The "That spell is not ready" error is so pronounced with Quag's Eye, that I hardly ever use it, unless I'm deep Fire, and Fireball is my primary nuke. My preferred PvE spec (33/28/0) uses Scorch and AB, and there, I definently do not like Quag.

I appreciate that we should not be able to obtain 0.1 cast Fireballs, by means of stacking. But at the same time, it feels like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part, that these wonderful (and very DPS increasing mechanics) do not apply to 1.5 cast spells.

And I did post earlier in this thread on the Quag's vs MQG, and while it was purely anecdotal, I would swear (though I am no longer as sure of it as I used to be) that popping MQG never got me "That spell is not ready", while for instance spamming AB at 1.5 second cast time.

I would counter Teenee that Quag's eye is good enough that I spec deep Fire and use fireball as my primary nuke. We shall see down the road but for now 10/48/3 is outperforming 32/29 for my present uses (primarily 10/25 mans with some heroics 5s). I'd like to try to seriously play with an AB/scorch-or-fireball rotation but the haste proc screws with the timing a lot and swapping out my favorite trinket would make me too sad.

Are we so sure that 11/47/3 is outperformaing 32/29?

I changed from 11/47/3 to 33/28 (never had AP so i'm indulging myself) and I'm seeing my damage go up... (850 dmg, 131 spell hit 200-ish spell crit)

(edit - dmg seems to go up, obviously at the cost of mana efficiency)
(editx2 - 33/28... not 33/29 - sorry typo)

Although I'm assume that the previous 2 posters meant 33/28, in my testing it was higher damage with my gear by a fairly large margin over anything else (with a 8:1 rotation).

He is saying that from his tests, 33/28 gives him the most damage.

33/28 does not yield good results for single target dps, its main purpose is for added utility (blazing speed, blast wave, crit) related to pvp.

Though I could be wrong about exceedingly high levels of gear. Mind mastery is huge around the 700 spell damage level, though.

Vontre
i'm just wondering, why should someone take blazing speed or blast wave in a 33/28 specc.
you might think of a pvp specc, but i'm sure they are talking about a scorch specc combined with spell power.
for max damage, they maybe not even pick buring soul for aggro management and use 2 pieces of t4 for not beeing interruptable. could looking like something. For pvp i would pick some complete different talents like that.

I'm sorry i can't tell you what is the "best" dps specc. Some friends claim arc/fire with scorch/fireblast circle to be the best, other swear on their good old deepfire fireball spam.

Mind Mastery is "only" 150 spelldmg at 600 int, and you have to put more points into some arc talents that won't push your damage directly or much (+10% crit on clearcast is e.g. possible) but u will lose 2% more firedmg from fire power or 2% crit from critical mass for every point more in arc tree, just to get the extra damage. every point of spelldmg increase your overall dps at let's say 1000 base by how much?
for 40/21 you have to drop some more talents in fire tree, which are supposed to be kicked? Master of Elements? Imp Fire Blast? Incineration? Imp Scorch?

7% more dmg caused, 6% more crit vs 10% more crit on a clearcast and 100 till 150 spelldmg (wasn't crit the intended idea of the scorch/spell power build to substain ignite and crit allmost all the time on high dpm or high dps with scorch/fireblast cycle, was it?)

Im saying that you wouldn't ever spec 33/28 unless it was for pvp. 40 arcane is straight-up better for single target direct damage.

Using your own spreadsheet with my gear, 33/28 outpreforms 40 arcane by about 120 dps.

Also in practice it outpreforms it as well, for I wear a Blade of Wizardry, and Quag's eye in pve for fireball spam.

EDIT: It is 5/5 mind mastery (+140ish dmg) + 1/3 arcane potency (~1% crit) vs 1/3 playing with fire (1% dmg) + 3/3 critical mass (6% crit) + 3/5 firepower (6% dmg)

Fireball outscales a blast rotation on anyfight over ~4 minutes, and scales even moreso with buffs because all of it is % damage versus 40 arcane's relatively static damage.

What stats/settings are you using? It must be radically different to obtain such a different result. Unless you're just looking at the fireball number, which would be silly because the arcane blast cycle has come out top dps by a good margin...

...unless I increase the time index of the fight. Ok so, the cycle becomes pretty pathetic when you push it up to 5 minutes. The problem here is, the calculated time index for fireball spam is, with my gear, around 2.5 minutes. The cycle is always more mana efficient, so if you CAN maintain fireball for a long fight, due to frequent breaks or what have you, then you can also maintain a steady ramping arcane blast cycle for more dps.

So any scenario I can create in which fireball spam with 33/28 does more dps than a mind mastery arcane blast cycle, it's also telling me fireball will run me oom before the encounter is over. From what I'm seeing you would have to have an extreme variation in spell damage and intellect in order for 33/28 to do more dps in actual use: maybe 1100+ spell damage and less than 400 int.

Has anyone compared Mage single target DPS to that of Warlocks? It seems to me like 41/0/20 destrolocks outperform 40/21 firemages even on single targets. It's kind of depressing so hopefully someone can set me straight.