Romple

We had 2 mages when we cleared Jaraxxus this week. It was our first meeting with him and I didn't realize his Nether Power buff was an instant 10 stacks! I thought he just popped it on a timer or randomly. But with only 2 mages responsible for stealing it we quickly ran out of mana. One time I had 7 stacks and was doing insane damage, but having to waste ~5000 mana every round of buffs is too much. When I told the raid we'd need help purging him then I was down to only 2 or 3 stacks to steal, but at least I wasn't burning through my mana.

Perhaps with 3 mages it wouldn't be so bad. Everyone could take 3 stacks and only burn 1800 or so mana a round.

The damage buff is nice, and I think they probably just did it to help validate the existence of Spellsteal, but to me it's more important to just get rid of the buffs than to inflate your DPS. The fight's about control, not massive damage really. It's more important to keep your tanks safe - and hence have the buff dispelled as quickly as possible.

 

odyz

We also had 2 mages this round and we found that splitting the steals for the first round was the most benefitial. After that if we could grab one or two on subsequent rounds it was great but we had shaman's and priests dispelling alot of them as well.

With this pattern we never ran out of mana to dispel the entire stack.

 

Alatyr

It's basically a wash. Checking the PTR numbers from the latest SimulationCraft run, Warlocks lose about 300 DPS by going from Destro to Affliction, while mages lose about 200 DPS going from Arcane to a Fireball build without using Scorch. Add the extra DPS loss that Fire incurs while Scorching and you're not looking at much difference.

 

Merope

For Jaraxxus, we had three mages for a 25 man kill, each of us stealing the buff every time it popped. The DPS done and the number of buffs gained broke down like this:
1) Me, with 16 stacks and doing 1.1% more damage than the next highest player
2) Mage #2, taking 9 stacks, doing .4% more than the next
3) Warlock
4) Mage #3, taking a whopping 25 stacks, and doing about the same as the lock

Mages 1 and 2 were TtW Fire; Mage 3 was FFB. Only I evo'd (though I probably could have pushed through it, and I ended up purposefully clipping it). I think that having a few of those stacks purged off next week would be more beneficial to all of us, mostly so mage number 3 isn't wasting every CD stealing something that she doesn't get to use.

I'm actually surprised that spellstealing it remained an option this week -- I expected something fun like that to get squashed pretty quickly.

 

Pasture

Well there's more to it than just 'stealing the stacks'. There are other mechanics going on in the fight, including having to run away from the legion flame, or dpsing the adds that bounce all over the room and constantly go out of range, subsequently wasting the buff. There's also timing cooldowns to tie in with the buff. As Arcane I save my cooldowns until I have my first lot of stacks and then blow Arcane Power/Icy Veins and quickly shoot to the top of the metres by some lead. Generally however it doesn't stay that way because running about from boss abilities or chasing down adds significantly eats into the benefit of the buff later on.

 

Romple

The damage buff is nice but I view spellstealing it as more of a "purge with benefits". Yea DPS is nice but it's more important to make sure you're not giving Jaraxxus the firepower to kill everyone. Last night I got to 5 stacks and popped all my cooldowns ready to unload. Swiftly after the Mistress grabbed me and took me for a ride. Then when I got down had to iceblock cause I was incinerated and healers were already stressed. So there went my nice double damage buff and all my cooldowns. But I still purged him of 5 stacks which helped mitigate a lot of damage, which is the more important point of spellstealing Nether Power.

 

Pasture

I will agree it feels more like a purge than anything else. I'm tempted to ask my raid leader if, for the duration of the buff, I can stay on the boss rather than having to chase down adds (which is a complete waste of the buff) but I'm guessing that's not going to go down a treat.

 

epoh

Actually, that's how we completed it. The two mages stood on the back side of the boss (closest to the doors the gnome comes in) and we focus 100% on the boss, and melee does the same. The rest of the dps focuses on adds when called for. If the adds come close enough to us we'll drop LB on them, but otherwise the only time we move is because of fire or volcano, which don't seem to happen much on that side for some reason.

 

Cython

That's what our guild does as well. We have 3 mages on the fight, each Spell stealing and staying just on the boss for the entire fight, while the other range/melee deals with the adds. Makes it fairly easy.

 

Arantes

DBM will tell you when he puts the buff up (and of course so should focusing him), so simply switching to Jaraxxus when it's up and switching back is also an option.

 

Randull

I think his point is time lost switching or with the crazy bitch jumping out of range is amplified when you have 40/60% damage buff. So Raid dps is increased if the mages are focusing the boss.

 

medloh

You can get rid of the lost time switching targets by putting Jarax on focus, and making a focus spellsteal macro. I do the same thing for the Runemaster on IC to steal his shield.

 

Cython

Not time lost, as much as, keeping mages on the boss the entire fight = the boss dies faster then moving them off to deal with adds, thus lowering the # of adds you have to deal with in the first place....it made the most sense to have the mages do this, due to the buff to their damage vs other dps classes on him, thanks to the SS.

 

Pasture

It's not about time lost switching to the boss to spellsteal. That can be handled with a macro. It's about have 60% increased damage and having two chase down infernals or the mistress who are constantly going out of range. You have a 60% damage buff but you're not using it effectively if you have to chase adds down. Staying on the boss, however, means the raid will see the full benefit of damage boost you're receiving, where as staying on the adds you're effectively negating the buff every time your target bounces out of range.

 

Romple

Jarraxus isn't a patchwerk dps race though. Obviously the faster you kill a boss the better, but it's misleading thinking you can ignore adds because it'll hurt your DPS on Jarraxus... But that's up to the raid, every situation's different.

But to minimize non-DPS time I use

#showtooltip
/target Lord Jaraxxus
/cast spellsteal

and for IC same thing

#showtooltip
/target Runemaster Molgeim
cast spellsteal

 

Light4

I use Xperl with a separate focus frame with all buffs/debuffs displayed. Then I put the focus on the target which I#m on duty for spellsteal and use the makro:

/stopcast
/cast [target=focus] spellsteal


This way you don't have to loose the target and are very fast with the spellsteal. Especially useful for IC, since the shield won't hold long anyway.

 

medloh

Question for mages that have 25man Freya +3 on farm: Do you use a spec with LB on 25man hardmode since the patch? And if so do you spam LB on as many little lashers as possible during the little lasher phase? Or would you recommend a deep frost build?

We're working on Freya +3, and I can't decide if LB on that phase is good or bad. LB does incredibly high dmg that phase, but it's kind of hard to control and may cause some to blow up early. LB's aoe range is a little small and may not hit all of them and its ticks are taking some down faster than others. We're using a strat where we keep them tightly grouped, then a tank does an aoe taunt and pulls them all away from raid and we finish them off.

 

ash2ash

The first mage would probably be best off going frost for the control from imp blizzard / WE nova. If you're the nova bitch, keep in mind that you're there for control, not for dps; your damage is going to be terrible. There's really no benefit for any other mages going frost once your raid gets good at controlling the lashers phase. Just keep in mind that you probably don't want to go LB-crazy until right before the taunt occurs, lest your explosions start popping lashers in the middle of the raid.

Ghostcrawler - "I'm the asshole that nerfed your class" - Blizzcon 2009

 

diamount

Hello

This is my first post on these forums and wanted to ask a question about what's the best build for a fresh level 80 doing 5 man dungeons and possibly Naxx, I heard arcane but isn't that supposed to be crit dependant?

 

Gasillio

Any build can succeed in dungeons/heroics. Most people suggest Arcane because it requires less hit (0 actually) to be capped for heroics. In raids you'll need a bit more, but still less than all other specs.

Arcane relies more on haste and spell power than crit. Although crit is not something to run away from nor avoid like the plague, if equal numbers take haste or spell power over crit.

An easy way to start getting geared is to check the Best Non-Raid Mage Gear thread even if it is a tad outdated (it doesn't reflect the 3.2 emblem change). But it will be sufficient.

As for the build in particular, you'll want something like: 57/3/11 although some of the points (Arcane Stability, Arcane Subtlety, Arcane Mind to some extent, and Arcane Flows) might be moved to different parts of the tree depending on what you prefer (Incanter's Absorption, Student of the Mind, Slow, Prismatic Cloak, Arcane Shielding, Magic Attunement) although most of those talents are about survivability rather than dps. For glyphs you should use Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Molten Armor. Minor glyphs can really be anything although I suggest Slow Fall and my favorite, Glyph of the Penguin.

 

Pasture

Arcane is good for heroics not just because of the hit cap but because you can afford to spam Blast a lot more than you could in a raid whilst fishing for Missile Barrage procs, and because of the increased Arcane Power / Ivy Veins uptime on boss fights. Arcane is an incredibly good heroic / raid trash spec.

 

Zerstorung

How do you handle the lasher phase is the big question. The basic system we use is the same, aoe dmg, tank aoe taunt. However, we spread out in a circle around Freya, and we dont count on killing the adds during that one aoe taunt. Adds dont die and we spend the remainder of the phase single targeting them. All of our mages were fire for learning Freya, yes we LB spammed, yes it's amazing.

 

odyz

I was frost for our first Freya kill but have been fire ever since.

However when we do the lasher phases, the entire raid stacks on freya. I throw out four LB's then start a blizzard. We have shockwave and shadowfury before we all scatter to help alleviate any explosion damage which could happen and then pick off the stragglers.

Occasionally we'll get sunbeamed while collapsed but we all follow the tank north and it's never been a problem.

 

Pasture

I've always done Freya+3 as Frost too. The idea was Improved Blizzard for the snare and Ice Barrier for mitigating damage - which is probably the key feature of Frost for Freya+3. Mages are incredibly squishy and will be amongst the first to die unlucky streaks of damage. Ice Barrier is essentially an extra chumk of health to ensure you don't dip too low.

 

Phatpharm

Fire Ward is quite nice for lasher phase. Try and pop it early so you can get a 2nd Ward up during the same phase. Equals about 8k mitigation, potentially more if you are talented into it.

Mr. Crowley \'''/ O \'''/