Please stay tuned for more info, but the patchnotes let us suspect that Frost is back.
40 / 21 Arcane Frostbuild are king of single target DPS (yet solo abilities are totally nerfed as with this build you are useless outside of instances) and therefore total raid builds.
Pure frost owned fire builds totally in TBC because in PVE you had an INCREDIBLE mana management and last VERY long and in PVP/PVE you simply survive like no other caster.

but now our frost DPS wis being increased, our abilities buffed, and trust me...
the cold winds of Northrend will blow again. Stay tuned for 2.1.0 Mage tutorials and for a comeback of DEEP frost even in PVE.
Naklin is back, my friends. I hope you will be back with me.
I am looking for 60 mages to level together, as we are able to make INSANE pulls if we work well, and get an incredible grind XP / hour.

Quote :

Mages

* Added a new rank of Ice Barrier to mage trainers.
* Arcane Brilliance, rank 1, is now available from trainers.
* Arcane Brilliance: Rank 2 of this ability now has the same range as rank 1.
* Arcane Missiles: Rank 3-11 will now consistently pulse 5 shots of arcane damage.
* Arcane Missiles: This spell is now affected by Spell Haste.
* Arctic Winds (Frost Talent) now also increases all Frost damage caused by 1-5%.
* Cold Snap: The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it only resets cooldowns caused by Frost spells. e.g.: Cold Snap will not reset the cooldown caused by Dragon's Breath.
* Conjure Mana Emerald: This spell now triggers a global cooldown as intended.
* Counterspell duration reduced to 8 seconds, and the cooldown reduced to 24 seconds.
* Fixed some data errors that caused Arcane Blast, Ice Lance and Molten Armor to generate more threat than intended.
* Frostbite effect is now subject to diminishing returns in PvP.
* Frostbolt: Damage on rank 12 has been increased slightly to ensure it did more damage than rank 11 at all levels.
* Hypothermia: If this debuff would prevent you from casting a spell on a given target, the button for that ability is now grayed out.
* Ice Armor: Rank 5 will now still trigger when all damage received is prevented by a damage shield, such as Mana Shield.
* Ice Block: This ability no longer makes mages immune to Weakened Soul from Power Word: Shield. However, using this ability now causes Hypothermia, making the mage unable to cast Ice Block again for 30 sec.
* Improved Fire Ward: This talent will now work correctly with rank 6 of Fire Ward.
* Invisibility: Clarified the tooltip on this ability to indicate any action breaks the invisibility affect.
* Molten Armor: This ability will no longer be triggered erroneously by some non-melee attacks, such as Feral Faerie Fire. It will also no longer break crowd controlling affects such as Polymorph.
* Spell Steal: Stolen buffs that affect specific spells from the original target's class will no longer have any effect for the mage.
* The Arcane Blast debuff can no longer be dispelled.
* Water Elemental: This pet will now come into the game with full health and mana, including that gained from a percentage of its

master's stamina and intellect.

Not that I know a lot about mages, but from what I've been reading firespec tend to be reading is:

arcane = max damage but high mana consumption
fire = good damage and average mana consumption
ice = lower damage and lower mana consumption

With a shadow priest in the group apparently the fire spec is the most played out spec for raiding, as you keep the dmg and get rid of the mana problem.

However I clearly have no experience, so I'll just go back to lurking.

http://radiationnow.net/wow/mage_dps.xls

Here is the requested file.
Others can be found around.

However this is theorycrafting.
Some WWS study might be better.

Keep in mind on average mobs often have high Fire or Ice resist, moreso than any other resist. This plays to Arcane spec benefit.

Without number crunching - since it changes often with different spec/build/gear/patch/etc - conceptually, ICE spec is intended moreso for defensive/functional. Most ice talents have a freeze or slow effect, for this reason, it is simply not _intended_ to out DPS the other two.

Fire spec is not so high in utility - but looking at effects of talents you quickly notice most are to improve raw DPS rather than increase protection for the Mage.

Arcane spec is intended to provide a larger mana pool if you have the gear (hence the xx of your INT talents) as well as improve raw DPS, if you have the gear to support the talents, and increase the DPS even moreso than Fire spec. Notice the later talents are "Increasing damage, but also increasing mana cost by x%".

I've read arcane mages with Arcane Blast / Arcane Spec in TBC doing insane DPS on boss mobs - but of course having to watch the AB debuff and mixing in other spells (missles, fire/ice bolts) until it fades. The problem with AB is it can burn mana fast in order to achieve that awesome DPS.

Naklin is right in that Ice conserves mana - reason being simply the individual spells do not cost as much to cast but do have that same long cast time (compare fire bolt vs. frost bolt. You get a fraction of the damage for similar cast time, with the benefit of slowing target movement speed). If you want the benefit of slowing movement speed, that is the cost.

It's all about playstyle and expectation. It's like a rogue - there are rogues who will always eviscerate on a 5pt and rogues who will always kidney punch on a 5pt when target is stunnable. If you have a TON of rogues, you don't require all to be kidney punching - some should be eviscerating, a good mix is always best, but some should be punching.

It's the same with mages. Some utility attacks should be tossed in with some pure DPS attacks if playing in group, choose your spec based on what your commited groups and friends play, or what you like.

Good Post.
I am happy to finally have a discussion with someone who knows what he is talking about.

I am sitting in a Coffee shop, just had a meeting, so don't expect too exact theory crafting. Still, bear with me if you can. ^^

Quote :

Most ice talents have a freeze or slow effect, for this reason, it is simply not _intended_ to out DPS the other two.

The point is HOW you outDPS them.

Fire mages do not have a necessarily higher output. They BURST higher. And they run out of mana in no time (sad, but true).
the one thing about fire spec, is that in order to fully take advantage of ingite (which is one of the MAIN DMG factors of fire spec), you need about 3 fire specced mages at least, in order to have ignites "rolling" forever and thus generate very high DPS.
Even like this, having no-defense-whatsoever, once you get aggro (and decent ignites will do that for you), you die. There is no way around it. And then, your DPS stops. You are not dealing damage anymore.

Arcane tree is a wonderful support tree. Arcane blast is incredible imba DPS, but you have to alternate it with scorches or frostbolt in order not to run out of mana. Your title as "utility" class gets lost becuase with 40 points in arcane (least needed), you lose all Crowd Control + Burst capabilities. you become a "single-target" torcher. because it will be about all you can do. High DPS? yes. do you die fast? faster than frost, slower than ice, as aggro mitigation talents are better.
Improved arcane missile is utter crap to take as you run OOM even faster than with arcane blast.

Frost gives you uncompared survivability. It gives you mana efficient spells and crowd control beyond any class' dreams.
Frost does not burst DMG like fire. it is CONSISTENT. and in my case, it is consistently HIGH. me not dying as fast as fire mages, makes me have a higher DMG output in the end of a battle than fire mages. Which in return made me be of bigger use to a group (the smaller the group, the more this plays in my favor).

Arcane is very good damage due to arcane blast.
But the increase in DMG / CRIT is not as high as the frost talents. Frost talents only affect frost spells, though. But i don't mind having 3% less DMG on my arcane blast, yet having 15% more on my frostbolt. i can still weave in a few arcane blasts, but be highly functional and do very high damage.
Yes, it is all about playstyle, but in the end, i run slower out of mana with frost, i survive better, and sustained DMG IS higher than with the other builds.
I mean seriously, as of the patch on tuesday, I have 37% critrate on mobs after 5 casts. Permanently, and without any additional buffs. That is uncompared. Add some buffs to it, and you can go nuts as a mage. For frost this critrate is insane, because we already have a VERY high sustained DMG output, due to frost being binary (hitting for full DMG or being fully resisted). I have +19% to hit after talents on my mage. I have up to 1% resists... maximum, on 63+ mobs.

This allows a frostmage to deal very very high total DMG (not as high in burst, as over time), while being in total (crowd-) control of the situation. and due to the consistent nature of the damage we can pre-calculate our odds of downing a certain mob VERY accurately.

As to fire / ice resistant mobs, there ain't a single mob resistant to both. a frost mage still uses fire magic and vice versa. DMG might be a bit lower, but will be still high enough. Not chillable? thats EXACTLY when arcane magic loses all its value. a Mob, running at you, not chilled. Forget arcane. You need to kite it (thank blizzard for toilet paper armor). And kiting non-chilled mobs requires instant cast spells. Arcane lacks those, only having arcane explosion, where you need to be at close range and the margin for error is too small.
You would kite with fireblast or ice-lance repsectively. kiting with those is not as easy as one might think, but its possible.
Eventually, things go down.


As i said once, i am HAPPy to finally have a mage on the server who KNOWS about the game, and have some competition and some dicussions and we can push ourselves to become better, both of us.
I hope you ding 48 soon, before the 11th, so that i take you FAST the last levels.
I am gonna try to be there.

This evening i am taken though, i think.
Good luck.

I'm pretty sure Ignites dont roll anymore.
I think that the Ideal group for a fire mage with the 10/48/3 spec is

Shadow priest - humm mana
Shammy - humm mana and crit and less aggro
Boomkin - hummmm crit
Fire Mage
What needs mana most likely a hunter or another mage

Apprently some Fire mages attain 48% crit raid buffed, that's just insane.

all that being said, i still prefer Ice myself, it's just cooler. (Ice....cool...get the joke?... ok that was lame)

Hi Naklin,
For levelling, I don't like to have anyone helping me when I'm grinding for the most part, only to run instances once I've gathered the quests. The fact is I have a serious problem with doing what I know is less efficient in levelling - I can parse the time it takes me to run / hand in x / gather y in my head - compare it to current grinding rate of said mobs - realize it's less efficient to complete a quest, but still run it (I HATE the fact I do things I know is less efficient). In any case, when someone is there to help me through quests or grinding I see the large chunks of EXP snatched away from my per-kill grip and it frustrates me Instances, though, Taimandred has been awesome. Quests ready to run the following when anyone has time: RFD, ULD

Now to the Points:

Some good thoughts and obviously a case can be argued for any spec, I think we can both agree that it is really dependent on gear and situation as to which is better. However, I have some points to add to yours.

Naklin wrote:

Fire mages do not have a necessarily higher output. They BURST higher. And they run out of mana in no time (sad, but true).
the one thing about fire spec, is that in order to fully take advantage of ingite (which is one of the MAIN DMG factors of fire spec), you need about 3 fire specced mages at least, in order to have ignites "rolling" forever and thus generate very high DPS

Ignite effect does not require additional mages in order to produce the additional 40% damage from Your spell. Whatever your spell hits for, lets say 100, it will do another 40% of that -- in this case 40 -- over 4 seconds. That is 100% independent of other people in the raid, including other mages Fire mages do not burst as high as Arcane mages and are infact much more steady on DPS, if you notice their talents are primarily +crit, +dmg, and -cast time, those are all per-spell-effecting talent factors which attribute specifically to DPS over Time. Arcane are burstmasters (POM, Arc Power, Empowered arc missles (not improved))

Naklin wrote:

Arcane tree is a wonderful support tree. Arcane blast is incredible imba DPS, but you have to alternate it with scorches or frostbolt in order not to run out of mana. Your title as "utility" class gets lost becuase with 40 points in arcane (least needed), you lose all Crowd Control + Burst capabilities. you become a "single-target" torcher. because it will be about all you can do.

There are a few points to address here. Arcane Blast is the most mana/damage efficient spell that a Mage can cast - if there are no debuffs. (Proof: Arc Blast - 195 mana - 2.5sec cast - 700 dmg - dmg per mana 3.6 - dps 280, pyroblast 10 - 500 mana - 1421 damage - dmg per mana 2.1 - dmg per sec 237 including full duration of DoT portion of spell) If you spam it you blow huge amounts of mana, however, achieve MASSIVE burst damage (Especially if you've mixed in pom/arc power!). This is rarely a good idea, but it's there if you need it. I don't know anyone who would alternate it with scorches, FB if you want slow effect yes of course (often I POM FB in combat between my other cast types if fight requires me to slow/blink away and resume casting.. of course tactic is all fight-dependent so lets not discuss this without detailing what case to do what ) I wont address the death-rate, I've already agreed that Frost lasts the longest, that's the point of a defensive-style build We're addressing DPS. (please don't argue "but if you die you do no DPS" again, that's irrelevent in theorycrafting, other classes performing their role sufficiently serve to prevent that from happening!)

Naklin wrote:

Frost gives you uncompared survivability. It gives you mana efficient spells and crowd control beyond any class' dreams.
Frost does not burst DMG like fire. it is CONSISTENT. and in my case, it is consistently HIGH. me not dying as fast as fire mages, makes me have a higher DMG output in the end of a battle than fire mages. Which in return made me be of bigger use to a group (the smaller the group, the more this plays in my favor).

This is a comparison of you vs a fire mage, not ice vs fire or arcane. Playstyle and observation plays an enormous role in DPS, survivability, etc. I agree with you that frost is survivable. It is not, however, the highest DPS over a course of time, if played to its fullest. It's utility - slowing run speed is amazing. Oh, speaking of which, please look at 41pt Arcane talent. But as for aggro: are reasons you can download mods like threat calculators to monitor your threat levels in relation to the MT or other players man I use KTM.

Naklin wrote:

Not chillable? thats EXACTLY when arcane magic loses all its value. a Mob, running at you, not chilled. Forget arcane. You need to kite it (thank blizzard for toilet paper armor). And kiting non-chilled mobs requires instant cast spells. Arcane lacks those, only having arcane explosion, where you need to be at close range and the margin for error is too small.
You would kite with fireblast or ice-lance repsectively. kiting with those is not as easy as one might think, but its possible.
Eventually, things go down.

Non-ice mages still get chill, it's just not for as long of a time or as high of a percentage slow as frost spec mages, don't forget this. Same as you mention throwing in AB during your frost offense which is acceptable. But you're also not paying attention to one very useful spell 41+ spec arcane now gets: Slow. Instant 50% slow movement, 50% slow spell casting, 50% slow range, last 15 secs.


I'll toss out some additional "for consideration" information about the talent trees and specs, I still am pro arcane if you go for +arcane damage and +int all the way, due to talents like Mind Mastery (all spell dmg 25% of total intellect!) Arcane Mind (15% increase total int) Empowered arc missles (45% increase on spell dmg bonus effect) and of course the -10%+10 arcane resistance on all spells cast. But like I said, your spec is very gear dependent, each to their own

Some crit/dmg DPS increasing facts between arc and frost:

Arcane talents: Arc Potency - +30% crit on all clearcasting (free) any spells, 10% chance on CC. Arc Impact +6% crit arc blast. Arc Instability 3% spell damage and 3% crit (all spells), Spell Power 50% crit strike bonus on all spells, Mind Mastery - 25% of intellect increase spell dmg on all spells

Frost talents: Elemental Precision - 3% decrease in chance frost/fire is resisted, Ice Shards - 100% increase in crit strike bonus to frost spells only, Piercing Ice - 6% increase to dmg on frost spells, (Shatter only affects frozen targets but pretty much guarantees 1 crit), Empowered Frostbolt - 10% bonus damage spell effect and 5% crit, Arctic Winds 5% frost damage, Winter's chill (20% chance stackable chance effect to increase maximum 10% crit on a target)


Arc effects affect all spells not just arcane. Frost spells affect only frost spells (in most cases). For this reason I choose Arc, so when I do need to change off due to resistances or cooldowns (which all types often have to do, especially if silenced in casting one school), there is some versatility without losing the benefits.

I'm glad you're frost - so I can make use of your utility when we group together, and continue to blast my spell class

We will run those instance this evening then. If what was previously posted on those boards that TBC is starting in 2 weeks, then there is no point in trying ot obtain any PVP gear. (I will still pvpto accumulate points for when I am 70).
Well all that to say count on me this evening.

I have read on forums that arcane blast is actually a huge benefit even with the debuff. Consider yourself with lots of mana left and the boss at a low health percentage. You get rid of all your mana with arcane blast and end up with no mana once the boss is dead which is what you should be aiming for.

However Maximus I have also read that arcane might become better for pve than other spec if you have the best gear around. (which would seem it is also very gear dependant).

Taim, you're dead on about the arc blast mana dump. It's all about mana management. You're also right with Arcane being gear-dependant, will notice I mention that a few times in the posts The wonderful thing about a build that lets you scale with pumping int is the int will not only pump you with raw crit and mana pool, but also the talent-based dmg bonuses. Other builds do not gain scale with scaled gear: so certainly other builds will outperform in other ways.

Check this, a pretty badass arc/fire raiding and pvp build (heavy arc but maintain pyro for the sheep>pyro>pm>pyro opener)

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?2550050300231150333125105500001000000000000000000000000000000000000

Hey guys,
Can anyone tell what is the fire mages damage should be?
I have fire mage with full epic items lvl70. My toon does +3000 damage in avarege. I pulled one time 4300(fire bolt) + 3200(fire blast) = ~7500 damage. But when I'm riding with my guidliers to 25 man raid I'm only 3rd or 4th on total damage list (only mages). I don't think they gear is better than mine but I just don't understand how they pull this off?

Make a full raid run and tell us your overall %of total and overall DPS. Second wierd thing is that the 3 first DPS are mages

EDIT = maklin current title is "timyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy" !

yes you right, our warlocks are not that DPS yet. Cause the guild was built by 2 mage friends.

Tell me plz what addon I use to count all DPS points? and how i do display them to raid?

thanks

Damage meters
Recount

take your pick