• Navaash

How to distill the last 2000 posts:

- PvE: 10/48/3 unless you like wasting DPS (oh yes, you also must tailor and have spellfire)
- PvP: */*/21+

Do I have this right?

 

◊ Kalman

There's some interesting stuff in terms of 4x/1x arc/fire builds, I think, but more or less, yes.

 

Copernicus

Close.

Leveling - Frost is amazing.

1x/4y/3 doesn't pull away from a 41/20 (or 40/21) until around +800 damage. Until then, they're close enought that playstyle is far more important.

Also, Shadow Priests are your bestest friends.

 

• Navaash

Right, I just assumed most people knew that (given where we post, heh).

Otherwise, what is there really left to discuss? I'm being perfectly honest here, this thread has resulted in some more-or-less concrete conclusions and nothing new is being brought to the table anytime soon, at least until we know what's changing in 2.1.

(10/48/3 will suck against Al'ar, though )

 

Stein

I'm dubious of the value of resilience. Useless against affliction locks...nigh useless against shadow priests. Even against the most crit heavy classes, only better than stam if you're getting a lot of heals (due to it's high item cost). Wasn't this established in some general board thread like 3 months ago?

 

◊ Kalman

Other than Vontre trying to nail down a few more cycles (like the ABxY FiBx2 cycle), not much left.

 

Maligne

So the next logical conclusion is to close and archive it. Really the best option would be to have someone go through and split each post into about 10 seperate threads...but uh...not it!

So really, if you have some mage questions, I encourage you to make a new thread. Lets not see 3000 posts.

Inform your dealers and whores of my credit, and pour me a goddamned drink!

 

Leto

Egads... 2000 posts, and I just realized I've read them all.

One thing I think would be useful would be to separate the dps spreadsheet discussion into a separate post, such as with rogues. It is difficult to find mention of a spreadsheet, or even a link to it if you are just starting to look at the thread.

Rogue at heart.

 

Copernicus

A recap of the common talent specs, their pros and cons, and their expected DPS at 400/600/800/1000 +dmg would be a useful finisher. Like 41/20, 33/28, 10/48/3, 40/0/21 and 10/0/51.

 

Antiphonal

I'll start with 10/0/51:

Basic talent setup: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=Rf0VZZVAGIofxkiot

What you get: A nicely performing build with lots of survivability for PvP and oh-crap buttons in PvE. In fights lasting 90 seconds or less and where the Water Elemental is strategically useful, it approaches the dps of Deep Fire builds. In longer fights it loses its dps lustre. Winter's Chill (your primary boss debuff) is automatically applied with all frost spells, so there is no need to do the equivalent of keeping a scorch stack maintained or refreshing DoTs. Frostbolt does all your work for you, allowing more concentration on positioning and fight mechanics. Even your primary DPS cooldown (the Water Elemental) has his own mana supply and aggro generation, so you can fire and forget.

Frostbolt itself has less dps than Fireball and more than Scorch, and also sits in between Fireball and Scorch in mana efficiency - making this build have the least need for micromanaging mana.

The PvP utility of the Elemental and Shatter is famous, as is the double iceblock in arenas allowing you to stop two assist train attempts. Ice Barrier can soak up DoT ticks as well as wand or gun damage from rooted opponents. Most frost arena players prefer 17 points in arcane for ICS, but the build above is more than adequate for the semi-serious arena player.

Solo play is very strong. Long range, easy kiting of elites, short cooldown on kiting tools. Overlapping cooldown on Cone of Cold allows for safe-ish AoE kiting - though not as safe as a 2/3 Improved Blizzard setup.

What you don't get: You sacrifice dps for utility and survivability. If that is not an okay tradeoff, this build will frustrate you. You have little control over the mana -> damage conversion rate (especially contrasted with the 4x/y/z builds). The Water Elemental sometimes refuses to attack targets or move, and in some fights he is a liability and never spawned. Ice Barrier is great, but doesn't absorb as much damage as it feels like it should. Helpful for incidental damage, but won't protect well enough. Many of the talents make solo fighting and heroic instances easier, but do little to translate into boss damage.

There are no specific weaknesses per se, it is just not a specialist build - except perhaps for freezable trash mobs or solo content.

Little-known trick - The Water Elemental's ranged waterbolt gets a boost from Winter's Chill. Even though he doesn't contribute to your aggro, wait until you have a full 5xWC on the boss before releasing your pet blobby. He'll appreciate the extra 10% crit.

 

◊ Vontre

All of this to find out the raiding game truly hasn't evolved past this first point...

Oh well.

(side note: this is why I prioritize pvp before pve)

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

◊ Vontre

Regarding resilience: dots do not kill you, you have healers and cleansers. Spike damage kills you.

The only way dots will kill you is if you're playing an extremely long game of attrition. In order to create an extremely long game of attrition both sides have to have a high amount of stamina and resilience.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

◊ Vontre

Oh and I suppose I'll make a thread for the spreadsheet and some recapped information.

Edit: Nevermind I won't get around to it today, flood of work.

www.magegraf.com

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

"We agree with Communism." - Greg Street 2009

 

Iceman

This pisses me off more than pretty much anything else about mages.

Being reduced to basically a crowd control class in arenas is not why I made a mage, so damn boring.

 

Joink

I totally disagree about resilience. It's very costly in an items budget and the amount of hits any mage should take in pvp should be quite low. It's secondary effects like silence, slow, roots, stuns that mages need to watch out for, not big crits.

 

PapaShlapa

Against high ranked teams, you will be recieving a LOT of pressure, simply because a mage left untouched is too dangerous, compared to a mage who's forced to defend himself. Dots are a nonissue, in 5v5. As it stands right now, the best setup you can run in pvp is highly stacked stam and resilience, with a mid-high amount of damage/crit. This is why you'll see, if you check the armory for the mages on all the top teams, they all run a MINIMUM of 9k unbuffed hp, and 200 resilience. The more the better. They're all running almost 100% pvp-obtained gear, because there simply isn't anything better.

CS Silence will almost never be used on a mage, there are no shadowpriests in top 5v5 because they blow, so the only silence you need worry about is Silencing Shot from hunters. Slows and roots are usually also a nonissue because whoever is being assisted on should have freedom as much as possible. Stuns you can blink out of, and are usually not an issue either.

This couldn't be further from the truth. You're not trying to keep a sheep down 100% of the time, because it's just not possible. You sheep to hassle. If your Paladin gets CS'd, you revert back to CC mode temporarily, by chain sheeping their assist train, but other than that, you're mostly just trying to sheep at important times. Your biggest concern, is landing a clutch CS on the enemy paladin, and following it with quick burst to a low target. Nova every time it's up, CS as often as good situations present themselves, and the rest of the time you're fulltime DPSing.

http://siggen.xembler.org.nyud.net:8...statsO1ukn.jpg

 

cladnin

I haven't read the whole post, generally because I've done a lot of testing on my own and overlooked this thread all together, but I'll add a small input that I'm not sure if it was said or not.

4x/x/3 with a shaman, using trinket / ap / cap / destro is simply mindblowing damage. The spec is rather lackluster for straightforward damage, but when it comes to tossing in the cooldowns, at the right time, the numbers skyrocket. It's kind of like x/4x/x after 20%, but whenever your timers are up.

 

Groglox

I have a question. With the first boss of SSC being immune to frost, and the first boss of TE being immune to fire (I assume), are all mages expected to go arcane? This is *really* frustrating. I wouldn't mind if they weren't DPS fights and could use offspec spells, but everything I have heard suggests otherwise.

Any tips? Or should I start farming up respec money now for when I need to switch when we eventually are working on both.

 

Joink

I wasn't referring to a shadowpriests silence specifically but any counter spell by any class that has one. Anyway I still don't see the value of high resilience on mages. 200+ is about 5% less crit chance from the target and 10% less dmg on crits. If the stat points where used else where your looking at about +200dmg gain or +7% crit.

 

Zeku

I agree, it would be nice to close this one down, there's now been several repeats of the same arguments between the deep fire min/maxers, and the flexibility of arcane. I've tried both quite a bit and have finally settled for the latter, here's hoping for some impressive Int itemization in the near future.

However, deciding between improved fireball and impact has been bugging me for several days now. How many fights are you encountering where you need extremely solid dps from over 30 yards? My alternative is 36yd scorch spamming, which is going to be noticably weak in those high-range fights.

 

cladnin

Really, I hate to say it, but deal with the respecs. Our tanks and healers do it more often than we do, we can probably afford to do it on 2 fights total. You can often skimp on respecs back to your "normal" spec, unless you have an important fight to do. IE: Kill Hydross/Alar at the beginning of a week, go back to whatever you like. Tops 4 respecs per week, I know we have warriors that respec 12+ times a week, and feral/shadow that do it at least twice a week.

Edit: all that said, you can go 38-40/x/x and still mix in arcane quite a bit, and go for a mixable spec.

 

Groglox

What fight forces your tanks and healers to respec?

It just seems like poor design to me.

Edit: I am a reroll so excuse me if this is old news.

 

Northerner

It isn't just a question of respeccing so much anymore sadly. Gear and especially the base tailoring gear (without which frankly, you are going to be even less competitive for dps) are school specific or dual-school at best. Even ignoring the enchants and such and even picking up lots and lots of off-spec gear, I simply can't just hit Org, plunk down some coin and come out as a great arcane or frost nuker. If something is fire immune these days, I'll pew pew with arcane blast and lousy frostbolts for the most part and pray pots + a shadow priest can keep me blasting long enough that I don't feel like a complete waste of a raid slot.

It's a legacy from us having the three schools at our disposal and it's just a myth in my opinion. I guess that's life though, I know our elemental shaman are less than thrilled with nature immunities as well. We definitely are overdue for some shadow-immune trash at the least however.

 

• Praanz

Thats why you, hopefully, picked up an arcane/fire or fire/arcane build together with some Spellfire-gear. Wich basically makes you viable for any encounter in the game - just change your spec to be primary fire or primary arcane whenever it's needed.

It's old news since most mages were forced into frost to be of any use in MC and BWL and later a rolling igniter in AQ40/Naxxramas.

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire.

You have not to move out of the fire, it will be nerfed soon.

 

Zephro

This would be extremely helpful. The thread is a bit of a monster, but it contains some very nice information. Condensing it all out would be great, especially for people who are coming to the thread late.