Pintofbrew

Going by item level on purely gimmick effects is a sure-fire way of failing in your judgement. TLC in effect has only three aspects:

1) it only gains value from a Shaman's +lightning crit talents and a SP's Misery.

2) Provided you don't crit faster than 3 times per 2.5sec (it's internal CD) there is no restriction to it's rate-of-fire

3) It effectively adds (average bolt size) / 3 to each crit you make. This is like saying "every time you crit, add 240 (if memory serves)"

Consequently, this trinket gains in value based on one things, and one thing only:




How many crits per second you have. Notice, crit RATE is irrelevant. Cast time is only relevant by proxy. Ultimately, ONLY crit/sec will determine this trink's DPS benefit. That, and shaman +crit talents.

Fireball and Shadowbolt are abysmal for it. Frostbolt is merely bad, and so is arcane blast. The only way TLC becomes "good value" is in a Scorch-spec (presumably 33/28/0) which is bullshit in it's self, and an AM spec. Particularly a high-hasted one, which is way worse even than 33/28/0. Or for elemental shamans at T4 gear levels. Though I reserve the right to be horribly wrong, because I can't put a value on how much benefit they gain from other trinks at that level.

Using TLC as a firemage is even worse than using Tymbal's. And that's pretty damn bad to start with.


Your gear is slightly odd in some respects. Firstly, if you stay arcane you need to drop both blue gems you're wearing (sta/dmg and flat sta) for spirit. I kid you not, the mana gain is hugely critical. Nobody should ever gem flat stamina as a mage in a PvE environment. You most certainly should not swap anetheron's for blasting, the 22int on ane's is much superior to BoB.

I'd suggest dropping frost from your cycles and going full-on arcane. I've never advised this to anyone before, but seeing as you're on merely 62 hit, I'd question the value of any spec including frost or fire. Obviously, you can drop some gear for more hit, but given your gear isn't that hot to start with I'm wondering why gimp yourself to cater for that.

I'd advise a 50.0.11 spec, like Kavan or myself. Irrespective of whether you do that or stick with arcane/frost, you must keep in mind: The whole, only, sole purpose of arcane is to sustain as much AB as possible. Don't under any circumstance try and make it work with Frbolt, with AM or any other crap. AB is the only goal, and any other spell you cast is ONLY because (1) you're low on mana (2) you have CDs coming up and you won't have the mana to sustain AB through them or (3) You're doing it wrong. Clearly, mage armor is the only armor you should ever consider.

I see you're running 17 frost. This is a bad idea. The whole point of 40.0.21 and the main reason it's superior to 50.0.11 is Cold Snap. No Cold Snap, no reason to spec FrBolt. You also have missed out Frost Channeling. Each time you cast a FrBolt that does not cost 15% less, that's mana you Won't spend ABing. There is simply no excuse not to get both Fr Chann and C-Snap as arcane-frost. Drop Slow (because it's beyond shit) and magic absorbtion (because it's moderate to bad) and spec those. Alternatively, as I said before, go full arcane-IV. Your low hit will not be kind to FrBolt.

Your primary trinket is questionable, though if you chain-pot it's not bad. You absolutely need a new head, preferably one with a meta-socket. CSD is hugely powerful. Engineering head and T5/T6 head are all excellent. Bracers off Rage will also help you as they have spirit on too.

All in all, rate gear with the following ruler:

1 int = 1.2 dmg
1 spi = 0.7 dmg
1 crit = 0.65 dmg
1 haste = 1.1 dmg

lastly, even for arcane, you're 1% below hitcap. At this raiding level, it's unacceptable. If you're with an E-shaman, fine, but given you deffinitely don't have a dranei in the group, you'll have to make that 1% up somewhere. Until the hitcap, treat 1hit = 1.6dmg.

 

Mac

For starters, My Armory.

I started playing WoW again after about a 1.5 year vacation. I've been back for almost 1.5 months. I joined a guild in which a mage there said that a good raiding spec was 40/0/21. I didn't know any better and he'd been to SSC and TK, so why not take his advice. I've since left that guild and joined up with my buddy who got me back into WoW. He also told me to come here and read your forums because I've been frustrated with my build and my DPS. I started reading these forums yesterday and it seems I should actually be 2/48/11. With the 40/0/21 build, I'm usually between 885-980ish DPS(depending on if I remember to use my cool downs as much as possible). I know I should be able to do more though.

I guess my main questions are, 1) I'm pretty sure I'll have to regem some of my gear, any comments/tips there? 2) I haven't been fire since Sapphiron. Is the spell rotation still 5xSc, 8xFB, 1xSc repeat?

My raiding atm consists of Kara, ZA, Gruul's and Mag. I usually place 2nd in DPS behind a hunter. He's always 1K DPS.

 

Callia

Hi all,

My armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

I am within 2 points of my hit cap by swapping out that cape for the Ruby Drape, fyi, and that's what I use on boss fights. My guild clears Kara and ZA weekly and we've been able to get 3 of the timed chests, and came within 11 minutes of the fourth on our most successful timed run. So we're looking at incremental changes we can make to make up that 11 minutes; our raid leader wants DPSers to be able to scratch 900 DPS if not sustain it.

Prior to this morning, I was 9/40/11 to take advantage of a few points in Clearcasting, but I decided to try the 2/48/11 instead to try to eke out a bit more DPS. I'm a bit nervous about this since we don't run with an spriest, but we'll see how it goes.

On raids, with my old spec and this gearing, I typically run around 600-700 DPS although I have spiked up to about 800 briefly and on rare occasions. But it seems like I should be getting more out of my gear and spec than this. This morning (after respeccing) I was pretty easily hitting 850-930 DPS on Dr. Boom, but I realize that's not really an accurate reflection of what raid boss DPS would be.

Any suggestions? I'm not sure there are too many gear upgrades available to me without getting into 25man content, which we don't do at all. Which leaves me with evaluating my efficiency with consumable and cooldowns, I guess.

:/

Thanks in advance.

 

Finkum

@Callia:

For starters, some of your gem choice (hit/mp5, hit/stam) are just odd - replace these with hit/dmg gems at the earliest opportunity. There are still several gear upgrades available to you from badges/ZA - notably the [Hood of Hexing]. I'm assuming you selected the otherwise suboptimal [Legwraps of Sweltering Flame] because you need the regen and spellhit - personally I would have gemmed more extensively with hit/dmg, bought the [Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons] and gotten the [Boots of Blasting] recipe off the AH, or purchased the new badge shoes [Boots of Incantations] if this was unavailable.

Make sure you apply a Runic spellthread to your pants and try for a +15 spell damage enchant on your wrists - the mats aren't cheap but you have the best bracers available at your porgression level other than [Bracers of Nimble Thought] (which are rather hard to get now that few guilds have HoDs to spare).

If you have no shadow priest or shaman than mana will be a real issue. Obviously this can be mitigated to an extent by intelligent pot and gem usage, and using mage armor. However this lack of raid synergy will hamper your efforts for a bear more than slightly suboptimal gear - I'd say it's not possible to beat the timer at your gear level without a decently synergised group. No shadow priest automatically lowers all magical DPS by 5%, no shaman by even more (wrath of air totem, mana spring/mana tide, heroism). What does your typical group look like?

In terms of optimising your play, one of the best things you can do is -- if you know the average length of the boss fight -- plan out your cooldown usage. If a fight is ~4 minutes you will have time to pop combustion, icy veins and your clicky twice. If a fight is ~6 minutes you can use your combustion/IV/clicky twice, with an additional clicky in the middle. None of the first four ZA fights should be longer than 6 minutes (if they are you certainly won't be getting a bear!) Alway make sure you use your final set of cooldowns when the boss is at 20% to take advantage of Molten Fury (which you may not have had in your previous 9/40/11 spec).

 

Pintofbrew

Callia: Finkum is correct: Your gems are extremely odd. Firstly, you've socketed everything red with crit/dmg. Secondly, you've got a number of hit/mp5 in blue sockets.

Ok first things first. It doesn't matter what spec you are, what content you do, what socks you wear. You ALWAYS reach hitcap before anything else. Even with a dranei in your group, you are .6% off hitcap. Strive to reach 13% hit (164) if you don't always group with a dranei, or 12% hit (152) if you do. What's with the hit/mp5 gems? You don't -have- to socket the colour the socket is, it's optional. This is particularly true when the bonus is irrelevant to your DPS.

If you insist on getting the socket bonus on your spellfire (with the exception of the gloves, their gemming is lovely though rare) go for stam/dmg in blue and spell/hit in yellow. This will net you +10dmg +4hit and +10sta which is clearly much more than +5dmg +4crit +4hit +2mp5 and +4sta.

As a guideline:
1crit = 0.7dmg
1hit = 1.6dmg (until the hit-cap, when it becomes 1hit = 0)
1haste=1.2dmg
int, stam, spi, all do nothing to your dps. Int does almost nothing to the length of time you can sustain it too. Don't mistakenly assume "I sometimes go OOM, so I'll stack int" like some do; One fireball's worth of mana is 31int. That could have been +38dmg which is hugely more DPS than 31int. You gain 0 mana from Spirit as Fire.

Your pants need a patch, and your bracers need an enchant change from +12int to +15dmg, and you disparately need new boots. Blastings as Finkum said would be optimal.

Gearwise, you look plenty fine aside from those small issues.

As said before, if you raid with no SP/shaman you should consider speccing out of Icy Veins and into Clearcasting. Do not be fooled and try to get Clearcasting and icy veins in the same build, this will net you a crappy firebuild which will drop damage talents for pathetic mana returns.

Do not be fooled into using Fireblast on bossfights for any other reason except motion. If and only if you have ease with mana consider fireblasting -only- when moving. It's DPM is particularly bad and if you're short you'll regret you didn't use that mana for a Fireball later.

Other than that, the difference between a shit mage and a great one boils down to correct Cooldown Usage. If you buttprawn your CDs, you won't make the dps. Ideally, you want two things to happen:

1)Get all your cooldowns going -together- at one point:
When the boss is 20%, ask for Bloodlust. You should always insist you get BL then, the difference is staggering. When you get your Lust, scorch once, and pop everything: Trinket, Icy Veins, Combustion, destro-pot (if applicable), Flame Cap (if you're not using mana gems). This spike in DPS will tip you over significantly.

2)Use as many cooldowns as possible, without preventing (1) happening.
While it is imperative you get all CDs at Molten Fury+Bloodlust time, you must also use as many as possible before that. Don't do a 4:30 Bear fight when you use them all once at 20%. You could have used at least the trinkets once at around 85% and still safely had them all up before BL was up.

1k DPS at this gear level is the goalpost to aim for, however do maintain that many bosses at your raiding level are not indicative. It is impossible to use Void Reaver, Zul'jin, Opera as DPS checks and comparing them is irrelevant: A lot of fights are technical and DPS is not an issue nor is it practical. Good DPS checks are ZA Bear boss, possibly ZA Lynx and... Well that's pretty much it until Terron.

Personally I'd suggest if you're planing to stick to 10-man content to consider Frost. I understand that's a hard thing to do once you've made all that spellfire, but switching to frost will net you (1) amazingly excellent boots (2) excellent pads, both of which are itemslot-for-itemslot much better than the spellfire equivalents (you can perfectly well slot in Belt of Blasting and Studious Handwraps) and more independence. Technically it's down to play-style but frost is a lot more self-sufficient and shines much better in 5-10 man content. This is doubly true in ZA and it's very obvious on trash. A frostmage with no Winter's Chill is weeks ahead of a firemage with no imp-scorch on trash.

 

Squishy

Hi all,
I've been following advice from these forums for approxamatly three months and believe i have improved
a lot in that time. However, i recently re-specced to acane/frost and am enjoying the change from fire.

I have more than enough hit and the questions i have now are:

Gem choices....i currently gem for +dmg and have a couple of blue gems to activate the meta gem. I have 85 badges
now and was wondering if i should spend them on +12dmg epic gems to replace my current ones?

If anyone has the time to check out my gear i would appreciate any advice on where to take my mage next, gear wise. At the moment i am short of a decent helm and in addition, would like to change my staff for a main and offhand.

We have stopped raiding in TK at the moment, which has meant i can no longer wait for Voidreaver to drop his helm.

My guild have just entered BT and have yet to down the first boss as we are learning. SSC is usually cleared in a couple of visits on a good run and am waiting for Leo to drop the fang for my mainhand.

 

Pintofbrew

Squishy, I had a look at your armory. I'm impressed to say, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Enchants are fine (If I was picky I'd argue 12int over 15dmg bracers, but that's a matter of opinion) gems are fine, meta is fine, gearing is fine.

The only two things I find slightly odd are: 1) you seem to have low int for an arcane build of my liking. Granted, you're gemmed for +dmg and this is expected but this is making your regeneration suffer very, very badly. This is doubly worrying when I noticed (2) you're wearing Molten. If you're wearing molten for farm purposes, by all means go ahead. If you're raiding with Molten, you haven't understood how arcane works.

You should be in Mage armor and you should gear yourself a little bit more towards mana regen. For my liking you've got way too little int/spirit and your gear perfectly shows you've just swapped from another non-arcane spec. Aim for boots from Lurker, and another two parts T5. Head and gloves will be absolutely mint-perfect for you. The set bonus on it is devastatingly good, particularly at your level. Bracers should be swapped for either ZA ones or ideally Rage Winterchill's.

While it's possible to play arcane with low regeneration you will suffer greatly on long fights. The whole aim should be to maximize AB/Frbolt ratio.

As an indication to what I mean, I'm currently on the upper limit of how much regen I'd like to have (ie. on some technical fights it's so much I can't dump it and overflow 1-2k mana over the whole fight). Fully raid-buffed I'm on 460mp5 -while casting- on the paper doll. And around 1430 spell-damage with no totem, in case you're wondering if so much int/spi is gimping the +dmg.

 

Kuun

Hey Everyone,

I accidentally posted in the wrong section and was told to come here.
As i posted before in the other section, I asked is it worth replacing most of my +12 sd gems in the yellow socket with a reckless pyrestones. I'm no genius at this haste stuff >.< so hopefully there's someone who can help me.
At the moment i'm at 1249 fire damage, 33% crit buffed with AI and MA and 76 haste. If i were to replace most the gems, i lose about 110ish spell damage but gain about 95ish haste rating. Is this worth it?

The World of Warcraft Armory
Armoury for anyone that can give me advice please.

 

Squishy

Thank you Pintofbrew for your feedback...

I wear molten as you say for farming when not raiding. In addition, i tend to go with it when we are clearing trash.
On bosses i switch to mage armour.

I have no set rotation and spam AB as much as possible, whilst downing mana pots and eating gems. If i find i'm getting low on mana i just switch to FB until i can get some mana back in order to spam AB again. You are correct in that i cannot sustain AB spam for very long and its usually done in bursts with FB fillers.

The next question then is how to improve my int regen/pool so i can spam AB for longer. Would it be a good idea to maybe take every other dmg gem out and replace with an int\spirit gem?

I just had a look at the way you have gemmed and i can understand what your doing. I have just changed my wand for the badge one and popped in a + spirit gem. Have also replaced a +dmg gem with a +int gem in my shoulders.

I'm also about to replace my enchant +6 all stats on my robe for a +15 spirit one?

Question is...how far do i go with replacing +dmg gems for Int and SP without gimping my damage to much?

I see your mana regen = 521 and your spirit is 404, whilst mine are a measly 275 amd 248 even with the changes i have just made....apart from the +sp enchant which i'm about to do?

 

Callia

Hi!

First, many thanks to Finkum and Pintofbrew for taking the time to look, think and answer me. I really appreciate it.

I realize the gems may be a bit nonstandard, but they were basically my attempt to get up to my hit cap in a smart AND efficient way, so that I could take advantage of my item bonuses where I could, which while not the most helpful for DPS are nonetheless useful (the extra stam really helps with Malacrass) and also maintain decent DPS. I decided to socket the hit/mp5 gem not particularly because of the MP5, but because I had the epic gem and it was a way to get +hit into a blue socket and still qualify for the item bonus, which I thought was smart. The mp5 is just icing. But I admit it's not the best itemization .

It's really the same situation with the legs I chose -- if you just compare the two badge legs against one another, the others are vastly superior DPS. But if I chose the others, then I'd have to make up 25 spell hit elsewhere, and at the time my calculation was that doing that with the other +hit items I have would, net, result in less DPS.

I made a careful calculation about how I could maximize my spell hit while minimizing the amount of DPS I had to trade off to get there. (For instance, I could regem with all or even mostly +dmg gems and make up the spell hit with other items, but my calculations showed that if I did that, with the items I have currently to swap for, it would be a net DPS loss -- for instance, the +hit items I can swap for right now are: [Jewel of Infinite Possibilities] and [Ashyen's Gift].) It's possible I made some errors somewhere or another though, but at the time this all made sense -- I think I'm going to take Pint's advice above on the swaps though; my concern is retaining +hit in a way that would also allow me to retain my item bonuses. I'm not always married to this (note my pants), but I want to to the extent that that's possible, and smart.

Definitely some ZA pieces I can still pick up, it's just a matter of time. Sadly, my boots are indeed terrible! I have now about 130 badges and am having to miss our Kara badge runs lately because of scheduling issues so I'm being rather careful with how I spend them (holding out for the possibility of eventually buying those DPS pants, in case I get another piece that would let me make up +hit elsewhere). Since there are some nice boots that drop from ZA, and I've already seen them drop twice ( >:| ), I am hesitant to spend the badges on the [Boots of Incantations] just yet. But that's definitely an option. In the interim it might make sense to just fork out some cash for the Boots of Blasting as you mentioned.

Forgot the darn spellthread; I bought the pants the day the badge vendor came out and there was no Runic to be found, then just forgot. /blush

On the mana issue: Yep. No spriest. We HAD a shammy, but I think she's gone for good as of last week, which makes things even tougher. Prior to her leaving, our typical group was:

Feral druid tank and pally tank (sometimes prot warrior tank depending)
Holy priest and holy paladin (or sometimes resto druid and holy paladin)
Combat rogue and enhance shammy
Fire mage (me) and destro 'lock
And a few folks that swap out, between rogue/hunter/frost mage/boomkin to round out.

We have some fairly significant group synergy issues though. We're a small, cozy guild that likes to let people play if they want to play; that has in the past caused problems with our group makeup. It also means when someone doesn't show up for ZA it can cause problems. And, now we'll have to find someone to replace our shammy.

As a side note, I easily got up to about 920 DPS on Prince last night with my new spec (2/48/11), #1 on the meters I imagine because our meleers have to do so much running in that fight. And I did notice the extra mana burn. Still reserving judgment until I try it out in ZA.

No frost for me, as much as I appreciate what seems to be some strong pro- arguments at this level. Just doesn't fit my playstyle, but I do appreciate the arguments.

Thank you again!

 

kraa91

Is there some kind of bug with the Draenai racial Inspiring Presence? I specd fire today, and my hit is 154(12.21%), because the 1% from my racial SHOULD be bringing me down to a 12% hit goal from the 13% aimed for by other races.

So my issue is, while testing it out in a 5 man today, I am getting noticeable resists or partial resists. Is there some issue with the racial that I don't know about?

 

Keldarn

Random numbers.. Unless you've casted well over a thousand fireballs your numbers maybe off by as much as 2% without (ie 97% hit) being that odd, from a mathematical point of view.

 

kraa91

Hmmm. I thought that too. Is there any reason why Rawr seems to completely ignore my racial? Is that not coded in? Because at 154 hit Rawr appears to prefer that I gear/gem accordingly to reach 164.

Strange in general. I expected the damage increase to be substantially higher, yet it appears Frost was almost better dps, at least in 5 man content (irrelevant I know, but it is just surprising to me at this current moment since I haven't raided with Fire yet). I think someone recently made a post about a similar phenomenon. Is it normal for deep Fire mages to land significantly lower than other specs on anything but long fights? I know this is the conventional wisdom, I am just trying to confirm my suspicions to give myself some hope for the spec in the long term, since my gear is not quite top of the line by any means.

 

grayrest

Indeed. 40/0/21 is a good raid spec... if you have 2 pieces of t5 and a regular spriest in your group. Making it work also requires gearing and gemming that are very different from the normal gemming rules--namely that regen matters and you gear with spirit as a consideration and gem for int. You're geared for fire but trying to nuke arcane, which is not a recipe for success. Rawr is showing that you should be able to hit 1200 dps purely from frostbolt spam (assuming CoE) and that switching to fire should put you at 1550 dps.

 

Kavan

You have to select Inspiring Presence in the buffs options, it does not automatically enable it based on your race.

 

Saphya

You don't even need that much hit for 5-mans, mobs there are only Lvl 72 max. Thus you only need 5% Spellhit for them (which is pretty much impossible to miss with Elemental Precision), your Draenei Bonus is completely unrelated to the resists you noticed

Edit: Rawr adds "Inspiring Presence" as a flat 12.6 Hitrating Bonus, as if it came from equipment. So if you have 164 Hitrating in Rawr with Inspiring Presence activated, you are going to have in fact only 152 Hitrating on your Items (or ingame shown in character screen).

 

Seksmachine

I'm a gnome mage on the Elune server and up til now I was usually coming in the tops of the damage meters. I've gotten some new gear but I thought it was better. I'm not sure if I need to regem some of my gear now, or what I'm doing wrong. Please Help! The World of Warcraft Armory

 

• Smithist

Just going off the armory there's a few things you could do. [Band of the Guardian] and [Darkmoon Card: Wrath] are both pretty lack luster, and you should try to replace them as soon as you can. [Icon of the Silver Crescent] and [Ashyen's Gift] are two good options that are relatively easy to get. Also, CSD is generally going to be your meta of choice and you have some stam and spell crit / penetration gems that really need to go. As for other things to work towards, if you're planning on keeping the Hydross robe you might want to work on getting badge replacements for the other two spellfire pieces to regain some stam as you aren't getting the set bonus anyway.

 

Seksmachine

I just got the t4 legs in Gruul's last night, but they look like they're not really an up from the spellstrike pants, but I'm open for suggestions! Also, would you recommend replacing the spell pen/spell crit gems with damage, or hit rating gems?

 

Senarion

T4 legs are indeed much worse than Spellstrike, go for one of the new badge rewards instead, preferably [Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons].

As for gems, you should always use [Veiled Noble Topaz] if you are below the hit cap. Don't use [Great Dawnstone], if you not absolutely need them to reach the cap. Assuming you have reached the cap, a [Reckless Noble Topaz] is