(Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

Well, patch 3.2 is here, and all mages should be familiar with the significant changes that have been made.  Depending on what you believe, Arcane now theorycrafts equal or better than deep fire, and you’ll be seeing a whole lot more arcane mages in raid groups.

As evidenced by many, many prior posts in the blog, I’m a longtime Arcane mage and someone who made it work even when it was ‘inferior’ to deep fire.  Now that the spec has come back into vogue, I’ve got mixed feelings – but I’ll spare you those and get right to the good stuff.

This is my Arcane Mage Guide, updated for Patch 3.2.2.

Motto: “Now more dangerous to bosses, and less dangerous to your mana pool!”

It’s rare that you see a spec get its biggest weakness so unequivocally fixed, but that’s exactly what patch 3.2.2 did for arcane mages.  The trick to the spec has always been mana management, and one ill-timed broken evocation could ruin an entire fight.  But no longer!  Now, with only average luck you can last even medium-length fights without a single evocation, and oh by the way you’ll be putting up ridiculous DPS the entire time.   Here’s quick summary of the changes that make this so:

-Arcane Blast now stacks to 4 instead of 3, with each stack increasing its cost 175% as opposed to 225%.
-Using Missile Barrage’d Arcane Missiles no longer costs any mana and does not consume clearcasting.

Other than the obvious mana-saving implications, this also means that you will be hitting harder.  Each arcane blast stack still increases the damage of your next arcane spell by 18% (with the glyph), so with four stacks you’ll be working with a massive 72% damage increase.  This further increases the spec’s already-prodigious short-term burn ability (in just a couple nights of raiding I’m seeing 30k crits during burn phases), as well as overall DPS.

Spec/Talents

57/3/11 is your only option, though you have a tiny bit of flexibility within the “57″ part.

First, let’s just square away the fire and frost points, for anyone who wants to try to get tricky.  You need 3 points in Incineration (6% crit to your main nuke) and you need Icy Veins (essentially, 20% more damage when you pop your cooldowns).  These aren’t up for debate if you’re actually trying to put up the best numbers you can.

Second, there are some fights that Incanter’s Absorption is ridiculously good for (Twin Val’kyrs in particular) – but there are some fights where it doesn’t help at all.  Therefore, if you want an Incanter’s Absorption spec, I suggest devoting your dual spec to it.  Having it in your main arcane spec will hurt your DPS on many fights because you’re pulling points away from important talents.

So with that said, the most basic possible 57/3/11 Arcane Spec would look like this:

Arcane Mage Spec

This hits all the vital talents, and stays as safe as possible with the discretionary choices.  With this basic spec, you will get yourself the most possible threat reduction, highest possible hit chance bonus, and nearly-full pushback protection even if for some reason you aren’t near a pally with Concentration Aura.

Now, you’re certainly not locked into the above choices, and you can (and arguably, should) move some points around at your discretion.  The three “flexible” talents  you can pull points from are:

–Arcane Subtlety: If you feel comfortable in managing your threat, you can drop a point.  Dropping both is very dangerous but still possible.

–Arcane Focus: If you’ve got excess hit rating, you can drop points from here.

–Arcane Concentration: Pushback is not a serious issue in a lot of fights, so if you can live with it from time to time you can drop some or even all points from here.

Points would be moved into Student of the Mind (a flat spirit increase per point), Magic Attunement (3 yard range increase per point – some people swear by this and it does tend to make your life easier), or the aforementioned Incanter’s Absorption,

Armor/Glyphs/Focus Magic

-Armor: Thanks to the increase of spirit on our gear, the T9 2-piece set bonus, and the glyph, Molten Armor is the only choice for any raiding mage.

-Glyphs – Pretty simple here as well:  Glyph of Arcane Blast, Glyph of Arcane Missiles, and Glyph of Molten Armor.  The minor glyphs don’t really matter.

-Focus Magic – Place it on another mage, and have another mage place it on you.  There’s no real reason for anyone to be Frostfire anymore, so every mage in your raid should have Focus Magic and you should all be able to buff each other.

Rotation

Now we’re to the good stuff – although the arcane rotation is a lot simpler now and the spec plays more like Fire.  In my last Arcane Guide, I wrote that the spec was like a car, where you’d constantly have to shift gears to make it to the end of the fight.  Now, it’s like a really fast car with an automatic transmission.

You can probably guess the ideal rotation based on the patch changes, but here it is:

-Always start with FOUR Arcane Blasts (this stacks the damage buff to full.
-IF Missile Barrage DOES proc, cast Arcane Missiles.
-IF Missile Barrage DOES NOT proc, continue casting Arcane Blast until it does, THEN cast Arcane Missiles.

Now…

A few things here.  First, Missile Barrage now has a 40% chance to proc on any arcane cast, meaning 9 out of 10 times you’ll be able to do the simple Arcane Blast x 4 -> Arcane Missiles rotation.  When you get unlucky and it doesn’t proc, your mana should be flexible enough to continue casting Arcane Blast until it does.  If you are concerned about your mana pool, however, you should just pop Arcane Barrage and start the rotation over.  You should not cast Arcane Missiles without the Missile Barrage buff.

-Evocation: No longer an integral part of an arcane mage’s life.  On longer fights you should still use it, of course, if you’re below 40% mana and there is still plenty of fight left.  But the days of getting off six evocations during Mimiron Hard Mode (which I swear I did) are long gone.

-Burn Phases: Spam arcane blast.  A lot of people, especially those new to the spec, wonder why you would ever spam arcane blast at the ridiculous mana cost when a fully-charged arcane missiles does just about as much (if not more) than a fully-charged arcane blast.  The key is that arcane missiles clears the arcane blast buff, meaning your next four arcane blasts will be considerably weaker than they would have been had you kept the buff.  Make sure you understand this concept – over the course of a 30-45 second burn, just hammering arcane blast will do way, way more total damage than sticking to the standard rotation.

-Mana Gems:  Use early and often, same as always.

-Cooldowns: If you’re Arcane, you have the following:  Icy Veins, Arcane Power, Mirror Image, any on-use trinkets, and Presence of Mind.  I recommend macro’ing everything except Presence of Mind together and using them at the start of fights:

/cast arcane power
/cast icy veins
/use 13
/use 14
/cast mirror image

Then, create a separate macro for your POM’d arcane blast:

/cast presence of mind
/cast arcane blast

And use that as the fourth arcane blast in any rotation.  Arcane is still about burst damage (though not as much as before), so you want to time your cooldowns with heroism and use them as often as possible during the fight.

And that’s about it!  Good luck to all the arcane mages out there, new and old, who should very much enjoy leading the charts again for the short time until Blizzard nerfs us!

(Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

For mages looking to improve their DPS, there are 3 basic questions you should ask:

1)      Are you spec’d right?

2)      Are you geared/gemmed/enchanted right?

3)      Are you using the right rotation?

Today we’re dealing with the first of those questions.  While there are a handful of proper PvE builds and mages can debate which one is best for them, a few misplaced talent points can sabotage even skilled mages.

So, let’s list the “acceptable” talent builds for raiding mages, explain why these are the most popular (and best), and identify some places where new raiding mages get tripped up.  Note that recommended glyphs are also included.

Frostfire

(0/53/18):  http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#oZfVcbRhIhVubhctbIccoc:IiLo0m

Explanation:   The basic Frostfire build that’s been around since the launch of Wrath of the Lich King.  Note that you have the ability here to stack the scorch debuff, but the glyph setup assumes that you’re not regularly being asked to do so.  If you are, then you should replace either the living bomb or molten armor glyph with the glyph of improved scorch.  If you know you are not going to ever need to stack scorch, you can always move those three points over to Improved Blizzard in the frost tree.

Where people get tripped up: The fire talents are pretty straightforward, but I’ve seen a fair share of frostfire mages with their frost trees messed up.  It’s important to remember that the talents Piercing Ice and Ice Shards both affect your frostfire bolt, and therefore are absolutely crucial talents to frostfire mages.  You are not, as some people believe, just trying to get to Icy Veins here.  Additionally, the mana cost reduction from Frost Channeling is a big reason why frostfire mages are so mana efficient.

Deep Fire

(19/52/0):  http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0Vck0sZ0EcbRhIhVhbhct:ViLo0m

Explanation:  With deep fire (unlike frostfire and arcane), you’ve got a few talent points that can be moved around depending on your preference – there are perfectly acceptable 18/53/0 and 20/51/0 deep fire builds as well.  Specifically, the single points in Student of the Mind and Arcane Meditation could be moved to Magic Absorption if you so desire.  You could also use one for Combustion in the fire tree if your crit is a little low (although well-geared deep fire mages don’t need Combustion).  As with frostfire, you are capable of stacking the scorch debuff with this spec, although if you are asked to do so regularly you should really get the scorch glyph.

Where people get tripped up:  This spec is a little complicated (primarily because you have to spend 5 talent points on useless talents in the first level of the arcane tree), and you could go a lot of different ways with it.  Just remember that any deep fire spec absolutely requires Spell Impact, Focus Magic, and Torment of the Weak in the arcane tree, and no points whatsoever in the frost tree.

Arcane

(57/3/11):  http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#ofhVsz0IzxGuMxedcZbGc0o

Explanation:  You can switch a few points around, but if you’re seriously playing arcane, you’re going to have a 57/3/11 point distribution.  The main source of moveable points is the first row of the arcane tree (you can mix and match those talents based on preference, hit rating, threat sensitivity, etc.), Magic Attunement, and Student of the Mind.  The rest of the talents are basically required.

Note that there is a viable Magic Absorption build that really works well on some Ulduar fights, but since I’m writing for mages that are relatively new to raiding, I’m not going to confuse anyone with a situational build that relies heavily upon priests putting shields on you and you intentionally taking damage.

Where people get tripped up:  I can’t stress enough how important the 3 points in fire and 11 in frost are.  The arcane tree has a ton of interesting talents and it’s tempting to leech some points from the other trees to get them, but you really don’t want to do this.  The fire tree gives you 6% crit on your main nuke – uh, yes please.  The frost tree not only lowers your hit cap, but gives you Icy Veins, which is vital to a spec that relies heavily on burst damage.

(Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

Back before the last patch, when all we had to run were Naxx, Maly, and OS, gearing questions for mages were a lot simpler.  Regardless of spec, the Tier-7 4-piece set bonus was powerful enough to overcome any minor stat differences between tier gear and non-tier gear.  Basically, every raiding mage aimed to have four pieces of the tier 7 set, leaving room for one “off-set” piece.  And given the relative ease of that content, most raiding mages achieved it.

But those days are long gone now.  Not only has the much more challenging Ulduar brought Tier-8 gear (and a pair of new set bonuses), but Tier 9 is on the very near horizon.

Given this explosion of new gear, it can be difficult to know what exactly different kinds of mages should be aiming for.  So, let’s take a walk through the Tier 7, 8, and even 9 (courtesy of www.mmo-champion.com) set bonuses to break down their benefits.

Note:  As always, this is not designed for hardcore raiding mages who are min/maxing their gear and looking for specific numbers.  Elitist Jerks (www.elitistjerks.com) is the best place for that kind of discussion.

Tier 7

2-piece bonus: You gain 40% more mana when you use a mana gem.  In addition, using a mana gem grats you 225 spell power for 15 seconds.

Comments:  While the spellpower bonus benefits all mage specs roughly equally, the additional mana clearly benefits arcane mages much more heavily than deep fire or frostfire.  Arcane’s strength is its ability to convert mana into damage at a much more controllable rate than fire/frostfire, and with the extra 1200 mana per gem and 3 gems per fight, this works out to be quite a considerable overall damage boost.

4-piece bonus: Your offensive spells gain an additional 5% increased critical strike bonus damage.

Comments:  Remember, this is crit damage, not crit chance.  That means that this scales best with big crits, making it especially useful to frostfire mages, but still very useful to deep fire and arcane mages.  Basically, regardless of what spec you are, the damage you do from critical strikes is going to be a large portion of your overall damage, and therefore this set bonus has obvious value.

Overall Thoughts: The two piece bonus is highly forgettable for deep fire and frostfire mages, who should have no issues with replacing it even if it’s with non-set (but higher quality) gear.  Arcane mages, on the other hand, will have a very difficult time parting with the unique mana increase the two-piece bonus provides, meaning that it should take a considerably large upgrade in gear quality to sacrifice it for.  As for the four piece bonus, it’s nice and certainly not worth breaking for a single piece of gear.  However, if you’re progressed into 25-man Ulduar and you’re passing on gear just to keep this set bonus active, then you are probably doing yourself a disservice.  At the very least, as soon as you have access to two pieces of Tier-8 gear, it is definitely time to break your 4-piece T7 bonus.

Tier 8

2-piece bonus: Your Arcane Blast, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, and Fireball spells have a chance to grant you 350 spell power for 15 seconds.

Comments:  Very solid (if not particularly sexy) straight-up increase to your DPS.  The effect has the standard 45-second internal cooldown, and will generally proc very quickly when it’s not on cooldown.  Regardless of your spec, when you factor in the upgrade in terms of gear quality, this is absolutely worth dumping your 4-piece Tier 7 bonus for.

4-piece bonus: You have a chance for the effect of your Missile Barrage, Hot Streak, or Brain Freeze talent not to be consumed when you cast the spells which benefit.

Comments:  Whoa there.  This is definitely the most interesting set bonus, and it has very different implications for the different mage specs.  For deep fire and frostfire, the ability to occasionally hit two consecutive pyroblasts represents a considerable DPS increase.  There’s nothing better than firing off two instant-cast pyroblasts!  But for arcane mages, this set bonus is a major disappointment.  Since casting the first arcane missiles consumes the arcane blast damage buff, the second one (the one that this set bonus provides) is much, much weaker.  In fact, casting arcane missiles without three stacks of arcane blast is simply not worth the mana – therefore, arcane mages basically have to sit on the extra proc until they cast three more arcane blasts (all of which would have a chance to proc missile barrage anyway) before using it.  So basically, this proc works out to being really nothing more than a relatively small increased chance to proc missile barrage.  Not exactly life-changing.

Overall Thoughts:  Deep fire and frostfire mages should set their sights on the Tier-8 4-piece bonus and get their by any means necessary (even if it means taking 10-man gear before the 25-man version is available to them).  The ability to get “two for one” hot streaks is simply too good to pass up.  In fact, until Tier 9 gear is available, fire mages should be aiming for the familiar “four tier pieces + one off-set piece” configuration.  On the other hand, arcane mages should probably forego the 4-set bonus entirely, and should seriously consider keeping two pieces of Tier 7 gear to pair with two pieces of Tier 8 and one off-set piece.  This not only allows arcane mages to capitalize on two super-useful set bonuses, it allows them some freedom to mix and match gear to their liking (maximizing haste and minimizing unnecessary hit rating, for example).

Tier 9

Note:  This is all based on the current public test realm information reported by mmo-champion.com, and as such is subject to change.

2-piece bonus: Increases the armor you gain from Ice Armor by 20%, the mana regeneration you gain from Mage Armor by 10%, and converts an additional 15% of your spirit into critical strike rating when Molten Armor is active.

Comments:  First, just ignore the ice and mage armor aspects of this – raiding mages do not use either of these.  So, on to Molten Armor:  this is a significant increase to your crit chance.  On the original PTR build, the set bonus granted 25% more spirit conversion, which was overpowered to the point that you could be getting as much as 7% crit to all your spells just from this set bonus alone!  Even with the number now down to 15%, you’re still talking about an additional 2-4% crit chance when raid buffed.  This is certainly helpful to all mages, with frostfire getting the most help from it, followed by deep fire, followed by arcane.

4-piece bonus: Increases the critical strike chance of your Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Blast spells by 5%.

Comments:  This certainly isn’t the sexiest set bonus, and it’s interesting that both the two and four piece bonuses involve critical strike chance – but whatever.  The benefit for all specs is clear – 5% more crit on your main nuke!  This alone would seriously favor fire and frostfire mages due primarily to the mechanics of hot streak vs. missile barrage, but Blizzard (smartly) added Arcane Missiles to this set bonus in the latest PTR build, evening things out a bit.

Overall Thoughts:  While nothing conclusive can be said before this goes live, it appears that mages of all types will be gunning for the Tier 9 4-piece set bonus.  While it will be difficult for fire mages to drop their extra pyroblasts from the Tier 8 bonus, the massive amount of extra crit combined with the upgraded gear quality should be more than enough to warrant the switch. For arcane mages, maintaining the much-beloved 2-piece Tier 7 bonus will no longer be worth the now-vast difference in gear quality, and the 2-piece Tier 8 bonus isn’t dynamic enough to be worth it either.

So to summarize:  As of right now, deep fire/frostfire mages should be gunning for the 4-piece Tier 8 bonus plus one off-spec piece, while arcane mages want to maintain their 2-piece Tier 7 bonus to go along with the 2-piece Tier 8 one.  When patch 3.2 hits, all mages will likely be looking to get the 4-piece Tier 9 set bonus.  Of course, like everything in the World of Warcraft, this is subject to change!

How Much Hit Rating Should You Stack? (Written by Karch) (Write for us!)

One of the trickiest things for new raiders to understand is just how much hit rating to run with.  While not a “sexy” stat like, say, critical strike or haste rating are, hit rating has a huge impact on your raid DPS.

The reasons for this are very much apparent, but this article isn’t about WHY your hit rating is important, it’s about HOW MUCH hit rating you should have.  Keep in mind that we are only concerned with raid bosses here, because this blog is about raiding.

Basically, if you’re a mage who’s just getting into raiding, and you’re trying to decide between the fancy spellweave set or the less-fancy ebonweave set, then hopefully you’ll find this helpful.

Note:  I always try to keep the numbers here to a minimum, and these numbers are available in many places around the net – including wowwiki.com, which is what I used.

Starting out:  if you’ve got zero hit rating on your armor and none from talents, you have a base 83% chance to hit a raid boss.  That means that nearly one out of five times, your spells will miss.  This is not good – you want 100%!  Luckily, there are plenty of ways to increase your chance to hit before you even touch your armor.  Let’s take a look at talents first:

• Deep fire mages get no hit rating help from talents – the “Arcane Focus” talent only affects arcane spells, which fire mages of course do not cast.

• Frostfire mages get 3% increased hit from the “Precision” talent in the frost tree.

• Arcane mages get the most help – 3% hit from “Arcane Focus” and 3% from “Precision” for a total of 6% bonus hit.

So to summarize:  If you are a deep fire mage you have a base 83% chance to hit a raid boss; if you’re a frostfire mage you have a base 86% chance to hit a raid boss; and if you’re an arcane mage you have a base 89% chance to hit a raid boss.

That’s still a lot of hit chance to make up, but if you are fighting with a raid boss, then chances are you’re in a raid – which means you get more help!

• Both shadow priests and moonkin druids have debuffs they place on bosses that increase players’ chance to hit them by 3%.  These debuffs do not stack, and hopefully you can count of having one of them in a 25-man environment.

So assuming you’re raiding with a shadow priest or boomkin, your updated chances to hit are as follows:  deep fire mages have an 86% chance to hit, frostfire mages have an 89% chance to hit, and arcane mages have a 92% chance to hit.

And one more thing, if you are a Draenei or you have one in your party (not just your raid – they have to be in your 5-person party), then you get their “Heroic Presence” 1% increased chance to hit.  This should be pretty easy to arrange if you’re an alliance mage, so I’m going to assume that Alliance players can always get in the same group as a Draenei.

So, for Alliance mages, deep fire mages have an 87% chance to hit, frostfire mages have a 90% chance to hit, and arcane mages have a 93% chance to hit.

Unfortunately, that’s all the help you can possibly get – the rest will have to come from your gear.  Note that if you are NOT running with a moonkin or shadow priest, then you’ll have to add 78 to all these totals.

Anyway, let’s assume ideal conditions and go spec-by-spec to see what you need:

Deep fire mages need 342 hit rating to make up the 13% hit if they are alliance, and 368 if they are horde.

Frostfire mages need 263 hit rating to make up the 10% hit if they are alliance, and 289 if they are horde.

Arcane mages need 184 hit rating to make up the 7% hit if they are alliance, and 210 if they are horde.

Again, these numbers assume ideal conditions.  If your guild does not run regularly with a moonkin or shadow priest, then you’ll need 78 more hit rating.

Note that arcane mages might find themselves with excess hit rating (especially with the hit-heavy Ulduar gear), in which case you might consider dropping a point or two from the “Arcane Focus” talent.

Hopefully this helps clear up some questions for you mages!

I have a Death Knight alt (doesn’t everyone?) that I’ve been working on gearing up, and I’ve been surprised how easy it was to get an initial set of gear.  My Death Knight is a tank, and within 3 hours of hitting 80 I was defense-capped with over 26k unbuffed HP without ever setting foot in a dungeon.  These stats aren’t great, of course - but they are perfectly passable to start doing heroics and maybe even 10-man raids.

So, if a death knight can do it, a mage can too, right?  Below is a list of items that mages who just hit 80 or who haven’t had good luck with heroics or getting into raids.

Keep in mind that this list includes NO items which comes from dungeons, raids, or emblems of heroism.

All that matters is that you have the gold  - and no matter how good or experienced a player you are, you can ALWAYS make gold.  Whether you want to do daily quests (which have the side benefit of helping your reputation) or just grind for hours, the only thing required to make a lot of gold is effort, or investing in this gold guide which is the fastest way I make gold.  That said, I’m not recommending anything here that should cost you a HUGE amount of gold (like the Kirin Tor rings).

So, without further ado, let’s look at some quality starter items that you can get without ever setting foot into a dungeon:

Head
Titan Forged Hood of Dominance or
Titan Forged Hood of Salvation

Cost:  40 Marks of Wintergrasp

Whether or not you’re a big PvP fan, playing in Wintergrasp is pretty painless.  You can just sit in a corner if you want, and you’re guaranteed at least 1 mark, win or lose.  Plus, you can play a bunch of times each day!  Just ignore the resilience on these helms – they’ve got a very solid amount of spellpower, a nice amount of hit (if you need it) or haste, and a meta socket, which is crucial for mages.  They are both straight-up upgrades over Hat of Wintry Doom, which you can have easily tailored for you if you are completely allergic to any and all PvP.

Neck
Chain of Latent Energies

Cost:  Depends on your server, but likely a 4-digit number.

A super nice BOE necklace that you should be able to find on your local AH.  On my server, the price varies from about 1,000g up to 1,700g.  Pretty reasonable for an item of this quality.  You can also find a jewelcrafter to make you a Titanium Spellshock Necklace, which, depending on the cost of Dragon’s Eyes on your server, may be quite a bit cheaper.

Shoulders
Dark Runic Mantle

Cost:  Probably 100g or so, depending on your server

A BOE drop from Halls of Stone.  The price on your server will likely be lowest on days in which HoS is the daily heroic, because (at least for me) this seems to drop at least once per run.  Very nice stats for a mage, including the nifty red socket.  Quite frankly, it gives essentially the same benefit to you as Mantle of the Extensive Mind, which would probably cost about 20 times as much.

Back
Deathchill Cloak

Cost:  Probably in the 400-700g range for mats

The mats are a tad on the expensive side, but this cloak is the real deal if you’re interested in pure DPS (and you’re a mage, so you should be!).  It can even last you into Ulduar.

Chest
Ebonweave Robe or
Spellweave Robe

Cost:  A few hundred gold for the mats.

Choose one based on whether you need the hit rating or not (hint:  if you’re a frostfire/fire mage, you probably do; if you’re an arcane mage, you probably don’t).  It’ll probably be significantly cheaper  just to buy the materials and find a tailor to make you one of these, but if you’re lazy and wealthy you can just buy one off the AH directly.

Wrists
Wraps of the Astral Traveler

Cost:  Hopefully under 1K gold on your server

This is a tough slot to fill, but these are probably your best option if your wealthy.  Raiders with excess Emblems of Valor will put these on the auction house fairly regularly, and at least on my server they’re cheaper than the other bracers.  If you can’t find them for under 1K gold, or if you’re having money issues, then Ancestral Sinew Wristwraps are decent if you put a red SP gem in them, and require you only be revered with the Wyrmrest Accord.

Hands
Ebonweave Gloves or
Spellweave Gloves

Cost:  Probably in the 200-500g range

Like the robe, find yourself a tailor and figure out whether you need the hit rating or not.  The material requirements for these are not bad, making them an easily-acquirable early upgrade.

Waist
Belt of Dark Mending

Cost:  Requires you be Exalted with Knights of the Ebon Blade

Knights of the Ebon Blade has 6 daily quests and a ton of non-repeatable quests, so you can easily get exalted with them in a relatively short period of time without ever wearing their tabard in a dungeon.  The belt itself is certainly nice enough to take into raids.

Legs
Black Duskweave Leggings

Cost:  Cheap

Very few good options for this slot.  These pants are good enough for for what they are, though, and they can be had for relatively cheap materials.

Feet
Sandals of Crimson Fury

Cost:  Exalted with Wyrmrest Accord

These are awesome boots that you can take well into your raiding experience.  Unfortunately, Wyrmrest only has three daily quests, so unless you’re running heroics they might take a little while to acquire (make sure you do all the non-repeatable Wyrmrest quests in Dragonblight!).  If you need something temporary until you hit exalted, Silky Iceshard Boots are reasonable.

Rings
Titanium Spellshock Ring

Cost:  Probably under 1K gold, depending on server.

An easy choice – Jewelcrafters make these and the mats are not killer.  You can pop a +19 spellpower gem into this and take it into Ulduar!

Signet of Hopeful Light

Cost:  Exalted with Argent Crusade

The Argent Crusade have a few dailies and a lot of non-repeatable quests in Zul’Drak and Icecrown to help you get your rep up.  Ring of Northern Tears is a nice, cheap option until you get exalted.

Trinkets
Darkmoon Card:  Illusion

Cost:  Hopefully under 1K gold, depending on server

You can now buy these off the AH!  Not an ideal item, but a ton of spellpower makes it attractive, especially as a starter trinket.  The price seems to vary widely, at least on my server.

Cannoneer’s Fuselighter from the quest The Last Line of Defense or
Rune of Infinite Power from the quest Mystery of the Infinite, Redux

These are quest rewards – there aren’t a lot of good options for trinkets until you’ve got the 40 emblems to buy Sundial of the Exiled.

Weapon
Gnomeragen Bonechopper (there is also a Horde version of the same weapon)

Cost:  25 Champion’s Seals from the Argent Tournament

Argent Tournament dailies are easy, quick, profitable, and can lead to this item!  It’s a great weapon to start raiding with and very comparable to 10-man Naxx drops.

Off-Hand
Faces of Doom

Cost:  Probably a few hundred gold on your AH

Inscribers make this – the mat cost isn’t terrible and the stats are very nice.  You can probably find a few on your AH at any time!

Wand
Shinygem Rod

Cost:  Revered with the Oracles

No great options here – if you choose the Oracles, this wand is just fine for the mage just starting out.  You can also pick up Iceshrieker’s Touch from a quest in Storm Peaks.

So there you go!  With some effort and gold, you can put together a pretty decent set of starter gear without ever setting foot in any kind of dungeon!

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:

1. 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).
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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:

1. Combustion:  Increases your crit chance 10% per cast until you crit 3 times.  You can use this every 3 minutes.
2. Icy Veins:  Increases your cast speed 20% for 15 seconds.  With the talent build above, you can use this every 2.4 minutes.
3. 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).
4. 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:

1. 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.
2. Hit all your cooldowns and start spamming frostfire bolt.
3. 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:

1. 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!
2. 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.
3. 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.

My main is an undead mage and I wanted to experiment with using videos as a medium to present information to you readers.

This video shows my current build I use for leveling from 66 – 80, it is designed for maximum dps against one target at a time with minimal downtime.

Combine this with a leveling guide like Zygor’s Leveling guide or Joana’s guide for maximum efficiency and to get a level every 2-3 hours. For a free alternative check out my write up about leveling guides in this post.

Continue reading to see how this build is used most effectively

Macros Used

Frostbolt – makes pet auto attack, uses your trinkets and icy veins if available, also takes away the annoying sound “I can’t cast that yet”:

#showtooltip Frostbolt

/petattack
/run SetCVar(“Sound_EnableSFX”,”0″)
/use 13
/use 14
/cast icy veins
/run SetCVar(“Sound_EnableSFX”,”1″)
/cast Frostbolt

Water Elemental Freeze – allows you to bind a key to your pets freeze for easy access to pull off the deep freeze/frost bolt combos:
/click [pet] PetActionButton5

Talent Build

At level 70 your build should look like this: 10/0/51

At level 75 I am currently using this in the video: 13/0/53

Finally, at level 80 your build should end up looking like this: 18/0/53

The build takes all necessary mana efficiency talents while picking up all the critical strike bonuses and chances possible to maximize damage. Deep freeze is fantastic to use with the water elemental pet and brain freeze is a great addition to free instant burst damage. I opt to take Torment the weak last as the initial frostbolt on a target doesn’t benefit from the 12% damage and I’d rather have 5/5 Chilled to the Bone and Deep Freeze.

Consumables/Glyphs

Glyph of Water Elemental

This brings down the time to cast your elemental to 2 minutes, and combined with Cold Snap your pet should be up very often and in most fights, not only is the dps boost from him shooting his 1200 dmg frost bolts a great increase but the ability to use the freeze to get off your deep freeze and combos make mages look godly by spiking off 3-4 mobs in a matter of seconds.

Glyph of Mage Armor

Keeps mana regeneration with mage armor on at a respectable level – 50% of your mana regeneration continues while you are casting. Blizzard has stacked tons of items with spirit in WOTLK and this talent will come in handy to make that spirit useful.

Spell Rotation and Strategy

As you can see in the video there is a pattern to follow in each encounter depending on which cooldowns are available:

Water Elemental – start casting your frostbolt (macro) – Pet freeze before frostbolt finishes casting and spam Deep Freeze – spam 2 ice lances to finish off target – if the mob is still left alive with <6% health Wand down or ice lance, if >6% cast another frostbolt.

After that first encounter is finished, ensure you cast Cold Snap whenever it becomes available to refresh your water elemental so the cooldown timer can start refreshing and your pet will be available right away after the current one despawns.

If no pet: Spam Frostbolt, if any frostbites proc – ice lance then deep freeze then span 2 more ice lances. That is it, use evocation whenever you are below 40% mana and keep up your consumables and purchase the highest level of water/food you can buy; since the mage conjured food/water isn’t the highest we can use until level 80.

There you have it, use these builds and a good leveling guide and you will be 80 in no time.