JasonX

I think ISB is overpowered here. The fact that ISB increases shadow damage taken by 20% and has 4 charges is a bit too strong IMO.

I would think that, if ignite provides a debuff that increases fire/arcane/frost damage taken by x%(e.g. 20%), it will be justifiable to bring more than 1 mage.

 

Sancus

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Kikler

I go for 10/0/51 on illidan , 1 mage does nova , then both COC 2k crit each , parasites down If they survive i do 1 AE if they are 2 , ice lance if it's 1.

 

Mystz0r

Right, I think we've moved about far away from the subject at hand, and delved into whining about warlocks and how Blizzard CAN improve mage viability. I still have one pressing question: what spec should I go for tomorrow? Currently, I think I'm inclined to go deep fire. It doesn't have the pushback and pet-dying issues of frost, and when I was it, I liked it. However, respeccing every single week for Illidan isn't that appealing - so I'm wondering: what are your thoughts? What spec will you go tomorrow?

Is any kind of arc/x viable? (33/28) or (40/0/21)? Haven't had a chance to go to the PTR, so if anyone could summarize some conclusions, it'd be much appreciated

 

Axira

arc/fire 33/28 is definitally viable, especially if you like stacking up on critrating... your dps might be a bit more unstable ... (sometimes higher or lower then cookiecutter 10/48/3) and you might also have a bit of threatissues at moments where you end up in crit-luckystreaks.

I've bad experiences with 40/0/21 for raiding tho ... because well, frost can't compare to fire (or arcane) in terms of DPS.

 

Shawn

Keep in mind that you will overwrite the Slow of Cone of Cold with Blizzard if you spec 3/3 Improved Blizzard. I'd always go 3/3 Permafrost and 2/3 Imp Blizzard if planning to AoE with Blizzard and Cone of Cold. Though I'm not really sure if Blizzard is really a good way to go for the Parasites. I'll always Nova, CoC, AE them as Frost (Icelance if Frostbite procs or Nova holds). Against the Shadow Demons it might help to spam Rank 1 Blizzard though a Hunter Trap would be just as effective. There's also the chance that you'll get paralyzed and having no slow then would be pretty devestating.
It should survive all the time if you have a Shadowpriest in your group and if it gets healed occasionally with Chain Heal and Circe of Healing. As long as it's not targetted by Barrage it should survive.
If you have a Shaman in your group, let him put Tranquility Totem early on. Once the first Flame is at ~90% let him switch to Spelldamage, summon your Elemental and then ask for Heroism. Use Cold Snap rightaway. You can push some really good numbers with Frost in that fight IMO.

 

Leialyn

They would probably change the warlock debuff to give 20% to all shools before giving something like this to mages ;p

Btw, since this is a 2.3 TC thread, what do you think, will the dps loss of a 18/40/3 spec be that significant compared to a 10/48/3 spec?

 

Roywyn

Deep fire beats arcane/fire for single target damage, but loses in AoE.

Deep frost beats arcane frost for single target damage when you can keep your elemental alive for a few seconds, has winter's chill, ice barrier, can have 75% slow on blizzard, shatter and some other goodies for illidan.
Arcane/frost can be better single target DPS if you can leech winter's chill and if your elemental would die all the time within a few seconds, you gain AoE bonuses but lose control goodies.


I've been 5/0/56 for a few weeks now since we use mages to control parasites and demons.
The damage is decent enough not to be a waste of a raid slot. I wouldn't recommend it if you have issues with enrage timers, but it works well enough and I feel it offers the best options for Illidan if that is what counts for you.

 

Sancus

Assuming you have Illidan on farm like we do, I plan to just stay Fire on Illidan and just use AM on p2, I have mana to burn, the dps won't be great, but c'est la vie. The dps won't be not-worth-a-raid-slot bad, at least.

I have all the Illidan loot I want anyway so I could just sit out, theoretically :P

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

thesmoosh

I'm also interested in the answer to that, but wouldn't this be the build we should be comparing?
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

 

Amarilia

Fire isn't optimal for illidan of course, but I don't see why everyone says it's not viable for it. Dragon's breath works well against the parasites and you can still blast wave if needed. Frost offers more control but to say it's absolutely needed for parasite duty? Not really.
After our first two illidan kills, we never respecced for illidan and parasites were never any problem.
You're crap in phase 2 of course but I don't get it why you would ever be frost the whole week and thus playing a less optimal spec because that spec is better in one phase of a bossfight.

Alternatively, you could just do illidan as last boss of the week and spec pvp frost for the rest of the week.

 

kycan

My goal wasn't really to create a buff that synergizes with other classes. Frankly, I have no desire to fulfill such a role. As has been discussed here a bit, mages, along with rogues, are consumers of buffs, not buffers themselves. I personally am fine with that.

The idea was simply to give a reason to put more than one mage in a raid. The more mages, the higher uptime on Ignite, thus the greater damage from each individual mage.

 

Rouncer

Our Hunters have been dealing with the parasites amazingly well.

They drop a frost trap towards the back and whoever gets parasite just runs on top of the trap or if one is up on top of the area that is still trapped. 2 of them just turn and a multishot from each kills the parasite instantly, if something happens then the mages can just spin and fireblast before it gets near the raid. We just keep our cameras at max range and then you can watch the parasites as they spawn and there is no reason to interrupt dps unless there is a reason to interrupt dps.

They die so fast that frostnova would just be a wasted GCD.

 

Praen

When u try to evaluate mage dps, everybdy should consider whole factors effecting it. For instace everybdy says 10/48/3 cookie cutter built can be the best one in raid dps, especially for single target fights. On the other hand, that built also the most problematic one in terms of threat creation. A fire mage w/ tailoring spec can hit 1100 fire spell dmg easily right at the beginning of his end-game raiding life. But his guild tank may not be as luck as that mage. So as a deep fire mage if u have to slow down ur dps, or cast invisibility spell to dampen ur agro, can we still say this built's the best dps spec for mages?

As we all know, blizz nerfed MSD and Capacitor because of arcane mages. Even if its explaination says MSD has 5% proc chance, i got 5 procs in a row many times while i was casting arcane misl. That gem's feature shines w/ arcane misl.; especially when it procs w/ clearcast at the same time. In 2.5 secs casting time, i saw more than 10k damage w/ full raid buffed and capacitor equiped, plus arcane power in use.

I dont have any t5 piece atm but i have 950 sustained dps in almost all single target boss fights, like Void Reaver, Karathress or Gruul. My record's 1050 on a single target long fight (Karathress). 7-10% of my dps comes from Capacitor and now blizz nerfed it. If i keep using it, its contribution will down to 5-7% probably. I cant saya precise data for contribution of MSD, but as far as i can see it helps damn a lot for arcane dps. My spell rotation's ABX3+Arc Mis+Fire Blast. Everytime either clearcast or MSD procs i was casting arcane misl. This's my guess but i think MSD was affecting my overall dps by 15% or maybe more and guess what, Blizz nerfed it too

So from now on, is there any way to keep my dps in same lvl as it's before? I dont wanna give up arcane spec because i really like its 40% threat reduction. Also deep arcane spec gets huge benefit from raid buffs like blessing of kings, mark of the wild. Stats which u gain from these buffs also increase ur spell dmg too. Arcane mages dont need a fragile pet like frost mages or dont need to wait till 20% for shining of their dps. From the beginning of fight to the end, arcane mages keep their dps up w/o worrying about their agro, pet or boss's health situation.

So what u guys offer to arcane mages for keeping up their dps after 2.3 patch?

 

Ztorm

For a guild learning Illidan, the hardest parts of the fight are probably phase 2 and the shadow demons in phase 4. Being frost helps your guild significantly with both. The higher dps afforded by frost in phase 2 reduces the time spent during that phase, subsequently reducing potential mistakes. Likewise, the shadow demons in phase 4 are best slowed using frostbolt with permafrost or imp blizzard. This allows the raid more time to DPS them down, especially if they target a player closer towards the front. In addition, I would argue that frost is very viable for the bosses leading up to Illidan. The extra survivability on mother is nice (although probably unnecessary after the nerf) and having an out to take stress off your healers during council is very beneficial as well.

 

Rouncer

I think what we need to offer is a course in the English language. I really hope that English is your second language or that you are not from the USA, because otherwise you just clearly demonstrated how badly the public school system is failing our society.

Please take a minute to read the forum rules regarding abbreviations and "LEET" speak and then reformulate that incoherent mess into something with a clear question that is worth answering instead of just telling you to review this thread for the 2 minutes it would take to note that Arcane is effectively dead as a raiding spec in the upcoming patch.

I'm sorry there isn't anything we "guys offer to arcane mages for keeping up their dps" since we aren't the games designers. We are just raiders who theorycraft on how best to play the game that Blizzard designs and there really aren't any hidden secret methods to keep Arcane as a viable spec once the patch goes live. If you like playing as a Deep Arcane specced mage then keep on playing it but just realize that you really won't need the additional aggro control anyway (except to keep Arcane Explosion threat under control) since your dps will be so poor that it really won't be an issue anyway.



If English is indeed your second language, or you are under the age of 12, I apologize for the comment on the "LEET" speak but do ask that you refrain from asking questions that have already been answered dozens of times in this and in other threads on the subject.

 

Copernicus

Thanks for the advice regarding Illidan. The main concern I have is that with lag + frost nova, the novaing mage can sometimes get next to them and get parasited. I think I'm just going to go with CoC and no Frostbite - with Permafrost it will slow them enough to be taken care of during the 10+ seconds of chill. And with them chilled I have less lag concerns so I can go Frost Nova + Ice Lance afterwards if needed.

I'd prefer to use Hunter traps or Earthbind totems, but we want to use as many of those as possible on Shadow Demons and the second parasite happens just before a Shadow Demon phase. Blizzard isn't an option there because I don't want to be hit with a shadow demon while so close to Illidan.

 

Asahina

Tbh I was fire right from the bat in the Burning Crusade and I cant say I ever had agro problems, sure, I had to use invisibility on some boss fights, mainly void reaver I guess but if your tank cant keep up, then get a new tank tbh. I would only ever pull agro on some trash in 5 mans where I wasnt paying attention, or on Void reaver where I was too busy calling for my group.

I'd honestly say Fire isnt a massive agro problem, I have never ever had to hold back for it at least

 

◊ Vontre

You would incur less dps loss by swapping Molten Armor for mage armor than using that 18/40/3 build.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

Massael

Having raided as fire pretty consistently in TBC (I knew the arcane nerf was coming and had inconsistent spriest availability) I've never noticed any severe threat problems. Even maintaining 11-1200 DPS it's rare that i'll need to invis unless I get a string of crits very early in the fight. In my experience fire is averaging about 700TPS if you go all out, any respectable MT should be well above that threshold.

 

Pintofbrew

Given mage armor and arcane meditation are now of equal mana-regen worth, unless you're pondering the possible case of having both up (60%regen while casting) then the 3% crit loss will most likely be a smaller DPS blow than losing (any combination of) Playing with Fire, Emp. Fireball, Elemental Precision, DB, Pyroblast/BW. There is of course merit to possibly speccing out of ele. pre. for it if you can't readjust gear to not be over the cap but I doubt that's realistic. And even so, you'd still have to ditch DB/BW. Besides, theres diminishing returns to speccing out of Ele. Pre.: The talent reduces mana costs by 1/2/3%, so you aren't gaining as much mana as you think...

Many have wondered if they could spec so on wow EU and US forums but personally? I don't see the point. How often would wearing mage armor make a profound difference on your mana-situation? That's the same buff arc. meditation gives and as far as I'm concerned it's just not worth the talents.

 

Nyuu

Well my DPS was lower then when I was arcane during tonights BT, but that probably has more to do with the fact I haven't been fire in so long and don't have the best gear to go back too for it. After I got used to it and some addons, I was back on top of the meters or near the top again so as much as I will miss arcane, I can live with fire.

One thing that I got to thinking about though was if a talent was added to the fire tree that would allow fireball/fire crits to apply or refresh the scorch vulnerability so we don't have to consistently reapply scorch every once in awhile, much like warriors had to do with sunder armor. Maybe a talent in general that caused an elemental weakness debuff from our spell criticals.

 

Northerner

The math really isn't ambiguous at this point. If it was desired that any given spec of mage would do more PvE damage and it would not upset the PvP applecart (where frankly, Mages at 2.1k+ ratings are not there for fireball or frostbolt to say the least) then it would have been changed.

The fact remains though that Mages are being taken on raids. They probably are being taken in large numbers over many other classes and even by "min-max" raids. The "why?" is arguable but until the actual use falls, Blizzard is probably correct in doing what they are doing.

 

JasonX

I still have some issues with the mage class in 2.3. I still think Blizzard could have done a better job with mages. The issues that have been raised with mages are:

1) Lack of raid synergy. Some have suggested for mages to get raid/party synergy that makes bringing more mages desirable, or at least competitive dps with rogues to justify their lack of synergy.

2) Bosses with immunities. It seems to me that bosses with immunities are usually fire or frost immune, which hurts only fire/frost mages (except for less common fire destro lock). It seems justifiable for blizzard to make fire elemental bosses immune to fire, yet they will never receives more damage from frost attack even though it is equally logical.

3) Mages are commonly viewed as a weaker version of locks, with less synergy, less dps & less survivability (except for frost mages). Blink is getting less useful when boss designs are leaning towards unavoidable raid-wide damage. High HP & fel armor are kings when it matters.

4) Mana issues, which they claimed to be looking into. Currently, I'm fine with mana as long as a shadow priest exist in my party.

5) Arcane spec offering sub-par dps. I was arcane spec for a long time, and I'm rather disappointed that arcane spec is simply not competitive enough with the nerf to MSD & lightning capacitor, as well as AB costing too much mana to be competitive.

6) Personally, I think scorch takes too long to stack. The original idea of a 5 stack scorch was for pre-bc raiding where 5x fire mages are common. Nowadays, it is common to have just 1 fire mage in a raid, making it much harder to stack scorch. It becomes even harder when raid bosses are frequently designed to requires people to move or hold dps for extended duration.

 

Lapochka

I just thought i would contribute to this thread a bit

I must agree that it was fun to do the MH waves with the TLC or have spellhaste and spam lightning bolts fastedr then a elemental shammy.. WWS did show nice dmg %.. but guys cmon - its Kara trinket. i am sure that blizzard were just fuckheads in the firstplace not giving it a though before handing it to an arcane mage

And yes i think that the chief developer at blizz has some obsession with warlocks, allways making sure that mages should be kept down^^

But people saying that they cry or the arcane spec is burried. still dont think so. Try to overDPS a "nerfed" arcane mage on supremus with fire build ^^
I am glad though that i might be able in the future to see some frostmages in the raid.

As for the builds i must admit that arcane was nicely overpowered before - it was actually the longest period that i have had arcane since i bought this game 2 years ago. But i still miss fireballs, scorch ignites..

I am speced 40/18/3 (i see loads of talents wasted in deep fire spec) and as i see it i gain 2 things from the patch - 15%(50% encrease) in mana regen and 10% "more dmg". This couldnt be more sweet - not mentioning that now i will not be alone in making the scorches . a happy day for me!