Hey guys how's it going. First time poster,


I try to keep up with theorycrafting on my warlock and my wife's mage but its getting to be a bit too much and I'm behind the times from a mage standpoint.


Here's her armory:
The World of Warcraft Armory

2pc t5, 2pc t6

Currently 44/0/17, she likes arcane missiles for farming

When would you guys recommend she switches over to fire spec?

I've messed around with the spreadsheets and it doesn't look like fire will pass her until 4pc t6, just wanted to make sure, in practice, people are seeing the samethings.

If you use that same gear-set for both tests, having the TLC on is probably a big hit to your fire dps. Crusade is pretty solid, but even something like Icon would likely be more beneficial than TLC and given your guild's progression Hex shouldn't be out of reach (it's the current 2nd best). Other smaller things like grabbing [Pattern: Bracers of Nimble Thought] will provide little boosts.

You have plenty of hit rating for fire so with a few changes fire should, in theory, come out ahead.

That's what I would think, but she's still beating all of our equal geared fire mages. She's got the icon banked atm and we're working on the hex lord trinket.


I mean she still wins out on fights <4 min and where threat is any sort of an issue (BB, RoS). In BT, I'd say fire beats her out on Supremus & Council, that's about it.

If she's beating your fire mages then it simply means they're not very good. Don't use that as a measuring tool.

That kind of reasoning is why posts like the one on the previous page are so meaningless, either she's just really good and will excel regardless of build (in which case she should do really well as fire) or the other mages are just mediocre. Also, how are fire mages beating her on Supremus? That seems backwards.

That's what I'm looking for. At what point were you over taking arcane mages?


Is it the instant you get 4pc t6? There's not a doubt in my mind you out pace arcane mages, but were you prior to your 4th piece?

People need to stop beating a dead horse with all this arcane crap. Unless your casting a large amount of AB's with 3x debuff your LOSING dps over FB spam at BT/Hyjal level gear no matter how clever you think your rotation is, and that's even before 4pc t6. So pretty much the only way you are going to better dmg with arcane is on incredibly short fights (talking like 3 mins max here), but even then due to the fact that you get far far less benefit from IV/BL atm than fire you will probably still end up doing less even on a fight that short. There is some speculation about how the new changes to the GCD with haste and being able to use 2pc t5 +4pc t6 at the same time could help arcane out, personally I don't think it will be enough though but that's in 2.4 with Sunwell gear so like I said it's really just speculation at this point.

Don't forget fire also opens up the door to flame caps and destro pots, neither of which you could ever use for a significant gain as arcane, and molten fury isn't a bad thing to have either. Anyways, morale of the story is arcane died when 2.3 came out for anyone well into BT/Hyjal (R.I.P. AM spam), most of the players using it still since then either don't know any better or saw some mage wreck the meters with it like 3 months ago and want to be like him but unfortunately they don't read patch notes.

It's mostly the regen mechanics change that make arcane worth considering, the GCD reduction from haste is just an extra, with 4pct6 being useable on conjuction with 2pct5 an even smaller bonus (arcane doesn't benefit as much from 2pct6). It all adds up though to bring arcane into "worth considering" levels, although I'd wait and see finalized theorycraft as well as finalized patch notes before paying for that respec and possibly regemming some gear.

I think you're missing the point. 2.4 gives int/spi changes, which can yield 100-150 extra MP5 to an arcane mage using mage armor. And a lot more out-of-combat MP5. Then the GCD going as low as 1s allows arcane to do AB spam with haste gear, which it currently couldn't. If all of this were not enough, currently arcane is forced to use something else than AB spam during bloodlust or IV because of 1.5s GCD, but now it can almost permanently AB spam (with the exception of bloodlust+IV giving sub 1s ABs). In any case, the net effect of being able to wear 4pct6 + 2pct5 is really minor. Ironically, come 2.4, 4pct6 is in fact less interesting than pre-2.4 because you can now possibly run into cases of pure AB spam with no frostbolt filler.

Just thought id post my thoughts on mage stats and situation atm.

Now first off all i ever read is that i should take haste over dmg and especially crit, which i conceed to being the right thing to do 'on paper' but from playing my mage i will take crit over haste any day of the week, maybe if i ever reach 50% crit fully raid buffed id do it (currently 37% w/t ele shammy, so 42% if i had a friendly bOOmkin).

Haste is a double edged sword, crit/hit/dmg is not....This is my reasoning behind my choice.
Also if you look at max-dps item ranking etc you will see certain items well below what i rate them 'in my head', serpent coil braid for example is almost worth it just for the 225 proc+25% more mana on gems (Thank you blizz for the gem love).

Having said all that, i am thinking i can currently add in some haste to my setup, the BT/MH trash ring is what id go for first. This is because for the majority of fights i never use mana pots, and sometimes find myself not using evocate either. So yeah i figure a bit less DPM and more DPS would be fine and dandy especially considering i rarely if ever get the benefit of a s-priest.
One thing im going to try first though is just keeping my current setup and start chain potting destro pots during prime times, such as IV+gem(SCB proc).

Lastly does anyone in T6 use molten armor as a fire mage, ive tried both mage and molten alot and theres just no question in my mind that mage is superior when your raid buffed...even without much spirit gear.
41(50) mp5 from BoW + 3% just seems in practise to be much less benefitical to ~120-130mp5 while casting. And this is pre-2.4, so yeah i guess haste is looking better and better for me atm.

Thats sort of a ramble, but ill just put it out there for anyone to pick at

These posts really make me wish a "minimum time spent reading a thread before posting" would be implemented... While it could be gotten around it would probably prevent most of the "hi I didn't really read the thread but this is what I think even though it's pretty much lacking any solid basis" posts.

The value of stats VS other stats and mage armor VS molten armor were discussed many many times. Unless you're AB spamming there's no real situation where mage armor would be better (unless you're very very cheap on consumeables and don't have a shadow priest yet manage to have high DPS uptime in a long fight all together). Crit never realistically beats haste no matter how you look at it. Spell damage always beats both per itemization value (although haste can come pretty close, and easily "beats" damage on a point-per-point basis).

Your post makes very little sense, and is pretty painful to even look at.
That being said the things you assert seem to contradict themselves: You say haste is a double edged sword? I'm assuming you're referring to the minor toll haste will have on your DPM. This is true and its why haste and damage are generally considered roughly equivalent (its why you take[Design: Reckless Pyrestone] over [Quick Lionseye]). You also don't use Molten Armor because you value the mp5 from Mage more.

All that being said, you go on to claim that you never have any mana problems. So you're making all these dps sacrifices like taking crit over haste and using Mage Armor for more mana, that by your own admission you could do without?

Basically your gut feeling on this one is just wrong, haste and damage are the two best dps stats(assuming hit cap of course)and it's currently accepted that with a reasonable group set up you shouldn't have any trouble maintaining fireball spam. I'm not sure why you felt so compelled to register today and immediately come tell the people that have spent some time confirming currently accepted TC that they're all wrong, but its not a good way to start off.

[e]so beaten

Now, are you just talking about the combo of 2pct5 and 4pct6, or do you also include 2pct5 in that category?

I ask this because everybody seems to weigh in that 40/0/21 is not viable without 2pct5, and while this may be true in present day, I'm having a little difficulty seeing this with 2.4's mana regen rules. Plugging my current gear into Vontre's spreadsheet gives me 1562 DPS for deep fire's 8 fireball 1 scorch rotation (molten armor). Plugging the same gear into a 40/0/21 gives me 1613 DPS for 3 AB 1 Frostbolt rotation (mage armor). Keep in mind this is with the AB debuff fully applied, and any rotation that involves a need to re-stack will send DPS a little below fire. There are some gear changes I would make, trading [Blind-Seers Icon] for [Fetish of the Primal Gods] and changing out [Icon of the Silver Crescent] for [The Lightning Capacitor], but I left my gear stats the same between specs for a rough estimate.

So the question as far as I'm concerned is, "will 2.4's mana regen rules allow me to maintain this cycle in a raid boss situation"? Assuming you use every reasonable tool at your disposal to obtain mana (2pct6 evocation, mana gems, mana pots) it would appear so.

Since overwhelming opinion appears to be that a gear layout without 2pct5 is not going to be viable for 40/0/21, can someone point out where I might be mistaken?

2pt5 and 4pt6 isn't a big deal for arcane because most of arcane's damage comes from arcane blast, so 4pt6 only benefits the "filler" spell (frostbolt). And yes, as has been discussed in this and other threads the 2.4 mana regen changes may make arcane viable. The spec would work by maximizing time spent arcane blasting and then regenerating mana with a filler rotation of frostbolts and unramped AB.

He was referring to 4/5 T6 alone as being less interesting because the regen changes mean the 5% bonus to your filler isn't very important if you're not using the filler nearly as often, if at all.

Manly; I wasn't really trying to get into the whole 2.4 theory thing there, and although you made a good point about 2.4 changes to spirit with arcane which I totally forgot about I think its a big stretch to say you could sustain Ab spam for an entire boss fight. I could be wrong here but I think you need something along the lines of 2200 MP5 to sustain normal AB spam, no AP/IV/BL even. Obviously you don't actually "need" that much mp5 but consumables and your starting mana pool only buy you so much time before you start needing alot more MP5 coming in from other places to make it to that next c/d. Playing around on rawr in order to even get to 5 minutes before finally going oom with no c/ds up I'm having to gem and pot every c/d, evocate, have at least 2 well geared SP's and either wisdom being judged or a shaman totem. 150 more MP5 seems like a pretty large drop in that huge of a bucket.


Bawarr; you should have an SP in your group for pretty much any boss fight in the game with one or two exceptions, you really shouldn't even have to evocate for most fights. Unless your other casters significantly overgear you I don't understand why your RL wouldn't have you grouped with him most of the time. Anyways, that makes it very pointless to use mage armor as a fire mage since the extra mana is completely unnecessary and gives no dps gain at all since it's not like you are going to go oom without it. 3% crit is going to be alot more dps then the 0 dps your getting from mage armor in most cases.

Your statement is just plain incorrect, haste is not a double-edged sword it is the same exact thing as the other three stats you listed, a dps increase thats value depends on the values of the other three and the spell cycle you are using, changing the amount of one stat changes the dps value of all of them. This isn't a linear equation; which is why when you are trying decide which of two items would be better you either have to estimate or hold every other value constant comparing one exact setup to another exact setup. Crit is hands down the worst weighted stat of the four, well hit is by far the best, until your capped obviously then it is worth nothing. The weighting between dmg and haste is where it a little harder, when your total +dmg is still fairly low like 1000ish most of the items with haste will still be trailing slightly behind another item for the same slot that trades that haste for some combination of the other 3 stats. With another +200-300 dmg on your gear though those haste items (bracers of nimble thought, zhardoom, etc..) start to pass their alternative, and as you keep getting better gear and better total +dmg the gap gets bigger, well at least for awhile. It's kind of like a puzzle since blizzard only gives you a very small set of choices for each slot that have the possibility to be the optimal item for it simply due to Ilvl or simply retarded itemization by the designers on some stuff.

That's my mistake on not thinking about my acronyms. For some reason I typed that thinking Per Minute, as in your dps over a long term timeframe. Basically that you'll use your mana faster like you said, I guess I just expressed it poorly.

Well, truth be told haste can increase your dpm, when you get a lot of it. If haste can give you one extra cast during your cooldown popping (ie: while your DPM is higher by virtual of doing more damage), then haste will effectively, in that case, increase your DPM. Although for worthwhile theorycraft the numbers are rather insignificant, but it just shows that there aren't really any downsides to spell haste, unless you somehow manage to go totally OOM on a fight.

See that's exactly what I'm seeing, but I'm not seeing high arcane blast rotations really that difficult to keep up in Hyjal & BT.

I was watching her do a lot of BT last night, Prince Naj, Supremus, Shade, Gorefiend.


She was maintaining 7-9Arcane blast & 3xfrostbolt rotations for all of these encounters w/o going oom. Granted wayy back in the day, pre 2.3, she could pass fire mages with more conservative rotations, but from what I'm seeing, with our current gear level (on Illidan, 8/9, so mixes of 2pc t6 set bonuses and a lot of t5), she's still pulling ahead on mages with heavy arcane rotations. Obviously much longer fights like Illidean & Council puts arcane behind, but for the majority of encounters I'm still seeing arcane ahead with heavy AB rotations.

Kittenslayer; as several others have said I think the most likely situation is that she is a decent mage using a somewhat gimp spec and the rest of your mages are just completely terrible. If you want any kinda of meaningful feedback post a raid or two worth of WWS reports so we can actually see what she is doing and what the other mages are doing. Not to be rude be a bunch of anecdotes from a third party is not the kinda thing most people in this forum like to see. If you don't have any recent reports get one going for her next raid. Afterwards come post it here and I guarantee you alot of experience mages will be more than happy to come take a look.

Also about the haste dpm thing its basically the same thing as what manly said but if you have any proc effect items (even the ones with ICD's to a lesser extent) spell haste can also effectively raise your dpm by giving you more chances to proc.

Sure I'd be glad to post some reports. I didn't bother because I figured that the topic has been beaten to death and that someone had already identified where fire passes arcane.


I don't have too many relevant wws logs to share since she hasn't raided for a couple of weeks, I hopped on her toon for the beginning of BT last night, we had shakey attendance so less than stellar group comps.

Here's the numbers from Gorefiend, where I screwed up the evocate (waited till 25% to evocate) and messed up my mana gem rotation, probably my 2nd raid since ssc on her mage.

Wow Web Stats

Again not great, but I barely know what I'm doing, still enough to pass the fire mage on a 4 min 15 sec encounter. I did have 2xBM hunters but I'll take it to make up the skill I lacked with evocate + gem rotations.


Edit:

On the topic of skill, I hope we will able to speak a bit more candidly about how much it really takes playing some of these specs. I mean I know exactly how much skill a lock destruction spec takes, I don't feel a mage fire spec takes too much more. Fire spec mages and destruction locks aren't exactly rocket science.

Bonus spell damage and crit rating increase one's damage per mana, while haste rating does not affect it in general, except for the very small effect of possibly increasing percentage of spells cast under higher-dpm conditions sometimes, as manly noted above. To be fair, when somebody speaks of haste rating "lowering" dpm, it might be assumed that there is an implied reference to the opportunity cost of having that haste; indeed it does lower dpm compared to what it would be if the equivalent item budget were spent on additional spell damage or crit rating. (I realize that sometimes when people assert "it just makes you go OOM faster", they don't seem to be taking into account that one also does the same damage in that shorter period, but not everybody might make this mistake.)