Not dead yet!
The amount of mail I get is inversely proportional to the amount I post. Lots of posts, very little mail. Few posts, and I get so many e-mails that getting through them all is a half hour ordeal every day. And that’s if I don’t respond to any of them.
It’s actually flattering the number of mages who seek me out and ask for my honest assistance. It’s a big step, exposing yourself to a stranger for criticism.
Well, a virtual self that has no relation to the real you, anyways.
Naturally, the primary question I get asked is “halp my dps is crap!”
I’m noticing that the vast majority of you (you here used to refer to those mages who seek out my infinite wisdom) seem to be making the same mistakes over and over again.
Allow me to try and address those mistakes here and now, in an effort to help your fellow mages from repeating these same errors.
First and foremost, check your metagem and boot enchant. Those should be, respectively, the Chaotic Skyflare Diamond and Tuskarr’s Vitality.
Thankfully, very few mages come to me seeking aid and sport something other than a CSD. I still see lots of mages hanging around in game with absolutely ludicrous metagem choices (-2% threat? really?), but at least some of you are already well on the path of wisdom.
Tuskarr’s Vitality is something I don’t see nearly enough of. Allow me to explain why an enchant that boosts your movement speed slightly is far, far better than a paltry boost to crit and hit…
As a mage, you are required to DPS.
In order to DPS, you must cast spells.
To cast spells, you must be standing still.
If you are moving, you are not casting spells.
The need to move is inevitable. Nearly every fight will require you to move.
Thus, if you are running faster, you will spend less time moving.
If you spend less time moving, you are spending more time standing still.
If you spend more time standing still, you get to cast more.
If you cast more, your DPS increases.
See how that works?
Related to this, another very common mistake is to move too much. Let’s take the classic Void Zone situation. You do not need to run away from the void zone, you merely need to not stand in it.
Simply put, move in a precise and calculated method. Do not move more than a single yard more than you have to. If a VZ appears under your feet, you do not need to have a five yard buffer between you and the wall of death. A single yard or less is more than fine.
This is a very hard skill to learn to do subconsciously. You will, more likely than not, have to consciously force yourself to stop moving far earlier than you think your comfortable with.
You do not need a comfort zone, you do not require a space buffer.
Naturally, the same thing goes for opposite void zones. If it’s something you want to stand in, move as little as possible to get the buff. You do not need to stand in the exact center of the Blue Rune of Happy, inside the closest edge is more than sufficient.
Moving on.
The other major mistake I see are gem choices that can be best described as “wrong”.
Generally speaking, all but three of your gems should be Runed Scarlet Rubies (or better), with one of those gems being, of course, the CSD and the other two being +9 spellpower/[useless stat here] blue gems to support it.
Naturally, if you are a jewelcrafter, you don’t even need those two blue gems. Everything is spellpower.
It doesn’t really matter what type of +9 spellpower blue gem you get. The stats available to you are equally useless. Spell penetration provides you with nothing, so go with the stamina, mp5, or spirit versions instead. Those all provide you with next to nothing.
Speaking of useless crap, socket bonuses!
Most socket bonuses exist only to make you feel better about gemming inefficiently. Here’s a quick rundown of what to look for:
- Spellpower: pay attention to any spellpower socket bonus. Try to get these.
- Haste/crit: only pay attention if these are present in values higher than five, and only if your spec makes good use of that stat.
- Hit: only pay attention if you are shy of the hit cap, or are juggling gear to maintain the hit cap.
- Everything else: ignore completely.
Some quick examples:
Yellow socket, +4 intellect bonus. Ignore it completely.
Two blue sockets, +7 spellpower bonus. An excellent candidate for the two blue gems you need for your CSD. Otherwise, ignore it.
Yellow socket, red socket, +6 spirit bonus. Once again, ignore it.
Yellow socket, red socket, +6 haste bonus. Consider grabbing the bonus from this one, but only if you are an arcane/frost mage. Even then, probably safer to simply ignore it.
Two red sockets, +6 spellpower bonus. Irrelevant. You’d be putting spellpower gems in here regardless of what the socket bonus was.
Speaking of stats, please bear in mind what the stats your spec wants. Yes, it is different, however simplistic it is.
If you are a fire mage, you need more crit.
If you are not a fire mage, you need more haste.
These are universal constants.
Lemme put it this way.
Over the course of a raid, as a fire mage, half of your spells should be crits. Not joking. Self buffed, aim to get your critical strike chance close to 40% (this is NOT including any glyphs or the scorch buff). Your fire crit should at least be above 30%, preferably before you put Molten Armor up.
As an arcane or frost mage, you should be sitting at at least 10% passive haste unbuffed from gear alone. Your main nuke should be below a 2.3 second cast; aim for under 2 seconds. Again, this is all unbuffed and discluding talents.
If you don’t match or beat those numbers, take a long, hard look at your gear and see where you can improve.
If you are a fire mage, aim to have every slot sporting crit. Arcane/frost should try to have every slot sporting haste. You likely won’t ever be able to do that, but aim for it, and you’ll get the right idea.
And lastly, Glyphs.
Thankfully, I haven’t run into any mages who are glyphing horrifically wrong. Everyone seems to have a mighty fine idea of what glyphs to use.
Except that one guy with Glyph of Arcane Barrage. Seriously man, I hope you set that crappy glyph on fire.
Anyway, there is one thing I want to make clear.
As a fire mage, you should have Glyph of Living Bomb. Ditch Imp. Scorch if you have to, or even Glyph of Fireball/FFB if you must. LBs glyph is, right now, only a very large boost in DPS. You can get by without it, but you’ll be better off having it.
But.
Patch 3.2 will change all that.
If you haven’t been paying attention, 3.2 is introducing three very important things for fire mages.
First, the periodic crits from LB (that the glyph grants) will be able to cause Ignite (which, yes, does contribute to Hot Streak).
Second, LB does not have a target limit. You can throw that puppy on any number of enemies.
Third, 2% of your base mana (or 65 mana) is restored every single time Ignite deals damage.
Do you see where this is going?
While I do disagree with the statement Spirit is close enough to useless and that Fire spec stacks explicitly crit stats, I agree on many other points, especially the meta gem and gemming part, but obviously SP/Spirit is the best blue socket you can grab for PvE, considering the spirit->crit conversion mechanic making it obviously better than say Stamina (unless you are grossly under 15k health).
Talking about Spirit and Fire spec. I’m using a Fireball spec, but I’m finding that stacking Haste works much better than stacking Crit, especially as most Haste items are also crossover healing, giving it a generous amount of Spirit, putting me at 740 (With Student of the Mind 3/3 and The Human Spirit), boosting my crit with ca 9% using my glyphed MA. My total selfbuffed Fire crit is ca 34%, add in Focus Magic and you’re getting close to the 40% you reccomended. I have no issues getting 60% overall Fireball crit in a raid with a good class diversity.
Feel free to check me out
Reechter at Kul Tiras
I am a SV Hunter. My gear is very good for the 10 mans I run, though I could use an upgrade or two (or more).
I had the pleasure of running a few heroic instances with Rip. He was trying to get some gear drop, and was diligently running the same 2 or 3 heroics daily – being rejected by the WoW gods each tiime.
When I step into an heroic instance I am used to topping the meter by a healthy amount.
When I ran with Rip he and I were so close in damage that a simple missed spell, forgotten shot, or stunning from a boss gave the other guy the lead.
When I inspected him I was humbled to find that his gear was not at the same item level as mine on average. I out-geared him in at least 6 slots.
I whispered Rip complimenting him on his damage, explaining that when I run with any other mages at his gear level I usually have them by 500 DPS or more. He responded with a barrage of spell and cool down mage lingo after he threw me a ‘ty’.
Bottom line – Mages out there, heed this guy’s advise. Some things may seem counterintuitive, but he knows his stuff…well, really well.
They say you can’t squeese blood out of a turnip. When it comes to DPS I think Rip could squeese out blood, a confession, and a few pieces of bacon.
The problem is, with more and more crits triggering ignite, ignite won’t tick for longer and longer, and at least currently the mana gain doesn’t bank like the damage does. :/
@ Armond
Yes, that is true, for single targets anyways.
Point is, with LB available to be cast on multiple targets simultaneously, you can rack up a lot of ignites ticking on a lot of targets.
Take Mimiron, for instance. With these changes, you could easily have an Ignite ticking on all three parts.
To put it another way, a standard DPS test on the test dummy in Orgrimmar, (done withOUT casting LB on the two 80 mobs next to the main guy), resulted in my T8 geared fireball mage having infinite mana.
Naturally, that was done self buffed, so there wasn’t any paladin judgements or replenishment or anything else skewing mana returns.
@ Reechter
See, this guy knows about dem crits. That is the kind of crit rate you want to be seeing in raids.
There is nothing particularly wrong with getting more haste with that amount of crit.
I mean, if you’re sporting 60% fireball crit, you’re in an awesome place crit wise.
This was more directed at the fire mages that have something like a 35% crit rate on fireball in raids.
That’s just too low, and at that level, it’s far more beneficial to get more crit than it is to get more haste.
Yeah, the +9sp/+8spi gems are the best ones to choose, but the crit rating you get from such a tiny amount of spirit is negligible. Without any modifiers, with two of those gems that basically gets you an extra 8 critical strike rating.
The bonus is so small it’s hardly worth worrying about, and a mage isn’t really going to miss anything if they don’t go with the spirit one.
@Euripedes
I’ve heard that the PTR is bugged that LB dots are counted as Ignite dots for returning mana. Are you sure you weren’t getting infinite mana from that?
@Euripedes and to all
1st – “periodic crits from LB (that the glyph grants) will be able to cause Ignite”
2nd – “…LB does not have a target limit…”
3rd – “…2% of your base mana (or 65 mana) is restored… ignite deals damage.”
“Do you see where this is going?”
Mana buff to FB/TTW and FFB mages which is not really…. not required.
First of all, FFB never really have problems with mana. So FFB mages are simply buffed by using LB on multiple targets which is only useful for AOE trash mobs or mobs that can last the full 12secs. Then again, FFB has always been the most proficient AOE spec, with FS and Blizz rotations. Throwing in a new LB rotation. Is it worth it? Redundant!
Second, mana improvement benefits TTW/FB. Really? Do we need that? Is mana the root problem of TTW/FB or is it really an issue for Arcanes?
TTW/FB is identified as the highest single target damage spec. Throwing in new LB makes it capable of dealing better AOE I guess but why? Apparently Blizz is not sufficient. TTW/FB is suffering from the lack of bigger cannons not mana management.
I would prefer bigger cannons in the expense of more mana = Arcane. But then Arcane is meeeeh….
“Buffing damage output in PVE may OP PVP.” I have yet to see a TTW/FB or FFB mage in Arena or BG.
So…. “Do I see where this is going?” Ans: NO!
Does Blizz or GC know what is going on with mages? Vaguely?
Huh. I just posted something similar on my blog but it looks like you beat me to the topic of gemming by a day. I should have come by here a tiny bit sooner!
If you’re lucky (or rich enough) to have the Crafted Belt/Boots you have 2 nice Blue sockets there and then, and the Bonus is +7 SP. An excellent candidate for your CSD.
Talking of course about Sash of Ancient Power and Spellslingers Slippers
Depending on your gear level, haste is more valuable to Fire/Totw specs than crit. Crit is more valuable for frostfire. I’d refer you to TCoM, but its down for some reason.
@Bonito: I think Euripedes was referring more towards problems seen in hard modes, while your discussion seems to refer more towards normal modes.
@Darkdalamar: Euripedes addressed this in a previous comment. Scroll up.
Crit = FFB
FB/TTW = Still Haste
In raids that I have been in, which is quite a few lately, it is ridiculous the difference in dps between our melee dps counterparts (rogues) and mages. When is Blizz gonna do something to fix the obvious disparity and give us back our cannons?
Oooooo I love you…these were wonderful tidbits of juicy information:)
One of my big booboos of late is getting lazy about attention to my mana gem/potion/evocate use. Its fine if I’m with a strong DPS group but if not and the fights are long, then I need to be more attentive.
/slap myself
@ Dubldeez
I dun mind the rouges being able to out DPS mainly because they are out at the front and are therefore more prone to drawing aggro. They are a pure class like us and face it, we do have the range advantage and better CC. And they dun wear plate / mail.
The concern here is the comparison between the pure DPS classes vs the hybrids aka pallys, druids, warriors, shamans. Many often you do see these classes out dpsing mages. Is this right?
@Bunito
agree about that rouge thing but what will you say about warlocks, pure dps as we, clothes as we, ranged as we, but in about the same eq lvl you will newer be able to outcome lock DPS (of course u can be better on some bosses, or if lock is a dumass) but overall dmg/dps They will be always better. In my Ulduar25 raid the recount is almost always the same – lock’s are in top 4 best mage is like 6-8 i asked mates in diferent guild and they are confirming that – lock are always in top dps on raids with melee and hunters.
and that’s is the worst thing,
melee ok- blizzard had maid them 2% dps better than ranged class cause they have to move etc.
but that huge dps wall betwen lock and rest ranged dps (except huters they are doing well)
It’s important to note that a lot of the values assume you’re at the lower range of the gear scale.
At the top end of the gear in 3.1, Fire/TTW gives almost identical values to haste/spellpower/crit. They are so close that you can basically add the effective stats together, because the higher number of spellpower+crit+haste is better. That should dictate how you socket. SP gems are worth 19 stats, yellow gems are worth 17 stats, and blue gems are worth 13+ stats. Therefore, if the socket bonuses give you at least 3 crit/haste/sp per yellow and 6 crit/haste/sp per blue, the bonus is worth it.
FFB is close to the same at the top end, where crit is a little better than SP and haste is a little worse, but still, we’re talking about 11 crit = 12 haste, so you can still gem that way. The only real difference is that you use the 9 SP/8 crit gem instead of the 9 SP/8 Haste gem.
About the ignite mana gain – Fire/TTW does occasionally run into issues in longer fights with mana, especially since 3.2 is bringing a nerf to replenishment. Therefore, managing ignites is going to be more important for mana conservation. Arcane is getting their mana management from a reduction in the cost of Arcane Blast.
@ Twonationarmy
I don’t post a lot these days, so there’s really no fault on your end.
@ Bonito
You kidding? FB/TtW is in desperate need of more mana, relative to the other specs. Hell, technically speaking it relies more on Evocate than arcane does.
@ Darkdalamar
Should be up now, was down for a server transfer, I think.
But no, as mentioned before, haste is great for high end fire mages.
Then again, high end fire mages don’t come to me for help, they don’t need it.
This is directed more so to the newbies.
Basically check out Fricassee’s comment. Exactly what I mean.
In defense of blue gems.
Purified Twilight Opals give +9spell/+8 spirit
Raid buffed (with bless of kings)
8.8 spirit = 4.84 crit
With a +7 spellpower socket bonus, you sacrifice 3 spell power and gain 4.84 crit… which is about even. Considering the spirit mana regen factor, i’d consider PTO’s for blue sockets with only +5 spell power. As far as I’ve seen, at the high end,
1 spell power=
1.2 haste=
1.4 crit
As far as fb/ttw dps is concerned.
And ripper… if you runnin outta mana as FB/ttw, you doin something wrong. Two points…
You DONT need the full evoke. This aint arcane. Half of it is fine. Evoke early on long fights, as early as when you are at 60-70% mana. Dont be afraid to break it. If you can get by with half an evoke every 4 min, you wont have problems, if you also use gems wisely.
Any fight that lasts long enough for you to have mana problems also has lulls that allow considerable mana regen. XT hard mode is one of the most annoying fights I know, non stop dps over a considerable time… I still get an evoke off when waiting for the gravity bomb to pop.
Wait till you do general hard mode, my little troll… just you wait.
@ Mabd
Haven’t done any hard modes past Flame Leviathan, and that hardly counts.
For Deconstructor Hard, I’m prooobably going to use an arcane spec for that one. The guild is looking to try that next week (maybe week after?) so we’ll see.
General hard mode is a long way off. Random events have conspired so that we got to Vezax once, and then every week have failed to get there. Either people were missing, moving, sick, whatever.
I’d use a frost spec for Vezax hard, anyways. BFF is just too good a talent to pass up in that kind of situation, especially with 4pT8.
Dunno bout arcane for xt hard. Fire does about as well… and the odds of you gettin screwed on at least one evoke over the 10 mins of the fight are too high.
Although arcane will help in killing the heart, obviously. But killin the heart aint the hard part. You gotta be able to keep similar dps up through all 9 minutes (or so) of what follows.
My guild’s best time so far… 20 secs before enrage. Yeouch.
Vezax hard mode, yeah, I use a really strange gimped frost/arcane build. And its not really Brain Freeze that makes the build, strange enough. Its the water elemental. Have that up half the time, try to keep it parked in shadow crashes, and you’ll get insane damage per mana. But I mean… with every talent that reduces mana costs of spells… I was at 3% when we killed him in 10 man.
Fer Vezax regular… fire rules. The healers will be poppin saronite often enough to keep full mana.
And ripper… when you get 4 piece… you start a new game called “how many insta pyro’s can i cast inna row?”
My record is 5.
Hah, yeah, I just got 4piece this week, and I’ve already started counting crap like that.
Best I’ve gotten is only three though.
Think I need more time with it before I can get really high chains like that.
The other thing about arcane is killing the Life Sparky things. As usual, fire isn’t all that great at swapping targets, and arcane excels at it.
Then again, multi-target LB would probably help in that regard, too…
Life sparks? trick is to tank em so the mage can target both the life spark and xt without having to move. Then you simply line up the add, drop two fireballs, and go back to xt.
Shouldnt lose any cast time either way. And the life sparks really shouldnt live long enough to be worth LB’ing.
We tend to tank him all the way on the right side, between the two trash piles there. Gravity bombs to the left (top) and life sparks to the right (bottom).
10 man is not a problem, actually easier than normal mode. 25 man xt hard mode is a beatch tho.
Our life spark tank is, in all likelihood, going to be a Death Knight, so positioning hopefully won’t be an issue. Unless the sparks are immune to DG, I suppose. We did regular XT tonight, as the raid leader wasn’t too confident in our DPS.
We dropped the heart to 40% or less each time it was exposed, and that was with 3 of the DPS contributing nothing as we were off killing adds.
So we’ll likely do that next week, see how it goes.