Bye bye frostfire and HELLO arcane (crazy dps increase)

[atheus]

I respecd my mage from frostfire to arcane and got a huge dps increase. From 1300dps to 1900dps according to recount at the end of full heroics. I could tell the difference right away in how fast mobs were dieing. These are heroics I always farm and know my dps levels.

spec: 55/3/12 ('http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=230005031100330150323102515321030 00000000000000000000000000530030010000000000000000 000')
/castsequence Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage

I will try out some other casts like:
/castsequence Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage
and
/cast Arcane Blast

[Heenan]

Yeah, the patch was very nice to Arcane. I am enjoying it very much. I am probably going to respec a mage to FFB to be a scorch-bot, but otherwise I am pretty happy.

[Bigfish]

They really need to fix Fireball and Frostbolt. The whole point of Frostfire Bolt was so that you didn't see the complete shunning of the fire tree ala Vanilla WoW or the situational frost/fire switch off (depending on boss) of BC. The thing shouldn't be a mainstay replacement spell.

[puppychow]

heres the macro I use on my mage, it does use castsequence so that will lower the DPS a bit, but I just like seeing arcane missiles :)

#showtooltip Arcane Blast
/stopmacro [channeling]
/use 13
/use 14
/castsequence [target=focustarget,harm][] Arcane Blast,Arcane Blast,Arcane Missiles,Arcane Barrage


You can take out the /use if you have trinkets that dont have use: parameters. The x2 ab's does eat mana a bit, and I generally run with mage armor when multiboxing (molten when raiding/solo).

FFB is still a tiny, tiny, tiny bit higher dmg in top raid situations, but for a lot of movement intensive fights and fights where you can go nuts near the end (Thaddius, Loatheb, Malygos, etc) just spamming AB while going oom really can put you on the top.

[AtroxCasus]

Not to sound like an elitist pig or anything, but what kind of gear are you in, and what is your hit and crit rating at as FFB Spec?

I specced my mage FFB shortly after hitting 80. Heading into 10 man Naxx was right around 1800-2k DPS overall according to recount in heroics and on boss fights upwards of 2500. ..Now in Naxx gear on easily 2k-2300 avg and 3K+ on bosses, depending on boss, etc.

I have seen the numbers Arcane mages post on boss fights, and even the ones who aren't as well geared as I am post big numbers, especially on bosses where we all stand there and cast, but they aren't killing me by a long shot.

You said your DPS went from 1300 up to 1900 in heroics you "run all the time", and it seems to me that maybe you weren't doing something right if you were heroic geared and at 1300 DPS. At 70, I was doing 1200-1400 in Kara/ ZA gear with a frost raiding spec.

Like I said, I'm by no means saying that I am the best mage out there or anything, but your numbers should have been better than 1300 as Frostfire Bolt Spec, and as Arcane, 1900 should be what you are posting on fights with a lot of movement and trash clears. On a boss I'd think you could peg 3k or so easily.

[Maklar]

Much of that dps difference is going to come from your macro use. FFB is hard to use a macro due to Hot Streaks. Also, it looks like his macro did not include scorch so I don't know if he was keeping that up or not. Arcane still has Missile Barrage but it can be done without.

If you are going to use a sequence macro you should try something like (after you have full stack of scorch):

/castsequence Living Bomb, Frostfire Bolt, Frostfire Bolt, Frostfire Bolt, Frostfire Bolt, Living Bomb, Frostfire Bolt, Frostfire Bolt, Frostfire Bolt, Frostfire Bolt, Scorch
I would also expect you to get a significant dps boost as arcane if you use Arcane Blast more than once. Some of this will depend on your mana, but having shamans with stacked mana totems will help on that.

[pinotnoir]

You guys are using specs made for solo play. FFB and arcane require you to watch for procs so you can imp arcane missle or use streaks. If you want the best multibox spec where you just have to spam 1 button go frost. The other day I did 2400 dps in vault with my guy. I can do that on the heroic target dummy as well. All you do is spam 1 button and use mirror image and elemental. Leave the FFB and arcane specs to solo play where you can watch for all your procs to increase damage.

Check out my mages talents and try it out.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Magtheridon&n=Icewine

One macro to spam frostbolt. One macro to pop elementals/coldsnap. Glyph for elemental & molten armor. And bind mirror image to a key.

p.s. Ice barrier helps a ton running heroics.


/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","0")
/use 13
/use 14
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","1")
/cast icy veins
/cast [target=focustarget] Frostbolt

#showtooltip Summon Water Elemental
/stopcasting
/castsequence [target=focustarget] reset=144 Summon Water Elemental, Cold Snap

[Bigfish]

I macro for Hotstreak. Haven't had any problems.

[pinotnoir]

I macro for Hotstreak. Haven't had any problems.

I have 3 mages. Watching for hotstreak on 3 mages while tanking and healing doesnt work. If you had 1 mage I can see being able to do a hotstreak macro.

[Kaelika]

I macro for Hotstreak. Haven't had any problems.Would you mind posting your macros? I'm contemplating switching from a frost spec, but I'd like to see how other people are managing their macros first. I run different classes, so I'd rather not have to micromanage TOO much, although I don't mind a slight jump in complexity if it yields higher DPS numbers.