{"id":644,"date":"2011-06-24T10:26:09","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T17:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/15minutesofwow.wordpress.com\/?p=644"},"modified":"2011-06-24T10:26:09","modified_gmt":"2011-06-24T17:26:09","slug":"daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alternateimage.net\/gaming\/2011\/06\/24\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Man, I&#8217;ve really been slacking on keeping up my Daily Thoughts here. Someone once commented that I should consider calling it &#8220;Weekly Thoughts&#8221; and that is seeming more accurate right now, but the name doesn&#8217;t sound quite right. Let&#8217;s continue!<\/p>\n<p>Not too long ago, my mage reached level 85. I leveled using mostly a mix of frost and fire specs. 5 minutes after reaching max level, I was ready for heroics. Wait? Apparently it&#8217;s pretty nice reaching 85 with nearly max justice points and honor points through a long series of dungeons and battlegrounds. I picked up my vendor gear and had 331 item level, well clearing the 329 requirement to get into heroic dungeons. I got fired up, ready to go, and prepped for my unfortunately long 30 minute wait to get into a heroic dungeon&#8230;and found my DPS startlingly lacking.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>WHATS WRONG WITH MY METERS!!?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, aside from being carried in a guild run for a Zul\u00a0Aman heroic later on, I was never significantly lower than other players in a heroic and usually was still averaging between the other dps in my runs. Unfortunately, I&#8217;m not satisfied with being between the others. I&#8217;m also not used to it. All my other toons\u00a0would top the charts nearly every run even being freshly geared for heroic dungeons (except my feral cat at first, but I knew my feral gear was atrocious and I my item level was horribly screwed by my resto\u00a0gear). I read up on the fire mage&#8217;s rotation, confirmed I was doing it right, and reforged a little extra hit &#8211;\u00a0an insignificant increase.\u00a0It was after an exceptionally lack luster performance in Baradin&#8217;s Hold (under 10k dps &#8211; the first time I&#8217;ve not broken that in there since my very first attempt ever on the boss). I decided to try out arcane, hearing that it is supposed to be the bees knees of mage specs currently. Wanting to be able to keep my fire spec for comparison, I dropped frost and hit up <a href=\"http:\/\/www.elitistjerks.com\">EJ<\/a>\u00a0for some (hopefully)\u00a0good arcane information.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Is Arcane Better Than Fire as of 4.1?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is hard to make a blanket statement between the specs with my limited experience. From what I hear, in raiding environments arcane\u00a0has a strong lead but fire is a competitive spec still. For me personally though? Well, arcane has been a solid damage increase, mostly. The problem that I&#8217;m finding with the fire spec, it that it\u00a0is highly dependent on crits\u00a0and procs. With a lucky string\u00a0of crits\u00a0(and still weak gear) I can break 16-18k\u00a0dps on a heroic\u00a0boss or shorter test dummy\u00a0experiment. Meanwhile, in that same gear the best I accomplish and typical damage as arcane is 12-14k, assuming the fight doesn&#8217;t have damage boosting gimicks. Sadly, the amount that I am &gt; 15k dps in fire is probably under 15% of the time. \u00a0Other times I can find myself struggling to be over 10k dps. Both specs bring solid buffs to the group so personal dps really does take priority for a mage. As a mage, if you&#8217;re not doing the best possible dps, given that you&#8217;re not pulling aggro\u00a0or standing in fire, you&#8217;re doing it wrong. Unfortunately, arcane is really, really boring. Spam arcane blast, occasionally hit arcane barrage or arcane missiles on the proc. Rotation ends up something like, AB &gt;AB &gt;AM&gt;AB &gt;AB &gt;AB &gt;AB &gt;AbarAB\u00a0&gt;AB &gt;AM. Forever. It&#8217;s just that. For burn phases its nothing but AB &gt;AB. I saw a mage over 20k dps with nothing but arcane blast cast. The game with arcane is mana conservation and management. With my current level of mastery, every 4% mana lost is 1% flat dps loss! Keeping mana topped off is a must. So, I&#8217;m finding myself in arcane more and more because I want my dps to be consistent. Even though the rotation is much less dynamic and a little more dull, I find that when I&#8217;m playing a class that does nothing other than pewpew, pewpewing the hardest is the most fun for me.<\/p>\n<p>Finding yourself doing bad mage deeps? The folks over at ElitistJerks usually have buckets of helpful information. Check out their <a href=\"http:\/\/elitistjerks.com\/f75\/t118084-cataclysm_arcane_mage_compendium\/\" target=\"_blank\">Arcane Mage Compendium<\/a>\u00a0to turn your QQ\u00a0into pewpew.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Man, I&#8217;ve really been slacking on keeping up my Daily Thoughts here. Someone once commented that I should consider calling it &#8220;Weekly Thoughts&#8221; and that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,22],"tags":[107,108,303,347,536,537,538,918,958],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily","category-mage","tag-arcane","tag-arcane-mage","tag-elitist-jerks","tag-fire","tag-mage","tag-mage-4-1","tag-mage-dps","tag-warcraft","tag-wow"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane - Alternate Image Gaming<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/alternateimage.net\/gaming\/2011\/06\/24\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane - Alternate Image Gaming\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Man, I&#8217;ve really been slacking on keeping up my Daily Thoughts here. Someone once commented that I should consider calling it &#8220;Weekly Thoughts&#8221; and that\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/alternateimage.net\/gaming\/2011\/06\/24\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Alternate Image Gaming\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-24T17:26:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sharden\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sharden\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/2011\\\/06\\\/24\\\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/2011\\\/06\\\/24\\\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Sharden\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/560db19ee00b27ce1fae16d645a40579\"},\"headline\":\"Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane\",\"datePublished\":\"2011-06-24T17:26:09+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/2011\\\/06\\\/24\\\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":722,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"arcane\",\"arcane-mage\",\"elitist jerks\",\"fire\",\"mage\",\"mage-4.1\",\"mage-dps\",\"warcraft\",\"wow\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Daily\",\"mage\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/2011\\\/06\\\/24\\\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/2011\\\/06\\\/24\\\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/alternateimage.net\\\/gaming\\\/2011\\\/06\\\/24\\\/daily-thoughts-arcane-in-the-membrane\\\/\",\"name\":\"Daily Thoughts: Arcane in the Membrane - 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