Ulduar Raid SpecFollow

Hey all,

First 25 man guild run is friday, looking to get pretty far into it. I have raided through everything as arcane so far and have not had many problems, and 95% of the time finish second in dps and about 4-5th in overall dmg done. I was just wondering if anyone has done any ulduar raiding as arcane and how it faired.

Ive heard that mana might be an issue and that arc/fire builds may out dps arcane now. Anyone know about this? I dont mind going fire but the problem is I have been avoiding crit and stacking haste so my crit would be a bit low if I respeced.

Thanks all, looking forward to hearing ulduar stories.

So what happened to the FFB/Focus spec's you talked about previously? Decided against it?

Awesome, I look forward to hearing about how it goes. I checked out your build, looks good. I would like to try it. I think I have enough hit atm, somewhere around 320 or so with haunting call on. I would like to stay away from FFB if possible, we have one FFB mage running with us already and I would like to let him be the only one. Me and another mage are arcane. Again, thanks.

Yeah, as far as I can tell one person Horde-side has it on my server and charging 500g a piece for them... so I haven't got it yet. Just waiting on a guildy to get it out of a book or prices to go down a bit.


By the way, Arcane wasn't too bad at all. We have been having attendance issues (and vacations) and we only had 1 replenishment last night so it was hard to keep up the arcane rotation. Razorscale really was not too bad though with it, I switched to fire about 3/4 of the way through and managed a bit better because of the aforementioned raid makeup. We didn't get Razorscale down though, too many people dying and/or not enough dps alive to burn him down. Either we are doing something wrong or you have to kill him in like 1 minute while he has 6 million hp... lol.

just got razorscale down, stayed fireball. the fights I think are a bit too long right now (while still learning them), DPS was decent on the fight, but it is not a good test of dps because of how much target switching and such there is.

Just wanted to update this with my experience so far =)

This is based on Razorscale and XT-002 10 man so far. 1 SPreist and 1 Resto Shammy were the only replenishments, with no wisdom. My guild is one of those ones where after about 1 1/2 hrs we start to get silly and we just go downhill from there so, but I do <3 them hehe.

It may just be me, but I can't get FFB or FB to be better for me than Arc. I have been Arc for 4 months now so it could easily be outta practice though (and more geared for haste instead of crit....)

I personaly had no problems on XT-002 with Mana as arcane. There was one time I was down to about 3k mana with 10 seconds on Evo and Gem up but that was it. Our FFB ran outta mana completly (which due to her corner not being down ended up in a wipe booo) but for some reason she was having a LOT more mana problems than me for that fight.

Razorscale I also had no mana problems at all, it was last night, but I can't even remeber if I had to Evo during that fight at all. At least for us it was a decent chunk of downtime waiting for dwarves at times (10, 15 seconds) so...

Honestly looking at attempts with me as FFB vs Arc on XT-002, I did a TON more as Arc. I am at only like 30% crit in my FFB spec though which I am sure is the reason why though. But having to pay more attention (why I went Arc in the first place!!) was well worth the 400+ dps Arc got me.

I am glyphed ABlast, AMiss, and Mana Gem. I tried Molten and useing that but our 1st night that did give me mana issues. I have been using Mage armor. Which is pointless to Glyph with Meditation. My only real concern about Arc is not being able to give up the 2 piece T7 bonus. Then again... the 4 peice T8 bonus is pretty much useless in Arc. So while I think it would be useful as an off-set.. I can't see myself getting 2 extra T8 or 8.5 peices just for an off-set anytime soon =P

As for DPS. I was always right under our Fury War and BiS Aff lock for boss's. I ended up still being in the top 2-3 last night even over the FFB mage for damage so =)

Just wanted to throw that out there! Its retro raid night tonight and I believe we will be doing 25 man Sunday, but depending on what happens with 25 man I will throw down my experiences.

I gave the popular off spec focus + FFB main spec a try last night.

In 10 man Ulduar, when you don't have many other casters, I don't think it's really worth it. I feel like I was able to help the raid more as arcane, particularly while the healers are learning the fights and I need to be resisting whatever damage I can. My DPS is also better arcane (I'm sure skill plays a role there).

It may be better for 25 man, or with groups that are very skilled or caster heavy. Does this make sense, or should I give FFB another try? I don't think I have the hit gear for FB-TTW.

What Jasalth has said makes a lot of sense to me.

I'm currently rolling a arcane spec and a fire spec with precision. I don't have the +hit to go full arcane fire. We usually have 3 toons with replenishment in the raid and a resto sham.

Leviathan to Auriaya isn't bad at all so I stay arcane for the higher DPS I can personally put out. I'll stay arcane if we do Hodir and Thorim next, but after that mana starts to become a problem. There's just so much add switching and AoEing on Freya that fire works better. Mimiron is a toss up, depends on everyone staying alive or not. On Vezax I've actually switched to using FFB instead of FB as my main nuke due to the no mana regen mechanic of the fight, and I just stay fire for Yogg as well.

It's really nice to be able to switch between a DPS spec and a mana regen spec so that's what I recommend doing. Once your guild starts to farm bosses a bit better you'll find yourself staying arcane longer.

Edit - For 10 man I'm just staying fire specced. Just losing 1 DPS on a boss in a 10 man makes the fight so much longer that it's nice to have the extra mana.

Edited, Apr 26th 2009 12:10am by DarkHybridX