thank you so much for making such a simple and easy to understand no BS guide this helped a ton! just rerolled to arcane mage at the start of season 3 and i still dont know what im doing till now 100 thank yous!!
Every 45sec, you can do a go with Touch of the magi and PoM. If you're free to cast, you can spam arcane blasts with 4 orbs up, drop a ring of fire on CD, use missile procs, a fully channeled shifting power, rotate sheeps between healer and off target (depending on the comp you play, sometimes you don't want to sheep and cleave both dps) since the pvp talent gives you a speed boost and vers buff when a target is sheeped. If you're getting trained, I usually spellsteal important buffs like shields, freedoms, hots. Keep melee slowed with arcane barrage, arcane orb first so you can double slow. Use your blinks, alter time, blast wave/ice nova combo well and once you get some space, you can send the magi/pom and spam blasts, missile procs, sheeps and so on like mentioned in the free to cast part
With arcane mage my biggest problem is not so much the damage, but survivability. I have a lot of problems surviving against DH and DK, yesterday in shuffle I had 2 in my lobby, and it was impossible to kite the demon hunter, in combination with all the grips, interrupts, silences and anti-magic mitigation. I don't know if it's just a bad matchup, but it was one of the most miserable experiences I've had in arena. I literally used my entire toolkit: slow on both dps, the 2 blinks and displacement, ice nova, ring of frost, frost nova, blast wave, dragon's breath into polymorph, and of course all my defensives. That allowed me to survive about 3 minutes being chased, but even then it was impossible to kill them or not be dying all the time. I really don't know what I should do in those situations where there is a double DH or DK/DH. I was thinking about trying frost mage, but since the rework the button bloat is too much for me, I don't feel comfortable using it anymore.
Well DK/DH is a miserable experience for any caster and Frost could be better into it thanks to the snares and Ice Barrier (gives bonus armor against melee), but honestly Arcane has the most survivability out of all mage specs. It's all about trading mobility cooldowns, abusing infinite spellsteal and sending arcane missiles from behind the pillar. Personaly I got better into DH after I started using Ice Nova on them on cooldown. Anytime I can Ice Nova their dash or Hunt, I spoil their plans.
My advice as a former 2.4+ arc mage in shuffle is that you wanna be doing everything ur doing but you have to try and do ur best to be completely untargetable to the point where they just don't wanna hit you. It's tough cause when you turn your attention to the DK or DH even if they get off you, they can just grip and cancel your burst or the DH just dashes over. To counter, when they do so, you wanna try to trigger a fire/frost lock with a ring cast or just get precog and get arc surge + radiant spark + magi into 2 POM blasts and a barrage then 2 orbs then barrage again into some missiles behind a pillar and if they aren't dead yet then they at least would have backed off. I've killed people in under 5-6 seconds a few times while triggering a precog I think once you get above 2k it's just essential as an arc mage to get good at triggering precog or getting them to lock the school of magic that you don't wanna use so you can get off your surge and radiant spark. Running radiant spark can be tough vs DH and DK combo but if you get good at getting precog I promise you can have setups where you 4 shot people and it's ggs.
Oh ... are we PoM blasting AFTER spending our clearcastings now? I am still doing what you adviced in last arcane guide: Arcane Surge, 1x Clearcasting missles for imp Arcane Blasts, cancel these first missiles asap with PoM+Magi, Nether Tempest, then the double pom blast and just after that spend the rest of the missiles. Also I wouldn't entirely discourage people from getting the advantage of no-gcd macros for magi:) this one: /cast Touch of The Magi /cast Presence of Mind /cast Arcane Blast Actually gave me so many free kills on swaps. Obviously I mainly use everything with seperate keybinds normaly, but this macro with [arena123] comes handy more often than not. Granted I am just 2000 right now, so obviously I could be full o' shait :D ...
Yeah blast in S1 used to be your main source of damage but in S3 now you want to missile mainly. Cancelling missiles is a big DPS loss so don't recommend. The macro I def don't recommend either but if you are really set on it then go for it
Love me some Arc mage. L60 "twink" for a while now. No big arenas to play in any more, but we get some good BG brawls in. Hardest things for me are big DH's, big Locks, Disc Priests, Hunters :-/
NGL. Sometimes I go behind pillar or los and just cast it on a pet that was following me just to get it off before a go. Is that something I should never do?
I think there is not much problem with this. I cast them even on 1hp totems/anything I can target and not be targeted. Getting kicked is much scarier than lossing how much? 200K hit? That's 1x full Clearcasting Missiles.
@@Aeghis your guide about a frost bomb is rly useful. Would like to know some special tips about positioning in arena in general. Im not demanding it, just wanted you to know that this is itresting)
looks like u sub rog in caster world now cuz u need to wait for ur 2 dmg buttons and in time where u havent both of them u just running and do some random stuff kekw. Nice guide tho ty
Arcane mage is insane you just gota cc abit more if your getting run down or just go to a pillar and be annoying asf the melee will eventually give up arcane is a pretty hard spec to play as well
@@sand3lz Honestly that’s not the problem, I can cc and kite for a while but teammates never seem to want to peel and eventually the dps in ccing gets dr and will run me over. With solid teammates I do well but I do feel like a CC bot most games whereas devoker feels like they are so hard to shut down they can just murder while never taking their foot off the gas.
@jamesconnor5923 Ya shuffle is imo bad for arcane unless you’re insanely good at it, especially when half the time your teammates don’t listen or just zug zug. Or you hear that special 1k healer. Shuffle makes me rage though, maybe I should stop doing it, I’m ok peaking where I did.