4.0.1 - Arcane, Fire, and Mastery.Follow

Hello, I know this post incorporates a few others that have been posted but I thought combining them could answer all my questions at once and possibly help other mages consolidate knowledge. Also do NOT interpret this as me being a master, if I get lucky some of the real masters will help out on this. I have a firm grip on what I was as a mage, but after the patch I literally just sat infront of the talent trees going "WTF" even though I spent hours researching things and playing with talents. Also heres my Armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sisters+of+Elune&cn=Valleyum


My first point is PvE, I went and did both of my specs as PvE instead of my usual PvE with PvP offspec (Arcane/ Frost respectively). Arcane now has many of the old core abilities it used to have and a few generic brand ones removed. I like that they brought back Arcane Explosion as the AoE of this build and I love the idea of the talent reducing global cooldown. I have only played the butt end of WotLK, so all I truely know is arcane being the powerhouse for PvE mages. I love the return of mana gems increasing damage, I had heard of this from FrostFire mages and the old tier set (T7 or T8 I believe pardon me for not researching that). Also a final note, after filling out the arcane tree, I felt it was obvious taking "Master of Elements" and "Piercing Ice" but didn't know where to go from there, maybe "Burning Soul".


Fire has seem to make a comeback in terms of PvE in my opinion. From what I see the main talents were kept/ improved, and all the bologna ones were taken out. Playing around with specs, I'm not even sure what people would seed as "cookie cutter" anymore. Theres some serious wiggle room between talents going down the tree. One I notice (and avoided because of uncertainty) was that Fire Blast was in a lot of the talents. Well more a couple of them, but I just skipped over them. This may have been my mistake. But since I'm so embedded as an arcane mage I'm useless at knowing what I should do in this tree.


Now my final thing is reforging. I love it, I was at like 540+ hit (massively over cap) and I reforged for haste on items without it, and reforged crit chance on items that already had haste. I believe now I'm inbetween the "okay" and "max" range of hit. But my shaman RL friend swore by him reforging into Mastery. I read on here people shutting that idea down, but I was looking and it could be a DPS increase. I do agree though, the more you can crit and the faster you can cast, the better. I'm avoiding it for now but wants to see what a mass of brains thought of it.


Last thing would have to be gems. All my SP gems turn into INT and I get the new system where int is a larger thing. But I was wondering if I should stick with the old set of gems (that some changed colors etc) or if I should start gemming pure int gems. Int now brings mana, SP, and crit into the picture which makes it a superior stat in my opinion. Also I'm asking this to find out how to start re- enchanting my gear. I'm sure WoWHeroes will show me where to go with this as well. -Also- as a note, I accidentally got a 23SP enchant on my bracers once cause I was linked the chant, got the mats, and didn't notice til after. I'm not sure if the same goes for the 30SP wrist enchant but its basically the only enchant that remained on my gear. Bug maybe? I was thinking bug because of all my other SP enchants being gone. Throwing it out there.


This is really the final thing, I have no clue where to go with glyphs, and I'd love some advice there.


Thanks for reading through all my stuff, and thanks for any responses I receive!

-edit- Added the link to my Armory, and added another [enter] between each paragraph, I talk too much, eh? Thanks again!


Edited, Oct 13th 2010 2:53pm by valleyum

arcane isn't bugged, it is just better now because of the scaling of our current gear. remember, abilities are scaled for level 85 now.

for arcane you want to reforge for crit and mastery (around 33% crit I believe self-buffed is a good target -- using mage armor + glyph of mage armor), after that 33% reforge to mastery. Haste actually hurts you now more as arcane as it hurts your mps and you want to stay at higher mana for longer times (never want to go below 85% except for burn phases).

Check out the EJ arcane thread for more info, tons of good info there.

Edited, Oct 13th 2010 5:49pm by Anobix

I'm going to wait to see what they do to reduce our damage before I get around to doing any kind of reforging, tbh.

ftfy, generally (at least from what I thought) it was to take it to 40% mana then a full evocate will take you back up to full.

I saw 77k-80k ABs in ICC last night. Only had time to spec into arcane without updating glyphs, mastery etc.

Read somewhere that someone mentions 136k ABs on BQL.

hi guys - first time posting.

I have really appreciated all of good tips and comments in this forum - so thanks

I am still playing arcane and wanted to know if the hit cap is still same as pre-patch?

Also - can you check my build - generally my dps is still good but would appreciate any suggestions -I know i need some better gear. I have reforged into mastery many of my items. I miss icy veins in my rotaion but get haste not quite as important as before

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Nazgrel&cn=Vynestra

Thanks - I truly appreciate the advice.

Ya i kinda got goofy on the purple gems....will make the changes you suggest - thanks again. =D