Drums use a GCD, so the 80 haste that you gain for 30 seconds has to be weighed against that. For most casters, I think that the damage gained through 80 haste about offsets the loss of a GCD, and you end up about even, so you might not see a significant personal dps gain.

The bottom line I'm trying to say is that its a 'more the merrier' sort of thing. Each set of drums, from the 1st to the 4th, is a sizable dps gain for the raid and definitely beneficial. If you are picking up a profession for dps, LW makes a lot more sense than tailor/enchanting/JC.

Moving is equally taxing on your healer. Dependant on where your healer is positioned, you may get out of Line of Sight, or force them to try to dodge a blizzard/AoE to keep range on you. Moving a lot may also move Zerevor, causing problems with other peoples positioning. Lastly, it cuts into your DPS time. While holding threat on him is primary, you get to basically sit and DPS the whole fight. It's really rather relaxing.

You might be getting overhealed for more damage then you're taking from Blizz/Flamestrike already. I posted above how we tank/heal Zerevor. I've only ever died once while tanking him, and that's when my priest healing hit alt and healed himself instead of me by accident.

Moving when you don't have to just seems to complicate the job.

I think you guys are vastly over-thinking this. I just stand on the stairs and can strafe in and out of any aoe, and I'm perfectly in LOS of the healers further back in the room. Moving Zerevor isn't even an issue so I'm not sure why that's being brought up. Council is arguably easier to tank than Krosh in Gruul's Lair due to the buff duration and the lack of spike damage Zerevor deals out.

@Grai

I should have been more clear.. Nurru hit it on the head. Just strafing (a couple steps left/right) isn't going to make things overly difficult for a healer. That's where communication comes in. "Hey (healer) I gotta take a couple steps to the left, " works wonders.

You're a tank in this fight, not a DPSer. Your main priority is to tank. Reducing your dps time is negligible as long as you stay alive and Zerevor stays on you so the rest of the raid can do their job. You're not going to be doing your normal DPS anyway if you're tanking.

@Krazen

Thanks for the response and clarifying your thoughts for me.

I know the more people having them the better. Our melee group has 4 drums in it, and it's incredible for them. I wonder if I can talk any of the rest of my usual party members into going LW.

Thanks for the help guys!
Had our first goes at Council tonight and it was a lot easier then I expected it to be. Everything seemed to be under control from the start on my side, now to get the rest of the raid sorted, our MT seems to be squishier then me!

The mage tank is fairly unsquishy just because the damage is easily predicted (no unexpected judgements, poisons (don't matter), and consecrate etc). A priest worth their salt can solo heal a council mage tank while being in group 6 for a 15 minute fight with no problem.

One thing for aspiring mage tanks, if your guild uses a bubble pull method like mine does, I've noticed that when the paladin bubbles and runs in, Zerevor will usually run around in the back of the room for the first seconds of the pull and can usually get off a bolt on an unsuspecting body aggro or bloodrage tank.

You will need to blink up to compensate, as Zerevor is too far away for GCD to interfere with spellsteal.

After posting yesterday and getting some answers about gear I am still struggling a bit on the +hit category. Aside from getting the ring from Cenarion Rep which will give me +21 more I don't think I can get to 164 for some reason with the gear I have. The World of Warcraft Armory I made sure that I am in the gear I use most of the time when I logged last night. No I have the T4 gloves which will boost me up some more but still not at 164.

I know there is a GEM or 2 that I can change to Veiled Noble but thats only +8 more. I'd be dam close to 164 but not using the spellfire gloves will hurt my damage in the long run. Just looking for some more advice I guess.

Thanks all.....

Egor,

You appear wedded to socket bonus'. Don't be. The 6 stamina, for example, that you get from fullfilling the socket bonus on your spellstrike helm is certainly not worth the hit/dmg you lose. Plan on gemming EVERY socket with veiled noble topaz until you hit 164. If this places you over 164, go back and gem with +9 damage living rubies. I count 9 sockets without veiled in them. That gets you up to 156 but I suspect going to the Tier 4 gloves will get you the rest of the way.

Also, never, ever, ever use a spell penetration gem.

Ah Good call on the socket bonus. I guess I never thought of that. Guess in the long run it doesn't add up where as the spell hit will always matter of course. As for the spell pen gem that was when I knew nothing about GEMS or Mages. Like I said I was playing a holy pally for a long time and when I finally got to 70 on my mage I knew nothing about them. As you can plainly see. Thanks for the help everyone.

so i have a question then, what would be the best DPS and mana effecient rotation for a fire? the other night in raid my DPS was low because i was worrying about saving mana but at the same time i really want to do High DPS

Replace your Capacitor with [Starkiller's Bauble]; you may have to wait a little for the quest mob, and you'll need a friend or two, but the reward is well worth it. Then you should be able to enchant your spellfire gloves with +20 damage instead of +15 hit. Then replace your two [Gleaming Dawnstone] and the [Glowing Nightseye] in your pants with [Veiled Noble Topaz]. With the gems changed and with [Ashyen's Gift], you should have 164 hit exactly.

Yeah I am missing rep with alot of factions. I quested alot from 60-70 so I didn't hit many instances. Once at 70 I was still running my pally alot due to just starting Kara/Gruul and our guild needing healing. I'm pretty geared on my pally so I was always a main healer. Then I got tired of healing and went back to the mage. Well up and coming healers took my spot then I was able to get a DPS spot in our runs. To where I am at now. I generally don't heal that much unless I'm needed. I bounce between my mage and my Warlock who I just hit 70 with. But he is basically just PVP. I'm trying to gear my lock up now too with PVP gear so I'm usually doing something. If I can concentrait on one guy I would be set. But still having quests to do on my lock the gold will come in handy. Like I said I was trying to do the best on my mage with the gear I had. With still knowing that I need to regem.

Thanks again all..... Very helpful site here....

Between evocation, mana gems and mana potions, you shouldn't be worrying about mana efficiency. The standard spell rotation for fire is 8 fireballs to 1 scorch, after initially stacking the scorch debuff to 5. If you have another fire mage in the raid, you could push it to 9:1 or even try dropping scorch entirely. Skipping scorch is extremely risky though, and places an undue burden on the single scorch mage - what if he gets silenced or has to move? Then you have to waste time restacking the debuff.

I've tried to search around but can't really find any solid answer but being an Australian player on a US server (averaging around 400-500ms in a raid environment) just how important or wasted is Spell Haste when you factor in the ping, even with Blizzard’s apparent fixes? I’ve heard a lot of conflicting answers.

We’ve been farming BT for quite a few months now so i’ve been lucky enough to collect a bit of both (things like Tempest of Chaos / Zhar’doom among a couple of others), so I guess my question is would it be more beneficial for someone like me to head towards a more pure dmg/crit gearing over the haste. Although with Sunwell just around the corner I suppose it doesn’t leave much choice anyway but just figured it was worth asking.

I play from Singapore, with similar latency values as you and I find haste gears to be worth it. It may seem that our latency will occasionally negate the benefits of haste. However, over a long period of casting, I still find myself reaping almost the full benefits of haste.

If you really want to see how much haste are you really gaining, you can try looking at your combat log and compare the differences between your spell casts. You will need to take a rather large sample size to be able to get a good estimate.

Well not really; aside from doing the initial pull correctly your main priority is to CS Malande when she is melee immune. Everything else is *yawn* spam fireball/frostbolt *yawn* spellsteal when he buffs.One player can easily cover tanking zerevor and interrupting every melee immune CoH.

Since this is the "help me" thread I figure I'd throw this out there for analysis:

Recently I got the Vashj robes however as it is close to 2.4 and we have a distinct shortage of red and yellow epic gems I have some time to decide how I want to socket them. I do plan to buy the gems with badges and I'm a JC, so I can socket them however I want to.

At first I was thinking about spinel spamming:
[Runed Crimson Spinel]x2
[Don Julio's Heart]x1
ignoring the socket bonus.

However, I talked with a few folks who have suggested putting the +14 into something which I don't care about obtaining the socket bonus for - ie T6 head, and then socketing the robes with:
[Reckless Pyrestone]x2
[Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst]x1
matching the sockets for +5 damage.

Since I recently replaced studious wraps with T6 gloves and I plan to socket the haste pyrestone in them, I am concerned about meeting the 2x blue gem requirements for CSD, to the point where I'm thinking about resocketing Belt of Blasting with pyrestone/shadowsong, or getting the blue gem from Kaz pants/new badge pants. Possibly doing both, since BoB has only rare gems in them as of now.

It seems to me (using RAWR mage) that matching sockets with spelldam bonuses using pyrestones is very close in DPS to spinel spam. So I wanted to see what you all thought about this.

(btw: armory is showing me logged in the gear I would use for 2/48/11)

As I pointed out a while ago, 2.4 changes gemming decisions. Spinel spamming is a remnant of pre-2.4 gearing, and inappropriate for 2.4 onwards. If the socket bonus is worthwhile, then using a haste/dmg yellow gem is effectively the same as using a pure red, but you gain the socket bonus as free damage.

Got a sort of odd question about spell penetration and pve. While I know it is totally useless in regards to affecting your chance to hit a boss, one of the warlocks in my guild, Sideous, asked me if it might affect the partial resists you get when nuking with shadow, arcane, and fire damage based spells. He linked me the recount report for partial resists for Yuh, himself, and myself. Yuh has 65 spell penetration, where as Sideous and myself have almost 0 (I have 10 from Arcane Subtlety.) Yuh had about 1.5% partial resists for the entire night, Sideous had almost 11%, and I had 13%. Other notes; Yuh is affliction and at 11.73% hit from gear and 6% from talents; Sideous is 21/40 Destruction with 15.77% hit from gear; I am at 12.52% hit from gear 3/4/6% from talents fire/arcane/frost.

Does spell penetration affect partial resists at all or is the tiny amount of missing spell hit really making us have so many partial resists?

Side note: I did have only 1.5% partial resists for my arcane explosion for which I am hit capped.

This may be true depending on your strat. It depends on the way your guild does things. Strats differ from guild to guild. We have the tanking mage spellsteal when they can, but we have other people on that duty as well. Any mage that's in the raid is capable of doing it with a focus macro.

Quick question, with what gear did ya'll start replacing your Spellfire/Spellstrike gear with?

Whats worth breaking the set bonus?

For spellstrike i'm thinking of picking up Cowl off VR and t-5 pants,(then respecing arcane) however i'll get cowl before t-5 pants. Should I pick up the cowl and just bank it till I get the pants?

For spellfire set i'm kinda lost as to what would be worth breaking the set bonus.

Any suggestions?

For spellstrike, since the Chaotic Skyfire, pretty much any helm with a meta is worth breaking it imo as long as you can stay hit capped with other gear, but the higher level the better. Spellstrike pants are harder to replace as you'll want the pants from Kazzak or Kaz'rogal to really replace them.

For spellfire, once you get the badge gloves and either the lurker belt or the belt of blasting, you'd be okay breaking the set and maybe still wearing the chest. Personally I wear the T5 chest with the lurker belt and I was using those with the studious wraps, but I picked up my 4th T5 piece on a keying run so now I use 4pcT5.

Either way I dont' recommend going arcane just because of the 2pcT5 bonus these days.