hypetech

Well going from 1100 fire damage to 1300 fire damage alone is an 18% fire damage increase. Add that to the fact that the T6 4 piece adds 5% to fireball and you're in the ballpark. You're still wearing T4 helm and spellfire gloves, so you have room to upgrade even before T6 content and you may see better results using the Icon or the ZA trinket in place of the SCB so you can use flame caps, but that is debatable. Personally I hate using the SCB :p

 

Duamil

I'm in a similar boat as Korval, except he has a little edge on me in gear; mainly neck, offhand, legs...though my guild just last night killed Rage for the first time - I hope a few more MH bosses fall within ~2 weeks (can't wait to get my hands on the neck, offhand, and legs). 2.4 badge boots will be a welcome upgrade, too.
Having a spriest is almost always a given, typically have a shaman with me, and CoE is so-so and varies night to night. I manage to put out around ~1200 (w/o CoE, with evoke and invis as necessary) on bosses that allow me to really concentrate on damage with minimal movement/downtime (Rage, Lurker). I eagerly await 4pcT6 and the huge dps that follows.

 

Jscalbny

Ok, after reading some 80-odd pages of the forums here as well as having enough of a basic grasp of the math behind these formulas et cetera to be able to figure out the hows & whys (grad school is good for something after all ), and thus being well schooled that +hit to the cap is a must...

...how exactly do I get there?

I'm at work at the moment so can't access my armory page myself, but I'm stuck at 105 hit and can't for the life of me figure out what I can gear/re-gem differently while my guild is just starting into T5 content (i.e. a couple fairly regular boss kills in TK/SSC, Kara & Gruul on farm, ZA clears coming more often now). One thing I can see from the many posts is to pick up [Ashyen's Gift] ASAP of course, but is there something else I can do to cap? I have +4 hit/+5 dmg gems in all available sockets I can get an orange into, but quickly ran out of sockets. I do have the [Talisman of Nightbane] in the bank, but no good caster blade to match it with (mindblade just never drops for me), and just can't figure out what else to do?

If there was a discussion somewhere that I missed I apologize, but I've read these two main threads top to bottom, tried searching the forums with no hits, and get the impression that the way to get hit capped is somehow common knowledge that I'm just not privy to... please help.

My current spec is 10/0/51 while we're working on Al'ar, but I had been raiding up until now as a traditional raiding fire spec (10/48/3, and more recently 2/48/11) and as one would expect doing sufficient but sub-par dps due to my low +hit. Doing higher but still lackluster dps as frost (again, for obvious reasons).

I think you can get to my armory from the sidebar... I would greatly appreciate any suggestions if someone has a spare moment to glance at it?

 

LiquidHAL

- [Hood of Hexing] from ZA
- [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury]
- [Ruby Drape of the Mysticant]
- [Belt of Blasting] - Very obtainable now, one of the best pure DPS belts in the game.
- [Starkiller's Bauble] - can also get a slightly better drop from Heroic Durnholde, but this is by far much easier and faster to get. Decent placeholder until you get some better +hit items. But if you can do Hexlord for the hood in ZA you have a chance at getting the shrunken head as well which is much better than anything else at this gear level, hitcap or no hitcap.

If you have a lot of badges you can get [Shroud of the Lore`nial] off the new badge vendor which'll be out shortly. There aren't very many decent robes out there, it should be worth the investment.

 

Putts

Jscalbny, LiquidHAL had some good suggestions for you above. Also, you have 3 yellow sockets in your gear with gems other than [Great Dawnstone]. Swap them out for an additional 11 hit. Reenchant your gloves with +15 spell hit. And if you're REALLY desperate to reach the hit cap, swap from Aldor to Scryer for [Scryer's Bloodgem]. However, that's one hell of a rep grind, and probabaly not worth the cost in the long run. You'd probably be better off breaking your socket bonus in a few pieces of gear for more [Great Dawnstone].

 

Jscalbny

Thanks for the suggestions... I've been doing 25-mans instead of kara or za for a while, but should probably try to get back in on a few of those runs again to try and get my hands on [Hood of Hexing] and [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury]. I may know someone that can make [Belt of Blasting].

The Sunwell vendor isn't open on my server yet, but I have been saving badges for that robe ever since I heard about it... hopefully soon.

I thought I'd seen elsewhere in the forums that [Veiled Noble Topaz] was preferable to the Dawnstone? Is that only post-capped then? I'd been wondering about that...

Putts: I do think that by the time I ground over to Scryer, I'd just as likely have a couple T5s ... Actually, I do suspect I'm due to get the shoulders soon from VR hopefully.

Oddly, my guild has yet to drop Mag even though we're 2/4 in TK and 3/6 in SSC (and even managed Rage Winterchill in Hyjal this past weekend)... class mix problems according to our GM's...

Thanks again... and willing to take any other suggestions as well. I'm all too tired of having our mages far, far below the warlocks, hunters, rogues, and even a shadow priest on our guild's dmg meters. That's just not right.

Edit: I replaced two of the [Veiled Noble Topaz] with [Great Dawnstone], got myself a [Ashyen's Gift], and picked up a [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] instead of that +12dmg/runspeed meta. That brought me up to 136 spell hit (+21 increase) while losing 22 +dmg, which caps me for frost plus a little extra. The dps increase was quite noticable - almost 1100dps as opposed to my previous 850 or so (sorry, combat log bugged out so no WWS). I grasped the theory, but admit I was stunned by just how much more effective +hit is pre-cap than +dmg once I saw it in action. For the time being, I'll stay 10/0/51 for now until I can get hold of those kara/za drops to close in on the fire hit-cap.

Now, if I can just convince my raid leads that the mages might need a shadow priest more than the lock and druid group... and convince my locks that CoE really is a good idea when there are 3 or 4 mages in the raid and only 1 or 2 locks...

 

• Smithist

If your guild does any kind of T5 raiding, Kara / Za should be pretty easy and Kara is probably the most efficient badges / hr. there is.

You defiantly don't want to underestimate their importance, especially if you're hurting for badges. ZA isn't quite as great for badges but the trinket is part of any, current, ideal setup so that should be incentive enough.

Of course you can't always do everything each reset, but finding time to run these when you can should be highly beneficial. I'd bet interest within your guild is high too, as I'm sure there's tons of people ready to get some gear on their alts.

 

kraa91

Hi, I am a new to 70 mage, I am a reroll onto Terrokar from Black Dragonflight.

I was planning on going fire, but I just respecd to 10/0/51 Frost and I prefer it for some reason. My question is this:

I was accumulating Spellcloth from my tailoring combines, and am now going to sell them off for Shadowcloth. The thing is, looking at the two sets I notice a big difference. While FSW adds some stamina, and has more +dmg overall, there is a lack of any crit on the FSW pieces. With this in mind, how should I gem these and approach my gearing? Should I go with Veiled Noble Topaz, +12dmg gems, or other ideas? I know it only takes 10% to reach the hit goal for Frost, which is a relief

The extent of my raiding will be Gruuls/Mag/Kara/ZA, just as a FYI. I have T6 friends who help me out, so I already have a Belt of Blasting and access to Spellstrike when I have the mats. I have Gladiator 2h, and as I said I am making 3 piece FSW, and then 2 piece Spellstrike.

Just a lil confused, any advice on 10/0/51 with that kind of loot access is very helpful. Thanks guys.

 

Katava

In preparation for my server opening up the badge vendor, I've been looking through the badge loot. I originally planned to go for [Scryer's Blade of Focus], but I just got [Wub's Cursed Hexblade] (replacing [Relentless Gladiator's Spellblade]), so I'm no longer sure if that's truly the best use of my 160 (and growing) badges. Given my gear, are there any other badge upgrades that I should be looking at first?

Head: [Spellstrike Hood]
Neck: [Adornment of Stolen Souls]
Shoulders: [Fel-tinged Mantle]
Back: [Ruby Drape of the Mysticant]
Chest: [Spellfire Robe]
Wrist: [Runed Spell-cuffs]
Hands: [Spellfire Gloves]
Waist: [Spellfire Belt]
Legs: [Spellstrike Pants]
Feet: [Footpads of Madness]
Ring 1: [Ashyen's Gift]
Ring 2: [Ring of Recurrence]
Trinket 1: [Scryer's Bloodgem]
Trinket 2: [Icon of the Silver Crescent]
Main Hand: [Wub's Cursed Hexblade]
Off Hand: [Fetish of the Primal Gods]
Ranged: [Carved Witch Doctor's Stick]

I'm currently raiding in a guild that's 5/6 SSC 3/4 TK as 2/48/11. My stats self-buffed with AI and molten armor are 1085 fire spell damage, 164 spell hit (capped), 85 spell haste, and 27% fire spell crit. I sit at 6.4k health and 8.1k mana.

 

Antiphonal

Kraa - For 10/0/51, and with the modest loot and raiding goals you have set, I would definitely suggest FSW+Spellstrike. Get the badge wrists and possibly the gloves from non-heroic Kael in MrT. That will give you a very strong opening 8/8 epic set, and all the pieces can just be farmed up. I've been running TK25 as 10/0/51 and have found precious few (if any) upgrades left for me in KZ, and I'm still wearing 3/3 FSW + 2/2 Spellstrike. I would also get the Cloak of the Black Void crafted up. Dirt cheap and respectable +dmg.

One nice aspect of FSW is that the set bonus isn't a damage amplifier like Spellfire, so you can break the set as you see fit.

EDIT; You mentioned gems - I've been sticking to the gems that fulfill the socket bonuses simply because I get the spell +hit for free that way. The blue gems force me to drop +dmg for +sta, but I've found in these earlier instances and with crafted gear generally light on stamina, that it is a reasonable trade-off. Just my opinion, but doing Tier4 content with 7k health unbuffed is very comfortable. The crafted gear with only +9dmg gems will (if I recall correctly), put you under 7k unbuffed.

 

aznxk3vi17

In our recent Brutallus attempts, we went all-out consumables. The mage group consisted of 3 Fire Mages, a Shadow Priest, and an Elemental Shaman.

We reached the enrage after losing several people (but definitely seeing us defeating him pending no losses). Using Recount, my personal dps was shown to be around 1600-1800, depending on the attempts.

I have near-optimal gear, and I know how to manage my cooldowns. I'd pop Destruction Potion, Flame Cap, Combustion, Icy Veins after Scorch stack, and continue to dps as is standard for Fire Mages (Fireballx9, Scochx1, Scorch never fell off). I used the Icon on every cooldown except the 3rd time, where I waited for 20%. My latency is minimal (100-200ms). We also received CoE which never fell off, so that wasn't the issue.

Is there a reason my dps isn't nearly reaching the levels of other mages? It's true that I don't have the staff or the best trinkets, but does that add 200-400 dps alone? Is there something that's not going right here, or am I just getting owned by the RNG?

 

hypetech

I'm not sure what you use for your second trinket as your armory is showing DC:C and riding crop atm, but you are only sitting at 135 hit like that. I'm assuming that's because you normally get ToW from your shaman. Are you sure you were in range of the totem? A WWS report would be helpful.

 

Zabbu

i've been pretty oblivous to the majorority of changes in 2.4 and havn't kept on my theorycraft, so I apologize if this is the 10to the power of nth time its been asked.

These are my assumptions from what I have read.

40/0/21 is very viable now with the changes to mana regen witrh the new patch.

1. Im assuming I should gear for +10% hit since I gain +6 in arcane and +6 and front (I assume its bugged)

2. After that though, do I gear for crit, dmg or INT?

3. Does haste have any value in this build or does it horrible screw up all the rotations? Is there an ideal magic number to aim for?

4. I see several diffrent rotations being mentioned. What is the diffrence between then?
AB6x, FB3x
AB3x, FB3x .... etc

5. Whats the prefered armor type? Mage or Molten?

6. Is Arcane Power + AB still a big mana drain no no?

7. What trinkets should I equip? Is TLC still prefered? I have Icon, Serpent-coil, TLC, nexus, but no Quagmir Eye

8. And Finally should I still /stopcast /cast AM on Clearcasts ?

 

hypetech

You should really check out:

[Mage] TC after 2.3
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t18441-m...tional_thread/

All of these questions have been answered in the hundreds of pages of threads about mages that you decided not to glance at.

 

aznxk3vi17

Unfortunately, we did not have a WWS parse for the night. My other trinket is the Icon, and yes, I'm 100% positive I was in range of the totems. I suppose without WWS, there's only so much that can be speculated, but our WWS parser wasn't online, and the rest of us were too busy focusing on the raid to go set it up.

 

Gukreb

Guys, thanks for the response. I plan to regem once I get switched over to the new spec since I don't have the cash to pay for 2 new sets of crafted stuff and pay for blue gems in every slot just to take the pieces off next week. But I really appreciate the suggestions.

Akuman, I did the +20 hit enchant over the + dmg gloves one based soly on cost. Since originally I needed the +hit way more. Then as I got closer to the cap, it just became cheaper to trade +hit gems than change out the +hit enchant. Of course once I can drop it for more +dmg I will, but I assume that so long as I need it to get to the +hit cap it is better to have it then trade off for +dmg.


~Gukreb

 

Allanonn

Katava,

The decision on when to break Spellfire and Spellstrike is a popular one around here. Breaking point for spellfire seems to be when you can get your hands on Belt of Blasting. If that is the case, maybe the Studious Wraps would be a good investment with your badges.

I've seen a lot of people say the Grand Engineer helm or the Hood of Hexing is enough to replace your Spellstrike Hood. You may be in those Spellstrike pants for a while though.

In the end, a question like 'what should I use my badges on' is complex as each piece changes your hit rating and therefore can impact several other choices. Using a tool like Rawr or magegraf can help a lot but you'll have to do some work to figure out what is your best upgrade path...

 

Eradorn

I have spent a long time reading over all three threads for mages, and I have heard a lot one way or the other on a lot of the "standard" builds, but they are always refered to in numbers, and I have yet to see any links. Can anyone post quicklinks the builds like 40/0/21, 2/48/15, 0/51/10? And any others I missed. I am sorry if I somehow overlooked these, but I read through a lot and searched, and only saw numbers, no links.

Thank you.

 

hypetech

The talent calculator @ wowdb.com Mage Talents has a couple of "preset" builds you can look at.

 

chase

0/47/11 (+3) - You pick up all the damage talents in fire, usually picking up blastwave and dragons breath for the occasional AoE. 11 points in frost for elemental precision and icy veins. Remaining 3 points don't add much, so you can put them anywhere. (2 points arcane subltlety is nice for light threat AoE with AE)

40/0/21 - Arcane blast build with frostbolt as a filler. Pick up all the arcane blast enhancing talents in the arcane tree along with mana regen talents. (Arcane Focus, Arcane Impact, CC, Arc Med, Arc Mind, Arc Instability, Arc Potency, Spell Power, Possibly MM) Frost tree you basically pick up the talents that increase frostbolt damage and include cold snap and icy veins for a min of two shots at icy veins.

There is a bit more flex in some builds than others, but I tried to explain the core talents of each.

 

NoValidTitle

So I finally got to try this and it doesn't really work 100%. I can't nail down exactly what is failing but it seems to miss scorches once I hit 5. Not always but literally 95% of my scorches once I hit 5 don't reset the timer but yet I still have 5 scorches stacked on the mob.

*edit* seem to have fixed it. I was digging in the options and for some reason my name was in the black list although I'm 3/3 imp scorch and automatic is not checked. I unchecked it and it SEEMS to be working. We'll see about other mages once we head to Gruul tonight.

 

mius

My guild is currently working on Brutallus. The current intentions for the group comp that I'm in is to have a 3x mages, ele. shaman, spriest with two LW in the group and receiving two heroisms.

The cooldown schedule I was planning on using is as follows.
0:00 flamecap/drums
0:30 destro/icon/comb/IV
0:30 2nd drums

2:00 drums
2:30 trinket/mana
2:30 2nd drums

4:00 drums/flamecap
4:30 2nd drums
4:30 destro/icon/comb/IV

The question I have is when to use both heroisms. Obviously one should be used at 4:20 in the fight, but will it be higher dps using the 2nd heroism at 3:40 (ensures 100% heroism time during MF) or at 0:30 (during the first full cooldown cycle).

 

Xei

Hi Mius! (hope you remember me from Meddle)

There was another Mage with a pictorial representation of what you are trying to work out here.

http://elitistjerks.com/695697-post3743.html

The only problem with popping cooldowns too early is the risk of pulling agro - I don't know about you, but if I pop everything on the pull I will be tanking very shortly ... even with Salv and MD's on the tank.

"Being a leader is not a position of power. It is a position of service." ~ Barestomper

WTB Oceanic Horde PvE Players

 

Kandir

Was curious if anyone had any insight on what it's like with arcane spec against Archimonde. Given that Rawr-mage show's I'd in general do significantly more dps with 40/0/21, it's very tempting for me to switch for MH, but I'm paranoid about Archi. Off the top of my head, I can see the following benefits and problems:

Potential benefits:
* CoE is being replaced with CoD
* Hard to keep up scorch
* Possibly easier to take advantage of the windows of opportunity for dpsing with burst dps.
* Another iceblock
* Great for other MH fights, AOE

Potential problems:
* Range issues, risk of getting roasted.
* Eventual difficulties keeping proper spell cycles up (debuff)

Just FYI, we're 4/5 MH and 4/8 BT and I'm still forced to use veiled gems to reach the cap.

 

Alvira

Archimonde isn't a DPS race anyway. I think arcane is fine for MH. Its good for the AOE on trash and competitive to fire on the MH raid bosses. For Archimonde, you are right. There are periods of time when DF forces you out of range and to keep running. So you won't be able to DPS because you are keeping away. So, mana is never ever an issue on Archimonde. So arcane is fine.

But regardless of spec, you will probably not have the chance to top any damage meters on Archimonde because most likely you will be asked to help decurse as a first priority, dps as a second. Plus all that non-DPS time from moving tends to lower your net total DPS.