hello there ,
i think i have horrible latency atm "500-600" in 25 man raid our server craping atm , i am playing arcane while i have this very bad latency i am still able to stay doing a good dps "4.5k-5k" last night i tried to go fireball spc and i had a really bad day with it " 3.9k dps " is it me who laked skills for fire or my latency who failed me ? and if it is latency why i have a better dps with arcane ? i really seek your advice folks .

What addons do you use? I play with similar latencies, and the Quartz cast bar mod can add over 10% DPS in high latencies, as you can chain-cast properly.

Even so, Fireball is something of an RNG spec. If your crits come at the wrong times (trinkets down or missed Hot Streaks), it's very easy to have a bad night.

Lastly, I'd check my gear. Arcane has 6% hit from talents, while fire has 0%, so you may be a bit below the hit cap. There doesn't seem to be a fire thread, but the FFB thread has most of the information you'd need. Just remember you don't have Precision. Also, the balance of haste vs crit for Arcane and Fire are very different, so your ideal gear choices may have changed.

remove please

I would seriously consider doing a full repair/reset of your warcraft, recently i had major issues in 25 man raids where i was disconnecting or had heavy latency/lag especially when there was 25 man AoE. I spoke to the tech guys and they said it was more than likely due an abundance of addons, some of which are probably broken or buggy. So i completely reset my wow folders with the repair tool, installed only the necessities of addons i.e Omen and Deadly Boss and left it at that, the result was much better. Scrap the cosmetic addons like xperl and try to minimise the amouont of extra combat text etc you have selected. If you have a good look through the interface options you will find that you can modify a lot of things to suit your needs without installing extras. Also arcane is rather forgiving with high latency aswell.

I play using mobile broadband due to very poor broadband land lines in my village, therefore i usually play with 500-750ms lag and it is somewhat variable. I have found arcane much more forgiving than FB especially since the Abr nurf. Arcane now (for me, with the exception of movement) has no instant casts, where as fire has instant pyros, Living Bomb & then Scorch on a short cast time.

My guild is working on Sarth 10man with multiple drakes at the moment. Currently we are pretty close on 2 drakes. Here's the thing: for our Sarth attempts, I will be the only mage. Which spec makes the most sense? I have the hit gear to go FB, even though I'm currently enjoying playing Arcane more. Of course, Arcane lacks Improved Scorch. I'm curious from the raiders experience here what would perform the best in 10 man Sarth+ as only mage. For reference our attempts will likely only have 2 other caster dps (boomkin and spriest). Thanks for your insight.

In addition to Morthoul's sage advice, I'd like to mention that Death Knights can gain a surprising amount from spell crit, and I have yet to see a guild without enough DKs to bring at least one to a 10-man. Also, Enhancement shamans and Ret pallies have small but not insignificant gains from 10% spell crit.

Has anyone done the theory-crafting on Illustration of the dragon soul and arcane explosion vs blizzard and other trinkets? A quick search provided a bunch of 'Blizz doesn't stack this trinket' posts.

Basically, for AoE trash pulls is it better to swap trinkets, go jump around maniacally casting AE, or if it doesn't matter and I should just do whatever.

Haste rating is worth approximately 1.4 spell power per point for blizzard AOE, so I'd go for haste. I have [Spark of Life] and use it sometimes with [Embrace of the Spider]. [Pendulum of Telluric Currents] is more DPS than the spark. If [Tears of Bitter Anguish] worked on spells, it would be the best AOE trinket right now.

[Illustration of the Dragon Soul] will probably be fixed (at least to some extent) for 3.1. It behaves the same with rain of fire, so there are at least two very similar spells where it needs to be fixed.

Most of the time on trash I'm using the Sundial + Embrace trinkets... at least that way, if I forget to switch trinkets for a boss, I'm not losing a lot of damage (and I did forget to switch for Patchwerk this week). If there's any chance you might forget, I think it's just best to wear boss gear even for the trash clear. If the boss involves a lot of AOE (or long pauses), I usually equip the Sundial.

question:

TtwFB > FFB

true or false?

That is oversimplifying the question -- for single target dps, TtW fire > FFb. But if you need to AOE, have mana issues (10 man without replenishment?) etc FFb may out perform it. Also, FFb has a somewhat better burn phase with IV.

I'm hoping either they change the mechanic to a single application or just have a warlock apply it so we can dump the scorch glyph for LB.

agreed, droping molten armor or the FFB glyph ( if your FFB) is just not worth it

i dont know about if your FB though, it might fit in a little better

I just leveled my mage. My question is what should I spec for now? My gear is absolutley horrible. Mixture of t4-t5 quality lvl 70 epics and greens/a couple blues. So, at this level of gear what would be the best spec until I gear up a bit?

If your looking at entry raiding, your survivability will contribute the most to your DPS. Your HP's and MP are still probably going to be a bit low, so possibly Frost. As you gear up, Frostfire or Arcane will do you well from there. There will be a point where if you have anough hit all over the place where TtW Fireball is better than Frostfire, but still a little behind Arcane for pure horsepower.

Is there a place where we can get info on the TtW spec ? I've been reading around and i can only find bit and pieces. I haven't seen any threads like for the Arcane or FFB specs.

TtW is not a spec, it's a talent taken in an arcane, FB or Frost spec. You won't find a thread just for TtW because its built into the threads for those specs.

I just hit 80 on my mage a couple of weeks ago and have been trying to figure out which spec I should be using. I've been trying to use FFB but its not really working in 5-mans and the gear that I have. I tried the arcane spec discussed in the Arcane thread but its working out even less. What is the preferable 5-man spec for gearing up?

on a side note, when do I know I'm good to 10 and 25 mans?

This should be in the simple questions thread really. I'll answer anyway;

The reason FFb isn't working out for you is because the crit-dependancy of the spec is not well supported without raid buffs and decent level gear. I would recommend arcane for 5-mans while gearing up. The fights are short enough that mana isn't an issue and the 2minute evocates means you shouldn't be holding up your group with lots of mana breaks.

TTW - Frost, press imp blizzard button a lot. Try and go straight to nax though.

* double post *

I went with the arcane spec show in the Arcane thread, and i cant seem to get it to work at all. either im not familiar enough with arcane spells and have been getting the abbreviations wrong, or i did something wrong