Elementalist Mage cast rotation (0/58/13) (and your FFB Qs)Follow

best advice I can give is to throw your character into rawr (given raid buffs etc) and see what it spits out.

Arcane got a huge amount of buffs in the 3.08 patch and became raid viable and also arguably the highest dps Mage spec depending on gear/raid makeup of course. I am also always looking for new things to try. Tonight I will be trying out 18/53/0.

You can see info about it in the thread that I made pertaining to arcane on these boards or at ej (lnk in sig)

If you post what is different I would be happy to update the post for you, I try to stay up to date on them but can't always :-)

Nice catch, looks like the numbering/linking system from mmo-champion has changed. I have updated the build + glyphs (I think they all got shifted by 1 or something).

Should be: frostfire + molten armor + scorch.

I am unsure if FFB being higher than Arcane. I know that Arcane/Fire is better than Arcane -- at least for my gear level. I think it depends on where you are.

For instance, if you are getting deep into Ulduar FFB/Fire may be better than Arcane. For the short fights that are Naxx/EoE/OS Arcane is great for the 3 minute burst.

How good is the tier 7 4 piece bonus?


I got the 8.5 leggings last night and I am not sure if I should use them now or bank them until I get a second tier 8 piece for the bonus.

If I use them right now:

I gain: 34 sp, 1.74% crit, 15 hit (by changing gems I can convert this to a further 15 sp gain)
I lose: 4piece bonus from tier 7, 67 haste

Decisions, decisions.

My progression was:

FFB > Arcane > Arcane/Fire

FFB is good because it is easy, hits fairly hard, and is very mana efficient. The AoE is pretty good and you get the hit talents. Arcane takes some practice and experience and juding of fight lengths to know when you should blow your cooldowns and what rotations to use. Arcane/Fire takes a bit of gear (truly mostly enough hit to be close to hit cap w/o gemming for it) which you can get in mostly 213-226+ items very easily (ulduar is [imo badly] bloated with hit gear).



As for the previous post, 4pc T7 is worth about 100dps to you. If you only have 4 pieces and don't have a 5th to put onto another slot (my head for instance before I got my 2pc) I would keep it. At worst theorycraft it out for yourself and see if the legs give you enough of a dps increase to makeup for the loss in crit damage.

I really wish I had better numbers for you. When I was in T6/SW gear I already had close to 1300sp-1500sp (iirc) so that was pretty easy. I guess you could switch to Arcane or Fire at around 1750spellpower but overall I think Rawr can tell you what talent specs may give you higher DPS as well.

Edited, Jun 3rd 2009 10:24am by Anobix

If I read this correctly, Arcane/Fire is now the shizzle rather than FFB. I've enjoyed Arcane but AB/AM is getting old. I was going to try FFB but am now thinking twice. Is there a cookie-cutter Arcane/Fire spec (NB -- all the specs linked on the original FFB post are coming back blank; I don't know if that's a bug with my computer or because the talent tables have changed since release)?

(PS, I'm guessing it's the fire spec in Anobix's armory, that the case? And rotation is same as FFB except fireball replaces FFB?)

Edited, Oct 6th 2009 2:23pm by tuskerdu

FFB has its place in niche fights like heroic anub'arak where you have to do a lot of kiting/aoeing (and FFB has the best AoE with critting Blizzard with good dps).

Arcane/fire is better than FFB in a raw-dps standpoint, as long as you are geared enough to go Fireball (read have enough hit in gear alone without gemming/enchanting for it heavily).

FFB is pretty good on general hard mode because of the mana efficiency, I believe mim hard mode has a lot of aoe as well which it would be good for.