Arcane, low dps

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...l/Tyi/advanced

Right now i seem to be averaging around 20K in DS, even on zon'ozz i cant break 30. As far as i can tell my enchants/gems/reforge are all right, so it must be something to do with my rotation. Currently my Rotation looks something like:

Arcane blast 4->Arcane missiles->arcane blast 4 -> Arcane Missiles->Arcane blast 2-> Arcane blast-> Blow all cds->Arcane blast to 80% mp-> Pop Mana gem/AT-> Arcane Blast down to 40%->evocation->rebuild haste stacks.

after that i say more or less mana positive(arcane blast 4->arcane missiles) untill my mana cd's are back up.

Edit: I've also tried blowing my Arcane power on CD, but cant manage to stay mana positive doing that.

I'm fairly sure i'm doing something wrong there, I'm also using things like Mana shield to get the SP buff when ever there is raid damage going out.

Also, This upcoming week ill have 2400 VP, What would be your suggestion on my next vp upgrade? i'm leaning towards maybe an offset piece to get rid of my 5/5 set right now, or perhaps the trinket or cloak.

thanks for any help in advance,
Stephen

Firstly arcane doesn't follow a rotation 'per say'

Building the T13 stacks initially can work, but there are some reasons it won't work. Firstly if taking the extra time at the start could make you lose an extra burn at the end, you should try to figure this out based on your guild's past kill times.

Also if your guild uses hero off the bat this will also hinder you slightly since you could be stacking its affect with arcane blast, and your internal cooldowns.

Also your about ~150 haste from the 'soft haste cap' and this would help you out to the tune of about 100 dps.

You can drop as low as 45% mana you can burn down to 30 to 35% mana, or even a slow at 25% depending on how comfortable you are in the managament of mana

The main thing you have to get used to as arcane is how procs like clear casting, and power torrent will influence your rotation and really knowing where your next arcane blast will put you mana wise.

Is there a guide i can go to read about this, the ej post just isn't doing it for me, and not being at least presentable dps is really eatting me up. I went with the vp trinket, which even reforged to mastery gives me over the Soft cap, 1600 i think. What i dont really understand is, using fixed percentages for how low to burn pretty much statically means that besides having to know 'this next AB is going to put me below ~' how are the procs activity going to change this?

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Originally Posted by gd_void

Is there a guide i can go to read about this, the ej post just isn't doing it for me, and not being at least presentable dps is really eatting me up. I went with the vp trinket, which even reforged to mastery gives me over the Soft cap, 1600 i think. What i dont really understand is, using fixed percentages for how low to burn pretty much statically means that besides having to know 'this next AB is going to put me below ~' how are the procs activity going to change this?

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Procs change how your over all mana is going to be burned.

If you have an addon that shows you your percentage mana you will notice when power torrent procs you suddenly lose about 9% mana. And you think "Dear god did I zone out during a boss fight and mindlessly spam arcane blast more then I should have", but in reality what happened the intellect gain from power torrent caused your mana to stay at say 85%, but now you see it at 74%, and you are now getting more regen each tick of mage armor because of the larger mana pool.

Overall the difference is small your talking like 1 or 2 extra AB's past the 4th stack (which will be around 45k damage on average), but for each proc of power torrent thats max/mining 90k extra damage each power torrent.

The next thing you can do is watch for clearcasting procs, a clear casting comes up on your second stack it will get consumed on your 3rd giving you enough wiggle room for you to hit the boss with an additional 4th stack AB's before dumping your stacks.

But the main dps gain is knowing how to keep yourself at a very high amount of mana for a long duration. And literally hover right at the 90 to 95% mana mark then just destroy the meters with your burns.

What it comes down to more then anything else is practice, very high arcane dps is knowing your gear and your mana pool inside and out. Make a point of sitting at the dummy 5 to 10 minutes a day and just practice see if you can weave in an extra AB here and there, see how much damage you can squeeze out of your rotation without dropping to low in mana. Also don't burn when you start or any time during the practice, this will really let you see how bad arcane does without its massive burn phases, so you can really learn to max min the majority of what you do.

Thanks for all your help.