This post was originally written by Larcix <Haste> Dethecus and was retrieved from the Internet Archive: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> The Guide for Raiding Mages (archive.org)
I am reposting it here for posterity and in case something happens to the archive copy. Note, it is long.
Also note, this post mentions a tool called Rawr. This was a theorycrafting tool we used back in the day; basically a forerunner of Simcraft. AFAIK it is no longer available, but I am leaving the references to it in the post just in case something becomes available for WotLK Classic.
General numbers useful to a mage
166.66 Intellect yields 1% crit.
26.23 Hit Rating yields 1% hit.
45.91 Crit Rating yields 1% crit.
32.79 Haste Rating yields 1% haste.
Any other numbers wanted, such as all coefficients, can be found in my WotLK Guide post:
The haste "cap"
Disclaimer: This is to be used to determine proper cooldown
staggering during heavy cooldown usage, NOT points at which you should stop
gearing for haste.
Fire: With every haste increasing buff I could find (besides
things like Hodir) active at one time (Normal raid buffs, Bloodlust, 2pc T10,
BM, Engineering Gloves, Speed Potion) it would take 1878.25 haste rating to GCD
cap a fireball. Completely impossible. There are NO haste caps for fire.
Frost: With every haste buff fire had + Icy Veins, you would be 30.63 Haste
Rating past the GCD cap with Frostbolt. I think very few
people are actually at this point however, and if you actually cared enough to
pop all of these cooldowns simultaneously, then you probably aren't raiding
Frost.
Arcane: With every haste buff Frost used, you would be 276.16 Haste
Rating past the GCD cap with Arcane Blast. That means that
with zero Haste Rating, you would already need to stagger cooldown usage. Here
is some helpful math to let you adjust your cooldown usage based on your
current gear/available cooldowns.
Table of common haste modifiers:
ABILITY | haste % |
haste rating
Bloodlust | 30 |
IV / PI | 20 |
Speed pot | | 500
2 piece T10| 12 |
Engin Glovs| | 340
Black Magic| | 250
Passive | 1 | 32.79
To find the haste required to cap Arcane Blast, use the formula (7151/x-3279);
for Frostbolt, use (7580/x-3279); for fireball, use (9096/x-3279). If an
ability adds haste rating just adjust the final number, if it gives haste %,
place it at the x.
Examples, using arcane:
Just normal raid buffs: 7151-3279=3872
Just IV/BL: 7151/(1.2*1.3)-3279=1305
IV/BL + SoF(432 haste): (7151/(1.2*1.3)-3279)-432=873
IV/BL + 2pc T10 + EngGlovs: (7151/(1.2*1.3*1.12)-3279)-340=473.8
IV/BL + 2pc T10 + EngGlovs + BlckMgc: (7151/(1.2*1.3*1.12)-3279)-340-250=224
The hard cap is unattainable, but many soft caps exist in perfectly attainable
situations with heavy CD usage. I had 872 haste, and incidentally that gets my
Abl cast time to exactly 1 second(lol) with Scale of Fates and IV/Bl:
2.5/1.1464/1.2/1.3/(1+(432+872)/3279)=1.00016 second cast time. Once I get 2pc
T10 I'll save SoF until IV drops, because of the haste cap.
The hit cap
For all mage specs hit is the most valuable stat you can
have, period. It can not be stacked indefinitely like Spell Power however and
is capped at a very specific value for each spec.
Reaching the hit cap should be the first thing on all new mages minds, which
spec you choose determines what value of hit you need. Arcane has the lowest
requirement at 210, followed by FFB at 289 and taking up the rear is the all
mighty TtW-fb spec that requires 368. Actually, to be exact its 367.24, but
because that last point of hit is only covers up a final .24, the effectiveness
of the hit rating is essentially cut in a quarter, so point for point, at 367
hit, it would be more beneficial to get some other stat.
It is recommended that you have two gear sets; one gear set has the above
numbers which assume that you have a Moonkin or Shadow Priest to supply the
necessary 3% hit debuff to the boss; the second gear set doesn't assume this
and can be used on some trash pulls(most trash aren't level 83, so the hit cap
vs them is only 6%, not the bosses 17% ) and/or if you don't have a Moonkin or
Shadow Priest in the raid or group, usually happens in a 10 man, shouldn't be a
problem in a 25 man raid.
As a side note, the hit cap for heroics is only 6%, not 17%, because the bosses
are only level 82, not 83. Because of this, a gear-less arcane mage is already
hit capped and a FFB mage can be hit capped by the mere presence of a Moonkin
or Shadow Priest and/or with only 79 Hit Rating.
Enchants
While many things change between specs, enchants are not one
of them. Each slot that can be enchanted has fairly obvious enchants. Haste for
cloak, spell power for weapon/wrist/gloves/etc, stats for chest, the various
reputation enchants for helm and shoulders. Not much info to give on this
topic. There are three exceptions.
Legs: The leg enchant has 50 SP and 30 spr or 30 stm,
dps or survivability, most mages will choose DPS as a we are a
DPS class.
Feet: Tuskars Vitality vs Icewalker; the added run speed can be amazing in even
moderately movement intensive fights which there are plenty of in Ulduar/ICC.
Pre Ulduar/TOC and/or under the hit cap always use Icewalker though.
Weapon: Black Magic vs +SP; for a staff, +81 SP almost always comes out ahead.
For a 1H'er, it can change based on your current haste rating. Check rawr to
see if you should use BM vs +SP.
Gems
Gems are another example of something about the mage class
that is quite straight forward to all specs. Which are the best gems to use
depends a lot on the spec, and sometimes even more on the gear level. The
following is a general guide on mage geming in PvE. Note that you can use the
rare quality gem or the epic quality depending on your need.
META
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (The currently accepted BiS mage Meta gem)
RED
Runed (19/23 Spell Power)
YELLOW
Rigid (16/20 Hit Rating). (If you are short on hit)
Veiled (9/12 Spell Power, 8/10 Hit Rating) (If you only need ~8/10 for the hit
cap)
Potent (9/12 Spell Power, 8/10 Crit Rating)
Reckless (9/12 Spell Power, 8/10 Haste Rating)
BLUE
Purified (9/12 Spell Power, 8/10 Spirit) (Generally, only use these for the
meta requirement)
Notes on geming:
There are critical points where which gem is best for a socket swaps
dramatically. Like going from crit to haste, or going from Runed's in blue, to
Purified's. Creating a list of "general rules" to gemming is just
more confusing then helpful, because there would be 30 exceptions. I advise
simply plugging your char into rawr and having it spit out your gemming.
Threat Management
Like all DPS classes you should always be watchful of your
threat vs any mob that you are attacking. For this purpose I highly recommend
(read: must have) a threat meter, normally Omen. You
should normally be at ranged when fighting creatures so if you are watching
Omen, you will pull agro at 130%, as it shows you. If you hop into melee for
whatever reason you will suddenly only need to be at 110% threat to pull agro
and if you were sitting between 110% and 130% he will happily turn, one shot
you, and continue on his marry little way.
Threat capping. Your tanks threat is an ever increasing number, but some
tanks are better at generating threat then others. In 5 man settings threat
should be insanely easy to generate for any tank while at higher gear levels
DPS scales better then threat and you can start become limited in your DPS
because to DPS any more would cause you to pull agro. If there are any adds in
the fight you can swap to that mob for a while and back to the boss to continue
to dps but still lose relative threat on the boss. If there is no other mob to
attack you can use Invisibility or Mirror Image.
Invisibly. Once this spell is used you lose 10% threat per second until
after 3 seconds you instantly loose all threat on all mobs, where you should
then use a spell or macro to drop out of the Invis effect. I use this on the
end of Mirro
Mirror Image. A lot of mages use MI as a DPS boost(and with 4pcT10 that
becomes everybody), but one it's most important mechanics is it's Fade ability.
Upon use you lose 90 million threat (literally) on all mobs you have threat
with. At the end of 30 seconds you gain back that 90 million threat you lost. I
use this mainly for when I actually do pull agro I can pop it and the boss runs
back to the tank, or sometimes one shotting some of the MI's before getting
taunted. Or if you are threat capped you can pop MI, go balls out for 25 seconds
and then pop Invis to lose any and all threat, nice combo.
There are a couple
ways to judge MI's duration. I use the following macro that I believe only
works if you have an Ace addon installed. (Don't spam the macro though or in 25
seconds you'll spam party chat)
Q u o t e:
#showtooltip
/cast Mirror Image
/in 25 /p Mirror Ending in 5 seconds.
You can also use
Q u o t e:
/dbm timer 30 Mirror Image
but this can be hard to spot on some bosses(rarely).
Dual Specs
Many mages will have two of these specs as their dual specs
because some fights work better with one more then the other. For example, I
main spec Arcane because I like how it performs and I top damage meters with it
right up there with any other class. My offspec is TtW-fb for fights like Hodir
and Vezax where the haste brings Fireball to a sub 1 second cast time. If I
used Arcane on either of those fights, which I have done when forgetting to
respec before the fight, the haste is almost wasted on the short cast times of
Abl and AM and my mana becomes an real problem that I find is solved using a
fire spec. I've been thinking of use FFB however because I feel more
comfortable with the spec and have had better personal experience with it over
TtW-fb. We'll see.
Which spec should I be?
To a fresh 80 mage, what spec you should go depends on what
you are going to be doing exactly. If you don't plan to raid much then going
TtW-frost is a nice way go as it not only is actually good at that gear level
but is amazing for heroics. If you want to raid and gear up asap going Arcane
or FFB would probably be better. If you go FFB make sure you get the hit cap
quickly and really work on your crit so that Hot Streaks are not few and far
between, later on getting some more haste. If you go Arcane don't be put out if
your numbers aren't that great right off the bat. Arcane takes a little getting
used to, but once you figure it out I find it a really rewarding spec. Only try
TtW-fb once you have the crit and the hit to support it.
When should I go TtW-fb, or should I ever? TtW-fb is almost an
outdated spec at this point. At the lowest gear levels this spec does laughable
damage, any other spec would do more. Even in Nax25 gear the damage this spec
does would be outstripped by FFB or Arc. The only time you would want to go
this spec is in mostly Ulduar+ gear. However, with the changes to Arc in 3.2.2
Arc should out perform TtW-fb at all gear levels in single
target DPS. If there are ~3+ mobs that can chain LB on or that LB is exploding
on TtW-fb would out DPS Arc, but that only happens on maybe Kologarn or some
other fight with multiple high Hp adds.
Try each of the specs and see what your playstyle is. One may appeal to you
more even if other people say you can do better as a different spec, but do not
limit yourself on preconceptions. Each of the three main spec, even if one is
theoretically better then the other, can perform well when played correctly and
geared properly. However, to reiterate, using any frost spec to DPS in anything
but 5 mans is not the greatest idea except with a few minor exceptions, sorry
all you Frosties out there, the truth hurts :(.
Final Thoughts
Most of this information I learned from browsing these same
forums. When possible I added my own experience, having played each of the
specs a bit myself, and my own theories/thoughts that are mostly backed on my
experience and that of others. If you disagree with something or want more
information on a topic, whether it's in this guide or not, as long as it
revolves around raiding, I will try and answer your questions and update my
guide accordingly. This guide is not set in stone, and nothing that I've said
is necessarily the gospel truth, much is open for debate and I'll try and show
both sides of an issue if possible, letting you decide for yourself. I am just
hoping that this information helps raiders new and old be the best they can be.
This is also my first real in depth guide I've written, so if you have any
suggestions on format or style, don't be afraid to bring it up. Enjoy :)
The rest of this guide goes into more detail about the three main(and one
kind-of) raiding specs for a mage; Frostfire Bolt(FFB), Torment the Weak -
Fireball(TtW-fb) and Arcane(Arc).
Note: I'm leaving the Wowhead talent links in on the off chance they work when Wowhead releases a WotLK talent calculator. In any case though you can probably get a good idea for the essential talents if you just read the entire section for a build.
Arcane [Arc] spec. (53/3/11 +4)
The default/cookie cutter spec for Arcane:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0Vsz0fzxGuMxedcZbhf0o:Nzio
Variables of the spec: you can get 2/2 Arcane Subtlety, 3/5 Arcane Stability
(With imp conc aura, that puts you at 100% interrupt reduction), Student of the
Mind (spirit = more mana = more crit), Magic Attunement (extra range is handy)
or Slow (just generally a fun/good talent for one point, its often avoid in a
purely raid spec, but I like to grab it.). Incanters Absorption is a great
talent when used properly but is kind of hard to work into a spec. It works off
of all Absorb mechanics and is amazing if you have disc priest to bubble you or
in certain fights like TV.
The Key talents/points to this build:
Precision + Arcane Focus. These two talents with the
MK/SP buff gives Arc mages the lowest hit cap of all the specs at 8%. Will be
talked about more in the Hit Cap section.
Icy Veins + Arcane Power. These two talents used in tandem during a
Bloodlust/Heroism is an insane amount of damage and if you watch the meter you
can normally see your place jump up, especially if you get a few Mbarr procs
during it.
Missile Barrage. This talent turns your slow and clunky Arcane Missiles
into a machine gun. This is the RNG of Arcane and this talent can
single-handedly ruin your mana pool or skyrocket your dps.
Focus Magic. Not exactly a deal breaker, but it's something that you
should watch for and make sure you keep it up on some one who crits enough to
have you keep your 3% crit buff on you at all times. On more healing intensive
fights putting it on a healer, like a Holy Paladin because they crit a lot, is
a good choice for this buff. However, swapping it with another mage (So you
each get 6% crit) is a common scenario.
Arcane Flows. This talent is what let Arc mages succeed in PvE. Giving
evocation a 2 minute cooldown allows the Arcane mage to keep his mana up, even
when going full out.
Arcane is a very interesting spec and played quite differently then TtW-fb or
FFB. You need to watch your mana and how the fight progresses and use your mana
in the best way possible, making constant judgment calls, however all the work
is worth it, once you get it down your DPS is amazing.
Threat. If you specced 2/2 Arcane Subtlety you should almost never pull
agro unless you get a lot of chain crits/Mbarr procs at the very beginning of a
fight and the tank doesn't crit with you. A lot of mages drop one point in AS
because agro is so little of a problem that can spare that point somewhere else
in the bloated Arcane tree, it's still good to have for fights like Twin
Valkyr's.
Mobility. Many people think that Arcane has the best mobility of the
specs because of Abarr, but in the highest DPS rotations Abarr isn't even used,
so you are left with zero mobility. However, when you do need to move you have
plenty of options with Abarr and Fire Blast to maximize your damage done. Not
even Mimi hard mode requires enough movement that a well timed blink and some
Abarrs can't let you be on the GCD at all times as Arc when played well.
AoE. When it comes to AoE, Arcane is definitely not left behind. If you
pop Arcane Power + Icy Veins + other cooldowns, blizzard will normally dip
below 4 seconds and under great conditions under 3 seconds for the entire
channel, on top of that, Arcane has the most Spell Power of the three specs and
with Arcane Power amping up blizzard even more, you can double the next person
in damage in any AoE pull for the duration of the cooldowns. Without the
cooldowns the AoE is lackluster, but AP has such a low cooldown, it's up almost
whenever you want it. Keeping the ground dots from Flamestrike ranks 8 and 9
rolling is an aoe DPS increase. You need to make sure the mobs are close
together (small radius) and won't move for the duration, or I would say that
blizzard would still be better.
Gearing
Reach the hit cap of 210 Hit Rating. If you are below the
hit cap, gem, eat hit food, whatever is needed to reach the cap. After that you
mainly want Spell Power. Choosing between crit and haste is more delicate. At
all gear levels, Haste Rating will be better for you then Crit Rating, Spirit
or Intellect, point for point. The hard part is finding the gear with only
Spell Power and Haste on it. Neither Intellect or Spirit are very good, but
neither are very bad either.
The Rotation
Arcane has a very intricate rotation depending on the fight, your current mana
and mana regening cooldowns. Abilities: Evocation(Evo), Arcane Blast(Abl),
Arcane Missiles(AM), Missile Barrage(Mbarr), Arcane Barrage(Abarr).
Abl has a very distinct mechanic which is what gives Arcane such an interesting
rotation. As you cast Abl you receive a stacking debuff which increases all
Arcane spells damage by 15% and Abl's mana cost by 175%. What starts as a 5000
nuke for 215 mana, quickly turns into an 8600 nuke costing 1720 mana. Once any
other Arcane spell BESIDES Abl is cast the debuff is reset and Abl is instantly
turned from the worst damage/mana ratio spell in the game to the best. The
problem with the Arcane rotation is finding the happy medium between stacking
the debuff for more damage and removing the debuff for more mana efficiency. As
an important thing to note, you should never clear the debuff using Abarr
unless movement or some phase transition requires it. Always use a none hasted
AM.
The various rotations and their ups and downs, going from most mana intensive
and highest DPS to least are as follows. The format is "Rotation; in
words: info on the rotation"
Abl x[Infinity]; Just spam Abl: this is purely a burn rotation. Can be
used at the end of a fight to burn mana, or a lot during heroic bosses because
the fight lasts 20 seconds.
Abl x[Low Mana / Mbarr]; You simply spam Abl until Mbarr procs, where
you use AM and then repeat: this is your standard rotation. If while spamming
Abl you realize your mana is dipping too low and your mana CD's are taking too
long, then clear it with a none hasted AM and repeat.
Abl x[number less then 4] -> AM; Casting Abl two to three times
before using AM to clear the debuff: The Abl x2 + AM rotation is as low as you
should go in your mana saving endeavor, in a proper raid environment you should
actually gain mana following this rotation.
2pc T10 makes Abl spam not worth it, ever. MBAM increasing your haste by 12%
puts using MBAM ahead of just using Abl.
An aspect of the Arcane rotation I haven't touched on that is very important is
cooldowns and Bloodlust. You want to take the most advantage as possible with
your CD usage. Almost all boss fights have a time when they take increased
damage or where you get a buff, even if it's only a trinket proc; you want to
try and time your CD usage to line up with this moment. While your CDs are
popped it is advisable to go to Abl spam to maximize your damage output. This
is often times not possible because of bad evo's, bad luck or just a low gear
level, but it's a goal. As for Presence of Mind, once it's off CD, wait for the
next time you are casting your 4th Abl (you have 3 stacks), then PoM the next
Abl, which will be a 4 stacker. This gives the extra crit chance to the single
attack that does the most damage. If you need to create your mana gem during a
fight, using PoM then is recommended.
A key point to being able to pull off Arcane spec in a raid is proper mana
management. You should use your mana gem as soon as you hit the popper
deficient so that none of the mana gets wasted. Evo is a trickier subject
though. While Mana Gem costs you zero dps time, you must stop outputting damage
to use evocation, so if possible you want to try and avoid it. Pre 3.2.2 you
would need to use Evo on CD, but now it is much more flexible.
I find myself using evo occasionally anyways, even just following the basic
rotation, but don't worry about it, using evo is definitely better then backing
off to some really low MPS rotation.
As a final tip, try and use evo at the very end of a haste affect(BL / IV /
2pcT10 / etc). Whether you are casting damaging spells or evocation in the
middle of the haste boost doesn't mater, but using evo at the very end
essentially increases the haste buff's duration, giving you a net increase in
DPS. If possible, it's good to pop IV when your evo has ~18 seconds left on CD
and then just evo as soon as it comes up. This is often not possible however
just because of when CDs are blown or not blown, your current mana issues, etc.
Hit Cap
One of the best things about arcane is it's amazingly low
hit cap. With both Elemental Precision and Arcane Focus on your side each
giving you a free 6% hit and with an assumed Moonkin or Shadow Priest, you only
need 8% hit to reach the cap, which is 8% * 26.23 hit per % = 209.84 hit rating.
This low hit cap is a god send for many beginning mages as it's fairly easy to
get even in just heroic gear. Without a MK/SP you need 289 hit rating to be
capped. With a Dranny, you need 184 Hit Rating.
In heroics however, an arcane mage needs zero Hit Rating to be hit capped on
all creatures, very handy. But this also means that any gear with hit on it is
just wasted itemization for a heroic; but this is a raiding guide, and in raids
you still need your Hit Rating above all else.
Glyphs
I could write a bit more on this subject probably, but the
nuts and bolts is that the three glyphs any raiding Arc mage will use are Glyph
of Arcane Blast, Glyph of Arcane Missiles and Glyph of Molten Armor. Using the
Glyph of Molten Armor also means that you will be using Molten Armor as well.
As far as I can tell, there are no exceptions, you really should not run out of
mana as an Arc mage in 3.2.2
Frostfire Bolt [FFB] spec. (0/53/18)
The default/cookie cutter spec for FFB is:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#oZfVcbRhIhVubhctbIccoc
Variables of the spec: If you find that range is a non issue you can drop one
or both points in Flame Throwing and pick up BW or DrB for some extra aoe-ness
and mild raid utility in some scenarios. Most mages like the range however and
find some extra AoE behavior to not mater in anything that does mater.
The Key talents/points to this build:
Ignite + Ice Shards + Burnout. FFB is effected by all
three of these talents giving a default crit modifier of 315%. With set bonuses
(4pc T7.5) and metas (Chaotic Skyflare) your crits become massive and these
three talents working together is what makes this spec as good as it is.
Master of Elements + Frost Channeling + FFB's low mana cost. This spec
is very mana efficient and is the most mana efficient spec available for an end
game mage.
Hot Streak. This talent allows for some massive burst DPS when it procs
when you start sending out multiple instant cast Pyroblasts, especially fun if
you ever PvP with this spec :)
Combustion + Ice Veins. These are your only cooldowns besides 2pc T7.5 +
Mana Gem and/or trinkets. These cooldowns can be a huge boost when used along
side BL/heroism etc.
The main idea of the spec is to grab every talent in the fire and frost trees
which amplify your FFB ability. FFB is effected by nearly all talents that
don't specify a specific ability:
Fire
- Ignite
- Impact
- Burning Soul
- Master of Elements
- Playing with Fire
- Critical Mass
- Fire Power
- Pyromaniac
- Combustion
- Molten Fury
- Empowered Flame
- Hot Streak
- Burnout
Frost
- Frostbite
- Ice Shards
- Permafrost
- Elemental Precision
- Piercing Ice
- Frost Channeling
- Winters Chill
- Arctic Winds
- Fingers of Frost
- Chilled To the Bone
This spec doesn't hit that hard if you didn't crit, but once the crits start
rolling you get absolutely massive crit numbers from the 324.45% crit modifier
and Hot Streak(HS) procs.
Threat. Both fire specs cause a very large amount of threat. If you
chain crit 2 or so Pyros at the very beginning of a fight you will probably
pull agro. Watching Omen closely at the beginning of a fight can save you life
as you can see the tank's current threat and see how much room you have to be crit
happy. Popping Mirror Image at the beginning of a fight can be very useful too.
Mobility. FFB can use their instant Pyro's from Hot Streak and Living
Bomb refreshes to move a short distance with zero dps lost. If that isn't
enough and you are in range then Fire Blast and even Ice Lance, in a pinch, can
both be used while moving to try and do as most damage as possible during the
course of a boss fight.
AoE. This spec also has decent AoE abilities from the points in the
frost tree amping up Blizzard along with the fire tree amping up Flamestrike.
Using those two spell along with Combustion and IV can give some really high
dps numbers on AoE pulls.
Gearing
Reach the hit cap of 289 Hit Rating. If you are below the
hit cap, gem, eat hit food, whatever is needed to reach the cap. After that you
mainly want Spell Power. Choosing between crit and haste is more delicate. At
lower gear levels you need to get your crit up. You want at least 300 crit
rating before really trying to get some haste. After you get a lot of crit
rating, haste will start to be better then crit. At that point a fine balance
is reached where dropping one makes the other better, so you want an even mix
of both. Rawr can give you your stat values if you want to see how your stats
stack up in any given item set.
The Rotation
For this spec your rotation is less of a set order and more
about watching procs and times. Excluding the very beginning of the fight, you
will simply spam FFB over and over, keeping Living Bomb up on all targets you
want it up on, using Hot Streak procs as available and keeping scorch up if
needed. Use the above addons to keep track of the scorch/LB duration and for
when HS procs.
If LB or scorch are about to expire and you just got HS, cast the other then HS
to avoid Ignite Munching (Two crits happening at one time, causing one of the
ignites to cause no damage). If LB and scorch come up at the same time, which
you use first depends on how selfish you are. Up your own damage; cast LB. Up
your raid's damage; cast scorch. Personal preference more then anything, but
most would say scorch first for the betterment of the raid.
At the beginning of a boss or when you are switching to an add/different mob
then cast LB first, followed by scorch, and then continue with the normal
"rotation."
For trash, use LB on all targets that won't die in 12 seconds,
and just go at it, not much to say.
Hit Cap
Frostfire Bolt is effected by Elemental Precision giving it
an extra 3% hit from talents. That means that including the 3% hit gained from
a Moonkin or a Shadow Priest (If they aren't doing it, go /slap them) you need
11% hit. 11% hit * 26.23 hit per % = 288.53 Hit Rating required to reach the
hit cap for a Frostfire Bolt mage. Without a MK/SP you need 367 hit to be
capped. With a Dranny, you need 262 Hit Rating.
A note on the hit cap: a lot of people, even if there is some piece of gear
that would net more dps but doesn't offer the hit cap, would choose the hit cap
because they do not want LB or scorch to miss. That is not only a DPS loss but
throws off the "rotation" and in LB's case costs you a lot of extra
mana.
Glyphs
The one glyph to have if you could have no others is Glyph
of Living Bomb(GoLB). From there you will normally use Glyph of Molten
Armor(GoMA) and Glyph of Frostfire Bolt(GoFFB). If you don't have a warlock and
need to provide the imp Scorch debuff, then dropping ether GoFFB or GoMA would
be the way to go. With really low spirit levels it's better to drop GoMA, with
more gear it's better to drop GoFFB (as MA scales, FFB doesn't). If you can
keep the imp scorch debuff on the target for the duration of a fight then not
having Glyph of Improved Scorch(GoIS) would be better, but that just means you
need to prioritize scorch over other abilities in the last 3-4 seconds of the
debuff, do not let it drop.
In an ideal situation you have a warlock Imp Shadowbolt'ing for the debuff and
you have GoLB +GoMA + GoFFB.
Torment the Weak - Fireball [TtW-fb] spec.
(18/51/0 +2)
The default/cookie cutter spec for TtW-fb is:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0Vck0cZ0Ec0RhIhVubhct
Variables of the spec: Those +2 can be put in Student of the Mind (more
spirit), Flame Throwing (extra range) and/or Blast Wave/Dragon's Breath. Play
around with the spec a little and get your own feel for it. It's mostly
personal preference.
The Key talents/points to this build:
Torment the Weak. As the name of this entire spec
suggests, this is an important talent. Many people do not understand how it
works vs bosses, but each tank provides an attack speed slow which counts for
this talent. So the net effect is that these 3 talent points give you 12% more
damage from all sources, pretty amazing.
Focus Magic. Not exactly a deal breaker, but it's something that you
should watch for and make sure you keep it up on some one who crits enough to
have you keep your 3% crit buff on you at all times. On more healing intensive
fights putting it on a healer, like a Holy Paladin because they crit a lot, is
a good choice for this buff. However, swapping it with another mage (So you
each get 6% crit) is a common scenario.
This spec is more of the iconic fire spec making use of the old standby,
Fireball. This spec doesn't dish out the amazing crits quite as well as FFB,
but fireballs hitting a bit stronger lets it surpass FFB in total damage done.
In an ideal situation, this spec will out dps FFB by a marginal amount, usually
player skill or even a couple small item upgrades can make or break that
dominance though.
TtW-fb is a noticeably less mana efficient then FFB spec. Fireball costs
substantially more after talents and in the longer boss fights a FB mage vs a
FFB mage will have noticeably less mana and need to use evocation and mana gems
more often and intelligently. A messed up evocation, or forgetting a mana gem
on a long boss fight could spell disaster if mana isn't managed well.
Threat. Both fire specs cause a very large amount of threat. If you
chain crit 2 or so Pyros at the very beginning of a fight you will probably
pull agro. Watching Omen closely at the beginning of a fight can save you life
as you can see the tank's current threat and see how much room you have to be
crit happy. Popping Mirror Image at the beginning of a fight can be very useful
too.
Mobility. As with FFB, this spec has HS procs along with LB that are
instant casts already in the rotation that can be used for movement with zero
DPS lost. If that is not enough you can use Fire Blast or, in a pinch, Ice
Lance to do as much damage as possible while on the move.
AoE. This spec is not that good at AoE compared to Arcane or FFB. With
no ways to amp up Blizzard nor any real cooldowns to pop during AoE pulls, it
lags behind. It does it's job however and a completely unbuffed blizzard while
weaving in some Flamestrikes and a LB will still net respectable damage on AoE
pulls.
Gearing
Your should not go this spec if you do not have enough hit
to reach the hit cap of 367 Hit Rating. That means start as FFB or Arcane and
stock pile some gear, and once you have enough Hit Rating then go for TtW-fb.
For fire, haste is a very good stat, but make sure your crit isn't too low, or Crit
will surpass Haste. Spirit is almost as good as crit, per point, but Intellect
is pretty bad. Use rawr for specific questions.
Glyphs and Rotation
Fireball uses the exact same glyphs as FFB spec(except Glyph
of Fireball, not Glyph of Frostfire Bolt), the same gear (besides that which is
noted in the Hit Cap section) and nearly the exact same rotation. Please refer
to the FFB section for that information.
The one difference between the specs is where FFB generally has zero mana
issues in any length fight, fireball can become mana intensive near the end of
longer fights with bad mana management. If this happens it can be better to
stop using Pyroblast and/or LB and just spam fireball as fireball is more mana
efficient than the rest of the rotation. This is a large DPS loss however, and
hopefully can be avoided at all costs.
Hit Cap
The hit cap is one of the main reasons that people don't
want to/can't go TtW-fb. This spec gains zero hit from talents and only
receives the 3% hit from a Moonkin or Shadow Priest. Because of this it has the
largest hit cap required of any mage spec, sitting at 14% * 26.23 hit per % =
367.22. Because of this high hit cap it turns down most new mages and they
ether go Arcane or FFB. If you have the gear to meet the 368 hit rating cap
however, it can be a good idea to go TtW-fb as it should, theoretically,
increase your dps in a raid setting.
If you don't have a MK/SP in your raid, then you'll need an insane 446 hit
rating for the cap which is quite hard to do without full raid gear and while
not gimping yourself in all other stats. With a Dranny, you need 341Hit Rating.
A note on the hit cap: a lot of people, even if there is some piece of gear that
would net more dps but doesn't offer the hit cap, would choose the hit cap
because they do not want LB or scorch to miss. That is not only a DPS loss but
throws off the "rotation" and in LB's case costs you a lot of extra
mana.
Torment the Weak - Frost [TtW-fs] spec.
(18/0/51+2)
Now that 3.3 is live, Frost got some pretty good buffs and
is now an all right spec for PvE! Go bliz! With these updates Frost should be
the clear winner in maximum damage done in an average 5 player instance at any
gear level. You give up a small amount of damage (5% to 10%) to gain substantial
survivability. In 10 mans, and especially 5 mans, this could become important.
The default/cookie cutter spec for TtW-fs is:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0w0u0cZZqIcckfu0fzgbot:nRiz0o
Variables of the spec: The above spec has everything you could want for dealing
the most damage you can, so you get 2 free points to place where you wish. You
can max Frostbite, that's what most people do. You can max Arcane
Concentration, but frost has zero mana problems. You can take 2/3 Brain Freeze,
but in a patchwerk type fight, the instant fireball is a DPS loss. Fireball is
your only good ability to use while moving though, so it might be good to take
anyways.
The Key talents/points to this build:
Water Elemental. With the Glyph of Water Elemental
this pet becomes permanent. This is one of the main reasons that Frost is now
viable in 3.3.
Focus Magic. Not exactly a deal breaker, but it's something that you
should watch for and make sure you keep it up on some one who crits enough to
have you keep your 3% crit buff on you at all times. On more healing intensive
fights putting it on a healer, like a Holy Paladin because they crit a lot, is
a good choice for this buff. However, swapping it with another mage (So you
each get 6% crit) is a common scenario.
Magic Absorption + Ice Barrier. One of the main points to this spec is
high survivability and these two talents are really what gives it. Without
these talents you might as well spec anything else.
As a random note, Fingers of Frost (FoF) with always proc together with
Frostbite. This comes into play while AoE'ing. For AoE just spam blizzard, with
this many points in Frost, blizzard is amazing. With the above spec blizzard
should be proccing FoF (imp bliz + frostbite) and these procs can be used with
Cone of Cold(CoC) for some good damage, although blizzard spam is still
probably better damage and is much easier because you don't need to be in melee
range.
Gearing
Reach the hit cap of 289 Hit Rating. If you are below the hit cap, gem, eat hit food, whatever is needed to reach the cap. After that you mainly want Spell Power. Besides Spell Power, you want to stack haste. Lots of haste. Get some crit too, but haste will always be better.
The Rotation
Frostbolt xForever + (more)cooldowns. Slightly more exciting,
isn't it? Make sure your pet is always alive.
Deep Freeze: Use this on CD as soon as you can. Use the DF on the 3rd ghost
charge by spamming DF while the second FoF'ed FB is being cast.
Fingers of Frost: Unless DF is coming off CD during the next 2 FB's, you should
just spam FB, ignoring the fact you even got FoF.
Brain Freeze: BF is normally not even taken in builds but can be good for low
gear levels and fights that require high mobility as it adds another GCD that
can be used for movement.
Besides those three things, all there is to cover is proper use of cooldowns.
All cooldowns should generally be front loaded and used as often as possible.
I'm not sure if the WE dynamically adjusts it's attributes as yours change, or
if it takes certain stats or all of it's stats from you the instant it's
summoned.
Hit Cap
Having taken Elemental Precision, this spec gains 3% hit from talents. That means that including the 3% hit gained from a Moonkin or a Shadow Priest (If they aren't doing it, go /slap them) you need 11% hit. 11% hit * 26.23 hit per % = 288.53 Hit Rating required to reach the hit cap for a TtW-fs mage. Without a MK/SP you need 367 hit to be capped. With a Dranny, you need 262 Hit Rating.
Glyphs
You will us Glyph of Frostbolt, Glyph of Eternal Water and
Glyph of Molten Armor. Not really any options here, those are just what you
should be using.
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