana at near 100%. You do realize that arcane missiles now also add stacks of arcane charge (in addition to being buffed by it) and arcane barrage is instead used to drop the charges (also buffed by it)? Also barrage hits one additional nearby target per charge for 50% damage, PEW PEW.

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    1. You must be the only one. Nymphy and I both had the same problem at level 85 with arcane. The Icy Veins guide calls the same problem out, and the mage we ran DS with last night who stayed Arcane was at the very bottom of the DPS chart the whole raid because their mana was dropping so low. Yes we know about the arcane missiles change. Are you going to 4 stacks before using barrage to drop stacks? How long have you been able to sustain high many for? Are you using a haste heavy build to increase mana regen

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  3. Just ran a couple bosses in raidfinder siege, was in top 5 dps. Still reforged for mastery, usually get to about 5-6 stacks before I barrage, though sometimes it gets stuck at 6 for a while when i get lots of arcane missile procs. Only time i get anywhere close to oom is when i spam arcane blast intentionally before refilling with an evocation. One thing i do is try and save some arcane missile procs till i hit 4 charges, then use the free spells to get me to 6 charges for a nicely buffed barrage. Only other spell i use regularly is living bomb with glyphed fire blast to spread it around.

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  4. It looks like a hotfix went out to Arcane mage mana regen today to bring it back in line with where it had been before the patch dropped. That makes a lot more sense.

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  5. "I didn't read all of it" - too long for you was it? I know, having an attention span last longer than say 30 seconds takes practice for some. Maybe if you had actually bothered to read the whole thing (and 'whole' is too big a word for the handful of lines in the post) you wouldn't have made such a fool of yourself.

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  6. So I see we have some new friends here at D/E the Tank! Hi folks who came here looking for a serious mage guide only to be horribly disappointed. Let me run down a few things real quick.

    1) If you were looking for a serious mage guide, Nymphy helpfully provided a link to a real one. Right up there where she explained that this is a joke and not a serious mage guide. Showing up and complaining that this isn't a serious mage guide isn't going to make me feel bad for you BECAUSE SHE GAVE YOU A LINK TO A REAL ONE.

    2) Arcane mana regen was hotfixed quickly after the patch. Seriously, we put this up on the 29th and by the 30th the issue was fixed. If you looked at the comments you will see the one where I point out that it was fixed. So if you want to comment that your mana regen is totally awesome now and you cannot possibly run out of mana on your arcane mage, we agree with you.

    3) If you come up in here and act like a fucking asshole I'm just going to delete your comment. (To the commenter I accidentally deleted while going for the asshole I apologize, my delete finger was over-zealous.) Seriously, this was a god damn humor post where the real joke was Nymphy whining about having to learn a new spec. If you think it wasn't funny then you don't have to come back.

    4) I left up Vlad's comment responding to the asshole, even though it doesn't make sense with the original comment deleted, because I like that someone told off the fucker before I had a chance to. Go Vlad!

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  7. Late response, but hey, I thought it was funny.

    Not sure what's up with the I'm-so-srs-I-take-any-joke-about-arcane-super-srs responses.

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  8. lol this was quite funny! I thought I was getting a real guide but instead found this humorous post. haha so thank you! :P

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