hey guys I'm back with a few questions. I finally got my 2pt5 and appropriate gear and I was impressed by the dps even while I was still gemmed for fire. Anyway I have a few questions about arcane. First in the arcane thread it says that +10 int is almost as good as +12 dmg, is there any reason to even gem +10 int? Is there ever a reason to gem for +10 spirit? Also how sustainable is dps with arcane with just a resto shaman and no spriest? Also guardians pendant of dominance vs conquest, which is better?

Most people take having a shadow priest to be an inalienable right (or pretty obvious raid utility).

However, does anyone know where I can find a good argument that I can present to my raid leader as to why mages (rather than warlocks) should have a shadow priest in their group? I know it's pretty intuitive, but my raid leader is stubborn and "They can lifetap!" just ain't cutting it.

(If needed, I'm 2/48/11, my stats are 1217 unbuffed fire dmg, 377 haste, 30.06% crit, and of course 164 hit, I have Shifting Naaru Sliver, Hex Shrunken Head, and Drums of Battle)

"They can lifetap" is also the argument for giving warlocks a shadowpriest since your raid leader might worry about the increased healing needs. VT+VE means less tapping and 'passive' healing when they do tap.

You can use Rawr to do the math for yourself. Rawr also has a warlock model, although I'm not sure of it's accuracy. Maybe prefer the warlock spreadsheet from these forums. Then chart for various bosses: your dps with a shadow priest, your dps without; then do the same for the warlock. In this way you can prove to yourself and your raid leader what is the better setup.

I've had my 2/T5 for a few weeks now and am similarly impressed with it. RAWR gives +10 int a slight advantage over +12 dmg in yellow slots depending on fight conditions, duration being most important. It also has a slight advantage over haste/dmg but that is so slight that I have chosen the latter for a few slots for future flexibility.

We were learning (and killing) Hydross last night (long delay in gathering resist gear) and on the 1% attempt I was still casting AB at 9 minutes (though there was a brief bit of wanding along the way). I sadly died early to vile sludge on the kill so can't speak about that. I am specced 50/0/11 as I can't rely on a shadowpriest so the extra Icy Veins would be wasted. If the sp was always available 40/0/21 would be better.

For a shorter fight, just shaman should be fine though you probably couldn't get that Cold Snapped Icy Veins.

For your pendant, check RAWR for the answer.

For one I suggest you update your guild/gear because the click don't work.

Secondly, It really depends on the fight and how many SPs is being brought to justify whether a mage needs 1, a SP in a warlock groups gives a good DPS increase too.

Thirdly, given your gear, I would think you have completed Sunwell or is on KJ so your raid leader should know what he is doing(hopefully).

I'm new at posting in EJ and my English is far from good, but let me try to explain my situation.

I always raided as frost, 10/0/51, now 0/0/61 just for some testing. My guild has defeated Kalecgos this week and now we are heading for Brutallus.
I can sustain 1900+ dps without problem. Unfortunately some guild mates can't, so I want to spec fire for higher DPS.

I want some advices on gear and itemization for fire.

I have optimized my gear for frost, as you can see at Armory Lite - The WoW Armory Alternative: Sydtrack of Gurubashi
I have 119 spell hit, paired with a restoration draenei shaman for spell hit cap (we don't have any well geared elemental shaman, that is our worst problem)

[Tempest of Chaos] never dropped to us, and I'm next on [The Skull of Gul'dan]. As frost, I'm waiting skull to change [Belt of Blasting] for [Anetheron's Noose] or [Leggings of the Tempest] for [Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons].

To raid as fire, I need to raise my hit cap to at least 154, and I don't know about my spell critical rating.

Some ideas might be getting [Merciless Gladiator's Spellblade] and enchanting it with Sunfire. About [Translucent Spellthread Necklace], I will not use it on my frost build and I don't feel like getting if just to test fire, because some other players might want it.

I have [Ring of Ancient Knowledge], [Sunfire Handwraps] and [Bracers of the Tempest], 3 goods items with no hit rating. I also have a spare [Mana Attuned Band] that I can use with my [Loop of Forged Power].

Does this mean that on a general basis a warlock with a shadowpriest is more valuable dps-wise to a raid than a mage and shadowpriest? I'm interested in this argument because our raidleader always puts the shadowpriest in the elementalshaman/warlock-group, while we mages gets a restoshaman. Like the question before; could someone provide links where/if this have been debated?

Does this mean that the hitcap for frost is still 126? i thought it was fixed some time ago

Yes, it's still 126.

There is no "general basis". It varies at different gear levels and on different fights. Some fights you can use gems and mana pots and some you'll be forced to use mage armor instead (or even evocation, God forbid). As I said before, there exist tools to calculate this for both warlocks and mages. Use those tools to provide yourself and your raid leader with a general indication of which combination of groups will benefit raid dps most.

Finally picked up the Skull, and was wondering how you all use it to maximize dps.

I was considering for short fights like akama using serpent coil and skull in conjunction with icy veins and destruction potions and then fireball spam.

For everything else, I am thinking I am best off with the skull and the hex shrunken head. I know there is a flame cap/trinket/iv rotation somewhere in the forums, but can not find it. Any suggestions/help?

Here's an armory of my toon:
Moedaddy's Armory

I usually have the Scryer's Bloodgem which makes my total hit 186.
Trying to get exalted with Scryer to get the shoulder enchant.
Going to enchant my bracers soon as well.

By the time I get the last two enchants, that will raise my damage up from 900 to 930.

I was trying to figure out in which way should I gem up my gear and what other gear upgrades I should get to do decent DPS for BT/Hyjal preT6. Unfortunately I don't run SSC/TK nor will I have a good chance to be able to. I have my eye set on getting the Fetish of the Primal Gods and possibly the Carved Witch Doctor Stick for the extra socket.

Also, with the current gear I have, I do on average around 700 DPS. I wanted to know if that's too low for the gear I have. I almost feel like I should be doing more but I'm not really certain.

I have tried Rawr but I just want to have feedback from something other than a gear calculator.

Thanks in advance.

@eltigeron:

The hit cap for you as fire mage is 164, so if you have 186 hit rating using the bloodgem, you can get re-gem to replace some of the +8 hit gems with +12 damage (since you are 22 over the cap). The armory doesn't show the gems in head and gloves items for some reason, so I can't comment on that. However, if they also contain +hit gems, I'd suggest you pick up the [Hood of Hexing] in ZA. On top of that, replace the enchant on your cloak with Subtlety so you can dps longer without reaching your threat ceiling. Or better yet, replace the cloak with the one from prince if you have more +hit gems to replace.

Also, at your current gear level I wouldn't think that haste gives you much of a benefit. So my general advice would be to balance your gear/gems around the 164 +hit rating mark and +dmg. Keep collecting +haste though for when you get some gear from BT (belt, ring, etc).

And in my humble opinion, you should be able to do much better than 700 dps in your current gear. A long while ago we had a new recruit with us at Gruul. He only had a few epics, the rest was blues/greens and yet he pulled 1k dps. If you could provide a WWS link we could have a look at CD management and consumables, both of which can affect your dps a lot.

In terms of the gems you didnt see, I havent added any yet. I was trying to wait it out and see what would be best.

And how much is "much better" DPS-wise?

I have to take issue with some of the advice. I ran your equipment through my spreadsheet, which while it is not RAWR doesn't do a bad job of weighting stats against each other for a typical scorch/fireball rotation, assuming no mana issues.

1. Yes you have way too much hit on your equipment. Make one gem +10, and swap three others for +12 spell damage. Even if you don't manage to pick up any slot bonuses that is +36 spell damage essentially for free.

2. Spell haste is decent for you at this gear level. You have enough that it is slightly worse than spell damage, but it's superior to crit. My math says, assuming a 2/47/11+ build with scorch/fireball rotation

1 hit = 1.23 spell damage (to cap of 164)
1 crit = 0.6 spell damage
1 haste = .97 spell damage

3. My theoretical dps for his current gear on a scorch/fb rotation is a touch over 1000. However most fights won't let you stand there and DPS with no interruptions or no mana issues. 700 is a little low, but it depends a lot on the fight.
To get a sense of your DPS, pick a fight where you did not have any "issues". You were able to bang away, manage your cooldowns and not run out of mana. Be aware of anything that can affect these results, such as a Moonkin, curse of elements, scorch stack maintained by somebody else, heroism, etc.

4. Saying that a blue-green equipped mage did 1000+ DPS in a properly stacked raid doesn't say that much. My numbers shift upwards 200-250 DPS if I am in the kind of raid group a 25 man raid can put together, with all mage raid synergies in place. Ie, if my theoretical scorch rotation DPS is 1100, I have seen 1300 on WWS in a stacked raid group if I am left alone and execute perfectly....and I have seen 850 or so if the raid does NOT have that kind of support and I'm dealing with interrupts and/or mana starvation. Consumables can also make a pretty significant difference. If that blue-green guy is drinking a flask of pure death, weapon oil, spell damage food, being pumped enough mana to use flame caps and destro pots, he's going to do a lot better than his gear might indicate. This is doubly true at lower gear levels, where +200 spell damage from such things is 20% of your gear rating, vs a Sunwell guy where it might be 10%

My blind guess is that 700 DPS is kinda low for your gear, but without knowing the circumstances of the fights where you are getting that number, and the raid support you get, I can't really say. Magegraf and RAWR are very good about taking all that into account. You can plug in a fight's parameters, then compare what they spit out to what you actually got on WWS.

It's not just a blind guess, after importing his character into Rawr I'm getting ~850 DPS for his currently equipped gear, those average 700 are about 80% of that - a reasonable number theoretically. However, that's with zero buffs, no raid support, no consumables, and not to mention the gearing issues (way over the hit cap, missing gems and enchants).

Keeping the gear and optimizing its potential by smart gemming, enchanting and utilizing consumables in raids is key, and for that a "gear calculator" like Rawr helps a ton so I advise to use it beyond "trying". I wouldn't be surprised if he could do about 50% better easily, even without support other than very basic buffs (int, gift, kings and/or wisdom) and a warlock curse. In fact running this through Rawr's optimizer I'm getting setups that yield ~1200 DPS. Add a shadow priest or shaman totems, add JoW - it just gets better. Sure you might end up with low DPS at times because circumstances don't always allow you to perform optimally, but his gear allows for far more than 700 DPS "on average", stacked raid or not, lucky or not.

Specific advice on where he did (or didn't do) well pretty much requires a WWS log. But starting with regemming (with Rawr, a custom spreadsheet or manually to get to the right hit cap, no matter), enchanting the bracers and using consumables (doesn't even have to be a flask, [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom] + [Elixir of Major Firepower] are potent already, weapon oils aren't expensive and neither is spell damage food) his performance should improve a lot. And then we can start talking about optimized cooldowns use etc.

You're doing what I'd consider "average mage" behavior. You're at least trying to use your cooldowns, but are relying on a rote approach rather than knowing the individual fights. (I'm not any better. What you described is quite similar to what i do).

Theory says that one of your "Blow cooldowns" needs to be timed with the 20% health and lower Molten Fury range. A lot of fights last a bit over 3 minutes, so your approach will work ok on them. If they last singificantly longer or shorter, you'll hurt your DPS.

Aside from this, the primary behavioral improvement on DPS is not overscorching or underscorching. Each scorch puts a spike in your DPS, so you want to do it as little as possible. However dropping it requires casting 5 more scorches. The goal should be - the debuff never drops but you cast as few as possible.

Your Dr Boom numbers are close to my spreadsheet - about 1080 dps ignoring the cost of bringing up the scorch stack, but maintianing it by yourself, and using stacked cooldowns as they come up without respect to molten fury.

Speaking as one medeocre mage to another, here's how you can probably improve your overall WWS numbers significantly.

1. Fix your gear issues. You're giving up way too much to just gemming. Get rid of the excess hit gems, put spell damage or spell damage/haste gems instead. Ignore socket bonuses unless they're spell damage or you get them with red/orange gems anyway. Significant spell damage bonuses may merit a purple gem. If you can ever get out of spellstrike hood and have a meta gem, take Chaotic Skyfire (and two blue/purple gems somewhere in your gear). Focus on the DPS attributes for both new gear and enchants, and enchant every slot - spell damage, haste and crit. At your gear level, crit is probably worth 2/3 of the others, but it is far from worthless. Cloak enchant should be subtlety - whenever threat limited that's 2% more DPS you could be doing.

2. Blow cooldowns when fighting trash. I have a scorch key that is just scorch, and another that will blow any cooldowns that happen to be up AND cast scorch. I use the latter on trash (and in PVP). I also use it in boss fights if I don't know the fight length well enough to know if I will get two or more sets of cooldowns. I'm not worrying about timing molten fury, or even stacking them perfectly, I just don't want to go any length of time without using them. Trash DPS can also be improved by AOE'ing, if you can manage the threat and the mana. Obviously if you are getting close to a boss, you'll want to moderate this behavior enough to have cooldowns when the boss fight goes off.

3. Chaincast smoothly. This includes with motion and target switching. If you have to move, toss a flame blast or even ice lance as you move. if you can stand still, your next spell should always be tapped before your casting bar runs out. Don't waste spells on dead targets...if an enemy is geting low, use your casting time to tab target to your next victim, and have the victim's spell queued up on the tail end of the spell that will finish your current target.

#3 is a pretty big deal. Heasitating between casts costs a significant amount of haste rating.

I'd also just look at your time on target. Are you slow off the mark? How close do you stay to the tank's aggro curve? (you should be pushing 90% most of the time, unless he vastly outgears you). How fast do you recover when you have to ice block or go invisible? (I have a "click everything off with one key" macro that I use to unblock/de-invis without fussing with the icons). Do you set yourself up at the wrong ranges and lose time adjusting?

Don't expect miracles. I have about 100 more theoretical DPS than you do, and my WWS ratings are usually 150 points higher than yours on 5 mans and on 10 man raids where I don't get stacking. My gear is similar but I've done a better job of enchanting and geming, which is why I have 100 points more theoretical. The other 50 points is probably better execution in #2 and #3. My boss strategy is quite similar to yours. I could add probably 50 points to my DPS in boss fights by not scorching as often.

The biggest impact short term is raid stacking. But making the most of what you can do is a good idea, as when you DO get raid stacking, its impact is higher if you have good habits. Even without raid buffs and consumables, 500 DPS is underperforming for your gear. You can get your best numbers for the non-"molten fury" state on Dr Boom. That should be what you shoot for when doing 5 mans and such. Be sure to check out the individual boss fights and trash subsections of WWS and look at your spells used, time on target and such.

Compare to any mage that you think performs well. You might be using a very different spell mix, or his % DPS time is much higher or some other correctable thing.

RE: Dropping hit: 164 is cap for fire, I wouldn't drop it if you intend to stay fire.

Have you considered speccing frost? Right now, you're at about the gear break-even point where frost and fire do comparable DPS. You'd receive the benefit of the ghost hit from EP which would be a bit of help(allowing you to drop your bloodgem for a Quag's eye(or comparable damage trinket) in addition to being a less mana-dependent spec and having greater survivability(very little about BT is a DPS race, survivability in a t6 instance when you're in t4 gear is probably a good idea.)

Going tailoring wouldn't be a bad idea as the shoulders/boots are a far cry above anything else you can obtain(however these assumptions are based on the fact that you're not going to get any t6 gear and you want to spend the money pre-expac to go tailoring. IMO, going tailoring will probably be a no-brainer for caster classes come the expac, but might not make a lot of sense pre the release of frostweave).

Replace your neck with a PVP neck, and without sounding too harsh, your badge choices were far from optimal. Mages should never choose crit over a better itemized stat(which is just about anything). Your legs were a bad choice; you should replace these with the hit legs and replace your trinket with a primal fetish.

These comments all come with the following caveat: This is stuff you can do without raiding to increase your DPS right now rather than waiting on t6 drops. You may decide that it's not a good investment to do so this close to the expac, I'd hardly be one to blame you.

Edit: BTW, i just realized the key components i forgot in my spec. Damn I knew i had too many points to screw around with in frost!

Careful with that. Quantity has a quality all of its own.

50 crit is worth more than 25 haste at pretty much any gear level for a fire mage.

You have to work out what a crit rating is worth, and value it accordingly. For me this has varied between .6 spell damage and .7 spell damage. Haste has come down between .9 spell damage and 1.05 spell damage, depending on the mix of my equipment. Hit has ranged from 1.2 to 1.4.

On gems or similar items where the trade is 1-1 sure, crit is worse in BC. It often is not 1-1 though. As an example my ring choices include the following: 32 spell damage/17 crit...29 spell damage 19 crit and 42 spell damage zero crit. Which is best? Right now, it's the first of the three. Which is worst? The last one. But they're all very close.

Or in his case....the 100 badge pants are
61 spell damage, 43 crit, two sockets

The 75 badge pants are
54 spell damage, 45 haste, zero sockets

Adding nonepic gems, just blue ones into the sockets (+5 spell damage/+4 haste and +5 spell damage/+6 stamina for +4 spell damage socket bonus, worthwhile if epic gems are not in picture) the comparison is:

75 spell damage, 4 haste, 43 crit
vs
54 spell damage, 45 haste

Assuming 1-1 for haste and 0.6-1 for crit (biased against crit, it's usually a bit better) you get

75+4+43*.6=104.8 equivalent spell damage (two red epic gems instead adds +5
vs
54+45=99 equivalent spell damage.

Now whether 25 badges are worth 5-6 spell damage is debatable. But it isn't an a-priori poor choice. It is the max DPS badge choice if you are already hit capped (which he is), even if it isn't the best DPS/badge spent choice.

This is true except for the fact that he's wasting dps by gemming for hit rather than picking it up on another piece.

Of course 50 crit is worth more than 25 haste because you spend twice as much item budget on it - common sense would dictate he meant an equal/similar amount of item points spent on hit (if uncapped), damage, haste or sometimes even int, eg. on gems and enchants (because there's no "crit gem with twice the item budget of a haste gem") - anything beyond that should be compared with knowledge of item budget formulas, spreadsheets or Rawr in order to find the "better item" which can easily contain crit if the upgrade is of a higher item level or uses a superior stat spread to make more efficient use of its budget.

After all, the generalization is "don't gem/enchant for crit, get it with on gear that's better overall", not "avoid crit altogether because it's bad".

Hello. I just got 80 on my mage and I was wondering if this would be the place to ask about spell rotations for fire and arcane since today's push. Whenever, I'm lost on a mage issue, I pour over these forums and usually find the answer, but I'm an atypical mage it seems in that I'm painfully challenged when it comes to the fastmoving discussion of WotLK Beta changes. I levelled frost and I think I have a pretty good handle on it for the moment. Is this the appropriate place to ask ? I've seen some references to flamestrike and I'm eager to try out anything new that's available for rotations.

Edit: I've read the discussion of flamestrike as aoe, but I thought I saw mention of rotations that included it as single target dps.