I think the obvious example here is Hex Lord during the bolt volleys.

I just save IV for the Volleys he does under 80% health; the Volleys before that point are irrelevant and there's not usually more than two or three when he starts Drain Soul-ing.

If there are four or more volleys, I Ice Block rather than DPS through them, to save the healers stress and mana, which ultimately ends up being more valuable on longer kills.

Similarly, you could just ask a paladin to throw up Concentration Aura, which will give fire mages 100% pushback resistance. I ice block in the most dire of situations then, IE, when the next shadow bolt volley is going to kill me. You should be running ZA with a shadow priest, and that will give you Prayer of Shadow Protection. That coupled with Mark of the Wild, and whatever shadow resist gear you have, will end up resisting about 1/4th of each shadow bolt volley's damage (about 100 resisted, 300 taken).

It's a tricky fight for mages because you'll want lots of hitpoint equipment on, but at the same time you won't want to sacrifice too much DPS. It's a good example of a fight where equipment that is middle of the line in terms of stats/DPS is appreciated.

Yes, that's true about Conc. Aura, but the discussion was in the context of Arcane Mages, who don't have any Pushback resistance aside from Arcane Missiles

I don't see the value in swapping on SR gear for the Volleys; it's better to burn him quickly; longer fights increase his damage done to the tank in between volleys, make his abilities more dangerous and potent, and the first four volleys or so don't exceed 10,000 damage total even if they're completely unresisted. Putting on SR gear just prolongs the fight and makes all of his non-Shadow damage even more hazardous. Better to just gear as though it's a DPS race and rely on your healers.

I suppose I should rephrase it, since no one in the group I run with uses shadow resist gear (that I know of), or at the very least, as in my guess, one piece of selective equipment. I replace [Violet Signet] with [Dark Band] (of Magic, +19 Spell Damage), which gives me more stamina, a decent amount of shadow protection, and minimal spell damage loss for a fight that favors survivability over DPS.

Do Arcane mages even spec for Icy Veins? Isn't haste exactly what an arcane mage doesn't want, since it just lowers DPM?

You've made a packed post here, so I'm probably going to respond in what you'll feel is a shamefully incomplete manner:

First, I disagree that Hex Lord is a fight that favors survivability over DPS. Every 30 Seconds, after 80%, he increases his damage by 10% and deals ~9k * (1.x) damage over ten seconds or so to everyone in the raid, where X is the number of times he's done it already. This is clearly a DPS race; survivability enters into only so far as you have enough HP not to require emergency on the first wave of bolts. After about 10k HP, you healers should and do have enough time to react to the damage being dealt; having more and more HP just gives you a larger buffer.

Additionally, this damage increase isn't just Shadow Damage; if he Siphons your Mage, and is on his fourth or fifth cycle (+50% damage), he's Ice Lancing for ~5k. If you're at all slow with Wings when he's a Paladin, he can three shot a tank by the third Drain Power cycle. Ditto for Blade Flurry. All of the raidwide damage he deals becomes rapidly more difficult to deal with, far outstripping any kind of survivability gain you can swap on via gear. Hex Lord is clearly a DPS race. After you have 9-10kHP buffed, and a Shadow Protection buff, your gearing calculus should be for DPS, not survivability. Additionally, swapping on one Blue-quality SR ring isn't going to change your incoming damage very much, if at all, and will only change it during the Spirit Bolts phase, in addition to only being what, an added 30 HP? I think you might be analyzing the goals of the fight incorrectly.

Moving on...

Yes, Arcane Mages today spec 40/0/21, eschewing Arcane Missiles entirely and using IV; this is partially enabled by the Haste changes allowing the GCD to be reduced to 1.0s, partially by the Spirit changes of 2.4, and partially by the fact that while IV is a straight-up DPS increase; the Fire Tree offers nothing aside from a bigger outlet for PoM. Also, Haste is not a DPM decrease; your DPM is static. Your DPS increases, as does your MPS (Mana Per Second), but your DPM is unaffected. Since most Arcane Mages are able to sustain 85-90% AB Spam for the duration of a fight, ending the fight at 0% mana, the accelerated Mana consumption isn't considered an issue.

If you have the gear it doesn't hurt to wear it. I don't think anyone is claiming it's required. Hex Lord isn't much of a dps check either way.

About as much of a DPS check as you can design a ten-man boss to be and not require crazy stacking, anyway.

yes there was a purpose to my post. So let me put it as blunt as possible. in the 36 pages to this thread I see nothing about a 40/21/0 build I was wondering if it is a usable raid build. secondly I've seen some mages running around with a 39/11/11 build I wanted an opinion if either of those build are raid worthy or if you should just stick to the more common builds. also if they are what would the cast order be.

Sathvelin ,

Stick to 2/48/11 or 10/48/3 or 33/28/0 or 10/0/51 or 17/0/44.

40/21/0 get nothing much out of both fire and without T5 gear arcane still lags behind fire

39/11/11 is a weird build mainly because speccing for a 3 min per use spell(POM+Pyro) with a spell that have no much impact on POM+ pyroblast and not getting coldsnap is a waste.

There is no reason at all to currently spec any variation of arcane past 33 with fire splash. There are a multitude of reasons to do so with frost.

Bugged EP means you need only spec 3/5 arcane focus and need exactly 10% hit for both to cap-out.

IV is much, much bigger DPS increase than PoM-Pyro

All of frostbolt's major damage talents are at the top of the tree; you can get a load more DPS out of 21-talented frostbolt than you can out of 21-talented fireball.

Deep arcane builds focus and revolve around AB. Whether you use AM or FrB as a filler is irrelevant, they're both more or less the same due to one being more DPS but costing more mana (thus less AB ultimately). The only reason 40/0/21 is superior to 50/0/11 is practically exclusively down to Cold Snap meaning it get's +1 IV.

There is no conceivable reason anyone would tri-spec arcane. It is utterly appaling and as far as raiding is concerned, foolish.

40/21/0 is a throw-back to the days when 31/20/0 was considered 3m spec and somehow useful. The same world-pvp one-kill-per-3m people today run 40/21/0 despite that very same spec having been proven, since BC release, to be inferior in any possible way to 33/28/0 hybrid. If you must go arcane-fire, do so as hybrid. You simply can not compare 40/21/0's mind mastery to fire's 6% crit and 6% fire damage. 8% damage if you spec correctly into 2/3 play with fire.

The most interesting thing about the 40/21/0 specc is that it is BOTH inferior and less fun... which makes it quite horribly, actually. Considering PvE, there is no reason to specc either 40/21/0 nor 34/27/0, since they both just lose to the more common speccs in terms of damage, and even the most moronic mage will only claim that his specc is "so much fun" or "gains so much from crit" until they see that all their careful calculation (and amazing ignorance, for that matter) is crashed by sheer force of numbers on the WWS in the end.
Considering PvP though, I can admire the fun behind such a specc. Crit-instant-pyros are a lot of fun, and, lets be honest, probably the reason a lot of people rolled a mage-alt at one point or another. With the PvP-perspective in mind though, there is even less reason to specc deeper into arcane, considering that it only gives us a very minor damage-talent. One obviously leaves out Fire Power and Playing with Fire in a PvP-focussed build, but we gain Molten Shields AND the wonderful Blazing Speed, talents which will make your day in the battleground just SO much more fun (which is what the specc is all about, anyway). So, yes, clearly stay away from 40/21/0. It has no justification anywhere.

It should be 259982 /175 *180.25=267781.46 damage which is a difference of 7799 damage.

You are absolutely correct, I had my math wrong there. Still even with that adjustment 3300 mana is alot of damage so I still think that the extra mana has the edge in the comparison.

Now just to make another example and try to isolate the effect a bit more.

Fully ramped AB spam, 1.5 sec cast time.
Average AB hit 2300 damage.
30% crit.

Now I know people may have very different values but this is what I use for my example.

IED 5% procc rate gives a procc every 20 spells which means every 30 seconds.
300 mana every 30 seconds = 50 MP5 (while casting).

CSD at 30% crit is more tricky to isolate but over a sequence of 10 casts we will have 3 crits.
Damage done witout CSD:
2300*7 + 3*2300*1.75 = 28175 = 1878 DPS

Damage done with CSD:
2300*7 + 3*2300*1.8025 = 28537,25 = 1902 DPS

So we can say that in this case the CSD gives 24 DPS.

I guess it all comes down to preference and the situation. Given enough mana-support the CSD obviously has the edge since it directly increases DPS. But in longer fights, or situations were you might not have enough mana-support, I'd say 50 MP5 while casting would deffinitely hold the edge.

While the IED is indeed a viable meta gem, you're a little off base. There is a hidden cooldown of 15 seconds which means it should proc about once every 45-50 seconds, giving around 30mp5. This was proven in the resto shaman thread by Skyhoof: http://elitistjerks.com/759589-post1319.html

Mp5 generally gives poor returns for an arcane mage since adding damage instead and using frostbolt more gives a better damage/mana tradeoff. Rawr shows this quite well - using my gear, 30mp5 is only worth around 18 +damage.

The CSD will also scale better - the damage for AB you quoted was quite low. With weaker gear the two gems should be closer, but the CSD is generally better.

Not quite, actually. The CSD works like so with crit-increasing talents:
(1.5 * 1.03 - 1) * (1 + crit modifier) + 1 = total crit size

Thus, Frost: (1.5 * 1.03 - 1) * (1 + 1.0) + 1 = 2.09 = 209%
Arcane: (1.5 * 1.03 - 1) * (1 + 0.5) + 1 = 1.8175 = 181.75%

In the context of the main post "stacking cooldowns might have a great effect".
I'd like to know, which trinket that is most profitable to pop with what exact cooldown?
With a 2/47/11+1 talent specc and a [Hex Shrunken Head] + [The Skull of Gul'dan] (cookie cutter) trinket setup.

I mean, if your wearing a +Spell Damage increasing trinket and a +spellhaste trinket.

Which should you pop with what cooldown to obtain the most DPS ?

Combustion + Icy Veins + Spell Haste trinket, followed by a standalone +Spell Damage seems like the best option in my opinion, due to spell haste being multiplicative.
Can anyone confirm/suggest other rotations?

IV + Skull + Destro Pot, followed by HSH + Comb is the optimal cooldown stacking (with a flame cap ontop).
IV + HSH + Comb, then solo Skull for non-destro pot situations.

Combustion scales with dmg an not with haste. As such you want HSH stacked with it. Combustion should never be casted ontop of a destruction potion because it neutralises the benefit of the +2% crit chance.

This is the consensus.

Reading a few pages of this thread and finding other information on mages in random bits here and there, I've read that there is little difference between gemming for 12 damage or for 10 haste, and that 1 haste is worth 1.18 damage. I don't have the time to sift through all the pages of this thread, and I'm more or less looking for confirmation of this information. I presently gem mostly for haste, waiting for a few items to drop before I switch some 5 haste 6 damage gems over to 10 haste. Is this difference between 10 haste and 12 damage gems negligible where it's just user preference or am I really gimping myself by going for haste over damage?

I'm also debating the usefulness of the 2 points in Arcane Subtlety that I see most mages use - I've seen the general fire dps spec of x/47/11 with 3 extra points - are these 2 points negligible? Personally I've got other places I'd put them for when I'm doing battlegrounds as raid spec, because I don't respec each time I want to do a few BGs, but I don't want to give up anything useful in a raid situation for pvp in my raid spec.

I apologize if these have been answered elsewhere in this thread, there are just a few too many pages for me to sit and sift through.

The 2 points in Arcane are basically so you can spam Arcane Explosion without regard for threat. They aren't exactly core to the spec; if you wanted to put them in Blazing Speed or something it wouldn't be the end of the world. You would need to watch your threat in AoE situations more closely, though.

Spell Haste

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Okay well I have been playing around with stuff and this is what I have come up with.

This is based on the empirical research I have been able to put together in game. My gear is about kara/t4 level in my oppinion. I have 2/2 Spellstrike and 3/3 Spellfire. I go against the grain and actually socket for bonusses in all my gear. I am hit capped at 165, and have 1044 unbuffed fire spell damage. My remaining gear is SSO rep rewards/badges with a one ZA drop. I am specced currently at 4/46/11.

I re-gemmed all of my gear for spell haste. By doing this I got 118 haste rating, and my dps went down by 20. ( I had been averaging 640 dps in raids, and after the haste rating I was averaging 620 dps per raid these numbers are completely unbuffed ( I did not want to skew the results). This fits with the math I have done based on the spreadsheet. (ie 1 spell damage = .6 dps).

Based up the finding that 110 spell haste rating = 7% Spell haste I have come up with these numbers:

330 SPH Rating = 21%
440 SPH Rating = 28%

and the magic number is 530 Haste rating (this gives about 34% haste). At 34% haste your GCD is 1 second and your fireball is a 2 second cast. here is the math:

The global cool down is 1.5 seconds. to make the math easier I multiply the GCD by 100 to get 150 "points" these are abitriary just helps me to visualize the math. So if my target is a 1 second global cool down that would be 100 points out 150 points or 2/3. Therefore we need to shave off 1/3 of the GCD so we need 33% haste ( 1/3 = 33.3333%)
Thus the "cap" for spell haste is 530 in my opinion. I mention this becuase somewhere somebody had estimated 780 or something for the haste needed to reduce the GCD to 1 second.

Also, I read in the posts that spell haste is really only effective at a certain threshold of spell damage. I dont know that to be the case. I have not raided past Magtheridon so i dont know what the fights are like in SSC/Eye/TK/Hyjal and what not.

I do know this my average dps went down; but the dps curve was flatter. If you look at my dps from a standard kara raid (or ZA) on the bosses where I can stand still and spam scorch/fireball my dps peeks at ~850 and on fights where I have to run like nitebane, prince, and netherspite my dps can bottom out at 450 dps. However, with the haste rating I was peaking at 750 dps and bottoming out at 500 dps.

I am totally of the opinion that dps is not the best measure of damage output/performance. But with the above model you can see that with haste the minimum amount of damage done was increased, not only was it easier to keep the scorch debuff up but it was alot easier to be mobile. and if you increase your minimum damage you increase the overall output of damage.

I know thier is some magical place where x amount of spell damage with x amoount of crit rating will provide the best damage out by minimizing the sporadic bursts of crits but maintaining a solid baseline of damage. I do not know what that is but i think haste can be used (at any level) to make our dps more consistent.

I do have some questions though please anyone answer these becuase i can not get a strait answer on my server (even from mages in the top raiding guilds.)

First, I was told that a mage with only kara gear nothing from badges/rep/pvp/ or za/gruul or later can produce 1000dps on boss fights. I can not believe this I have better gear then kara and i do not come near that number on my best days. So is this true?

Second, I thought the best damage cycle was scorch x 5, firebal x8, scorch rinse and repeat... But when I look at the spreadsheet I see scorchx3 fireball x6 scorch rinse and repeat... Please help me with spell rotations i find that my dps on trash blows and it is really messing with my average dps.

I hope this helps. I feel completely at a loss most days as a mage. Please any feedback would be greatly apreciated.

You have many misconceptions about mage mechanics.

Here's a short list of stuff to straigthen things out

~12.615 spell hit = 1% spell hit
~15.7 spell haste = 1% spell haste
~22.08 spell crit = 1% crit

The spell final casting speed goes through the following formula

final_cast_time = talented_cast_time / (1 + spell_haste_rating_in_percent) [/ 1.3 (bloodlust)] [/ 1.2 (icy veins)]

So in other words, if I have 200 spell haste rating, and cast a 3/5 talented fireball (chosen specifically for demonstration),

200 spell haste = 200/15.7 = ~12.74%
final_cast_time = 3.2 / (1 + 0.1274) / 1.3 / 1.2 (using bloodlust and icy veins)
final_cast_time = ~1.82s

In other words, your conclusion of 34% haste making [1.5 -> 1.0] is invalid. The proper number is 50% spell haste. Here is the mathematical demonstration of the calculation:

1 = 1.5 / (1 + x)
1(1 + x) = 1.5
1 + x = 1.5
x = 0.5 (ie: 50%)

50% passive haste means [50 * 15.7 = 785] spell haste ratings.

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Your trinket selection is severely hampering your dps output. Switch to any combination of the following: [Hex Shrunken Head][Icon of the Silver Crescent][Darkmoon Card: Crusade]