@obwangkenobi

Frost talents make you crit for 200%. 1600-1800 normal damage means crits around 3200-3600.

Also, stop signing your posts. Read the forum rules.

Thanks for your response.

The reason I was using frostbolt was that I had been told that casting that spell with 40/0/21 was effective if you had a deep frost mage in your party to provide winters chill. It then becomes a build based on high crits (around 5k but I have seen up to 6k with AP/AM) which can be fun but unreliable. With Curse of Elements on each frostbolt will hit for around 2,000. So I thought with FSW (much higher frost stats than arcane) and the fact there was nothing I felt like I had missed out on in the frost tree apart from arctic winds and empowered frostbolt (both of which I thought were probably made up by mind mastery and arcane power.)

I also thought that arcane spam was advised against unless supported by two pieces of t5?

I will try out the arcane blast rotation though I don't particularly like it as a spec and am not comfortable doing this wearing FSW. Which is why I was looking for comments on switching to fire? (see my previous post)

If I did stick with this build what would anyone recommend gear wise? I have quite a few badges to spend and don't want to waste them! It seems like if I buff my arcane damage the frost portion will suffer thus hindering my DPS? (likewise with the arcane spell hit suggestion)

jj: Firstly, please try and leave the name of the quoter in the quote title whenever you do quote someone. It helps the rest of the posters locate rather than hunt the thread. Secondly, you are correct in that Arcane specs should AB only with 2/5 T5. I suspect the poster that pointed you in that direction didn't bother to armory you. You will see no benefit at all from including AB in any scenario.

Provided someone gives you Winter's Chill then yes, 40-0-21 can perform though it is generally considered a so-so spec nowadays. It's not amazingly better than pure frost and both of them are considered sub-par to fire-IV. In fact, the advent of IV is pretty much what nailed the arcane-frostbolt coffin.

Given that you want to stay with 40-0-21, what you should do beyond all doubt, is get a head with a meta slot. The Chaotic Skyfire Diamond will make your output increase by a signifficant sum, as it does not in fact increase your crits from x2.25 to x2.28 as it looks like at first glance. Odd mathematical application means in fact it increases to a good chunk higher than that. Junk the kara trash gloves, they're quite terrible (who the hell decided to put SPIRIT on them, Jesus) , get instead the amazingly excellent and imminenetly valuable Studious Handwraps. lastly, you're a good chunk over-hit. You should be on 124hit, exactly 10%.

I recall running some simulations on Mar's gear/spec from Loot FTW a good few months back and deciding that his 40-0-21 did in fact work fine given his monumental amount of crit. Perhaps I was using flawed TC back then because I was finding I had to pen-and-paper a lot of the sim but it seemed that given tons of crit it worked fine. I was however comparing his spec to full frost rather than comparing his spec to full fire as I couldn't understand why bother with arcane/frost in the first place as for a lowlier setup it seemed sub-par compared to a WE setup.

Thank you PintofBrew for your response - it was very helpful!

However, I am not keen on staying 40/0/21 in fact I would really like to try fire! I have been frost based my entire time of being a mage so more than anything really I just want a change.

My plan was to get the new badge boots, ring and and the haste off hand and replace FSW with the spellfire set (and unfortunately have to wear the t4 shoulders) I've calculated this should give me about 1100 spell damage, hit cap (though I might check this based on what you've said) and around 25% or so crit. My question was will this improve my damage/dps out put?

As I've said I'm not obsessed with being the best DPS in the guild or anything but I don't want to change to fire and be out beaten by the deep frosties because then I will wonder why I bothered! I just want to make changes that are improvements.

You will suck on trash compared to frostmages who push it. This is inevitable and has only to do with the nature of fire in that it doesn't work well on short fights. ie: trash. Both specs are heavily dependent on correct cooldown-stacking however fire is more fickle in that. If you miss-time frost cooldowns you lose a lot less than if you miss-time fire. Make sure you get Bloodlust at boss >20% and combo it with everything (flamecap/icon or hex/comb/destropot/IV) and you're cooking.

Since guild has added more healers (main=healadin), I'm getting more raid play on this toon. Just entry level 25 content...Gruuls, Mag, SSC....Also can now run kara grinds as they wont need my heals every time. Any advice on my current gear/gem/spec. Anything good Im looking for in Kara/badges? Only fire mages in the guild it seems right now...

I can say I dont have the time, patience, or gold to get the crafted SFire set or Belt of Blasting so looking for other options. I will probably never see BT on this toon, but have given Rage Winterchill a try.

I was 40/0/21 for a long time and have the FSW set in the bank. Should I go back?

Seems like right now I am gimp and am only in the top 7damage or so in gruuls runs (granted I been tankin the mage)

Input Appreciated for this mage coming out of retirement.

So, I have been reading the mage threads for a good couple months now, and I either missed it or completely forgot, and i can't think of a good way to search for the answer so i said screw it i'll ask and if i get flamed oh well, i'll go cry in a corner after...anyway, is there a point that 2/48/11 is higher dps than 40/0/21 without 4t6 and with 2t5, and if so about what point would that be?

If he was looking at a recount or WWS from heroic magisters terrace he could have seen a frostbolt crit for 5k. When you kill those little worm guys or after killing one of the sparks you get a bonus to damage. Those bonuses could have pushed the max crit he saw to 5k.

You are also right Tyfon that typically with no other affects the max crit he would expect is 3200-3600.

There are also a spell steal buff that get you 250 more spell damage or something. Say you trinket, spell steal buff, totem, elixirs, food buff what ever 5k crit actually sounds pretty attainable. Hell my fireballs will max crit direct damage at 6k raid buffed (of course that's with molten furry)

Yes there is a point where 40/0/21 is better than 2/48/11, that point is when your guild first enters into MH and BT, which is where my guild is at right now. I was always fire back in the day, and I have played as 2/48/11, but once I grabbed 2-T5 I have been Arc/Pyro and now Arc/Frost. MH and BT have relatively short fights which is where Arcane excels, and Arcane is now the king of Mage AoE and I destroy the damage meters on MH trash, even beating the SoC spamming warlocks. Arcane is a very fun change from fire, and it is better IF and only if you play it to its potential, stacking your CD's and ending the fight with 0 mana. Then again I am a big Arcane guy so maybe I am a bit biased.

2-T5 is needed for any arcane spec, so once you start getting 4-T6 the amount of hit and haste your gear will have make fire a much better end game spec.

Which gear outfit is most optimal?

ArmoryClone.com - The Faster Alternative to WoW Armory! - Level 70 Gnome Mage
ArmoryClone.com - The Faster Alternative to WoW Armory! - Level 70 Gnome Mage

Basically it boils down to...

56 +Damage, +155 Damage for 20 seconds every two minutes.

or

55 +Haste, 1% Critical Strike

Thanks in advance.

I've got a question, and it has to do with mana management. I'm Arcane/Frost and am wondering the best combination to use when potting for bosses, outside of 2 hour long flasks and the like. Along with an Adept's Elixir, is it better to go with Elixir of Major Mageblood which gives me +16mp5, or Elixer of Draenic Wisdom which increases my int and spirit by 30? My Spirit right now is at 229. I apologize if this has been asked before, or is a dumb question, I'd just like to know from a good source before I go and make a bunch.

With your current int/spirit, and giving you common raid buffs, an elixir of Draenic Wisdom would add ~31mp5 while casting. Assuming you have mage armor on, and ~16mp5 if you didn't. I highly recommend you download rawr, and load you're gear/spec/buffs into it, and see for yourself.

Thanks. Where can I get Rawr?

Edit: Found it.

There's a link to it at the top of the [Mage] 2.4 TC thread. I'll link it here.

Also anyone know why Ferocious Inspiration isn't modeled in Rawr? I tend to get grouped with a spriest, 2-3x BM Hunters, or another mage, and a resto shaman. I know this isn't an ideal group setup, but I'm not the GM. Though I'd think a 6-9% dmg boost is pretty good if you can't be in the "uber" caster group.

Sorry if this question has been answered in this thread already - I've read through a lot of it, but I can't recall seeing my question asked.

Generally my guild uses up Bloodlust at ~30-40% HP, and more often than not it's not up in Molten Fury range.
Should I save my Destro Pot + Flame Cap + IV + Combustion + Trinket for Molten Fury Range, or should I use it when Bloodlust goes up?

And in pre-empt to those people that will say "Have your shaman BL at 20-25%" - I tried asking but the raid lead basically said no as too many people are usually dead more often than not pre-20%.

Fwif group make-up is:
Ele Shammy.
SPriest
Me
Dest. Lock
Dest. Lock / BM Hunter / Healer.

If you're popping bloodlust at around 35% instead of 20-25%, to avoid wasting it on dead people, why not just pop it at 95%?

It would seem that using it at 35% is getting the worst of both worlds. You're not getting the benefit of stacking it with MF, but at the same time, you don't really have a guarantee at that point that everyone will be alive.

So if you've lost the "use BL at 20-25% argument," why not go the other way? Say "ok fine, we want it to benefit everybody? Well give us 5% to get scorch built up and for misery to be up and for the tank to build an aggro lead, then pop it when everyone is guaranteed to be alive." Then use your cooldowns during the BL and they'll definitely be up again in time for MF.

(But I also agree that you should continue trying to get BL used to coincide with MF)

This is what usually happens, as bloodlust wears off around 25% or so.

Generally my trinket comes up ~10-12% left on the boss HP.
Flamecap comes up ~1-3%.
Destro Pots don't come back up.

(Assuming I use cd's as soon as BL is used)

If there's truly reason to BL as your RL says rather dubiously in the middle of the fight, you might as well keep doing as you were. Bortson's theory is also quite applicable, might aswell ask for BL earlier if you can't get it later so at least you get to pop all your cooldowns once with BL and once with MF rather than once with BL and half with MF.

Ok, well I kind of know the answer to this already, but I'd like some serious TC opinions.
Here's a link to a rather disappointing night of brutallus attempts, this one attempt in particular since it was a 1% enrage wipe.
WWS
Here's my Armory
I was using the listed gear there for that attempt, and was in a group with a resto shaman and a shadowpriest. There was no ret paladin in the raid.

I'm under the impression that I did everything within my own power to push as much as I could. The mage who beat me is 2/3 of the sunwell t6, skull/tempest/chronicle/council cloak. Needless to say, he outgears me by a lot.

I have a couple other peices I can sub in for more haste (badge offhand, nimble thought bracers, ZA chest cloak) which will put me at around 7% haste, at the cost of roughly 3.5% crit.

So herein lies my question(s):
1. is there anything else I could have done gameplay-wise to have increased my dps?
2. would going with the haste setup net more dps? keep in mind that I have a fairly shitty internet that puts me in the 300-500ms range, which kind of devalues haste, which is my assumption on this.
3. Is it possibly the gear that made the difference rom where I am now to the top 3? Maybe it was the fact that come enrage, all the warlocks were bop'd upon getting aggro leaving me to die. I was watching recount and I was actually in the number 2 slot until I died.

If anyone has any suggestions, please speak up. Mind you my chain of the twilight owl was on cooldown /facepalm

I would like to make a request of Manly, Pintofbrew, and any other T6 content raiding mages to take a look at my armory and tell me what sort of numbers they belive they could pull off with my current gear. For note: there are 2 other firemages, we are getting CoE, I have a resto shaman in my group but no shadow priest, I don't use Destro Pots or Flame Caps at this time due to needing to use Mana Potions and mana gems for mana due to no shadow priest, I have the following CD stacking macro:

/use Hex Shrunken Head
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Combution

I am currently hitting my macro soon as the initial Scorch stack and first round of fireball x8 scorch x1 is over to allow the tank to build sufficient agro before I begin to try and pump out the damage. From watching Recount and lookin back at WWS I generally sit about 1250 DPS on average with spikes as high as 1450 and dips as low as 1050 on bosses.

Also aside from telling me what ya'll think ya'll could pull off for DPS in my situation, do ya'll have any general tips on what I might be able to DO (I know I need to get back up 164 spell hit, I lost a chunk of hit after getting my T6 helm and gaining a meta socket) to increase my DPS?

WWS from this weeks raids (was on hiatus last two weeks due to game card running out)
Was on side lines for both of the raids at the start till one of our rogues had to leave due to lag issues both days.
Black Temple first 4 bosses.
Hyjal full clear.

As I was doubting a bit about the optimalisation of my gear I plugged all my gear and buffs into Rawr to see what it would tell me..
I'm currently frostspecced as I'm the magetank for Council and our Raidleader doesn't want to risk having to do the pull without the elemental untill we get them down more consistently. (The few times I tried it without the elemental I failed horribly >.<)
But anyway, as I found myself over the hitcap as frost, I was looking to switch out some items to loose some hit in favor of other stuff. The first thing that came to mind was swapping out my [Wand of the Forgotten Star] for the [Carved Witch Doctor's Stick] (with a runed ruby untill the gem-vendor gets unlocked).
It seemed to me that 23 spelldmg + 14 critrating < 27 spelldmg, but Rawr seems to disagree and tells me the Solarian-wand is quite a lot better then the badges one.

Trying to find out why that is, I noticed that, if I switch between 2/48/11 and 10/0/51, Rawr tells me I'm at 15.57% spellhit, for both specs, without changing gear. Is Rawr not calculating the ghosthit from Elemental Precision for Frost? And is that the reason it seems to rate the wands wrong? Or is my maths just totally off and is 14 critrating that much better then 4 spelldmg after all?


Thanks in advance!