State of Mages in 3.3.3?Follow

Those numbers kind of surprise me, I would have actually figured them to be the other way around. I'm guessing the numbers are there for when a mage does not have to switch targets (all 3 are switch target fights). I suppose that living bomb would be beneficial on all 3 if it blows up at the right time (killing bone spikes on marrow, if adds are tanked at boss [we do that in normal] on DW, and if it explodes when blood beasts spawn on Saurfang).

Although looking at normal modes it appears that arcane has the edge for the majority of the fights.

I switched to a Fire spec, and I am NOT impressed.

@Jay, no I didn't. Those were just top rankings for the specs--I don't know how to add him in without it being the actual raid log.

*some time later*

Just checked out WoL. WE was about 1K for all 3 fights for the top DpS Frost runs. Still a significant gap, unfortunately.

But I'm really confused, as the top ranked Frost dropped 2K from the aforementioned value. Are these weekly tops or something?

[EDIT]

Fire has grown on me a little, but I won't say I prefer it. I just find AoE annoying, and the ST rotation isn't really exciting:

Scorch>LB>Pyro>Fireball

Frankly, it plays like Frost, except you need to keep up two debuffs. I don't like the RNG factor of Pyro. Just practicing on target dummies, my DpS has fluctuated 1K based on luck (4K to 5K).

Arcane's lowest DpS since I got my 2pc and Merlin's Robe was 5K. And if I got lucky (lots of crits on high ABs), 6-6.5K. The rotation is more fun in ways than Arcane, but is frankly way more annoying on fights like Anubarak, when your LB doesn't even explode once.

I do kinda want to try it in PoS though, because Garfrost would be fun if I had a LB on each geist.

Edited, Apr 11th 2010 8:56am by idiggory

I'm working towards http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oZfVc0RhIhVubhcthI0sRzh (level 76 at the moment). It's intended solely for 5 mans, and that horrible grind you have to do to farm emblems (farming 3 times if you want PvE, PvP and BoA gear).

It completely neglects fireball to the point I don't even bother casting it, and use scorch instead. That isn't too much of a problem in 5 mans where things die too fast, or you have to move or get interrupted too much to finish a fireball cast.

The AoE DPS that the build is capable of is, as Mozared said '*SICK*'.

*Obscenely sick*

.

You open by dropping living bomb on as many of the mobs as possible, follow up with the 2 highest highest rank Flamestrikes, and then Blizzard. By the time you've got round to Blizzard and it's chill is giving you masses of crits from a huge pile of DoTs, chances are the mobs are getting into the 35% health that leaves them open to another 12% damage thanks to Molten Fury. Then the Living Bombs go off.

You can pull off stupid amounts of damage with next to no chance of over-aggroing, because the build up is slow enough to let the tank get a lead, and even if you do pull 4-5 mobs during the Blizzard, they'll be slowed, you'll more than likely have a Hot Streak proc to use on any caster, and you can just Frost Nova and drop another Blizzard on the remaining melee.

Nothing short of a DK built for the same purpose comes close on the meters, and they run the risk of pulling aggro, as their DPS is more front loaded.

I'm wondering if it would even be possible to put the scorch debuff onto the mobs as part of the opener for another 5% crit chance (may well be possible if they have a slightly higher healthpool than the mobs I'm facing while levelling, to give me more time to get to the 35% Molten Fury effect).

The only problem is the huge amount of mana you get through. I'm glad I've got engineering for the Nitro Boosts, otherwise I'd be miles behind from all the sitting and drinking I have to do.

Edited, Jul 9th 2010 2:21pm by polarityjp

To be fair, though - even if the Frostbites don't break by the amount of Living Bombs going off, after 3-4 LB's and two Flamestrikes, the tank *should* generally have all mobs in position. This is 7.5-9 seconds we're talking about, before Frostbite even has a chance to start popping up.

Take a look through that talent tree again, and think about what you're complaining about.

Frostbite freezes the target in place, yes.

It also means that all the spells casted by the mage that hit the target until the effect is broken are going to have a 50% higher chance of being crits thanks to the points in shatter.

I played a mage in AB as frost CC until level 29, the bracket where you get Improved Blizzard and Shatter, and one thing became very clear about how blizzard works when used to slow or immobilise, when I got high enough to put talents in shatter. If you have a high crit chance, then even if you do freeze someone in place, they won't stay frozen for more than a second or two before a crit from the Blizzard breaks the freeze effect, because the chance of the freeze breaking increases dramatically with sucessive crits. That was with BG CC gear, which does not use SP or crit, and favors stam and int.

When you combine full talents in Ice Shards and Shatter, on top of the much higher crit over a frost build you have from a full fire tree, and you have no less than 3 DoTs ticking on the mob, as well as the damage from the other DPS contributing to the breaking of the freeze effect, frozen mobs from Blizzard are only going to be prevented from moving once in a blue moon.

And you're worried about being unable to drag those almost dead mobs out from under the mage's 3 pre-targetted AoEs, plus any from the other DPS, all of which is guaranteed to kill the mobs provided nothing moves them? When I tank I consider it my job keep already aggroed mobs under the existing AoE, and bring new ones to it, instead of expecting all the DPS to chase me round and try and work out when I've got things positioned to my satisfaction, so they can finally start casting again.


I'm also trying to work out why any tank would give a damn about a charger. It's not like they can do anything to stop them from charging, so they may as well ignore them doing it (benefit of threatplates, a mob starts running round and the plate over it's head is still green, you ignore it, because you do have aggro on it). In those cases it's up to the DPS to huddle to keep those mobs under their AOE as much as possible.

I'll hop onto my frost mage and play with specs a bit to confirm the FoF thing. Last time I checked (around 3 months ago) you still needed a point to get the FoF charges correctly. Honestly, I've played my mage maybe twice in 3 months. When a server dies, and you don't have the money to server AND faction swap, there's not much you can do :\

Pardon me, who the hell are you to say that I (or some of the other educated posters) don't know how Frost Mage mechanics work?

Edited, Jul 14th 2010 1:24pm by jaysgsl

See, the thing is, we actually have done all you've done, and then some. We read the patch notes, we read google, we read wowhead and ElitistJerks.
However, we also spend the gold on respecs. We put our asses on the line in 25 man raids to test stuff out.
Here's the straight of it, new guy. Whereas making some retarded half wit spec may seem better for 5 mans, it really isn't. The difference between 14K DPS and 15K DPS on trash mobs is minimal and negligible. It's going to kill that trash pack a whopping half second earlier, give or take a half second. The listed spec WILL root the mobs in place in a blizzard, and it WILL make the Tank and Healer's jobs much more difficult.
Do you understand how threat works if a mob is rooted? It attacks the nearest target, completely ignoring threat. So, if you happen to root some radioactive trogg near a healer, the healer will get gibbed.
Your extra half second on trash is NOT worth the 10 extra seconds you take to kill a boss.

Edited, Jul 14th 2010 1:22pm by jaysgsl