Hey folks.

I'm specced 0/50/11, running SSC/TK, Kael is unvisited but had some good tries on Vasjh.
My raidbuffed stats are atm 1234 firedmg and 31,38% crit and a bit too much hit (168 or so, I'm draenei, just got boots of blasting).
My question is, the new 2.4 spellhaste/spelldmg gem (4hit/5dmg), would that one be better for me than the +9spelldmg?

Also, how would the serpent coil braid rate now vs. Quagmirran's Eye and Icon of the Silver Crecent ? With the Braid and my current excess of spellhit, I could get some more crit, haste or spelldmg thru replacement or regemming.

just getting into hyjal, i'm wondering if it's worth it to drop tailoring for leatherworking for the drums. I already have bracers and mantle of nimble thought. the 2.4 patch is probably months away and even then who knows how long it'll be before enough of the robe patterns drop for me to get one. Should i hold out or are the drums good enough to drop tailoring and skill up LW immediately?

I am aware of this, I have it macro'd, but I was wondering if there was a "sweet" order that it needed to be placed into the macro, or not. Thanks for the info anyhow.

Only you can make this decision. Keep in mind that the pattern for the BoP robes seems like it can drop off the first trash packs (the healing one did), and the ~1600g cost to switch to Tailoring and back to LW.

In all honesty I wouldn't drop tailoring unless you're willing to pay to skill it up again, either just at 2.4 or 3.0 in WotLC. Arguably LW will be next to useless in Northerend compared to the shiny new epics from Tail (coming soon to a cinema new you!).

How relatively powerful are drums compared to tailoring in 2.3? Very. How relatively powerful are they compared to tailoring in 2.4, given 2.4 is an unspecified length of time away? Unknown. And subjective.

Any Ideas on the new Items allready?
And the new manareg mechanism?

Maybe spamming Arcane Blast can become a valid Raid Specc. Non of the new gear has any spellhit on it - not needed for Arcane in large style. Arcane blast in 2.4 will benefit from Haste. The DPS should be ok i guess. Any calulations for this - including 200-300 Haste reducing GCD.

What about the Mana:
Arcane Mages have a lot of Int. In 2.4 Int will increase your Manaregeneration.
T6 Set has some spirit.
We have an armor and a talent for Mana in FSR.
Could this be enough for Arcane Blast spam?

Im sorry for my poor English and the lack of calculations, just some basic ideas on 2.4 and the "no hit items".

I am basically new to being a mage and even raiding as a damage class. I've been 70 for about a week on this toon (which is now my main) and I was looking for some input on my gear.

The World of Warcraft Armory

I joined a guild that is beginning SSC/TK so I have been busting my rear to get caught up in gear to be viable for raiding. They needed mages and they raid daytime CST so it worked out well for both of us, but I was obviously undergeared having just reached 70. I got lucky on my first two runs through Karazhan (server transfer so my Raid ID reset and got to go twice last week). However, Karazhan is not a guarantee anymore as it is obviously off the progression list and mainly a badge run or people wanting to play their alternate toons.

I am basically stuck between getting the Spellstrike set crafted (pants first) and purchasing the Icon of the Silver Crescent or getting the Pantaloons of Arcane Annihilation from badge rewards.


Icon - Icon of the Silver Crescent - Items - World of Warcraft
Spell Pants - Spellstrike Pants - Items - World of Warcraft
Spell Hood - Spellstrike Hood - Items - World of Warcraft
Pantaloons - Pantaloons of Arcane Annihilation - Items - World of Warcraft

I have crunched the numbers with Vontre's Spreadsheet and on Maxdps.com. However, I am looking for some input from some people with experience in these encounters with the information a spreadsheet does not necessarily tell me. The lack of Stamina on Spellstrike concerns me as my health is already lower than ideal, but I figure figure 12 stamina gems could fix that.

Anyway, thanks for looking at this and any input on a different gem setup or anything would help. (Yes I know I need my bracers enchanted it will get done when the servers come back up). Also the shoulders will be replaced with the Season 1 gear from honor.

[Icon of the Silver Crescent] is really good, and you're in need of a second trinket. I'd buy that and have the Spellstrike Pants crafted, since there is no trinket you can have crafted if you buy the badge pants. Icon also saves you lots of badges which can go towards one of the cheaper items: [Fetish of the Primal Gods] or [Runed Spell-cuffs].

[e]You're also hit capped which is good, and means you can gem mostly with +9s. I wouldn't worry too much about your stam, getting spellstrike and applying a [Pattern: Runic Spellthread]or[Pattern: Mystic Spellthread] as well as the glad shoulders will help.

Pantaloons of Arcane Badge Wasting are so shit it's unreal. What you need is a pair of spellstrike pants asap and an Icon to replace that abysmal green trink. If you're coasting on excess badges, get the bracers but whether or not you get them you should get a bracer enchant. Swap your 15hit glove enchant for 20spell. Subbing in Spellstrike Pants will give you plenty of leeway in terms of hit so you can afford to drop a number of hit gems for more spellpower.

You are wearing what I assume to be a heroic gem with +spell and int. Drop it for something more suitable. The same goes with the gem in your helmet, you should use a spell/stam instead of flat stam gem. Shoulders are a bit of a problem, the epics off aran are terrible and barring those there's nothing else except Maulgar's which aren't exactly Stellar. Many prefer to go for S1 so if you don't mind the grind they're a decent choice. Failing that, you could always aim for the new heroic Sunwell 5-man pads which look quite potent.

Try and replace the Coral Band with Ring of Recurrence from chess and your offhand with either flametongue seal if you're low on badges or the new haste offhand if you can. Other than that, your spec is fine, most of your gear is fine and that's about it. A little spit-and-polish is what you mostly need and to get rid of those pesky last items which are holding you back. You'll be at 900 spellpower in no time.

Edit: You didn't mention how deep in SSC/TK so I assumed not much. If you feel confident that you're well past the first 2-3 bosses in each, your choice broadens: T5 pants are a charm and T5 pads are cake to get, as are the pads off TK trash and off Morogrim. If you nab yourself a Belt of Blasting and a pair of the glvoes from badges then either the robe off Hydros or Vashj will be an ideal set to get rid of spellfire, though many keep the whole set till MH/BT. Both trinkets from SSC are good, with SCB having the advantage of being able to trigger two +spell effects as it can be combo'd with Icon.

I would advice against the 75 Badge Pantaloons, get Spellstrike Pants and the Icon instead. Personally however, i would get the 35 Badge Spellhaste Bracers first, they are superior to the Karazhan bracers and will save you the money for an additional 15 spelldamage enchant (i always try to get items first which are rather expensive to enchant, so i don't have to waste gold which is better spend elsewhere).

After getting some more gear with spellhit, you will probably want to replace most of you gems with Veiled Noble Topaz (5 spelldamage 4 spellhit).

Ok thanks for the input. I did not really want to drop 75 badges on pants but I just wasnt sure maxdps.com calculates things right and was not sure I was using the spreadsheet correctly. The only other trinket I have is the caster version of Bladefist's Breadth with 26 spell crit and I figured 22 spell hit was more important because I was at only 120 spell hit until last night when I finally found someone on Azuremyst to cut +8 spell hit gems, but again thank you for the help.

After reading these forums for a while, i cant really get the answer im looking for and im not exceptionally well at maths. My dilemna is that im a little gear limited at the moment, and i produce about 1163 dps non buffed with my 2/47/11 spec, compared to my 40/0/21 spec which sits at around 1050 unbuffed. My arcane spec does include two piece tier 5 bonus, and i and redone all my stats if i were to switch to arcane (lowering spell hit etc).

The great thing i love about arcane (and becuase im horribly bored with deep fire playing it for 9 months), is that you do not rely on a debuff essentially to be always maxising your dps, unlike deep fire where you need to constantly have your scorch debuff up. Since half the time im the only deep fire mage, sometimes i just miss my scorch debuff completely, meaning 5 more scorches. In cases like FLK, i will have no choice but to continue reapplying scorch, since i have to change targets. So finally coming to my question, how much dps is really lost everytime i have to reapply my 15% debuff? substantial enough that raiding arcane maybe the way to go? (by the way i have a shadow priest 95% of the raids i attend) Or am i just dreaming?

My dps calculated using Lhivera's Script.

You are looking at things in a rather odd way. You claim fire has the tough prerequisite of maintaining scorch, yet arcane in order to perform beyond abysmal has AB-control to reign in the damage. Clearly one scorch per 8 fireballs is a lot less work than working out (a) how much time is left w.r.t. your mana, and when can you start your final AB spam to maximize DPS and finish the fight OOM and (b) how to work with rotations so as to benefit from clipping the AB buff whenever you rotate but not refresh it. Both of these are deffinitely much more complex than keeping up a trifling scorch.

If at any time you find your scorch dropping off, I'd advise not theorycrafting but training. Dropping a scorch except on dire emergencies is unacceptable and shows poor command and control of one's class. Changing a spec is not going to correct your problem. It's like saying "I'm a rubbish driver, if I buy an auto will the dps gain be better than the dps loss of missing a shift in a manual?". What you need is to ensure you don't drop off a scorch, not respec a more complex setup in order to avoid a specific complexity.

Edit, and utterly off topic, Veyron is more proof that when Audi got told "you can now play with Bugatti" they decided to go totaly overboard with the excuse that a product not coming from germany won't ruin their tectonic immage of stern solidarity and efficiency while at the same time fuel their egos and desires for an utterly overspecced and overpriced product for a rediculously small nieche in the market. The highest-technology parts of the Veyron aren't designed by Bugatti or any of the VAG group. Rather Bosch, MIRA and Ricardo did the most technically staggering parts of the vehicle.

Thanks for that Pintofbrew, best advice.

If you are the only fire mage, you probably won't get Curse of Elements. Since you also happen to have 2 pieces of T5 and get a shadowpriest most of the time, you should do fine with your old 40/0/21 spec. I don't understand how you get your DPS figures however.

I just loaded Lhivera's script with your armory data and set the appropriate settings and got about 70 DPS difference between both specs using the main rotation (that is, using mage armor instead of molten for arcane and not adjusting gear for arcane, so the real figures should be even closer). Since the standard Arcane rotation actually showed up to be more manaefficient, you should be able to catch the difference with some arcane blast spam.

If played properly, i would expect both Arcane / Frost and Deep Fire to perform about equally well given your circumstances, so you should probably choose whichever you happen to like the most. If you do get curse of elements however, i'd probably stick to Deep Fire.

There is something to be said if you are getting Maledicted Curse of Shadows and not getting Curse of Elements at all, it'll make a distinct difference. There's also the possibility you're the only firemage because the others are full frost or arcane/frost in which case perhaps trying out 40/0/21 FB spam or full frost respectively would be an idea, given that in one case you'd be coasting on their Winter's Chill and in the other case you'd be giving them WC.

I understand you may be finding fire boring, and if you look at it from a newlyborn perspective it is quite, but the truth is that cooldown management is the father of DPS maximization for fire. Making sure trinkets, combustion, IV, flame-cap, destro-pot and Bloodlust all combine into (a) as much grouping as possible with as little "off-CD" time as possible and (b) they all go off at the same time into one massive flurry of death at Molten Fury range at least once per bossfight will be the source of infinite self-satisfaction.

Since I will probably do my first Supremus raid tonight, to what extent should I stack penetration?

I will have a Curse of Elements, I'll use an [Elixir of Empowerment], [Vindicator's Band of Dominance], the back enchant, but past this point I will start sacrificing a lot of stats.

Futher options available to me:
-[Veteran's Band of Dominance]
-[Mantle of the Mind Flayer]
-[Rune of Perfection] :P

Actually no, in our raids, we still have curse of elements up, maybe this is due to having around 5 warlocks on raids (overflow). As for CD management, i couldnt possibly handle them any better 'i think', using combustion, icy veins trink, flame cap and when mana allows destruction potions (mainly for execute range though), and this varies as the fight goes on.

In response to Saphya, as in my earlier post stated, my gear used for arcane/frost is not identical to that used in deep fire, again due to lesser need for more spell hit (since current frost bolts gain an extra 3% from EP) meaning only 126 spell hit is needed instead of the 164, as well looking at my armoury i am using spellfire, and i wouldnt use this with arcane/frost (frost loses 172 spell damage otherwise).

I 'should' have mentioned the reason im probalby experiencing this is because im running lesser geared members through gruuls and early ssc at the moment, HKM, gruuls, Lurker, and soon FLK, are all fights where re-scorching are 'probably' going to be applied and why im even posting this in the first place! But through your posts i found my answer anyhow so cheers thanks

In response to f1reburn:
I really wouldn't bother with anything more than the elixir and ring if that. Supremus for a guild that has cleared SSC and TK is fairly easy and he has an extremely generous enrage timer. Concentrate on not dying to volcano's and not aggroing at phase changes and you will do fine.

In response to Bizzaro:
I personally use Elkano's Buff Bars with a group for showing the targets scorch debuff. I believe Natur Enemy Cast Bars can also show it. However, if you have another fire mage in your guild and they get the first scorch in the timer will only show for them. So either organise with them who will keep it up and have that person scorch first or be sure to get the first scorch in yourself to be able to see the timer. Lastly though, if in doubt on the time just add an early scorch in

I think you can have Perl show specific buffs/debuffs ona target and change the size on them as well. I have the scorch icon show up 4x's bigger than the others

A mod u can use to track other mages scorches is scorchio. I think that is what it's called. All mages will have to have the addon for it to work though.

Since 2.4 has new spell haste gems (+8 spell haste, rare yellow gem), I want to see if they are better than +9dmg gems. According to common wisdom, Hit > Haste > Damage > Crit > Penetration. After investigating on Lhivera's calculator, I'm not so sure. According to the calculator, switching my damage for haste gems is a bad plan (ever so slightly).

So, is the common wisdom wrong, inapplicable to my noob gear, or am I misunderstanding it?

(And yes, along with any regemming, I'd regem to get back to max hit. Changing gear has ever-rippling effects. Armory checkers should be advised that I switch specs frequently for PvP and back. My PvE spec is Fire w/IV, wearing Kara/Tailoring Epics, ~1k +fire.)