Oasu

Dear Abby,

Just Kidding.

I am a mage who has several questions for the very educated here @ Elitist Jerks. I feel like I sometimes don't exactly understand the best mechanics of my class to the fullest ability and reading the posts in this forum with all the math makes my head spin. I try my best to do the spell rotations and other things that I learn here and it has shown some improvement but I am looking for some assistance.

I have several questions and I don't really know where to go to get the statistical information you probably require. I've seen people talking about rawr.mage and other programs like WWS but do not have experience with them. I am currently toying with rawr.mage but still haven't figured out it's entire use.

Anyways, on to the questions:

1. I currently am a FFB spec (0/58/13) and I don't typically see the DPS that I would like (usually around 2k depending on criticals and hot streaks, although my crit % is low) and Im wondering if I am doing something wrong in my FFB spell rotation of scorch x2, Living Bomb, FFB until scorch is about to expire, scorch, LB, back to FFB ... I am just beginning to experiment with potions like haste and critical, is there a particular one that is more suitable for us than others?

2. Are there any macro's out there for using your trinkets and your additional abilities like Icy Veins and Combustion automatically everytime they pop up?

3. I was considering going to the Arcane spec that I tried recently (58/3/11 I think it was, normal cookie cutter spec) and I saw greater amounts of DPS was told that despite the higher dps numbers the overall dmg was significantly less based on the fact you don't get the DoT effect of Ignite. With the upcoming changes to spirit and crit %'s of FFB and Molten Armor, is this spec worth getting and sticking with? My thought is the increase from student of the mind plus spirit focused gear will push your crit rating as high as with FFB. I don't have any math or numbers to reference tho so I don't know.

4. If the above spec was to be chosen I have read on here that the typical spell rotation is Arcane Blast x3 and then AM repeated with double cast of AM if Missle Barrage procs? What is the point of Arcane Barrage in this build if it's not used or is it only used in certian situations? Also, what glyphs would best be utilized in this setup? My guess would be the increased mana regen, arcane blast and arcane missle major glyphs and then whatever minor you want, right?


Sorry for the long winded questions but I am in serious need of help and looking for some solid answers that I can use to educate myself and also enhance my abilities. I am serious about getting better, by whatever means necessary.

My character name is Oasu on Quel'Dorei realm, alliance draenai mage level 80 for looking up armor or statistics or whatever. I am more than happy to answer any necessary questions to the best of my ability via these forums, private message, or my personal email @ j t o m p s o n @ g m a i l . c o m

Thanks and Have a Good Day!

Oasu, 80 Mage

 

Griggsy

That DPS sounds pretty low if you are referring to raids where you have the various buffs and debuffs. I just looked at your armory and you should be doing better than that. Are you making sure to fire off your pyroblasts when hot streak procs? Also, how is your latency and FPS? These can both effect DPS as well.

I notice you are still using the Spellstrike Hood which requires tailoring to use. Right now you get zero benefit from that hat since you are not a tailor. In fact it acts as an empty slot for you right now.

Also, your hit rating is fine if you are in a 25-man raid with shadow priest and/or Moonkin, but if you are doing 10-man runs without either you may see some misses which will lower your DPS.

Blizzard does not allow any UI actions that automate these kinds of actions so the answer is no.

You might want to think of re-itemizing somewhat if you are thinking of doing 57/3/11. That spec values haste more than crit.

Check out Manly's arcane thread for information on spell rotations.

 

brutalmagics

Quick Question. What is the Hit Cap for a Arc Mage, with no other buffs except for the Talents. I am a little confused as I see several diff numbers. I believe it's 268. Can someone confirm, or correct. TY

 

Oasu

This is the best spell hit reference I have found so far ...

According to this it is 268 I believe.

See for youself:

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

 

Raencloud

Your rotation is a little unclear. Are you only casting LB after you scorch? If so, that is wrong. You should be casting LB every time it falls off the target as highest priority (possibly second to refreshing scorch if it came down to LB then having to do 2 scorches or scorch and then LB). Wild Magic is the superior potion for FFB.

You can make a macro that attempts to use all of that each time you press the button. For example:

/cast Icy Veins
/cast Combustion
/use [insert trinket name]
/cast Frostfire Bolt

Assuming you use that macro to cast your FFB, it would cast IV, Combustion, trinket, and whatever else you add in there as soon as it's up. However, I would strongly recommend against this. Quite often you will not want to use them as soon as they are up, because it's usually better to stack them. It's also always better to use them during heroism, preferably during molten fury time, so if say the fight was 5 minutes, you could use all of them at the beginning, but since you would not be able to use them a 3rd time during a 5 minute fight, you would want to wait to use them the 2nd time until later in the fight. This will in fact have a very large impact on your DPS.

The spec is 57/3/11, I'll assume that was just a typo because the one you posted is 72 talents anyway. Arcane is actually arguably the best spec right now, with fireball being the counter-argument. Next patch, however, fireball and FFB actually both pull ahead of arcane (or at the very least arcane looks much less appealing but that's a whole different discussion that I'm not getting into). There is some truth to increased DPS but lower dmg with arcane, but that's related to your dps uptime. If you don't have to stop casting with either spec, then your dps will directly correlate to your dmg. If you are going OOM, then many dps meters will track your dps uptime as when you have casted in the past 5 seconds and thus will inflate your dps even if you do lower total damage. Fireball and FFB suffer the same, but the dots applied by those are included in your dps uptime, which means even if you don't cast for 5 seconds, the dot is still ticking, and thus your still dpsing.

Student of the Mind is pretty much garbage, even next patch. Only the extreme players that are sacrificing other talents (ie Arcane Barrage, Arcane Subtetly, Arcane Stability, or possibly Combustion in some cases) will even pick up any points into it.

Arcane uses a 2cycle DPS style because the max DPS rotation is unsustainable on the majority of fights. The max DPS cycle is to cast AB until MB procs, and then use AM, but only after at least 3 ABs (ABSpam3MBAM); this is the rotation you should always use during APs. The 2nd cycle is either AB3AM, which casts 3 ABs and then AM and ignores procs completely, or AB3[Abarr or Mbarr] which casts Abarr whenever a MB has not proc'd before the 3rd AB. The second one is slightly higher dps, but less mana efficient, and thus is often ignored in favor of the first one.

Note: You never cast AM without a 3stack of AB unless you are using some other mana saving rotations that you can find in Manly's arcane thread post.

Glyphs would be AB, AM, and Molten Armor. Some people prefer using Mage Armor (and the glyph) instead, because it's more forgiving to mana management, but Molten Armor is superior if you can handle it.


If you are just starting to raid, I would suggest either arcane or FFB. Arcane is less hit dependent and may be better early on if you can figure out the playstyle. Fireball needs too much hit from gear and isn't mana efficient enough to warrant use early on IMO.

 

Griggsy

You need 17% to be hit capped. Precision and Arcane Focus will give you 6% leaving you with another 11% to obtain from buffs and/or itemization (about 289 hit rating I believe)

Good info at The Arcane thread

 

Oasu

Thanks for the timely response.

I am pretty sure that I hit all my pyroblasts because I use magealert to tell me when they are proccing. My biggest thing I think is that I don't use combustion and Icy Veins and stuff everytime Im supposed too. Latency and FPS are almost always not an issue unless it's server side causing the slowdown.

I've been trying for awhile to replace my hood but never get any lucky drops. I'll keep that in mind though and work on replacing it ASAP.

I didn't think any macros were available but you never know until you ask.

As far as spell hit, switching to an arcane spec and being draenai with a 57/3/11 spec would mean I could theoretically reduce my spell hit down by almost 40 in favor of haste gems and/or other things of that nature. The arcane spec would need some retooling of my gear, could you give me some examples and explanations if it's not too big a hassle?

I've been reading thru the arcane spec thread and I will continue to do so.

Thanks for your time.

Oasu

 

odyz

One of the best if not the best pre raid helm is hat of wintry doom. It's a tailored headpiece and very inexpensive to make, also allowing a meta gem with it for chaotic skyflare diamond.

Your crit is also on the low side in my opinion with a heavier crit dependant build in FFB.

We could definitly give you a better breakdown of your fights if you could provide a WWS to go through.

 

Oasu

I am not familiar with WWS, if someone could explain I would gladly provide some raw numbers to help diagnose the problem and possibly give some solutions.

I will definitely look up that head slot item and thanks alot for some of the clarification on multiple topics.

Everyone's help is much appreciated.

 

Swindley

This is false. Only the 2 piece setbonus require tailoring, not the hood. Not suggesting he keeps the hood of course, just correcting wrong information.

 

Magelove

There is a macro in the ffb thread for living bomb, allowing it to cast itself every 12 seconds if i remember correctly, i think it was something like:

/cast living bomb reset=12. (this may be slightly wrong as i cant find the specific post again.

Well my question is could you use this with cd abilities such as icy veins or arcane power, i.e icy veins on a 2 min cooldown would be:

/cast icy veins reset=120

The post at the top of this page sparked the idea if it was possible to use macros that could effectively automate the activation of these abilities.

 

Mynak

For Living Bomb this macro should do the trick
For Icy Veins and what not you'd have to be spamming a seperate macro most likely and I doubt you could use this with the Living Bomb macro

 

Thegoodman

While automating abilities like Icy Veins and Combustion can be useful to beginners, I wouldn't recommend it for the seasoned raider if you are FFB or Fire. You can get more out of your abilities by stacking them at the correct times. If you put everything in 1 macro, you might cast all of your cooldowns when the boss is at 45% and you won't be taking advantage of Molten fury.

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates.

 

swiss

You are not taking full advantage of the frost talents. Normally you would want to spec (0/53/18) to get full advantage out of all fire and frost talents for the FFB spec. This is more then likely why your dps is falling short right now.

Plus with a well made raid you are 60 points over hit cap. You are leaving a lot of dps on the table being that far over hit.

 

willem11

works just fine, it will cast icy veins when its off cooldown, and continue casting frostfire bolt if its on cooldown. But as said before, its recommended to have at least a seperate cooldown macro so you can time your cooldowns better. It might be valid to use this during trash tho when you know your more then 2 minutes away from a boss.

Is also a usefull trash macro that makes sure you dont waste cooldowns while doing trash.

 

cbags

It will work just fine, but if your concerned about not using the talents that provide you with DPS increases...binding them to you nuke will only make a marginal increase.

A suggestion would be to have a couple of different macros, or use modifiers for that macro'd main nuke.

Cooldown stacking is where Fire gets it's real punch.

Silent Justice, Kilrogg US

 

Carteret

Why exactly is Fire Blast not used in the Frostfire rotation? I searched but could find no explanation.

 

Pheroz

In the first post of the Frostfire thread, there is a chart with the DPS per Casttime of all the available spells. Since Fireblast is lower DPSC then FFB, there is no reason to cast it when you could be FFBing instead. The only reason to use Fireblast is when you moving and cant refresh living bomb or cast an instant pyro.

More simply, Fire Blast is not used becuase doing so would lower DPS.

 

Thegoodman

Fire Blast has no additional gains from Spellpower like Fireball or Frostfire Bolt and no reduced cast time like Fireball and Hotstreak-Pyroblast. This means it does not scale as well as those spells and just gets its base spell damage bonus. Read this WoW Wiki on Spell Power Coefficients to learn more. It just doesn't have a high enough base damage to merit spending a GCD on it.

At some point back in BC the math was done and it was determined that Fire Blast is not worth the GCD at around 1000 spell power as its scaling falls behind other spells.

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates.

 

Zerstorung

I've got a question on re-scorching early. Lets assume.

Lets say you have 1.5s left on your LB before it explodes, and 10s left on the Scorch debuff. Is it better to Scorch for the 1.5s remaining and refresh LB immediately, or Fireball and overlap 1.5s (1s hasted) before refreshing LB?

 

Exodus-SG

Not sure if this been asked before, is it worth pre-stacking (or keeping existing stack) for Illustration of Dragon Soul trinket (with arcane explosion+drink) at the risk of wasting the proc on Embrace of the Spider or Dying curse assuming you can't predict when the next pull will happen?

Can't quite figure the maths.

 

Xmasman

try early enough to stack Illustration of Dragon than the proc of the other trinket will be ready when starting.

in the discussion about macros i think its the best way is to combine only trinkets with managem and one skill like icy veins or combustion or arcane power and your main nuke skill
build another macro where you change icy veins with combustion on another button.

than use the macro with the skill which has a longer duration first and after that use the second macro.
later on you can use them seperatly when coming to point like 35% or a special phase in combat.

 

Magelove

My use of abilities depends on the fight length, if i can get two icy veins and 2 arcane powers into a fight then i will, one at the start and one at the burn phase come 35%, which is when our raid group blows all cooldowns such as heroism. Does anyone know if you can set a macro to activate an ability in relation to your current targets health?

 

Tempest1

If you want to safely ramp up IotDS pre-combat, you can unequip dying curse (or other proc trinket) while u ramp up IotDS and equip it just before the pull. This assumes your tanks are doing a countdown or something so you will know when to equip the curse safely.

 

Thegoodman

As an arcane mage, why wouldn't you always stack your cooldowns as often as possible? Since you don't have Molten Fury, any time is just as good as another for using cooldowns (assuming you are not stopping for some reason).

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates.