Hey guys, QJ here.
So many of you have been asking for me to make a guide on how I play Arcane in pre-patch, or how they should play and how we are supposed to play Arcane in dragonflight.
First of all, let me remind you that I do not have beta access, so I did not have time or the opportunity to test our gain in dragonflight at all.
But I've done some pretty high keys on pre-patch as our game since I had time to play the game again, so I wanted to tell you guys my way of playing our game.
Before watching this video I strongly recommend you watching two videos which are Arcane guides or thoughts or whatever you want to call them on beta and Arcane on dragonflight first one made by preheat and the second one made by phosphorus and especially the one made by phosphorus because I feel like he has a good understanding of how arcane is at a high level in MythicPlus, also keep in mind uh I am going to talk about arcane assuming that you already know how it was played before pre-patch so how it was played in shadowlands and what was the best rotation then and uh what the Spells were back then so don’t really consider this a guide, I didn’t want to make a guide and I still don’t want to make a guide for pre-patch and the reason is The Sims are not out yet I do not have beta access so making a guide for you guys that I will have to update or change in one month I don't think is worthy of you so if ever I want to make a detailed guide I want to make sure that it's actually consistent and that you can be sure that you have to play that way but dragonflight isn't even out yet after it’s going to go out we usually see so many changes, I don't think Arcane is going to change much because you don’t see spell changes but just like tuning which can impact some of your rotational play cells so let me tell you how.
Let's just have a quick reminder right on how we used to play Arcane before shadowlands, before shadowlands we did not have our game search so just imagine this is Arcane power right we would do Arcane power radiant spark cast touch of the Magi which was not instant do our four Arcane blasts or five in some single Target situations and then Arcane barrage right what was the idea of this rotation of course it's the rotation that outputs the most damage but the idea behind it and why was he doing so much damage is because touch of the maji will accumulate a lot of damage so we had to do the modes damage in the touch of the Magi rotation and that meant during the four arcane blast which were powered by radiant spark and a big barrage of course, all of them with the bonus buff of the four Arcane charges and the 18 stacks of our legendary for Arcane barrage.
Now how the guides on Wowhead and how I think all the guides right now tell you, you should play arcane in dragonflight and therefore how you should play in pre-patch to prepare for dragon fight is like this you will radiant spark do three Arcane blasts one two three and then Arcane surge into barrage and touch of the Magi right after barrage lift off and then just consume the clear casting Stacks until you’re at 18 stacks and you can consume a barrage, again the idea behind this rotation is to make full use of this Talent right here arcane so for every damage direct damage that you do to the Target it’s going to explode if it's affected by touch of the Magi and that does damage to itself and the targets nearby.
Right now I do not like this play style I feel like most of the people that want to try again like preheat is a very good example they hate reading spark play style they hate that we have a big burst every 45 seconds and then we our filler is basically whatever uh they feel like we spend the same buttons but it’s really not the case if you want to optimize it in high Keys we have so many more keybinds that for example fire and I will show you now the rotation that I used in all AOE single Target rotation and uh yeah all the UE and all single Target rotation I sometimes adapted depending on multiple things but basically this is what it is.
I will do Arcane surge, Radiance Park do two Arcane blasts another Tempest touch of the Magi the last working blasts barrage and then consume the clear casting Stacks without another barrage necessarily before the touch of the maji ends, why do I do this well it depends on wow why do you play WoW right so some people play because they want to play the best classes and throughout the most damage some people play for fun and fun is subjective so it can mean whatever it is to you right for me I play World of Warcraft because of fun and for me what’s fun is burst and losing the rotation we had in shadowlands to play a clear casting spam during touch of the Magi is not that bursty anymore like try the old rotation on the new one you will see that maybe the new one might do a bit less damage overall but the burst is more condensed, it’s condensed into the 10 seconds of touch of the Magi while the burst that the or the rotation that they want you to play in dragonflight will be spread out in more of like 15-20 seconds and that is because of how you play it.
You press radiant spark and then you do two three Arcane blasts and by the end that and then Arcane surge barrage touch of the Magi but when you finish casting Arcane surge maybe six seven seconds already passed right and then you Cast arcane surge and this gives you back for 15 seconds, I don’t see like I know it depends also on laser design but we're not supposed to stuck with the design that we're given right but I think it's a good idea like for example Arcane surge is a 15 second on cooldown Radiance Park is a 10 second long debuff and touch of the magi a 10 second long debuff I do not see why you would use one of them before the other especially since this one has a debuff shorter than Arcane search so I want Arcane surge to last for the whole duration of my buff get it that it also does a lot of damage right that's why you uh you want to use it on your third debuff of radiant spark because it does a lot of damage but that damage I think you can ignore it for the bonus damage that you would get from it on the Arcane blasts so instead of doing three Arcane blasts without the Arcane surge Arcane power whatever buff I would rather use Arcane Surge and without the amped damage so I can amp the damage of Arcane blast.
That is also why I do not do the Arcane blasts outside especially the last two outside of touch of the Magi the damage of resembles is really non-negligible look at this so if I go Arcane surge and then radiant spark and then to get my charges look at the damage that my arcane blast will do. this is 30k, 20K non-crit 51k and then 30k non-crit and then 17K crit a 70k crit or let's say what would be a 60k crit because you would never Arcane glass on the fourth debuff right only on the third is not negligible you don’t want this outside of your touch of the measure you want this in your touch of the magi right and I think that the damage so basically what the guides tell you but the Sims are not out yet is that one clear casting proc of Arcane missiles in touch of the Magi with Arcane Echo because of our kin ago we'll do more damage than one Arcane blast buffed by one or two or three debuffs of radiant spark which I do not agree with.
I think this does more damage maybe not the first two Arcane blasts because the debuff is not strong enough that's why it would outside of the touch of the Magi but this is the reason I play the rotation that I play, I do Arcane surge Idol basically the rotation I use I still have the burst of shadowlands and I still fully utilize Arcane Echoes uh potential right because if also I played double bloodlust I do not play uh time anomaly time anomaly is good if you have nine issues but if you learn how to manage your Runner properly and you don't just Spam stuff randomly let's just call it that way you will have your Mana for everything like I don't even need to use evocation.
I use Evocation to amp up my game search when I'm at already 100 Mana like evocation is a button I never press anymore with the how our team search works so I will show you now how my rotation looks with double bloodless because this is also the reason that I play it this way right I will just in this now to just so you can see you imagine this is a new pull so imitating Stacks engaging a new pull I will Advocate before the pull to be sure I have my my buff and look at this so I will have a bloodlust and then Arcane search radiant spark two Arcane blast another Tempest touch of the Magi lasso Arcane blast and then Arcane barrage and look how much time I have to consume my clear castings every time you consume them do two Arcane orbs do barrage again fully buffed and touch energy still hasn’t expired yet.
I don't see why we should delay the use of touch of the Magi they want you to delay it so that you can do multiple Arcane missile clear casting uh spams right to proc Arcane Echo more often but right now in pre-patch this is not the case also this is not a talent uh that Played in pre-patch.
I'm going to talk about talents because this is uh I have so many things to say about so many talents, so um the one thing I wanted to say before going into talents is this rotation that they are teaching you to play in late in dragonflight pre-patch so that you can be ready for dragon flight might work in dragon flight because of the talents that we're going to pick right so we're gaining five more points uh we are going to spec harmonic Echo we are going to spec uneliminated thoughts twice concentration and Arcane Harmony so if you read concentration it's even eliminated thoughts you have more clear casting proc chance you have a chance for a clear casting process not be consumed and this is just arcane Harmony but basically what these two mean is you might not have time to consume all your clear casting Stacks before your touch of the magi explodes so if that's the case and I will test it out when dragonflight launches because I cannot do it before because I don't have beta access if that's the case then yes the rotation that you will see on all the guides and on Wowhead is the rotation that you should use but I cannot tell you that for sure yet because I haven't tried it.
Let's talk about my setup right so I am not expecting to radiant spark why you should or should not be expecting to radiant spark is that if you want to play the rotation ready for dragonflight, the one that they teach you you should spec it because Arcane search does not interact with the curio radiance Park so I think it's a micro for me because um and I cannot even spell micro, okay there you go so the if I do if I press uh Radiance file can I do three icon plus like the rotation that they wanted to and then I just press Arcane surge it interacts because I have Radiance work specked but if I unspec it it's not going to interact with it if you're not expecting to Radiance Park and you only use decurion one it will not interact with Arcane search to do, and then you do your again search and this doesn't interact with the target you see the debuff did not interact right, there that is the reason why uh if you want to play the rotation you are supposed to play if you read the guides on dragon flight you should spec Radiance part but this is not what I play this is generally the build that I've come up to.
I’ve played many different things and I’m going to tell you my thoughts on every Talent first of all I could of course specular Radiance park right and that's just not pick or Kimber bar or King bombardment but this Talent is so huge you guys cannot even realize, 35 is a lot of Health in bosses especially as Arcane we focus the highest health Target right, what generally this talent means because you will never see the when a pack is almost dead right you see the back on pull it means you have time to use your CDs and that right at the end of your touch of magi if it's like a bloodless pull or whatever you have time to generate another buffed barrage your barrage is going to do so much damage it's so worth it uh on bosses in 45 I find that they last exactly long enough for this talent to be perfect so I use my CD Zone pull I use my mini burn of 45 seconds 45seconds later and then another 45seconds later so one minute 30 into the fight I have my CDs again and the boss is at around 40 HP it's perfect the time I get to use my barrage in my rotation he’s right under 35 depending of course on the boss on the key level if tyrannical fortified but generally this works and even if you have your mini Burn only when the boss is at less than 35 you should use it just because we now have execute as Arcane, this is such a good talent I cannot I cannot stress this enough.
Now I want to talk to you guys about one Talent which I played a lot and was this one I thought that this would be very open let me tell you the reasoning for why I thought this was a piece so neither rotation that you want to use after your barrage you will spam Arcane missiles so having a buff of haste haste in that small Arcane missile spam duration is much more important than the haste outside of it so if you could get like a lot of haste only for that amount of time it would be great and this is exactly what it is except I read it wrong I thought this will give you two percent for every Arcane charge that you consume so I thought you will get eight percent haste exactly when you need it for Arcane missiles I thought this was perfect it's not the case it’s two percent and every time you refresh the buff it Stacks up to five times so I just packed out of it I'm never playing it again.
Now let's talk about crackling energy, so this increases your Arcane explosion base damage by 10 or 20 if you spec it twice, this Talent is not that important why first of all we do not use Arcane explosion almost at all anymore like it's in some very big AOE cases in your filler you should use it or even in like five six seven targets I'm not sure exactly how many but there are some situations in which I feel this does more damage than just Plumbing Orkin results and then doing Arcane orb right but in most cases it’s not you will not use Arcane explosion that’s the first thing, the second thing is Arcane blast never use Arcane blast outside of your cities never it's it’s worthless it does no damage it does a lot of damage with radiant spark much more than Arcane missiles or anything else except barrage of course but it does a lot of damage then but if let's say you are outside of your CDs and just have four stacks of Arcane uh of our game Stacks I don't know how you call them just four Stacks or parking charges yeah there you go, don't spam Arcane dust it doesn't do enough damage you you're better off spamming Arcane missiles it just does more damage.
So I'm specked out of this I was specked out of this twice and I just came back to one because what I used to play sometimes is this right so okay the same talents as before I used to play the speed on Arcane brush I feel like this speed is underrated this is so strong you are so mobile as our game if you pick this because you have the same Mobility as fire and frost except you also always move with 50 increase speed because you always barrage so often like this is so good but I expect out of it because it's not mandatory and do more damage of course not much more but 10 more if I expect this why don't Expect it twice it's for me to play.
This Talent is very strong I don’t think you guys realize so Arcane best has a 10 chance to generate you an additional Arcane charge if you were to gain an Arcane chargeable at maximum charges instead gain 10 Arcane damage for 10 seconds this 10 Arcane damage has doesn’t have a 10 chance so if you're at four charges and you press Arcane blast you will get this bonus for 10 seconds why is this so good, because you never use Arcane blasts when you don't have four Arcane charges you don't use Arcane to generate the Arcane charges but to do damage with Arcane blast on Radiance Park when you already have 4 Arcane charges.
How this Talent benefits you in every rotation that you use is that you we so we use radiant spark and then we do 4K Plus or like three Arcane blasts and Arcane surge if you use the rotation they want you to play in dragonflight if you do this your last Arcane blast is going to be with four Arcane charges which means every time you see the big burn or mini burn you will get this bonus for the exact same duration that your touch of the magi less so 10 seconds So this is actually very strong losing 10 damage on Arcane blast to gain 10 damage on all of your spells in your Burst when you are a burst class is definitely worth it So this Talent is very very underrated I think you should play it very often.
Apart from this the only thing I am changing when I play is uh just general three talents right I can spec out of Tempest barrier to spec into Winter’s protection if I feel like I have to ice block more often than I have to then I can blink uh I'm specking out of Shimmer in streets because I can blink the containment in a you know in the first boss so I play IC flows but I never even press them because I don't need to uh I sometimes pick out of the second last wave because uh this last wave without the second, what what's I think so yeah uh playing last week without the second last wave is just a DB basically it's an AOE DB so yeah I'm just just pre this is more defensive than speed I can play decrease if I want but it's I honestly nothing matters here except double bloodlust, unacceptable bloodlust and three percent two percent sorry extra crit chance nothing matters but I really wanted to show you uh my thoughts with you guys on this challenge.
So lastly what I'm going to be in dragon flight, I feel like I'm going to try to play Arcane bombardment more than I will play enlightened this is very good because having more Mana regeneration means we can pick less Mastery which means we can pick more crit Versa and haste and especially more crit and having this is basically Mass restart this is what this is It's it gives you a lot of past semester that doesn't increase your damage but doesn’t allow you to go mana that fast so you can put your stats into something else so this is very strong.
I will not speak out of siphon storm I love the siphon storm play style it reminds me of the Azura trinket when I was playing fire image in BFA uh but Arkin bombardment is so so strong I love the radiance part play style so I don’t even know if I'm going to try the orb barrage build where I just Spam clear casting missiles and orbs all the time I don't want a constant spec damage, if I want constant damage and not burst I will play fire because we have 85 percent uptime on combust in single Target and like 40 outside of single Target so you have combust all the time, it's not busy we have two buttons to press Fire blast and pyroblast, you could micro them together and just press one button that’s boring to me I want to have burst even though it looks like I'm doing the same rotation I just wanted to show you what my base rotation looks like right but I will sometimes improvise.
So for example if I see that I will do my rotation but I don't have any clear casting procs for some reason it just happens right if I do that I will press touch of the Magi earlier because if not I will waste touch of the magi, if I do two Arcane blasts and then touch of the Magi and then two Arcane blasts and then I don't have clear casting stacks or only have one to consume then basically touch the magi it just stays on my target with me spamming Arcane missiles without clear casting process and that that does no damage so I’m better off pressing it earlier if I see that I have already three stacks of Arcane uh Arcane missiles I will delay my touch in the matchup by one more blast so I will do three Arcane blasts touch on the magi, arcane blast and then barrage so I can fit in more clear casting missiles I'm adapting it depending on how many clear casting procs I have.
These were my thoughts guys and I will try to make a very detailed guide on how you should play Arcane Mage in uh dragonflight but I'm waiting for dragonflight to come out so I can properly test it and test it at a high level just like I tested our game in pre-patch, right now you can see these are the keys I managed to time in just a few weeks of coming back to the game, thank you guys for watching and if you have any questions ask them in the comments below don't forget please watch the other guides on YouTube and a big big shout out to especially folks for us who does an amazing job of testing Arcane for us in beta!
