i. Introduction – Mages in PVE
ii. PVE Specs, Arcane Blast, Frostfire Bolt
iii. Talents and Builds
iv. Comparative Mage Stats
v. Gearing for Raids
vi. Glyphs, Gems, and Enchants
vii. Rotations
viii. Consumables
ix. Recommended Addons
i. Introduction – Mages in PVE
Mages, like warlocks, hunters, and rogues, have only one function – to do damage. Dual spec system will not allow mages to slip comfortably into a secondary function in PVE, and the need for CC has been largely negated by the ease of AOE tanking. Thus, it is crucial that good mages learn their primary role well.
Currently, the mage class is in a good state when it comes to competitive PVE dps. The pressure, therefore, is shifted into the individual, not the class designers, to perform up to their full capacity. Luckily, playing a mage is fairly simple.
(I am not going to really discuss the mage class and/or mage dps in comparison with other classes, except to say that if you only play classes because they are perceived to be OP, then you should play a game where you are guaranteed to win. Due to Blizzard still changing class mechanics around a lot, expect that there will be no clear-cut winner in the dps race for quite a while. In the meantime, there is plenty of room for skill and gear and close the gaps.)
This guide will concentrate on the two primary PVE specs: frostfire and arcane. I will not discuss frost as it is not considered as of 3.0.8 to be a competitive PVE damage spec.
For the math behind the theory, you should look at ElitistJerks as I will not reproduce it here.
ii. PVE Specs, Frostfire Bolt, and Arcane Blast
All information in this guide assumes level 80.
At the start of Wrath, Frostfire spec (often abbreviated as FFB for Frostfire Bolt) was the highest practical dps spec. There was some early theorycrafting done where pure fire still slightly outdamaged FFB, but only in the event that an arcane mage was present in the raid as a “slow slave” – to continuously Slow the target to apply the Torment the Weak debuff. This is obviously not something everyone can come to depend on.
With patch 3.0.8, deep Arcane becomes a strong PVE competitor, although only time will tell if it is truly a superior dps spec than Frostfire. Many mages that switched from FFB to Arcane with 3.0.8 report that it is an immediate dps increase over FFB, anywhere from +500-800 dps just from respeccing. It seems that Arcane is finally an extremely viable and competitive alternative to FFB. Many mages may prefer to play as Arcane because it is a more dynamic and “fun” playstyle. Arcane is also a good PVP spec for Wintergrasp and outdoor battlegrounds, but I will not cover the Arcane PVP spec here.
Currently, Frost falls behind the other two trees in damage, and although it continues to be a strong spec for survivability and for leveling, its endgame performance is lacking. There are plans to massively buff Frost dps for PVE as well as grant the water elemental the Replenishment ability (it is Blizzard's intention to make all three mage trees equally good for PVE. Whether this will actually pan out in practice is another story). It is still a good arena build, but since this is a PVE guide I won’t discuss PVP specs here.
A Word on Playstyle: Arcane vs. Frostfire
Arcane plays very differently from fire/frost or frostfire. As frostfire, your dps is limited by two things: cast time and crits. As Arcane, your dps is limited by your mana pool. As frostfire, you are juggling dots, cooldowns/trinkets, and procs. As Arcane, you are also juggling cooldowns and procs (no dots; you’re not a warlock), but now you must actively practice mana management. You can go balls to the wall until your mana bar goes limp, or you can concentrate on maximizing DPM (Damage Per Mana) for sustainable dps. Therefore, playing as Arcane requires the mage to have a sense of timing instead of simply applying a rotation over and over.
That's very nice on paper, but how do the two raid mage specs compare in practice?
Arcane does require a lot more micromanaging of your mana regen mechanics. Even with 3 mana gem charges, a 2-min Evocate, and one mana pot per fight, you will spend a lot of time staring at your mana bar trying to figure out exactly when the best time to recharge will be. And God help you if you are interrupted during Evocating. If you can talk a druid into Innervating you, so much the better, but with the new changes to spirit-based regen and mana management techniques, I wouldn't count on it too often.
Also, you don't have Dragon's Breath or Blast Wave, which are actually very nice talents in certain situations.
In return, you get some added mobility, a spellpower boost, and an extra 3% hit from talents, which works out to about ~80 hit that you don't need to gem/gear/enchant for.
FFB sees massive, massive crits -- with 35% crit and about 1730 spellpower, Frostfire Bolts hit for 12k. That's still nothing compared to the 14-15k Arcane Barrage crits I've been getting with Arcane Power up, but Arcane Power comes at a pretty heavy price. In the new patch, Arcane Power's mana cost will be reduced to 10%, as will the damage bonus.
Let’s now examine the two main nukes of the FFB and Arcane specs.
Frostfire Bolt: The tooltip for FFB is confusing, if you want to know exactly how your frost and fire talents interact with this spell, you may look at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jsessionid=73FC37BB82E923B642094B4BF99785AE.app27_03?topicId=12661303549&sid=1. Basically, talents that refer to “fire” or “frost” spells affect FFB, talents that refer to specific fire/frost spells, such as fireball, do not affect FFB. If you are spell-locked while casting FFB, you will be locked out of both the fire and frost trees.
It does “frostfire damage,” which is a completely different type of damage from either fire or frost. It did both types of damage in Beta; not anymore. If a target happens to be immune to fire or frost, it will deal the other school of damage instead. It used to double-dip from the Frost talent Elemental Precision, where FFB received 6% spell hit instead of 3%. After Patch 3.0.8, this will no longer be the case and FFB will receive 3% as is intended. It has a 3-second cast time, which is not alterable with talents, only with haste.
Arcane Blast: Patch 3.0.8 changed this spell from its former unplayable version. Now, it does the following: Each time you cast Arcane Blast, the damage of all Arcane spells is increased by 15% and mana cost of Arcane Blast is increased by 200%. Effect stacks up to 3 times and lasts 10 sec or until any Arcane damage spell except Arcane Blast is cast.
What this means is that as you chain Arcane Blast, each successive Arcane Blast will receive 15% more damage. Then, after you have cast 3 Arcane Blast, your next arcane spell will receive the damage bonus, at which point the damage buff will then wear off. If you do not want to incur the increased mana cost of Arcane Blast, you only cast one Arcane Blast, then a different arcane spell, then start over.
You can already see how the arcane playstyle will depend on mana. We will cover rotations later.
iii. Talents and Builds
Frostfire: The FFB raid spec is heavily fire-based. Cornerstone talents include:
Ignite
Flame Throwing (does not affect FFB but affects Scorch, Fire Blast, Pyroblast, and Living Bomb)
Pyroblast
Burning Soul
Improved Scorch
Master of Elements
Playing with Fire
Critical Mass
Fire Power
Combustion
Pyromaniac
Empowered Fire
Hot Streak
Living Bomb
Precision
Ice Shards
Piercing Ice
Icy Veins (in 3.0.8, FFB will benefit from the pushback protection in this spell).
With these talents, Frostfire Bolt receives a 315% critical bonus. In addition, crits proc Ignite, mana return with Master of Elements, and has a chance to proc Hot Streak.
What this means, in practice, is that the damage output is a lot streakier than playing as frost or playing as fireball/Fire. FFB still hits for about the same as fireball, but it crits for a lot more.
For comparison, here is my current build: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=00000000000000000000000000000000550020123033310531203013512033030311030000000000000000
Notes: A little off from the cookie cutter single-target dps spec. I picked up Blast Wave because I like it. I don’t have Improved Fire Blast. I don’t have Incinerate. I don’t have World in Flames, which I actually wanted but couldn’t afford.
Arcane: Cornerstone talents include:
Arcane Focus
Arcane Concentration
Spell Impact
Arcane Meditation
Torment the Weak
Arcane Mind
Presence of Mind
Arcane Instability
Arcane Potency
Arcane Power
Arcane Empowerment
Arcane Floes
Mind Mastery
Missile Barrage
Netherwind Presence
Spell Power
Arcane Barrage
This is an example of an Arcane build: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage=03000000000000000000000000002032030010000000000000000000230025230100330150323102505321&glyph=012004000000
Note that it has both Arcane Focus and Precision. Arcane is the only PVE spec that can gain 6% hit from talents instead of 3%. It also is the only mage spec that may benefit from spirit gear. The 2 points in Student of the Mind may be used instead on Magic Absorption, which trades off more mana regen in combat for some survivability. Magic Absorption is primarily a PVP talent, but I can see a good case being made for having it in PVE as well. It will depend, again, on how good your mana pool is. Also, this build does not include Slow as many bosses are immune to the effect. Torment the Weak, being that it now works off of other slowing effects such as Thunderclap, may still be useful enough to pick up even without having Slow, but I could see a good case being made for picking up Slow also.
iv. Comparative Mage Stats
Generally: Hit (until capped) >> Spellpower >> Crit/Haste
For Frostfire, assuming you have 3 points in Precision (and you should until your gear is good enough to move points away), you need 368 hit to cap your frost and fire spells, or 289 with a shadow priest or moonkin in the raid. For Arcane, assuming you have 3 points in both Arcane Focus and Precision, you need 289 to hit cap your arcane spells, or 210 with a shadow priest or moonkin.
Spellpower is fairly self-explanatory. Arcane mages gain 15% more SP with their Intellect. You can play around with the relative values of haste and crit. For Frostfire, obviously more of both is better, but since FFB shows remarkable returns with crit, I tend to value crit more highly than haste until you have 30% crit or so. Since haste is the only way to reduce the cast time of FFB, it is obviously also important. Luckily, a lot of caster gear comes with both.
Arcane gear isn't exactly the same as FFB gear, you need more haste and more Intellect than a typical FFB gearset has. Haste is far more valuable to an arcane mage than an FBB mage, and crit is less important. I typically run with 2 FFB mages in my raid, with about equal gear as me. My arcane set has about 8% less crit and 100 more haste than my FFB set. I do a lot more dps than they do, and my main nuke (AB) crits about as much as their main nuke (Frostfire Bolt) does. But a crit in arcane is just bigger numbers. It doesn't return mana, it doesn't proc ignite, it doesn't proc Hot Streak, and it's definitely not 315% of normal damage.
Here is the haste formula:
Haste Rating Required = ((Base Cast Time / Desired Cast Time) - 1) * 32.79 * 100
How much haste is required to get FFB down to 2.5 seconds?
A lot. Haste scales negatively as you acquire more of it. In the neighborhood of 330 or so haste, FFB will be 2.7 seconds, which is actually very usable.
Because of the way itemization works, generally a piece with two or three different stats is better for mages than a piece with slightly more of only one or two stats. For example, a cape with 30 crit and 50 spellpower is better than a cape with 60 spellpower only. Generally. Your mileage may vary.
v. Gearing for Raids
If you really need hit, the Ebonweave set is a possibility, but in general the tailoring pieces are not as good as they were in TBC even for beginning raiders. There is a good beginner guide available here: http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/01/10/arcane-brilliance-gearing-your-mage-up-for-naxx/.
The best indicator of your readiness for Naxx is your dps, not your gear. You can check it by practicing your rotation on a boss training dummy for a moment of two. If you can sustain 1800-2000 dps, you are probably ready.
Once your gear gets better, the 2-piece and 4-piece mage T7 bonus is actually very good, in comparison with older mage sets.
What does an example of a high level mage set look like?
Head: Gothik's Cowl. Better than Faerlina's Madness if you don't need the hit.
Neck: Cosmic Lights from Heroic Sapphiron
Shoulder: Valorous Frostfire Shoulderpads.
Cloak: Shroud of Luminosity from heroic Maexxna.
Chest: Gown of the Spell-Weaver from Malygos-10.
Wrist: Bindings of the Expansive Mind from Razuvious-25.
Gloves: T7.5 piece
Belt: Cincture of Polarity, although Plush Sash of Guzbah is fairly comparable
Legs: Leggings of Atrophy if you don't mind losing the gem slots of the T7.5
Boots: Boots of Impetuous Ideals - Naxx25 trash drop
Weapon: Turning Tide - Heroic Kel
Offhand: Surplus Limb from heroic Patchwerk, only real upgrade from Ward of the Violet Citadel
Wand: Gemmed Wand of the Nerubians - heroic Anub'rekan
vi. Glyphs, Gems, and Enchants
You’ll probably be gemming for hit a lot of the time (Rigid Autumn’s Glow). The Runed Scarlet Ruby is the spellpower gem, which is rather expensive since it requires Kirin Tor exalted to cut. Then there is Luminous, Potent, Veiled, and Reckless Monarch Topaz (9 spellpower and 8 int, 8 crit, 8 hit, and 8 haste, respectively) which are orange gems. It is probably best, unless you really need a socket bonus, to stick with spellpower and hit gems and let your gear stats do the rest. You don't really ever need to gem for intellect.
Chaotic Skyflare Diamond is the highest caster dps meta in the game right now, but its requirement (2 blue gems) is a bit odd for mages, and I would argue that it's a better meta for FFB than arcane anyway. The spellpower metas (Ember Slyflare is a good choice) are also good for mages as well.
For FFB spec, Glyph of Improved Scorch, Glyph of Molten Armor, and Glyph of Frostfire are the 3 major glyphs of choice. The new Glyph of Living Bomb is also going to be a top contender, and it's hard to figure out which of the three existing glyphs it gets to replace.
For Arcane, Glyph of Arcane Blast, Glyph of Molten Armor, and Glyph of Arcane Missiles are the glyphs of choice. If you find yourself short on mana often, the Glyph of Mage Armor may be more useful instead of Molten Armor. Glyph of Arcane Power is rather less good now that AP has been nerfed.
Enchant list follows below:
Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries
Shoulder: Lesser/Greater Inscription of the Storm
Chest: Super Stats / Powerful Stats
Cloak: Lightweave (if you are a tailor) or Greater Speed. Lightweave is getting massively buffed in 3.1 so it's going to be vastly superior to haste, come the patch.
Bracers: Greater Spellpower or Superior Spellpower.
Gloves: Exceptional Spellpower, Greater Blasting, Precision (20 hit)
Belt: Eternal Belt Buckle
Legs: Sapphire Spellthread
Boots: Icewalker
Weapon: Exceptional Spellpower
vii. Rotations
Frostfire rotation:
First and foremost, you must always keep Imp Scorch up.
Secondly, now that you have a DoT (Living Bomb), you should keep that up as much as you can, also.
Assuming you have the Scorch glyph...
Opener rotation: Scorch->Scorch->Living Bomb->FFB to infinity.
Reapply Scorch and LB as needed. Hot Streak Pyros are more important than reapplication of Living Bomb.
The timing on the Hot Streak Pyro can be played with. It doesn’t have to go off immediately. If it interrupts your rotation, you can defer it until your current cast is finished, or on new targets, apply 2xScorch first so the Pyroblast gets the increased crit effect.
Ignite munching is still a bug, and for anyone paying attention to your logs, it will show up as ignite damage randomly disappearing. Basically, it refers to the incident when fireball/FFB and Pyroblast land and crit at the same time and the ignite damage from FFB is “munched.” To the server, it looks as if FFB and Pyroblast were the same spell because they hit at the same time, so only one spell procs ignite. As Ignite adds up to a fairly nontrivial portion of your overall damage, this is a problem, and with Hot Streak, it happens enough to be noticed. The recommended workaround until Blizzard finds a way to fix this is to defer the Pyroblast until you have first cast a scorch or reapplied Living Bomb. Since scorch has no travel time, it will land before the pyroblast. The edited rotation looks like this…
FFB->FFB->(Hot Streak!)-> Scorch-> Hot Streak Pyro.
On ranged AOE pulls:
Living Bomb-> Flamestrike (full rank)-> Flamestrike (Rank 8)-> Blizzard
Yes, Flamestrike. You always want to pick a Living Bomb target that is not liable to die before the dot ticks to full. The two ranks of Flamestrike are so that the dots stack, but in practice, I find that 6 seconds of casting Flamestrike takes you out of the action for too long, so I only cast the first full-rank one and go straight to Blizzard.
On close up AOE pulls:
Living Bomb-> Dragon’s Breath->Flamestrike-> Cone of Cold-> Blizzard
I do recommend speccing into Blast Wave because it is useful in certain situations; however it is bad in raids and especially on trash AOE due to the knockback effect. It makes tanks incredibly unhappy, for one thing. However, I have found it worth the point spent on it; it is a good spell if you use it well. For example, there may be occasion where a trash slips through and comes straight for you. You can ice block, or if you think you can take it out, which you probably can, you can Frost Nova it in place and finish it off. Or, if you are feeling lucky, you can Blast Wave, knocking it back, then FN it in place, and finish it off. Same concept, more damage. You can also use it to push mobs off healers, to push mobs back towards the tank, or to control where adds go when you are put into a kiting role.
Arcane Rotation:
The optimal rotation is still being debated, and in a sense, it is hard to pin down because a lot of it will be situational.
Update (TL;DR version): With the new change to the Arcane Missiles glyph, and the nerfed coefficient on Arcane Barrage, the new optimal rotation is Arcane Blast x3->Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage OR Arcane Barrage if no Missile Barrage. It is recommended to use the rotation Arcane Blast x1-> Arcane Missiles-> Repeat for a mana-conservation rotation instead.
Full math (from EJ):
| cycle | dps | mps | dpm | dpm tradeoff (next cycle) | dpm tradeoff (cycle 2) | general use | note |
| AB3+ [mbarr] | 5495.957 | 387.9541 | 14.17 | -1.85 | mana dump / during AP | cast mbarr only at 3 stack | |
| AB AB AB ([mbarr] or abarr) | 5132.355 | 190.8791 | 26.89 | 1.85 | main cycle / during AP | ||
| AB AB AB AM | 5070.111 | 157.7089 | 32.15 | 1.88 | 1.88 | main cycle / during AP | |
| AB AB ([mbarr] or AB AM) | 5031.662 | 146.4452 | 34.36 | 3.41 | 2.27 | main cycle | |
| AB ([AB mbarr] or abarr) | 4760.778 | 87.75334 | 54.25 | 4.62 | 3.60 | mana saving | * see note below |
| AB ([mbarr] or abarr) | 4677.5 | 74.82857 | 62.51 | 6.44 | 3.92 | mana saving | * see note below |
| AB AM | 4184.583 | 32.69562 | 127.99 | 11.71 | 5.99 | mana saving |
Nice, huh? What does it mean?
First, it means that ABx3->Missile Barrage is the best dps at an insane mana inefficiency.
Secondly, it means that ABx3->MB if procced or ABarr otherwise is a close second in dps at better mana efficiency (over longer periods of time. The first rotation is never going to be possible because Missile Barrage will never have 100% uptime). Thus, the second rotation is the best dps possible. Also, it is possible to increase the mana efficiency dramatically if you cut one AB buildup off the rotation.
Thirdly, it means that ABx3->AM is the one that best balances dps and mana efficiency.
Basically, think of it this way. With FFB, you have one dps speed. With arcane, you have 3 -- fast, medium, and slow.
Fast burn-> (Arcane Power/Bloodlust) 3AB->ABarr | Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage-> repeat. Retardedly mana inefficient, cannot be sustained for very long.
Medium burn-> Above rotation without Arcane Power/Bloodlust, or 2AB->ABarr | Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage-> repeat
Slow burn-> 1AB->ABarr | Arcane Missiles if Missile Barrage-> repeat. Incredibly mana efficient, you could do this all day.
Generally, it is best to save AP for Bloodlust time, and use your own Icy Veins in another burn cycle when BL is down. Nerfed Arcane Barrage is no longer worth casting except to clear the AB buildup, or on the move. You can dynamically switch from Fast Burn to Medium Burn when your mana supply is drying up, or even to Slow Burn if you absolutely are running bone dry and it's another 30 seconds or so to mana gem/evocate.
A good use for POM is to apply it at the start of the 3xAB spam, to hasten the first one and apply the damage bonus more quickly. Very good when you need to apply AB on the move.
Use Arcane Power when you would have used Combustion as FFB. It will drain your mana fairly quickly though, so beware.
Also, Icy Veins syncs up well with the 2-min cooldown of Evocate, allowing you to use Icy Veins, and then Evocate afterwards.
On AOE pulls: Flamestrike->Blizzard still works well on ranged pulls. On closeup AOE pulls, you're stuck with Blizzard and Arcane Explosion. Have fun.
A Note on Mirror Image:
Mirror Image is kind of interesting. For one thing, you have no control over what they hit, so they might be off firing frostbolts at Faerlina’s adds, for example, when you don’t want them to. They are hyper-aggressive and completely oblivious to whatever you are doing. They also randomly sheep things, and they have polymorph spells that you don’t. On the other hand, they can be used to soak up boss debuffs that may save another raid member from having to take them. They can be used to even out the streaky dps of FFB spec, but on a lot of bosses they will be one-shotted by AOE damage, so use them early. Play around with the timing a bit. Your mileage may vary.
viii. Consumables
Flask of the Frost Wyrm (+125 SP for 2 hours) is going to be the flask of choice.
You can supplement this with Firecracker Salmon/Tender Shoveltusk Steak (+46 SP, 40 stam), or a Great Feast. There is also a bunch of crit/haste food available.
There is also Snapper Extreme/Worg Tartare if you need 40 extra hit.
ix. Recommended Addons
Decursive
Omen
Recount
Quartz
DoTimer
Autobar
Boss Mods
Decursive is a must-have for any class that can…decurse.
The threat library has been overhauled and now Omen works even for people that don’t have Omen. Even with the new tank threat buffs, you will sometimes still pull agro, so you need to know where you stand.
Pure dps classes love dps meters. But Recount is more useful for the other information it tracks – deaths and how, dispels per fight, who’s healing who, who’s hitting what, who’s taking damage from what, and what spells you’re using and how often they hit/crit/miss. Think of it as a performance evaluator, not an epeen meter (that rogue that lags on trash pulls is totally capable of spanking your butt on boss fights – where it really matters). If you find Recount is too performance intensive, Wow Web Stats will accomplish the same thing.
Quartz is a nice addition for anyone with a cast bar.
DoTimer is useful to track your Living Bomb and Scorch uptimes.
Autobar isn’t really necessary, but it’s very useful. It dynamically changes based on your abilites and bag contents, and can be used to quickly reach all those things you need in the course of a raid, such as consumables, mana strudels, healthstones, mana pots, mana gems, trinkets, even pets.
