Raiding talent builds for 3.03/3.08Follow

Please add your ideas/changes/etc and reasoning for them if possible. If you can use a talent calculator from mmo-champion (so that you can include the glyphs etc as well) that would be nice, but not necessary.

Nice build, I forgot to mention that one. When you have a molten fury range that lasts long enough for two icy veins it is indeed nice. Although come 3.08 combustion crits will count towards hot streak procs (as they currently do not). It may be worthwhile to pick it up. I hardly have any mana issues while keeping LB up (refreshing it approximately ever 12-14 seconds depending on combustion and using the GCD for hot streak procs to avoid ignite munching).

3% extra free damage is very worthwhile. I rarely take damage and taking 3% extra is nothing that a healer can't handle, especially with warlocks lifetapping etc

Fiery payback is fairly useless as you should not be under 35% for any significant amount of time.

I'm having trouble running any numbers because there are few calculators that take into account use of Mage Armor + Glyph of Mage armor as an alternative to Molten.

Consider:

-> Arcane as a main talent tree can be played either as a mana dump for higher DPS OR conservatively - moreso than FFB.
-> Arcane Meditation, Student of the Mind, Mage Armor, and Glyph of Mage armor provide substantial MP5 through casting.
-> Arcane Subtlety and Precision provide considerably higher Hit rating and threat control.
-> Prismatic Cloak provides AoE Damage mitigation as well as a considerable amount more of threat control.
-> Boss AoEs will not critical (Molten Armor), however they can be resisted and absorbed (Mage armor, Magic Absorbtion, Encanters Absorbtion).


What does this spell to me?

A stacking of Spell Power and Haste mixed with Spirit and Intellect moreso than a FFB Spec, gearing in Post-T7 gear (sometimes considered Healer/Boomkin cloth gear) with Mage Armor up as opposed to Molten Armor would allow a considerable "mana-dump" with consistantly high mana regeneration through cast with the ability to "Absorb" AoEs by choice through Mana Shield or Frost/Fire Ward for an even larger mana-dump with even larger DPS that can then be made back up with a shorter cooldown Evocation.

By forgoing the necessity to crit in order to do damage, this build opens up use for some of the highest-end gear - much of which has no Crit on it (and I find fail to be upgrades to my more outdated pieces).

While this seems like oddball rambling, if you take a look at the difference between many of the 10 and 25 man Cloth gear, you will see a sharp rise in Haste and far fewer Crit items. Furthermore, these pieces lack the +Mp5 of a classic Priest item, leading me to believe the items are designed for Boomkins - not really all that different gear build than a Mage.

So I guess the question is... In very high-end deep Arcane would a Mage benefit more from Mage Armor over Molten Armor?



P.S. - To all FFB Mages currently at a 10-Man Raid gearing level, do you find certain fights to be a drain on your mana? 25-man Loatheb comes to mind the most, but I find on a few occasions in 25-mans that Gems arn't keeping me up (I need more T7 - this might help), my Evocation's cooldown is too long, and my eventual OoM DRASTICALLY hurts my DPS.

When raiding/grouping Slow is a very useless spell. I have yet to find any non-trash mob that is actually works on and in a group you don't need to slow trash mobs usually.

Shoot even soloing I don't use it anymore. Once again unless its an elite I don't need it slowed because I burn it down so quick. And naturally any elite that I am trying to kill usually is once again immune to snare so pointless.

I am mostly arcane with a couple of points in ice for the freeze effect. When I was 70 using this spec I never ran out of mana in heroics/raids/pvp/etc. Now that I am 80 if I don't use mage armor I run out of mana on boss fights alot.

Edited, Jan 1st 2009 7:37pm by fronglo

I thought the numbers were run that once you had even a ridiculously small amount of SP, the GCD it takes to cast the slow isn't worth the TtW, especially if you could hunker down in 1 spot.

As it stands, Slow+TtW is almost entirely a PVP tool.

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you're asking here. Please, better spelling and more clarity of message. Are you wanting to add a fire build to the list here? Are you wanting to know how to use a fire build for yourself? Is it something else I'm not understanding?

Our mages are currently struggling a bit in terms of damage, do you know if theres any links (like the wrath scoreboard on elitist jerks) for the patch yet? I don't think any would object to going FFB, but it would be interesting to see how the different specs compare.

Second question is I know at least part of FFBs superiority is due to the DK rune increasing frost damage by 5%. As far as I know none of our DKs are using this and I was wondering if there's a certain number of mages that you would need to make that rune a bonus to raid damage compared to whatever the DK would be using otherwise.

On the 13/58 fire build what is the reasoning behind putting points in spirit and burning soul instead of at least 1 point for blast wave? I've found the knock back with blast wave to be a life saver on some occasions and helps with some of the ad fights in naxx.

I guess it's just a difference in raid philisophy. Our raid leader prefers us to have blast wave in case an add gets away from a tank or someone pulls threat. That and the naxx fight is all we use it for. We are usally back with the healers and use it as sort of a last line of defense for them.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0qcz0cZ0EcbohIuVubhst

LOL. I wish I was having threat issues. I land squarely in the middle on average while sometimes in the top 5 depending on the fight. Even our mage lead, who prior to wrath was always in the top 3, is now happy to be in the top 10 on average.

I'm looking into respeccing to Arcane for heroics once I hit 80, and I was looking at your first Arcane build you have listed. You have Frost warding as one of the extra frost talents and I was curious as to why. I remember you telling me a while back that it was a useless talent and I shouldn't bother putting points into it. What is the benefit of having Frost warding in this particular build? Surely there are some other lower end frost talents that would be more useful? Perhaps a couple of points in Ice shards?

Thanks for the clarification. :-)