pre raid gearFollow

I hit 70 a few months ago with my mage, and I remember having similar gear difficulties. I would highly suggest that you get the spellstrike and spellfire sets as they are very easy to acquire and will boost your damage and crit ratings drastically. Also, there are a good number of epic pvp items which can be used until they are replaced by Kara gear. I've included a list below along with some information regarding where each item can be found/bought. I think you'll find these choices to be optimal for the time invested. If you're a frost mage, though, you won't want the spellfire set...but I would strongly recommend fire/arcane until you have high-level gear.

Chest - Spellfire Robes - buy the pattern to these from the specialty tailoring
Hand - Spellfire Gloves - trainer in Shattrath
Waist - Spellfire Belt

Head - Spellstrike Hood - farm gold for mats to this set and spam the trade
Legs - Spellstrike Pants - channel to have a mage craft them for you

Neck - Veteran's Pendant of Conquest - These items can be obtained from
Wrist - Veteran's Silk Cuffs - pvp honor via the Hall of Legends
Back - Sergeant's Heavy Cape
Feet - Veteran's Silk Footguards
Finger - Veteran's Band of Dominance
Trinket - Medallion of the Horde

Finger - Seer's Signet - Requires The Scryers: Exalted

For the weapon, wand, shoulders, and second trinket there aren't a lot of options outside instance runs, arena, and raids for getting epics. As a quick fix I would suggest the following:

Weapon - The Bringer of Death - Buy at AH for around 100g
Wand - Nesingwary Safari Stick - Nagrand quest completion reward
Trinket - Vengeance of the Illidari - quest reward from "Cruel's Intentions"
Shoulders - High Warlord's Silk Amice - pvp honor reward


I hope this helps.


Edited, Sep 6th 2007 4:11pm by IllusiaStratus

Farm the following instances

Shadow Lab -> murmur drops a warlock chest (I snagged one) and a sword
Mechanar -> More scryer rep for you, mana wrath, a offhand
Black Morass -> farming this place is a bit easier than you would think if the group works well. If possible get a plow group together and hit it hard for a good 4hrs. Not much gear besides that helm from the last boss.
Arcatraz -> OK this one is the hard one here, the trinket is gold though.

After all that work on revered for Coilfang. Then raid heroic SP for trinket from Quaggie (I called him that... damn thing refused to drop his eye for a good 2 mths....). The next hard grind you would have to do is the HH rep grind. The reward at the end is a sweet epic sword.

You actually do not need to be in spellfire set for Kara raiding. It does make for good gear since with that you can look past the token drops and go for other stuff. I would say that if you have 90% instance blues and has ditched all your green gear (a green trinket is ok I guess) you should be set.

Mage raiding Kara should aim to get 6k hp, 9k mana and at least 500 spell dmg. I think I managed that with normal instance drops, the difference between then and now is the stats.

Indeed.

I'd like to add a couple things:

SMV has two excellent quest rewards.

[wowitem=30925]Spaulders of the Torn-Heart[/wowitem]
and
[wowitem=31104]Evoker's Helm of the Second Sight[/wowitem]

Neither of the quests are too awfully hard if you can get a group for the group parts.


Additionally, I'd recommend a crapload of SV runs as well for gear to tide you over until you get your spellfire/spellstrike. Includes a robe and belt with +hit, which is good for raiding, as well as other items such as a ring and your mage set gloves and shoulders(good, not great). And if you do that place enough, you'll get exalted with CE. That gets you an awesome epic ring with damage and spell hit.

Finally, I'd like to recommend a resource I use to help me plan out my gear goals from instances.

http://wow-loot.com/mage.htm

That site will help you see everything from every instance in both regular and heroic mode that may be of interest to you, as well as blues from quests to look to get. Seriously, check it out.

Rate up to Cancerous and Anobix for great advice. I was surprised to hear from Cancerous, however, that 500 bonus dmg is really all you need to get going in Kara. I realize Anobix estimated more around +700, so is it safe to assume that somewhere in that range (along with 9-10k mana) is a good starting point?

I'm just under 700 bonus dmg and just over 10k mana (self-buffed), though I can get my dmg over 700 in my pvp gear (mana and crit% drop unacceptably low in this setup however). In PvE gear, crit is around 25% self-buffed, btw.

Side note: wow I love having an OOMkin around for the +5% aura. I out dps my lock buddy who has a HEAVY gear advantage when my Moonkin buddy is along. Feels like every other cast crits.

@500 dmg I believe that Attuneman and Moroes can be doable. in order to break 600 u should have to start spending some gold on enchants, do not break out the bank for the really high end stuff just general ones is good enough. Note that 550 to 600 is quite enough for clearing up to Maiden. I would say that you would need to stop after that since you are still not strong enough to try Opera.

Once you make your way past opera, you should find yourself sitting on some gear (amassed from Attuneman, Moroes and Maiden) which after gems and enchants should push you over the 550 mark. Do note that if you do heroics in your non raid times, you can also do the same. Most of what I got now is from heroics and some from kara. There are things that Kara will not be able to replace till you reach bosses beyond Curator. Who is already quite a roadblock itself. If the raid group is geared enough from Kara which entails things like King's Defenders for tanks and what nots, the guild can have a crack at Gruul's.

Mage Level 70 Pre-raid Gear:

http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=302171544&sid=1