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As previously mentioned, we touched upon the Frost-fire Mage and how to play it, but now we will make mention of the Arcane Mage and how to play it as well. Let us get started it right now.
When it comes to the best arcane spec, there is plenty of room for debate, unlike Frost-fire. The most popular distribution of talents is 57/3/11, though which exact arcane talents you take is up for debate. The only flexible talents in the arcane tree are Arcane Focus, Arcane Stability and Arcane Subtlety.
You can mix and match points in those and if you've got a couple leftover you could invest in Magic Attunement, Student of the Mind, Incanter's Absorption, Slow or another peripheral talent.
About the glyphs, these are as follows:
Glyph of Arcane Blast: Required.
Glyph of Mage Armor/Glyph of Molten Armor: depending on which one you use or you could glyph both. It's up to you to determine whether you want to raid with the 5% crit from glyphed molten armor, or the extra mp5 from glyphed Mage armor.
Glyph of Arcane Power gives you an extra 3 seconds of arcane power, which is nice, but not necessary. If you feel like you're always going to be running with either molten or mage armor, this would be the choice for your third major glyph slot.
Note that Glyph of Mana Gem and Glyph of Arcane Missiles might seem a little tempting, but they're both weak choices.
In regard of rotation, the general idea of arcane is below:
Arcane Blast is your bread-and-butter spell. Casting it increases the damage your arcane spells do by 15% and increases the mana cost of arcane blast itself. You can stack it up to three times, giving you a massive damage buff but at that point arcane blast costs over mana to cast.
The way you dump the buff is by casting another arcane spell. This spell will benefit from the stacks of the arcane blast buff you have, and then clear the buff itself.
Ideally, you want to stack Arcane Blast three times before casting another spell.
Think of it as charging up. You charge up by casting arcane blast up to 3 times and dump the charge by casting either arcane barrage or arcane missiles. How do you know which one to use?
All of your arcane spells have a chance to proc Missile Barrage, which makes your next arcane missiles cast super fast. After stacking your three arcane blasts, you proc missile barrage, then you should cast arcane missiles immediately followed by arcane barrage.
If missile barrage doesn't proc while stacking your three arcane blasts, you should just cast arcane barrage.
Regardless of what you cast, you should immediately go back to stacking three more arcane blasts, and repeat the process until the boss is dead.
So this is more complicated than Frost-fire. Well, try it and see just how quick you run out of mana. Between the stacked arcane blasts and the hugely expensive arcane missiles, you're going to be blowing through your mana very fast. How do you counter this?
One is to use mana gems aggressively and aim to use all three every boss fight. In general, we use one within the first 15 seconds of any fight, as soon as we've burned enough mana to warrant it. Do not wait until you are low on mana to use one.
The other is evocation: While Frost-fire Mages rarely if ever have to evocate, arcane Mages may find themselves evocating three times during a boss fight! Thanks to the 2-minute cooldown from talents, evocation can and should be used aggressively to restore your mana pool. If you can time it to where you start casting it in the final second of icy veins, then all the better.
Then it is runic mana potions. You only get one per fight so make it count.
The last one is Mage Armor. If you're having serious mana issues, consider switching from molten to glyphed Mage armor.
And finally, if you're still finding yourself having to resort to wanding on boss fights:
Change your rotation. If you start stacking arcane blast twice instead of three times, the spec is much more mana efficient. Of course this seriously hurts your DPS, so you want to avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes you can't. The essence of playing arcane is to know when to hit hard and to know when to scale back. This depends on too many factors to count: your gear, the raid you're in, the fight itself, whether you get innervate and the like. Therefore, it's impossible to generalize about this stuff, it just takes experience.
When it comes to the best arcane spec, there is plenty of room for debate, unlike Frost-fire. The most popular distribution of talents is 57/3/11, though which exact arcane talents you take is up for debate. The only flexible talents in the arcane tree are Arcane Focus, Arcane Stability and Arcane Subtlety.
You can mix and match points in those and if you've got a couple leftover you could invest in Magic Attunement, Student of the Mind, Incanter's Absorption, Slow or another peripheral talent.
About the glyphs, these are as follows:
Glyph of Arcane Blast: Required.
Glyph of Mage Armor/Glyph of Molten Armor: depending on which one you use or you could glyph both. It's up to you to determine whether you want to raid with the 5% crit from glyphed molten armor, or the extra mp5 from glyphed Mage armor.
Glyph of Arcane Power gives you an extra 3 seconds of arcane power, which is nice, but not necessary. If you feel like you're always going to be running with either molten or mage armor, this would be the choice for your third major glyph slot.
Note that Glyph of Mana Gem and Glyph of Arcane Missiles might seem a little tempting, but they're both weak choices.
In regard of rotation, the general idea of arcane is below:
Arcane Blast is your bread-and-butter spell. Casting it increases the damage your arcane spells do by 15% and increases the mana cost of arcane blast itself. You can stack it up to three times, giving you a massive damage buff but at that point arcane blast costs over mana to cast.
The way you dump the buff is by casting another arcane spell. This spell will benefit from the stacks of the arcane blast buff you have, and then clear the buff itself.
Ideally, you want to stack Arcane Blast three times before casting another spell.
Think of it as charging up. You charge up by casting arcane blast up to 3 times and dump the charge by casting either arcane barrage or arcane missiles. How do you know which one to use?
All of your arcane spells have a chance to proc Missile Barrage, which makes your next arcane missiles cast super fast. After stacking your three arcane blasts, you proc missile barrage, then you should cast arcane missiles immediately followed by arcane barrage.
If missile barrage doesn't proc while stacking your three arcane blasts, you should just cast arcane barrage.
Regardless of what you cast, you should immediately go back to stacking three more arcane blasts, and repeat the process until the boss is dead.
So this is more complicated than Frost-fire. Well, try it and see just how quick you run out of mana. Between the stacked arcane blasts and the hugely expensive arcane missiles, you're going to be blowing through your mana very fast. How do you counter this?
One is to use mana gems aggressively and aim to use all three every boss fight. In general, we use one within the first 15 seconds of any fight, as soon as we've burned enough mana to warrant it. Do not wait until you are low on mana to use one.
The other is evocation: While Frost-fire Mages rarely if ever have to evocate, arcane Mages may find themselves evocating three times during a boss fight! Thanks to the 2-minute cooldown from talents, evocation can and should be used aggressively to restore your mana pool. If you can time it to where you start casting it in the final second of icy veins, then all the better.
Then it is runic mana potions. You only get one per fight so make it count.
The last one is Mage Armor. If you're having serious mana issues, consider switching from molten to glyphed Mage armor.
And finally, if you're still finding yourself having to resort to wanding on boss fights:
Change your rotation. If you start stacking arcane blast twice instead of three times, the spec is much more mana efficient. Of course this seriously hurts your DPS, so you want to avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes you can't. The essence of playing arcane is to know when to hit hard and to know when to scale back. This depends on too many factors to count: your gear, the raid you're in, the fight itself, whether you get innervate and the like. Therefore, it's impossible to generalize about this stuff, it just takes experience.
