Playstyle & Rotation
General Rotation
Within this Section there is a term called ‘clipping’, this is referring to your arcane missiles where you interrupt the channel on your next gcd for a damage gain.
For the very basics of Arcane Mage:
- Always be Casting.
- Never sit on Clearcasting.
- Always use our arcane barrages with a nether precision stack from clearcasting if possible
- Cast barrage if you struggle with mana.
- Never cast Arcane Blast on 2 or less charges in st, always try to have a way to get charges back via arcane orb or via arcane missiles (with the high voltage talent if specced).
- Ideally we want to consume Glorious Incandescence/Intuition + Nether precision together for a small DPS increase, if it happens then nice, if not, then it’s not a big deal. It's not something we ACTIVELY try to force, it’s more of something that happens depending on our dynamic rotation.
- Use Arcane Surge + Shifting Power + Touch of the Magi on CD, it’s crucial that we Touch of the magi by itself on CD (if combat allows) so we can stay on the 1:30 burst surge timer
Opener:
- Cast Evocation 4 seconds before the pull
- Cast Arcane Missiles (evocation gives us Clearcasting)
- Cast Touch of the Magi if below 4 charges. If at 4 charges, then cast Arcane Barrage followed by touch of the Magi so our Arcane Barrage will benefit from Nether Precision into the Touch window.
- Continue to Cast Arcane Blast and Spend Arcane Missiles procs accordingly
- Shifting power after arcane surge/soul window ends
- Touch of the magi when it is ready
- Continue along this cycle
General Rotation Priority:
During our downtime phase and within our burns,we are playing pretty much identical,weaving our Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage or Arcane Missiles to consume Nether Precision.
The priority of the phase is as follows:
- Cast and Clip Arcane Missiles unless you have Aether Attunement(never overcap this)
- Arcane Barrage with Intuition Proc, now that its 5 seconds you can get an Arcane Missiles in most situations if you don't already have a stack of Nether Precision, just make sure not to waste the proc
- Cast Arcane Barrage if you are on the move or meet the conditions
- Arcane Orb if you are below 4 charges
- Arcane Explosion if you are at less than 2 charges
- Arcane Blast
Multi Target:
- Make sure to still cast Arcane Blast during Touch of the Magi to proc Magi’s Spark(If talented)
- Consume Clearcasting if you are on 3 (highest prio we never want to overcap)
- Use Arcane Barrage according to the barrage conditions, in aoe especially as spellslinger this is what your entire rotation is going to be built around and where the majority of your damage will come from
- Don’t sit on Shifting Power, it’s not only Damage in AOE it also helps us to sync our CDs in line up with their respectable timers 45 Seconds for our Touch of the Magi window and 1:15 for our Evocation and Arcane Surge Window
- Arcane Orb if you are below 3 arcane charges
- Cast arcane explosion if you have less than 3 arcane charges
Playstyle
For both sunfury and spellslinger there isn’t a “fixed“ rotation, it’s more of a priority list and the majority and the major part of the rotation comes from your conditions to press Arcane Barrage
Casting arcane blast on 0 charges is the biggest mistake you can make, you NEVER want to cast arcane blast on 0 charges.
As mentioned earlier, the basic gameplay is building arcane charges with blast, orb and missiles and consume charges with barrage when the conditions are met. The most important part is making sure we keep our Touch of the Magi on cooldown so that we keep it in line with our Evocation and Arcane Surge where the majority of our damage will be.
The aspect that changes more for sunfury is we have to pay more attention to our spheres and our burden of power procs, trying to line up our barrages with nether precision and burden of power to maximise our damage. For Spellslinger, we are paying a lot more attention to our barrage conditions and playing around our arcane orbs for charge regeneration in both single target and aoe.Spellslinger is definitely a lot more complex, as it has a lot of conditionals that go into when we should be pressing barrage.Arcane Barrage Conditions
Since arcane barrage constantly receives changes, it’s easy to understand why you would lose track sometimes of when it’s the optimal time to press Arcane Barrage. In 11.2 our conditions arent as complex as they have been, however they are relatively different for each hero talent
However, the mage discord (credit to Porom from the Alter Time discord) and theorycrafters came up with a simplified conditions list for the optimal time to press Arcane Barrage for both Spellslinger and Sunfury.
Spellslinger Single Target:
- You have Intuition
- You are at < 10% mana and arcane orb is ready
- If Arcane Tempo is about to expire
- If Touch of the Magi is off cooldown and you have 4x Arcane Charges
- You have High Voltage, Clearcasting, 4x Arcane Charges and 1x Nether Precision
- If you have 20x Arcane Harmony Stacks and 4x Arcane Charges
- Arcane Orb is off cooldown and 1x Nether Precision and no Clearcasting, or neither.
Spellslinger Aoe Additions:
- Arcane orb is ready
- You have Aether Attunement with High Voltage talented
Sunfury Single Target:
- You have either Intuition or Glorious Incandescence
- If Arcane tempo is about to expire
- Arcane Soul is up and you have nether precision is up
- The global before you press Touch of the Magi if you are at 4 arcane charges
Cooldown Usage
It's important we continue to use both arcane surge and touch of the magi on cooldown, since they both have a fixed CD of 1:30 and 45 second respectively, so it's important we use them as often as possible to line them up together. We want to make sure that all 3 of Evocation, Arcane Surge and Touch of the Magi are going to be up before entering our burst window as that is where we do nearly all of our damage. This means we want to be pressing Touch of the Magi pretty much on cooldown for our mini burn to give us a good lineup for our big burn.
Defensives
As an Arcane Mage, you have excellent survivability and mobility at your disposal with Mirror Image, Alter Time, 2x Shimmer, Ice Block, Greater Invis (which also increases your movement speed if talented), Prismatic Barrier and Mass Barrier.
Rotating our defensives properly can significantly increase our chance of living through high sources of incoming damage!