[Guide] How to play a Mage in 3.1!

**Muncher** · 04-26-2009

I) Introduction
II) Talents – too many points yet not enough
III) Stats – numbers give headache
IV) Gems and Enchants – pretty colours and expensive mats
V) Consumables – Gimme fuel!
VI) Glyphs – I always wanted to be a scribe
VII) Playstyle – “Look where I died…”
VIII) DPS rotation – I wish I was a TBC Warlock
IX) Addons – If they could play for me

I) Introduction
PVE and DPS wise, the class went from king in vanilla, to mediocre in TBC and now we are back on our feet. Up-sides have always been to combine great DPS and mobility with a large variety of CCs. While the latest one may apply to only a few boss encounter over the entire game, the mobility part is mainly represented by the spell Blink. It is a great tool to make the difference between you and another caster in the survivability field. It also means you can rapidly reposition yourself to resume DPS.

While the play style and main tree hasn’t changed much over the years, the way you are throwing your fireballs and the components they employ went through many changes. In this expansion we have a new core spell to consider when looking at the fire tree and beyond called Frostfire Ball. In this first guide, we will go over the basics to play your mage properly in raids. I will give you some tips on how to choose your talent build depending on the situation you are in. Help you decide which glyphs to use and the play style you should adopt as a ranged caster DPS. You won’t find any complicated formulas backing up what I’m saying, everything here is purely built on logic. If you choose to trust it you will basing your play around the same things as many top mages over the past few months.

II) Talents – too many points yet not enough
For the purpose of high end raiding in WotLK there are commonly two main builds with only some slight variations within them. Fireball with Torment of the Weak and Frostfire Ball. Recently a lot of voices are rising to defend the Arcane spec, especially since it had its undue glory time sometime during Naxxramas. During that time it was completely bugged and consequently overpowered. The problem with that build is that it is soo mana intensive that it requires you to evocate on every cooldown, presenting a huge problem in Ulduar.

World of Warcraft Europe -> Talents
Fireball / Torment of the Weak : Called as it is because your main nuke spell will be Fireball. You spend the points ltaking every essential part of the fire tree along with the points in Arcane to reach Torment of the Weak. This build is considered the highest single-target DPS one. You can change Arcane Meditation (2/3) for Master of Elements (3/3) or take Blast Wave and/or Dragon’s Breath instead. However as we will see later on your safest AOE nuke is Blizzard (ranged) and those two spells are for close-combat. Don’t forget to buff someone (let’s be honest, screw other classes, buff your fellow mage(s)) with Focus Magic!

World of Warcraft Europe -> Talents
Frostfire ball : Here you will use Ffb as your main nuke ability. This build combines greater mana efficiency with higher AOE potential than the Fb/TotW one.

As a side note, the Fireball build requires more gear than the Frostfire one. This is because you will need 3% more hit rating to reach the cap on bosses and also that Fireball scales more from SP than Frostfire.

III) Stats – numbers give headache
Our stats in WoW haven’t really changed since the start, except for TBC’s new comer; haste rating. I will list them in order with the priority they should take in your gear for high end raiding :
Spell Hit Rating : there are two percentages you must know here. While fighting adversaries of your level (mobs or players, PvP) you need 4% hit (104.93 spell hit rating). While fighting bosses (those are considered +3 levels) you need 17% hit (445.94 spell hit rating). Depending on if you choose to go for Frostfire or Fireball build, you will need either 11% (288.55 spell hit rating) with the Elemental Precision talent or 14% (367.25 spell hit rating) without. Note this is for raid environment when you have a boomkin or shadowpriest applying his 3% hit debuff on your target. Spell Hit MUST be capped and not doing so will result in a great DPS loss.
Spellpower : this is your second best stat, not much to say on this, I will go more in details on how to increase it in the next part of the guide.
Spell Haste Rating : this stat scales really well and will never betrayer you unlike Crit Rating. You will use the full potential of this rating on every single cast.
Spell Critical Strike Rating : scoring a critical strike will result in a spell doing 150% of its normal damage. That’s for everyone, after that you can add damage from other talents such as Ignite/Ice Shards, also mana regen from Master of Elements etc. This stat will be both your worst enemy and your best ally. When you will get decent crit luck (equal or above to your tooltip rating) your DPS will sky rocket thanks to Hot Streak. However if you are under your tooltip crit, the stat will be completely wasted. Unfortunately you can’t do anything about that but pray and press your buttons harder. It is indeed common knowledge that the harder you press Fireball the more crits you get.

IV) Gems and Enchants – pretty colours and expensive mats
You can get a good overview of how to gem and enchant your gear here. Here are some simple facts that you have to keep in mind when you loot a new piece of equipment.
Your boots should be enchanted with Tuskar’s Vitality on every movement or heavy raid damage encounter.
Your metagem should always be Chaotic Skyflare Diamond.
Always enchant your armour parts with what will give you the most SP.
To get the most damage out, enchant your pants with Brilliant Spellthread. But if there is a lot of raid damage (like in Ulduar) and you need survivability, you won’t loose much from using Sapphire Spellthread.
Always socket pure SP in red sockets.
Use Yellow sockets to make up for your lack of Spell Hit, if you are capped use SP + Haste/Crit gems.
Use Blue sockets to gain some more stamina with SP + Stamina gems. If you are a Jewelcrafter, use those sockets for your prismatic 32 SP gems.

I will use this place to make a quick word on professions as well. In WotLK, most non gather professions are pretty equal on the buffs they provide. However jewelcrafting with the prismatic gems (32 spell power in blue sockets) is the most useful one by a large margin.

V) Consumables – Gimme fuel!
Always carry with you Stoneblood and Frost Wyrm flask. Just remember that you will always do more dps standing on your feet rather than dead on the floor.
For your food, 46 SP and stamina is a must.

VI) Glyphs – I always wanted to be a scribe
VII) Playstyle – “Look where I died…”
VIII) DPS rotation – I wish I was a TBC Warlock
IX) Addons – If they could play for me

-Minor.

Arcane Intellect for convenience. Slowfall to limit the number of reagents to carry. Blast Wave if you are going to take the talent. The knock back effect could actually be of some use to you depending on the encounter, so make a wise choice whether or not to go for it.

-Major
Fireball / Frostfire Ball: obviously depending on what build you go for.
Molten Armor: will increase the amount of spirit converted into crit.

And either
Living Bomb: represents a higher DPS increase than Scorch glyph if you have someone else in your raid applying the debuff. However, the crits generated from this consume Combustion. It’s unclear whether or not Combustion then becomes completely useless and should be replaced. Requires more testing and time to test out things.
Improved Scorch: if you don’t have another mage doing it in your raid or a warlock, it’s a must have. Doing 5 scorchs at the start of the fight is already a DPS loss. Also if your stack drops during the fight for any reason you are in for a world of pain.

VII) Playstyle – “Look where I died…”
As a ranged DPS, you always want to stay as far as possible from the melee. On most encounters there is more deadly stuff going on in close-range combat, so you will want to keep range for that reason. Doing so also grants you a better overview of the fight, allowing you to anticipate the coming events that would cause harm to you and improve your raid awareness generally.
I will go more into details in another Guide where I will speak more in details how to play your mage well on every Ulduar encounter.

Use your tools to survive and increase your DPS:
Mirror Image: while it adds some extra DPS, they also delay your threat on every target. If you are about to rip agro from your tank, pop them to ensure your safety until the mob dies or you receive a Hand of Salvation.
Invisibility: use and abuse it to reset your aggro.
Frost Nova: when the fight is getting too close to you, but employ with caution because a rooted mob will always hit targets closest to him. Don’t kill people in your raid with this.

Get the maximum utility out of your cooldowns. Try to pop a mana gem rather than a potion if possible, you can then still use a Healing Potion if you don’t have a Warlock’s Health Stone. Use Evocation when you are sure that you will be able to carry it to the end, not during a movement phase when you maybe have to cancel it. Ice block preemptively rather than getting oneshotted and be on the floor without using it at all. You can also Ice Block most critical debuffs and annoying boss events (Ground Tremor on Freya for exemple).

VIII) DPS rotation – I wish I was a TBC Warlock
As a mage, your DPS rotation is pretty simple, yet it requires to be done perfectly to attain your max damage. Your priority number 1 is to keep Living Bomb up. It’s a powerful dot and when you are engaged against multiple adversaries, its explosion is most likely to trigger Hot Streak. This will of course grant you an instant Pyroblast which is great while you’re moving. Your priority number 2 is to keep Improved Scorch up on the boss if you don’t have a Warlock or another Mage doing it for you. Also note that this is important if there is other people than you DPSing the boss. If your entire raid is moving and keeping the debuff could compromise your survivability, skip it until you can resume DPS.

With those two debuff conditions cleared, you are going to start spamming the main nuke ability dictated by your build. If you chose to stick with the ones I proposed you, you will then have to be on the lookout for the moment when you will score 2 critical strikes in a row. You will then receive the buff Hot Streak, allowing you to launch a Pyroblast without cast time. This is the talent making the difference between you and another caster on DPS meter. You cannot munch it (waste it by critting 4 times in a row without using it). In practical situation, your DPS rotation when you crit should look like this:
Fireball Critical Strike
Fireball Critical Strike
Hot Streak proc, but you have already started casting Fireball because you don’t take a pause between them obviously
Fireball + Pyroblast
Fireball, if this one crit just repeat the cycle (when your next Fireball will have launched use Pyroblast right after)

Where it gets interesting is when you add the fact that Living Bomb can crit as well and trigger Hot Streak. To optimise your DPS, you should always think as if your Living Bomb explosion will crit and grant you Hot Streak. Here is an example of what should happen. Let’s say you have about 4 to 5 seconds left before your LB explodes, you are going to be on the edge of munching a Hot Streak if you mindlessly spam Fireball, play intelligently:
Fireball Critical Strike
Fireball Critical Strike
Hot Streak proc, Fireball is casting, you have a bit more than one second left on Fireball (as cast time Fireball =< Living Bomb explosion)
Fireball Critical Strike (yes you are lucky, but that means it’s going to require more thinking) + Pyroblast
Living Bomb explodes at the same second as you use Hot Streak, or even a tiny 0,5second before. Why don’t you munch Hot Streak and fail then? Because there is a 0,5second server delay between the moment you land the crit and the moment you receive Hot Streak buff. Learning from what I told you, you kept your head cool and didn’t panic on spamming Fireball, you see your second Hot Streak thanks to the global cooldown triggered by the launch of the first Pyroblast, and you cast the second one.

Reading this, following it and getting your own experience is definitely the best way to never munch a Hot Streak. Experience is always king.

IX) Addons – If they could play for me
The way you setup your UI is always a matter of personal liking, but there is some key addon witch can help you playing your mage better, or at least make your life easier.

Scorchio2: the all round mage addon. Tracks Scorch debuff, Mirror Images, Hot Streak, Clearcasting etc.

PowerAuras: a very powerful tool to add graphic reminders on your screen when you gain certain buffs (Hot Streak) or debuffs.

Recount: a meter to track DPS, healing, death’s etc; because we’d rather see for ourselves when we are #1 on DPS than to ask around.

All credit goes to Ekye one of the best mages around!