That survivability is of little value in PvE, however, and the direction taken with most other classes has been to make sure every tree is viable for PvE. Until the introduction of Spell Power, Frost had a place -- fire was way ahead on sustained DPS, but frost could burst for up to 90 seconds at a rate considerably higher than fire's non-Molten Fury DPS.

Now a deep Arcane spec can do considerably better sustained DPS than Frost, using Frost spells, and it can burst ferociously high. For frost mages to really be the master of their chosen element, it needs some damage boosters high in the tree -- and perhaps even to have some of its existing damage boosters moved deeper into the tree.

There's one thing that people are overlooking so far, though - range-enhancing talents.

Arcane's biggest problem in PvE is its hard-capped 30 yard range.

You have to be at least 35 yards away (figuratively) from Anub'Rekhan to avoid getting impaled. Even more to the point, you need to be 35 away from Sir Zeliek to stay out of Holy Wrath range, which you absolutely do not want chaining for any reason.

In those situations, if you get a Clearcast and want to use it, you sure can't use it on Missiles because it exposes at least you and potentially the whole raid to Bad Things (tm).

Range is an issue with some current content certainly but it remains to be seen what future fights will hold. I'm also not at all a fan of damage that relies on switching spells for clearcasts. Especially with the changes to conditionals in macros, you are consistently going to lose important time if you need to cancel and switch plus of course the issue with staying at closer range. I do worry that a lot of the dev theorycrafting may well rely on the idea of mages being able to choose precognitively which spell they'll cast next, despite present clearcasting mechanics.

Even if clearcasting macros still function in the expansion they almost never work because of lag anyway. Personal playstyles vary but I've found being twitchy and trying to catch clearcasts (especially while fastcasting scorch) isn't very engaging.

Oh, I agree entirely. After a number of attempts, I've given up on trying to make a spammable macro that would actually increase my dps through substituting fireball for scorch on clearcast aura events. Oh, I can get it to work and all but it just simply loses too much time to be worthwhile. In fact, the only time I'll even switch spells on clearcast is for extremely mana-intensive situations such as mixed AE work. That loud audio cue and flashing icon are not worth too much when I've half completed my next cast by the time it activates.

This *might* change in TBC if I end up playing with Arcane Potency and Spell Power but really, it is a painful mechanic at the best of times. If clearcasting actually procced during a cast then things would be different but as it stands I just take it as a 10% manacost reduction with the occasional free blizzard/flamestrike in some strange situations. That doesn't mean I am writing off using clearcasted spells for some things though; we aren't always chain-casting on a single target after all and switching out to another target allows ample time to cast AM or whatever. I can already see using scorch very, very minimally in TBC as it stands now regardless (even less than now!) given the high dpm of the fully tricked out fireball. It is a crying shame that fireball can't at least serve Devastate-style duty and refresh the scorch debuff.

A deep arcane spec can, however, switch to frostbolts with a 36-yard range and still out-DPS a deep frost mage.

Here's what I get when I remove 8% crit from the Arcane mage's frostbolts (I'm assuming that one mage can't keep Winter's Chill up full-time, as seems to be the case for me -- even a fight like Patchwerk where I do nothing but spam frostbolts, I'll lose the debuff if I get a couple resists in a row). The Arcane-spec numbers are in bold:

DPS Rankings
923.13: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (burst)
903.03: Frostbolt (with Arcane Power)
731.71: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (sustained w/Cold Snap)
694.64: Frostbolt
651.61: Frostbolt

DPM Rankings
10.25: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (burst)
8.76: Frostbolt + Waterbolt (sustained w/Cold Snap)
8.57: Frostbolt
8.28: Frostbolt (with Arcane Power)
8.07: Frostbolt

Even without Winter's Chill, the arcane mage can switch to frostbolt and out-DPS the frost mage handily. The only way the frost mage can keep up is to burn Cold Snap every time it cools down.

I have no problem with it personally, but I also have maxed +hit. We have two mages with 3/5, does just fine.

The biggest obstacle to keeping winter's chill up is not the +hit, but damage-horny warlocks who put up immolates, etc, and bump off WC.

40 debuff slots in TBC. np ;)

As some-one in another forum pointed out:

Now he's not totally correct, in that, some of those effect's don't stack on the raid boss (FFF, Thunderclap) and you wouldn't use rend.

But with the introduction of a possible shadow priest (VT, VE, Misery, SWP, SW) I could see the cap still being pushed.

Nowhere near as bad as it is now, though, ofcourse.

Fair enough. I'll adjust the variables and rerun it.

This makes me think: Is it really fair to assume Improved Scorch for a Fireballing mage, or that Winter's Chill is up for an Arcane/Frost mage? With only 2-3 mages in a raid group, maybe you can't count on other people providing those debuffs for you to mooch off of.

Also true. The ideal situation in my mind would be that an arcane/frost mage could match our frostbolt DPS with his frostbolts, and frostbolt + elemental dps with his arcane spells. Bugs me a bit that we need to burn a cooldown every time it's up to beat someone else at casting our primary element. But I suppose it's not gamebreaking.

Presuming a 3 mage raid though, one does at minimum need account for one of those mages scorching instead of fireballing once or twice per refresh. Call it once if we ever see the fix for casting effects not being resistable (which is anticipated). That's no big hit or anything but when theorycrafting, one should take it into account.

Regardless though, I think sometimes we as a mage community mirror our roguely counterparts a little too closely and not always in positive ways. Perhaps indeed in our search for a perfect damage spec we forget the utility we provide, despite or because of us not always liking that utility role all the time. I personally am trying to get my head wrapped around potential AE and CC specs that will indeed be less single-target damage. I've even flirted with conceptual specs that try to combine extreme burst, AE survivability and utility and excellent CC where allowed at fairly extreme damage throughput sacrifices. I think of it as a hemoesque Mage spec and I look forward to seeing what I can do with it.

All this comes from the perspective of a fella that played a rogue in EQ for six years with a mantra of "damage is all" though, so take it with a grain of salt. The only caveat was "a dead rogue does no damage" and in WoW, that is really not a terribly applicable sentiment. Through consumables and clickies, I can always ensure my survivability in a pinch and nine times out of ten when I do die (ignoring complete wipes of course) I died because someone failed to execute their role, not because I geared, specced or acted any differently. I'm fairly sure in the end I'll min-max to damage and not utility, I'm just getting the feeling that Blizz might not always agree with me there. Kaplin I know wants to make dps classes much more involved and in the end, who the hell am I to argue? I know he'd rail against it back when nearly as much as I seem to now but hey, I think this is where we are heading.

That's the thing with frost, everything good is in the middle. While trying to make an elemental build including blastwave, iceblock and combustion/ice barrier I found it almost impossible to just put the 21 in frost to get Ice Block, theres just too many good talents in the lower and middle tiers I always end up with 28+. However it was much easier to stop at 31 with Ice Barrier and not be 'forced' to put more points in. Compare this with fire and arcane which just keep getting better as you go down, instead of peaking early.

As for the 30+ frost talents most of these are currently very weak in my opinion, making Water Elemental hard to take over something like blastwave or PoM (and all the goodies that come with those 2 spells).

They implented the new talents today in the beta, and ofc I had to try the spellpower thing out (+50% crit bonus). However, it must be bugged now since I do my hit with frostbolt around 1400 and I crit for 4600-4800.

EDIT: http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/8...rtalentoq9.jpg

Fireblast for 2.2k, CoC (not imp.) 1800 and AE 1000+.

Sounds fine to me! :V:

I though you mages might be interested.

With a 90% hit chance, 1k spell damage from stuff (not including fel armor), and 17% crit chance before talents. (This is roughly equivalent to tier 4, I would think.), I am getting ~1250 dps sustained. using a 40/21 destruction/demonology build, using ONLY immolate and incinerate, and ~1400 during a burn, when lifetap is not necessary.

By "I thought you mages might be interested" you presumably meant "I'm slapping my e-penis down on the table and trying to de-rail a useful thread by boasting about another class" ?

EDIT: As the above poster pointed out - you can't even HAVE that build currently.

Yeah, duh.

You can't incinerate at level 60 either!

Oh the horror!

This thread is about "THE BURNING CRUSADE mage theorycrafting". The level cap will be level 70! And in case you haven't noticed, warlocks and mages will be competing for the 5th mage/lock raid spot. And therefore, dps comparisons between the two classes actually mean something.

What this means, is that if we work on the assumption that 2 mages/warlocks can cover their respective utility, the 5th caster to be taken will be decided by whichever class offers more dps. And with the talents as they, warlock dps blows mage dps out of the water. Single target.

Which, imo, is wrong.

If I wanted to slap down my epeen, I would say that the imp, with the lock in the same gear, with the black book active, and wrath of air totem would do 2k dps, for ~30 seconds. (Flasked +potted)

That said: does anyone know if multiple wrath of air totems stack? I would assume not, but I haven't bothered to find out much about most totem mechanics.

But you are using a build that is currently unattainable and you are posting about Warlock damage in the Mage TBC thread.

What.

It's a fact of life - the mightier the e-peen, the more blunter the scissors. I am curious about how warlocks shape up versus mages in terms of damage dealing, but only because I'm considering switching to mage from warlock. I love the look of deep arcane, I love Blink, and I love Frost Nova. I also hate pets and orcs with Command (although if I went Deep Arcane mage, doubtless I will hate Gnomes with their Intellect).

Deep Arcane goes some way to addressing the issue of shadow priests - namely that Vampiric Touch is only useful if you have a lot of off-specs. A build as mana-hungry as an Arcane Blast one would surely benefit a lot from Vampiric Touch (did it get nerfed yet?). The possibilities are awesome - low threat, a mana feed, and some potentially juicy stackers - Arcane Blast three times, pop your trinket(s) - presumably ToEP style is better for this than ZHC style, hit Arcane Power, and call for a Power Infusion. The one trouble is that it uses Curse of Shadows not Curse of Elements - I'm really loving the idea that raid synergies will be rewarded by those guilds willing to decide "arcane mages + shadow-bolt/dot warlocks + shadow priests" versus "fire warlocks and fire mages". Especially if only one warlock wants to take Maladiction. If anything, that's the trouble I see with Deep Arcane - it doesn't seem to synergise intra-class as well as Frost does, or Fire. On the other hand, since at the moment it outperforms Frost despite potential synergies, I think it's safe to assume Frost is due a big buff before too long.

Ignoring the warlock trolling, can someone check over my maths? I've noted we're all quoting numbers on DPs and DPM, but I'm fairly sure we're all using different mathematics and I'd like to know where my errors are creeping in.

I'm doing maths assuming +1000 to spell damage, as Gurg mentioned, and using my current 9% crit rate from gear, and 6% from intellect. I've also assumed +4% to hit from gear. All specs include elemental precision or arcane focus. I've used the current AQ20 ranks of the spells as we know they aren't changing.

Here's how I get my fireball dps.

Fireballs base damage : 678 on average
+ to damage : 1000 . 120% Modifier on spell damage due to Empowered Fireball.
Crit rate : 6% (intellect) + 9% (gear) + 6% (Critical Mass) + 3% (Pyromanics) = 24%
Hit rate : 6% (talents) + 4% (gear) = 10%
% increases : 10% (Firepower) + 6% (Molten fury averaged out). = +16%
Debuffs : 15% (Scorch) + 10% (Curse of Elements) = +25%

Therefore :

Base damage + (spell gear *1.2) = 678 + (1000 *1.2) = 1878
Debuffs + % talents : 1878 * (16% + 25%) = 2704.32
Crits added in : (Damage + ((Damage *1.25) * 24%)) = 3534.62
Level based resists : 3534.62 * (84% + 10%) = 3322.54 damage per fireball cast

Therefore, with a 3 second casting time, DPS against a 3 levels higher mob = 1107.51 DPS

Using the same maths and gear, I get the following :

Fireball (Rank 9) : 973.19 DPS
Arcane Missiles (41 arcane, clearcast) : 909.33 DPS
Frostbolt (41 arcane) : 868.71 DPS
Scorch (41 fire) : 833.27 DPS
Frostbolt (41 frost) : 819.32 DPS
Scorch (41 arcane) : 782.47 DPS
Arcane Missiles (41 arcane, non clearcast) : 772.01 DPS


Can anyone tell me where I am going wrong in this calculation method, because clearly my results are different to what others are getting.

Are you bitter or something because no naxx guilds want you? Go back to the warlock thread.