Orpflog

Hi guys,

Been reading and learning from your posts for quite awhile. But, I have come to a point that I do not know what to do. I'm using the the standard 2/48/11 spec. Here is what I wear during raiding: The World of Warcraft Armory

Our guild has just recently cleared ZA and is going in to SSC and TK this week. I have been there before in another guild, but never got any loot from it.

My average output is around 850dps with my Boss output going up in the low 900dps. I have been in some trash runs and have seen Mages with less gear and +spelldamage out dpsing me. This is my frustration. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong. I had a pug Mage come into a Gruul's run the other day and had an output of 1250dps with the same spec basically and less gear and +spelldamage.

Please take a look at what I have and give me any suggestions you may have. I am using the 5 scorch followed by 8 fireball and 1 re-scorch as much as possible. On trash mobs, I usually get 2 to 3 scorches followed by a fireball and a fireblast in there, depending on the life of the mob. I try not to get caught channeling a spell that will not hit before the mob dies.

I am usually the only mage, so I get no help with Improved Scorch. Rarely have a Shadow Priest or Shaman, and get really not help with COE from our Warlocks.

When looking at my gear, I recently got the [Fury of the Ursine] bracers which I will be enchanting with the +15 spelldamage today.

Thaks for the help in advance and I look forward to any comments.

 

Mitholorin

Hello!

Have been arcane for quite a while now, since Kael'Thas, currently working on RoS, clearing MH.
I feel that I grasp the concepts of how to gear my character fairly well, for this spec. However, I far to often have "oh shit" moments, where my plans for my character need to change in order to optimize.

This is me : The World of Warcraft Armory

My current plan is the other badge robe, Tormented Demonsoul Robes, gemmed with a 10int gem. With this change, i replace my t5 helmets 12dmg gem with a 10 int one, netting me some hit. Can also use the currently equipped Brooch of Unquenchable Fury for hit, or the Adornment of Stolen souls, if I reach the hit cap with that. I am steadily grouped with a Draenei caster for that extra 1%.

Long term plans are t6 belt and bracers, the current I feel is enough until then (?), Robes of Ghostly Hatred, skipping t6 robe/Rhonin, skipping Rage bracers. Finally, the dream beeing Grand Magisters Staff of Torrents.
I think this should be an exellent kit for an Arcane mage, fitting well with my beloved flexible 50/0/11 spec.

Am I making any elementary mistakes? Or small ones too? Will my gear hold up with the current items, until the long time wish list can be fulfilled? I realise that I have a pretty huge disadvantage, as I passed Serpent Coil Braid back in my fire days, and slacked at attending later SSC runs (even then it was abysmally stupid).
Also, is it worth it for me, to make the effort to level Alchemy for the new alchemy trinket in order to keep up in later long hard fights like Brutallus?

Thanks in advance, to those keeping this thread alive with patient answers and advice

 

Tyfon

@orpflog
Your gear is more or less fine, that stam gem is probably not necessary but isn't that big a deal. Its difficult to give performance feedback based solely on your armory profile, do you have any wws parses?

 

KingRhabuf

I have leveled my Mage to 10, and I would like to to go down the arcane tree. However, I have been told that it is not a good idea to do so. What am I sacrificing by doing so? DPS or efficiency? I do not mind cooldowns and am more than happy to drink a lot in exchange for good DPS.

 

Kavan

If you go arcane for leveling then you'll be using AM fulltime. I've done so and it worked ok for me, but most will say that it is not efficient (and it probably isn't). In the end you can level as anything you want, it's just a question of how long it will take you, so go with whatever playstyle you enjoy. One thing to note is that leveling as arcane has no relation to raiding as arcane at 70, so you're not losing much no matter what spec you choose as you'll have to learn things from scratch if you start raiding as arcane anyway.

 

Orpflog

I had forgotten that I had those 2/+12 stam gems in there. I will get them replaced. I am not sure how to get you the WWS parse, our WWS is embedded in our guild website. I will get in touch with my Guild Leader and see if I can get that..

 

KingRhabuf

I've been told fire is the way to go for leveling, and Arcane isn't any good until the end of the tree. I just want to make sure here isn't a substantial DPS difference between leveling with Arcane or Fire.

 

Kavan

For leveling AM and Fireball have about the same dps, except AM is more mana intensive. The main characteristic of AM playstyle as I see it is the uninterruptible nature of AM after you put 5 points in improved AM. Main idea is that you'll have to drink anyway to regen mana, so if you eat at the same time you don't lose any extra time. So farming usually involves attacking mobs one after another and letting them hit you as long as your health is above mana. Fire and frost on the other hand place more focus on the mobs not hitting you and as a result have a more kiting style. You're trading time lost on kiting for eating/drinking time.

 

Orpflog

Here is a WWS, got my guilds password

Wow Web Stats

Thanks again for the help

 

codeviper

Hello again, i'm back to ask another question... Lately i've been reading that the rough statistic of haste is that 1haste=1.2 dmg, so am I wrong in my gemming in that I'm putting 4haste/5dmg, vs straight dmg gems all the way through? not to mention, lets say I get Leggings of Channeled Elements (or w/e its called) There's three choices I can choose from in terms of socketing, straight 3x12 dmg gems, 3x6dmg 5 haste, or 2x6dmg5haste, 16dmg7sta, +5dmg bonus. Which one would I pick? I Rawr'd it, but I need a second opinon, or more.

This whole haste thing has me confused : /

 

Soraxis

Orpflog- A few questions, when raiding are you both using the same buffs? Proper flasks, oils, mana pots if necessary etc etc. If you arent and he is, that would be one easy difference to point out, in addition do you know if he's using flame cap when he is fine on mana? Stuff like this will potentially make the difference you're describing here.

"Time is like a monkey, you think its there and then its gone eating a banana."

 

Orpflog

I am always using a flask and an oil, flame cap if I can...

i rarely run out of Mana as I use my Mana Gem and plenty of Mana Pots..

 

xiaoxin21

Each of the 3 trees have its own leveling benefits. Fire due to the upfront damage , killing mobs before they actually hits you. Arcane due to AM being pushback immune and POM providing utility. Frost due to snares and aoe grind potential. Pretty much your choice will be due to your method of leveling

 

Chiharu

Hi guys.

I've been lurking and reading here for a fairly long time, thought it was about time to step up and see if you guys could improve my performance.

I'm at The World of Warcraft Armory and am rolling with a 10/0/51 spec.

I've been frost since I started the game (about 3/4 months ago now) and I've been thinking about trying fire. I'm just waiting for the Hatefury Mantle to drop from Anatheron, then I'm going to give fire ago. My main issue is that I'm currently sat at 114 hit, which I think is capped for me:

202 - 12.6 (Draenei Racial) - 75.6 (12.6 x 6 for bugged EP) = 113.8

please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

Unfortunately, as I'm still relatively new, I'm not quite sure what I need to go fire. I'd need to change Soulfrost for Sunfire (No problem), and my crit is currently around the 23% mark, so with fire talents and the Hatefury, around 33%, which is fairly respectable. I've got 116 haste at the moment, a 7% Cast Time Reduction.

Basically, it'd be helpful if I could get any hints from you guys about going fire. I'd go for the 2/48/11 spec, but if there are any bits of gear I should pick up, or any things that I'll have to change play wise, then I'd love to hear them. I realise I'd have to regem for far more spell hit, to hit the 152 hit cap for fire (including the Draenei racial and EP) so I'm thinking the badge ring, and since we downed Kaz'rogal for the first time last night, maybe the Channeled Elements.

As I said, any help would be great, and I appreciate it in advance.

 

Wizeowel

Firstly, I'm wondering if you are stacking Icy Veins with your trinkets and combustion during the boss' last 20%? Or are you just clicking trinkets as they come up? Stacking=win.

Secondly, perhaps more importantly how quickly are you casting? For example, on Nalorakk, I see 53 fireballs, 16 scorches, 1 fireblast, 4 deafening roars. Assuming no lag, that adds up to 192.5 seconds. Yet the fight was 257 seconds long. Perhaps there's something I've forgotten to calculate in (if so ignore next paragraph), but seems like you are wasting a whole minute to either severe lag or slow casting.

Then my suggestion is to download Quartz mod (it's a wow-ace addon). This will replace your casting bar with a new one which shows your lag as a red section towards the end of your cast. What I tend to do to maximise number of casts is hold my fireball key down during the cast, and at the moment the casting bar hits the red lag section, I let go of the key and the next fireball will be cast as soon as possible. Then you can hold the fireball key down again until the next cast. Hopefully you can improve your casting activity in this way.

(If you decide not to cast fireball, you need to do something else, don't let go of the key! You can still do other things while holding down a key: running, trinkets, blink, whatever.)

 

Pintofbrew

You are not wrong, you only need 9% to cap.

At the level of raiding you're at, I wouldn't suggest respec to fire. It's not that fire's bad, it's that you'll see approximately fuck-all difference. Frost is a-ok at that level and unless you're plowing through the content you're at (which is unlikely, or else you'd have progressed further into the game I assume?) you'll find frost is much more competent with trash than fire can aspire to be. As far as frost is concerned, I'd advise: drop Shatter entirely, spec Arcane Impact as it's vastly superior to any other AoE and spec the last point in Ice Floes. Ice Floes directly impacts your DPS because it makes Cold Snap's CD short enough that you may use it twice on a boss fight. This is roughly what should be happening:

0.00 engage
0.10 tank has *some* agro and you have 3-4 stacks of WC. Summon WE, then IV-Trink-SCB. Immediately Cold Snap.
0.30 IV over, recast IV
0.55 Elemental expires, recast Elemental.
At T5 level many fights last long enough for you to get a second Cold Snap, which means one more IV and probably one more WE (I say probably, because it's pushing it for 2*Csnap+45sec WE for boss fight duration)

If you insist on going fire, by all means do, but be warned: Fire performs optimally on bosses, and does not pull significantly ahead from frost before T5 gear-level.

 

Chiharu

Awesome, good to know that I haven't been under the hit cap. I didn't realise that Rage was Frost resistent, and my dps was below normal on that fight, so I wasn't too confident about the hit cap, despite reading all the TCing threads.

As for the content, we are going at a good rate, we went from from 0/6 SSC to 6/6 SSC in about 5 weeks I think, and we've done the first 3 in Hyjal after about 2 weeks. We start BT on Wednesday.

As far as my rotation goes, it's exactly what you showed just there. The shatter etc is for soloing, but I'm thinking of dropping it, as the SSO dailys are a piece of cake, and so there's not much need for those points.

TBH, I'm not bothered about damage meters, I just want us to progress, so if I'm behind on trash, but the boss goes down, all the better. That's why I was thinking fire. It's also because I don't generally use my CDs on trash (outside the ele) and save them all for the boss.

With all this in mind, do you think it's still worth not speccing fire? If I were to, what gear changes would you advise?

 

Dunstertie

I've been trying to find the answer to this for awhile, but can't seem to find an absolute answer, even rawr seems to give me different results every time I run it. What gems should an arcane mage go for? Rawr seems to be telling me to get int/mp5 some of the time...some people say to go for straight up int...some people say go for damage. Is there an accepted practice that I'm just missing somewhere? I assume to dome extent it depends on what socket bonuses you may or may not be getting. Your help would be appreciated, thanks!

 

Rumpatron

I'm not quite sure what you expect to gain from answers anyone can give you. You're asking for advice on optimisation yet say you don't care about damage meters, and refer to yourself as spec'ing however you want, rather than what's best for raiding. As someone above mentioned, your guilds progress is fairly slow so the difference will be minimal in regards to downing bosses.

If you're looking for spec purely for bosses, as said, fire is the answer. There's so much gear availiable to people now that getting hit capped really is a non issue unless you're extremely lazy, in which case, i don't think there's any point posting here.

 

Orpflog

There is usually sometime during the fight, in the beginning and duriing the middle of Nolorakk that I have to stop dpsing to either let my threat subside or to invis to wipe my threat. Should I forget that and just go all out? I do use Quartz already and try to do exactly what you are talking about. I try to always pop my trinkets during the fight and time my Icy Veins/Trinket/Combustion inside that last 20 secs for my Molten Fury to have it's max effect. It does seem that 65 seconds is a lot of down time. I will watch that and and see what I can do about shortening that. What would be a normal amount of down casting time?

 

Soraxis

There is no definite answer to this question, there are a few reasons to this being the case.

A) Int and spirit work in conjunction. If you have a high amount of spirit, intellect will start looking better because of the extra regen you get on each point of spirit. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you have low spirit then MP5 will look better compared to the int.

B) This is going to sound almost contradictory here when I say it, the higher int you have, you will gain less extra mana on each point of spirit. If you are interested I could find the exact formula, but essentially the gain will be calculated by some number multiplied by the square root of your intellect. So the higher your int gets the more it takes to get the same amount of gain.

C) Are you modifying the duration of the fight? If the fight is a shorter duration, int will look good again because a portion of the mana gain from int is of course from its base mana gain, so if its a shorter fight there is less chance for MP5 to actually get much use.

Regarding your question about what stats to gem for, really I'd suggest to try to balance it out. Like I said, if your int is high its going to be getting worse and worse returns, if your int is low, MP5 would probably be good to go for instead of spirit until you do get more int because spirit wont be giving as good a benefit of course. Spell damage does come into play but that should generally be secondary to your 'mana' stats.

"Time is like a monkey, you think its there and then its gone eating a banana."

 

Legendcc

Ok, So i have a dilemma. Ever since i have started to raid anything above kara, I have been the cookie cutter 40/0/21 spec. However, in this spec, i do not AB spam, i dont even use it at all. I spam frostbolts, while always keeping a trinket/AP/icyveins up. In this spec i have been able to produce 1200 dps. I have recently joined a Hyjal/BT raid guild, and the mages there are very confusing. I have to deal with a 40/0/21 mage in T5 who AB spams and gets 1400 dps, and a 2/48/11 mage who also gets 1400 dps. I have tried to do the AB spam method, but my dps drops to about 800dps, WHich doesnt really make sense to me. I tried to go 2/48/11 and the DPS for it is just as low. I was wondering how it is that when i Spam frostbolt in 40/0/21 i can do 1200 dps, but i cannot do no where near it in AB or fire. The frostbolt spams i can get chain crits of 6k with AP popped, and 5.4 reg crits. I am currently in T4/SSC/TK gear.

Heres armory link.
Armory.

Any help is much appreciated.