[MACRO] Arcane Mage DPS Macro

[Taliesin]

What I have used for a long time:

/cast Arcane Power
/use 13
/use 14
/castsequence reset=10 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage

With 5 different classes, I have no intention of trying to micromanage using Arcane Missiles on procs, but that would be the most ideal DPS. When I manually run the mage in solo mode, I always use ABx3, AM, and cast ABarr before the last missile from AM launches which results in 4/5s of AM and ABarr all benefitting from the ABx3 stack buff (AM only consumes the buff when the last missile hits).

The arcane mage is definitely a huge mana hog, but then you should also talent your Evocation cooldown to just 2 minutes, which is mandatory for any raiding. For heroics, you're not going to run out of mana on any single fight, so you don't even need to think about mana efficiency. That same lack of efficiency translates into very high DPS, though. My guild refers to my mage as "the DPS queen". Only a DPS DK gives her a challenge right now, mostly on trash and not so much on boss fights (multiple targets vs. single target).

[Oatboat]

You'll save alot of downtime if you just throw in a fireball between arcane blasts.

/castsequence reset=target arcane blast, fireball, arcane blast, fireball

Really helped my mana consumption problem. And with Ignite its nice to see the flame crits.

[Greythan]

Tal,

I'm frost specced currently as it seemed the most multi-boxing friendly. (Summon Water elemental whenever available, option to pop the talent that resets all frost cooldowns on a boss fight, icy veins when available and spam frostbolt.) I'm also leary of castsequence macro's after seeing numerous posts on these boards about DPS gimping.

That said, I'd be curious to see your spec for arcane. Frost seems SO out of style I'd be open to changing specs (and to a castsequence) if its an improvement.

[Taliesin]

Greythan, you can always look up just about anything on someone else on the WOW Armory website. That said, here's Luan: Luan's talents and glyphs

I think most of the discussion around /castsequence is not so much that it "gimps" DPS, but that your latency now plays a bigger part of how fast you cast. I'm usually hovering about 150ms latency, so I really don't mind the minor DPS drop. If you're something like 500ms latency on average, then you may want to invest the time in a /click method. I just didn't see any significant change when I tried.

Regarding Frost spec (and to some degree Fire too), I think you find that you have more proc management and "combos" to try to manage if you're going for maximum DPS. I just didn't want to make things more complicated than I needed when I assembled my team, though I have thought about trying some more complicated specs now that we have dualspecs. Arcane in general is very competitive for DPS and a rather simple rotation.

[Greythan]

Sorry Tal, I didn't notice the names of your toons were in your sig. Thx.

Frost required the least micro when I was speccing. Its basically a frostbolt spam with a cast when ready approach to Water Elemental and Icy Veins. As I mention, I have a "turbo" hotbutton I use when I pop BL on my shaman, etc. It casts mirror image and coldsnap to refresh the timer on icy veins and Water Elemental. Very low maintenance.

I'm wondering if the arcane spec is better. I'll have to do some research.

Oh, and what else is new: the armory is down.

[heffner]

Thanks for the info. I think I will have to do some testing to see what sequence works best for my situation. The ABx3, AB would be easy to implement, even without /castsequence.

For me, my latency definitely has a noticeable impact on my DPS based on some testing a did a while back. I am not sure what it normally runs at though.

I also think to maximize mage DPS, after learning more about it, Arcane probably requires the most micromanagement (not that it's a lot, but just more difficult to "automate"). Fire isn't that bad, you just need to hit pyro when hot streak goes off. That's probably slightly easier than hitting ABarr before the last AM goes off. Pretty cool though. Anyway, in the end it really "matters" when you are raiding.

[Taliesin]

I wouldn't worry about the 4/5 AM + ABarr trick very much. That's just a simple trick to try and squeeze out every inch of possible DPS boost. The other two specs may not have something as tricky as that, but by not using this method does not mean you are not able to do high DPS. It's basically splitting hairs between doing 3300 DPS on a raid boss or doing 3400 DPS (just a simple example). It may not be obvious here, but it also makes the arcane yet even worse on mana longevity, meaning that you are going to run out of mana even faster (bad if everyone else is not pumping out similar DPS). 95% of the time, I just use the macro I posted above and still do great DPS.

I didn't have mana issues too much with a 2 min evocation cooldown plus using my mana gems when they were available in 10-man Naxx, until I got to Kel'Thuzad. With all the initial trash and a 5mil hp boss fight, I started getting crunched for mana already when he was about 40%. I actually went back to just using my macro around this time to start slowing my mana consumption. Didn't matter much though anyways since our offtank died and one of the adds came over and wtfpwnd me around 25% before I realized what happened and we got them under control again. Ended up third in total damage on KT even after the end of the fight and missing a quarter of it.

[Taliesin]

I'm wondering if the arcane spec is better.

I'm not going to try and answer that one for you, except to give you my strats for comparison. Besides the macro above, Luan's "turbo" (or as I refer to the "OMGDPS" button), I use:

/cast Arcane Power
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Mirror Image

Reason I repeat the first three lines from the regular DPS last macro is because boss fights I tend to open up with this, so most are probably off cooldown. I suppose if I really wanted to get fancy I could give her a second macro or keybind to cast Arcane Missiles after I see (or hear) the proc, and add a [nochanneling] clause to the regular DPS macro. I just don't see the need to until my other DPS actually start to beat her (i.e. she's not my DPS weak link that I need to be worried about right now).

Nothing wrong with Frost mages at all, even these days in Lich. They are still the most mana efficient, and even help other casters in ways an Arcane mage can't with the mana regen buff from the elemental (always a very popular raid feature). The last time I researched into Frost, they had some shatter combos to maximize DPS that I just didn't want to have to get into. That was a while ago now, so maybe those things have been made easier. Initial DPS simulations after the Lich changes actually had Fire as top DPS (least mana efficient), Arcane second, and Frost third (most mana efficient). I don't know how they stack on the latest build.

[puppychow]

fire (18/51 + 2) is the top spec when you have best in slot gear for 25 man raiding (good for 10 man too) - you need 340-380 hit so its very gear dependent, its not a spec you want to do when in heroic/naxx10 gear, only when you are in good naxx25/ulduar gear

arcane (51/3/17) is the top spec for starting raiding, only needs 200-240 hit and has the highest burst (so great for very short fights). its very competitive with fire in 10 man raids, and can do well in 25 man on most fights, its just that you are very dependent on not getting evo screwed by having to move, and on ulduar boss fights can be long and require lots of movement. arcane is also a great PVP spec although not as good as frost

FFB (0/53/18) isn't that great a spec anymore due to the nerfs they did to stacking fire/frost buffs for ffb. no one should really be spec'd ffb anymore

frost is the best PVP spec, its a mediocore PVE spec. the max theoretical/realistic DPS is quite a bit below fire and arcane, but it has higher survivability, movement, and control (ie great for arenas)

[Havelcek]

thought I'd post my super dooper Arcane mage macro:

#showtooltip Arcane Blast
/use 13
/use 14
/castrandom Icy Veins, Mirror Image
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/castsequence [target=focustarget,exists,harm,nochanneling] reset=combat/target/4 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles