I am almost certain Spellsurge is a 45sec (since 2.1) and not a 30sec CD. Even so, it's effect can be easily simulated. Take it as given that by 55sec it will have procced, divide mana return by 11, there's the effective mp5 gain per spellsurge. Run simulator and add that much mp5 to your SPs regeneration, see DPS increase. If it's more than negligible, which I doubt, you then have to establish how much damage you're losing by not having a damage enchant on, which means you'll have to calculate how many spells go off before surge procs (and hence you swap weapon), and then you have to input conditionals like "if cooldowns are going off, don't swap" and "swap late enough so as to ensure spellsurge CD is up only outside AB part of rotation" and all sorts of utopian malarkey which even though may be possible to simulate by a machine is utterly impossible to in fact perform...

I'd doubt spellsurge will make any noticeable difference. The amount of mana it returns is very small, and it becomes especially small when compared to the vast amount we're regenning from passive regen, JoW, SP, Mana tide and gems.

Expensive but yet effective way boost 40/0/21 dps if you got two exactly good weapon. First can be more dps oriented and second more regen oriented.

Macro1:
/cast arcane blast
/equip sunfire weapon

Macro2:
/cast frostbolt
/equip soulfrost weapon
edit: /equip +40dam weapon. (If cost is too much. Or if weapon swap is too slow)

Is there a consensus about SoG'D + HSH vs SoG'D + SCB?

I did some scruby tests at Dr Boom myself and found out that the difference isn't big on average (when using flame cap for combo #1), but a couple of times the SCB combo did deviate upwards in dps by as much as ~100, probably with a series of lucky crits happening while having the mana gem buff. The tests lasted just 2 minutes and SCB seemed to have a small DPS lead. In cases where a flame cap wasn't used the SCB combo was the clear winner.

Is there more input about this? I'm interested especially in a brutallus 6min setup, that unfortunately couldn't afford to do timewise yesterday when I did those tests.

The amount of mana gained for yourself might be very low, but what about the effect on your group - and what if you are stacking the enchant in your group? I play with a shadow, a resto sham, a moonkin + another mage or a warlock as a 40/0/21 (thats why it seems interesting for me, as a firemage I wouldn't care). Assuming that I am the only one with the enchant, it would be 500-600 mana for a 5 minute encounter (I suck at math, so just approximations for me :P). Assuming the whole group is using an addon for swapping, it would be like an extra super mana for everyone. And imho it wouldn't be a problem that it is such a small amount of regenerated mana compared to the other regsources, as an AB spammer I'm happy about everything I can get (lf druid who is monitoring my manapool and provides me with innervate :P).

Since I have two nearly equal mainhands (Zul'Jin hasteblade - too bad that it is unique - and Fang of the Leviathan), the idea of two enchants doesn't sound bad to me. But if (stacked) spellsurge isn't really worth it, soulfire/soulfrost looks like the better alternative to me.

You missed out an important part, how long is the fight? The shorter it is the better arcane becomes due to the fact that your mana can sustain and also a shorter execute phase.

In a unlimited innervate scenario, arcane is better due to the fact you can use destro pot and no need to evocate.

Okay, so, I admit I'm not perfect at theorycrafting, so could use some help at seeing if I've been modeling mana gains on arcane mages.

Basically, what I did was this (assuming you weren't trading anything for mana, as in the case of giving an arcane mage an innervate).

The value of mana/damage can be said to be:
X= Cost of fully debuffed arcane blast + 2/5 frostbolt (because this is 2.5 second cast time, replacing your frostbolt).
Y= cost of frostbolt.
A=Damage of arcane blast + 2/5 frostbolt
B= damage of frostbolt.

So for every X-Y mana, you gain A-B damage?

Edit: I should note that "cost" of a spell includes stuff like JOW mana return, mana regenerated while casting (though that one cancels out), etc.

Varrah, your calculations seem good to me. If you're trying to figure out the extra damage done over the course of a fight, which I assume you are.

Lets assume 2 things
1: Fire damage is generally greater then Arcane damage
2: A Fire spec mage brings more to a raid via debuffs (imp scorch) then an Arcane mage

Has anyone assessed the raid viability of bringing 1-2 Fire mage and 1 Arcane mage over just flat out Fire mages?

If I might digress to other classes in raids for a moment

If we might use Locks and Pallies for example. Pallies bring progressively more to a raid via blessings so you gain more benefit with additional pallies over the first, to a sticking point. Generally per class, you can have 2 beneficial blessings, 3 if one of the pallies has kings, past this point you reach diminishing returns, you loose out on AOE/HOT healing capacity over say another druid or priest over 4-5 pallies. Having the 3rd pally spec for Kings brings more to a raid then simply just bringing another healing Pally.

Looking at Warlocks, each Lock can put up a different curse that benefits the raid as a whole, again up to a point of diminishing returns. Once you reach a point of 3 curses, Warlock raid viability takes a drastic turn downwards. Now if a lock specs for 0/1/2 point health stones, each additional lock brings something unique to the raid, but you have say no 3 point HS, or any curse beyond the 3rd just starts to become no more then additional damage. Same with Pally/Kings, a 3rd pally with Kings brings more to a raid then a 3rd pally without kings, but past that you begin to get Melee blessings on casters and vice/versa.

This leads me to my starting point, if you had 3 mages, would 1 additional Arcane Mage bring more then 1 Additional fire mage. The questions being mainly thus

1 : Can bringing 1 Arcane Mage to a raid be viable over say just bringing another Warlock or Hunter for damage if you have 2-3 Fire Mages already.
2 : Can the DPS downturn of having one mage spec as Arcane, be made up for by scenarios/situations where the Arcane mage's benefits out way the lack of sustained DPS. If you say get a 5-10% loss on DPS, are there scenerios where the Arcane Mage can become more then 10% effective over a Fire Mage, thus counter balancing the lack of damage.

If we look at what a Mage brings for raids.
Food / Water
Arcane Int
Decursing
Scorch Debuff

A few other things, however what can a second mage bring that the first can't bring.
There is no need for another mage for AI or Water/Food
Decursing potential goes up, but only so much decursing is needed for fights,
initial stacking/reapplying the Debuff helps, Locks can Damage faster and only one mage needs stop DPS to apply, the other can just spam Fireball.

Going on to a Third or Fourth Mage
If for decursing, you can just as well bring a druid for DPS / Decursing, or bring another lock/hunter/rogue if your shorter on those classes.
Needing 3 mages to keep scorch up just borders on being useless, needing 4 for the debuff borders on stupidity of the other 3 mages to either keep it up or re apply it (if it falls off all 3 mages should be trying to get it up).

So if one is going to bring a 3rd mage, I believe it can be argued on various fronts that 1 additional Arcane Mage comes out on top over a 3rd fire mage, in some cases perhaps 1 Fire and 1 Arcane comes out over 2 Fire mages.

if Arcane mage doesn't need to upgrade past tier 5 in certain slots, you leave tier 6 open for say the other fire mage/s. 1-2 Fire mage with 4-piece tier 6 adds more raid value then 3 mage with partial tier 6. Tier 6 head is more use to an arcane mage, most fire mages fight over Cowl Ilidari, I as an Arcane mage took the Tier 6 head which I most likley wont replace, any other number of mages in my guild would take it as a side grade, but ditch it for the Cowl. Going back to Even SSC, I favored the Boots off Lurker, most fire mages would rather the Boots of Blasting.

I have a whole slew of arguments over issues like Arcane needing to back peddle gear, the need of a shadow priest, distance factors and such. One might say bring it on?

Okay, well, then with 1200 spell damage and 0% crit (which was just some numbers I used earlier to demonstrate that a warlock benefits much less from an spriest than an arcane mage. Silly, but someone wanted me to demonstrate it), one can conclude that an arcane mage with the above stats receives 1.92 damage per mana he can receive.

So, a new point arises: a Fel Mana Potion will give about 1300 more mana than a super mana pot, on average. This costs you 25 spell damage for the rest of the fight. So with the above stats, it would take over 200 seconds to lose damage for having gone with the Fel Mana potion

As you gain more stats (notably crit, which I kept at 0% for this estimate), you will get more damage per mana, and the difference becomes even more clear.

So, my overall point is: there is a point where arcane mages should be using Fel Mana Potions rather than Super Mana Potions, do we know what point this is?

Edit: Of course there is not a universal point for all arcane mages. My question is more of a "are we aware that there is a point like that for every arcane mage, and do we have means to establish it quickly and easily for each individual?"

This is where you are wrong. The more warlock you stack, the more you increase the ISB uptime (since more warlocks means less impact from spriests eating ISB charges), as well as gain COD, which will outclass mage dps under most circumstances. Try to imagine that COD is a 8-9% personal dps increase buff that warlocks use when they have 4+ in the raid, because thats what it is.
No that it matters, but generally speaking theres no incentive to bring more than 1 mage per raid as far as raid synergy is concerned, and even then I don't consider imp. scorch a synergistic raid debuff - it is mostly a mage-only buff, or rather, its a personal uptime cost you need to keep up to compete, much like COS is to warlocks. Theres fire destro locks, but I will assume for simplicitys sake that they don't exist and/or are not commonplace. For the most part you want mages almost exclusively to make trash mobs easier thanks to polymorph; ie: sunwell. Thats about the only realistic reason to bring more than 1 mage per raid. Trash. We provide a somewhat stable dps and relative ease of flexibility (ie: our spells are well suited to adapt to many scenarios), but we don't particularly excell anywhere that notably matters for bosses. Ok, I admit, mages are very very good for felmyst, but that is arguably the one exception case of all bosses since TBC came out. That is approximately the only place I can think of where you specifically want mages over other classes.

As far as fire mages are concerned it is a lot more convenient to have 2+ fire mages to ensure scorch is always up/faster scorch stacking, which mostly applies for trash.
Pure philosophical question. You either favor consistency, or you allow some leniancy in the results. I believe the core strenght of mages is consistency of results thanks to our arsenal of spells that suits pretty much any given task, and to that respect, I prefer fire spec since it goes in line with that mentality. Now if you want to point out that spec x excells at y, well then I reply that yes all specs have upsides and downsides. Do you want to go for the spec that tends to do more mediocre results overall but under a few fights it will do better, or you prefer to go for the spec that will give consistent results but never excel on any fight ? Or maybe you want to respec differently for every fight? Or maybe the fights you consider worthwhile are limited to 4-5 total which makes one spec seem better than the rest ?

I don't think I can answer that. I can give you facts. I can give you TC. But in the end you make the judgement call and go with your own pick.

-----
addendum

Arcane viability isn't really gaugeable. The results will vary highly depending on group composition. Same for fire spec. Here is a loose list of what matters, again, this is a matter of personal opinion more than anything else:

if you want to compete as arcane, you want:
-jow
-resto shaman (over elemental shaman specifically)
-shadow priest
(innervates are a bonus and can compensate for lack of jow/mana tide)

if you want to compete as fire, you want:
-coe

If you get moonkin or ret pally 3% more crit, it favors more fire spec because of 210% vs 175% crit scaling, but both spec somewhat make a decent use out of them. Firespec doesn't really gives much of a damn about jow, or a resto shaman - as long as you get your 101dmg totem. Of course, elemental shaman preferred, since again, it is better for fire spec due to crit scaling (and possible gear swap for less hit). Firespec is fine without a shadow priest on 4min- fights (or longer - depends on your haste rating), but past that point you pretty much want one. Arcane spec needs a shadow priest irregardless of fight under realistic scenarios. Also, drums favor firespec, so if you run with a lot of drums I would recommend to err towards firespec.

On a few occasions we had 4-5 Warlocks and actually had an issue with pushing the Debuff limit on boss mobs, also part of a Warlocks viability is CoE and CoS, after that the warlocks only benafit themselves and not so much other raid members. My argument is whether or not an Arcane Mage can benefit the raid.

Part of my point was this, bringing more then one mage isn't as usefull unless the other mage has added benifit.

To think of a few, Mages frost nova so locks can seed up ala Tide Walekr, Synergy can go well outside of damage.

Fights with threat caps or constantly reseting agro when direct damage is favored over DoTs

Bosses which build resistance to certain spell types and increased damage to others.

You also claim Mages are better suited for trash then boss mobs, I can think of any number of bosses which do just that mid fight.

Off the top of me head at least ten, some of which the mage can (and does) polymorph. Where does the benafit come in arguing how a mage is better suited to trash mobs then bosses when a large portion of boss fights spawn trash mid fight?

The tremendous amount of decursing during fights like Hyjal trash/ Achimode is one of the essentials of bringing mages, to limit it to issues like "well mages make trash easy cause of poly and that's it" really over simplifies things. When you get into issues like mana cost for sheeping / decursing, arcane mages come out a bit better then they were.

For example, if a fight has a mage at 50% up time do to moving/decursing, then a fire mages Scorch goes from 10% of his damage to 15-20% of his damage, where as an arcane mage stays at 90-100% damage via AB. Which is odd cause most people argue why Arcane fails on boss fights the require a bunch of moving.

First, if you have some fights that favor or even require an Arcane mage, would that mage have been better being geared toward that spec? Some fights reqiure a Warlock to tank, but in general a lock (outside of resist gear" doesn't need to gear himself differently from his normal build, where as an Arcane mage that hit caps does. Several fights are DPS races that often times last small periods of time, which almost always favor Arcane over Fire. Which goes back to another point I made, If The arcane mage can make make up his DPS loss on some fights by excelling at others.
Alright lets go with some anti-arcane arguments I have heard.

"Arcane has to downgrade gear to remain viable"
Your basicly arguing that an Arcane mage has to give up 1-2% DPS to get 18-20% more damage as being a downside. If Tier5 gave 20% increase to Fireball damage how could you argue it as a downgrade? I would regulalry see Tier 3 Rogues/Warrios/Shamans walk around with Hand of Justice, a blue drop from a POS instance off a POS boss, would you have argued that downgrading to pre-raid gear some how gimped a rogue when said trinket was generaly regarded as the best melee trinket in the game?

"AB ramping is bugged"
Rolling ignites aint? If you use AB only for dumping your mana pool and then between Frost Bolts the ramping become negligable if you don't let the debuff.

"Anything that Arcane can scale with such as +damage +crit, Fire scales with better"
PURE DAMAGE yes fire scales better, but with a Shadow Priest one could try and argue that Arcane scales better with mana regen then fire does. A fire mage can use destro pots or flame caps, but then you have to do the math over if AB dumping a mana pool > flame caping/destro pots.


"Arcane doesn't have range and an extra 10 Yards makes a hug difference"
Congratulations you just made the argument why not to bring melee which stand RIGHT ON TOP of the boss, or that healers have to stand in range to heal the tank. People argue how range favors fire (which it does), but a converse to that would be fights which require you to stand close to the boss would favor arcane, or at least that Fire looses one of its benafits over arcane.

One sided, Arcane depends on said buffs yes, but here is the flipside. Can an Arcane mage make more use from said buffs then say another class? If for an arcane mage a SP might mean a 5-10% increase in DPS were as for other classes could actually have -gasp- trouble unloading there mana bar which a SP. Yes I know arcane vary greatly depending on raid makeup, but for the 1 in 5 fights that favor an arcane mage, can Arcane actually make up for his lack on the other 5 fights is my main point, and that you only need one arcane mage for said purposes.

Funny how people talk about how fire scales better do to crit but not how arcane favors spirit/int. If you get optimal gear sure you can make that argument, but using my tier 6 example I can get my best head piece From Hyjal, with less competation and less viability to junk it, a fire mage has to wait till Illidan to get his best head piece outside Sunwell. I am more then happy to aknowladge that an Arcane mage is gear/raid dependant, but conversely can't one argue that under optimal scenario an arcane mage might actually do better?

I have found myself to not be to bad off on a 2-3 minute fight, I can dump my mana bar faster an evocate after having potted once, all said and done I am generally close to my pot timer again.

Aldor, you grossly inflate fact. "we had a debuff issue with warlocks" you say. As though a firemage has fewer debuffs? Or indeed an arcane one.

Fights with agro-reset and constant phase change, as well as fights ala-morogrim as you put it, are only in T5 content. You assume Morogrim works with a Nova rotation, I assure you it works perfectly without one, in fact it works better with SoC instead of AE and no Nova whatsoever.

"a large portion of boss fights spawn trash mid fight". Do they? Like who exactly, past T5 content? Because if we're discussing T5 content we're in a totally different realm of TC. Illidan is so technical we're practically mandatory and aside from him there's nobody who summons anything, except Anetheron where our mage-specific tools are irrelevant. Indeed, low HP-pools are the biggest problem we face at him.

Your 1-2% arguments are also indicative of someone who missinterprets TC. You see the T5 bonus and assume "zomg 20%" and feel it's idiotic to compare losing 2-3% gear for such a bonus, without realizing that without it AB was about as useful as an autistic ballet dancer. We are in fact comparing two specs who'se difference is measured in much less than 7%, and I'm sorry if that's a disappointment to you but wearing T5, which is two tiers below sunwell, -is- a damn big deal. And it's compounded by the itemisation wasted with surplus hit, though granted, you could conversely say spirit is wasted on Fire, even though less item budget is spent on it.

The ignite bug is utterly negligible to normal Fire playstyle. Unless you bugger an ignite with an immediate blast on the move after a ball that will crit when it hits, you see exactly 0 loss from Ignite. While AB ramp is a much more serious DPS loss. Every time you move, get silenced, have to break the cycle, evocate or whatever else, you drop 9 seconds of crap DPS. At this level of TC that's the difference between wipe-the-floor and get-blown-away.

You adress the 30y range issue of arcane, yet you don't in fact offer a solution for it. Melee DPS is not the same as ranged, you do not work in the same way and I assure you, DPS time is LOST due to 30y range. Melee do not swap targets in multi-target bosses, they do not need to stop DPS to move when they can rotate to another quadrant of the bosse's hitbox and are alltogether apples-and-oranges. Your arrogance against the 30y issue belies the fact that it is a genuine problem for arcane and so is it's lack of interrupt resist. And no, fights where you're close do -not- favor arcane. They simply don't cost it more walking time when relocating. In fact, I could argue close fights favor fire , as a close fight will allow Fblast on the move, which will be signifficantly better for a fire spec.

Ultimately, I don't get what your point is. You seem to throw around a lot of "one can argue that" as fact, with no discernible goal. We know arcane is viable, we know arcane is more conditional and we know the pros and cons of arcane vs fire. You have said nothing that has not been said before, you've just been more assertive with your personal tint that arcane is somehow a superior choice once the raid has two firemages (I still can't figure out why).

It might also be worth pointing out that Arcane increases in viability when there are *no* fire/frost mages, because it removes the reliance on CoE (well, assuming no firelocks either)

Interestingly, we had two points raised at the same time that are related:
Sometimes there is a spare innervate floating around.
Sometimes your group composition is such that one mage gets an spriest/other buffs he needs.

In these cases, give the arcane mage the innervate, have your fire mages spec fire. But this is so specific I don't think it's really relevant to TC, but yes, there are *some* situations where it's going to be better to have 1 arcane/2 fire. Of course, just kick the arcane mage and get a second spriest? :P

Edit: I should note that my guild runs with arcane mages, and since we're just starting Hyjal, I think arcane works very well (since we're in t5 anyway). So it's useful in my situation, but that doesn't make it relevant TC for "optimal gear" (though of course, the quesiton should be raised).

Edit2: I guess I should summarize my point as: the ideal setup is either 3 arcane mages, or 3 fire mages. This will sometimes be false under very odd group circumstances (1 floating innervate, maybe?)

Neither arcane or fire mages are "needed" or required outside of one in any Mt Hyjal or BT content. None of the fights are DPS fights outside of ROS and Akama stage 2. Arcane shines in both.

So, unless you are looking to top damage meters, then both specs are competitive and viable in both Mt Hyjal and BT. Now, if you are talking about progressing through Mt Hyjal and BT. Then its a different story. I would say from personal experience that progressing through these dungeons with arcane is easier than as fire. Because for the figths where DPS does matter, like ROS, arcane shines.

For execution fights, it doesn't matter either way. Both specs are competitive.

For boss fights were we are required, like Illidan, and as mage tank on council. Then arcane is better than fire. Fire DPS is crappy on the fires of Azzinoth in Illidan phase 2. And the mage tank should preferably have hit maxed out. Which is easier for arcane to do even while loading up on arena and stamina heavy gear.

For AOE, arcane is generally at the top. So when progressing through Mt Hyjal, Arcane spec is very useful on trash waves. And trash waves are 50% of the progression in Mt Hyjal.

Fire starts to surpass arcane on damage meters on selected fights only when they start getting four piece T6. Which is when you probably have both dungeons on farm. So, for practical purposes, both specs are viable, but I find that arcane is more flexible and helps more when your raid is progressing through BT/ Mt Hyjal.

So, sure, when you have everything on farm and you are trying to gun for highest possible DPS based on TC and top gear. Then fire will come out better in some fights. But even then, not all. And if you want TC, then arcane mages with the luxury of SP, shammy, plus innervates all thrown in that can spam AB 100% of the fight will perform just as well as fire mages quaffing down destruction pots and using drums.

Even based on my not top of the line gear (only got 2pc T5 and two pc T6), my theoratical DPS based on arcane blast spam on Rawr is around 1970 DPS. This is without throwing in arcane power, hasting and such. I would need to have 4 piece T6 and have drums plus destruction pots to top that as fire.

There's a difference between theoratical top DPS once you have all the gear you ever want versus what is good when progressing through content and based on your existing gear. Rawr is very good for that, and with two piece T5, arcane spec remains very viable right up to when Illidan is on farm and beyond.

These days, maximum DPS is dependent on too many raid specific conditions. based on Rawr, arcane mages outfitted with 4 pc T6 and 2pc T5 and the best gear, with shammy and SP in group, and raid buffs can achieve 2426 DPS just via spamming arcabe blast. Which means if they are allowed to throw in arcane power, get hasted via heroism/bloostlust or drums plus they can keep up spamming AB for 100% of the fight (maybe with the help of innervates being given). Then their theoratical DPS is huge. It will be even higher than 2426 DPS.

I outfitted a fire mage using Rawr with best possible gear and fireball spam, even with scorch and COE, destruction pots up, gives only 2107 DPS. Fire would need to rely on that molten fury and drums from the entire raid to give higher DPS.

Would fire be able to achieve that kind of DPS even with the best possible buffs and gear and raid support? Maybe , maybe not. Possibly if the entire raid is so stacked with drums of battle. Then yes. But otherwise, I think Fire would be hard pressed to give that type of DPS. Then again, how common is it to give druid innervates and ensure that arcane mages are paired with SP and Shammy at this stage?

That particualr issue was about bringing an extra lock over an extra mage, if you do have a debuff limit issue with exccessive locks then a mage becomes more viable

I was rambling about random bosses were Arcane comes in handy. I would be happy to address any number of tier 6 bosses.

Again I was generalizing, lets leave trash out for a moment. Bosses that need buffs to be spell stole Arcane comes out ahead, bosses that require heavy decursing Arcane come out ahead.

ROS in BT prefer a mage to spell steal over a purge, Councel requires a mage tank.

Hyjal, lets see 80% of the Trash and 100% of Achimode require decursing. Having a 1.5 second cast allows me to spam AB and decurse without a stoping as my only limiter is GCD. Fire mages spend half there time outside GCD when Fireballing, meaning I don't have to drop mid cast to decurse, a Firemage does.

Bosses which need decursing Arcane has a bigger mana pool/mana regen capacity out side of Damage.

In such was one of my points, for said encounter having just one arcane mage deal with a lot of side crap frees up a lot of space for DPS / Healing to go free, and often times you would only need one arcane mage for said tasks. Spending 2000-4000 mana on blinking/decursing/manashield/fire warding is a large chunk of a 10k mana pool but it is rather negligable for a 15k+ mana pool and a 12-14k Evocate.

I do aknowladge the need of Tier 5 to make arcane viable. My point was how much you loose out on by downgrading gear, if the benefit is sufficiant to counter balance the downgrade.

Less item budget? Arcane can use some hit, espicialy if they are frost bolting. Fire can't do dick with spirit. If I over cap on hit I might loose 20-40 points in stats, a fire mage can loose as much as 100 stats via spirit if not more. Arcane can socket Int/Damage with equal viabilaty and Spirit a close thrid, when a fire mages often have to skip their socket bonuses just to keep it damage. When you have 4-6 yellow sockets and 3-4 blue socket slots with red gems, you loose potential stats.

You liked to point out to me about the lack of tier-6 bosses that have trash, how many bosses in Hyjal/BT have a full 7 second silence/stun? Evocate? I generaly try to PoM after an evocate thus cutting out ramping time. PoM on a 7-10 minute fight allows me to drop the debuff 3-4 times. I also IV/Coldsnap allows me at least one other time to ramp up AB without a huge downturn.

Scorch DPS is crap vs Fireball correct? If you have a fight that requires moving a lot, 10% of your damage via scorch become 15-20% of your damage via scorch. Is this or is it not negligable?

How many tier 6 bosses have a 30 yard range issue? I generally find it puts fire behind me, creating a natural forced spacing. My arguemtn is not if it is an issue, but how negligible it is.

Conversly I could argue that having a 3 second cast time roots a fire mage more then an arcane mage with 1.5 second cast, several fights require you move narry more then a hair left or right to get out of Rain of Fire, which is often more a strafing thing and less a move away from the boss issue. Any mana used outside of damage doesn't hurt an arcane mage as much do to larger mana pool and mana regen capacity. Any fight that requires decursing/blinking/mana sheilding/fireward all factor into mana cost issues based on mana pool and regen capacity

Tier 6 content where one arcane mage comes in handy

RoS Arcane can spellsteal, and AB/IV a full mana bar. Spellstealing is preffered to purging. Only one arcane mage is needed for this.

Counsel, Mage Tank, only one Arcane mage is needed.

Mother ShaZ often become vulnurable to specific trees including arcane. Within a 10-15 second window and Arcane Mage can easily squeeze the full benafit out of this, Given that arcane mages are hybrid build they can do more DPS on two different debuffs, a Fire mage is gimped when fire Resist is up and has no viable option to change has damage type.

For Hyjal Trash an Arcane mage makes for better AOE packs. Burning down trash before the next wave generaly 1 arcane mage can go a long ways. IF so you can theoreticly have the Arcane mage start on AOE sooner and leave a fire mage to single target and come out ahead.

I could point to Fire Totems in SSC, but lets take a more recent instance. Hyjal infernal spawns on a boss (Forget which one.) Burning the infernals is more imperative then actually burning the boss. Boss fights allot 5-10 minutes, burn phases often allot you only seconds. My argument is having an Arcane mage for this one fight helping out more then it is gimping you in the other 4 HYJAL bosses. The ability to ramp up DPS for a burn portion IMO can make up for the lack of damage needed on another boss. However you only need one arcane mage to assist in the burning portion.

What about lack of gear competition vs locks and other mages. Having perfectly good loot get chucked/DE doesn't benafit the raid.

What about scorch becoming a larger % of a mages damage on fights that require a mage to often stop DPS to move or do various other tasks.

What about socketing? Fire Mages loose a lot socketing yellow/blue, Arcane mages come out just peachy. Choatic Skyfire requires 2 blues.

Keeping the AB buff up is a pain in the ass I will admit, but if I don't let it drop I can keep my AB up during bouts of moving or stop casting. Also IV/Coldsnap on pull negates issue with AB ramp up, and PoM can negate it for evocating and saving it for times when you do drop it. Assuming I drop it once per minute, 1 PoM every 3 minutes while not making up for the loss, certainly makes it less painfull.

All in all I have no problem admitting that
1: Arcane is the most gear Dependant spec (They have to have the proper trinkets and tier 5 set peices)
2: Given general conditions, fire is better.

I would stess the "general" conditions. One would say "you can't argue optimal for arcane cause several fighst are not optimal", I would counter argue "How many boss fights have -general- conditions."

That may be all good for shade of akama which lasts like thirty seconds of dps on him but show me this on a Sunwell fight like Brutallus or Twins, fights that actually matter. The problem with arcane is when you can really do alot more dmg than fire with it usually that means either the boss is trivial (see akama) or your raid is so overgeared for the boss that it dies much faster than intended, rendering it trivial.

I don't get the debuff issue with Warlocks, If they're Destruction, they only need one slot for their curse. A Fire mage will use one for Fireball and one for Ignite. An Arcane mage will use zero, though...

I'd contest the spellsteal thing. Why would Arcane spellsteal better?

For example, you try and find a use for a certain stealable +35% fire damage buff as Arcane in Sunwell...

Also, when tanking the Council, -40% threat generation doesn't appear so good (we have most of our casters hitting Zerevor as he doesn't get the resist aura)...

Arcane shines in some situations, Hyjal being one of them. It begins losing in Sunwell - it can't last through Brutallus without a perfect raid setup and Innervates like Fire can. Has a high chance of running into trouble at Kalecgos, where the need to balance decursing and DPS in group composition often leads to shaman-less or SP-less mages. Might be fine at Felmyst with the AE and long regen phases. Will be hurting for mana at the Twins like they do for Brutallus, plus they can't profit from the spellstealeable fire buff.

400 mp5 shadowpriest seems very unrealistic for Brutallus, also you do know that meteor slash causes pushback right? And you have no pushback resistance on your main nuke, ab, so you're going to be losing a bit of dps right there just for starters.

Depending on spec/raid make up of course, perhaps it was something else but we did have a lot of mages and locks, I didn't factor in the ignites for mages just scorch and fireball.

For fights where it is needed, mainly councel. ROS is optional, but 99% hit with Arcane would allow an arcane mage to safley steal it without much risk of a resist.

Arcane mage can tank with frost bolt, the main issue would be avoiding the inital resist on pulling.

I must admit that I am not as familiar with SP as I am BT atm.

I disagree with the tone of that statement.

At equal gear levels up to the point where both specs can have 2 pieces of offset SWP loot (pants, chest, helm, shoulders or gloves) they are each capable of a similar level of performance. Arcane also has the capability to do better on Felmyst and Kalecgoes. Arcane also comes with 2 Ice Blocks for Twins while Fire has to lose the AE threat reduction (which is useful on Felmyst) for them, although that stealable fire buff in the Twins encounter is definitely a nod in Fire's favor for that fight.

Fire also suffers a bit more from RNG syndrome, Arc/Frost just due to the increased number of casts over the same period of time, is more likely to give you more normalized dps numbers while Fire will vary significantly more depending on whether the RNG liked you that night or not.


I'm sure this argument will continue indefinitely but I will point out that top 3 dps on tonights Brutallus was 2 mages following our warglaived rogue. One of those mages was Arc/Frost and the other was 2/48/11. I won't tell you which mage was higher because honestly the spread of damage between us was too close to say with any level of certainty that it was due to spec or gear or just luck. Arc/Frost is definitely viable when it gets proper support and from what I've seen it's performance is sufficient to justify that level of support.


On less of a TC note, Felmyst was kind tonight and I hit 8/8 T6 to go along with my 3/5 T5. Time to start playing with Rawr.mage again to figure out if it changes any other aspect of my raiding set besides just those boots.

I have always wondered, AB ramped up is 1.5 seconds. Assuming a pushback can push back 1 second, one full pushback would only occur at 1.-1.499 seconds cast. If the pushback only happened at 0.5 seconds into the cast, you only lose 0.5 off a spellcast, if it happens 0.2 seconds into a cast you loose less. Longer spell casts give you a greater deal of time for the actualy pushback to happen. Not as good as 70% resist on fire I addmit, but still something I have noticed on bosses with pushback, or when I was Fire, Pyro vs Fireball, Pyro always would have more pushback then 2 fireballs simply cause it was a longer cast, 2 Fireballs would come out with 2.0 seconds of casting time to avoid a full pushback. Anyone done the math for this as a % of spell pushback?