[How to: PvE, Mages] It's over ninethousand!

[neax1337]

Specs

Mages should be raiding using this spec:

Classic 10/48/3 Fire spec.



However, if you are lucky enough to be placed in a group togheter with a shadowpriest, you should have this spec.

2.3 2/48/11 Fire spec.

The last spec should ONLY be used if you do NOT run out of mana during a boss encounter. If you have specced this way and you do run out of mana, despite your mana gems, super mana potions and your evocation, you should respec to 10/48/3.

How to play

It is vital that the scorch debuff is up all the time. I have seen times where there was no scorch debuff and I've seen mages not helping to get the 5 stacks up as fast as possible. The first thing you should do is help ensure that there are 5 stacks of the scorch debuff up. Also, get the debuff up on trash that has over 50k health, else it's not worth it.

The scorch debuff has a 30 second duration and with one of the specs mentioned above, fireball has a 3 second casttime. In a perfect environment, you should cast 9 fireballs and then scorch once. with over 10% haste, you can have 10 fireballs and then a scorch.

Ofcourse there will be movement involved, so you should scorch the moment you arrive at your new spot if it has taken more than 10 seconds. Else you can cast 2 fireballs and scorch after, depending on how far you are in your rotation.

In a raid, there will be only 1 mage keeping up the scorch debuff, the others will be spamming fireball.

Your aim is to finish a bossfight with exactly 0% mana left. If you're feeling you're gonna have mana left after the fight, add in fireblasts in your rotations, so they look like this:

2x Fireball -> Fireblast -> 2x Fireball -> Fireblast -> repeat.

Or if you're keeping the scorch debuff up:

2x Scorch -> Fireball -> Fireblast -> 2x Fireball -> Fireblast -> 2x Fireball -> Fireblast -> repeat.

To get the most out of your DPS, I suggest you to get the Quartz addon (Quartz | World of Warcraft Addons | Curse).
This castbar addon has a special feature. It can show the latency when you start casting and let a part of your castbar turn a bit darker. When your spell reaches that darker part, you can click your Fireball button again. If you do this, your first spell will fire because of the latency between you and the server. It looks like this:



Important stats
Spellhit
Spelldamage
Spellcrit

In this order.

I did not add spellhaste because that depends on the raid, your raidgroup and your gear. You should only gem for spellhaste when you're NEVER running out of mana.

Spell hitcap is 16% or 202 spell hitrating.
Because of Elemental Precision, you only need 13% spellhit, which equals out at 163,8 spellhit.
Spell hitcap for a mage is 164 spell hitrating.
The first thing you should get is spellhit before you even start looking at other stats.

Spelldamage is the best Damage per Second increase without running into mana issues (spellhaste is a bit better, but not much). This should be the main stat you try to gain.

Spellcrit is a tricky one because it has various effects.
1: critical hits are random
2: critical hits refund 30% of the base mana cost of the spell through Master of Elements.
3: A critstreak will give you a higher ignite dot which gives additional damage.

Through various tests, spellcrit has been proven to be too high on the itembudget to be worthy of gemming for. Only gem for spellcrit if you're:
1: hitcapped
2: have below 30% firecrit unbuffed with molten armor up
3: you run into mana issues
4: you have a yellow socket gives a spelldamage bonus

Gems

The gems are ranked from good to bad, highest being the best gem for that slot.

Meta Gem Slot:

Chaotic Skyfire Diamond
12 spell crit rating & 3% increased critical strike damage
This is the ONLY meta gem you should use. NOTHING else.

Red Gem Slot:

12 spelldamage (epic)
9 spelldamage (rare)

Yellow Gem Slot:

If you are below hitcap:

5 spell hit rating/6 spelldamage (epic / instance drop)
4 spell hit rating/5 spelldamage (rare)
Dependant on the bonus:
4 spell crit rating/5 spelldamage (rare) or a Red Gem.

If you are at hitcap:

Dependant on the bonus:
4 spell crit rating/5 spelldamage (rare) or a Red Gem.

Blue Gem Slot:

6 spelldamage/7 stamina (epic)
6 spelldamage/6 stamina (instance drop)
5 spelldamage/6 stamina (rare)

Gem Slot Bonus

The only Gem Slot Bonuses that are worthy of getting are:

Spelldamage
Spell hit rating
Spell crit rating

Bonuses like:

Stamina
Intellect
Spirit
etc.

SHOULD NEVER EVEN BE CONSIDERED.

If the bonus is not worthy of getting, you should for

if NOT spell hit capped:

5 spell hit rating/6 spelldamage (epic)
4 spell hit rating/5 spelldamage (rare)

if spell hit capped:

12 spelldamage (epic)
9 spelldamage (rare)

Sheeping

I myself use a focus macro to sheep, which saves me quite some time targeting my sheep target and then targeting back to my previous target.

To set a focus, type:

/focus

to clear it, you type:

/clearfocus

I myself use this macro:

/focus [target=mouseover]
 /focus

This macro first tries to focus the target I have my mouse on (this also works for unitframes). If I have no target under my mouse, it sets a focus to my target.

To sheep, I use this macro:

#showtooltip Polymorph
 /stopcasting
 /cast [target=focus,exists,modifier:shift] Polymorph
 /cast [nomodifier] Polymorph

If I hold shift and I have A focus target, this macro sheeps my FOCUS.
If I hold shift and I have NO focus target, this macro sheeps my TARGET
If I press this macro, I sheep my TARGET

With a focus, you save time swapping targets and this way, you can do more DPS. Also, if you set the focus up before the pull, you will be able to resheep a broken target faster.

Buffing and Reagents

A mage should ALWAYS have:
20 Runes of Portal - Might seem abit too much, but during i.e. Sunwell there is lots of respeccs involved.
40 Arcane Powder
at the start of a raid.

Arrange the buffing among your different mages before you start the instance, so you doesn't have to waste too much mana or reagents.

A table should be summoned in the beginning of the raid in the beginning of the instance.

Best Regards,
Neax

[ZioNe]

Good guide. I think I will make it a favorite as there is a few things that I always keep forgetting..

[Psyfadious]

Do not listen to this guy about specs or how to play. You should spec 2/48/11 no matter what, mana is easy to maintain.

How you should play: On trash mobs just spam fireball, for a boss fight get scorches up until there are 5 on the boss, then spam fireball until scorch is almost done, then hit scorch to keep all 5 debuffs on then keep spamming fireball.

[neax1337]

"mana is easy to maintain"
Yeah if you play using ONLY mana pots (instead of Destruction ones) and have exceptional gear.

And your right about the rotations.

[Psyfadious]

I can go through any fight using mana emeralds and evo's. Except for the very long fights where I might have to use a mana pot or two.

[killa321]

I can go through any fight using mana emeralds and evo's. Except for the very long fights where I might have to use a mana pot or two.

well on mana intensive fights I would like to not use evocate because, say you run just 1k dps, wich a kara geared or less mage can do easily, evocate is an 8 second cast or something like that, i forget lol, so 1k X 8 and you are losing 8k damage, but that's just my opinion >.>

[Claes]

I can go through any fight using mana emeralds and evo's. Except for the very long fights where I might have to use a mana pot or two.

I touched you first!!!

[Psyfadious]

What? (Filler)

[Drythils]

Why would you want 2 in Improved Frost Nova if your PvE?

[neax1337]

Why would you want 2 in Improved Frost Nova if your PvE?

Like any other of these 5 choices are more valuable? No. So, for the sake of getting to Icy Veins you put 2x in imp Frost Nova,

[Drakee]

well on mana intensive fights I would like to not use evocate because, say you run just 1k dps, wich a kara geared or less mage can do easily, evocate is an 8 second cast or something like that, i forget lol, so 1k X 8 and you are losing 8k damage, but that's just my opinion >.>

are you stupid?! you will run out of mana with icy veins it aint easy to keep up your mana with only gems for a whole boss fight and 8sec=2½ fireball or 60% more mana that u can use ~25 more fireballs in geez reroll a rogue or something and spam ss...

[Xaque]

maintaining mana all depends on gear, if you high enough intel then all you need is a mana gem and maybe a pot or two, on the other hand, having high intel means you get more mana from evo, maintaing your mana in a boss fight is the most important thing, you might as well be dead if you're OOM

[Xaque]

don't mean to offend anybody here

[ubrpwnt]

Um, no, by far, the best raid spec is Arcane, or Arcane / Fire combo. I raided 48/10/3 with my guild and was top DPS mage even though I was lowest geared...

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft was basically my main spec, maybe with a few changes, RIP main account

[dragonaut]

You should ALWAYS raid with 2/48/11, mana shouldnt be an issue at all with pots/gems and evocation.

Also, get the debuff up on trash that has over 50k health, else it's not worth it.

that really depends on your group, scorch isnt that good dps so you'll have to decide yourself if u wanna give up 7,5 seconds to gain 15% dps, but generally it should be done on mobs that live 20 secs or so. but then again, who cares about trash.

Important stats
Spellhit
Spelldamage
Spellcrit

Spellhaste is worth _so_ much more than crit, but by the looks of it you're talking about kara level raids where there are barely any items at all with haste on it.

Spell hitcap for a mage is 164 spell hitrating.

126 for frost
76 for arcane

2: have below 30% firecrit unbuffed with molten armor up

why??

3: you run into mana issues

the extra mp5 gained from a few points of crit is so low that if you really have mana issues you'd be better off gemming int or even mp5.

Yellow sockets should have dmg/haste gems.

ALWAYS have:
20 Runes of Portal
40 Arcane Powder

this is just nonsense

"mana is easy to maintain"
Yeah if you play using ONLY mana pots (instead of Destruction ones) and have exceptional gear. small tip if u are really concerned about time lost due to evo, use it in the last second of icy veins.

not true _at all_, exceptional gear isnt needed to not go oom without mana pots. And moreover destru pots don't really boost dps by that much at all.

Um, no, by far, the best raid spec is Arcane, or Arcane / Fire combo.

this is just bull, arcane is only good on short fights where u get a spriest and shammy.