dragontologist

After looking at the top raiding mages in your guild, I noticed that most of them are Fire spec, and have 5 points in "Improved Fireball." Since Improved Fireball does not decrease the cast time on Frostfire bolt, I was confused. Do your mages use Fireball instead, or do a number of people need to respec?

 

TantalusHyjal

They are a different spec for raiding then the FFB spec. Using 18/53/0 fireball is your main nuke instead of FFB's 0/53/18. The first is also referred to as TotW Fire (Torment of the Weak) and is the highest DPS spec a mage has right now with Arcane right on its tail. The tradeoff is that it is the most hit dependent spec since you do not get your 3% hit from precision.

[e] Left out some spec points, button stuck.

 

irgendwer

Right now arcane is still superior to fireball and i would be surprised if fire came out on top @ 3.1.

 

xactfoxy

What is the best solo-mage raid spec?

I'm currently 20/51/0 (see here) but the other raiding mage is going away for about a fortnight, so basically I'm wondering if it would be best to revert back to FFB spec as I won't be getting the benefit of sharing FM.

Also re-gemming probably wont happen lol.

 

winslow

Hello,

the question whether Living Bomb is worth casting during BL Phase or not, annoys me since start of wotlk. In Manlys FFB thread this has been given as an open point, but has unfortunately never been worked out.

To specify my question:

Full raidbuffed 20/51/0 mage - BL phase + speed potion + Hyperspeed Accelerators (engi) fireballs are at approx. 1.6 - 1.7. I have taken LB off my rotation, as long as bloodlust runs. With 3.1 the factor comes in that LB is able to crit, on account of that the question suggests itself even more and maybe one of you knows an answer or a thread I overlooked.

Drop LB from the rota during Bloodlust? yes / no

Thanks in advance and sorry for the grammar, my english is a bit rusty.

 

Toabo

You'll still get the benefit of your 3% Focus Magic proc if you cast it on another caster with a decent crit rate. Healers are also perfectly viable candidates, particularly if they're assigned to the Main Tank and therefore spamming heals.

 

dethfrumabob

i am a frost fire mage i have a 19.86% crit chance unbuffed and 1847 spell damage we cruuently have another frostfire mage who has been kind enough to take over the scorch buff adn we have an arcane fire mage to put the focus magic buff on .... my question is i just picked up j.c. and am now able to craft the 25 crit gems ... with my molten armor and raid buffs i have close to a 36.7 % crit chance from memory ... now if

1.)i regem/ reenchant to try and push my crit above 50% wouldnt that wind up with a substancial increase in the number of hot streak procs i have ? i am no statistician , but i do grasp the concepts enough to realize that if you could get pass the 50% their should be a substancial increase in dps ... and
2.) is it even possible to reach said 50% limit ?

 

Dorvan

Yes, it is possible to reach 50% crit. No, there isn't a magic jump in hot streak procs at 50% crit (it's a continuous function). No, you should *never* gem straight crit (+dam/crit is acceptable in yellow sockets for FFB).

 

Phatpharm

Hi Dorvan,

Typically it is the second best stat for you after being hit capped. Spell power being the #1 stat.

But to be certain, go to the rawr.mage thread, download and import your character. Adjust all of the raid buffs you normally have. The go to the drop down on the right, scroll all the way down until you see "Relative stat values".

This will give you a weighed value for each stat.

Also Dragon's eyes are [Runed Dragon's Eye] vs +[Smooth Dragon's Eye] , yet another loss

 

Duravi

The reason this is kind of a moot point is because even dropping LB from your rotation during c/d stacking with speed pot results in losing ~3s of LB uptime, since it should be refreshed right before you use your c/ds anyway. The question boils down to whether to cast those last ~2 fireballs without refreshing first and rawr will tell you it is a slight dps loss to refresh LB before casting those last ~2 fireballs on live. With the new LB glyph this may change but since none of the patch changes are final at this point I have not checked to see what happens in the beta version of rawr.

 

brutalmagics

I would like a simple answer, if at all possible, and a link.
What is the highest Damage Spec for Mages?
One place I hear Fire, another I hear Arc, and I see Frost as well, all here at this site to.
So which one is the heaviest hitter, for real.

 

Gwendoline

Most spec are actually very close in damage , they are close enough that the randomness of your crits or the nature of a fight ( movements etc ) can tip the balance between spec all the time. If i was you i would focus on picking one of the 3 spec that you have the most fun playing.

• FFB ( frostfire )
• TTw ( Torment the weak , Actualy refered as Fire but you need to go up the arcane tree to get TTW for it to work )
• Arcane

The best way to get Hard number for your own gear is to use Rawr.

Frost is not really as high in PVE right now, even though with the easiness of current content you can raid as frost without really limiting what your group can do.
I will try to get you links to these builds.

 

brutalmagics

I did actualy like the Arcane, only really because of the Missles followed Mob around, which is useful in some cituations, and I was doing well. TY for any link(s) to spec

 

Kaymar

You can find links to typical specs for all three in the first post of the following threads:

The Frostfire Bolt Thread
The Arcane Thread
Optimal Gear Sets (for TTW/Fireball)

Read through them carefully; the links tend to be buried within several other lines of text, but they are labeled as such. Just don't skim through and you'll find them with no problem.

 

Pyrates

With 3.1 around the corner, I'll probably have to think about respeccing, but I don't want to give up on arcane to fast. But I'm not really delivering the dps I thought I should. Could anyone check the following wws (I'm #8, if that's unclear) : Wow Web Stats

I'm really dumbfounded why I just do 5k dps here, everything worked well (I hitcapped myself using buff food, because I didn't get a draenei in my group). I'm not really BiS geared, but rawr talks about me having around 5,8k dps maximum with full pots, so I think I should be doing more than 5k, even if I didn't use optimal buff food and a flask. If anyone has any idea what's going wrong, I'd happily go after every small hint

 

nisaea

Hello,

Simple enough question: how do you gem for pvp?

How much res (I have 440) and stam (I have 17K hp self-buffed) gems should I use to replace the usual +19sp gems?

Thanks

Solstices

 

lunamoonraker

It's hard to tell really from one WWS parse of one fight, especially as it's a fast kill of Patchwerk. So variables such as Missile Barrage procs, crits, a missing FM buff, any lag spikes etc, will all have a bearing. Also, they have TTW/Fire specs. Taking a look at the log it looks like you are doing most things right. If you compare your dps to the others in All Bosses you are ahead of the others on dps (4537) which is probably about right for present state of mage specs in terms potential dps. RAWR shows maximum 'potential' figures which are rarely achievable in practice.

One thing, you mention from RAWR 'full pots' but I don't see that you used a Potion of Speed or Potion of Wild Magic in this fight?

On spell hit, I'm don't believe it was worth losing the +46sp from buff food to top up your hit from 198 to hit the required 210 (without heroic Presence). Also with no Resto Shaman totems you miss some nice mana. Was this allowed for in RAWR?

Lastly something to consider, you don't have JC which gives about the best professional buff available atm. Engineering gives you nothing currently compared to other professions will give around +37sp (Tailoring will give a very nice boost come 3.1 with the revised Lightweave proc)

 

Pyrates

Thanks for your answers, luna. I know I could squeeze out more Damage by using the right food, a flask and a potion (though I like to keep that cd for a mana potion in case I screw up or get unlucky), or changing trade skills. But there should be more even with what I have, that's what bugs me (the parses have been looking the same for the last few weeks), because that hints that I'm not doing some things right. I'll check my rawr settings for potions and totems, though, and maybe check about the resto totems (maybe not since that'll mostly be gone with 3.1, right?). If someone else has any ideas, I'd still be grateful

 

Thegoodman

If your guild is going Patch in less than 3 mins, it is unlikely that any of the healers need their Innervate, you should ask for it. Also, a flask, a potion, and the correct food will do a lot for your DPS in a short fight like this. Of your 31 AB casts, you only have 6 AM casts, I would think you should have 10 if you are doing an ABx3AM cycle. I use the addon MageAlert and it works very well to let me know when I have a MBar or HS proc and I rarely miss one because of it.

1. Make sure you are button mashing. There is a small "spell queue" that you can put your next cast into, so make sure you do not waste any time doing this. Many mages have been successful without button mashing, so I am told, but I have not seen any.
2. Don't miss any opportunity to use a proc. MBar adds a lot to your DPS and DPM, don't miss them.
3. If you want to compete, go all out. Food, Flasks, Potions, Enchants, Gems and all that.

I would also recommend a MH+OH rather than the Staff. In almost all cases, staves are subpar dps when compared to the MH+OH combos. The other 2 Mages didn't even use Living Bomb or Hotstreak correctly either, so if you play it right you can overtake them (if that is actually your goal, personally I love the competition).

The problem is that I doubt you will be able to get an Innervate in Ulduar so that doesn't really help you learn to manage your mana.

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates.

 

Pyrates

You're misreading wws, I do have 16 AM casts, and i'm pretty sure I didn't miss any procs save those that were overwritten (I use power auras for that). As far as equip goes, the staff is my best option now, and that'll probably be it till Ulduar. Btw, part of the bugging is that I think I managed my mana perfectly, I ended with like 1-2k mana left only using ABspamMBarr and AB3AM as cycles.

But there's an interesting point: I use quartz to show the lag and try to push the button in the right moment. Would I be better of mashing? Would I risk losing AM ticks?

 

Thegoodman

My mistake, I was only looking at the non-crit hits. Your AB:AM ratio is 56:80 which is close to where it should be. The only issues I can see are consumables and the possible time lost between casting if your timing is off.

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates.

 

Phatpharm

One thing I noticed (when comparing mages) was that you ended up with only 9 Mbarr procs, whereas there were 17+ Hot streak procs.

I have very similar stats (SP / Haste) so I will post my Patch parse. It unfortunately isn't my best due to mana shortages in the raid. (Arcane still favors party makeup, and some raid leaders seem to think that they can slap together groups randomly now) I say this because I was forced into a AB2AM rotation near the end and had to Evo at 200k left >.<

Wow Web Stats

(Holding back rant on Manatide, 5 druids with innervate, and 2 Hymns of Hope)

 

Narcis

So I've been farming DM for a while now and I've noticed something strange about frost nova. Why is it that when I pop LB on a mob and then frost nova, 1 tick of LB will break the nova but if I just sit back and blizzard a group of frost nova'd mobs, they'll sit for the whole duration of the nova? LB dot was ticking for around 775 and blizzard was doing about 730 hits and 1125 crits. How does the frost nova mechanic actually work with breaking on damage?

 

Clownbaby

I've seen plenty of information on high-level pvp hit caps, but is there any way to determine how much hit a 39 mage twink should have?

 

Dejah-Thoris

There's a very informative page over on WoWWiki:

Spell hit - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft