That's very nice damage done overall including trash on your report. What spec were you at the time out of interest? I know theres some very nice logs of individual boss encounters flying around but overall dps often tapers around the 1200-1300.

When will the initial post be getting updated to include 2.3.2 changes?

My mage alt recently hit 70 and i'm in need of some advice

Update the mana gems. New values are as follows:

Also not to be the grammar police but you mispelled emerald in your original post.

For the sake of my sanity, I simply used an excel worksheet to make a quick table. Saving this as a CSV cut off the last letter of some of the spell names.

I'm a mage that is just now starting to move from T4 to T5 content and I'm wondering if losing the 2-piece T4 bonus is going to be much of a big deal in later raids. Obviously for most of the time, I won't be getting hit and thus won't suffer pushback, but I'm wondering if there are any bossfights where this may be a factor and if so, is it worth to have 2 pieces of T4 over some slightly better gear?

*edit* I forgot to mention, I'm a frost mage, so I don't have anything else to prevent pushback.

I can't think of any pushback issues in SSC or TK. None besides RoS in T6 either.

I use 2*T4 on Malacrass, and in Black Temple on Reliquary, and quite often on Naj'entus and Gorefiend. It isn't essential for those two though.
I can't see much use in the T5 zones though, besides strider kiting while getting chain-zapped.

It's great for farming though, so you don't have to worry about an add beating on you.

Anyone know if they fixed the Elemental Precision bug with the patch?

No, the tooltip was not yet updated

Hello all.

Currently I am in a guild that clears SSC weekly and is working on Kael. Recently I received [Vestments of the Sea-Witch] which means to reach the 4 piece t5 bonus I will most likely have to take [Cowl of Tirisfal] replacing [Spellstrike Hood] socketed with two 9 spell damage gems and one 14 spell damage gem.

I would like to know if the 4 piece t5 bonus is worth losing the damage and hit I would lose in the swap. To me it looks like a side grade at best if there is an internal CD or low proc rate on the 4 piece set bonus. I am hit capped and could make some other switches to easily cap my hit again and I would be inserting the [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] into the t5 helm along with the 14 spell damage gem. If the bonus isn't that impressive then I would just as soon save the dkp since we should have Kael dead in the next week opening up access to BT/MH gear.

Any help is appreciated.

For the 4 piece set bonus there is no CD as for the proc rate I don't remember what it is exactly and prefer not to give mis-information, but it is up fairly often (as an arcane spec you can keep it up a vast majority of the time) though with fire, it is up a lot less. As for taking the cowl over the spellstrike hood...personally I would do it if it would give you the set bonus, plus the fact that it will give you access to the meta gem socket.

In all honesty there seems to be a lot of posts in the Sweet Info Thread which would be better served in http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16781-mage_help_me_please/ . This thread is best kept clutter free for any updates/modification Vontre needs to do to maintain the first page correct and valid.

Nickelleon: I'm frost with 129 hit rating, and over two full TKs and half a SSC since patch (and a Winterchill) I've had 1.1% resist, which is perfectly in line with normal bugged behaviour; it's never been lower than 1.1% for some reason, but it deffinitely is still bugged.

Thaelon: You may model the T5 set bonus as a flat spellpower gain on an uptime of 70-100% depending on spec. It's practically perma-on for arcane spec but has a few lapses in fire. The general problem with T5 is that compared to non-tiered gear (like badges gloves and hood of hexing) the stats are rather lack-lustre. The abundance of spirit also indicated item-budget badly spent, and the badly lacking hit rating shows that T5 was really made with arcane spec in mind. If you're planning a foray into arcane-frost that seems to be all the rage with the experimenters nowadays, T5 would be a great choice. For fire I'd advise against it, even though in my guild there is a fire mage with 138hit, 4/5 T5 and statistics on his side (ie. he never gets lower resist than anyone else and always magically pulls 3-6% more crit than he should out of his ass on bosses).

Leiven: From what I see from your gear you're going a little too fire-style with your frost gear. Firstly, your hit rate is low for frost, even bugged. I'd suggest swapping to (ideally) hit/dmg gems in your bracers and pants to capitalize. You're also wearing boots of blasting, which would be better replaced with FSW boots in my oppinion. I can see this would impact your spell hit a little, though you can always socket in 8hit and the heroic-drop stam/hit gem for identical hit rate, less crit and a lot more spellpower.

The reason I'm pushing spellpower is the same reason I'd say take off the crusade and put on the Sextant: The elemental gains only from your raw int/sta and spellpower. Simulation aside, the best thing I've found I can do is winter's chill up the boss, pull out elemental, shoot one bolt (make sure he's shooting too), and pop the managem/icon/icyveins/frostbolt macro. This will make you gain compound effect from the trinket/sextant stacking.

Combine this with Crusade taking a bloody hour to ramp up in frost (Fire stacks it twice per scorch or three times per scorch crit, making it ramp in 7.5sec at the latest, while you need 25sec at least) and it might even drop off; this means your modeling it as +80dmg is wrong as it isn't in fact anywhere near as good. I shelved mine when I switched to frost.

Having said that, you'd benefit rather hugely from a new head. Hood of hexing or Cowl of Engineer would be a great upgrade, particularly in terms of spell hit.

I have a question that didn't merit its own thread, just a quick one.

Basically, through Heroics and BG's, I've created a mage with 881 bonus damage, 89 hit, and abou 17.8% crit. And about 8.8k health and Mana.

I don't plan to raid with him anymore, I have left my guild and now just plan on doing Heroics and regular instances with my RL friends. My question is: Does the hit > damage > crit order still apply if I won't be facing raid level bosses?

If you're just doing 5 mans you won't be doing many fights against level 73s. It will be mostly 72s and below. which means you don't need 16% hit. I think you need something more like 4-5% hit, which is much much easier to reach. So no at this case get your 4-5% hit (which should be able to get from talents/head enchant/gear) and don't socket towards hit anymore.

If I remember correctly, against lvl72 mobs there is a 6% resist rate, so you have to maintain +5% tohit.
However, I wonder which build is performing the best in heroics, as they are more about cleaning trash as fast as possible, than about nuking a boss to death in a 10mn fight.
Maybe 40/0/21 ? Deep frost ? As shatter damages are semi-exploitable in five-mans...

The best non-raiding build is probably deep frost. Deep arcane is out because you can't rely on the mana regeneration that the build requires. Deep Frost has better extremely short-term burst (45 seconds or 90 seconds with Cold Snap), better threat control, frostbite action on trash, and the ability to kite easily in a pinch when compared with deep fire.

It also puts you at 6% hit with Elemental Precision, which is a bit strange for gearing purposes because it requires no hit rating.

So as I understand these posts, a frost mage doing Heroics just needs a hit rating of 64?

I added that shatar head enchant, which brought me to 103 (8.16&), or with a different trinket down to 77 (6.10%).

From a pure "big numbers" perspective, I've been having great fun in heroics as arcane. Even without a shadow priest, BoW, mana tide, etc. I can generally arcane blast spam to my heart's content on trash, switching to a more conservative cycle for the first 50% or so of a boss' HP bar. Especially with two piece Tirisfal, the damage output is just silly. It's also a raid-focused build (went arcane in order to learn Al'ar recently); I'd probably enjoy it in heroics even more if I could take Slow.

I think when you get down to the 5 man level, it really depends on the type of group you'll be running with. Are these guys pros who will be speed clearing heroics in half an hour? If so, yeah, arcane will run your mana bar dry. If they are slow and methodical and you have time to drink, you can do very well as arcane. If you are going to be PUGging a lot or your friends aren't top notch players, you might appreciate the extra control and survivability of frost.

Edit: And per Wowwiki, you need 63 hit rating to cap yourself vs a level 72 (which is boss level for any endgame 5-man, I believe). If you go frost, you can elect to take the bugged Elemental Precision to get 6% hit and then just stack damage/haste/crit out the wazoo, or get that meager ~6% hit from gear and spend the 3 talent points elsewhere. Neither is a really bad option.

Actually, elemental precision also gives a small amount of mana conservation since it gives 3% less cost to all frost/fire spells. Not much no, but for 3 talentpoints to cap hit AND get mana conservation, it's a damn good bargain.

No you need 0 hit rating as Ele Pre is currently bugged and granting 6% rather than 3% to frostbolt, so you'd be capped with just that. I'd sub out any hit rating possible and instead replace with 5-man agro-friendly spellpower rather than crit.

Edit: You could also go ahead and drop imp blizz as it's rather useless in 5mans, and a few more points dropped off permafrost and Fbite wouldn't be bad either, they can instead go towards Clearcasting which is arguably more useful depending on playstyle. There's some 8hit gems in there, a hit/spell gem and a crit gem too. These all should technically be ditched for crit/dmg gems (if you must have yellow ser boni) or pure damage gems. As it stands at the moment you're on a total of 12% frost hit chance whereas most mobs you face only mandate 5%.

Great job with this thread. I refer anyone new to the class to it all the time as a good one-stop shop for information.

One quick note - I was re-reading the first post today, and the phrase:

"On the plus side, frost builds have ice block, an extra escape option that can prove extremely useful on encounter that heavily emphasize survivability (Archimonde is a great example). As such, frost may be the preferred spec for certain raid encounters."

Can probably be removed, or maybe reworded to indicate that all mages have Ice Block, but frost mages have repeatable Ice Block using cold snap, at least within the bounds of Hypothermia.

- Is there anything better than Quartz for achieving your fastest casting times? Haste seems rather irrelevant for those of us who aren't casting perfectly. I can't imagine that 1% faster will matter at all with my response times.

- Does the bugged Elemental Precision (to get 6% hit) also apply to fireballs?

- Regarding the 40 debuff limit on bosses: Does your ignite get knocked off very often?

- It often seems to me that the scorch debuff goes invisible for a time, and then reappears fully stacked. Is there a mod to use to see all 40 debuffs on a boss? Is 40 the correct number?

- Does the dot from your fireball count toward the 40 debuff slots? With 3 fire mages in raid, are we using up 3 debuff slots just for this dot? Will it knock off SWP?

- If your crit is ~42% in raid, you can assume that ignites will overlap each other. Is it correct that they do not "stack"? That one sure put me into a panic, losing 40% damage quite often, with the loss increasing as my crit goes up. This one issue alone is enough to make me consider going back to arc/ice (not to mention all the respec money I'd save on Al'ar).

- We're working on SSC/TK and I now suspect my shadowpriest is suffering from having her spells knocked off. Would that be typical? As raid leader, what do I need to be aware of, regarding relations between her debuffs & the mages? Should I immediately forbid hunters to do stings?

- If you choose arc/ice, you will reach hit cap at 10%, and use 2xAB, 2xIcebolt? or 3 x each?

- I thought arc/fire was the "oh i was just kidding" spec? In SSC TK, our arc/fire mage respecced to 10-48-3, & immediately moved up 3-4 spots higher in the damage rankings. SSC TK specs are either fire or arc/ice, correct?

Thanks for any help with these questions which might seem like a step backwards to some of you.