Ranged Arcanist guide for Raids and M+ [A52]

Ranged Arcanist (LA BOMBA) Guide for Raids and M+
written by Sarizia

Overview

Ranged LOTA is one of the most versatile specs in the game for casters, bringing insanely high burst, mobility and possibility for utility to every m+ or raid group. It is important to consider that this build requires practice and time to get the most out of it though. However, I would really not recommend trying this build if you’re a beginner or only like one button builds, as this has many buttons.

Link to the build

REs

Epics:

1. Time Bomb
2. Sunfire
3. New Moon

Something to keep in mind is that New Moon is exclusively good where you can ST for extended periods, as in high M+, and any raid bosses that don’t just instantly die. If you’re looking to do faster damage and more consistently across all phases but arcane (lower end content), you should swap New Moon into Elemental Equilibrium.

Blues:

1. Improved Insect Swarm
2. Moonfury
3. Lunar Guidance
4. Celestial Focus
5. Demonic Arcane Missiles

What do you need to know?

Legacy of the Arcanist can be hard to understand if you’re new to the game or have been using one of the simple melee versions of this RE, so I’ll explain everything that it does:

1. Meteors: Whenever you cast an Arcane, Fire, Frost or Nature spell, you will drop a meteor of any of those elements at the target, which deals massive damage in an area around the target. This has a 8 second internal cooldown, meaning that you can’t get multiple meteors by spamming one ability.
2. Elemental Motes: Arcanist will empower your next phase (in order: Arcane, Fire, Frost, Nature) everytime you reach 4 stacks of potential and trigger a resonance to empower your current phase.
3. Potential: Everytime your meteors hit a target, you will get a stack of potential (1 per each element). Once you reach 4 stacks of potential, all your stacks will be consumed and you will enter an empowered phase through a resonance.
4. Resonance: Triggered once you reach 4 stacks of potential, it will consume your mote and your potential to empower your current phase, based on your mote. This goes in order everytime: Arcane, Fire, Frost and Nature. Meaning that your first resonance should always be Arcane. Empowering a phase will basically make you get increased damage for that element, increased critical strike chance and it will reduce the damage of other elements. The exact values are as follows:

   
5. PRO TIP: If you wipe or are doing a raid with a lot of trash and timed bosses like Hyjal, you can change your mystic enchant specialization to another without Legacy of the Arcanist and back into it to go back into an arcane mote.

Rotation

Ranged arcanist, unlike melee arcanist, is divided into five rotational phases, one for each element, and two for arcane. As you may know, the build goes through the four elements in this order: Arcane, Fire, Frost and Nature. In this build we focus completely on Arcane and Nature, while trying to maximize the damage output in the other two phases. The reason why we go through two arcane phases is because one is dedicated to the boomba, and the other one is a simple button mash to get us through arcane.

Another important thing to note, is that the point of the rotation is to go through our phases as quick as possible, and trigger meteor from previous phases with a well timed cast (meaning that finishing a phase, you will cast to call down a meteor to get a potential stack ready towards next phase)

Last but not any less important, a BIG part of the rotation is keeping up your Empowering Frostbolt and Nature’s grace buffs through Frostbolt and Wrath, and weaving in Arcane Missiles to fill gaps or simply to do more damage and proccing Demonic Arcane Missiles, so your rotation might be subject to change in comparison to what you’re about to read.

NOTE: This build MIGHT be possible to put into a cast sequence if you try really hard, but I would really advise against this.

Opener

Arcane (1st, opener):

Haste Potion -> Frostbolt -> Sunfire -> Earth Shock -> Time Bomb -> Damage CDs and Power Infusion -> Starfall -> Arcane Orb -> Arcane Missiles (twice if you’ve got 2 Missile Barrage procs) -> Starfire until 2x Missile Barrage proc -> Arcane Missiles 2x -> Repeat Starfire and Arcane Missiles until Arcane Resonance runs out -> BIG BOOMBA (100k+ BOOMBA if you did it well, even with bad gear) -> Fill in your next arcane meteor with Arcane Missiles for next phase.

Continuation (Fire, Frost and Nature phases)

Fire:
Finishing your arcane phase burst, your first potential stack should be triggered from the previous cast of Arcane Missiles or Starfire. This way, you will instantly have ¼ potential stacks.

Next, do the following sequence to get the most out of fire, assuming you have already called down an arcane meteor.

Frostbolt -> Wrath -> Elemental Mastery -> Fireball 3x -> (weave in any Missile Barrage procs) -> Frostbolt -> Wrath -> Fireball last (to proc meteor for next phase)

If you didn’t call down an arcane meteor, you will have to use Moonfire anytime before the Fireballs.

Frost:
If you start the beginning of the Frost phase with a pre-Fireball to call down a Fire meteor, your Frost rotation should look like this, but it’s really just a priority system here, as our Frost phase does very poor damage.

Wrath -> Frostbolt -> Arcane Orb -> Arcane Missiles -> Frostbolt 3x -> Wrath -> Frostbolt, Arcane Missiles or Wrath until the phase ends -> ANY (Frostbolt, Wrath or Arcane Missiles) last to get your meteor on next phase.

If you didn’t get the Fireball in time correctly, you will have to use Sunfire after your Wrath cast.

Nature:
If you start the beginning of the Nature phase with a pre-Frostbolt to call down a Nature meteor, your Nature rotation should look like this, and this is the only other phase where we hard spam.

Sunfire -> Fill Meteors with Frostbolt or Arcane Missiles, if you didn’t get Missile Barrage, use Moonfire instead -> Wrath -> Insect Swarm -> Wrath until phase ends and make sure your last Wrath is going to call down a meteor for next phase.
NOTE: Losing the Empowering Frostbolt isn’t as important as missing out on a Wrath cast during this phase, so don’t bother with Frostbolt here.

If you didn’t get any meteor when the frost phase ended, you will have to cast whichever element you missed after Frostbolt or Moonfire.

Arcane (2nd, 4th, 6th, no boomba)

Same as with the other phases, if you started it with your Nature meteor, your rotation will look like this:

Frostbolt -> Sunfire -> Arcane Orb -> Arcane Missiles -> Starfire until you get Missile Barrage 2x -> Arcane Missiles 2x -> Repeat Starfire and Missile Barrage until arcane phase runs out.

Next phases, after 2nd Arcane:
These phases will look pretty much the exact same as your previous phases, until you reach the next Arcane.

Arcane (3rd, 5th, 7th BOOMBA)

Your second BOOMBA is your moment to recover for the DPS loss that you suffered during your other phases, and for this really want to have called down a Nature meteor when starting this phase, because it’s really important to follow this rotation, or you’ll lose a global cooldown trying to fix it, meaning you could potentially be losing on non-movement time, Bloodlust, etc.

Invisibility + Haste Potion -> Frostbolt -> Sunfire -> Time Bomb -> Damage CDs + Power Infusion -> Starfall -> Arcane Orb -> Arcane Missiles (twice if you’ve got 2 Missile Barrage procs) -> Starfire until you get Missile Barrage 2x -> Arcane Missiles 2x -> Repeat Starfire and Missile Barrage until arcane phase runs out.

This concludes the rotation guide, and after this part your rotation will repeat itself from Fire to even number Arcane, and then to odd number Arcane. Practicing this rotation will not only get your Time Bombs to be insanely high, but it will also make you lose less DPS when going through the lesser phases. Good luck!

Practicing this rotation will not only get your Time Bombs to be insanely high, but it will also make you lose less DPS when going through the lesser phases. Good luck!

Here's a video to show your rotation should look like, but I'll also simply leave a recap below to summarize it:

Gear

• Helm: T6 Mage
• Neck: Amulet of Futures Past (Chromius, Hyjal)
• Shoulder:T6 Mage
• Cloak: Aetherflux Shroud (Chromius, Hyjal)
• Chest:T6 Mage
• Bracers: Blessed Adamantite Bracers (Rage Winterchill, Hyjal)
• Gloves: T6 Mage
• Belt: Cord of Braided Troll Hair (Nalorakk, ZA) or Asc Waistwrap of Infinity (Supremus, BT)
• Legs:T6 Mage
• Boots: Heroic+ Pearl Inlaid Boots (Najentus, BT) or Asc Boots of Courage Unending (Trash, SSC)
• Ring 1: Sparking Arcanite Ring (M+) or Asc Ring of Captured Storms (Supremus, BT)
• Ring 2: Asc Band of the Vigilant (Morogrim, SSC)
• Trinket 1: Hex Shrunken Head (Zul’jin, ZA) or any high SP on use/proc trinket (avoid stacking ones like Eye of Mag because they will not be good for your opener).
• Trinket 2: Sextant of Unstable Currents (Naga Council, SSC) or Shiffar’s Nexus Horn (M+)
• Weapon: Heroic+ Tempest of Chaos (Archimonde, Hyjal) or Time Shifted Dagger (M+)
• Off-hand: Heroic+ Chronicle of Dark Secrets (Rage Winterchill, Hyjal) or Lamp of Peaceful Radiance (M+)
• Ranged: Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess (M+) or Wand of the Forgotten Star (Solarian, TK) or Wand of Prismatic Focus (Gurtogg, BT). Only use wands if you need more hit rating, the relic is FAR superior.

This is what I’m using at the time of posting, including my UNBUFFED stats (ONLY Fel Armor is on, so you can see that I’m hit capped with it and no other buffs):

Macros

Burst macro

#showtooltip Arcane Power
/use 13
/cast Power Infusion
/cast Arcane Power

Fireball macro (use this instead of your normal Fireball):

#showtooltip Fireball
/cast Combustion
/use Flame Cap
/cast Fireball

Pet & Extra

Pet

As you may have noticed, I use a Molten Elemental in this build, and this is solely for the purpose of utility towards physical damage players; I’m using a Molten Elemental that does about 3-4% of my damage in a single target fight, and provides a Sunder-like effect for physical dps in case no one else brings this.
However, your pet should be swapped out for any utility that a raid needs, for example, if your raid requires you to bring a Solar Beam, Wind Shear, or any epic slot utility, you will have to sacrifice this extra portion of damage and be a good raider.

Mythic +

Always, and I mean, always sacrifice your pet ability essence and gems for utility when it comes to M+, even if it’s lower keys. Pets are extremely obnoxious in this kind of content and don’t bring any real utility.

Extra

This build uses 1 out of 2 points into Playing with Fire talent, and while this acts as a 1% damage modifier, it also acts as a 1% magical damage taken increase. Currently, there shouldn’t be any content where this 1% damage taken increase means the difference between getting a kill and wiping, but if you must really insist on taking it out for something like Magic Absorption, go ahead and do it. However, it is very important to note that 1 point into this talent will allow Combustion to be up for EVERY single fire phase, as it lines up perfectly if you’re constantly dealing damage with abilities.

Feel free to swap points from Mind Mastery into hit rating or other things as this build is literally built towards my gear, and your stats will probably differ from mine a lot.

Weakauras

Finally, this weakaura pack will keep track of EVERYTHING that’s really important in this build, but keep in mind that if you’re using ElvUI, your Button 1 from Bar 1 will light up if you get a Missile Barrage proc. This is simply my preference and you can obviously take it out, but I highly recommend adding a highlight feature to your Arcane Missile button when you get a missile barrage proc to avoid thinking about your rotation in the middle of a fight.