MaddHawk

0/40/21 for DPS on Brutallus for the mages not maintaining Scorch, what do people think of this? Members of my new guild has suggested this as best DPS for a mage with only one going 2/48/11 as the scorch mage. I for one disagree, and would like some input from the mage community here. We currently run 3 mages in Hyjal/BT/Sunwell with the bulk of our Warlocks fire.

"The future will be better tomorrow."
-Sid Mier's Civilization IV

 

Roywyn

[Mage] Sweet Informational Thread
Rawr gives the same result. A second IV during Bloodlust/Molten Fury is not as good as the lost points in DPS talents (PWF/Pyromaniac).

The reason why mages go 0/40/21 is for a 2nd Ice Block on (Felmyst/)Twins. (Not seen M'uru.)

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

Rate-my-WotLK-spec! If it's not listed here, it's probably not worth it: http://elitistjerks.com/846078-post4020.html

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.

 

Footspeedy

Speaking as a mage that has done sunwell as both 2/48/11 and 0/40/21. the DPS difference between the two specs on Brutallus is insignificant. Running my current gear setup through RAWR showed 20 dps in favor of 2/48/11 (6 minutes, ideal conditions AKA Brutallus).

Also scorch's damage is such an incredibly low amount of your total damage that there isn't really a big difference on which spec your "scorch mage" is. The real advantage of 0/40/21 on that fight is the ability to negate 2 burns while your healers are learning it, which isn't very significant.

 

Pook

Hopefully this is the right thread to ask in...

I've been using Rawr, setting it to a 5min boss fight selecting appropriate group buffs and mana regen & I'm spec'ed 40/00/21.

When I run the Optimize function (after selecting everything I have available) It tells me that I want to replace all of my gems with either Int &/or Mp5 gems.

Now I understand the importance of mana with the rather less efficient AB spam, but does it really seem right to swap +spell dam & crit for Int ?

 

Pintofbrew

Welcome to a few months ago. Yes you can swap damage for int. Depending on duration/buffs/JoW/regen/others int can vary from 1int=1.1dmg to 1int>1.2dmg. I'd question the mp5 gemming, preferring instead spi on 3-slot items and another int for 2-slot items. However this assumption fails if you don't evocate or if indeed you're on trash etc.

 

Tyfon

Pint actually just answered a very similar question on the last page with this little nugget:
You have icon instead of hex but they work the same.

 

Pook

Thanks very much for the reply, sorry its old news.. :P

Its kinda hard to find things by searching when you can't quite figure out how to get it down to a few short words

 

Ikevin

Hello all

My armory The World of Warcraft Armory

I am here for advice on how I can improve my character, Also my current guild runs 3 mages they are both spec'd arcane. I was wondering if it would be easier if I spec'd arcane, Since I have to count on myself to keep the scorch debuff up all the time.

 

Bonaparte

A question for you experienced mages.

I'm fairly experienced as a Mage but not THAT experienced. Done SSC/TK etc. Got rather nice gear for that level (lots of 2.4 stuff and gear from ZA for example)

Right now I'm playing as 50/0/11 and loving it. I'm great dps on trash, in heroics and in 10 mans. Also on trash in 25 mans. I'm great dps as long as I got mana in 25 man boss fights too, but and here's the big BUT....

I very seldomly get raid support classes. The guild I'm in (and i'm not interested in changing guilds) have basically NO shadow priests at all (despsite 100+ raiding members, usually 40+ ppl signed for all the 25 man raids) and if there is one he gets put with the healers for some reason ^^. I very seldomly have a shaman in my group either.

Now, its not hard to see that I'll be chain-chugging mana potions and mana emeralds, but I still oom in bossfights even while using extremely mana effeciant casting cycles like AB. AM, FB and repeat.

Now to my real question:

With NO raidsupport at all, what spec will most likely be the best dps ? In bossfights in particular but also seen over the whole instance.

 

Antiphonal

With 2pc T5, 40/0/21 will _usually_ outperform other specs, even with no spriest (but will be very tight and you kinda have to do it perfectly). Assuming you are in a situation where it will be IMPOSSIBLE to convince your raid that the healers really don't need the spriest like the mages and warlocks do, you might just need to bite the bullet and go with a 2/48/11 or if the fights go VERY long because of the lower dps, you might even need to go with 10/48/3. If you are desparate for longevity, 18/0/43 will give you the highest possible efficiency. It's fairly easy to model in Rawr though. Your profile link shows a druid - mind linking us your mage's armory page?

A raid not supporting their DPS will have trouble eventually. It may be better to get people on the same page now rather than later. You might consider making it into a friendly guild challenge to do highest DPS parses on your farm bosses. Do some kind of token prize to keep it fun. Just a suggestion. :-)

 

Alvira

There's more being discussed speficially centred on arcane mage raiding on this thread. [Mage] Raiding as Arcane mage post 2.4. Hopefully you will find that useful.

 

Alvira

As you progress into MH/BT, you will find that the boss fights are much shorter compared to many of those in SSC/TK. So it will actually get easier even if your raid support remains the same, which is low. And as your guild gets better and better geared and if you are still doing ssc/tk. Then even those fights will become shorter because your overall raid DPS has gone up.

Your own gear will also get better enabling you to DPS harder for longer. So, if you are already enjoying the spec, my advice would be to to just keep going.

 

Bonaparte

Mmm, I used to play as 2/48/11 for a long time when I had Spellstrike / Spellfire gear and i switched to 50/0/11 even without having the 2 set T5 bonus and it was still a great increase in dps in the shorter encounters for me.

I find Antiphonal's advice the most useful at the moment but just in case my gear will give you more sugestions I'll link some for you!

Armoury: The World of Warcraft Armory

Be Imba: Be Imba! - the online Character Auditor for World of Warcraft

Also to add something: I do have Spellstrike hood+pants, whole spellfire set in addition to some nice random rep rewards, kz and Za drops in the bank (no hood of hexing though), so if I have to go Fire spellhit will not be a problem.

My guild's progress is 5/6 SSC and 3/4 TK and we downed first 2 in MH aswell. Our guild is right now in sort of a "regrouping phase" so we're mostly Farming SSC up to Vashj (not even giving her tries atm) and clearing Gruul+Maggy. If it goes smooth like it did this week, we'll down Rage and give the next two a try. Kaz'rogal has yet to die though. The old veterans are all very good geared, but we have a wierd mix of say....15-20 rather well geared people (T5 gear level) and then a rather large jump down to the "mass" of about 40-50 raiders with T4 (or even worse!) level gear.

That's why we are playing the way we are, need to gear up the big mass of people to get enough well geared people to really give MH/BT a serious go.

Oh! And I think I have to edit this in too: We're a CASUAL raiding guild that raids about 5 times a week. But since we're casual and friendly we use signup priority. As soon as the "demanded" classes like tanks and healers are filled, we go with those who signed up first, not what would make the best raid. So sometimes we have 8 locks and almost no melee and next time we have 4 rogues and only 1 lock etc... We then choose wich bosses to do considering the raid group, and not choosing the raid group from what bosses are needed. If you see what I mean. So I can't really count on any kind of ....regularity in what group I end up in...

Now.
If you take all this into account. My gear, my situation in general, and the fact that I'd prefer to stay in the guild I'm in because of RL issues, what is the likely best spec for me (in order to do as much dps as possible) at this point?

 

MaddHawk

Thanks for the responses gentlemen. This, along with our own WWS reports, reconfirms what I felt. It also explains why our 40/21 mages sometimes just can't match the DPS or total damage output of our 2/48/11 mages.

"The future will be better tomorrow."
-Sid Mier's Civilization IV

 

Neoslider

Hello there,

I've been reading most posts on Mages here and found valuable information. Still I have a question (or batch of questions) regarding the spec for mages in our guild, I'll try to explain and be short :

- Our guild is raiding 6 times a week, doing 4/5 Hyjal and 5/9 BT, and also cleaning sometimes SSC/TK to get some gear (and test recruits)
- We are 3 "fixed" mages raiding 3-5x a week, and testing 2 news mages in order to have a better turn-over inside mages. Specs are :
-- 1 mage is deep Arcane, has itemized his gear towards Int/Spirit, and is mostly spamming AB (being in an optimized group including a spriest helps him have a decent mana regen for most encounters, while potting/gemming of course). He is our best dps mage so far.
-- 2 (including myself -> The World of Warcraft Armory ) are standard 2/48/11 fire builds (I'm still 0/48/13 but should change to 2/48/11 I guess for AE threat (?) ). The other mage is doing well as fire, while I am OK/average, because I often lead the raid and still have issues to lead well and dps well at the same time.
-- 1 recruit is frost spec, and is still doing decent dmg while he has lower lvl gear (KZ,SSC,TK and craftable set for frost)
-- 1 recruit is fire spec, we haven't tested him yet

Recently a few mages have discussed the possibility to try frost builds, since the new recruit is performing well in raids despite his weaker stuff. While I think (after reading most posts here) that Arcane and Fire specs seem to be the best specs for Hyjal and most part (if not all) of BT, I'm still having doubt and need advice on this.

So to make it short :
- is frost build viable for Hyjal and BT, especially the 2nd part of BT (RoS, Shahraz, Illidari Council, Illidan) ? (we are working on RoS at the moment)
- should some of our mages re-spec Frost and try it, or should they "not lose time" and keep their fire build ? (or re-spec fire for those who aren't ? Exception for the "arcane specced" which I think has a decent dps output and shouldn't lose his gear/talent optimization he's invested in)

Thank you for your input and pieces of advice.

 

Antiphonal

I plugged your data into Rawr and gave you very minimal buffs (PW:F and MotW are givens, BoW but not BoK, no Spriest or totems, etc...). I set the encounter length to 360 seconds, which is about right for Tier5 content. The fights usually last up to 10 minutes (or longer with A'lar), but you get some time here and there where you can't cast and can regen mana, so it's a good estimate.

It showed you getting an almost 250 dps boost going to Frost/Meditation, even with the low amount of spell hit you currently have. Once you boost to 126 hit the difference is even greater.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Narub

I tried 0/40/21 On M'uru and I think it's pretty horrible, you want to maintain full imp scorch and therefor you should have to lose 1 point in master of elements which means your mana will be limited (and ofc losing 1 point in playing with fire/Pryomaniac makes you do less dmg overall), as for a double IB, on M'uru you will max use 1 (I used one where he was on 10% to stay alive and then we killed him) so there is noway you gonna use a second one in that fight as in p1 all the negative energy is easily healable and therefor you will have never have to IB there.

 

Bonaparte

Thanks for the input mate. I might try that in a bit. I just started using WWS aswell, and have a report from a heroic today. Good paladin tank that gave the opporunity to AoE and AB spam alot. He was rather eager to do it fast though, so I couldn't really go all out because he'd pull next group even if I was sitting down and drinking with 10% mana ^^

Wow Web Stats

And regarding the spellhit thing. I can get over 200 spellhit if I maximaise for spellhit, so that is not a problem. The only question is how much spelldam/crit/haste I'd get with 164 spellhit for Fire or 120'ish for Frost.

 

Fabjuth

Recently I've been having some threat cap issues against my tanks (a story for a different thread) and decided to play with some frost based builds to split off part of my threat (10-15% damage to an external threat source? Yay, free DPS at no TPS). Many many moons ago I was chatting with a mage about some theory-crafting and the viability of a couple of raid specs, when he mentioned he'd built a frost based spec that dropped ice-block & Ice Barrier to get points in arcane meditation for some points in Arcane Meditation for better mana regen as a frost mage. I don't remember the exact rationale as to why the lower DPM wasn't considered enough, but figured if I could free up a shadow priest for one of the still un-threat-capped mages this could only be a good thing. So I've adjusted the spec he gave me slightly to this:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

My question is, aside from loosing shatter (irrelevant on most boss fights since they're all snare immune) and Ice Barrier, is there any disadvantage to such a build beyond the standard disadvantages of frost?

A secondary question, is there any theory-crafting or side by side comparisons for Master of Elements vs Clearcasting? What I mean is, is there a % of crit for a frost or fire mage makes MoE more desirable? The reason I ask is a follow on spec I made just for fun (and the one I've been using for Vasj, dealing with elementals) is:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Mage -> Talent Calculator

[e] Just noticed Boneparts thread above, reading backwards now.
[e2] Ok, so it is a 'viable' DPS build for what I intend/am hoping for, I'm curious what I'd be loosing out on still though.
[e3] I'm going to bite my tongue now... just noticed the mana management thread in Roywyn's comment... I knew an hour of browsing wasn't going to be enough to find all the gems of info.

 

Medusa

I just take a few adjustments for optimizing my Deep Fire + Icy Veins spec. There are some spells that are not realy needit in PVE - just like Dragon Breath or Pyroblast. Sure, without Blastwave you lose a little bit for Trashes like MH, but it is not a big deal only spamming AE.

I try to spare a few points in fire just to take a little more Manareg with Arcane Concentration. The idea behind is to not use so often Managems/Manapot but instead Flamecaps/Destro Pots.

Here is a link to my actual 7/43/11 build and i feel comfortable about that:
The World of Warcraft Armory

I am in the late BT progression (workin on ROS - last night 4% lase Reliquary aspect) and there are some fights where i wish to chainpot Destro/Flamecaps but was not possible even with a SP in my group. We need vor Teron (as example) 4.30-4.50 minutes and with my old spec 2/48/11 i run unpritty oom in the end (Bloodlust + 2x Icy Veins).

With the extra points in AC i even can sometimes cast free Blizzard in MH, that is also a pretty nice thing.

 

Fabjuth

Neo,
A frost based spec can be viable mostly dependent on a) The amount of raid damage in a particular encounter, and b) the skill of the mage using it. Frost specs can match fire specs in terms of DPS output to within 5-10%, if the elemental is utilized correctly (Cold snap on CD, bloodlust/heroism timing, winters chill stacks/maintenance, etc). The main issues with a frost spec though is it's (usually) high investment in shatter and it's reliance on such an easy to kill source for 10-15% of it's DPS. Some more information can be found here.