[Mage-PvE] dps

[blkthunder]

After a long time of only using my mage to farm/waste time its finally close to 80. I was using the standard ice spec to lvl but now am looking to do a few heriocs/10ms. What spec is least Gear Dependent?!?

[Levantine]

Probs Arcane. Something like they're passively hitcapped through talents for all heroic mobs and bosses? To be fair I know almost nothing about mages.

[Bregor]

I think arcane is currently top dps with FB/TotW close second (though the theoretical difference is minimal). Arcane has the advantage of 6% hit from talents, while FB has 0. OTOH, starting epics (ToC5, crafted and BoE items) and rep blues have a lot of hit. I personally prefer fire, and LB spam for AoE is just fun (provided mobs live long enough for it to go off), but then I leveled fire as well.

[Shoju]

Fireball TTW is currently best Single Target DPS.


Yes, Arcane is passively hitcapped for heroics, and thus needs the least amount of hit to get hit capped for raids. It's also pretty freaking awesome DPS.

[bzzt]

Actually, single target arc is the best (by a fairly wide margin, 5-10%).

FB/TTW is your best single target option if you're being counted on for the scorch debuff (5% spellcrit for the raid).

FFB is the best AoE (by a good bit) and only ~5% behind fb/ttw typically for single target.

For heroics, arcane will post much much better numbers than either of the other two (it has very strong cd's for short boss fights and can burn mana very aggressively), and 2 minute evocate keeps you from lagging behind while drinking. Add to that no missile speed (ablast hits instantly vs. travel time for ffb/fb), faster base cast (2.5 second + 6% talented haste vs. 3.0 second), and no dots (which are tempting to put up, but often don't have time to go off).

For 10 mans it will depend on the caster synergy you expect to have. Arc is probably the most resilient b/c it scales alright with most any buff (so missing any 1-2 will hurt you, but not absolutely wreck your dps). The hotstreak specs (and particularly ffb) otoh, pretty much require all the raid crit buffs (moonkin/ele shaman + 3% target crit debuff) to post excellent numbers (particularly in starter gear).

[Shoju]

Didn't read that it had changed. I was under the assumption that EJ was still saying that even after the Arcane buff FB/TTW was tops.

I've been arcane since I hit 80 on my mage, I love it, and I'm actually contemplating changing mains.

[bzzt]

Well, I should say on average arc is the best by a fair margin.

Hotstreak specs probably will have competitive or even better "best dps done on a single log" b/c the RNG factor is very high with them. A geared fb/ttw mage can pretty easily hit 70% (expected) crit raid buffed, and on fights that are only <3-4 minutes long, repeated enough times across enough mages a few of them will RNG their way into 80%+ crit raid buffed at which point they'll wreck most anyone with pyrospam. Its not uncommon for the same player in the same raid setup on the same fight for fire to swing 600-800 dps one way or the other (funny story, to this day, on single target 25 man tank n spanks, one of my highest dps logs was back in t7.5 gear on patchwork as ffb, and parsed a +20% crit rate over my expected, it was epic , but my average dps was prolly 2-3k less than it is now).

Arcane can still get a good string, but the nature of the spec sortuv regulates itself (For a geared arc mage, the worse your proc rate, the more 4 stacked AB you end up spamming early, vs. with a glut of procs, you'll typically have a pile of mana left at the end that you end up blowing on ABspam anyway.). The crit modifier is also only 180/193% (vs. 252% or 324%). So the delta is just much lower.

[katraya]

If you really want to raid somewhat seriously, arcane is probably your best bet. As others have said it does great damage and the low hit cap makes gearing up much easier.

However, I found the playstyle rather boring. Other people love it so it's really about what you prefer. I really suggest trying out Arcane and FFB (and I suppose FB/TTW too) and seeing what you enjoy. For fun times on an alt I don't think the dps difference is game breaking. Plus, I know when I hit 80 I had tons of hit thanks to drops from reg ToC and crafted gear.

[KysenMurrin]

On the subject of hit capping easily, my own mage, who is sorely neglected and wearing a mix of naxx 10 and H ToC gear, just passed 17% hit from gear. There doesn't seem to be any way to lower it, so I'm taking this as a sign to finally give up on Frostfire and go Fire/TtW.
In other words, Arcane may give a lot of passive hit, but there's so much of it on entry level gear (especially H ToC gear) that it doesn't matter much. Doesn't change the fact that Arcane is the top dps spec atm, though.

[bzzt]

For sure, make sure you're playing what you like (as far as alts go). I'd even mention frost as very viable in starter gear (it's honestly not that bad starting out, even pre-3.3, and has a some fun stuff for 5 mans, and even some raids (imp blizzard, shatter combos on non-root immune things, ice barrier). Once the changes to frozen core get rolled out, I expect it to be very very viable for fights with difficult survivability requirements.

Re: arcane & spellhit - a lot of arcane's best gear actually looks like (is) healing gear. If you could pick the stats, SP ~ haste > int ~ spi ~ crit > mp5 (but mp5 isn't so bad that you ignore it). Its a little embarrassing when your stuff says things like "darkmender" or "swiftheal" but thems the shakes .