Ahoy there, magesires! On the behest of Lord Boethius and his majesty King Gurgthock I bring you this compository of all things magely!

 

Contents

1The First Rule of Mage DPS 2Talent Specs 2.1Viable Spec Summary 2.2List of Specs 3Frostfire and Fireball Spell Choice and Rotation 3.1Effective Spell Arsenal 3.2Casting Method 4Frost Spell Choice and Rotation 4.1Effective Spell Arsenal 4.2Casting Method 5Arcane Spell Choice and Rotation 5.1Effective Spell Arsenal 5.2Casting Method 6Gear and Stat Choices 6.1Stats 6.2Meta gems 6.3Glyphs 7Mana 8AoE 9Partial Resists and Binary Spells 10Tables and Values 10.1Rating conversion formulas 10.2Spell Haste Math 11Currently Observed Bugs 12Tools, Utilities, and other Information

[top]The First Rule of Mage DPS

The first rule of mage dps is: Never stop casting unless you want to do less damage. Split seconds spent hesitating on your next move will cost you more dps than simply casting the wrong spell. Always have your next spell planned before your current cast finishes. Mash those buttons hard, faster button mashing has actually shown to increase the rate at which spells fire (observation courtesy of Manly). Train yourself to automatically hit the nuke key if you have no idea what to do. Just don't ever stop casting.

Now that that's out of the way, we'll move onto talents and rotations and all that good stuff.

[top]Talent Specs

[top]Viable Spec Summary

Fireball and Arcane specs are currently the top dps. Frost specs are both very far behind and only worth consideration if your raid absolutely needs a non-dps benefit provided (such as improved blizzard). Expect to lose 15% or more of your damage by using any build that is not based around Fireball, arcane or Frostfire Bolt. Frostfire Bolt is slightly behind Fireball for direct damage, 3-5%, but has better AoE damage, much better mana efficiency, and better burst through timers thanks to Icy Veins. Fireball, on the other hand, has slightly better sustained damage and better survivability through Magic Attunement (granting 80 resistance to all schools). Arcane has better single-target damage than Fireball, and better controlled burst, but slightly less damage to bosses below 35% health (very important on Yogg-Saron and Anub).

[top]List of Specs

18/53: Fireball spec with Living Bomb, Torment the Weak and Focus Magic. Goood dps, provides improved scorch debuff (also replicated by warlocks). Excellent dps on multiple targets due to multi-target Living Bomb.

0/53/18: Frostfire spec. Good dps, very good mana efficiency, provides improved scorch debuff (also replicated by warlocks). Excellent dps on multiple targets due to multi-target Living Bomb.

57/3/11: Deep arcane spec with Icy Veins. Top dps, no threat issues, excellent controlled burst.

18/0/53: (or other frost variant): Deep Frost. Strong for survivability and mass kiting. Poor dps.

[top]Frostfire and Fireball Spell Choice and Rotation

[top]Effective Spell Arsenal

Frostfire Bolt or Fireball, Scorch, Living Bomb, Pyroblast and Fire Blast. Fireball or Frostfire Bolt are your primary nukes, depending on spec. Scorch is critical for applying the fire vulnerability debuff, but much lower dps than fireball or frostfire bolt. Fire Blast is an inefficient use of mana, but is an instant attack, giving it special use at certain times and while moving. Living Bomb is a powerful dot that should be re-applied after every time it explodes, and should additionally be kept up on all mobs that need to be killed. Pyroblast is for use on Hot Streak procs only.

[top]Casting Method

Basic casting method is to maintain the Scorch debuff if needed, react to all Hot Streak procs and reapply Living Bomb after each time it explodes. Do not ever overwrite Living Bomb as this is a major loss of damage due to its backloaded explosion.

It can be a good idea to get a DoT timer to track Living Bomb and a mod that will alert you to Hot Streak procs. Missing either one of these opportunities is a significant loss in dps.

In general, timers should be popped immediately as long as agro isn't a concern, and used again immediately whenever the cooldown is up. The effect of stacking timers with mismatched cooldowns is negligible, however stacking a significant number of powerful timers can have a great effect, and be worth saving your cooldown. Bloodlust/Heroism should be saved for the end of the fight so that it can stack against Molten Fury. It's advantageous to save other timers such as Combustion, trinkets and Icy Veins to stack against this powerful combo, but don't save them for so long that you miss an entire cooldown cycle. When in doubt, burn everything immediately.

Frostfire build is not much different from Fireball build other than using Frostfire Bolt in place of Fireball.

[top]Frost Spell Choice and Rotation

[top]Effective Spell Arsenal

Frostbolt, Fire Blast, Ice Lance, Fireball, Frostfire Bolt. Frostbolt is the primary nuke, providing the best dps all around. Fire Blast is a mana inefficient nuke, but is useful as an instant attack. Ice Lance is useless damage against anything that's not frozen, but will refresh the winter's chill debuff if it hits.

[top]Casting Method

Frostbolt. Know it, love it. Cast fire blast during movement, but otherwise frostbolt constantly for best dps. Frostbolt will apply the winter's chill stack on its own, and maintain it, but keeping it up for an entire fight can be difficult due to its 15 second duration. An ice lance hit will immediately refresh the stack, and can be useful while moving or otherwise unable to deliver a full frostbolt. Do not use ice lance to put up the initial stack of winter's chill, the massive difference in damage makes it unwise to ever use ice lance when a frostbolt could be used in its place.

It can be a good idea to get a mod that will alert you to Brain Freeze procs. It is always a good idea to use your free Fireball.

Fingers of Frost is still being studied, however there is currently a small timing oddity that allows you to get 3 spells from the 2 charge buff. Using a frostbolt->ice lance combo for the second charge will cause both spells to gain the frozen status from the buff. This is a very, very slight dps increase. If your latency does not allow you to reliably use the combo, don't even try.

Timing the water elemental is crucial to maintaining good dps. As frost, the water elemental should account for upwards of 10-15% of your overall damage, possibly more. However, the water elemental has extremely low health. If possible, time water elemental summons to maximize the chance that it will stay alive for its full duration. Remember that water elemental bolts benefit from winter's chill, so it's a good idea to wait until winter's chill is applied before the first summon. Stacking timers against the water elemental is overall not important, with the major exception of bloodlust. Summon a water elemental right before Bloodlust is activated, it will not get the effect unless the pet is active while the spell is cast. Be sure to use cold snap to summon an extra water elemental at some point during the fight.

[top]Arcane Spell Choice and Rotation

[top]Effective Spell Arsenal

Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage. Arcane Blast is the highest dps spell in the game when ramped fully, but has terrible mana efficiency. Conversely the first (and only the first) cast of Arcane Blast has the best mana efficiency of any spell. Each stack of the Arcane Blast debuff will greatly increase the damage of your next arcane spell as well. Arcane Missiles is a weak primary nuke with a high rate of fire, however due to its long channel time and incredibly high damage per cast it is extremely powerful when comboed with Arcane Blast correctly. Arcane Barrage is a high damage instant attack, but has a 3 second cooldown.

[top]Casting Method

Arcane has a few viable cycles depending on the situation and available mana. The primary arcane rotation is [Arcane Blast]x4 [Arcane Missiles]. It is also possible to continue spamming Arcane Blast beyond the 4-stack until a Missile Barrage proc is ensured, increasing dps slightly, but this can be extremely hard on mana. The goal of Arcane damage rotations is to cast as may 4-stacked Missile Barrage'd Arcane Missiles as possible; when fully ramped during a Missile Barrage proc, Arcane Missiles can hit for over 16,000 dps. Being aware of your cycles can be extremely valuable for burst phases. It is more valuable to use a high mana rotation and Evocate than it is to use a mana efficient rotation, but only if dps continues for another two minutes after Evocate is used.

Arcane Barrage should be used for movement, and only when your Arcane Blast stack is at 1 or less, or about to drop. For short movement, it is more beneficial to save your Arcane Blast stack for a Missile Barrage than to reset it on an Arcane Barrage.

[top]Gear and Stat Choices

[top]Stats

Spell hit rating is the best stat you can get, by a large margin. All spell casts use a 2 roll system, which means they must hit before they can crit or partial resist. Additionally, only 26.2 hit rating is required to add 1% hit chance with spells. Because of this, spell hit rating is better than any other stat. The base chance for any spell to resist, before talents, is 83% against a boss level mob (+3 levels). Any talent that describes itself as "reducing the opponents chance to resist" increases your chance to hit. Beyond that, gear can be used to improve your hit chance to a maximum of 100%. Once you reach the 100% hit mark, further hit rating is completely useless and you are considered "capped". With rare exceptions, gearing below the hit cap will almost assuredly result in a loss of potential dps.

The following is a list of all mage stats in order of effectiveness (by item point, for fire spec):

spell hit rating (to cap) > spell damage > spell haste rating > spell crit rating > intellect > spell penetration

Spell penetration is of almost no value at all, it's primarily a pvp stat. Spell crit rating tends to come prepackaged on a lot of gear, but is generally not a desirable stat because it takes a monstrous 45.9 points of it to give a 1% increase to crit rate. In all cases, check the gear against a spreadsheet or other theorycrafting tool to see how effective it is, as varying stat values can often make the differences between gear exceedingly difficult to eyeball.

[top]Meta gems

Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. Use it.

[top]Glyphs

Always use Glyph of Frostfire, Fireball, or Frostbolt if any of those are your primary nuke. Always use Glyph of Living Bomb if you have Living Bomb in your spec, this glyph is incredibly powerful. Arcane should use Glyph of Arcane Blast and Glyph of Arcane Missiles in place of these. Glyph of Molten Armor should almost always be your third choice. Glyph of Improved Scorch can be an acceptable if you are soley responsible for maintaining the scorch debuff on every mob.

[top]Mana

Mana is still a minor concern for the typical raiding mage. Every mage prefers Molten Armor. It is never advisable to switch to Mage Armor for purposes of dps, as the gains from Molten Armor are incredibly high.

[top]AoE

Spamming Blizzard is now typically the most effective way of doing aoe dps because of its damage, mana efficiency, and range. However, there is some debate over the use of Arcane Explosion by Arcane specs due to proc interaction with Arcane Potency. Avoid using frontal cone spells like Dragon's Breath and Cone of Cold for straight damage, as their limited frontal range arc will often his less targets than a circular area effect like Arcane Explosion or Blast Wave. Instant spells like Arcane Explosion and Blast Wave are good for mobile aoe damage and burst. Multi-target Living Bomb is excellent if the mobs last long enough for the explosions to trigger.

Not all AoE is done by tanking. In the case of shorter burst AoE phases, it may be best to focus on mass snaring with Cone of Cold and Frost Nova. Warlocks can potentially hold agro from range with Seed of Corruption, while mages snare the mobs and spam low threat Arcane Explosions or Improved Blizzards, resulting in a quick and clean AoE clear.

[top]Partial Resists and Binary Spells

For every level above the caster, a mob gains an effective 8 magic resistance against all magic schools. This means a level 83 mob will have an effective 24 magic resistance against any player. It's important to note that this level based magic resist cannot be overcome or removed in any way, not even by spell penetration. It's estimated that partial resists caused by level based magic resistance account for a 6% loss in overall damage for all spells.

Frostbolt is no longer a binary spell, and is thus affected by this resistance in the same was as all other nukes.

[top]Tables and Values

[top]Rating conversion formulas

Stat Conversion

Spell Hit Rating 26.23199272 => 1%
Spell Crit Rating 45.90598679 => 1%
Spell Haste Rating 32.78998947 => 1%

[top]Spell Haste Math

To determine the new cast time of a spell after haste rating is applied, take the percentage of haste, as a decimal, and 1. Divide the cast time by that number. For example, 10% haste against on a 3 second Fireball would be 3 / 1.10, giving a new cast time of 2.72~.

[top]Currently Observed Bugs

(Last updated 01/02/09)

- A cast time and instant cast fire spell may sometimes stack their ignites incorrectly if the instant spell is cast while the cast time spell is still in mid-air. In all cases this glitch results in a loss of ignite damage.

[top]Tools, Utilities, and other Information

MageGraf.com by Vontre
Pseudo-simulation tool with extremely detailed output and advanced logic used for spec and rotation comparison.
http://www.magegraf.com

Rawr.mage by Kavan
Gear and stat comparison tool written in C# using the Rawr package.
Rawr - Release: Rawr.Mage b2