You need to look at DPS over the entire fight, not just DPS over a short period. Also you need to look at fights were it's mostly tank and spank. In Kara a fight like Prince or Attumen are excellent fights as measuring sticks for DPS.

Since you're a fire mage, generally Recount will calculates your DPS to be lower due to the DOT effect of fireballs. A better source would be something like a WWS report.

Also it's entirely possible for a Kara geared mage to be pushing 1000 DPS if not surpass it when playing right. And that's certainly skipping over set bonuses when the trade off is stam vs spell dmg, using an Icon of the Silvercresent (one of the best trinket in the game for mages not in SSC/TK/ZA), getting best enchants for the slot (Runic Spell Thread, +20 spell dmg to gloves, +15 spell dmg to bracers), using proper CD stackings, raid with consumables (elixirs, food, wizard oil, flamecaps), and getting the proper raid support.

Notice a lot of those things does not happen due to the fact that most players capable of doing such a thing simply will have vastly superior gear by now, and the people who are still kara geared don't care about squeezing out top end DPS.

I have read through this thread but have not seen the break down to the coefficient between +damage to all and +damage to fire. Can some enlighten me to the numbers of this.

Vontre, you need to update your Magegraf site to include the [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] in there so i can TC with out ending up with hours of BS ending in a headache...

anyway, i have here some results for my current gear set up... now i just need to know if replacing my [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] with the [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] will increase my DPS or not... because no amount of theory i can do on my own will help me with this... i'm just not that good at math...





Ok, so i just used what numbers i could on there and using the "Manual Entry" option instead of Gear selection i came up with a pretty definitive answer to my question... answers in this thread were too wishy-washy and hard to locate.

sooooo here's what i got, 2/48/11 specced and using int, crit and hit as a constant. only varying haste and dmg based on the 4 gems i would socket as blue. (also, my [Leggings of Channeled Elements] showed a decrease in about 6 dps when i TC'd putting socket-bonus-friendly (2 [Reckless Pyrestone] and 1 [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst]) gems in there instead of 3 Runed Crimson Spinels. EVEN with the 5dmg socket bonus...)

EDIT -- I decided to do math with 3 Runed in the legs due to the greater dps in that... so this is stats for 3 [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] vs 3 [Forceful Seaspray Emerald]. decided to leave my bit on the legs in the paragraph above in here because it is a decent bit of information to have. sound good?

so...

1205 dmg and 65 haste, yielding a dps output of 2000 on a Brutalis-ish fight.
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?hash=639b7a338fa48944a8dcdd4147bf7e3d

VS

1187 dmg and 80 haste, yielding a dps output of 1999 on the same fight.
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?hash=dec9a5b7c0c0049050485d7d2582d051

that is a close close close comparison... Imho i can't really decide... It seems a smart decision would be based on whether or not your guild is low on shadowsong amethyst because all the healers take them... i suggest you either buy them from the gem vendor on QD or just use guild Seaspray Emeralds because they're far easier to come across...

It appears that the more times you factor in haste in replacement for dmg however, the more haste will increase your dps. More posts will follow when i effectively have time to compare the [Reckless Pyrestone] vs the [Quick Lionseye] for yellow sockets... that should be a good close race too tho.

We'll see (no smiley faces because they're politically incorrect)

EDIT EDIT -- ok so i did the TC adding in the [Quick Lionseye] in all the yellow sockets in my gear instead of [Reckless Pyrestone] and the results weren't exactly what i expected lol.

1152 dmg and 95 haste, yielding a dps output of 1981 for the Brutalis-like fight.
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?ha...2ab8abdeeeb96b

AND then i guess just for sh*ts and giggles... here's the stuff for the 3 [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] AND the [Quick Lionseye].

1134 dmg and 110 haste, yielding a dps output of 1981 for that same fight lol... so it's essentially the same thing...
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?ha...48fede10d1f50e


AND on going with this sort of thing... i did some goofing around with this, throwing in items like [Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer], [Shadowcaster's Drape], [Ring of Ancient Knowledge] and [Vindicator's Pendant of Subjugation] w/ [Quick Lionseye]... giving me interesting numbers again...

1124 dmg and 220 haste, yielding a dps output of 2097 on the same 6 min long fight...
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?ha...3db5653c3a2999

soooo it appears that after a certain point, haste does become a lot more beneficial and appears to finally pass dmg... as one would expect...

Not really sure what you are talking about. The damage coefficient on your spells is the same whether you are talking about regular damage or just fire damage. Obviously your frost bolt's coefficient will only be multiplied by your generic damage and not your fire damage, and likewise if you have more fire damage than generic damage your fireball will use that total.

There is absolutely no difference between normal +damage and +fire damage as long as you are casting fire spells. The only difference between the two is that +fire damage only applies to fire spells, where as +damage applies to all spells.

I wouldn't call your gear an opinion, since all items have item levels and tier sets have specific pieces, as you well know, to form those sets. Therefore, it's either Kara/T4 level or it isn't.

I'm not sure why you're specced 4/46/11, as it does roughly nothing to increase your DPS. The only talent you need from Arcane tree is arcane subtlelty, and that's for arcane explosion (and can help with counterspell/polymorph). With 2/48/11, there are three floating points. Some people put these into Pyroblast, Blast Wave, and Blazing Speed. I throw all three into Improved Flamestrike -- it really doesn't matter, that's why they are floating, but flamestrike is a ridiculous mana drain, so 15% extra crit increases MoE return, and ensures a high average damage.

Spellstrike is around T5 level. If you're doing ZA, Hood of Hexing will break this set. For leggings, pick up [Corrupted Soulcloth Pantaloons]. [Legwraps of Sweltering Flame] can work too, but don't scale as well once you get spell hit from other equipment slots. The spellfire set bonus will last you quite a while though. In a typical raid setting, you'll be getting a bonus of 35-40 spell damage. The set breaking combination for a fire mage would typically be [Vestments of the Sea-Witch], and [Belt of Blasting]. Keep the gloves, and keep in mind that you'll need both the vestments and the belt to break the set. Equipping just one of these will reduce your DPS. The reason is that these items have high amounts of spell hit on them and only slightly less spell damage. Thus, you'll be making up for the lost spell damage elsewhere (most likely in gems), where the spell damage outweighs the spell hit.

This I wouldn't recommend. I wouldn't gem for spell haste until you get high amounts of spell damage. Even then, you should only be using [Reckless Pyrestone] and [Runed Crimson Spinel]. Furthermore, you mentioned that you purposely gem for the set bonuses, yet you're using spellfire set. This is a waste of gems, as the set bonus is stamina on spellfire. You don't need stamina if you're using spellfire set (because it has no stamina to begin with). At your gear level, [Runed Living Ruby] and [Veiled Noble Topaz] would most commonly be used, unless you can afford the aforementioned epic gems (including [Veiled Pyrestone], although use these sparingly, because they'll be replaced).

I'm at ~1300 fire spell damage buffed, with 91 spell haste ([Shadowcaster's Drape], [Bracers of Nimble Thought], [Blade of Twisted Visions], [Fetish of the Primal Gods]). My DPS on bear in ZA (a good DPS check) in last raid was pushing 1550. As you can see, I have -less- haste than you, and ~300 more spell damage, but nearly 3x the DPS. A lot of DPS revolves around cooldowns and spell rotations. Think of it this way, every time you cast scorch instead of fireball, you're losing upwards of 15-25+ DPS. That's a small loss overall compared to not stacking trinkets correctly and using consumables at the right time. If you have too much haste and you don't have means to compensate for the mana, you'll go OOM, and then your DPS will drop considerably for said fight.

Just for fun, I ran Rawr last night and did a max theoretical DPS check. That number came out to 2996 DPS for an undead mage, 3012 for a gnome mage. The spell haste from all the gear was at about 450. The spell damage, off the top of my head, was at around 1600, maybe more. The spell haste is nearly 5x as much as I have, and the spell damage is only a few hundred higher, but the DPS is twice as high. That's because once you get a certain amount of spell damage, spell haste starts to outweigh spell damage. In other words, you don't have to double your spell damage to double your DPS once you reach a certain amount of spell damage. Rawr helps you find that number. Spell haste directly increases your DPS, so it should make perfect sense that you want spell haste once you have as much spell damage as possible without lowering your DPS.

Consider how gear works. Most spell haste is in subsitution of spell crit and/or spell hit -- not spell damage.

This is where Rawr comes into play. It will show you that it is true. It can show you the exact levels at which spell damage will increase your DPS and spell haste will increase your DPS. The same applies for spell hit and spell crit. For instance, some items have such high spell crit, they can outweigh an item with spell hit on them if you can make up that spell hit elsewhere. For instance, [Ring of Recurrence] outweighs [Fused Nethergon Band] if you have certain item combinations (vestments, wand of the forgotten star, belt of blasting, mana-attuned band). Hopefully by the time you have all of those items, you'll be in BT and get [Ring of Captured Storms], but it just goes to show that 19 spell crit can outweigh 28 spell hit under certain circumstances. Rawr shows you those circumstances.

This largely depends on the boss in question. ZA is an excellent model for this, as it has DPS checks (bear, lynx), semi DPS checks (hex lord, zul'jin), and teamwork-DPS checks (dragonhawk, eagle). I, and pretty much everyone else, can't say enough about Rawr. It's easy to make speculations about your gear and your DPS based on personal experience. But when you plug in the stats and see your max theoretical DPS, compare it to WWS logs, and work on your in-game performance, that's when you'll really start to improve. It takes the speculation out of it.

Also, the number you're looking for in haste, to reduce the talented cast time of fireball from 3 seconds to 1 second, is 3140.

Casting speed - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft is quite useful

Speed = 1 + (3140/1570)
Speed = 3
New cast time = base (3) / Speed (3) = 1 second

The spellstealable buff from ZA, which increases cast time by 300%, gives you 4710 spell haste. At this time, pyroblasts cast in 1.5 seconds.

Does anyone know of the cookie cutter way for deep Frost on a Mage's talent tree? If so, can you put it on a talent tree generator of some kind, or at least in a coherent way, so that I can transfer that information myself...

Much Obliged,

Drackthor

As I mentioned in a previous post, I ran Rawr to find the highest DPS possible, and this is what I came up with.

Thanks for the metagem note Sunstealer, and the spell hit rating comment Boswell, I was the one who was wrong -- some options, like Metagem requirements, are off by default. I resolved this, and it is minor DPS loss of about 5, since it was including the metagem but without the requirements. I also reverted back to the Staff of Torrents, which it had originally equipped as a better item to equip.

[Dark Conjuror's Collar]
[Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]
[Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst]

[Amulet of Unfettered Magics]

[Mantle of the Tempest]
[Veiled Pyrestone]
[Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst]

[Tattered Cape of Antonidas]
[Runed Crimson Spinel]

[Sunfire Robe]
[Runed Crimson Spinel] x 3

[Bracers of the Tempest]
[Runed Crimson Spinel]

[Handguards of Defiled Worlds]
[Veiled Pyrestone]
[Runed Crimson Spinel]

[Belt of the Tempest]
[Veiled Pyrestone]

[Leggings of Calamity]
[Runed Crimson Spinel] x 2
[Veiled Pyrestone]

[Boots of the Tempest]
[Reckless Pyrestone]

[Loop of Forged Power]
[Ring of Omnipotence]
[The Skull of Gul'dan]
[Shifting Naaru Sliver]

[Sunflare]
[Chronicle of Dark Secrets]

[Wand of the Demonsoul]
[Reckless Pyrestone]

If anyone can find a higher combination or has suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Also, for those wondering about the spell hit... the reason it was low is because I have listed Sunflare and Chronicle of Dark Secrets, but I also have Totem of Wrath in there, which obviously is advised to never be relied upon. Switching out to Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents fixes this, and now I realize that's why it suggested that staff in the first place. So yeah, these are things I'll keep in mind when running optimization, and playing around with Rawr in general. Lots of things can influence, unintentionally, the outcome.

The stats for the above set are as follows:

Spell Crit Rate: 30.30% (403.4)
Spell Hit Rate: 13.16% (166)
Casting Speed: 1.285525 (448)
Arcane Damage: 1619
Fire Damage: 1699
Frost Damage: 1599

Professions are tailoring and enchanting. Thanks Manly, btw, for pointing out the jewelcrafting/tailoring dilema. The 24 spell damage to rings works out to be 28 DPS here, which is a minimal loss switching out the jewelcrafting neckpiece. I guess I forgot to consider a few things before running optimization ;-) But, that's why I always ask for suggestions too. I appreciate the feedback, not that I'll ever see any of these items... nonetheless, I took your advice Manly and I'll run optimization again later, but I've reflected the changes above.

@Enthorn

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that set-up you posted gives you 117 hit rating.

I'd expect that most alliance mages will be shooting for 152 hit rating because mages in sunwell almost always have a resto shaman in their group (draenei racial). In that case, with mages without jewelcrafting, using [Amulet of Unfettered Magics] over [Pendant of Sunfire]and using [Mana Attuned Band] over [Ring of Omnipotence] should put you at 150 hit rating, probably the best set-up you can get away with, as far as I can see.

ermm.... good luck with that meta gem... it seems you ignored the blue socket in both the helm and the shoulders, even though there's a bonus that would easily make up for the loss of dmg since there's a necessity for having those 2 glowing amethysts in their proper place...

that may increase your dps slightly, seeing how rawr was unable to calculate your metagem working, thus increasing your damage properly.

I would never use a gear set with less than 161 hit rating. Even with an elemental shaman 100% of the time. The sole exception to that rule would be if I were draenai (assuming the aura applies to self, which I'm not sure).

Also, I have a hard time to agree with using jewelcrafting neck in addition to tailoring chest. Given the choice, I would obviously go for the robe. I think that, for the most part, the upgrades difference between the offset tier pieces (read: gloves, shoulder, pants, robe) are somewhat all very near in term of dps upgrade. Personally I like it a lot. It means that it isn't a big deal if I am missing that one last KJ loot drop -- I can recoup the loss by instead looting another equivalent piece - for example, the twins shoulders.

Besides, if you think at it long term, and consider wotlk coming out end of december, it is unlikely that you can realistically gun for a fully perfected out gearset. If you do, you'll probably enjoy it for a very very short while. So just go with whatever you get first thats a best-in-slot. At least thats my rationale.

Draenei hit aura applies to self.

I disagree with not taking advantage of the elemenal shaman, if present and reliable (i.e. does not stand in fire). It's more damage most of the time, and if he dies, the boss is already that much closer to death from the itemization advantage. Worst case scenario, he dies early and you swap in your Chronicle/Forgotten star/etc during next movement to make up the difference and not waste the GCD.

A lot of things come into consideration when you're comparing yourself with the other mage such as the gear difference and if you're optimizing your gear (Hit capped, correct gems, etc).

Ideally, your 1 scorch + 8 fireball should be more dps then rotating fireblast in fights where you can just stand there and consistantly chain cast fireballs.

Aside from that, with the combination of what fight it is and how the player chooses to use his abilities, with a fight like Najentus, I just chain cast fireballs and then before a tidal shield goes up you scorch+fireblast to refresh the debuff to prevent the debuff from dropping during the shield, if scorch is ticking down low and then I pre-cast fireballs and cancel before it goes off if the shield is still up, and if the spine is thrown I just let the fireball go.

You have to note that theoretically, chain casting fireballs and only scorching when the debuff is about to drop is indeed the best "rotation", but there are so many fights where you move around or when there is predicted times where you are forced to stop dps, fireblasting is a small increase in your damage. Also, fireblasting consistantly results in a higher mana consumption and you're most likely not going to get away with constantly fireblasting if you don't have a shadow priest. You should also be avoiding evocation as much as possible, unless its at a time where you're forced to stop dps such as when Najentus has his shield up.

Before you use your IV, just refresh scorch once and then use the full duration of IV to chain cast fireballs.

Ok well there's a couple things that are in the unknown about why this mage beat you...

1) is his gear comparable? is it worse? is it better?

2) is his ping/latency/framerate similar to yours? worse? better?

3) do you make proper use of the auto-stopcasting that blizzard introduced a while ago to reduce ping affecting dps? (i.e. pressing your next key either as fast as you can before your current spell is done casting or having a mod like quartz/nature cast bar that shows you the latency for each spell so you can pre-cast accordingly)

4) the actual dps... did you get a lot more resists than him that fight for some reason? more partials? less crits? did you get spiked to the floor like 5 times?

all those things can make a world of difference...


Anyway, your first known problem is that you don't have an SP in your group... severely limiting your ability to do max dps by weaving in fireblast in there. Using fireblast every cooldown without a shadowpriest is not going to happen because you'll go oom and won't have a way of getting mana back no matter how hard you try. I have the 2pc t6 bonus, [Serpent-Coil Braid] and i'm a blood elf (lol yes i use Arcane Torrent for the extra ~450 mana every 2 min on mana intensive fights) and i know i'll go oom even while using every mana regenerating cd available to me... even CC mages have a hard time doing this with their increased DPM... i just happen to have an amazing shadowpriest and i hardly go oom as long as his dps is good that fight hehe

So... the hard fact you have to learn to deal with is that you're going to have to scorch every now and then. There's not such thing as having a rotation that isn't a 1-8 rotation of some sort unless you're A) a bad fire mage or B) you have another mage always do it. Given that, having a scorch timer-mod is a great idea (X-perl does it for me), letting you know the duration of the debuff so you know if it needs to be refreshed immediately or if the other mages are doing it early and saving you the trouble... i'd say re-scorch at ~5 seconds to be safe vs resists. So while you're doing your 1-8 style rotation just throw Fireblasts in there when it's on cd. Also, don't use 2x scorches in place of 1x fireball... only use them to keep the scorch stack up or to restack the debuff if you fudge on it and it drops off.

Your rotation might look something like this...

(pretending you're the only mage for a second...)
Scorch 5x -> Fireblast -> Fireball -> Fireball -> Fireball -> Fireblast -> Fireball 4x -> Scorch -> Fireblast -> Rinse/Repeat
[30s@end]__[28.5s]_____[25.5s]___[22.5s]___[19.5s]____[18s]______[15 - 6s]___[4.5->30s]__[28.5s]______

my timer math may be a little off but i think you can get the basic idea...


As far as what to do when you pop your IV... first off i'd suggest popping IV along with your best Trinket(s) AND combustion... because when you're getting that extra cast speed... you have about 7% haste currently, making your fireballs a 2.8s cast normally... adding in IV and my horrible math skills currently, it's about a 2.33s cast. So faster casts + more dmg per cast = win ok? Also popping IV and Combustion at the same time also helps you to keep the two together for when you go for the molten fury dmg spree at the end of the fight. For najentus you can probably use your trinkets 3-4 times, where as (if you save IV/C for the -20% like a good mage) IV/C you may only be able to use 2 times unless the raid dps is slow as a whole/people take long to pop the shield etc, then maybe 3...

Think about it this way... without IV you have 3sec cast x6 to fit into that 20sec duration that [Icon of the Silver Crescent] is active... but if your casts are 2.33 seconds long... that gives you 8 complete casts in the same 20 sec duration. You get two extra casts so why not make them do more damage and have a great chance of critting?

Stack your scorch to full again, pop IV/C + Icon then spam fireball until you're on your third crit then cast your fireblast (hoping that crits while the fireball's in the air)... from there spam fireball til fireblast is off CD and rinse repeat... once your trinket/iv is off make sure to restack your scorch.

Anyways, i'm pretty sure i answered your questions somewhere in this post... Enjoy my wall of text... i write too much...

Thanks for pointing this out. For some reason, Rawr likes to have certain things off by default, such as enforcing metagem requirements. I made the proper switches to reflect the metagem requirements.

Regarding the spell hit, as I mentioned in my edit of the original post, optimizer actually did place grand magister's staff of torrents as a better item than the Sunflare/Chronicle combination, and I didn't know why at first, since when I switched to Sunflare, DPS skyrocketed. And this was because I had switched on totem of wrath sometime in between, giving an unreliable 3% spell hit bonus. I switched that off.

I realize that obtaining all of these items before the expansion hits isn't going to happen to be an option for many people, although I'm sure some are fortunate in this manner. And there may be better combinations for specific fights, especially if you consider things like AoE and speccing frost for such (since this build favors a pure DPS fight).

I'll run the optimizer a bit more later on and see if I can tweak it a little bit with all things considered (no totem of wrath, metagem requirements enforced, no jewelcrafting -- this was my mistake, I had already included enchanting for the spellpower to rings).

I do understand though that equipment is progressive in a manner such that obtaining one item may actually lower your DPS until you get another to balance things out. This is essentially how the spellfire set works when trying to break it. And the same can be said for here. That's what keeps WoW interesting though -- you can look at the end result and know what you want to achieve, but getting there all at once isn't a very viable option.

I suppose the answer then, as others have said, is to take what you have available, and make the absolute best of it. Makes the improvements that are possible. But all things considered, this list of course is just for fun.

Why? After all, hit rating becomes completely useless as soon as the cap is reached. Hence any use of the additional hit rating would only be due to periods when the buff would be missing for some reason. According to magegraf, at your gear level one point of hit rating will be effectively worth around 1.68 spell damage and 1.58 haste rating. So hit rating is point for point equal to spell damage or haste rating once the uptime of the totem of wrath buff is less than 40% and 36% respectively. That doesn't sound very likely. Granted, ideally you should be able to put in an estimated uptime for buffs to your chance to hit in tools such as Rawr or magegraf to evaluate gear properly, but always going for the full hit cap regardless of buffs doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Am I missing something?

Well, actually, TC would say you shouldn't bother. :-)

Well, TC is all about averaging things. The same could be said about crit rating... Averaging 40% crit rate over 10 casts will give you 4 crits, but averaging over 11 will give you 4.4?

Well, you can't actually even say 1 more extra spell haste point will be better, if you want to be pedantic, since you might not get an extra cast in... But at what point does spell haste begin to 'matter'? A full extra cast in the given duration? But what if it the fight ends 1 seconds earlier? 5 seconds? 10 seconds?

hi sunstealer regarding these questions,

1) yes both of us have t6 gloves, mantle of nimble thoughts and 1 ring of ancient knowledge but he has band of eternal sage. he has bracers of nimble thoughts and his spell damage is probably 80 to 90 lesser than mine. well i gimped my crit for haste and damage. he's using darkmoon card crusade while im using timbal's.

2) ping should be the same, i am averaging 250ms per fight

3) what i usually do is i spam my fireball button no matter what happens, just spam that's all

4) the actual dps.. hmm i kind of forget.. we didnt upload wws for that fight but he did ate spell food and wizard oil. but hey that shouldnt be a 0.8% of a difference in dps.

yesterday i was at gruuls i was doing 700dps for that fight. it was really bad but all i did was sctorch and fireball and tried to use my cds for last 20%. i got silenced during the part when i blew my cds.. so partially it was my fault that my dps didnt pick up. as for the earlier najentus fight that i highlighted, i was 10th in table before i used my IV/C and Icon for the last 20%.. that brought me back up to 3rd, losing to the other mage though.

in summary, for different fights i have to learn to save my cooldowns and watch for timers(ie gruul's silence) right?

like for shade of akama, even though im on sheeping duties, i realise the last 20% was too fast for my cools to work.. i guess i have to work on it.


edit: just to add.. my average fireball without sctroch is 2.7k while my fireblast is dealing 1450 damage

Do you have access to the Darkmoon Card: Crusade, or Hex Shrunken Head? Those are better than Timbal's Focusing Crystal.

I would think that even with the amount of haste you have you would still be better off sticking to the Scorch/Fireball rotation. If your concerned about another another mages numbers for the fights, give yourself a better chance, if he is using consumables (Food/Oil) then you should be too.

I also see you have a few spots gemmed with +crit/+damage, and you have some gemmed with +12 damages...you would be better off puttin +12's in as many slots that you can, for the most part you can ignore socket bonuses unless they are damage, but if you can gem for more damage than the socket bonuses you should probably go that route.

crap double post... sorry

First of all [Timbal's Focusing Crystal](30dps item) is your first/biggest problem... anything other trinket is at least a 20 dps upgrade or something... Even something like [Quagmirran's Eye] (43.1dps item) is seriously that much better than Timbal's. Having Access to [Serpent-Coil Braid] (46.7dps item)may be a tad difficult but something like [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (56dps item) is a great option. especially since you cant stack icon/hex's Use: effect, but crusade is always active.

second problem... you said "my average fireball WITHOUT scorch is 2.7k..."... You should never ever ever ever ever EVER not have scorch completely stacked on a boss. Trash doesnt matter but that 15% will give you (and the other mages) so much more dps. Turning those 2.7k Fireballs into 3.3k... and you fireblasts into 1800dmg. It's so easy to keep stacked it's ridiculous. Just use my rotation i posted above and you'll be good to go.


K now's the time to nit-pick at your gear... Don't take anything i say as anything but constructive criticism here, because that's exactly what it is.

What i see at first is a missed socket bonus that's totally worth getting, Potents > Veiled orange slots. an 8 hit gem. and a nasty looking spellstrike helm...

A Disclaimer about hit... hit pisses me off... You can't reeeeeally cap it. you'll always have that 1% chance to get resisted no matter what. I raid with ~150 hit normally. I dont stress capping it because it makes such a little difference from 150-164 that as long as you're only shy of 16% by -2% it wont hurt as much as TC likes to make you think... You can resist a lot less or a lot more when in an actual encounter because the game is randomized that way... For example, we did a Rage downing last night... i goofed my trinket/IV/C rotation because the fight only lasted like 2m 45s and i didnt anticipate that... I missed out on my ele shaman totems most of the time cuz i forgot where he was. No flask/food/oil and i pulled out 1560dps. running 130 hit because i had an ele shaman in the group and was only half trying because it's hyjal... i think i got 1 resist that fight? if at all... hit is a strange stat... cap it at your own discretion... but never socket 8 hit gems... 2 Veiled Nobles will get you more dmg than going 8hit/9dmg instead.

So... you have a lot of [Potent Pyrestone] in your gear... now that rubs me the wrong way a little bit, especially after seeing how you have your [Spellstrike Hood] gemmed out. Putting 3 [Runed Crimson Spinel] (or the Living Ruby) in there and putting those Hit/dmg gems into other locations where you actually use the socket bonus is a much better idea. For instance, you have a [Runed Crimson Spinel] in your t6 gloves, when there's a nice little 2dmg socket bonus in there... So throw a [Reckless Pyrestone] in there... with the gem switch from the helm to gloves you've already picked up 2-3 damage and the necessary hit in a socket-friendly location. Also, wherever you have a crit/dmg gem, replace that with either a hit/dmg or a haste/dmg one... If it were MY gear i would take the yellow-socket gems in [Scarlet Sin'dorei Robes] and [Leggings of Tirisfal] and put a veiled noble topaz in there... [Belt of Blasting] (if you're planning on using that belt until t6) deserves a [Reckless Pyrestone] in there imo. Once that's done... regem your spellstrike to straight damage gems.

Finally... haste gear vs "other" gear... [Bracers of Nimble Thought] is a good 11dps upgrade over what you're using currently. I've never been a huge fan of your shoulders... I find that [Hatefury Mantle] is probably a nice upgrade for you. You're low on crit by a lot and getting a bit more at the cost of haste would be a nice upgrade for "my" playstyle, which is why i socket for haste (i'm self buffed at ~35% crit)... but that's merely a suggestion. Nothing you should take as "fact"...


These are my opinions for you gear... Using the program Rawr to check your current gear vs. my regemming and addition of [Bracers of Nimble Thought] and [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] -- because you dont need to wait for those to drop -- takes you from a calculated/self-buffed 1346 dps to a whopping 1388 dps (1397 by getting [Hatefury Mantle] w/ 2 Spinels) by doing those things alone. And again... Keeping your scorch debuff up will also help what you see on your screen/in wws.

Wrong? Hit has the same effect for the first 1%, as it does for the last 1%. Hit is also the best stat you can get, until capped.

Get epic gems and that problem will go away. They're so easy to get nowadays, I'd seriously considering getting them for alts instead of blue ones.

Yes, because you should be using [Reckless Pyrestone], if you want to have yellow gems, [Runed Crimson Spinel] if you want red or don't care about the socket bonus.

The rule of thumb for gemming you should be using is to find the two items with blue sockets which have the highest +spelll damage socket bonus and use those two blue gems for getting the meta gem requirements. The rest should be [Reckless Pyrestone], [Runed Crimson Spinel], or [Quick Lionseye].

Because crit is such a crap stat, it's nowhere near to "fact". Out of the relevant stats (spell hit/haste/damage/crit), spell crit is the worst stat. By far. Spell hit is the best, then spell damage and spell haste, the last two being almost of equal 'value'.


Use the optimizer and the upgrade finder in rawr.

Edit: Oh, and add all your usual raid buffs/debuffs to rawr before doing that, value of gear changes after those.