My aim is not to compromise raid DPS, but still be able to function on BG's and Arenas. Deep fire right now is the best I can do for raiding, perhaps were I to get the two piece tier 5 bonus things would change. I am using the points to get blazing speed and impact in the 2/56/3 build, which matter for PvP. I am not very impressed with deep frost for raiding. I suppose my question is this...can you fully function as a fire mage without the clearcast, or is it a necessity for serious raiding, and at what point does this become a necessity (Grul? Eye?).

Is it? If you have the mana to use it , it's 2k damage for your GCD and it has like 40% crit chance.

Fire Blast is nice to use on the move when you need to keep Aura of the Crusader up or as a finisher for trash and bosses to squeeze in that last bit of DPS but as far as using it in a rotation, it simply doesn't scale as much as fireball. Fire Blast receives 42.86% of bonus spell damage while Fireball (assuming imp. and emp. fireball) receives 105% of bonus spell damage. You're getting way more DPM from fireball then fire blast. This brings in the question of having the mana. Can you honestly say mana isn't a concern? I've always found it best to be conservative about my mana usage because it is impossible for you to predict what is going to happen later in the fight. If for some reason half the DPS dies during the fight, you don't want to be OOM because you decided to use fire blasts or other high DPS, but low DPM abilities.

Will you have mana issues with sp/shaman in your group?Even on our last teron kill i was spamming fireblast/fireball (with out SP in group cause healers were whining about their mana) and i just ticked evo twice at arround 30% and finished with out mana problems(Though i was using mana pot/gems-instead of destruction/flame caps)

The simplistic answer is that you can function exactly the same as you would with a 10/48/3 spec until you run out of mana.

The way I would approach it if I had the same desire would be to simply pay attention to my mana on boss fights - when you start going OOM long before the fight is over (or have to significantly adjust your spell rotation to conserve mana), then you should think about adjusting your spec.

Since you aren't min/maxing obviously, and aren't trying to be on the bleeding edge of progression, the only correct answer is the one that works for you and your raid group and PvP partners. I know the more avid PvPers in my guild just respec every weekend - PvE spec during the week for raiding and PvP spec on the weekend for PvP. The ease of making gold now makes 100g/week in respec fees trivial.

Would you care to post a WWS report of that fight? Or any fight where you are claiming to of spammed Fire Blast.

We can all agree that FireBlast's DPM is horrible (it costs more mana than Fireball and does much less damage) and should be avoided in fights where mana is an issue.

However, in some cases, casting FireBlast can also reduce your DPS compared to just casting Fireball. It depends on your latency and spell damage.

Let's talk about latency first. The cast time of Fireball, if you use /stopcasting, is always 3 seconds.. However, you can't /stopcast the GCD so the "cast time" of FireBlast is: 1.5 + (latency * 2). If you have 250ms latency, the cast time of FireBlast will actually be 2 second and not 1.5..

Also, as someone already mentioned in this thread, FireBlast doesn't scale well. It gets only 42.86% of your Spell Damage -- So, if you have very high spell damage (> 1300) and bad latency (250ms+) casting FireBlast, even if you had infinite mana, will increase your DPS by almost nothing or even decrease it.

With my gear raid buffed including totems / etc (1400 to 1550 spell damage and 30% crit) and my latency (300ms) I'm almost always better off not casting FireBlast, as my DPS in a Fireball/Fireball/FireBlast rotation is 1431 and my DPS just casting FireBall is 1427.

Originally Posted by Kikler
Also one quite silly question from me , why i see on some WWS reports (Alaina - WWS)

not a single fireblast?
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Because it's a waste of mana and global cooldown, that's it.

If you're Fire Blasting right now, should compare your dps to that persons. You're prolly near 900~dps, they're at 1300. While some of that is gear difference, most of the difference is in the casts.
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Alaina uses Fireball only, because wearing 4 parts of T6-Set. Using fireblast rotation with non T6 equip can give you equal DPS. see Zathul - WWS = 1,3k DPS

my DPS was around 1,1k, mostly because of great 4-7 fps in raid situations and a test arcanblast action (without T5 bonus) for testing

Currently I am specced 33/28/0, our guild has cleared Kara several times, and have downed Gruul several times. I am looking to maximize DPS, however was originally a hunter main, so am still learning the class. I usually get close to 600 on the front end of Kara, and 700 on the back. That being said when I logged was not wearing my quag eye so that is missing in my armory profile atm: The Armory

I would like an opinion on gems // spec // spell rotations // mage mod reccomendations. Currently use: Sorren's, Quartz, and our raid required mods. I appreciate the time and effort anyone will spend, and welcome the constructive criticisms as well as reparte.

I know that most say 10/48/3 is best raiding build prior to 2 pcs. of T5 for mages, so I just want to know is this based on +dmg, +crit, or +hit? What combonations therein?

Almost forgot I do have the spellstrike set as well in my bags, and I am a Jewelcrafter so regemming is quite easy for me.

Thanks again,
Zan

Hmm, I'm not totally sure that the GCD is as affected by latency as cast times? I could very well be wrong here, but I know from my own experience that with both the GCD and latency bars turned on for Quartz, the GCD bar is -always- finished before the end of the cast time on things like Scorch.

Using a /stopcasting cast as soon as the GCD pulse reaches the end still saves you casting time, therefore I'm not convinced that the impact of lag is quite so heavy. (This probably stems from the fact that the GCD completing does not need to be confirmed by the server, therefore it may just be latency and not latency * 2 in that case?)

I have been experimenting with using Fireblast in my rotations recently--as I had ignored it for a very long time--and have noticed a marked increase in my DPS. I have pretty average latency around the high-100s/low-200s, and still notice a pretty substantial increase in how much damage I can pump out. Of course, it is far more mana-heavy, but a good Shadow Priest makes it viable on a short to medium-length fight. It was an insane DPS increase for me on movement fights such as Void Reaver, and also contributed to a more reliable Darkmoon Card: Crusade stack uptime.

Using Fireblast rotations, I've been able to maintain a rather reliable 960+ WWS DPS on Void Reaver in pre-BT gear (despite that WWS somewhat screws Mages over for VR due to movement+Fireball DoT), even catching a bomb now and again without using any consumables of note, and without an elemental shaman/moonkin in the group for any caster buffage. Was never able to reliably land that high using only Fireball spam on previous kills.

I had specced 2/56/3 originally in TBC, and never had too much trouble with it besides higher mana pot expenses (and I seldom had a Shadow Priest then). I specced out of it only after Al'ar. The loss of Clearcasting might be more significant, however, in a few of the post-Al'ar mana-intensive AoE fights (Kael p2 with an AoE strategy, Solarian, Hyjal trash waves...).

Assuming GCD is client side, wouldn't that make is vulnerable to illegal modification of it?
Of course, this could be easily detectible by Blizzard.

Blizzard trusts the client with a lot of things that it "shouldn't" in an ideal world, mostly because of Warden and their ability to perma-ban people they detect as cheating fairly easily enough. I wouldn't suppose anyone who likes their Mage all that much would want to experiment with it.

In regard to the Fire Blast issue, though. It is pretty poor returns for the mana, so you will almost certainly need a Shadow Priest to sustain it on a boss fight. Even then, you may be looking at putting yourself in a Mana Pot/Evocation scenario when you otherwise would have not.

I suppose one would have to do the math to figure out exactly what you gain from a Fire Blast rotation, from an overall damage situation if you are going to have to use Evocation when you would have otherwise not.

You lose 8 seconds of DPS time (possibly ~9.5, due to the GCD if you use a weapon swap) which is the loss of, say, ~950 * 9.5 = 9025 damage. Presuming a 6 minute fight, you lose ~25 DPS due to the Evocation. Looking at a recent WWS parse of a guildmate, his Fireball average on one fight was 3000, and his Fireblast was 1746. This means that he is gaining roughly 246 damage every 7.5 seconds, or 32.8 DPS.

So, in the event that you do not have to Evocate, it is a rather substantial gain, however if you Evocate due to using the rotation you could end up losing a rather large chunk of the damage you gained previously. Something to consider, I suppose.

One more question , whats the rotation you use on al'ar for arcane spells?ABX2 then AM and you wait till AB debuff is on 1sec?I haven't tried arcane specc my self , i got my 2nd piece 1-2 weeks ago to try it out but didn't have any SSC/TK raid where i can test it.I wanted to try it out on hyjal since it will propably be better for AOE but the raid scheddule was really last moment so i didn't have time to respecc and stuff :/

You can swap weapons while casting Fireball, and Fireball will gain the spell damage of the new weapon. For example:

Time 0 - You start casting Evocation
Time 8 - Evocation ends
Time 8 - You start casting Fireball
Time 8 - You swap your weapons, the GCD starts
Time 9.5 - The GCD ends
Time 11 - You finish casting Fireball, and that Fireball will get all the Spell Damage/crit/etc from the new weapon

Under the conditions RED will not work for spells (just as it is on PTR current build), I am wondering if IED will not fit better in raiding situations.
The gem requirement of MSD is so harsh I am wondering if IED will not win the mage metagems matches...

I am hardcore frost and I want every bit of haste gear I can to try and drain my mana pool out more as I always have tons left but the prob I have is how much is spell haste really worth? I seem to have to drop a ton of +hit/crit for it and is it really justified?

For example look at the [Belt of Blasting] compared to [Waistwrap of Infinity]

Its a massive drop of +hit and +crit, I doubt it is worth it unless you have tons of each already?

I think you missed about 31 Stamina and 22 Intellect when you were comparing items there bro

i have searched as best i can but i have a question.

i am a raiding mage 10/48/3

at the start of most every fight i pop a destruction potion (2% crit, 120 dmg for 15 sec) i use this generally only once as my future potion cooldowns are consumed by mana pots.

My question is at what point would a haste potion (400 haste for 15 sec) be more dps than a destruction potion.

i am assuming that haste functions off my spell damage. at some point that haste must be better than the destruction pot's fixed increase.

or am i an idiot?

Err...if you mean [Haste Potion], then it has no effect on spell haste whatsoever.

well that blows. thank you for your help

you should be saving that destro pot for bloodlust/combustion/molten fury in my opinion.