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My main is an arcane mage, and while I do awesome dps on my hunter (thanks to the seemingly endless amount of focus), I am really suckin' it up on my mage. I wondered if anyone had any tactics that they use to keep their mana supply going?

Here's what I do:

While fighting the captain, I do not go all out with my damage, for mana conservation. I'll arcane missiles when they're up, and not use any of my mana regen cd's. I still end up lower than 100% mana by the end of the fight, so I have been going invis and then eating, losing dps time against mannoroth.

During the actual mannoroth fight, I will pop my trinket and spam AB for some bonus dps. When I'm down to about 1/3 I mana gem, mirror image, arcane power, evocate and then i'll try and conserve mana. After the fel fire storm against mannoroth (not the 2 with the captain) I pop TW. I do this not for myself, but for the raid, because I am not spamming AB when I pop tW here, as I would prefer. My evo and mana gem are still on cd, so I will still be sparing with my mana consumption.

Maybe this is just not the fight for mages? And really a fight for other classes, but I have seen mages do better dps than I am doing during this fight. I am pulling around 50k, give or take. (While against Petroth'an I'm doin 60k and up)

I'm not saying I'm the best mage there is, this is just my attack plan and I'm sure there are some issues which is why I'm asking for help.

02/22/2012 05:09 AMPosted by Rosanna

I will pop my trinket and spam AB for some bonus dps. When I'm down to about 1/3 I mana gem, mirror image, arcane power, evocate and then i'll try and conserve mana

Therein lies the problem! First of all your "burn phase" altogether has about a 1.5-2 minute CD. When you start on Varo'then (or any boss, this rotation is applicable to all) you should Arcane Blast x 4 (which should bring you to ~90% DPS) and then pop Mana Gem, Mirror Images, and Arcane Power all at once. A simple macro would help a lot on that. That should bring you back up to roughly 100% mana. Then spam Arcane Blast til you get to 35% mana THEN evocate. Then you start Arcane Blast x 4 and AM spam for conservation. Once Evocate has 30 seconds left on CD start burn phase again, so on and so forth.

The trick to Arc Mage DPS is making sure you start your burn phases with as much mana as possible for max damage output from your mastery. Hope this helped!

You shouldn't go OOM as arcane, ever. Mastery gives you bonus damage based on how full your mana pool is. So except during your burn phase, you should be keeping your mana pool as close as possible to full without capping and wasting mana. If you're not getting Arcane Missiles procs often enough to keep your mana full, you can cast arcane barrage to clear the Arcane Blast debuff.

Edit: That said, I'm not really sure how to maximize DPS against Mannoroth, because I don't really understand how Magistrike Arc works. Are you just supposed to get as many hits in as possible, because each hit has a fixed chance to proc it, or is it normalized so that weaker hits have a smaller chance to proc it, or proc for less damage? Not that it matters, really, considering how easy the fight is.

I'm pretty sure Magistrike Arc has an smallish internal cooldown but a high proc rate. Essentially, as long as you have someone working on him, his life will go down at a fairly even rate.

Essentially? Once Varo'then is down, the rest of the fight is really just an active cinematic. You'll only wipe if you explicitly do things wrong; you won't wipe from not having the gear.

02/22/2012 11:45 AMPosted by Yablik

I'm pretty sure Magistrike Arc has an smallish internal cooldown but a high proc rate. Essentially, as long as you have someone working on him, his life will go down at a fairly even rate.

Yeah, this seems fairly accurate. He always seems to go down at pretty much the same speed, regardless of group or gear, and those that hit faster seem to do more damage with Magistrike Arc (as they can proc it faster after the ICD.

During the actual mannoroth fight, I will pop my trinket and spam AB for some bonus dps. When I'm down to about 1/3 I mana gem, mirror image, arcane power, evocate and then i'll try and conserve mana. After the fel fire storm against mannoroth (not the 2 with the captain) I pop TW. I do this not for myself, but for the raid,

Please tell me this is a troll

My b, meant to say party not raid.

I did exactly what you suggested Baenor, and I only pulled 9k more dps with this fight, up to 59k from 50k.

Maybe it's just not that mage-friendly since it's so drawn out?

You would get roughly the same DPS on Mannaroth by spamming Ice Lance as you would by executing a perfect Arcane rotation; if you've ever looked at the damage breakdown it's a massive, massive percentage of 'Magistrike Arc' damage. Hit the boss and there's a chance of doing 100k extra damage.

Not that it matters, but probably the best way to maximize dps on this encounter as arcane would be to do a hard burn rotation on the captain, then stack on the tank, near the boss, and cast arcane explosion whenever there's adds, arcane barrage whenever it's up, and arcane missiles every time it procs.

02/23/2012 04:25 AMPosted by Rosanna

I did exactly what you suggested Baenor, and I only pulled 9k more dps with this fight, up to 59k from 50k.

That means you increased by a raw 9k DPS since the Magistrike Arc damage would have been the same regardless of your rotation and CD timing. Which means, that's a MASSIVE improvement! :)

Basically what Mnevis said. This fight is a lame RP event not a real fight, if you are looking to pad the numbers just AoE the adds. I can pull like 150k or more from just LOLhowlingblastLOL spamming the adds.

I heal this fight and occasionally come out as top dps just because of Magistrike Arc procs.

Usually the only dps that beat me are ones with a bunch of DoTs, i.e Fire Mage, Feral Kitty, Boomkin, AffLock, or classes that melee fast, like Rogues & DWing DKs.

So, I have a question. Although not me, i was running on my Druid as a tank, and this arcane mage decides that using ice lance against Mannoroth. I wasn't aware of any frost vulnerabilities on Mannoroth, but apparently, this mage said it was a boost to dps. Perhaps if he was running frost, I could see that, but arcane??

I mean, the only time as an arcane mage I ever use ice lance is when I am moving, and then it is 2 between arcane barrages.

Did I miss something here? I mean, for me, I can pull 130k on Mannoroth doing normal arcane mage spells, and 77k on that fight seems like someone may be full of crap.

You would get roughly the same DPS on Mannaroth by spamming Ice Lance as you would by executing a perfect Arcane rotation; if you've ever looked at the damage breakdown it's a massive, massive percentage of 'Magistrike Arc' damage. Hit the boss and there's a chance of doing 100k extra damage.

Not that it matters, but probably the best way to maximize dps on this encounter as arcane would be to do a hard burn rotation on the captain, then stack on the tank, near the boss, and cast arcane explosion whenever there's adds, arcane barrage whenever it's up, and arcane missiles every time it procs.

ok, so you're telling me that ice lancing the target = normal arcane rotation.... I'm guessing having a 4 piece bonus haste bringing you to casting arcane blasts to very near 1 sec is probably better then, right?

Damage on Mannoroth is all coming from the proc, your personal damage is less than 1 proc on the debuff usually.

Dot classes generally do way more on this fight as they have more chances to proc it, my sub rogue has done 175k DPS, I've pulled 100k as fire, I think as arcane I was only able to pull 70k or so, because it has nothing.

As far as why the mage would ice lance, it's because it requires no thought to just spam, where as Arcane will edge it out because missiles hit fast, giving each tick a chance of proccing the million damage, but it's going to require another neuron or 2 to fire in your brain.

It's not just dot classes. I pulled 700k on Mannoroth on my Ret Pally a few months ago.

Flame orb every CD, missiles every single cooldown and use flame strike for the DOT every single tiem the DOT is up and you'll get up around 80-90k dps. The magistrike arc procs on damage, so putting as many dots and ticks and blips and blops of damage on mannoroth will increase your DPS dramatically. Worrying about some perfect arcane rotation won't be as good as this.

03/16/2012 09:13 AMPosted by Starkuma

It's not just dot classes. I pulled 700k on Mannoroth on my Ret Pally a few months ago.

Quoting the ret paladin bug as actual dps is lulz-worthy.

Never had issues with mana on Mannoroth.

Do not use Arcane Barrage unless you do not have Missiles and need to run or drop Arcane Blast stacks.

Use Arcane Power only for burn phases. Evo when you have about 50% mana left.

Make sure your mage armor is glyphed.

Stellar dps on that fight has nothing to do with how great your dps is, just stand closer to Mannoroth than the rest and Magistrike (or smth like that) will do the rest for you.

02/22/2012 05:46 AMPosted by Keeblik

That said, I'm not really sure how to maximize DPS against Mannoroth, because I don't really understand how Magistrike Arc works

It proc's off a tick of ANYTHING. So pet/dot classes will go through roof. My crap geared unholy DK does like 150k dps on this fight for that reason.

The key to maximizing your Mannoroth DPS is to increase your ticks. Mix in flamestrikes and fireballs for the dots, and lots of arcane missles.

Real simple for arc mages. Forget your usual rotation and hit Arcane Missiles whenever it's up. Pour on the haste trinkets/cooldowns and watch your DPS skyrocket. Oh, and PoM/Flamestrike under him doesn't hurt either.

I pulled respectable DPS on my mage doing this fight the conventional arcane mage rotation. I switched to missiles whenever they were active and my overall DPS peaked at 180K and finished around 150 with pretty much a full mana bar.

Let the Magistrike Arc work for you and watch the pretty numbers fly.

Wait a sec. The hardest part of that fight is dealing with the elf: the sooner he's dead, the better. Why is nobody recommending the OP use Time Warp on Varo'then?