Ok,
For the mages in the guild we need to come prepared, yes we get away with certain things because we bring the best buffs and the best food, BUT we need to bring the best talent specs and spell rotations too! So in this thread i will share 2 of the better raid DPS specs as well as spell rotations for those specs!!
Before we start though, the stats for the mages to try to build on, in order of importance is spell hit, spell dammage, and spell crit. with 2 points in [Arcane Subtlety] and 3 points in [Elemental Precision] your maximum spell hit required will be 164, otherwise you need 202...which is a pain and you start to sacrafice more stats for spell hit.
#1 Frost Mage 2/0/51
Link
This build is VERY easy to use, and the best mage survivability build around. With the combo of icebarrier, mana shield and fire/frost ward, you can withstand 3-4k of dammage while only losing a bit of mana instead! This build is also very mana friendly. Some of the keys in this spec would be frost channeling, and shatter, also improved blizzard is very helpful. The #1 and #2 most important talent points spent are in the winters chill, and water elemental talents. Winters chill is what makes frost mages SO deadly with very little crit percentage, and the water elemental should be used EVERY single time it is ready, except if maybe you will be using him for a boss fight 2 pulls away. Either way he is a 3 min cooldown and will be ready to use shortly after he dies / desummons. The water elemental will contribute to somewhere around 3-5% of your overall dammage, also he is great for setting up the frostbolt/icelance 1-2 punch. I recommend using his ranged frost nova in the middle of a frostbolt cast and start spaming that icelance button. ice lance doubles with frozen targets and shatter increases the critical strike chance of targets by a whoooping 50%!! You will see a nice 3500 frost bolt followed by a 2200 icelance very often if you can time them correctly. This spec is pretty straight forward aside from the Frostbolt + Icelance combo. Spam frostbolt and time those icelances and your DPS will soar! Good luck!!
I recommend this build for karazhan but as your gear gets better, and you progress into t5 (SSC/TK) content you will need to switch to a fire spec in order to do hydros the unstable.
#2 Fire Mage 2/48/11
Link
This talent build is what i personally use, and have learned to love! While you will use up more mana, you will do much more dps constantly. With the right stats your dots will do some crazy dammage and you will begin to climb the charts!
Some things to consider when chosing this build... 1.)Fire mages are much more mana intensive, so make sure you have a decent mana pool 9.5k-11k otherwise you will not be doing dps for most lengthy fights. 2.) Fire mages are AGGRO WHORRRESSS, you dont have the luxury of a frost mage, while you also have a 10% reduction in threat, you will hit harder, and have a tick come with those fireballs and another tick come from your critical strikes. Trust me ignite and the fireball / pyroblast(though you should never use the pyroblast...) tick will bring up that aggro quiickly.
Spell Rotation
With the 1 point in improved fireblast the best spell rotation to use is
Fireball + Fireblast --> Fireball --> Fireball + Fireblast --> Repeat
This is a great DPS rotation but will murder your mana pool and put you near the top of the charts on threat. The improved Fireblast sets the cooldown perfectly. You can cast a fireblast and 2 fireballs inbetween its Global Cooldown (GCD) The fireblast is a great spell because it has a 4% higher chance to crit, and does awesome instant dammage. This is what i use, and i average around 980-1060 dps. Also note that if you need to put scorches into this rotation, you can fit 2 scorches in behiend a fireball and still not lose time on the fireblast cooldown.
You can also use
Fireball + Fireblast --> Fireball --> Fireball --> Fireball --> Fireball --> Fireball + Fireblast --> Repeat
This is less DPS but more mana effecient. If your low on mana, i wouldnt suggest using fireblast alot...stick with scorch and fireball, unless you are trying to do a mage armor master of elements mana regen set of spells which is explained later =-D
Miscellaneous Info
Improved scorch is a MUST and is the fire mages must have spell. 5 scorches improve your dammage 15%! and that brings my 3000 fireball up to around 4500-5000 which is a BIG difference. 5 scorches should be up as often as possible on bosses, While trash mobs dont need it since they usually die before you can get 5 Scorches on the target and cast a Fireball + Fireblast.
You will notice that you have put some points into frost and are wondering...WTF? im a FIRE MAGE! SCREW FROST!! well really you get 2 great buffs from the frost tree. [Elemental Precision] and also [Icy Veins] which if you read the tooltip, increases the speed of ALL spells. With Icy veins up you can get 3 Fireballs off before the GCD of a Fireblast is over. Also [Icy Veins] stacks with Bloodlust... if you can coordinate this with your friendly Shaman, you will drop some VERY heavy DPS.
**A Quick tip for gaining some of your mana back would be...You gain a refund of mana from critical strikes, and you have a 4% increases critical chance with scorch and fireblast...if you get a string of crits in arow you will get a good amount of mana back with your current mana regen.**
I recommend this build for mages not doing Karazhan. That isnt to say that it is not an effective build in Karazhan it just takes longer to cast fireballs and thus you do less dammage on trash mobs. Also once you are past Karazhan you need to be fire for SSC/TK
#3 Arcane Fire / Arcane Frost
Arcane Fire
Arcane Frost
The first overall problem is that most mages that spec into this build think that suddenly their arcane missles/arcane blast will be their best spells... This is NOT true, and arcane blast and arcane missles are both very mana intensive and you often lose alot on the dps side of things... You still only need 164 spell hit for both builds and your mana usage will be a little bit easier to maintain, but your dammage will not be as high as a pure build in most cases. Arcane Blast can be used up to the 3rd debuff, any more than that you are wasting cast time and mana.... Arcane missles should just not be used AT ALL...its the most broken spell in a mages arsenal. think of it this way, your now splitting up your fireball/frostbolt into 5 ticks, instead of the chance that they all crit together, you may only get 1-2 crits per cast... you lower your chances to do large amounts of dammage and dps... your spell rotation for these two builds should be
Arcane Frost
3x Arcane Blast --> 3x Frostbolt --> Repeat
Arcane Fire
3x Arcane Blast --> 4x Scorch --> Repeat
or
3x Arcane Blast --> 2x Scorch --> 1 Fireball --> Repeat
I dont really recommend this build, the frost build is better for dps and close on mana, and the fire build is FARRR superior on DPS
If you have any questions or concerns please send me a whisper in game. on either Jaxsen or Iceeis.
For the mages in the guild we need to come prepared, yes we get away with certain things because we bring the best buffs and the best food, BUT we need to bring the best talent specs and spell rotations too! So in this thread i will share 2 of the better raid DPS specs as well as spell rotations for those specs!!
Before we start though, the stats for the mages to try to build on, in order of importance is spell hit, spell dammage, and spell crit. with 2 points in [Arcane Subtlety] and 3 points in [Elemental Precision] your maximum spell hit required will be 164, otherwise you need 202...which is a pain and you start to sacrafice more stats for spell hit.
#1 Frost Mage 2/0/51
Link
This build is VERY easy to use, and the best mage survivability build around. With the combo of icebarrier, mana shield and fire/frost ward, you can withstand 3-4k of dammage while only losing a bit of mana instead! This build is also very mana friendly. Some of the keys in this spec would be frost channeling, and shatter, also improved blizzard is very helpful. The #1 and #2 most important talent points spent are in the winters chill, and water elemental talents. Winters chill is what makes frost mages SO deadly with very little crit percentage, and the water elemental should be used EVERY single time it is ready, except if maybe you will be using him for a boss fight 2 pulls away. Either way he is a 3 min cooldown and will be ready to use shortly after he dies / desummons. The water elemental will contribute to somewhere around 3-5% of your overall dammage, also he is great for setting up the frostbolt/icelance 1-2 punch. I recommend using his ranged frost nova in the middle of a frostbolt cast and start spaming that icelance button. ice lance doubles with frozen targets and shatter increases the critical strike chance of targets by a whoooping 50%!! You will see a nice 3500 frost bolt followed by a 2200 icelance very often if you can time them correctly. This spec is pretty straight forward aside from the Frostbolt + Icelance combo. Spam frostbolt and time those icelances and your DPS will soar! Good luck!!
I recommend this build for karazhan but as your gear gets better, and you progress into t5 (SSC/TK) content you will need to switch to a fire spec in order to do hydros the unstable.
#2 Fire Mage 2/48/11
Link
This talent build is what i personally use, and have learned to love! While you will use up more mana, you will do much more dps constantly. With the right stats your dots will do some crazy dammage and you will begin to climb the charts!
Some things to consider when chosing this build... 1.)Fire mages are much more mana intensive, so make sure you have a decent mana pool 9.5k-11k otherwise you will not be doing dps for most lengthy fights. 2.) Fire mages are AGGRO WHORRRESSS, you dont have the luxury of a frost mage, while you also have a 10% reduction in threat, you will hit harder, and have a tick come with those fireballs and another tick come from your critical strikes. Trust me ignite and the fireball / pyroblast(though you should never use the pyroblast...) tick will bring up that aggro quiickly.
Spell Rotation
With the 1 point in improved fireblast the best spell rotation to use is
Fireball + Fireblast --> Fireball --> Fireball + Fireblast --> Repeat
This is a great DPS rotation but will murder your mana pool and put you near the top of the charts on threat. The improved Fireblast sets the cooldown perfectly. You can cast a fireblast and 2 fireballs inbetween its Global Cooldown (GCD) The fireblast is a great spell because it has a 4% higher chance to crit, and does awesome instant dammage. This is what i use, and i average around 980-1060 dps. Also note that if you need to put scorches into this rotation, you can fit 2 scorches in behiend a fireball and still not lose time on the fireblast cooldown.
You can also use
Fireball + Fireblast --> Fireball --> Fireball --> Fireball --> Fireball --> Fireball + Fireblast --> Repeat
This is less DPS but more mana effecient. If your low on mana, i wouldnt suggest using fireblast alot...stick with scorch and fireball, unless you are trying to do a mage armor master of elements mana regen set of spells which is explained later =-D
Miscellaneous Info
Improved scorch is a MUST and is the fire mages must have spell. 5 scorches improve your dammage 15%! and that brings my 3000 fireball up to around 4500-5000 which is a BIG difference. 5 scorches should be up as often as possible on bosses, While trash mobs dont need it since they usually die before you can get 5 Scorches on the target and cast a Fireball + Fireblast.
You will notice that you have put some points into frost and are wondering...WTF? im a FIRE MAGE! SCREW FROST!! well really you get 2 great buffs from the frost tree. [Elemental Precision] and also [Icy Veins] which if you read the tooltip, increases the speed of ALL spells. With Icy veins up you can get 3 Fireballs off before the GCD of a Fireblast is over. Also [Icy Veins] stacks with Bloodlust... if you can coordinate this with your friendly Shaman, you will drop some VERY heavy DPS.
**A Quick tip for gaining some of your mana back would be...You gain a refund of mana from critical strikes, and you have a 4% increases critical chance with scorch and fireblast...if you get a string of crits in arow you will get a good amount of mana back with your current mana regen.**
I recommend this build for mages not doing Karazhan. That isnt to say that it is not an effective build in Karazhan it just takes longer to cast fireballs and thus you do less dammage on trash mobs. Also once you are past Karazhan you need to be fire for SSC/TK
#3 Arcane Fire / Arcane Frost
Arcane Fire
Arcane Frost
The first overall problem is that most mages that spec into this build think that suddenly their arcane missles/arcane blast will be their best spells... This is NOT true, and arcane blast and arcane missles are both very mana intensive and you often lose alot on the dps side of things... You still only need 164 spell hit for both builds and your mana usage will be a little bit easier to maintain, but your dammage will not be as high as a pure build in most cases. Arcane Blast can be used up to the 3rd debuff, any more than that you are wasting cast time and mana.... Arcane missles should just not be used AT ALL...its the most broken spell in a mages arsenal. think of it this way, your now splitting up your fireball/frostbolt into 5 ticks, instead of the chance that they all crit together, you may only get 1-2 crits per cast... you lower your chances to do large amounts of dammage and dps... your spell rotation for these two builds should be
Arcane Frost
3x Arcane Blast --> 3x Frostbolt --> Repeat
Arcane Fire
3x Arcane Blast --> 4x Scorch --> Repeat
or
3x Arcane Blast --> 2x Scorch --> 1 Fireball --> Repeat
I dont really recommend this build, the frost build is better for dps and close on mana, and the fire build is FARRR superior on DPS
If you have any questions or concerns please send me a whisper in game. on either Jaxsen or Iceeis.
Edited by
Jaxsen 6 months ago
----------------------------------------------------------------
