Weekly PvP Diary #1 - What I've learned from playing Arcane

Still can't decide what I want my main to be in BFA's first PvP season, it's between rogue or mage.... Or priest. I'll probably play them all, and no I'm not obsessed with the RMP setup in 3's, these classes are just the most fun to me so far. I'm decently proficient at sub and assassination, haven't tried outlaw in PVP though I was obsessed with it in early legion PvE and it's become popular in pvp in the last few months so maybe I'll screw around with it. I'm ok at disc priest but it's the only spec I've pvp'd on.

But my favorite spec to PVP on right now is arcane mage. If you have a mage you have to try it out. Arcane plays so nice now, bit more fun than in legion (although I really miss mark of aluneth, RIP. blizz, please bring that skill back ;_; )

More or less the build I've been screwing around with in pvp.

I've actually used Mana shield more this week purely for the added tanki-ness and it's actually very OP for arcane right now. You can spam arcane shield while taking damage unless you get trained down by more than one DPS or someone pops cooldowns on you, you'll barely take damage. Add in an invis with the greater invis PVP talent that allows you to use invis every 45 seconds plus the reduced damage you take in the seconds after coming out of invis and you can take some hits. PLUS a temporal shield timed correctly. Makes arcane pretty hard to get down when they're playing defensively right now.

But I hate not being able to blink everywhere so I switched back to shimmer today for its overall utility in being unpredictable, once you've played with shimmer long enough its hard to go back. Can't put a price on being able to double blink and get away from danger, using your extra blink to be unpredictable in avoiding kicks, using it to easy get around obstacles when someone is LoSing you, and because shimmer is so OP as arcane since you can basically blink 4 times in the space of a few seconds when you blink combo'd with displacement.

I'm sure this build will obviously change up in the coming months, don't think the recent class changes are final.

OPENERS

I've been playing with this opener all week and have had lots of success with it: - start off matches with an invis, get into position preferably behind an important target, mass invis, Charged Up talent to generate arcane charges, pop arcane power, cast an arcane blast, use presence of mind, 2 more arcane blasts, arcane orb. Then if you need a bit more damage a couple more arcane blasts then use your arcane barrage if you can finish a target. I've actually one shotted a fair amount of people with that opener this week, especially if they don't expect it and don't use any damage mitigation fast enough. I'd say that from the first arcane blast landing to the last hit in this sequence if no one interrupts you or they don't get any heals or pop any mitigation, you can kill the average class within about 5-8 seconds with that opener. Its pretty crazy and I like the element of surprise that arcane's invis skills give it. I played a bit of frost and fire earlier this week and hated not being able to invis as often ( -_-)

I love trying to find cool openers for arcane mage too, mass invis is such a cool talent for messing with opposition and getting some cool openers off because if they don't find you by the time your invisibility runs out you can do stuff like drop a Ring of Frost below someones feet with them not even being able to see the ground effect until its already too late, or getting a poly off right next to someone and arcane orbing them right before the poly lands to generate an extra arcane charge (or more) right off the bat meaning you can ramp up your DPS a bit faster after the opener while getting an easy poly off. You can probably find tons of videos on youtube of mages doing cool stuff like that. I'm planning on playing some arena's with the ring of frost invis combo next week since it could have come in handy in a few matches I lost this week.

Also this staff rocks - if you're running arcane try to get it. It literally transforms into a moving sheep and laughs. A must have.

I also love spamming spellsteal like a maniac. Doesn't take that much of arcane's mana and you can basically spam it back to back. My favorite moment of the week was spellstealing another mages temporal shield in a BG duel when he really needed it. POP POP watchin' niggas drop. I also like stopping fire mages from getting their instant pyros off by spamming spellsteal on their hotstreaks while they're trying to burst, pretty evil.

I'm still learning more about playing a mage all the time and am expecting to play it a lot in BFA. I still need to improve my Blink usage, did some stuff this week where I felt dumb like blinking into walls I was next to while trying to avoid opponents. I tend to panic blink a little too much.

Final anecdote, If you play a mage you can do what I did earlier this week in arathi basin: cast slow fall about 5 or 6 times on all of your team mates at the lumber mill as they float down to the middle of the map to take blacksmith, then jump off like a cocky bastard only to realize you forgot to slow fall yourself and misclick the hotkey as you hit the ground.

That's all for this week, didn't mean for this to turn into a tips and tricks guide, that's better in a video format than in a text format but I'm totally obsessed with arcane right now.

If you don't have a mage or haven't played one in a long time I'd highly recommend it, they're so much fun to mess around on.