Smoggers

tyvm

 

Katava

I just joined a 5/6 SWP guild, after being in a 3/5 MH, 3/9 BT guild. I'm currently wearing [Studious Wraps] as my hands and I want to upgrade them, especially since I could use some spell hit on my gloves. (I have a [Ring of Ancient Knowledge] sitting in my bank unused because I can't afford to lose the spell hit on my [Fused Nethergon Band].)

My guild doesn't run MH any longer (but does clear BT weekly), so I'm not sure if I can get my hands on [Gloves of the Tempest]. I was wondering if, instead, it might be worth getting [Sunfire Handwraps] crafted and enchanting them with Spellstrike instead of the Major Spellpower I'd normally put on them.

My math shows that (assuming everything is socketed with Runed Crimson Spinels) would give me +3 spell damage, -5 spell hit, and +18 spell crit over T6 enchanted with spellpower and -3 spell damage, +15 spell hit, and +12 spell crit over my badge gloves enchanted with spellpower.

Does this make sense or should I be looking elsewhere for a non-T6 upgrade? I won't be able to get any of the SWP drops for a while, as I'm not geared enough to go to late SWP yet.

 

Vhad

I would get Sunfire gloves and then keep t6 shoulders for endgame setup unless you're able to pick up the gloves as they are the best piece to keep for 4 set. I'm unsure why you want more hit, you should try to lose 10 hit rating which is best on chest/trinket and then use a veiled pyrestone somewhere.

Another tip, so long as you don't have a meta gem just throw 12 spell dmg in everything unless a very good socket bonus is obtainable. Goes for shoulders, legs and belt.

What!?

 

Insei

I'd definitely get the [Sunfire Handwraps] if your guild will give you the sunmotes for them, since they're the best gloves 'til KJ. It's great that you have as much haste as you do, but non-SWP haste gear is almost always lacking in other stats, specifically spell hit.

As for your spell hit issue: See if you can get your hands on a [Blind-Seers Icon] (drops off Shade of Akama), that should enable you to put that near-best-in-slot ring back on. Also, the [Wand of Prismatic Focus] (drops off Bloodboil) is a great spell hit filler as well. If you can get [Cowl of the Illidari High Lord] (Illidan), that thing is a spell hit godsend. I definitely wouldn't enchant your gloves for hit, it's less of a loss to throw a couple hit gems in your gear. Hope that helps

 

Katava

Oops, I just realized that my Armory must have the wrong trinkets on. I normally raid with [Darkmoon Card: Crusade], not [Serpent-Coil Braid].

Yeah, I've definitely noticed that BT gear with spell haste seems to enjoy putting spell haste instead of spell hit, whereas the SWP gear that has both.

I think my thought with using a spell hit enchant on gloves is that would be one thing to replace when I received items with more spell hit (such as my SWP T6 or some luckier drops in BT), instead of regemming every five seconds. Hopefully something useful out of BT/SWP will drop this next week so I can add to my T6 chest and Mother legs. (I have T6 legs as well, but they're a side grade and banked for when I need them for a 4pc bonus.)

Thank you.

 

Zeromega

Question regarding Ranged AoE Nukes:

When it comes to a fight like Muru when you are using Ranged AoE nukes:

Flamestrike has the DoT coefficient that is over ridden with each new Flamestrike.

My question is: Is it more beneficial to chain cast Flame Strike in this situation, or would you be better off going in a Cycle of 1 Flame Strike to 1 Blizzard (which would allow the entire Flamestrike DoT to run its course)?

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Wiedmaier

I am in a rather similar boat and I have the same query. I am a fairly fresh 70, and I've been beg borrowing and trying to steal as much as I can to get my tailoring epics together, but I'm still quite behind the ball compared to the content I am in. I've been able to scrape together the hit cap for Arcane, but I am still lacking in hit for fire. It feels like I might be better off speccing arcane to stay at the spell hit until I catch up in hit rating, but is the sacrifice in DPS to go arc up to the sacrifice in dps without reaching the hit cap?

I am still reading through these glorious forums, but I'm on hour 3 and haven't found the answer, and since this is the closest thing I've found I hope I'm not too much of a noob poster.

 

xiaoxin21

What spec you are depends on what content you are attempting to clear and also relative to your guild gear too. For example if you are in a guild trying to down Alar, fire wouldnt be that good.

Without 2 pcT5, If I am in your situation, I would go frost and 18/0/43 if you dont have spellfire set or willing to respec and make the frost set.

With 2pc T5 I would go arcane and AB spam because the badge gears is good for that.

 

snowballpaul

I have searched for this, but the quantity of results just made my brain melt.

I am wondering if someone can tell me how to get meaningful results from a Dr. Boom test as a fire mage.

I have only had a couple of goes, but I don't think I can take him all the way down, so how do you get to experience the last 20%

Bomb him once or twice 1st?

Appreciate your response.

 

Lord Loom

It will take a while but you can get him down there, you just need patience and no one around who's on the quest. It won't be fast by any means (unless you bring friends, always an option), but you can do it semi-afk by sitting on one of the barrels and wanding him for a while.

Everyone always coming to Zathras with problems. Great responsibilities. But Zathras does not mind. Zathras trained in crisis management.

 

dblaikie

You don't really need to. Since Molten Fury is just a blanket damage increase across all abilities it doesn't change anything 'experimental'. Just multiple your experimental dps/damage done numbers by 1.2 if you want to see your MF dps.

 

Omeran

I'm looking for some input on something odd I noticed on our Brutallus wws last night. As you can see from the below link, there are fairly significant differences in mage damage during the various attempts. I'm definitely the least geared mage, but one thing that struck me as odd was the degree of difference in our ignites.

Wow Web Stats

I'd think this is a large enough sample size to eliminate luck, but perhaps not. My average fireball is only about 20 damage less than Midar, for example, and our crit rates are very close (1% diff), but yet his and Belgaryon's ignites are averaging over 150 damage more than mine. He also managed to land at least one huge (7.4k) ignite, much larger than Belg's and way larger than any of mine.

As the biggest difference in my stats and theirs is haste and I don't understand haste to effect ignites, I was looking for any thoughts on what might cause the discrepancy. Or how the heck one gets such huge ignites even during MF. Any thoughts on this issue are welcome as well as other suggestions for improving my output. More haste resulting in more fireball casts is obviously one big issue. I'm also probably a bit tentative with my rate of casting at the start of the fight due to concerns about aggro (perhaps unfounded given my relative gear situation).

 

Wizeowel

No it isn't. 28 wipes might seem like a nice sample size, but what you have there unfortunately is apples and oranges. You need 28 kills really, because comparing several 9.5 million damage splits with a large number of 5-6 million damage splits and a generous amount of quick wipes is just fudging your data.

Browsing the WWS log a bit, I saw that Midar and Belgaryon are stacking combustion with their cooldowns. I'm guessing that you aren't doing this?

 

Omeran

Actually, I have combustion, icy veins and the icon of the silver crescent all macro'd to be used together. I am not wearing another "on use" trinket so I don't have any reason to break them up. I add the flame cap and destro pot manually depending on the situation and don't always use both or either.

 

Anaxo

Why do you manually activate flame caps and destro pots? Unstacking them from your Icy Veins and Combustion destroys your ability to use the synergies that result from combining cooldowns.

 

balt2

So after switching specs as fast as i can make gold ( Arcane Hyjal/BT, Deep frost Illidan/mage tank, ) . We are finally up to Brutallus in Swp.

From what i have read eventually raid fire ( 2/48/11) will be the best spec for Brutallus once you have a decent amount of sunwell/haste gear. But for those coming fresh out of BT/Hyjal would arc/frost (40/0/21) still be a better spec? Or will they be so close at this point either is fine.

I usually have a shadow priest and go 2-piece T5 AB spam . Seems the have the highest dps for BT/Hyjal except maybe Council and Gorefiend.

For my fire raid set i have the sword from zul jin and 5 pieces of T6 plus fire trash neck and mana attuned band to get the spell hit up to 164.

 

mako

Fire should already be higher dps than arcane if you've got a full compliment of BT gear.

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Gili

I ask your forgiveness in advance for not reading all 94 pages before posting.
I have read quite a bit of the mage theorycrafting thread but only stumbled across this thread today. The posts at the beginning suggest that the theorycrafting thread is outdated and there seems to be much talk re: deep arcane builds.

I'm now quite befuddled. I just did a quick armory check of EJ mages and have found all the ones I've checked thus far to be of the 3/47/11 build. Have I missed something vital? Is it no longer conventional wisdom to spec deep fire for raiding? We are currently well into T5 content if that makes a big difference.

Thanks in advance for your kind consideration.

 

solbergb

Just a guess, but here's why I'd expect that result.

EJ mages are doing sunwell. (I am not a EJ mage. I'm a scrub here to learn)

Fire happens to be the highest DPS at the moment with T6/Sunwell gear, so that's what they'e doing.

In the middle of T5, I think arcane has a period of ascendency if you've got sufficient raid support to your mana pool.

 

mako

3/47/11 would appear to be deep fire to me...

47 in fire takes all the important dps talents, and can even grabs the aoe ones for the hell of it. 11 in Frost for icy veins. 2 in arcane for the threat redux on ae, and the last point is filler, which they chose to put in arcane.

In T5 content, when it was new and difficult, and equivalent gear was not available for badges, arcane was the spec, because it didn't limit you severely on bosses (hydross, al'ar, vashj elementals, etc) and at that level of content, it simply did more damage due to the 2 piece bonus.

Scaling up with T6 and equivalent, as well as gaining a new stat (haste) allows fire to surpass arcane, as arcane has minimal benefit from additional haste. The play styles are different, but if you are well versed in both, you'll find fire to serve you better if your gear is near the high end (or probably regardless if you lack 2t5)

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Gili

Thanks for your quick replies. I don't have any T5 yet because I have been raiding with my resto shaman (due to lack of healers) but now I will be raiding on my beloved mage once more. I guess I wanted a quick and dirty answer about arcane v. deep fire. I am currently deep fire and have been except for a short stint in MC. I love fire, no doubt. Even so, I don't want to go into TK or Hyjal and fall way behind on the wws reports.

Is 40/0/21 the new hotness? Will I be able to hold my own against all the arcane/frosties who seemingly came out of nowhere? A lot of this is pure nervousness at the thought of bringing my mage out of the stable again. When I put her away, I was top 3 dps at every raid. Now, I'm a bit insecure!

 

Omeran

To follow up in response to Anaxo's question, I do stack flame caps and destro pots with trinkets, combustion, etc. when I use caps or destro pots, but I don't always use them every time I use the trinket/combustion/macro (like on trash for example). I prefer the added control of having the caps and pots outside of the macro so that I can make a choice about whether to use them depending on the situation. I also dont use caps and destro pots on every boss (they aren't really necessary for farm bosses, imo). I could always make a separate macro that included them, and perhaps that would be particularly efficient for brut, but I have not done so.

 

solbergb

If the other mages are geared similar to you, then fire is likely slightly better but not hugely and it will come down to player skill.

If they're geared better than you (eg, 2T5+badge gear) you should expect to do worse on the damage meters and not feel bad about it, assuming your relative skills are similar.

How the damage numbers look also depend on raid support. If they're getting the shadow priest for mana, shaman for heroism and warlock for CoE and you have none of them in your group, you also shouldn't feel bad about not doing as well.

I watched my DPS shoot up 100 points when I was actually teamed with a raid stacked group (kinda by accident, they were testing a Boomkin's contribution in an easy KZ run to see if he'd be allowed to come) rather than the usual pickup groups I typically am with in 5-10 mans.

 

Lord Loom

A warlock's CoE works raid-wide as it's a debuff on the boss, and the first lock will probably put it up even just for himself.

40/0/21 isn't new, it's just the default arcane raid spec nowadays, with the focus being on 2pc-T5 supported arcane blast spam (and recovery with frost's low mana consumption) instead of the old strategy of weaving the spell into complex rotations.

The beauty of it is that you can turn excess mana into more damage, the downside that without good raid support your performance will not overtake that of a 10/48/3 or 2/48/11 deep fire mage. Still, arcane is your best bet until you upgrade most of your gear in T6 instances, but neither spec, provided you play it well, will make you fall back significantly. You will just have to accept that you can't keep up with warlocks.

Everyone always coming to Zathras with problems. Great responsibilities. But Zathras does not mind. Zathras trained in crisis management.

 

Anaxo

You can add modifiers to macros so certain actions are only done when control, alt or shift are pressed. Something like:

/use [mod:ctrl] The Skull of Gul'dan
/cast [mod:alt] Combustion
/cast [mod:alt] Icy Veins
/cast Fireball

If you hold control when you press this macro, it will use the trinket and then start casting fireball. Holding alt will instead activate Combustion and Icy Veins.