3 Mages lvl 70 - Trying to find best spec for dps castsequence

[pinotnoir]

I cant decide what to do with these guys. There are some arcane changes around the corner. Right now all 3 are deep arcane. With my current gear I can do 1000 dps with arcane. However, this requires me to do arcane missles when I get the proc. I cant do that oon 3 mages. What I am trying to find is a spec that will allow me to setup a cast sequence and spam away 1 key. I was thinking fire would be good. I can setup something like scorch, living bomb, fireball, fireball ect.. I am not sure how mana intensive that is. On the other hand frost seems like it could be alot of dps with 3 elementals on bosses plus all the crits. Can someone give me some insight to a good 70-80 instance running spec? I will have a pally tank, 3 mages and a druid healer. I need something simple to manage. I am leaning to fire. I dont know how much of a buff they will do to arcane. Frost sounds like it could be nice too.

[Thomaseh]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0V0zZZAIccofh0c0gbsx

/castrandom Icy Veins, Frostbolt, Summon Water Elemental

Thats all you need baby, on 3 mages, put up focus magic on each character and go nuts! :D

[maxel]

I have 2 mages at 80 and stopped using castsequence for primary dps the moment I went to a training dummy and realized it was botching about 500dps for me. To put that in perspective, as a fresh 80, I went from a variable 1200 dps to a whopping 1600-1700 constant dps. I'm frost and switched to a 2+1AE button system. It works a lot more reliably and does considerably more dps than trying to find a perfect cycle.

Macro 1 Setup:
/assist party1
/petattack
/cast Mirror Image
/castsequence reset=180 Summon Water Elemental, Cold Snap
/castrandom Ice Lance, Ice Lance, Ice Lance, Fire Blast

Macro 2 Primary:
/assist Party1
/petattack
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Frostbolt

Macro 3 AE:
/cast [mod:alt] Blizzard; Arcane Explosion

I'm pretty sure that's what I have, or very close. Some of the spells you won't have access to at 70 such as mirror image, but that should give you a healthy start. I've tried all 3 specs and while fire and arcane certainly have the potential to out dps frost, I found arcane causes my mages to dump mana like hot cakes, and fire is too much micro management for the benefit it provides. Frost gives nice, consistent dps, if you factor in pets and shatter combos, as well as making them a little bit harder to kill. With the 2 button system I'm also free to reserve my pets for boss fights when they are more likely needed.

If you're hung up on castsequence, my old frost method was:

/assist party1
/petattack
/use 13
/use 14
/cast icy veins
/castsequence reset=combat/target Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Ice Lance

[Edit: Just wanted to mention, don't use my current mages' spec below as your baseline. I was experimenting with something this week, so my spec is all botched up. This is closer to my normal spec: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0V0uZZAIcIofu0fzgbsx but use the frost spec linked above until you get closer to 80]

Max

[Bigfish]

/castsequence scorch, scorch, fireball, fireball, fire blast, pyroblast, fireball, fireball, fireball, scorch, fire blast, pyroblast, fireball, fireball, fireball, scorch, fire blast, pyroblast, fireball, fireball, fireball, scorch, fire blast, pyroblast,

Is what I currently use. Works ok for most situations with a 50% crit rate and Hotstreak. Pyroblasts end up with a 90% chance of being instant. I have no idea how Arcane works though, so I can't offer any advice there.

[pinotnoir]

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0V0zZZAIccofh0c0gbsx

/castrandom Icy Veins, Frostbolt, Summon Water Elemental

Thats all you need baby, on 3 mages, put up focus magic on each character and go nuts! :D

Do you summon the water elemental only on bosses? When I get a chance I will test all the suggestions. It seems like frost would be less micro management. If I go frost what would be the best glyphs to use? I know scorch is great for fire. With 3 mages one scorch cast would put the buff up to max.

[maxel]

I'm really not sure that the castrandom posted will work out all that well for you in terms of raw sustainable dps. I've played a mixed class group from the start with a paladin, lock, 2 mages, and a priest. Once I dinged 80, I was getting seriously frustrated with my dps. It was nowhere near what it should have been for the gear I had and my level. I did some tweaking of their macros and really, it boils down to requiring 2 buttons to play a mage, and to that effect walocks, effectively at higher levels.

Once I made the jump and got used to the 2 button rotation, my dps has significantly improved and I'm able to down things easily now that caused a big headache before. Obviously, it all comes down to personal preference, but I'm worried you'll be disappointed as a frost mage with the aforementioned castrandom macro. I guess it's great for fire and forget, but does not take advantage of shatter combos, looks very streaky, and unpredictable. It might work well before you get Ice Lance, but after that you're dropping significant potential for a lot of damage which you will need for the glass cannon to prove it's worth over boxing say a shaman.

Personally, the 2 button method works well for me, but it's really a matter of personal preference. (I don't mind hitting 1>2>2>1>2>2 ad-naseum on bosses. For trash its just 2>2>2 mostly because they drop so fast) The best advice would be to try out different sequences on dummies and see what you find is to your liking. Just remember castsequence on mages rob dps, especially for Frost Mages.There was another thread on this board that showed how bad it can be for shaman and I wrote in that thread about my findings for warlocks and mages. The drop off is significant. A /cast Frostbolt and /cast Ice Lance manual press will just about out dps a /castsequence reset=combat/target Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Ice Lance because Ice Lance really relies on it's instant cast hitting about the same time your frostbolt does.

Train yourself early with a 2 button sequence for dps and it becomes second nature, maximizes your potential for boxed dps, and preps you for more dps intensive fights later on. After that you can juggle what you want up when you want it. For instance, I don't like casting my water elemental / Mirror Image every time its up right before I get to a boss. I tend to let it cool down on the trash as I get closer to it so that I can cast 2 of them (with cold snap) for the longer fight. At 80 the elementals are nothing to sneeze at. They push out close to 400dps a piece with only their auto attack. It's sick.

Hope this helps. Feel free to hit me up if you have any other questions.

Max

[Thomaseh]

Of course you can add a few more Frostbolts in the /castrandom macro wich will increase the chance that the frosbolt will be cast.

[pinotnoir]

I have changed from cast sequence to 4 buttons on my shaman.. flame shock, lavaburst, lightning bolt, and chain lightning. DPS increased. I guess for a frost mage I need to learn when to use the two macros you listed. I have not played a frost mage since pre bc. With arcane its arcane blast, arcane barrage then missle when you get the buff. Fire is pretty easy but I just dont know when certain stuff needs to be cast for frost. I would be interested in giving it a try. 2 buttons should be doable considering my pally really only uses a castrandom and a manual avengers shield to tank. Whats really going to confuse my fingers is trying to setup healing macros for my druid.

[heffner]

I was thinking about this the other day as well...for all my toons.

For a multiboxer I think it will difficult to get max DPS with any mage spec. You constantly have to watch for some proc to go off. There may be a way to work the macros to maximize taking advantage of procs, hotstreak for example (I know someone on this board was trying to do this), but I haven't worked that out yet myself. However, frost might actually work out to be better due to the water elemental contributing a lot to the DPS.

[maxel]

Ok I got home and wanted to give you the macros I used. I forgot that recently I moved my Water Elemental to it's own button because I was tired of it misfiring. Here's what I use:

AE:
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Blizzard; Arcane Explosion

Buff:
#showtooltip
/cast [mod:ctrl] Molten Armor; Arcane Brilliance

Counterspell: I have 2 mages so Round Robin
#showtooltip Counterspell
/assist party1
/stopcasting
/castsequence reset=24/combat/target , Counterspell

Decurse:
#showtooltip remove curse
/targetparty
/cast Remove Curse

Emergency Heal: (My Mages are Draenei)
#showtooltip Gift of the Naaru
/target party1
/stopcasting
/cast Gift of the Naaru

FocusMagic: (For Levinor so it targets the other mage)
/cast [target=Levin] Focus Magic

Ice Block:
#showtooltip Ice Block
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

Poly Focus:
#show polymorph
/target focus
/stopcasting
/cast polymorph

Poly Random: (Other mage has an additional /targetenemy line to move to a seperate mob)
/targetenemy
/cast polymorph

SpellSteal: (Again Round Robin)
#showtooltip Spellsteal
/assist party1
/stopcasting
/castsequence reset=combat/target spellsteal,

Water Elemental:
#showtooltip Summon Water Elemental
/stopcasting
/cast Mirror Image
/castsequence reset=144 Summon Water Elemental, Cold Snap

Lance:
#showtooltip Ice Lance
/assist Party1
/stopcasting
/cast Ice Lance

Primary:
#showtooltip FrostBolt
/assist Party1
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Frostbolt

Couple of things. Yes, that's a lot more than 2 macros. I just wanted you to get a grip on all the main abilities of a mage. I don't use half of them but for specific situations. You'll notice that none of my dps macros have /petattack in them. I noticed that when I had that and was spamming keys, my pet seemed like it was just sitting there cancelling its attack each keypress.

Hope this helps!