Sorry but you are completely wrong here. With your current spec yes, you are probably right in that regard. The main thing is, you arent specced into empowered fireball which is a MUST for any raiding fire mage (aside from the now seldom used 40/21/0 spec which I dont call fire). With now empowered fireball in your spec you are essentially gimping yourself by just under 15%.

This shouldnt happen ever either simply because of how long our cast timers are. With a 3 second cast minus whatever spell haste we do have, we should have plenty of time to figure out exactly what we are going to do in the next few GCDs and in what order we'll do whatever it is we're going to do in. If you arent watching your cooldown timers and planning out exactly when you are going to do what ahead of time most likely you arent doing as much DPS as you should.

Actually, those were the numbers with my 2/47/12 raiding spec. My current spec is something I goof around with when it isn't the weekend because it is entertaining in battlegrounds, sucks slightly less than my raid spec when bottom-feeding in arena play (I suck at arena) and decent for doing SSO dailies and similar solo activities during the week (fireball on its own in this spec does 758dps, you can only get 7 fireballs in your sorch rotation, and it therefore does straight scorch spam is actually better...862dps vs 918). I'm threat capped most of the time when doing 5 mans, so the weaker DPS doesn't seem to matter if I do actually group during the week.

With 47 points of fire talents, 300< spell damage, scorch is better than fireball if you're talking straight spam. Fireball slowly gets better after that. I'm going to show the work to demonstrate that I'm not pulling these numbers out of my rear end. If I've made a math error, fine, but it is these formulas on which I'm basing my conclusions.

With improved fireball, 992 spell damage, 73 spell haste(.955), 213 spell crit (.166)
957 dps =((1.13*(633+805)/2+1.13*992*1.15)*(1+1.1*(.166+0.09)*1.03)/(3*.955)+1.13*84/8

Scorch spam (after the scorch stack is at full)
918 dps=(1.13*(305+361)/2+1.13*I3*0.4286)*(1+1.1*(.166+0.13)*1.03)*1.15/(1.5*.955)

scorchx1/fireball*8 gets 1078dps

So in raid spec with my gear, fireball spam is 4% better than scorch spam, but a fireball/scorch rotation is 13% better
than fireball and 17% better than straight scorch. Ie, the difference between fireball and scorch is small
compared to the difference between a scorch rotation and either. That was the point I was trying to make above. The shorter cast time of scorch might make up the 4% difference due to less overkill/wasted time on last shot when talking about trash, but neither works well compared to a decent scorch rotation on something that's going to live for a while after scorch stack is established.

Well yeah, if you're so good at the rest of the fight that you can spend all your attention on DPS. I add about 100 to my own DPS when I'm able to just focus on getting the cooldowns right. When my attention is on other things in the battle, I struggle with the rotations/cooldowns, even (rarely) go oom. As I'm relatively new to most of the content, this is fairly often and it's what I'm working on in my own play to improve on. Spec and gear are easy, that's just math. Executing is where the skill lies.

It's really not as hard as you make it sound, as scorch refreshing is not dynamic and as such you really only have to make the calculation once. For example, unhasted fireball + scorch is 4.5 seconds of casting; therefore, as long as you are running a timer mod, you simply need to make sure you cast a scorch when there is 4.5 or less of time left on the scorch debuff. Understandably you don't want to cut it that close, and you would probably want to bump it up to about the 5-6 second region to account for any lag until you get haste gear.

What is dynamic about scorch stacking is when events suddenly force you to do something other than scorch during that 4.5 second window. Need to resheep because it broke early (or someone hit the sheep) or need to move or need to heal or whatever. I think more experienced players use the "fireball time" baked into the 4.5 seconds to deal with all that and for me it takes a little longer to react correctly, especially in a new fight/environment. If I don't deal with whatever in 3 seconds, I've lost the opportunity to keep the stack up.

The situation is similar but not identical with cooldown management. Both skills improve with making more and more of what is routine automatic.

I think your basic point is sound though. It isn't that hard, any more than changing lanes in fast moving rush hour traffic is hard for most drivers. But a new driver...it takes a while to "automate" the mirror check, head check, matching speeds with current lane, opening accelleration lane to accellerate into the other lane (so you're not backing into traffic with relative speeds) and allowing enough wiggle room for if other drivers do something unexpected.

As it isn't hard in concept, we should strive to do it right, and keep trying till it gets automatic.

I just got my 4pc T6 bonus and have to spec out of arcane, since i wont be getting the 2pc bonus anymore. I was wondering if Frost or Fire is the way to go. Im in a group with ele sham and a Spriest always and im the only mage that raids in the guild.

Fire is almost always superior (except maybe Illidan or Al'ar).

I've done a lot of exploring on the site and I love the tools for mages. I registered today to share an idea for a new tool, and nobody likes a leecher. I've seen tools that will compare pieces of gear; 1 against the other, and even 1 against the whole pool of available gear. I have so many epics that I don't know which to use, and end up swapping/regemming to stay hit capped, but am I getting the maximum available stats from my gear? This program will take everything into account, like the weight of 1 point of haste/spelldmg/spellcrit against eachother. So here's an idea for an improved program to mathematically calculate max dps and gear/gem efficiency:

Input: -All pieces of considerable gear that you own. All epics, epicish blues, brutal glad even.
-Approximation of desired stats or possibly rank importance of stats. (ie DPS>Survivability)
-Nature of the encounter (duration, buffs, level of tarket)

The calculations will be much like those made in the other tools, except the program will compare EVERY POSSIBLE COMBINATION of gear, gems, spec, spell rotation.


Output - A set of gear that most nearly meets your desire. Perhaps a few that follow up, or meet secondary desires.


I realize that this looks very similar to other mage tools like MaxDPS, Theorycraft-o-Matic, and Vontre's Magegraf to name a few. And I'm sure the patient, skilled, and more talented mages don't even need the tool that I'm proposing.
This, as of now, is just my speculation, and if we're all lucky, I've overlooked a tool that already does this. Could I program it myself? I don't know the first thing about GUI's, but I could definitely code the equations. I have a few years of programming under my belt at Purdue.

Lastly, I'm sorry if any of you consider this spam or useless speculation. I apologize for not being able to contribute anything of use at the moment, but I had to get my idea written down, and figured I would post for you guys. Thanks for all the information at the site, keep up the good work! If you have any burning desire for a tool like this PM me with comments and such. A collaboration could also be in order.

Froto, I'm pretty sure you can do all that in Rawr.

Well don't I feel stupid. I'll take a closer look at that.

I haven't been able to get this running on my Linux OS (ubuntu 8.04) so that's why I can't play with it Any pointers?

You have to install Mono to use Rawr on Linux. This thread might have some information Rawr - Discussions or some other Mono threads there.

There's a mage help me thread where this question would be more appropriate and where you would normally get a more prompt response.

Your rotation is correct, it works out to about 8:1 Fireball:Scorch at low levels of haste. With more haste you can squeeze in more fballs.

The problem with popping your cooldowns as soon as you have a 5 stack of scorch is that your tank might not yet have a sufficient aggro lead to support your damage output. It depends on the ability of your tanks to generate a lot of aggro in the 10 seconds (or less) before your first cd-stacked fireball goes off. As far as when to pop cooldowns, it depends largely on the fight duration. The simplest way to put it is "use aggresively, but remember to have everything ready for Molten Fury range". Other threads have in depth analysis, but you can easily find those through the search function (because "how do i stack my cooldowns" has been asked to death).

or Supremus

First of all what you should do is try to see how long does it takes to kill a boss, when you will know pretty much timer, you can play with your IV,trinkets. What in my opinion is most important thing is to have everything ready on 20%, IV+trinket+destro pot etc. I have in group shaman, if fight like brutallus where 20% lasts enough for bloodlust, i get full bloodlust+IV+Illidan trinket+destro pot and before i use evocation to get mana ready for it usually.
I managed to push 2775 on brutallus so far with only 1 bloodlust, you can see my log to check my rotation if you want.
Wow Web Stats

Basically about combustion and 20% its better to use while not lust+IV+trinket+destro pot is active, but most fights are really basically where you dont have free time after that so just use with everything.
Give me some wws link of yours if you want, i can check some stuff !

Correct me if I'm mistaken but the underlying assumption upon which your argument (that the difference between scorch spam and fireball spam is small) stands is somewhat wrong. You're basing your numbers upon the fact that the 5 scorch debuff is already on the mob from the first scorch, which is fairly misleading. The whole scorch vs fireball on trash debate is based around whether or not it's worth casting the inferior dps scorch to get the debuffs up before swapping to our primary nuke. Your argument kinda misses the point.

Also, like Eyegore said, DPS on trash is somewhat irrelevant.

We are trying Brutallus right now (just one evening there and the enragetimer is still far away, so it is pretty hard to try proper setups for ourselves right now) and there is one big question left: How do we build groups to give every single damage caster proper support, without "wasting" ourselves. Our problem is that we just have a limited number of supporters. We have 3-4 warlocks and 2-3 mages (2/48/11) that want to be supported: We've got 1 shadowpriest (the second one is about to be equipped now, but since he's enjoying his holidays now, we can't count on him in the next trys due to his relatively low equiplevel[/bla]) and 1-2 Restoshamans (one is being trial and equipped right now, but should be ready for the first serious attempts if he does well and isn't a disappointment). Since the healers also want to be supported, it seems pretty hard for me to build a perfect setup.

I played around with Rawr and found out that using mage armor and pots/gems in combination with a Restoshaman is a larger DPS increase than having a shadow priest (which doesn't surprise me). According to a Warlock spreadsheet our Warlocks also demand a Restoshaman, instead of a Shadowpriest since it also seems the biggest DPS increase for them.

Does anyone of you already had the problem limited support vs. optimized groups and could share any experiences how you solved it relatively fair for everyone to achieve the best possible results? :/

One SP, that's a tough one.

Well I can tell you that, Fire Mages, can manage quite well without the SP actually.

I'm geared a bit past Brutallus, but I think your regen values will be somewhat the same as mine with the correct buffs.

My Mage Armor with IDS (we just box the IDS buff, it's the same as half a Pure Death flask as well in DPS) & all raid buffs puts my mp5 at roughly 170mp5.

I can do the whole fight without using evocation, by hitting Mana Gem & cycling that SCB Mana Gem with all cds twice, and SCB + DPS trinket once, using 3 SMPs throughout the fight. Last time I did this I finished the fight with 3.7k mana left, with a bit over 2.1k DPS. Fight lasted 5:40. So I could probably do this without the SCB as well.

You need JoW though, definetly.

WWS

Here I regen 32500 Mana from other sources + Mage Armor's regen (around 11k) & manage without evocation.

Even without a shaman, who gives me around 6600 mana, I could get through the encounter without any support, by using evocation if necessary, but then my DPS would be a tad much lower with no WoA + Heroism.

But if I had to pick between SP & shaman, I'd go with the shaman. 101 Spellpower > over Molten Armor's 3% crit any day.

When you get a group like this, you can make judgements throughout the fight depending on how much mana you have to play with. On our last Brutallus kill, where I had a bit over 2.2k DPS, I tried my luck without the SCB (I had just recently aquired a skull) and in the execute phase I used a Flame Cap instead of a Mana Gem, this turned out to be a bad decision as I came close to oom when the boss was on low percentage, so I evo'ed a tick or two. This was a net DPS loss, as the idea is to try to avoid evo'ing if possible.

These days my RLs find it handy that they can drop me with a shaman & I can manage, or just anywhere for that matter. Make your Mages use Mage Armor, stock up on SMPs & group them with a resto shaman, get a IDS buffer in the raid for every attempt, it will help loads. SP, since you only have one, would have to go to your MT healers, who are pumping out heals constantly & need that regen. Second resto shaman can go to your warlocks, so they can chug mana pots & nuke shadowbolts, if you don't have a shaman to give to your tanks for TPS, it might even be beneficial to give your warlocks a group that 'forces' them to lifetap, and that way do less TPS, so they don't become threat capped (it happens, at least for us). I recall the first EJ wws parse kill of Brutallus, had some warlocks lifetap well over 20k mana, that's a lot of SBs gone to 'waste', but they still all did over 2k DPS, all of them.

But if you were stuck with the choice between a resto shaman & a SP, would you choose the SP only so that you were able to use Flame Caps/Destruction Potions throughout the encounter?

This is: 58+ (Molten Armor over Mage Armor) + 19(Destro Potion over SMP) +27 (Flame Cap over Mana Gem) + 20 (no SCB trinket, Hex Head instead) = 124 DPS. (using the numbers from Roywyn's thread)

I won't include No Evocation as the other setup also assumes that you don't evocate (like in my WWS) We can also assume that according to my numbers it's possible to use Molten Armor and drop Mage Armor's 165mp5 (11880mana) and just Evocate instead, still not going oom with a resto shaman. The difference between evocating and using Mage Armour is only 9 damage, but on this forum we're all about min/maxing. I'm just saying that if you decided to go with Mage Armour instead you'd have evocation as an extra mana regen tool, if you suddenly found yourself low on mana with no extra resources to pull regen from after those six minutes of fighting. It's also generous to include the SCB, as I don't think I'd need that either.

For the shadowpriest, you would have to let go of the 101 (109DPS) spellpower granted by the shaman's totem.

But then there's also heroism, which is assumed to be a 103DPS increase for me including the molten fury execute range. (15% or about 50 seconds spent in Molten Fury range.)

It's definetly interesting to see that Molten Armor on my toon would yield more DPS than having Mage Armour on the entire encounter, I will try that out next time I have to be in a sub-optimal group, I think with Molten armor on I will be very low on mana, but not oom, after six minutes of fighting with evocation used & everything, but still come out with more DPS than with the SP alone. It's just safer to use Mage Armor.

I don't think Roywyn compares SP vs resto shaman in that thread at all, and you'll really have to take into account the shaman's totem/heroism before claiming SP is so much better. Also the mage stat comparisons used in that thread is of a finished end-game equipped mage, and not one reaching Brutallus just recently (22% haste, significantly higher mana consumption.) so that would probably work out quite differently.

Another argument as well, why not just give the SP to the Warlocks? (not saying for Capsaicin's case, where they only have the one SP), they need a massive amount of regen, and the less they lifetap, the more damage they do, and the higher the rDPS the raid will get, the warlocks get massive DPS increases compared to us, because they lose SB casts to lifetap. We 'only' lose 3% crit & a couple of DPS consumables.
I see that's what Anaxo's raid did, and it seems to work out for them, I'm surprised the warlocks didn't do a couple of hundred more DPS though.

I would love to get a SP/shaman every week on Brutallus, and see if I could push 2500+, but when it's required I'm happy to pass on the SP, because I can, without becoming severely hampered without it.

Back to the previous poster; try to get more shamans/SPs recruited for the raid group, it will make your life so much easier, (you also require a few more to later encounters.)

Which ever group you put the shaman in, be sure to have that shaman save heroism and sub him into the mage group at 20%. Nothing can out DPS a fire mage in execute range.

The most accurate way to go about this? www.magegraf.com

Input the mages' names and you'll be able to see how much mana they'll end the 6 minute encounter with, with the different combination of buffs/regen.

A couple of DPS consumables a mage can stack in the Molten Fury range. Not to mention, you don't need a shaman to be in your group during the entire fight for heroism, he can be switched in whenever necessary. It's not like the healers need heroism for anything, but they might need mana more than the DPS do.

The issues with evocation versus mage armor is that oftentimes you don't need the full duration of evocation, just a couple ticks to get you through the fight, whereas mage armor will gimp your damage the entire time. If you end the fight with half mana with mage armor up, but just barely over OOM with molten armor, that was a lot of lost damage and wasted mana. What's the point of having 6k mana when the boss is dead when you could have traded all that mana for more damage during the fight?

It's never a good idea to assign class-based priorities for things like spriests or shaman. Like I stated in my previous post, if your melee are beating your casters then they get the shaman, it'll be a better use of windfury. I mean who would you rather have windfury, your dual warglaive rogue who pulls 1600 DPS with windfury, or the retadin doing 1900 without the buff? Likewise, the same applies for making the caster DPS group. There's no reason to default warlocks the spriest if they're doing worse than your mages.

Alright I just joined usually I just look over the website for some help on rotations and such but after reading the Arcane Rotation I thoguht I should just make a suggestion. My mage at the moment is currently spec´d 46/15 with somewhere around 1250 spell dmg unbuffed. I don´t have all the "technical" stuff for what I´m about to say but this is the rotation I´ve used during raids as Arcane:

Arcane Blast
Arcane Blast
Scorch
Arcane Missles
Rinse and Repeat

Now for the explanation behind this:
As for the two Arcane Blasts this is so that you can deal around atleast around 4.3k dmg(uncrits) for a decent amount of mana. The Scorch and Arcane Missles allow your Arcane Blast debuff to cooldown so that right when your Arcane Missles end you have around .5 - .3 seconds to cast an Arcane Blast this ensures you an increase .7 seconds to the Arcane Blast cast without the increased 150% mana cost. Thus giving you more mana efficiency when using your Arcane Blast and helping you dish out more of that loved Arcane Power stompin DPS. I suggest most Arcane mages to go Icy Veins cus its kick ass when you use it with your Arcane Power and when you have a Shaman in your group for the wonderful Heroism. As for threat GO GO Invisibility!!!

[Mage] Raiding as Arcane mage post 2.4 - Elitist Jerks

is a good read if you want to play arcane from your Spec and gear. Most of the theory craft on rotation and not using them is already posted there. I also suggest you to get coldsnap if you are using icy veins. 46/0/15 seems to be a neither here nor there spec.

Can someone please explain how my frost mage (armory link) routinely does more damage and dps than the fire mages in my guild raids? Note that the fire mages are all actually better-geared than I am (this is an alt that I've only started raiding with recently), and all use a traditional fire spec.

[FYI -- don't yell that my spell hit is too low, it is not. I'm Draenai, and because of ghost hit my frost only needs 140 hit with 2 points in elemental precision, and my arcane only needs 140 with 2 points in arcane focus]

Are our fire mages just not getting the job done or is frost better than I thought? If its a problem with our other mages, then I'm gonna have to re-spec to fire (since I'm raiding now & not just grinding crap).