Here's how to raid stack for a mage and lose to a rogue?
Rage Winterchill Vampiric Touch (Mana): Mana Spring (Mana): Innervate: 2 innervates on the mage on a 3 min fight. Good Game Invisibility 2: 2 invis on one 3 min fight? Bloodlust: Brilliance Aura: Helps regen though the fight (not available anywhere else)
I mean come on. Most fights aren't this short. Most raids don't stack for one mage to the extent that they are. Trying to justify Arcane based on silly parses like those is amusing.
I've tried Arcane. Sure with a shadow priest and a short fight it's really fun to pump out large numbers. If you don't have quite the right raid composition your dps takes a hit far harder than any other spec.
If you look at the rest of those parses you'll still see shaman+spriest trying to keep his mana up and even innervates.
Feel Free to Ignore the other movies. Arcane provides better synergy in a raid and are also great mana dumps. ABx3AMScorch is a great rotation but all the mages rotations I see posted here are some form of ABABFBFBness. This is not how we DPS. I've noticed an over all increase in DPS since our mages went from 10/48/3 to Deep Arcane on fights like Gruuls and Void Reaver.
I am not saying that Deep Fire sucks, it can do great on it's own but raids work better as a team.
OK I found my AM DPS calculation error, so I stand corrected. 43/15/3 spec using 3XAB-AM-scorch to 33/28 and 40/18/3 with fireballs, however it doesn't do more unless you have very high int (~700) and can gain more than 1 damage per each point of excessive hit rating (aka if you were capped with 33/28, you should be able to gain 10X8X1.57=125.6 spell dmg by dropping down to 6% hit. if you were less than capped then you should be able to gain the appropriate amount of spell damage by dropping hit).
While I still don't find 43/15/3 spec superior, after fixing the calculation error in AM it actually comes very very close to the other specs. Also note I didn't include TLC becuase I don't have it which would slightly buff the AM spec, probably enough to make it totally equal to 33/28, although more math needs to be done there.
Note that if nobody puts scorches up for you you will need to spec 43/18/0 which is probably preferable, losing 0.3% DPS in the process. Also note that you cannot have improved arcane missiles and still have 5/5 arcane mind, so interruption fights become even worse if you go for max DPS. Overall I think I'll still be speccing 33/28 with 2/5 T5 and fill in with fireballs instead of AM. Although a significant amount of time spent AB spamming in a fight will mean the 43/18/0 spec will come on top as it has highest AB spam DPS due to both having mind mastery as well as not needing hit and thus having more spell damage, although the basic 3XAB-AM-scorch rotation gives me 7.4 DPM instead of 9 that I would get with 33/28 which means less AB spamming time.
I am not saying that Deep Fire sucks, it can do great on it's own but raids work better as a team.
Please stop pointing out the obvious. If you can count on optimal group composition every fight then great. Go arcane, have fun. This is not about raids just not working as a team. Sometimes you can't get the "perfect" raid group together.
Newsflash! Stacked groups perform better than non-stacked.
I can't always get a stacked group. Without it my dps takes a much bigger hit as Arcane than it does with fire. Both specs do similar dps and fire does it with less outside help as manly illustrated in his post which looked at all of the fights in that list.
Blessing of salvation? Your damage might be very competitive - but your agro limits how much you can do (in some situations). Salvation is 'external help' too, help which the fire-agro-sensitive builds rely on (more than other specs) in many situations - but I dont see many people reference it in discussions like this.
Both specs do similar dps and fire does it with less outside help as manly illustrated in his post which looked at all of the fights in that list.
Theres nothing wrong with telling people they should spec for what suits their guild raid setup strengths. People with little to no access to some classes in raids might (rightfully so) feel more comfortable going fire.
However, I think its a little silly for people to say 'my guild doesnt care about prudent dps group setup' and use that as a reason to discredit the performance of players in other guilds who do.
Having read most of the posts here and seeing no good post as to how effective deep arcane is i will share with you my experience as deep arcane.
I was and am now back to the 10/48/3 build because i find it to be the most effective for most encounters.
When my guild had al'ar on farm i decided to try some different off specs. I decided on http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=kixE00czxIuiZxxZ0h as my build. The points in fire are pretty much just filler.
This is how i played it and was top 3 dps every time:
Basically i would start with 2 arcane blasts and then channel an arcane missle. Once the AM was complete, i would begin to cast another arcane blast, receiving the reduced cast time from the debuff but timing it so that the debuff would expire before the spell was cast so it would get the original mana cost with the faster cast rate. Case 2 of those and then cast AM again.
The build takes some getting used to but overall i enjoyed it and sustaned around 1k dps with oils and adepts.
The only drawback, and reason that i respecced back to 10/48/3 was that if I didn't have a shadowpriest and resto shaman in my group i was pretty much worthless. Camping my mana pot and gem timer only casting as fast as my mana could regen from 0.
As for my gear, i wore the 2 piece t5 for the 20% increased damage. and used all SSC and TK epics for the rest of my gear. I had around 1300 arcane damage with arcane intellect.
Hopefully that clears up any misconceptions about the arcane raiding build. In summary i will tell you this. Its great in the right group, and worthless in the wrong one. I only recommend it if you are gaurenteed a well geared shadowpriest and a resto shaman for tide.
Blessing of salvation? Your damage might be very competitive - but your agro limits how much you can do (in some situations). Salvation is 'external help' too, help which the fire-agro-sensitive builds rely on (more than other specs) in many situations - but I dont see many people reference it in discussions like this.
I'm talking in-group help such as spriests/shaman/moonkins. These people actually change the dps distribution depending on which group they are in. Me getting salvation doesn't make the rogue lose windfury or somesuch.
However, I think its a little silly for people to say 'my guild doesnt care about prudent dps group setup' and use that as a reason to discredit the performance of players in other guilds who do.
Having read most of the posts here and seeing no good post as to how effective deep arcane is i will share with you my experience as deep arcane.
I was and am now back to the 10/48/3 build because i find it to be the most effective for most encounters.
When my guild had al'ar on farm i decided to try some different off specs. I decided on http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=kixE00czxIuiZxxZ0h as my build. The points in fire are pretty much just filler.
This is how i played it and was top 3 dps every time:
Basically i would start with 2 arcane blasts and then channel an arcane missle. Once the AM was complete, i would begin to cast another arcane blast, receiving the reduced cast time from the debuff but timing it so that the debuff would expire before the spell was cast so it would get the original mana cost with the faster cast rate. Case 2 of those and then cast AM again.
The build takes some getting used to but overall i enjoyed it and sustaned around 1k dps with oils and adepts.
The only drawback, and reason that i respecced back to 10/48/3 was that if I didn't have a shadowpriest and resto shaman in my group i was pretty much worthless. Camping my mana pot and gem timer only casting as fast as my mana could regen from 0.
As for my gear, i wore the 2 piece t5 for the 20% increased damage. and used all SSC and TK epics for the rest of my gear. I had around 1300 arcane damage with arcane intellect.
Hopefully that clears up any misconceptions about the arcane raiding build. In summary i will tell you this. Its great in the right group, and worthless in the wrong one. I only recommend it if you are gaurenteed a well geared shadowpriest and a resto shaman for tide.
Camping my mana pot and gem timer only casting as fast as my mana could regen from 0.
I have to admit, after reading this comment - Im wondering what your int and gear was etc, specifically how much spirit/what armor u used. Unless ur exageratting a tad, I find it a little odd you imply you spend the majority of the fight fully OOM waiting on pots. That shouldnt really happen until the very end of an encounter when you decide you want it to happen. I have similar gear (2 piece tier 5) and dont always have access to shadow priests/shamans either, but with 12-13000 raid buffed mana I NEVER go oom prematurely doing the same rotation you did, even in medium-long fights. (Yes I chug mana pots every cooldown, but I do that in any spec)
My first guess would be you were a fire mage who specced arcane but didnt have any/much emphasis on gear with spi? Im curious what gear you were using (aka was it the fire sta/int/dam items or the tiered pieces which have spirit?) People like this, who try to use good fire-spec gear (which might not be you anyway ) in arcane builds need to be careful not to forget the importance of a little gear-swapping/optimising arcane might require to avoid situations like the oom thing u described happening.
I never find oom'ing happening to me (with the 2ab->am rotation), unless I consciously try to push myself to drop my mana fast, for whatever reason.
I said how it works for the most part. Your raid bends over backward to make your dps rockstar good. Fire can be competitive without external help.
I can't count on having a shadowpriest and a resto shaman every fight. Heck I sometimes can't count on either one. Not having at least one of those means your dps as an arcane spec will be VERY poor compared to the same group setup with fire.
That is the reality that alot of people just kindly ignore.
One can make the opposite argument: many fire mages report ending fights with a ton of mana remaining. If your raid is heavy on shadow priests and no one is calling for your feral's innervate, you're doing you're hardly wasting scarce resources by choosing a mana intensive spec/cast rotation. So the reality is that there are some raid/group compositions that will favor arcane, and some that will favor fire. Some, I'm sure, will even favor frost. This thread is about finding situations where arcane can perform well, and learning how to spec/gear/cast once you decide to try it.
That being said, I'm still not sold on deep arcane over deep fire. Given how small of a role threat plays in most raid encounters (for a mage at least), the small potential dps increase just isn't worth losing the extra range and ease of play that fire provides.
I wish the fire mages here wouldn't be so sensitive about the arcane spec. It's not like everytime an arcane WWS comes up the same 3 posters have to go and discredit it to prove their spec is right. Putting restrictions on when a WWS can be considered valid is silly. There are short fights and there are long fights. To say one matters and not the other isn't valid.
I think this thread has shown a few things:
1) Shorter fights (and there are lots of them) favor arcane mages because they can turn excess mana into more dps.
2) Fire mages for a non optimized raid group come out better, but if you have the ability to put shadow priests with mages they can substantially ramp up their dmg as well as having the -threat talents to deal with it.
3) AoE situations arcane mages are insane with the dmg on LC/AE, plus with having reduced threat.
4) Fire mages do better with mobility fights because of the extra range.
5) If you decide to tailor raid comps to give mages more mana (through mana spring, innervates, double shadow priests, etc) they can turn the extra mana into a lot of damage.
One question I'd like to ask the theorycrafters. Given that your locks are all affliction, what would the dps change be in a 3 lock group going from CoE/CoS/CoR to CoA/CoD for the CoE guy given that all your mages are arcane and are at most using one scorch every rotation? Given that lets say you have 3 mages.
One question I'd like to ask the theorycrafters. Given that your locks are all affliction, what would the dps change be in a 3 lock group going from CoE/CoS/CoR to CoA/CoD for the CoE guy given that all your mages are arcane and are at most using one scorch every rotation? Given that lets say you have 3 mages.
I'm interested in this as well. We have a ton of (4) SP's and 2 Shammies, 2-3 locks. 1 on CoS the other 2 on CoD.
I'd also like to point out that Arcane Mages use ZERO debuff slots. Unless they are occasionally using scorch and proc an ignite.
Pardon my ignorance when i posted my spec, i did in fact forget to put my 2/2 into arcane impact.
Tyrian: i probably didnt do enough farming for more int/spirit gear. I should try the spec now with my 4/5 t5 since that set is very good about heavy int and spirit. I should have definatly put more emphasis on stacking int and spirit. I know that my buffed mana pool was 11,111 only because it stuck in my head. And i used mage armor which i believe in raid with wisdom and divine spirit put me at like 150 mana regen while casting.
One can make the opposite argument: many fire mages report ending fights with a ton of mana remaining.
I'd like to meet some of these mages, because as a deep fire mage who makes religious use of his pot and gem timers, along with usually having a shadow priest in group, I can burn my mana pretty well. I still have to meter myself on any fight where I get a significant amount of time to chain nuke (yes, I use Mage Armor as well). There are some exceptions, of course, any fight which requires me to do alot of moving or enforces periods of being unable to cast, I do tend to end with a good bit of mana.... Gruul forces me outside the 5 second rule enough to regen a fair bit of mana when you factor in the shadow priest, and I spend enough time dodging whirlwinds from Leotheras that mana is never a problem on the fight. Void Reaver is a tossup and directly related to how many arcane balls I have to dodge. But on fights with minimal movement like Magtheridon, Hydross, Karathress, Lurker (to a degree, the submerge phases give me some mana back), I can dry myself out very fast if I wanted to. I have to wonder how many of the fire mages with oodles of mana left over are holding themselves back due to threat issues... I liberally abuse the 30% buffer I have before I pull aggro unless it's a fight that would result in the MT getting hit with something bad, so I could see how folks who are trying to stay under the MT's threat might be running a little mana heavy, but if you're blasting away full bore wondering if the next crit is going to be the one that gets you killed, I don't see it.
Well, what the fuck. Seriously. You want to see big numbers ? I have a morogrim parse with 20k rdps. Oh wait, even better yet:
40k rdps - http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...&s=15756-15817
does this means anything whatsoever ? Not really. In case you ask, I was the only mage in the raid, had no COE, and the warlock on top was using coa to boost his damage further.
And please, anyone arguing about -40% threat remotely coming into play anywhere in a raid situation. It doesn't. Ever. If you want to argue that fire mage 'can't dps without salvation', then I will point out that I never use invis in any fights where I have salvation, so I can easily imagine doing a fight with no salvation and replacing it with invis. The only place I do use invis is on lootreaver due to the de-aggro. If you have aggro problems, get a new tank. Its almost impossible to pull aggro from a good tank with a fire spec and salvation. Give them 5 seconds to get aggro then go all out; you shouldn't be able to pull aggro.
I never said I had a problem with people giving WWS parse. The problem is when the selected examples are all selectively favoring arcane mages. I have never denied that almost every fight will favor either arcane or fire spec. This is why you want a broad array of examples, including results from the competing spec. Sadly, as I pointed out in the past, I have discovered that Flamecaps are not logged, so I have learnt to take fire mage parses with a grain of salt. But then again, WWS doesn't show the active buffs regardless, so I figure its not a big deal.
And seriously, if you have a good shadow priest, even with stats-horrific gear (hello crafted gear), its virtually impossible to go OOM as a fire mage. I have never ran out of mana in any fight other than reliquary of souls phase 2 (which makes every player max mana = 0). And I rarely use more than 1 or 2 combat mana pot (yeah: not even the major combat ones). Hell, on that morogrim kill with 20k rdps, we had 4 aoers. No mana problems either. I have nothing much to add besides 'get better shadow priests' or make sure your shadow priest are min/maxed properly so they return you more mana (protip: destro lock increases your shadow priest dps, so does shamans).
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
That seems strange to me Daenrya. I do always have a shadow priest (and he is exceptional) but there are very few fights that have me nibble on mana pots and lots of fights that I'll never even touch a gem or evocation. I can pretty much keep up a 7:1 chain forever with that shadow priest and potions used sparingly, obviously depending somewhat on luck with clearcasting and MoE. Let's not forget though, not all spriests are created equal.
Now, fights that include AE portions are another matter and while I cannot recall being tapped out to the point of not casting in ages, it is a restriction or at least encourages me to pot early on those fights. If I do not have a shadow priest at all though, I'm potting and gemming on cooldown and may well be in real trouble on a longer fight.
Hello all,
I'm Imbar, an Alliance mage on the Skywall server. I've been following this thread since it's conception and decided to make a post.
I will admit I'm in a baby guild as far as the other members of this forum are concerned. We have not progressed past Magtheridon yet.
Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but on long fights (8+ min) I find it extremely difficult to maintain a respectable mana usage rate. My current spec is 40/0/21 (for iceblock mainly, and frostbolt for solo farming and mana conservation) (additionally, armory is down atm but: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...kywall&n=Imbar) I have around 11.5k mana raid buffed, I never have a shadow priest/mana tide. Ever. That luxury is reserved for the healers. We have 3 shadow priests and they are always with the primary healing groups. I don't believe we have a resto shaman. CoS/CoE/JoW are never up on the raid boss (Our warlocks favor CoA/CoD for their own dmg boost and our pallies are all healers). That being said, I use: ABx2 AM rotation and find it extremely easy to go oom. I've suggested to our Raid Leader that our mage group (1 Arcane (me), 2 fire 10/48/3) get just one measly shadow priest, but he refuses to let us take one from the healers.
Is there something wrong with what I've been doing? I've read countless posts about other mages not having mana issues, but then again, they usually have spriests. I think it's utterly ridiculous that we can't spare one of our 3 shadow priests for the mage group, but eliminating that as a possibly, what can I do?
(Note: This post isn't about who's topping the dmg meters. I'm more concerned about mana consumption.)
EDIT: I forgot to mention, I'm forced to chug pots constantly to make up for the lack of a shadow priest/mana tide/other regen method, and I always use Mage Armor
Last edited by Imbar : 07/10/07 at 7:47 PM.
Reason: Clarification
Well, you're in luck then. If you check many many many high-end guild parses, you will notice that shadow priests almost always go with the mages. 2 shadow priest per raid is pretty much a baseline for highend raids, 3 being rather common. Groups of 3 mages, 1 shadow priest, 1 shaman (replace/switch mages with warlocks if you run with less than 3 mages). I know in EJ I am almost always in this group: 2x fire mage, 1x destro lock, 1x shadow priest, 1x elemental shaman. You can show your raid leader that it is common practice that shadow priest should go with your mages.
Just out of curiosity, with your build, shouldn't you be doing 2x AB, 2x frostbolt on fights where mana can be an issue ? I have never checked the numbers for a frost build, but I assume 2x frostbolt would be better DPM than AM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
But isn't that a good point Manly? if you only have 1 mage, it'd be better if he was Arcane. The more warlocks and spriests you add to the equation the more useless mages get simply because they didn't fix debuff priority and it's capped at 40 atm. Not having to put up CoE. Fire mages favor less warlocks and spriests while arcane mages favor the opposite.
I do use ABx2 FBoltx2 when mana is an issue, but it's still not as great as I'd like. My point is (detracting from my earlier note), it gimps my dps sometimes, which isn't always an issue, but with our rogues stroking their epeens raid after raid...
I've actually been forced to swap in my frozen shadoweave gear from time to time when I know Arcane is going to eat my mana too much, and I just stick to frostbolts. It's good dmg, especially with the added crit from the Arc and Frost trees, but I can't seem to convince my guild that individual dps pales in comparison to the good of the raid.
I'm really pushing to get a shadow priest in our groups for Gruul/Mag because obviously, the higher end raid guilds make it a standard. And our warlocks are too hungry for numbers that they don't understand CoS would be better than CoD/CoA because I'm sure I can outdo 4200 dmg in 60 secs with the added debuff. (<-- correct me if I'm wrong, I'm a bit ignorant of how a warlock works in this regard :P)
And our warlocks are too hungry for numbers that they don't understand CoS would be better than CoD/CoA because I'm sure I can outdo 4200 dmg in 60 secs with the added debuff. (<-- correct me if I'm wrong, I'm a bit ignorant of how a warlock works in this regard :P)
Whether or not YOU could outdo this number is not the issue. Whether or not everybody benefiting from CoS could outdo that number is the issue. If your warlocks don't work out CoS and CoE between them, they're almost surely making a mistake. Hell, if you have good melee DPS, Curse of Recklessness might be better than CoA.
But isn't that a good point Manly? if you only have 1 mage, it'd be better if he was Arcane.
Yes and no. Debuff-slot-wise, yes, absolutely. Having one-odd fire mage gave inherently poor dps since in the greater scheme of things coa > coe when only one player can make use of coe. Arcane mage would be better simply because cos was already up. However, the fight did 17-18 spell interruptions on the span of less than one minute (30-40 seconds in fact). I doubt an arcane mage would have provided good results with this many interruptions.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely agree that an arcane mage is better suited than a fire mage on a raid with only one mage. Stacking scorch does suck, I was glad I could part out of scorches when I tried out arcane. But in the end, since I don't expect jow to be up, I think 40/18/3 is arguably better as an overall arcane spec, given that fireballs DPM is far better than AM, thus giving more time for AB spam at the end of the fight. The sad part in that spec is that you're forced to gear in the most atrocious ways, since you need 13% hit from gear (or 10% with an elemental shaman) because you rely considerably on fire damage. Having that much spell hit with 2pc T5 is somewhat atrocious.
Originally Posted by Vhad
The more warlocks and spriests you add to the equation the more useless mages get simply because they didn't fix debuff priority and it's capped at 40 atm. Not having to put up CoE. Fire mages favor less warlocks and spriests while arcane mages favor the opposite.
It is a rule of thumb that you should not have more than 5 of the combination of shadow priest / affliction locks. More than that will be detrimental to a raid, due to said debuff limit. (you do want 1 destro lock to keep imp shadow bolt up tho, but that's a different debate).
I am not sure where you want this to end. I think that, objectively, if you want to stack mages, you want at least 2 fire mages, and arguably a mix of fire mages or 40/18/3 mages past that point. Then if you want to get holy about this and start talking about debuff slots, then I'd probably counter that, at that point, you either put arcane mages, or just don't use mages at all. I mean,, its like trying to take one extreme case, and make a broad generalisation out of it. I think fire mages use few debuff slots, 1 for imp scorch, 1 for ignite per mage, then fireball dot is low on the priority list anyway, so I don't count that one. I'll be honest and just say I think were getting out of the scope of the conversation at hand. Yes, if you have 1 mage in a raid, you don't want him to be fire for the most part (except if you have fire destro locks). That's about all there is to say about it.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Whether or not YOU could outdo this number is not the issue. Whether or not everybody benefiting from CoS could outdo that number is the issue. If your warlocks don't work out CoS and CoE between them, they're almost surely making a mistake. Hell, if you have good melee DPS, Curse of Recklessness might be better than CoA.
I didn't know Curse of Recklessness did that :P (Warlock ignorance ftw). So, to be completely honest, our locks should have a Recklessness up because our melee would make better use of it than our casters could. (We have hella geared melee, at least for where we are in the endgame scene atm.)
My point is, how do I convince our Raid Leader that a Shadow Priest would benefit our mages, because we could obviously spare one. How do I convince our locks that with the dps our melee can put out, Curse of Recklessness in the long run is more beneficial than Agony/Doom?
I suppose this has boiled down to "What benefits the raid as a whole most."
07/10/07, 4:56 PM
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