The following article is a WoW Confidential readers guest submission, I’d like to thank Karch for this fantastic guide on PvE raiding for Mages, you can visit his new blog at http://magekarch.wordpress.com/ which is a site devoted to mage PvE discussion.
The two guides below are designed to help mages who are just getting into raiding, or who feel like they’re seriously under-performing.
How to Play Frostfire Mage
Currently, as of the date of this posting, there are only three viable raiding specs for mages: Frostfire, Arcane, and Fire (with enough points in arcane for torment of the weak). Right now I’m only planning to do write-ups for Frostfire and Arcane – even though deep fire can compete with both, my experience is that not a whole lot of people play it. As someone who raided as deep fire for quite a while at level 70, let me tell you: fire is boring as hell. It’s like frostfire but without the big crits. If you play it, then more power to you, I just think frostfire and arcane cover all your raiding needs.
So without further ado, let’s talk about Frostfire!
Spec
There’s not a whole lot of variation here; if you’re going to play Frostfire, you’re going to be using something very similar to this 0/53/18 spec.
Sure you can debate a couple talent points – but the bottom line is that if you use the above spec, you will be set up just fine for raiding.
Glyphs
Don’t forget your glyphs! If you’re serious about raiding, you’re pretty much locked in to the following three major glyphs:
- Glyph of Frostfire Bolt (2% damage and 2% crit to your Frostfire Bolt)
- Glyph of Improved Scorch (Each scorch stacks the scorch debuff 3 times)
- Glyph of Molten Armor (2% more crit to your molten armor)
For all practical purposes, there’s really no reason to use anything else.
Rotation
This is what separates good mages from the many, many, MANY bad ones. An enormous number of players simply have no concept of a “spell rotation” – they just cast what they feel like, and figure that the damage will take care of itself.
This, of course, is stupid.
With frostfire, there’s really only one rotation you need to use. From the very beginning of every boss fight (we’re only worried about raid boss fights in this blog), you are using this same rotation, applying the same concepts, and rarely making any modifications. So let’s get right to the rotation:
- When the fight starts, cast Living Bomb on the boss. This is a damage-over-time spell which does no initial damage, and therefore causes negligible threat. This works nicely at the start of fights, because there’s very little risk that you pull aggro off the tank (whereas if you just started spamming frostfire bolts you probably would).
- Cast Scorch twice. Assuming you have the Glyph of Improved Scorch, this will stack the scorch debuff 5 times, giving all casters in the raid, including yourself, a bonus 10% crit on the boss.
- Spam Frostfire Bolt. This is your primary nuke. When in doubt, cast frostfire bolt. Over and over and over again. Most of your damage is going to come from this, so you want to be casting it as much as possible. Of course, you’ll also want to use your “cooldowns” as early as possible (more on this a couple paragraphs down; we’re keeping it basic for now).
- Pyroblast is not castable unless the “Hot Streak” buff procs from getting two consecutive crits. This temporary buff will make your next pyroblast an instant cast, and therefore it’s your top priority to cast it when it comes up.
That’s it. Those are your four spells, and all you’ve got to do is manage them. What do I mean by “manage”? Well, let’s go to the three key concepts:
- You need to keep the scorch debuff active. Though it takes two scorch casts to apply it initially, each future application only takes one scorch cast, provided you didn’t let the debuff go away. And you should NEVER, EVER let it go away. Once you cast your two initial scorches, watch the debuff under the boss’ health bar – it lasts for 30 seconds, and when it’s getting close to running out, just stop casting frostfire bolt for a second to throw in a scorch to refresh it. You can use an add-on like Scorchio (get it from curse.com) if you have trouble seeing the debuff.
- Living bomb needs to be re-applied as soon as possible. When you cast living bomb, it will tick for 12 seconds, doing minor damage – then it will explode for a significant amount of damage. Once it explodes, you need to cast it again as soon as possible, and repeat that until the boss is dead. A lot of mages think living bomb isn’t worth casting, but it will consistently account for 10-12% of your overall damage – you’re telling me that’s not worth it?
- Hit Pyroblast any time the “Hot Streak” buff comes up. It takes a little (but not much) practice to see the Hot Streak buff (you can also listen for it, or get an add-on), but you’ll pick it up soon enough. Your next pyroblast will be an instant cast when hot streak comes up, and in general there’s little downside to hitting it as soon as possible.
It really is that simple. We’ll just touch on one more thing: Cooldowns. “Cooldowns” are spells that you can use every couple minutes that provide you with a temporary buff of some kind. As a Frostfire mage, here are the ones you have:
- Combustion: Increases your crit chance 10% per cast until you crit 3 times. You can use this every 3 minutes.
- Icy Veins: Increases your cast speed 20% for 15 seconds. With the talent build above, you can use this every 2.4 minutes.
- Mirror Image: Creates 3 mini-yous that do a small but sorta non-negligible amount of damage. These guys will also effectively prevent you from pulling aggro for 30 seconds (your attacks will still generate threat, but it won’t be applied to you until the 30 seconds is up).
- Any trinkets you have that have a “Use”. Some trinkets will increase your spell power, haste, etc. for a limited amount of time when you use them. These usually have a 2-3 minute cooldown.
In general, you want to use your cooldowns at the same time, to get the most ‘bang for your buck.’ Putting them in a macro works well – just type /macro to bring up the interface, create a macro, and type the following:
/cast icy veins
/cast combustion
/use [name of your trinket, if you have one]
/cast mirror image
Then put that button somewhere convenient, and you’re good to go. Just hit that after you’ve cast your living bomb and scorchx2, and you can really go crazy with frostfire bolts right off the start of boss fights. By the time your mirror image runs out of time, the tank should have plenty of threat so you don’t pull aggro. If the fight lasts long enough for you to use your cooldowns a second time, use them when the boss is under 35% health so your cooldowns benefit from the 12% damage you’re getting from the Molten Fury talent. This is also the ideal time for a shaman in your raid to use Heroism/Bloodlust.
So let’s do a quick review of how the standard boss fight should go:
- Start boss fights by applying living bomb, then casting two scorches. When living bomb explodes 12 seconds later, cast it again. When the scorch debuff has nearly run out, cast it again. Repeat this until the boss is dead.
- Hit all your cooldowns and start spamming frostfire bolt.
- Only stop casting frostfire bolts to cast an instant pyroblast when hot streak procs, to reapply scorch, to reapply living bomb, or to use a mana gem.
Well, that’s about it! It really isn’t that complicated, and with a week of practice you too can be topping the damage charts even if you don’t have the best gear!
How to Play Arcane Mage
In deciding whether to play frostfire or arcane, there are a couple key factors to consider:
- Frostfire scales very well with crit, arcane does not. Frostfire crits gain a huge damage bonus (over 300%) and can proc hot streak. Arcane crits have about half that damage bonus, and can’t proc anything.
- Likewise, arcane scales well with intellect (and, potentially, spirit), frostfire does not.
- Mana is a very real issue with arcane. You can easily burn through 25k mana is 30 seconds if you want to. On the other hand, it would take you 7 or 8 minutes to burn that much mana with frostfire. Think of the specs like cars: arcane has about 5 gears that you must shift between, frostfire has 1 and only 1 gear.
- And because of that, arcane is a much more “involved” spec. You can ramp up your damage when needed (for example, when you’re standing in two damage buffs on Malygos), and scale down to recover mana. This makes the spec more fun, but also more dangerous. If you are arcane spec’d, there is a VERY REAL possibility that you will end up having to wand a boss, if you’re not careful.
So, if you’re just starting out raiding, I recommend beginning with frostfire. The playstyle is easy to figure out with a little practice, and if you are geared at the same level as the other dps in your raid, you should be at or near the top of the damage meters on boss fights (if you follow the guide in the post below).
But if you stay frostfire a while, you will probably get bored. The fights do tend to get monotonous, and it’s also frustrating because your damage on any given fight largely depends on factors largely out of your control (how many times you crit consecutively to proc hot streak, for example).
Before you re-spec, however, remember that Frostfire provides 10% crit to all dps casters in your raid, whereas Arcane provides no such utility. Therefore, for 25-mans or dps caster-heavy 10-mans, you are doing your guild a disservice if you respec to arcane unless you regularly run with a frostfire mage. Just keep that in mind.
For those of you still ready to take on Arcane, let’s get right into it!
Spec
Unlike Frostfire, there is plenty of room for debate when it comes to the ‘best’ arcane spec. No spec involving scorch (or pyroblast) is really viable for raiding, so forget about that. The most popular distribution of talents is 57/3/11, though which exact arcane talents you take is up for debate. Here is an example build that should serve you just fine. The only flexible talents in the arcane tree are the three top-level ones:
- Arcane Focus (depending on how much hit rating you have, you can lose a point or two)
- Arcane Stability (I like the pushback protection because there are a number of raid fights where damage pushback will screw you up, but it’s your call. This talent will not help you at all on, say, Patchwerk)
- Arcane Subtlety (you could reasonably run with only one point here if you manage your threat well)
You can mix and match points in those, and if you’ve got a couple leftover you could invest in Magic Attunement, Student of the Mind, Incanter’s Absorption, Slow, or another peripheral talent.
Glyphs
A few viable choices here, let’s list them:
- Glyph of Arcane Blast: Required.
- Glyph of Mage Armor/Glyph of Molten Armor: Depending on which one you use, or you could glyph both. It’s up to you to determine whether you want to raid with the 5% crit from glyphed molten armor, or the extra mp5 from glyphed mage armor. I switch my armor depending on the expected fight length and group composition, so I run with both glyphs.
- Glyph of Arcane Power: Gives you an extra 3 seconds of arcane power, which is nice, but not necessary. If you feel like you’re always going to be running with either molten or mage armor, this would be the choice for your third major glyph slot.
Note that Glyph of Mana Gem and Glyph of Arcane Missiles might seem a little tempting, but they’re both weak choices.
Rotation
Here’s where it gets interesting. The general idea of arcane is as follows:
- Arcane Blast is your bread-and-butter spell. Casting it increases the damage your arcane spells do by 15% (18% with glyph), but also increases the mana cost of arcane blast itself. You can stack it up to three times, which gives you a massive damage buff – but at that point arcane blast costs over 1,000 mana to cast!
- The way you “dump” the buff is by casting another arcane spell (arcane barrage or arcane missiles). This spell will benefit from the stacks of the arcane blast buff you have, and then clear the buff itself.
- Ideally, you want to stack Arcane Blast three times before casting another spell.
Think of it as “charging up.” You “charge up” by casting arcane blast up to 3 times, then you dump the charge by casting either arcane barrage or arcane missiles. How do you know which one to use? Well…
- All of your arcane spells have a chance to proc “Missile Barrage,” which makes your next arcane missiles cast super fast. If, after stacking your three arcane blasts, you DO proc missile barrage, then you should cast arcane missiles immediately followed by arcane barrage.
- If missile barrage does NOT proc while stacking your three arcane blasts, you should just cast arcane barrage.
- Regardless of what you cast, you should immediately go back to stacking three more arcane blasts, and repeat the process until the boss is dead.
So why is this more complicated than frostfire? Well, try it and see just how quick you run out of mana. Between the stacked arcane blasts and the hugely expensive arcane missiles, you’re going to be blowing through your mana very fast. How do you counter this? A few ways:
- Mana gems: Use them aggressively, and aim to use all three every boss fight. I generally use one within the first 15 seconds of any fight, as soon as I’ve burned enough mana to warrant it. Do not wait until you are low on mana to use one.
- Evocation: While frostfire mages rarely if ever have to evocate, arcane mages may find themselves evocating three times during a boss fight! Thanks to the 2-minute cooldown from talents, evocation can and should be used aggressively to restore your mana pool. If you can time it to where you start casting it in the final second of icy veins, then all the better.
- Runic Mana Potions: You only get one per fight, so make it count.
- Mage Armor: If you’re having serious mana issues, consider switching from molten to glyphed mage armor.
And finally, if you’re still finding yourself having to resort to wanding on boss fights:
- Change your rotation. If you start stacking arcane blast twice instead of three times, the spec is much, MUCH more mana efficient. Of course this seriously hurts your dps, so you want to avoid it as much as possible, but sometimes you can’t. The essence of playing arcane is to know when to hit hard and to know when to scale back. This depends on too many factors to count: your gear, the raid you’re in, the fight itself, whether you get an innervate, etc. Therefore, it’s impossible to generalize about this stuff – it just takes experience.
Let’s talk about cooldown management. The cooldowns you’ll have available are:
- Icy Veins: 20% cast speed increase, no spell pushback for 20 seconds. Can use every 2.4 mins with talents.
- Arcane Power: Increases your damage 30%, but also increases the mana cost of spells 30%, for 15 seconds (18 with glyph).
- Presence of Mind: Makes your next spell an instant cast, and (with talents) increases it’s chance to crit by 30%. You want to use this with arcane blast.
- Mirror Image: Creates three mini-yous who do a little damage, and ensure that you don’t pull aggro for 30 seconds. When they go away, the threat you accumulated while they were up is given back to you.
- Any trinkets you have with a “Use”.
As with frostfire, you usually want to use these early in the fight, and all at the same time. The macro I have is:
/cast icy veins
/cast arcane power
/cast presence of mind
/use [name of your useable trinket, if you have one]
/cast mirror image
I just hit that right off the bat of boss fights and go crazy. The earlier you use your first mana gem and evocation, the earlier you can use them a second time – so it’s generally to your benefit to burn your mana early if you can safely recover it.
What arcane does is give you the ability to control the rate at which you convert your mana into damage. Your goal in boss fights is for you to always have enough mana to fully dps the boss when he’s alive, and to have as close to zero mana as possible when the boss dies. This means that, if the boss is down to 10% and you have a near-full mana bar (after an evocate, for example), you can go into full-on kick ass mode and just spam arcane blast, ignoring other spells. You’ll just be chain casting super powerful, super expensive arcane blasts – which should drain your mana nice and fast, and give you a pretty sweet dps boost. Just make sure to time it so you don’t run out of mana before the boss dies!
Alright, let’s get to the summary:
- Your standard high-dps rotation is three arcane blasts followed by arcane missiles (only if missile barrage procs), followed by arcane barrage.
- Use your mana gems and evocation aggressively, and don’t be afraid to switch to mage armor if you continually struggle with your mana.
- Arcane often requires you to “switch gears.” If you are worried about your mana, start casting two arcane blasts rather than three. If the fight is almost over or you need to do a lot of dps in a little bit of time , consider just chain casting arcane blasts.
That’s about it! Good luck out there.
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Great info, seriously helped me, thanks.
Good info.
Mages can be quite fun, even frostfire mages. The bigger issues with FFB (frostfirebolt) mages can be caused by threat, crit and haste.
Let me delve a bit further into what Karch has already started.
Frostfire counts as both a frost and a fire spell so you get crit damage bonus from talents like:
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=15047
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=44472
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=12848
Now, if you notice all crits have a 50% damage bonus, plus 100% from ice shards, and another 50% from burnout, we are at a total of 200% extra damage, BUT we also leave a debuff that lasts for 4 seconds and deals 40% of the damage done, so that´s 40% of 300% regular spell damage. It totals a Very big amount.
Knowing this does what good to us? Well for starters Combustion. Never ever use combustion before scorches (its a waste of 1 or 2 combustion charges since scorch has a ton of crit). Using combustion ensures crits on frostfires (not actually 100% sure, but very close to). So if frostfire is a 3 second cast (before haste) and ignite leaves a 4 second debuff. Stop for a second before your next frostfire. this way you won’t clip your ignite debuff. Having combustion up will probably ensure you get another ignite.
Icy veins, don’t use it with combustion, makes frostfire bolt cast much faster and burn up your combustion charges clipping your ignites.
Always (even if it means canceling a spell cast) use your hot sreak as soon as it procs, because you can get a second one right after.
Threat is an issue since you can literally jump 30% in threat with a frostfire crit LB crit and a pyro crit.
Now on to arcane.
OMG i love this tree. 2min evocates, 1.5s arcane missles (missile barrage),arcane barrage, 12% more damg with arcane barrage on mobs that are slowed or snared (frostfire bolt slows, and if u spec into slow u can do it as well) haste, etc.
here’s the thing with arcane:
Icy veins is very good, especially for evocate. You have less downtime each fight (8 seconds of doing nothing lowers you dps a LOT), so when icy veins has 4 seconds left, use your evocate. Also means it wont get interrupted so u get max mana regen from it.
Clearcasting will make your next spell have an extra 30% crit chance. Presence of mind does the same.
About rotations: AB= arcane blast, ArBr=arcane barrage, MB=missile barrage proc, AM=arcane missile
rotations should go like this:
AB,AB,AB,ArBr
if you get a proc of MB
AB (MB procs), AB, AB, AM
AB,AB,AB,ArBr
if youre wasting too much mana
AB,AB,ArBr
AB,AB,AM (if MB procs)
to save even more mana
AB,ArBr
Cooldowns, Icy veins, presence of mind, trinkets, berserking (racial) use them often. You can start off with them, just make sure you use a lot of mana to use up evocate on your icy veins, or use em at 50% mana, and then again whenever they are up.
AB AB AB – ( get a free missile + cast ) – ARBR
or
AB AB AB – ARBR
ALWAYS stack 3 AB-s
onyl when have mana issues ( but why go arcane ?? than )
cast a AM after two stacks of AB
Hey thanks for the guide, i’ve been playing as arcane since 3.08, and when 3.09 came out i was iffy as they nerfed us a bit, now arcane blast glyph only gives 3% instead of 5%, a couple other things i forget now lol but i did notice one thing that wasnt on the patch notes. Glyph of mana gem now gives 40% more mana instead of only 10% more per gem , so its like you have T7.5 set bonus without acually having it. and yes they do stack to make 80% more mana from a gem.
Hi.I just wanted to point out that u can also use Serpent-Coil Braid and get 105% more mana from using a mana gem.70 lvl item but for some starters in arcane spec it could be pretty helpful and the spell damage stacks with 2 T7.Used it in the beggining as arcane mage but after a while u learn to control ur mana and dont really need it.(this drops SSC btw)
Just curious as to why you have 3 talents in “Torment of the Weak” and yet not take “Slow”. I found that many bosses can be affected by “Slow” and that if I keep “Slow” up my DPS goes through the roof with the “Torment of the Weak” talents.
So, my spell rotation is usually something like this (if the boss can be hit with “Slow”:
Slow, pop-all-trinkets-or-cooldowns, Arcane Blast (2-3 times), Arcane Barrage or Arcane Missiles if Proc, then repeat.
I am not as familiar with other class talents during a raid, so.. unless some one else in the raid is maintaining some sort of snare on a boss maybe my use of slow is overkill? Should I use a Frost or Frostfire Bolt instead? I like Slow because it is instant cast and I can get that up fast.
Any suggestions on this? Great post though! I refer all my fellow mages to this site.
Your tank should have a slow up at all times that counts towards Torment the Weak. So casting slow so frequently is a big loss in dps, compared to sticking to your damage spells every GCD.
“As with frostfire, you usually want to use these early in the fight, and all at the same time. The macro I have is:
/cast icy veins
/cast arcane power
/cast presence of mind
/use [name of your useable trinket, if you have one]
/cast mirror image”
I have a tip to add to that… You might want to include /use Mana Sapphire (preferably shift+click on the sapphire when you’re typing in the macro. Also, you might want to consider adding /cast Arcane Blast (Rank 4). The way this works is… You start a boss fight without using the Macro, and wait till you have used about 4-7k mana (depending on whether you have the mana gem glyph or not) and then you use the macro. This will proc all your cooldowns, trinket, your gem for Spell power (if tier geared) and it will begin casting an Arcane blast right off the bat, next you need to do is just cast two more and continue the traditional rotation.
Note: Arcane Power and PoM cannot be used simultaneously, using either causes the other to acquire a 15 second cooldown till it can be used. I suggest removing /cast Presence of Mind from the macro.
Thanks a ton for this. It was extremely helpful to me and the information was very organized and concise. In other words, exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
Hello.
)
First of all i have to say this is awersome!!
Thanks
So first of some useless info:
As it is now ive just become level 80.
Ive leveled from 20ish to 80 with frost aoe.
And today 20min after my ding, i got my firts hc as mage. In the group there was another mage, he head worse gear then me, as ive gotten 6boe epics of ah, aswell as 4 hairlooms – yes they aint that good at 80, but bether than blues – and he had blues / greens. This made me happy as i belived he would be way below me on dps. That wasnt the fact though, he had me way below him, even though i did throw out as mutch as a managed. (prob 1 of the bad mages out there, but thats gonna get fixed due to this helpful “blog”)
Got the following stats: ( or about there )
14.5k hp
17.5k mana
1470ish sp ( about 200sp+ in groups with food / pots ect )
So now for my question:
What will be best in heroics and early 10man naxx?
Ive gone caveman style and writen all down on paper.
Now i just need to figure out what to use of arcane and frostfire spec.
Hope someone can point me in the right way without wasting the little gold i have left on respecs, hehe
(if you need more items info check my name on wow europe armory )
Many many thanks from a desperate gamer
)
I agree with most facets of your guide except for arcane glyph usage. I found a strong steady dps increase in using
Glyph of Molten Armour
Glyph of Arcane Blast
Glyph of Arcane Missiles
It helped out a a lot in raiding for this spec mainly because my toon focuses on stacking haste rating so I use the arcane missiles proc very liberally.
However that aside I must agree with the rest of this guide. It is also noteworthy to mention that frostfire is good to start off as but as gear increases it becomes more advantageous to switch to arcane (For me my gear got better and better but I couldn’t pass 2800 dps on a boss, That is when I decided to switch) Now I get angry at myself whenever I pull less than 3K and I usually pull a lot more.
Also To any Arcane mages out there having problems with your rotation of mana regen I do not suggest using arcane armour. I found it to be a waste of my DPS. All you need is a good rotation of mana consumption and everything will be fine
First Step is ALWAYS have 3 mana gems available.
Wait until your mana is to the point where it will be recharged to close to full useing one. After that wait until mana levels drop to 35% then use evocate ( 5% for mana regens you get from your raid) then wait until you get low enough to use your mana gem again rinse and repeat. Also if it is a very long fight and you run out of gems and the CD on using one is down dont be afraid to make three more in combat The mana gem returns more mana than it cost to summon them and With the 4/5 tier 7 buff you get it increases your spell damage by a good amount for a short time.
But hey to the writer of this thing thanks im going to try stacking the buff three times before arcane barraging i usually use two because i thought it was a waste.
needless to say a lot of how you tweak things depends on your play style. Arcane is amazing and I love it. With the short CD on arcane barrage dpsing on the move is actually possible ( as compared to my old frostfire spec where that combination of words couldnt even be thought of.
Hopefully that helps out all aspireing mages
Ecastrel 7.5 mage
Spinebreaker, Alliance
PoM and AP don’t stack and can’t be used together.
Awesome help were arcane when i hitted 80 and felt it was good but after reading this guide i rerolld fire and not ooming like an ass + im top dps and its actually more fun than arcan from my opionion
a damm nice info .. but i see that u dont like arcane that much buddy .. ill tell u this arcane is the top dps mage spect! =)
mana is not like a problem .. when u get 14 k mana use ur mana gem (ur u are belf use ur arcanetorrent) then use all ur mana to cero. then use icy with arcane evocation . . and keep going and when mana gem cd finish . use it.. and that is that rotacion for mana :p .. if u dont know how to use a arcane mage ull have to use alot of mana pots.. =) ..
ps: i have never use a wand on a raid..
i have duel speced ffb and arcane. raided arcane for awhile and then heard that ffb was suppose to be a better raid build. (fire being top) tried to go ffb but didnt like it. as arcane, i could pull +3k on boss fights (around 3k average on 10 mans) and not really worry about mana. ffb i would end up pulling between 2k and 4k on a boss. overall dps averaged a little lower than my arcane so i went back as arcane. ffb is to streaky and very crit depended along with higher hit cap. yes ffb can out dps arcane sometimes however i rather be dependable then unpredictable. this information is soloy based on 10 main raids. dont know how i would do in 25 mans
hoho well as arcane u dont have alot or threat issues.. as fire.. or ffb .. xO arcane reduce ur threat 40% .. and fire. only 10 ..% so that kinda sux… as ffb or fire. i have to stop dps alot of times.. because of the threat =/ … al0o0ot of crits.. yeaah but ffb and fire.. stop ur dps.. and with arcane. u can just hiit and hiiitt and hiitt . but when tnk is dies.. it will prob kills u next…(boss) . that always happend to me xP lol /cry
Nvr Evr cast two blasts to scale down mana use, yr dpm drops if u do that, if u need to save mana use 1 ablast then abarr/mbarr
I predict you will see a major drop off of Arcane spec’d mages in raiding. Due to the four set bonus of Teir 8.5 armor. I am specced arcane but once i get my next 2 peices of T8 its FFB time!
so when and why did Fire/Arcane spec become the top end raiding spec. I like FFB on new fights that the guild is learning because you can still put out great dps and you can focus more on the mechanics of the fight over worrying about your mana. Then, when you’re more familiar with the fights, switch to arcane. But what is all this news about fire?? How is gearing for Arcane different than FFB? Arcane = haste and FFB = crit??
i pretty sure that scorch debuff only has 5% crit not 10 and i didn’t get the glyph for it cuz i thought glyph of living bomb(allows ticks to crit) which is very usefull and i my guild has a a few class that do the same buff such as locks with improved shadow bolt
oh ya btw im FFB
hi guys, i cant open the frostfire talent page from ur links. i can open the arcane talent page wich is mage with wowhead.
if i do open the talent page of frostfire i will get an talent calculator of the wowarmory in wich there is no point filled in, so i can fill them in myself. but i would like to know wich talents there have been used.
thanks, renzo
I don’t know of any lvl 80 raid bosses that you can “snare/root/slow”. So can you explain why 3/3 Torment of the Weak for Arcane is neccessary?
is it possible to get a link here of your talent trees so i can figure out what type of tree i want plz, as i am a lvl 74 fire mage with some arcane, but i want to get a good PVE tree going to do more dmg, i top most other mages but trying to top some other classes is annoying, as fire has a longer cast time than frost and arcane it wood seem
Yo WowC, I’m a long time wow player, more casual these days. And pride myself on my Priest healin Skillz. But, since i’ve started lvl’n my mage, i can’t stop, and have stumbled upon your very informative site. Just as all others, my question is for personal improvements. As being only lvl 68, what would be the best unfinished build route to lvl my last 12 and dominate the dmg meters. All spec’s seem easy to me and learn very fast, atm i’m deep fire! Seems like very low dps and i could be doing more. Mid 700’s? 28%crit with Molten armor. No hit? 550sp? Stats are close to accurate. Help?
So very very nice in depth guide, I loved it, but I would like to critique one very very crucial point, maybe 2.
First off, Glyphing for Arcane Missiles is absolutely imperative for Arcane Raiding, it overall increases your dps much greater than Glyping for Arcane Power.
And second, Glyping for Mage armor is useless, always go Molten Armor even if you use Mage Armor more. Due to the “Arcane Meditation” talent, your mana regens at 50% while casting, Mage armor unglyphed is another 50%.
The mana regen “cap” for passive abilities is 100%, so you cannot benefit from that extra 20%, however there is no cap for abilities such as Innervate.
So no firebolts ever as a ffb ,right ?
The thing I noticed he left out and failed to mention in your rotation, if you are in a 10 man raid it can come to be an issue, but most of the time in a 25 man it will not be an issue. The damage bonus you recieve from TOtW, should not be forggoten, you benifit by putting this on mob (Including bosses) I suggest the mage slow, although the affect will not slow the targets attack speed or movement speed, it is still on there and you will gain a 12% damage buff. But in 25 man’s it is easier for a root or snaring affect to be applied, I hope this small tidbit helped for all your mages!
Erasus – Gul’dan (PvP)
Also I noticed a majority of you were looking for spec’s to base yourselves off of; first off let me mention that when you first start your gear off, I would start with a FFB, or a more fire oriented spec, arcane is very harsh on the mana, and once you get better gear focus on Arcane, a decent mana pool for arcane is around 20-21k mana, or know how to use your mana very very sparingly. I have played arcane for years now I never liked fire, but now I switched FFB, and I cannot help myself to go back to arcane… You never go oom as a FFB spec, it’s amazing, but here is a run down of what my tree’s would look like and a quick recap.
Arcane = http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0Vcu0IzxGuMtedcZbhf0o
For this tree it is a typical arcane spec, feel free to swap perhaps a few points, if you want to remove a few points the first two I would look into removing points from would be, The spell haste and the mana meditation, but other wise nothing should be changed, as an arcane mage I find the haste still useless. Yes you attack faster and you might be able to increase your DPS but at the cost of what? Going oom quicker before the boss fight is over? Expessially if your procs don’t go off and you are spamming the hell out of Arcane blast. ALSO MAJOR NOTE as most mages don’t spec into it, and I cannot for the life of me see a reason why, but the FROST WARDING, is very nice, 30% chance to get some mana back during a boss fight? Are you kidding me? Hell yeah I would love mana back, and a lot of people will go omg how does that apply? Just think of the fights it does apply…
FFB = http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#oZfVc0RhIhVubhcthIrcoc
This spec not, a lot of points can be swapped, perhaps the less threat for more range, but I will tell you this now you want the less threat, FFB can pump a ton of threat! and if you want you can get the Frost Warding, I sure as hell do, I find myself not ever really needing more than 30 yards away from a boss.
Final thing I would like to say if you armorying me within the dates that I do reply to this, forgive me my account was hacked and the majority of my gear is missing. In a final note, I played a paladin healer for a while and fell in love with haste, it was a healers best friend, but as for mages, I find myself really stretching to even look at haste, I still not have made a big movement towards it, I like the crit more, it keeps you ontop, and restores mana for the most of the spec’s. Which is nice. So yes a 3 second FFB cast is much, but oh are the crits worth it. Also one last tid bit I know I am rambling but, I have recently discovered if you are using Runic Mana Potions! Oh no! There is better! Um.. Potion of Endless Nightmares? I think, it resotres life and mana! and more of it, although you do have to be seated for a few seconds, but that is fine! Well worth the wait!
Hope this helps to all you mages!
Erasus(Mage) – Gul’dan (PvP)
Final update, noticed that they mention Glyph of Scorch, and that it applies 3 times so cast it twice. (Provided you have improved scorch, I would hope so if you are this spec!)
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42747#created-by
Glyph of Improved Scorch