Just stay fire, arcane is out of the picture in 4 days anyway
For supremus bring this : Elixir of Empowerment and you'll be fine

Supremus isn't fire immune. He's just highly resistant. And if you're speccing for Supremus, something is wrong. That's like, well, speccing for trash. Don't waste your money ;\

well, thanks for the elixir I didn't thought about it.

In fact, we're very new in BT, but I'm even newer in the guild. My stuff is so laggy, I'm already out dps by my mates, having the wrong spec is quite impossible for me :/

but ok, thanks for the advice

Dyegirl is doing a decent job, the others just cast Flamestrike which definitely is subpar. Do your tanks require the mobs to be rooted with Frost Nova? Unless they really do (they shouldn't...) your Mages should just use Frost Nova in case someone draws aggro and mobs start breaking out of the pack. Anything below 1300-1500 DPS on Morogrim is bad for a Deep Fire Mage.


Guinuvere:
Just stick to the Cowl.

I use the following system to pick my gears, each item gets a total dmg score. all stats are translated based on a given ratio. I got this ratio using Lhivera's site.

Based on my current 10/48/3 gears, I use 1crit = 0.68 dmg, 1 hit = 1.58 dmg, 1 haste = 1.13dmg. I am not hit capped, (a little shy of 5% currently), I have no access to T6 yet. I get scores for

T4 helm (my current helm) = 75.31.
Collar of the Grand Enginner = 140.66.
Hood of Hexing = 152.39
T5 = 129.

Collar and Hexing get such high scores mainly due to the +hit. Score for T4 and T5 (hopefully I can get it soon), are using the new CSD gem, which, I read from the other 2.3 mage thread, at most makes 1crit =0.7-0.8 dmg. But having T5 helm will give me 4pcT5 bonus.

Basically, my dilemma is: Should I just using either Collar or Hexing? or go for T5+MSD+4pcT5 bonus? If former, I have a higher chance to get the Vashj robe if it drops, but probably not much chance of getting both T5 helm and robe, as our guild plan on when we do kill Vashj, we only do it to get people keyed and never look back.

Edit: about the 1haste = 1.13 dmg ratio, I know I made a post earlier on this thread about 1haste ~=1.6dmg. That was taken from the 2.3 TC thread. am I assigning 1haste = 1.13dmg too low?

Copernicus just wrote a quite fitting post in another thread: http://elitistjerks.com/542962-post857.html

The old MSD in combination with an Arcane spec was worth sacrificing stats for - the new MSD/CSD are not.

~45 damage for me as frost spec, closer to 35 as fire spec. T5 gloves are pretty horrible, but I have my MSD meta in my T4 helm and don't want to buy a new gem for one week, so I have to use them too

Edit:
Hm, I only plugged it into Vontre's. Maybe the MSD messed up the calculations, not sure. Fireball should get the bonus once, Frostbolt gets it for two casts.
Just do like you feel and hope you get some T6 soon

I have around 35% crit as fire, so that should be 70x0.35 = 24.5 expected value.

You will need 50% crit with Fireball to get 35. Is that even possible pre TB gears?

Piper: your maths are flawed. That would be correct if the proc would only affect the next fireball.

The proc in actual fact affects two next fireballs. so you get two chances to proc it.

Given crit 35% the chance it'll refresh it's self is 1 - (0.65*0.65) because you need to -not- crit twice to lose the buff. That means there's a 57.7% it'll refresh it's self before it's over. Effectively meaning it has a 57.7% up time. A smidgen more given you'll be scorching one-in-X spells.

0.577*70= +40 average spell power.

Thanks a lot.

hm..... that just makes it harder to ignore 4pcT5. But vashj robe is so nice too...

Sorry if this is out of place comment but I had a question similar to some of the people that have posted here. Is 2-3(Helm) / 5 Tier 5 the stopping point for Mages post 2.3 in regards to Tier gear and the benefits it lend to Arcane DPS? It seems like that is whats being said. I only ask becuase my guild is JUST starting on Hyjal so I dont want to see our mages going deep into 4 set Tier 5 and getting BoB if Arcanes not going to be competitive. (None of us have gone in for AM spam -lack of good Shadow Priest mana return - nor have the TLC)

I havent been able to get a firm grip on information in this area becuase most of you guys seem deep into tier 6 content and IM not sure if all this info is based on Tier 6 set bonus or if its a fact in general. Iv seen PoB state a few times that Arcane is Dead, but is this true in every case (including 2 set tier 5) or just in upper end tier 6 content.

If you have even issues sustaining AM spam, then 2/5 T5 rotations are not worth it. The point is that they only beat fire if you have huge amounts of mana to burn.
Have one mage try it for a raid or two to see if it works, perhaps. But I sincerely doubt it.

Its not so much AM spam and having mana issues during. Both of my main line raiding mages are using spellstrike hood and I only got my Tier 5 Helm last week so I havent wanted to waste the G on a gem that will be nowhere near its former effectivness post 2.3 since Id only be using it for a week or two.

Our main rotation is the ABx3, AMx1,Scorchx1 repeat and we do fairly good DPS for our Gear level I suppose. We round out with an average of about 1k sustained DPS each.( This includes AB burning etc. not so much a strict rotations but a bit of both)

Will a mage (able to output 1k sustained in Tier 5 SSC/TK gear as an Arcane spec) match or exceed DPS as a FIRE spec in similar regemmed gear. As in if we respecd patch day and regemmed for + hit. I honestly dont think so, not so much becuase of you guys being WRONG, more so from the fact that our gear is better suited for Arcane DPS.

We are about to hit Tier 6 content for the first time so its kind of a gear crossroads for us. I def am going to get everyone on Fire in regards to gearing for Archimonde and BT as we approach it. Theres just too much interesting info floating around to ignore. I just have a hard time getting to grips withthe fact that 10% damage coefficient removal makes such a massive difference. I was always under the impression that Arcane/Fire was the spec of choice regardless up until 4 set Tier 6:P


*edit

Question awnsered you guys were right on the money, thanks for the great suggestions and responses. You guys got me thinking/wondering and testing on PTR pretty much confirmed your assertions for me. Time to get to work regemming and no more wasted DKP on Arcane gear lol Gonna make sure my mages know what to expect in the future

Cheers

My guild is currently working on the Kael'thas fight. One of the advantages of speccing arcane has been the improved AE spam dps, especially in Phase 2 of the KT fight. Now that 2.3 is here and arcane's coffin has been nailed shut, it's back to fire.

I know that 10/48/3 is the best single-target spec for both DPS and DPM. However, one of the things it leaves out is improved flame strike. Plugging numbers into Lhivera's script shows that AE spam is a little bit higher (~6%) DPS than flame strike spam, although at the cost of a lower DPM. It seems that if a couple points were moved around in order to allow for improved flame strike, that that would put flame strike spam ahead of arcane explosion spam DPS-wise, and lower the mana cost per second due to interaction with Master of Elements.

My concerns about this are that neither Lhivera's script or Vontre's spreadsheet let me analyze this assumption, and I'm not talented enough to do it myself and be confident of my accuracy. I am not asking to have somebody else actually crunch the numbers. I would just like to know if anybody has thought this through before and reached a conclusion.

I would not want to sacrifice general DPS in order to do this. But I figured that I could take a couple points out of clearcasting (got a great shadow priest) and/or incineration (got two other fire mages, so scorch is not a big percentage of my damage) without having much of an impact.

One thing that I've always felt AE has going for it is the threat reduction from Arcane Subtlety. Yet Lhivera's script shows AE spam to be 18% higher TPS/target for a 10/48/3 build than flame strike spam, even though AE spam is only 6% higher DPS. Is that a bug in Lhivera's script, or is there something I am not understanding here?

Before anyone bothers to point out flame strike's smaller range, I have already considered that. For the sake of this discussion, let's assume that that range is adequate (which from the testing another guild mage has done appears to be the case).

If the range is adequate, Flame Strike spam should work fine. It's better DPM is very nice, as it lets you spam it for the entire phase 2 and still have mana left over. I prefer AE spam even after all that though, just because it lets the caster hit all the weapons at once (including the Bow and the Axe).

Keep in mind that the Kael encounter will also be slightly nerfed in 2.3, with the weapons and the advisors getting a 10% hit point reduction.

The problem I had w/ flamestrike or Blizzard spam is maybe a little related to range, it's that spamming it as fast as possible with a little movement from the weapons can mean some delay in starting the cast; the more delay the more accurate one can probably be, but I wasn't able to hit all the weapons I could with AE without wasting some pretty precious time. AE was much better and our combat logs proved it.

Another thing to note is that molten fury will give you some extra damage. I couldn't comment on that relative to arcane spec (ap/+crit/+crit talents/PoM) but it's not worth nothing.

To maximize potential AE:

* Be prepared to blow pot, mana gem, and evocate timers in p2
* If you're killing another weapon before jumping in to AE, and you're a fire mage, try to stack combustion as high as possible (2 crits then switch to AM or AB); after you're settled on position, this is when to pop trinkets etc and drop a flamestrike + blastwave, do it quickly enough and you'll gain combustion crit bonus on both.
* Get a lock to throw up CoS on all the weapons and a shadow priest that is NOT in an AE group to put misery up (shadowweaving on all weapons isn't really practical, although that does help SoC). Dagger debuff can be used along these lines too. (Note: It's trivial to create a macro to equip weapons and it saves time vs. searching bags, it's generally worth it for people to use these.)
* SoC a weapon that you don't necessarily want to kill early (we hit the shield) and put shadow priests / ele shaman / maybe a hunter or two on it; we observed 2 direct DPS'ers on the shield really helped guarantee seeds popped.
* Make sure you're hitting as many weapons as possible. The axe can be tanked inside AE range while not ww'ing cloth.
* Stop AE when there are only 3 weapons left as you the DPS starts being closer to that of single-targetting. Finish off remaining weapons ASAP to free up tanks for p3.

The problem with 33/28 being, you have to stack massive amounts of hit, I think like 202 or something insanely ridiculous. *Edit* If you actually have the gear to cap this spec's hit rating without SERIOUSLY gimping other stats, WOW that's impressive before Kael. So you have really good gear, so this next sentence comes into play for you (either way it's silly). *end edit* Also scorch scales extremely poorly, and if you're fireball spamming .... 10/48/3 is going to afford you much more single target: Enough I would think to blow way past the instant spam you would get with AP IE POM FS BW.

The other issue I would be concerned about is in a guild learning Kael you would have threat issues doing that, because I'm assuming that your tank is good but that good? Holding aggro off that kind for burst, assuming your tanks are on 2 diff mobs, would be incredibly hard. And you can't wait because really you're looking at wanting to do that early for 2 reasons,
1. It's going to burn mana and you don't wanna be sitting on 0 mana with AP ticking away
2. Ignite ticks need time to run out and maximize DPS.
(Basically if you don't unload early you're wasting your burn.)

10/48/3 is a good spec, it's going to afford something close to that sort of burst AoE, because you can always just combust your AoE and get 3 extra crits that will each ignite tick. Besides (Mana wise anyway) all AP really does is burn faster, there's no DPM increase which correlates to DMG increase in the long run, especially while AoEing.

10/48/3 is going to give you a much much harder hitting fireball and single target burst for other burst points in the fight, Thaladred, Axe, the other 3 guys. Not to mention Kael himself, not that it's urgent to have a wtf fireball on him, but it's fun to look at the bigger numbers.


Edited a second time for reading comprehension and cleaning grammar.

I do not have the extra +hit to make up for dropping EP, so I really want to stick with the deep fire spec, where I am hit capped if you count the draenei shadow priest I've always got in my group. Running the numbers in Vontre's spreadsheet with my current gear shows 33/28 to be about 100 dps less for fireball spam, and I don't really want to lose that much. Besides, 33/28 does not have blast wave, which I definitely plan to use whenever its CD is up. And our one mage who never abandoned fire in 2.2 insists that he is able to hit everything with dragon's breath.

The more I think about it, though, I am thinking that I really want to try an improved flamestrike spec, taking two points from clearcasting and one point from improved fire blast. The aforementioned shadow priest is good enough that I don't think losing 4% clearcasting will hurt too much, and the one point in improved fire blast is just filler in the 10/48/3 spec.

I really am not concerned with pulling aggro because we kill the bow first and then run over to AoE everything else, so the tanks have had plenty of time to build threat.

I think that only actually trying flamestrike spam will answer the questions as to whether it will hit everything I want it to, and whether I can cast it quick enough to be worthwhile (given its two step casting process). It those issues prove problematic, I can always switch to AE on-the-fly.

I do have a few questions just to make sure I know how this all works. For fire AoE spells, will Master of Elements refund 30% of the spells' total mana cost if I get a crit on one or more (but less than all) mobs? Next, I assume that only the initial (non-DOT) flamestrike damage can crit; correct? Finally, if you spam flamestrike, will the DOTs stack, or will only the latest spell's DOTs be applied?

Vand1: You can spec 33.28.0 with blastwave: The 15% increased manapool means elemental precision isn't as valuable as it is in 10.48.3. Ditch poins from that and get BW instead. ( Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft )

Another point about 33.28.0, it has a much smaller distance between scorch and fireball: By not having emp.Fball you're closing the gap and by including spellpower in your spec you're giving more relative value to the 4% crit scorch has over Fball. The drop in DPS between scorch spam and fireball spam in 33.28.0 is rather small (barring the DPS lost to hit, but that's common to both specs).

Though I wouldn't advise a 33.28.0 spec to anyone for raiding purposes (it was great in kara, but after that...) do note that (1) shadowpriest inclusion makes scorch/fireblast rotation valid and useful, unlike their 10.48.3 scorch/(fireball*x)/fireblast cousins which are generally considered rather wasteful and (2) Eye of Magtheridon makes 33.28.0 smile. So much so, that the ditch in circa 80-90 spellpower you'll lose in lieu of hitrate won't seem so bad after all. If you're (un)lucky you'll be looking at 40% uptime, and that's plenty buff. Not to mention new CSD will make it go wild... It's just a damn shame TLC won't work as well as it used to for it. Damn you arcane!

I just got on PTR and respec 10/48/3 and put on all my available fire gears and bought the 35 badges +25 haste cuffs.

my raw stats are:

Int: 415
Spi: 258
Fire dmg: 1102
Hit: 128
Crit: 320
Haste: 25

I plugged them into Lhivera's script, to my very surprised i got the following relative stats:

1 hit = 1.39 dmg
1 crit = 0.61 dmg
1 haste - 0.99 dmg

The hit and crit seem ok, but I was under the impression that 1 haste should be 1.3~1.5dmg range. If it's only 0.99, that's pretty bad....

Remember haste will do naught to your DPM while any of the other three will improve it.

I guess the message for Zul'aman becomes:

Haste: Just Say No

With my guildies now discussing how to deal with Patch 2.3, we find ourselves in a similar position to Vand. We are dealing with Kae'thas (and still hoping to down him before the Patch just to say we did), so the concern is that AE spam will not be as effective if we spec fire and that we'll have problems with the weapons in Phase 2. However, the idea of improved Flamestrike might counterbalance that. (I usually put points into Impact b/c it procs just enough to make it useful while farming, but I can probably get by without it.) Or would the wiser minds say that AE spam, even with a 10-48-3 spec, will still be the way to go?

Another question, however, has popped up on our guild boards, has been the use of Fire Blast in spell rotations. Placing myself on the global cooldown is something I avoid, so I typically only use Fire Blast when (1) I have to move or (2) my DM Crusade buff will fade before I could get a Scorch off.

However, I'm getting a couple of mages arguing that Fireblast should be part of any rotation b/c it adds DPS. This seems intuitively wrong to me, but my first stab at the math suggests that it is slightly better DPS than a fireball. But I still worry about that GCD. So am I being overly cautious over the GCD by avoiding Fireblast? (If this seems a rather elementary question, I apologize. But the "Help me please" thread seemed most appropriate for it.)