Thanks for all the replies! Let me respond to all that;
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Arcane Blast? YES. It was much better when the damage buff you got from AB lasted longer. I don't know that arcane is viable in arenas, but you should be able to stack the buff in battlegrounds. Any time someone isn't attacking you, just burn through that mana with AB. Better they're dead and you're eating strudel.
I lol'd at that last bit. It's true though. I guess this makes sense then - I've been using it pretty much in that way so far, but I just wasn't exactly sure whether you are supposed to try and get one or two hits of it off if you're in a pure 1on1?
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Presence of Mind is used with polymorph. That's how you fight more than one person, or reset a fight. You should be using polymorph all the time.
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Watch out for spell reflect on warriors. Painful.
These two things reminded me, actually. Can polymorph be spell reflected? Since in this case I will look into my PowerAuras displaying a warning when my target has Spell Reflect up. If a warrior gets me low, I can spell reflect myself into a Polymorph and effectively heal myself up while removing the warriors reflect. Seeing as I'm ranged and he's melee and I'd use this trick when I'm close to dying, I can imagine royally ******** over prot warriors with it. And being CCed is better than dying.
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The main thing is learning when to run away. I got Wrecking Ball as an arcane mage by liberal and judicious use of burst damage, running away if the target didn't die, coming back and bursting down again.
Sounds like I'm playing my rogue. I like that style, looks like I'm in for something.
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All of this is from a pvp/arena perspective since that's what you said you're using arcane for. Also, I'd recommend going frost if you're serious about pvp. While arcane has high front-loaded burst and is very mobile, arcane lacks survivability, is easy to cc or lock out, and goes oom quickly, especially if your evo is interrupted.
Thanks for the heads up, but no, I'm not that serious. By the time I'd have gathered up the gear for serious PvP and arenaing Cataclysm will be out. It's more of a BG fun-spec at the moment. On that note; I've come from a PvP fire spec so survivability seems actually rather high to me already, now that I'm arcane.
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It would be easier to give you pvp strats if you say what classes or comps you're having trouble against or what comp you plan on running in arena.
Well, the thing is more that I've never played Arcane before and decided to go into it at a whim yesterday. Which lead to a very confused me running around AB trying to figure out what to do. That said - strangely enough, I seem to have very little problems with rogues at the moment, probably because all rogues I've met so far were horrible. I managed to solo a retadin (go me!) and when thinking about it, I think the only class I specifically had problems with were other mages. There was one particularly annoying frost mage in that BG that was killing me before I even had a chance to spellsteal all his buffs. I guess this is where PoM-Poly comes in action?
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3) WoW macros can't check whether an ability is on cooldown or not. If you put arcane torrent in a macro, the macro will attempt to use it every time you press the button. You don't want that. Arcane torrent is use for the aoe silence. It can win you a match when cs isn't up. The mana gain is just a bonus.
Very well, in that case I'll have to find a way to bind the mana gem to a more reachable button.
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4)The minor glyphs are always fire ward, frost ward, slow fall for pvp. The major glyphs for arcane are normally evo, icy veins, poly, or mana gem depending on what your focus. Evo glyph is great in bgs, duels/1v1 situations, and 2s where you're running double dps. It's less useful in 3s and 5s where you'll always have a healer and it's harder to get a full evo off. Poly glyph is good in BGs or if you're running a comp w/ a rogue, lock, or priest. IV glyph is popular for duels and bgs, especially against melee. You don't see it in arena as much as the other glyphs as you can rely on your partner(s) for peels when you're being focused. Mana gem is extra mana and is normally the 3rd glyph for arcane in arenas.
That's interesting - all this time I've been trying to make a choice between the glyphs of ABar, ABla, AMis, Blink, and APower and now you tell me I shouldn't be considering any of those. Anyway, Poly seems too situational for me to use (I guess my experience sucks, but I yet have to experience the situation where I can't poly because of someones DOTs), but evo did seem like a must to me. Especially since I haven't gotten around to getting First Aid up yet. Mana Gem and IV, I'll have to look in to as I'm not sure what IV does (nor do I have IV yet). Also, you make a valid point about the minor glyphs, especially if I should be changing my armor depending on my enemy (heck, where am I going to leave THOSE hotkeys? T_T).
Thanks for the replies!