Ever heard of a mage called Fireangel?
Fireangel is the result of what happens when a mage asks “I wonder how high I can make my damage go…”. He specced himself to 40/0/21, and proceeded to drop magely jaws around the world when he posted what kind of damage he was doing.
To put it bluntly, Arcane Blast was spammed. A lot. Like a lot a lot. As in over the entire course of the fight, he casted about two dozen spells that weren’t Arcane Blast, and those were frostbolts that he used when Arcane Power was up.
Oh yeah, just for reference purposes, frostbolt was critting for over ten thousand damage.
And all those chained Arcane Blasts? Over the six minute fight of their first Brutallus kill, Fireangel produced 2200 DPS. Ain’t that fancy? Push it a little harder, and he could have put out 2700 DPS.
And guess what? Brutallus is one of the worst fights in the game for an arcane mage. Arcane mages are best at fights like Leotheras, where DPS needs to stop and start constantly. At a straight up DPS fight like Brutallus? Arcane should be lagging behind.
Now before y’all cry “OMFGWTFBBQ” and rush over to the talent calculator to get yourself a fancy new spec, know this:
These numbers are simply not possible if the arcane mage doesn’t have support.
In order to produce that 2200 DPS over that six minute fight, Fireangel had a Heroism, one Innervate, and two mana tides. To get his DPS up to the 2700 area, he would have needed a second Heroism and a second Innervate.
This is the key to why Arcane works so well at high end raids. It needs support from the raid in order to perform as well as it does.
This is why so many feel that arcane shouldn’t be brought to a raid. This is why arcane is frowned upon so heavily by the large majority.
Putting an Innervate on a mage of all things seems so… anathema to so many. Why?
“Innervate goes on healers, DURR. You retarded?”
Archaic thinking at best. At these higher levels of raiding, assuming your raid isn’t running short handed in the healing department, healers really don’t have mana troubles.
For example, there was a tree druid in Fireangel’s raid. That tree druid had 700mp5 raid buffed. Innervate? Don’t need it. Holy Priests have a shadow priest backing them up, halfway through the fight, they’re both sitting around 60-80% mana.
To quote fireangel:
Using innervates to boost DPS is a stigma; but it shouldn’t be. If I have 3k mana, and I AB spam constantly WHILE I have an innervate, never frostbolting at all, I end the innervate with 11k mana.
Self explanatory. That’s a lot of gained DPS, due only to the fact that there is more mana to work with.
Let’s say an arcane mage gets hit with Bloodluts/Heroism. That’s 40 seconds where the mage can cast Arcane Blast every second. It’s possible to get over 3000 DPS with Arcane Blasts going that fast.
Here’s an Illidan kill WWS for your perusal, and a video.
Note that Fireangel is not on parasite duty.
I am not responsible for the music in that video. Listen at your own risk.
Most people balk at the support arcane requires to put out these numbers, believing that a spec that needs that much support is fundamentally gimped.
Which, of course, is pure lunacy. The whole reason why there’s such a thing as a “melee group” and a “tank group” and a “healer group” is because the raid is trying to maximize it’s potential by stacking complementary classes.
There’s really no reason why an arcane mage can’t get this kind of support, really the only thing blocking it is sheer ignorance.
There have been arguments going both ways on the mage forums ever since Fireangel first started posting parses. The majority of these arguments are stupid.
Essentially, the argument the anti-arcane haters have is that they would be utterly wasting an Innervate on a mage. Never mind the fact that none of their healers need it. Some said that if they were going to spend an Innervate, they would spend it on a DPS class that could get the most out of it.
Completely ignoring, of course, the relatively massive amounts of spirit mages have.
One raid leader even said that he would spend an innervate on a survival hunter before he’d spend it on an arcane mage.
I am not making this up. A raid leader, of a guild progressing through Sunwell, firmly believes that an innervate would benefit a hunter more than a mage.
Heaven knows what these people will do when an arcane mage asks for a Resto shaman so he can get Mana Tide. Probably a /gkick.
Regardless, the numbers are there. It’s been proven time and time again that arcane, even on a fight that it’s ill-suited for, can still kick some very serious ass.
Arcane can rock the damage meters, all it needs is to be done right, and given the chance to do so.
Anyone who tells you that arcane sucks is just being ignorant.
One last thing.
Don’t try arcane without having first ascertained two pieces of T5! Without that extra 20% damage, you will only embarrass yourself.
Great post.. as usual!
I remember Phae talking about this concept a while back.
http://www.resto4life.com/2008/05/24/innervate-and-the-arcane-mage/
Ive been following your “arcane advice columns” and I am finding them interesting. I have been an arcane mage since about 66. I respecced to fire a few times, but have never been able to output the same dps, and definitely not been able to do it with the same sustainability or survivability.
Wearing crafted/kara and one badge item I am often topping the damage meters when compared side by side with the guilds highest DPSers – an enhancement shammy and a rogue – both of which could happily dps through BT or Mount Hyjal. (according to Be.Imba.Hu) I am presently averaging 700-950 dps on our kara runs – have approx 1000+ spell power unbuffed.
My spec is basically Arcane/Fire – mainly arcane with enough points in fire for Pyroblast and a couple in frost for the nice bonus on the first tier talents.
I really want to try out some of the frost spec stuff I have read on your blog and the Frost is the new Black blog, it looks like good fun.
As for fire – i have respecced and followed the instructions supplied with said raiding fire specs, and i lose a good chunk of +spellpower (obviously made up for with dots, crit and bonus damage) but I just cannot seem to pass 600 DPS on the damage meters with it, whilst also having to regularly mitigate my aggro or stop DPS to make sure i dont wipe the party. Suffice to say, i didnt like it. Perhaps there are other variations I can try, but I find that being able to work through the complexity of the arcane tree and come out with the numbers I do, and be comfortable using them is rather satisfying 😀
Consider this a defence against the red-headed step child 😉
But also understand I hope I am doing crappy DPS compared to other specs – then I can try them out and pewpew uber numbers 😀 Ive just yet to try one that works as well.
P.S – I am so nudging the healer for an innervate… my mana conservation is very good – but I want to try just spamming AB and see what happens. (3-4k AB crits every second and a half? yes please!)
Fire is an aggro whore, and you will definitely find yourself standing around doing nothing because your tank can’t keep up with you.
Don’t worry; tanks scale nicely, and fire will start totally rocking socks later on when you can happily chain cast for long periods of time without aggro concerns.
More lovely love for the Arcane mages! Thank you.
After reading Resto4life, I did write a post about asking for innervates as an arcane mage.
http://pinkpigtailinn.blogspot.com/2008/05/do-you-dare-to-ask-for-innervates.html
Actually I dared to do it once, but I was denied (what I remember it wasn’t used at all, or possibly used in the very end on a healer, 30 sec before the boss went down… Anyway it was a total waste). I’ll see if I’ll gather some courage to do ask again.
Maybe it isn’t only 2 pieces T5 that are mandatory for an arcane mage – maybe you shouldn’t spec that way unless you have made sure that you have an openminded raidleader willing to give your spec a decent chance and the mana support it needs.
Invervate, Mana Tide, etc definately can help boost my DPS up…. However, if you have a good spell rotation, use your pots and mana gems BEFORE you absolutely need them and play it smart you can effectively Arcane without support. The longer you can chain ABs the better, but you have to be smart and mix in some arcane missles to conserve mana if you dont have support in your group….
Gear is important to an Arcane Mage ….as Euph said…need those two T5s and since Arance spec boosts your spell hit you can trade off spell hit gear for gear with more spirit, thus more mana regen and less need for support
I have not done much in BT yet, but I would say I easily saw a 200+ point boost in DPS switching from Fire/Icy Veins to deep Arcane in SSC, TK and Hyjal
Lucky for me that my GM is a Arcane mage too….so a shammy usually finds its way into the mage group 🙂
Fireangel is not wearing 2pc T5 and is almost wearing the same gear as my mage. I am tempted to switch to Arcane/Frost to test it out, but I am not sure how well that would work out. lol.
I did the cookie cutter Raid fire spec(10/48/3) but could never dish out the dmg I did as the 40/0/21 build. I’m full T5 and last time I went to BT with the guild I was definitely in the top 3 DPS. That would dip on the bosses though because I didn’t have the support I needed. You can really pad those #’s on Trash pulls though if you just go AB spam crazy…drink in between. On bosses you can do rotations with AB and Frostbolt and do alright with your pots and Gems.