Well , our guild is really good DPS wise , we have some people that are just doing the numbers your are posting in your reports and some others doing half of it so i doubt if our MT will sacrifise his survivability for some more TPS.Is arcane a solution here?We have a retri paladin so that kind of helps with mana problems (pre tlc/msd nerf our paladins were refussing 2 put JOW up and spending hours whining how they can't afford spending mana/time on it).

You're MT really doesn't give up much, if any survivability getting expertise from, for example: Badge neck, Teron gloves, Supremus Axe.

I really need to get him to use those i guess..Having a SP that dies half of the fights basically forcing you to evocate and having to invis makes me wonna kill my self..

As far as i know just pushing back ignite spamming fireballs shouldn't cause any less ignite damage, yet that's what the WWS says

No it doesn't, what I meant to say is that, since I keep critting sub-2s fireballs, I just keep stacking ignite. With every crit I push-back further the ignite. What ends up happening is that my huge built-up ignite ends up 'falling' at the end of the fight because the boss dies.

If only ignites were not resettings the ignite timer (the same way it was pre-tbc), then this issue would be lessened. It is the same thing as exploding yourself with the ROS p2 shield spamming fireballs at GCD speed, accumulating a huge ignite, then your shield falls off, your fireball lands, then you get that huge ignite tick following right after, then you die. I have since stopped spamming fireballs like a madman when that happens.

Teron is not a favorable fight for elemental shaman dps. There is constant aoe damage which causes pushback on the shaman, thus dropping their dps. Their only way to lessen that is to wear pvp gear which is just as bad for your damage as the pushback. Fire mages have 70% pushback resistance talented so its a better fight overall for them. If you look at other fights here on the same parse, you'll find Eswedge ranks higher on other fights that are more suited to the strength of the class.

I do agree with the sentiment though that elemental shamans need something better than a 3% hit/crit totem.

Yeah, also don't forget that expertise is a survival stat as well, reducing mob chance to parry reduces one of the last remaining sources of critical burst damage (parry gives them a large haste bonus on next swing).

That's a thing I thought about a lot - and especially in the context of making arcane an viable raid specc. In this brief moment when Arcane was more or less equal/maybe better in certain situations/encounters than fire I really became a different view onto my class.

I think your main statement, if i understand u right - is to give us a more raid- utillity concerning a debuff that will raise one's and e.g. also the groups dmg.
I'd love to see this role played by arcane specc.

Don't take it too seriously what I'm saying, I haven't goten so far in raiding as you guys - but I think that a certain aspect of our class is getting more and more out of view of developers (or maybe has never been-__-) and this is raidutillity.

On the other Hand you could say IV are a great deal of +dps for us and that we should be happy with what we are having but I think that there is more in our class than that.

Just my two Cents^^

ps.:who finds grammar and ol' spellingmistakes can keep 'em

On yesterday's Teron, stacking IV + heroism + combustion gave me a neat 5k7 ignite. I'm not sure if there's damage lost or not, it's supposed to only delay the damage output, not forget damage, unless two spells land at the same time. But if it does well, stacking heroism + IV would indeed not be a so great idea, although it allows a much higher uptime on various timers.

This. Outside of Gurtogg, no one should be threat capped anywhere. Perhaps a fury warrior with glaives, but I doubt we'll have enough glaives to eventually give our fury warrior a pair.

so I am hearing alot of people talk about doing 50/0/11 now to get IV. Is this the best dps spec?

First off, I am currently 61 Arc. Wearing T5 and my guild is working on Archmonde and 3 bosses deep in BT.

So do I stay 61 arc? Go fire? Or is this 50/0/11 the best due to the new IV talent?

Your character name sums up the quality of the information presented in this post.

For the same reason ppl still stack crit over damage.

I think it has to do with the "fun factor" of stupidly big crits, as opposed to the more complex deep frost which relies heavily on proper management of your elemental.

Wishful thinking probably descibes it best.

Want to elaborate? Considering in my post I asked about dps specs, I told the current gear I am wearing and also explained at what point in progression my guild is at? What other info do you need? A/S/L ?

Take a look at http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t18441-m...tional_thread/. 61 points in arcane is not a particularly good build, and 50/0/11 is not likely to be much better since Icy Veins would just screw up your arcane blast cycles.

So by looking at the mage sweet informational thread I see :

hmm guess my friend was wrong on the Arc+IV being the best and I see Fire+IV is.

Thanks for the info.

Because theorycraft cannot account for differences in player skill. Maybe you are better geared, maybe you are using pots more, maybe the other mages are sleeping the whole time.
You said it yourself, you can theorycraft all you want, the player still has to do it. If your anecdotical experience is different with theorycrafting, then blame the players not the theory.

Nasty, no one here has said 'A bad player with a good spec will out dps a good player with a bad spec'.

Arcane scales better with short fights, such as the ones and pre TK and pre SSC.

In longer fights, you will see your dps reduce and perhaps fire mages in your guild will overdps you.


Why don't you try going fire, and see if your dmg increases?

A lot of the hostile responses towards you have a lot to deal with the fact that this has been discussed almost (not exactly though) 18971648267184712648 times throughout the coarse if this thread. If you would have just taken a few mins to read I'm sure you could have found it D:

I don't understand why people are hating the 40/0/21 spec. I agree that before 2.3.2 it didn't shine as brightly as deep fire or even arcane/fire, but it was still by no means bad. Now I'm in a guild with 3 other mages that raid regularly. Two are arcane/fire and one is deep fire. Prior to 2.3.2, in terms of overall DPS and dmg output, I was the lowest of the four, but definitely not far off from the mage right above me in any means.

Now after 2.3.2, where I now have both IV and Coldsnap in my 40/0/21 spec, I can put out some serious dmg in raids. Of course for this to work, the team aspect comes into play. We normally take 3 mages per 25-man raid, and in the mage group, we have a SP and elemental shammy. In my raid gear, fully raid buffed (including shammy totems), I'm at around 1350 frost spell dmg and around 35% spell crit. The key to making the most out of my dmg output is the coordination with the shammy in the group, and know exactly when he is going to Bloodlust. When that happens, I pop my macro which uses AP, top trinket slot (Silver Crescent Icon), IV, and starts casting a frostbolt. Which brings my Frostbolt down to about a 1.8 second cast time. The other trinket I'm using is Quagmirran's Eye, and when that procs during IV (which it often does), my frostbolt cast time is just barely over the GCD. But anyways, I let my AP/trinket/IV buffs run its course, and then immediately hit Coldsnap and IV again, as Bloodlust lasts for 40 seconds and IV only 20. So I'm getting in the full 40 seconds with both Bloodlust and IV (and AP+trinket in the first 20), and just before it all fades, I'll hit a PoM Frostbolt. So assuming a 0.5 second of lag time per cast, in 40 seconds of casting GCD-timed frostbolts, I can get off about 20 of them, with a lot of them critting (for about 7.5k). Now I agree that after that 40 second burst is over, my DPS probably isn't as great as the other non-frost mages, but those 40 seconds gives me a HUGE lead in terms of dmg over the other mages (and the rest of the raid). The last Supremus fight we did, I was #1 on the meters, with the next closest being a warlock, and about 80k dmg short of what I put out during the fight.

In terms of AoE, using AE as 40/0/21 is not any worse than a deep arcane or arcane/fire mage, as I still have all the talents in the arcane tree that goes towards boosting AE dmg. For Hyjal trash, me and the arcane mages are always at the top of the meters, whereas the deep fire mage, due to the mana inefficiency, it quite a ways off in terms of AoE dmg output. In addition, when I'm AoEing Hyjal trash, I use CoC whenever it's up, with talents in frost like Ice Shards and Piercing Ice; which are very nice synergies for arcane talents like Arcane Instability, Arcane Potency, Spell Power, and Mind Mastery for frost spells, I'm seeing close to 2k crits when I use CoC, whereas the crits with AE are only a bit over 1k each (of course this depends on how many mobs I'm hitting).

So all I'm saying is while theorycrafting and spreadsheeting is great (and yes, I do both, a lot), sometimes it's just a matter of actually seeing something in action before writing it off as bad or useless just based from prior experience (or worse, from prior theorycrafting).

I'm not sure if you're the classic troll or if you're serious. You mention you do a fair amount of theorycraft, but yet, you have absolutely no understanding of why arcane mages top aoe meters.

Here is the problem that all mages face when doing aoe:
-> You will hit the AOE cap.

There are ways around it. Namely, there exists only 2 of them:
-> stacking crit (crit bypasses AOE caps)
-> spell haste (which warlocks have the huge advantage over mages)

The only reason arcane dominates on AOE has got nothing to do with the fact that they got a bunch of arcane-damage-increasing talents -- it's only because they have a high arcane crit rate. Everything else has got nothing to do with it. And SOC wins big time because it, somehow, has a far larger range than the other AOE, and its 2s cast time allows spellhaste to 'bypass' the AOE cap.

Yes, I am fully aware that icy veins is really solid. From my personal experience, I gained roughly 10% DPS boost from it. Now here is what you did not consider. Yes, bloodlusted icy veins with AP is all sort of awesome, but if only the arcane mages would one day realize that, somewhat ironically, deep frost WE + normal spam is far far better 'burst' DPS than arcane spec gives. And the highest 'sustained' burst dps mages have happen to be deep frost WE + lust (+icy veins / snap / WE / icy veins). Nothing will beat this.

Now here is the reason mages tend to do very good on supremus: We have blink. That is the sole reason that mages have an edge over every other class. Supremus mechanics also make it not too favorable for WE, unless lust is popped during a tanknspank phase where your WE will not lose DPS time trying to reach supremus.

And yes, I am not saying the spec does bad, but theorycraft has never shown 40/0/21 in a good light really, pre and post icy veins. Deep frost will beat you if the cooldowns are played properly. Now here is some sad truth: if I look at the many WWS parses, I don't often see mages properly using their cooldowns either, and I'm talking fire mages. There is a good reaosn that the DPS varies a lot from mages from guild to guild: cooldown timing plays a tremendous role in our DPS, yet soo many mages ignore that part totally and assume gear/spec is the determinant factor in mage dps. I have always maintained that I believe skills is what will most affect a mage dps over gear/spec. I know that you come here read EJ for good information, and feel like you need to say something if manly is bashing your spec. I understand that. But I also want to make you realize that theorycraft, is what dictates my personal opinion, and what I usually recommend to other mages. Yes, 40/0/21 can give good DPS for you, but as you know I will tell you next, other specs can give you better.

And yes, as you already know, there are fights that will better cater to a certain build. Supremus is one of those where deep frost should be the top mage dps build, followed by 40/0/21. But the only way for deep frost to compete on supremus is proper timing of bloodlust and WE.

Supremus is a bad example for this kind of discussion because of his high fire resist. I'd bet that you'd do better dps with the same gear as a deep fire/IV spec - the numbers, my own experience, and the combined experience of most of the mages on this forum would seem to agree. Give it a shot, let us know what happens.