Random mage questionsFollow

Now that Kalivha and Aethien have lured me into their little cult guild on Kazzak-EU (join us, join us!), I've dusted off, faction changed and transferred my mage to play him again. Because mages kick ***. It was a bit bumpy to get back into the class, seeing as I started out at level 63 with a weird fire/frost hybrid spec and haven't played a mage since TBC, but I feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it again. Nevertheless, I've got some questions on which I'd like some feedback, so any help is appreciated.

From what I've learned from the mages who raid with me, Arcane is the flavour of the month, and people have been sighted speccing out of Frostfire builds for raiding all over the country. My problem, though, is that I'm very manly. Purple sparkles aren't manly. Exploding balls of fire are manly. So I decided to go fire and literally melt faces. I played around with the talents a bit and ended up with a build that is working pretty damn good for my level. My rotation for trash could be described as the infamous "JOHN F*CKING MADDEN" and I just pop Dragon's Breath, Flame Strike and Blast Wave to make everything near me explode. My rotation for bosses is Living Bomb > Scorch > Fire Blast > Fire Ball until Living Bomb drops, imp Scorch falls off or Fire Blast comes of cooldown, throwing instant Pyroblasts from Hot Streak basically as soon as the talent pops. But where are the questions, you ask? Well, here we go.

1. Am I doing it right? Is this the way you're supposed to play fire or did I miss something obvious and should I, say, forego Fire Blast altogether?

When looking through the awesome mage post (or w/e it's called again) I stumbled upon this, which then lead me to this 'cookie cutter' fireball spec. Which lead me to the following questions

2. Is that spec still viable in current 80's content? Is Arcane simply more popular because it's easier to play or is it simply all out better DPS? Or is it perhaps so that Arcane scales better and is only better in higher-end content? And how much better or worse is pure fire (in a fire/arcane spec) compared to a frostfire (fire/frost) spec?
Additionally,
2a. How does Torment the Weak work? This is something I've never quite understood. Aren't most raid bosses immune to snares? How do I benefit from the 12% damage?
And
2b. If I were to use the cookie cutter but swap Torment the Weak and Student of the Mind for Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath and Firestarter, like so, would it be a tremendous loss of single-target damage? And is the AOE damage even worth it in raids? And what if I want to raid but would also use this spec for grinding? And if I really wanted the awesome AOE-ness, would it be a better idea to grab the points from Improved Scorch or Playing with Fire instead?

And spec discussions aside,
3. Can anyone recommend me a good addon to take care of my portals? I'd specifically like a button with a "drop-down menu" - I just downloaded an addon called Wittymage but haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Thanks in advance for anyone willing to shed light on my issues or show me his experiences!

Weird that you consider fire to be melting faces, because, the way it feels to me is that arcane melts things and fire blows **** up. :) But seriously, I've seen a ton of mages and other people talk about arcane being the easier spec, but for me, personally, it's harder than the other specs because of the cooldown management. I think I'm getting the hang of it nowdays, but fire just seems more straight-forward to me. But, like Anobix said, it just doesn't do the dps that arcane does, and burstiness is pretty important on a lot of fights, too, which fire/ffb lacks.

With my current Mage, max (Raid) DpS in 25 man content is:

AB Spam, with Mbarr on 0 or 4 stacks-- 5473.81 DpS

With the rotation Anobix mentioned and 20/51/0-- 4845.33 DpS.

HUGE reduction? No. But it is 11% less. And no matter what way you cut it, an 11% nerf sucks. Sure, it may not seem like it matters when you think of it as 9K vs. 10K DpS. But in 10 seconds, that means the latter puts out 10K more damage than you (it's like they fought an additional 1.1 seconds).

When a fight lasts 5 minutes, the 10K DpS can theoretically do 3 million damage. The 9K dps can do 2 million, 700 thousand. That's 300 thousand less.

Up to you if you don't care. But don't think it matters way less just because you can still put out a high number.

Will you be gimp? Probably not. I'm sure you can still be up there in the charts.

But I'd say rethink Arcane. It doesn't feel "sparkly."

Why?

Because I'm quickly hurling massively condensed, raw, chaotic blasts of magic into my opponents face, not caring how draining it is. And then, when it becomes too much to continue working in such dangerous conditions, I turn around and fire 20 missles into the softest points of the enemy. Then, because I never learned my lesson, I start playing with the chaotic forces more. >:D

Fire's, like... Woo. I'm a sissy and don't want to play with the forces that could backfire and rip me apart. So I'm going to conjure flames to be all flashy to hide the fact that I'm too weak willed to toy with the Arcane.

Go play a Warlock, scrub!

Well, there are leveling specs and there are end-game specs. If you like blastwave for leveling, I don't think that's a big deal, on the other hand...

If you're playing with fire, and you get good at throwing down living bombs well, that will pay off later. If you "do it right" there should be more than enough for you to do on trash fights without blastwave and dragon's breath (those are fun PvP talents though), and you should be doing very good damage.

I will say, on longer trash fights, when you get living bombs going off all over the place, it really is very manly.

Oh, and this.

Thanks for all the replies, diggory answered my question perfectly - it's not that I don't consider Arcane at all, but right now I definitely prefer fire and if I get into raiding (which will be casual, probably 1, maybe 2 raids a week starting with TotC) I prefer to stay with the playstyle I like until I either really get the hang of it or simply want to try something new. I just wanted to know whether this was possible without completely gimping myself. And it seems it is.

In regards to the addons, thanks for the suggestions, I'm going to play around with them now.

P.S. Diggory: arcane sparkles. Edward Cullen sparkles. End of discussion.

Anobix is right - you will do less DPS as a fire. It might feel more manly, but it won't look that way. He reviewed my spec, gear, and rotation.

I was doing 3-4k on bosses. Last night on a completely BS heroic run I briefly ding'd 9300 DPS. It was on the 2nd (Spider Boss) of AN. I have no business doing 9k dps, and it's a complete gimick (AB until you can Gem, AB until you Stack 4 (you should already have this...), Pop all CD (Plus Troll Racial) AB until /oom, then Evocate, Rinse and repeat.)

But on Ignis (and doing a real rotation) I pulled a very easy and relaxed 5k.

I would (did) just go with his spec, design, etc...


9300 DPS - I still have 1 Blue item and several pieces <200 ilvl.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Grizzly+Hills&cn=Fishe


/edit: I put OK instead of AN - always get the two 'bug' instances confused.

Edited, Feb 25th 2010 9:44am by Borsuk