Well, there hasn't been many changes to the Mage talent review over the past couple of weeks on the test realm, so I thought maybe I could get some feedback and discussion on raiding mage builds for the post 1.11 game.
I've had a look at as much maths as I could find, and have come up with the following premises for all my builds :
i) Master Of Elements is junk unless your going 30 fire. Nice to have, but Clearcasting is far superior.
ii) Arcane Absortion isn't a hot talent - as it only works on full resists, for PvE that makes it pretty pointless, apart from guaranteeing a full mana bar for the entire Firemaw fight. Not many binary spells used in raiding AFAIK.
iii) Elemental Precision is a must for every build. Despite the wording change, it's still +6% to hit which is amazing for 3 talent points.
Build 1 - Deep frost + Clearcasting
Just an extension of what I already have, with pretty much every frost talent filled out bar shatter / frostbite, which remain pointless in raiding. I find the snare & super duration snares on Blizzard extremely useful in AE encounters, and Clearcasting remains the best mana saving talent there is really.
Primarily fire, but with 19 points in frost so that I can still actually be of use in BWL. My main issue is how many extra damage do you get from speccing fire over frost - and its the loss in mana efficiency worth it? Fights seem to be getting longer and longe r(in a good way), and fire runs out of steam awfully fast. Also, you can't work clearcasting into the build without skipping out on some nice frost talents (such as frostchanneling). I've gone with combustion over Ice Block purely because I want ONE build with that talent in, as it seems like a very good pve damage boosting ability. This *looks* to be the most fun build, as it gives you Combustion, Blastwave, Pyrblast, and more than one spell to cast on a raid - but I really worry about the mana efficiency. Also, Hypnotic flame Gloves look dreadful on any character... :)
The original 28 arcane 23 ice build, based around the hope that other mages in the guild get winters chill, and that it gets' applied fast enough to help. Assuming Winters Chill is on a mob, it will provide the best mana efficiency / damage output per frostbolt of any build - but it's incredibly limited, as effectively the only spell you get to use much is frostbolt. You don't have the snare on Blizzard, nor the defense of the amazing new Ice Barrier. How useful is that extra defense and the killer Blizzard?
The build I thought up whilst writing this post... :) Has all the fire stuff of build 2, plus clearcasting - but only has Improved Frostbolt and Elemental Precision from frost. Would add a *lot* more mana efficiency to the fire side of things, but at a cost of being much, much lower damage output in BWL, which is my guilds current main dungeon.
Apologies for the number of builds and the length of the post, just thought it woud be nice to hear what other top end mages are thinking about doing. I guess the main questions are, is Fire's extra damage actually noticeable in AQ and beyond, and is the loss of mana efficiency / iceblock actually worth it?
Can deal decent damage with either Fire or Frost. Fire being primary damage source (1st build is Fireball based, 2nd is Scorch based). Keeps Cold Snap and Ice Block which are so useful in so many situations.
Very deep frost! I don't think there is a single bad talent in the Frost tree and if I'm going to go deep I don't want to have to make choices. I'll take them all!
Combustion plus some raid utility. I quite like Arcane Absorption still - +10 all resists is sweet even if the resists thing isn't that great. Wasn't really sure where to put the last 2 points - could be put in Imp. Frost Ward which I'm sure won't do any harm in Naxx but I'm interested to see how useful Amplify/Dampen magic can be now so I chose Magic Attunement.
And then all the old Arcane/Frost build still look decent - the only reason I don't want to stick with what I've got now is that it's a bit boring. I really can't decide at the moment.
Not actually a member of Refusion on Burning Blade.
ii) Arcane Absortion isn't a hot talent - as it only works on full resists, for PvE that makes it pretty pointless, apart from guaranteeing a full mana bar for the entire Firemaw fight. Not many binary spells used in raiding AFAIK.
iii) Elemental Precision is a must for every build. Despite the wording change, it's still +6% to hit which is amazing for 3 talent points.
Arcane Absortion does only work on full resists, so it is weak compared to Clearcasting. However it does give 2 all resists per point, not a bad filler to get further down the tree.
I agree that 3 in Precision is a must have for Raiders, however a PvPer would need at most 2 points (only 4 to "miss" on 60s).
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
My problem with Magic Absortion is that it's a pure filler build - to what?
In PvE, although there are some nice talents further down the tree (Arcane Instability, Arcane Meditiation being the main 2), going deeper in either other tree seems to have more reward. The only build where I don't think thats the case is the 28/23 frost build, which is fine at pumping out frostbolts - but I'm not sure I want to just be doing that all the time now. Content seems ot be more and more about movement, AE'ng, burst damage - all the things which make steadily pressing the frostbolt button not that powerful, compared with say a fully snaring Blizzard, fires "potental" more DPS etc. Just wish I could quanitfy exactly how better that DPS would be, and if it's worth it compared to frosts mana efficiency.
(Albeit Blastwave looks hilarious fun).
For levelling, I'd just go pure fire tbh. Its the biggest ramp up in DPS you can get per talent point at the low levels. Once you hit 40+, you can go frost and AE kite if you want to with Blizzard / CoC etc.
For levelling I'd still put 5/5 Imp. Arc Missiles, then 5/5 Clearcasting and then go how you want. Precision might be good so you could take on higher level mobs easier.
In regards to the post above I kind of agree. My current build is 29/0/22 and with the patch the closest equivalent is: http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?RbxE0ocahZVi0cofz
I still think its the best raid PvE build for MC/BWL but as you say more is happening now in boss fights not to mention the fact the build is boring. Given I'm getting a free respec I want to make the most of it and choose something that will keep me interested while hopefully not proving a detriment to the raid.
Not actually a member of Refusion on Burning Blade.
It surely depends on where your guild are. In BWL (and MC obviously) fire will be gimped compared to frost. If you are just farming BWL, its not a big problem to go fire, but while learning it, frost is surely the best choice.
I dont agree Master Of Elements is junk. Sure, no reason to go for it unless you are going fire anyway, but then its quite good.
I plan on going fire, mostly because its more fun ^^
Considered some different builds
A 17/31/3 build: http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?of0E00bZeg0zbcut0h
The reason for this one is mostly that my guild is on Cthun right now, so silence is helpful. But as soon as we have the fight under control its not really a build I would keep. Magic Absorption is a decent filler and nothing more. And silence is of course rarely useful so its a very temporary build.
Thus Im interested in this 10/38/3 havy fire build http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?kf0VZEgMzfcut0h
Would make me the "imp scorch" mage, though the main dmg between scorching would still be fireballs. This build is of course not worth a lot if there arent fire mages in the raid that can use the 15% dmg.
I went for Arc. conc in both cases, fire is simply not mana effecient enough without it, but with it, scorch is very good imo.
Ive also looked at an elementalist build, and while it could be fun, I can only see one reason for going elementalist, which is shatter, and then its not much of a pve build anymore.
If I decide to go frost, It would just be a "full" frost more or less, maybe 41 frost, 10 arcane or so. The frost talents simply got great synergies for eachother.
But I like fire the most (Currently 21/30/0), so I would prefer a fire build in 1.11 too :) But Iceblock is always a nice talent ofc.
Not an easy choice.
Here is a build where absorption might be questionable cause I dont even get meditation, which is my main reason to go that far into the arcane tree. But there really isn't any fire talent left in the fire tree to get for PvE in that build. So I guess absorption is the best option.
Though I'm not sure meditation is that amazing. I did some maths and it seems 10 minutes of constant casting gives around 2.5k mana (10 minutes of constant casting isn't really realistic anyway). I guess I will drop elemental focus for arcane meditation eventually as I gain more spirit and more hit.
For the fire mages out there, how do you deal maximum damage in raids? I'm assuming that on boss mobs you aren't using Fireblast, but do you generally cast Scorch enough times to get the debuff to 15%, and then switch to fireballs? Occasionally refreshing scorch to reset the debuff timer?
I can;t really see the point of a pure scorch build when raiding though - wouldn't frost bolt just be better, as it's more mana efficient and higher DPS generally, as well as coming with other added benefits?
pvp or pve realm? I'm not sure it matters though. This is more pve, since taking shatter late gives up a huge pvp tool. Just swap some ordering for pvp, probably grabbing shatter and frostbite earlier, though frostbite can be annoying for AoE grinding, since you want all the mobs together.
I'd do pure frost, heading for AoE grinding, which is fantastic. frostbolt/permafrost/nova/cold snap/blizzard/piercingx1, arctic reach, refill piercing and frost channeling, Cone of Cold. Now start filling shatter, shards, etc. I'd take ice block as the 30 point talent, you can use it as a cooldown remover while grinding (as in oops, I better ice block and wait for Cone of Cold to refresh), but that's pretty weak.
I can live without shatter for AoE grinding, but you might want it earlier for pvp. Since Arcane Explosion is instant now it is awesome, you grab another AoE talent for free which keeping all the frosty goodness.
1 year old twins means no WoW for me. But you just wait, as soon as they get a little older it will be my own stable of gold farmers.
Ye, I agree. I cant see the reason for pure scorch build either. Then a pure frost build would be better.
The problem is you need to spend quite a few points in fire to get both improved fireball and imp scorch.
Scorch is mostly used for the other fire mages imo. The fact that you need to lower your dps (cast scorch) to get 15% more dmg, kinda spoil the idea if you are the only fire mage.
I can see the point of a pure firebuild going for 5 casts of Scorch then unloading fireball, assuming you were wearing 3 piece NW, just because scorch is a very low aggro spell then - nice to start a fight with, then you unload the big spells. (And PoMed Pyroblasts in 1.11 if you have full NW).
But I don't get a pure scorch build for PvE. Like you say, frost surely is just better?
But now that the scorrch debuff lasts for 30 sec instead of 15, it should be easier to unload your fireballs between keeping the scorches up :)
And with 10/38/3 build you can get both scorch, imp fireball and pretty much all other useful stuff in fire.
(and impact, a spell that you could skip and have even less points in fire, I just like it somehow, even though the pve use is limited. Its rather fun to range stun sartura and adds, but the use is limited ofc.)
Edit: and yeah, full NW proc and pyroblast without a cooldown sounds nice.
(Now if Nef would have dropped a single NW chest over the last 5 months... :/ )
Most mage theory is really depending on how all of Naxxra will be. Maybe some of our talents will be very helpful for some bosses/trash.
Don't know if you can get much more efficient for pure PvE than either of those builds. As Naxx phases in and BWL gets phased out, I'd be very inclined to go with the Fire variant.
Okay, I'm no way a top end mage. I play my druid in BWL/AQ raids and due to my mage being an alt never get to go anywhere with it but MC/AQ20/ZG and such, so my high end raid experience with a mage is quite limited :(
I'm generally against heavy fire builds because you miss out on iceblock, in raid settings it just has too many uses to miss out on.
This build may seem silly, but it has all boss nuking talents for frost and even though master of elements may seem like junk to someone - if your raid has enough mages to keep winter's chill stacked to 10 you should get around 25% critical chance(?) and with master of elements that makes your frost spells 7.5% cheaper, give or take some based on the crit chance. The question is if it's worth getting the rest of the fire talents or if this diversity is much too costly.
Of course it requires that some mages go deep frost so it can work in synergy with it, otherwise it's quite worthless. Does winter's chill timer refresh on each new to the stack or do you need the 10 frostbolts to hit per 15 seconds to keep it up? It does seem that what is up on the talent calculator is wrong, winter's chill is reported as being 5 x 2% instead of 10 x 1% at the moment, it seems to be a bit back and forth.
Winters chill works just like Shadow Weaving or Improved Scorch - once its maxed, you only need 1 frostbolt every 15 seconds to keep it maxed on a mob.
And I agre, giving up iceblock under any circumstances will feel incredibly painful - it's just that amazing as a talent.
Re. your fire build Whitemane - my problem would be that without Firepower & Critical Mass, you'r probably just better off casting frostbolt surely? And although Master of elemnts is a decent reduction once Winters Chill is applied - is it necessery as well as Clearcasting? I sort of see them as an either or option, unless your going 30+ points fire. Would a frost build need frost channeling, clearcasting and master of elements?
As someone who's not got too far into AQ, but spent a lot of time in MC/BWL, I've always considered Fire a bit of a poor treee, but have been more and more tempted to try it after starting AQ40. I've considered builds like whitemane(though I was trying to get Blastwave / iceblock / 4/5 clearcast) suggested, but the fire spells don't really seem to have any use at all - without firepower / critical mass / imp scorch, fireball isn't much better dps than frostbolt, and a lot less mana effiecient - I can't really see much point going for fire if you aren't going to go for lots of fire, as the end talents are what makes the fire tree good. Personally I think I'll try the fire elementalist build(though with iceblock instead of combustion), and once(if?) I get too annoyed at being constantly out of mana like I suspect I will, I'll respec to fire with clearcasting for aq/naxx and 8 points in frost for bwl bosses that are fire immune. If that doesn't work for me, it'll be back to deep frost / arcane.
In theory its best to only have a couple of mages per raid with imp scorch / winters chill, but I suspect most people will end up with one or the other.
I'm a fan of frost and was actually just trying to make the optimum frost build for single target sustained damage. Master of elements is just a bit more out of the way than clear casting and frost channeling, but it all adds up.
It's clear that if you want fire for damage, instead of diversity, you need firepower and critical mass like you say but my reason for taking them is purely for diversity. The problem is I'm not sure how big a deal this is, at the moment it is only nice in a handful of encounters but I reason that it's not too bad since you have all the single target dps from frost already.
How exactly will you distribute points for this? This was the same build I used for a long time but I don't see how it fits into the new talents. 11 points in Arcane especially seems odd.
Not actually a member of Refusion on Burning Blade.
I don't believe that Master of Elements is junk at all. If you are going to be using a elementalist build with 0 points in arcane then Master of Elements makes sense. With a decent crit build as well as the 30% aggro reduction in both trees a mage can possibly make up the mana difference in not having clearcasting. That is all dependant however on whether or not a crit build may become viable in PvE. With the 30% reduction to threat in each tree plus TA/BoS it might make sense.
This is the build I have on test, except I have 5/5 Magic Absorption, and Pyro and Blast Wave are passed up in favour of 3/3 MoE, and Imp Scorch and Incinerate are taken. MoE is a good talent; I only wish that when I hit a crit Fireball and a crit Fire Blast, it would give me mana back for both. According to DMs, I was running with a 29.3% crit rate on Fireball the last time I spent any decent time in Naxx, and so MOE was getting a lot of use. Doing the math, it comes out to basically 10% less mana cost overall (with a 30% crit rate).
Fire does better DPS, but has poor efficiency. Frost does good DPS and is stupidly efficient. So the only reason that Fire doesn't out-DPS Frost on most/all fights is because you just plain run out of steam (or you get aggro and die because your ice block key doesn't work), and so anything that helps your staying power means you're contributing that much more to the raid. Pyroblast? Unless you have PoM or 8/8 NW, you'll never ever use this in a raid setting. Blast Wave? Useful on Broodlord Whelps, Ouro scarabs, and Nef Undead Drakonid Zerg, and otherwise useless. More mana? You'll use that every single encounter, including trash.
I'm contemplating going with a Pyro build tonight and 8/8 NW in Naxx, and making some macros to always use Pyro if Netherwind Focus is up, but we'll see.
I agree that frost has lots of good stuff in it, so heavy frost is quite good. I would feel comfortable with that many points in it.
You feel that 2 more resists or 150ish armor is worth getting? Of course clearcasting is a given.
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
06/02/06, 8:34 AM
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