Mage thread

[west]

Spell hit, level 83 (boss).
Draenei Heroic presence = 1%
Imp Faerie Fire/Misery = 3%
Elemental Precision = 3%
Arcane Focus = 3% (arcane only)

Hit% needed/Rating/Buffs

16% 419.7 Draenei
13% 341 Draenei+EP/Misery/IFF
10% 262.3 Draenei+EP+Misery/IFF
7% 183.6 Draenei+EP+Misery/IFF+Arcane Focus

Useful links:
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/ EJ forums
http://www.codeplex.com/Rawr Rawr
http://zaldinar.bounceme.net/tcom/index.php Theory Craft-o-Matic

[west]

Wowhead (http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#o)
MMO-Champion (http://www.wowtal.com/#k=.9i7.mage)

[west]

MMO-Champion (http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/1669)
Wowhead (http://cata.wowhead.com/class=8)

Time Warp (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=80353)
Warp the flow of time, increasing melee, ranged, and spell casting speed by 30% for all party and raid members, as well as granting the casting mage 30% increased movement speed. Lasts 40 sec.

Allies receiving this effect will become Sated and be unable to benefit from Bloodlust or Time Warp again for 10 min.


Flame Orb (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=82731)
Flame Orb
6% of base mana 40 yd range
1.5 sec cast
Launches a Flame Orb forward from the Mage's position, dealing (228 * 15) damage over 15 sec to nearby targets.


Curtain of Frost (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=82676)
Curtain of Frost
7% of base mana 20 yd range
Summon a Curtain of Frost for 10 sec. Movement through the curtain by enemies will cause 368 to 426 frost damage and slow movement speed by 50% for 8 sec.




Fire and Frost Ward have been replaced with Mage Ward (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=543)
Mage Ward
16% of base mana
Absorbs 1008 Fire, Frost or Arcane damage. Lasts 30 sec.


Arcane Intellect and Brilliance have been merged together (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=1459) and changed to max mana instead of intellect.
Arcane Intellect
31% of base mana 30 yd range
Infuses all party and raid members with brilliance, increasing their maximum mana by 5401 for 1 hour. If target is in your party or raid, all party and raid members will be affected.


Arcane Missile (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=5143) is now a proc and the channel duration has been reduced by 2 seconds.
Arcane Missiles
35 yd range
Launches Arcane Missiles at the enemy, causing 416 Arcane damage every 1 sec for 3 sec. Each offensive spell you cast has a 30% chance to activate Arcane Missiles.


Molten Armor (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=30482) returned to its original state, glyph (http://cata.wowhead.com/item=42751) included.
Molten Armor
28% of base mana
Causes 190 Fire damage when hit, increases your critical strike chance by 3%, and reduces the chance you are critically hit by 5%. Only one type of Armor spell can be active on the Mage at any time. Lasts 30 min.


Mage Armor (http://cata.wowhead.com/spell=6117) now regenerates 3% mana per 5 sec instead of 50% of spirit regen.
Mage Armor
26% of base mana
Increases your resistance to all magic by 44 and causes you to regenerate 3% of your maximum mana every 5 sec. In addition, the duration of all harmful Magic effects used against you is reduced by 50%. Only one type of Armor spell can be active on the Mage at any time. Lasts 30 min.

[west]

Reserved

[Angra]

http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c290/Bumeyes13/missilebarrage.jpg

[west]

Apparently you can use 2t9 to cast molten armor, swap to old gear and the buff stays at 70% of spirit. This is still working, who knows when it will be fixed.

[west]

Cleaned the thread up a bit and updated it with some Cataclysm information.

[Jankes]

Current Fire rotation discussion, and T4 Hot Streak.

Firstly, whether to spend two points into T4 Hot Streak. According to the nerds at EJ, if you are under 20% crit raid buffed (which may or may not be an issue come level 85 in starting gear), the talent is terrible and not worth picking up. The general consensus however is that it is mediocre.

T3 Hot Streak is also quite interesting because of the lack of knowing the actual proc chance, as the tooltip just states "A chance to proc". Whether this is affected by crit modifiers is something that has to be tested, as not enough data has been gathered.

Also, the ever so long spec discussion. There is no definitive spec, because of Blizzard's new design, but this is currently what I'm running with.
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=8&tal=0020000000000000000002123301201201210132310300 000000000000000

Obviously I took all mandatory DPS talents, except 2/3 Netherwind Presence, because I don't have the talent points to max it out.

Why I skipped Blast Wave: Simply because there isn't enough room to take that, with its complementing talent, improved flamestrike, and its extreme situational use. The only fight where the snare is a necessity is LK Valks, and the short duration is already causing the snares to DR, so you wouldn't use it unless you were desperate anyways.

Fire Blast is going to be a dynamic part of our rotation, on add fights at least, as well as Marrowgar or Deathwhisper for example, because of melee AoE cleaves getting nerfed a bit. I took 2/2 Imp. Fire Blast to make up for some of the range deficit compared to Fireball or LB, and also gives a hearty 8% crit, which is always nice for a spell you use consistently on certain fights.

Why I took 1/2 Impact. Because 5% is enough. I had this proccing on Ignite ticks, LB ticks, pyroblast ticks, combustion ticks, and direct damage spells. It is up whenever you need to spread your dots. The 2nd point is complete overkill at 80 at least, because we are strained for talent points, and spreading dots so fast that you don't even let them tick is counterproductive.

2/2 Imp Scorch: It is necessary for long fights. Like completely necessary, for Saurfang, PP, Sindragosa, Valthria, Festergut, and Rotface, as well as LK, mana was a recurring issue. It wasn't as serious as me starting to wand without the talent, but where it will really shine is LK, where you will have to play mana conservation, and if you hop into mage armor while spamming scorch and maintaining dots, you can minimise your time in Mage Armor. Similar to Hunter's aspect hopping before focus.

Cauterize: In a perfect world, you won't need this, but unless you're West, you're going to die at some point, so it is pretty gamebreaking for progression content (and loling as you jump on Heroic Sindragosa's frost bombs during airphase).

FFB Vs. Fireball

Without the glyph, current numbers are that FFB is at about 86% base damage of Fireball, but with the glyph that adds 15%, it obviously puts it slightly higher. The looming question in the mage community is whether the 1% base damage and the dot surpasses the 5% crit from fireball glyph. Currently, I was messing around with both rotations, and on my napkin numbers, maintaining the dot on fights you can easily keep it up (Saurfang, Festergut), it is worth doing, assuming you are reforging all excess hit (I had 16.58% hit without any gems, lol), to Mastery. Currently, and yes, sadly the bug made live, only 1 Mage can keep it up, and if another mage tries to cast it, it refreshes the dot of the original mage. It is a funky bug, but since Aizlynn's gear surpasses mine, we would get the most benefit as a raid by having Aizlynn keep the dot up. With higher levels of mastery, at 85, it might surpass, but as of now, it looks like Fireball holds its title.

So the current rotation looks something like this, because Hot streak munching is almost 100% a non issue unless the stars align.

Critical Mass maintenance (obviously not if you have one of our 3-4 locks in the raid).
LB maintenance
HS Pyro
FFB if casting a fireball is going to cause the dot to fall off (it doesn't re-apply until it travels). Obviously you have to recast this 3 times if it falls off, which isn't ideal because it doesn't have the 5% crit that fireball does.
FB filler

Now, for gearing.

Mastery and how it affects FIRE

Mastery currently really shines in AoE fights, with impact procs, and obviously highlights the FFB dot at high levels (pretty much unobtainable at 80).

I reforged extra hit to mastery, for shits and giggles, and lack of real numbers, but I left my haste, and crit alone, but i did reforge my valithria wand's spirit to mastery, which left me at 9.76 mastery.

Even with FB's base cast time being reduced, I left my haste as is.

These are some of my fire initial observations, I'll add more as it comes to me.

[dirtybird410]

http://www.ragequitblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/keyboardmageslz1.jpg

[Jankes]

Jankes: RING HAS 1.5 SEC CAST TIME OMG THIS IS UNBEARABLE WTF
Dirty: what? one more gcd? stop qqing

couple days later, add 1.5 second cast time to HC, reverted ring change.

Dirty: HC 1.5 second cast time wtf?
Jankes: gsogsogsogsogso

[dirtybird410]

Jankes: RING HAS 1.5 SEC CAST TIME OMG THIS IS UNBEARABLE WTF
Dirty: what? one more gcd? stop qqing

couple days later, add 1.5 second cast time to HC, reverted ring change.

Dirty: HC 1.5 second cast time wtf?
Jankes: gsogsogsogsogso

Hey, just because Mages can bitch better than DK's on forums about PVP doesn't mean Dk's are bad people.

My biggest concern is Kiting adds.

[Jankes]

Definitions:
Tier 12 Mage 4-Piece:

Your spells have an increased chance to trigger Brain Freeze or Hot Streak. In addition, Arcane Power decreases the cost of your damaging spells by 10% instead of increasing their cost.

Arcane Power:
When activated, you deal 20% more spell damage but spells cost 10% more mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 sec.

Leading to...
Arcane Power with Tier 12 4-Piece:
When activated, you deal 20% more spell damage but spells cost 10% less mana to cast. This effect lasts 15 sec.

The Problem:
This bonus appears to be a great boon to Arcane Mages' mana pools during Arcane Power. Upon further inspection, however, the math of both Arcane Power and this bonus are misleading.


Base Arcane Blast Mana cost: 870
10% savings of 870 = 87 Mana cost reduction
This is 87 Mana cost reduction for every Arcane Blast, regardless of stack number! It is applied after stacking mana cost from Arcane Blast debuff. Arcane Power works the same way, but increases spell costs instead of decreasing them, like the set bonus does. The net effect of the set bonus is two of these mana cost reductions: 1) 10% mana reduction and 2) removal of the 10% mana increase from Arcane Power.



Total Mana savings with set bonus = 87 * 2 = 174 Mana cost reduction
This can also be seen upon inspection of actual mana costs under different conditions in the table below:



AB Stacks Base Cost Cost w/ AP Cost w/ AP and 4pc Mana Savings
0 870 957 783 174
1 2175 2262 2088 174
2 3480 3567 3393 174
3 4785 4872 4698 174
4 6090 6177 6003 174


Suppose 12 Arcane Blasts are cast during the 15 second duration of Arcane Power:


174 Mana * 12 = 2088 Mana saved during each Arcane Power
Let's convert this to MP5 for an easier way to visualize the bonus:
Code:
2088 Mana saved every 2 minutes (typical practical cooldown of Arcane Power) =
2088 Mana / 120 seconds * 5 seconds = 87 Mana per 5 seconds


Following the same calcuations but with Shard of Woe equipped (which none of us, since we didn't kill Sinestra), the result is an even lower 67 MP5.

Conclusion:
To put this in perspective, over a 6 minute fight, 87 MP5 yields 6264 mana. This is enough for one extra stacked Arcane Blast, which would correspond to a dps increase below 1%. But since this is obviously a rough estimate, we don’t run out of mana to begin with, and the mana savings is actually spread out over several Arcane Power usages, the actual dps gained is even lower than this.

Another way of looking at it is by comparison to Mage Armor. Glyphed Mage Armor with a mana pool of 100,000 yields 3600 MP5. The 4-piece represents a meager 2.4% of Mage Armor's mana regeneration.

Overall, the tier 12 4-piece bonus is not strong enough and does not provide nearly the dps increase expected from such bonuses or granted by the 4-piece bonuses of other classes, possibly due to oversight in Arcane Blast's Mana cost calculation and Arcane Power interaction.

[Aizlynn]

It is negating the penalty of a spell that we gain all of our burst damage from. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

[Ibalis]

Not a bad thing, just really lack luster.

[Jankes]

Spent some time crafting t12 BIS lists, note arcane does not use 4pc at all.

Fire:

Helm: Firehawk Hood
Neck: Flowform Choker
Shoulders: Firehawk Mantle
Back: Wings of Flame
Chest: Firehawk Robes
Bracers: Wristwraps of Arrogant Doom
Gloves: Fingers of Incineration
Belt: Majordomo's Chain of Office
Legs: Firehawk Leggings
Boots: Coalwalker Sandals
Ring 1: Infernal Signet of the Avengers
Ring 2: Crystal Prison Band
Trinket 1: Necromantic Focus
Trinket 2:Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor
Weapon: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest
OH: N/A
Wand: Stinger of the Flaming Scorpion

Arcane:

Helm: Flickering Cowl of the Flameblaze
Neck: Flowform Choker
Shoulders: Mantle of Closed Doors
Back: Wings of Flame
Chest: Firehawk Robes
Bracers: Wristwraps of Arrogant Doom
Gloves: Fingers of Incineration
Belt: Majordomo's Chain of Office
Legs: Firehawk Leggings
Boots: Coalwalker Sandals
Ring 1: Infernal Signet of the Avengers
Ring 2: Crystal Prison Band
Trinket 1: Shard of Woe
Trinket 2:Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor
Weapon: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest
OH: N/A
Wand: Stinger of the Flaming Scorpion

[Aizlynn]

might wanna make a list without the legendary since that really only applies to vrede

[Jankes]

I will when I get a bit more time, since the staff has so much hit I'll have to reshuffle gear.

[Jankes]

New BiS set for Arcane since 4pc became worth it, somethings to note:

We don't use the Valor Bracers, as they can't be 391'd
Same with the crystal prison band
If it is possible to equip 2 rep rings from exalted, the spirit one is also bis with the caster dps one (lol), this is because of the red socket and intellect gains.
Offpiece is gloves as expected, there are several pieces from h-rag we need
Shard of Woe is still by far our best trinket (about 1000 dps over its competition), so back the fuck up healers
Because gearing has been so heavily based around the staff, without having the staff, the BIS weaponry is the heroic rag staff, but that will leave you severely hit starved, with a slightly less attractive option of heroic volcanospike/heroic molten scream. The latter will compensate for the staffs hit, but if you go with the hrag staff, you will be about 1% under the hit cap.


Helm: Firehawk Hood
Neck: Flowform Choker
Shoulders: Firehawk Mantle
Back: Wings of Flame
Chest: Firehawk Robes
Bracers: Wristwraps of Arrogant Doom
Gloves: Fingers of Incineration
Belt: Majordomo's Chain of Office
Legs: Firehawk Leggings
Boots: Coalwalker Sandals
Ring 1: Infernal Signet of the Avengers
Ring 2: Quicksilver Signet of the Avengers*
Trinket 1: Shard of Woe
Trinket 2:Variable Pulse Lightning Capacitor
Weapon: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa's Rest
OH: N/A
Wand: Trail of Embers

[Jankes]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2973251647

Early staff analysis, seems overpowered, as expected.