Hi.

Just wondering what other mages use for MAX mana efficiency when it comes to what order you use things like Managems, Evocation and manapots?

I have no particular order but I generally use the citrine after about 15 secs in a fight, so I can use my mana ruby and mana emerald at 2.15 and 4.15.
Mana pots is basically encounter/group setup dependant. Once I know the encounter, I usually know how mana pots I need, whether I can use a major instead of a super mana pot at the start etc.
Evocation really depends on the length of the fight, If I can comfortably squeeze 2 in, I'll do it.

I do pretty much the same- as soon as my mana bar drops enough to allow me to get maximum benefit from a mana gem and start my cooldown (so I can quickly get to the next one), I pop my gem. Same with mana pots.

Getting a staff with +50 spirit and enchanting it with +20 spirit and a +15 spirit wand and swapping them out has REALLY helped my evocation. When I am with a shadow priest, I can actually rock my molten armor on some fights.

I'm 10/48/3 so you may wish to change things for your spec.

After scorch is fully stacked I pop combusion and throw one fireball. After that I pop my lowest rank mana gem (I think it's the agate) which generally fills me back to full and since I have the mage trinket from SSC, it gives me a damage boost for the rest of my combustion. The crits from combustion give me a little bit of mana back, which with the rest of the mana regeneration I generally have keeps me near full.

Depending on the length of the fight I'll either bleed mana as fast as I can (Fireball x 2, Fireblast) so I can evocate early enough in the fight so it is up again before the end or use a slightly more conservative spell cycle. I'll burn a mana potion if I get below 50% and I don't have a gem timer up. Sometimes it's not necessary, but mana potions are fairly cheap and I like to have mana to burn if necessary.

If I have spare mana (Shadow priest or a resto shaman in the group on shorter fights usually result in this) I'll save my mana gem for when combustion is up again, but in some fights I can use a mana gem in between combustions and wait for the next gem when combustion would be more ideal (e.g. I won't use combustion while Lurker is submerged or if I could save combustion until the mob drops below 20% health for more damage.).

Generally though, using mana gems on cooldown and using a low rank one early is the best option. If you don't have a shadow priest or something else to help improve your mana efficiency, I'd recommend potting on cooldown as well if that's an option. Super mana potions are expensive, but they translate into roughly 100 mp5, which is roughly the same as your evocation and mana gems combined.