Mage DPS Input Requested

[kadaan]

I have one mage on my team, and it's always the lowest dps despite adequate gear. The main reason is, from what I can tell, my lack of using the free fireball as frost or the free pyro as fire. As frost, I just nuked with Frostfire Bolt and nothing else. As fire, I have a castsequence to cast Scorch, Living Bomb, 4 fireballs, Living Bomb, 4 fireballs, repeat.

With Hot Streak, 2 crits in a row is a 100% chance to make my next Pyroblast instant cast, which would be a HUGE dps boost. I recently downloaded PowerAuras to put some big glowy icons on my mage's window when it procs so I can try and take advantage of it. Does anyone else have a different setup for trying to maximize your mage's dps?

I was also playing with /castrandom after some successful testing with my shaman, but it didn't work for my mage. I tried something like this:

/castrandom Pyroblast
/stopcasting
/castsequence reset=target/combat Scorch,Living Bomb,Fireball,Fireball,Fireball,Fireball,Living Bomb,Fireball,Fireball,Fireball,Fireball

Since a /castsequence with /castrandom after it worked great for lava burst's cooldown, I was hoping this macro would try and cast Pyroblast, stop instantly (so it goes off if it's an instant, cancelled otherwise), and go on to my castsequence if HS wasn't up. Unfortunately the /stopcasting breaks the macro and it never casts anything at all :). Anyone know if it's possible to have a 1-button /castsequence macro that can cast the pyro when HS is up?

[moog]

My mage is arcane/fire and I use PowerAura to monitor for the Missile Barrage proc to get my fast Arcane Missiles off (and in her previous incarnation of pure fire mage, I monitored for Hot Streak for the insta-Pyro).
I just pop up a text message with PowerAura telling me which proc has been seen and reminding me which key to use to take advantage of it (I have other procs on other chars, Warlock 'Decimation' for instance, so a reminder is helpful).
If my mage procs, I press 0 which runs a macro on the mage along the lines of...

/stopcasting
/cast Arcane Missiles

and I then go back to my main DPS macro.

[Bot]

you can setup miks scrolling battle text to give you a sound and scrolling text notification on your mains screen for the free pyro proc. its what i use for hot streaks. i dont have my macro on hand but ill try and post it later

[Greythan]

Or spec frost, summon the Water Elemental whenever ready, and spam frostbolt.

I am a huge proponent of less micro. I'm also a huge proponent of pets as they take no DPS micro at all. They simply spam their attacks.

My mage is never last in my group's DPS.

[X-Ifist]

Could try



/castsequence reset=target/combat Scorch,Living Bomb,Fireball,Fireball,,,Fireball,Fireball,Living Bomb,,,Fireball,Fireball,Fireball,,,Fireball

/castrandom Pyroblast

[KvdM]

I was toying with a similar idea with Surv. Hunter's "Lock and Load" talent. In the end I decided that its just not a good talent for multiboxers - and somewhat in general since the total reworking of explosive shot.For LnL it works perfectly.

[genocyde]

For my mages i was full arcane and used pitbulls buff frame to display missile barrage procs so I could use them individually on each of my 3 mages. Doing this I have managed to get as high as 3x 6000+ DPS on a heroic boss wearing almost half blues half heroic/naxx boe epics. Granted that was before 3.1, I never even downloaded the last patch to see what I'd do now.

[kadaan]

I was frost the whole time leveling, and through most of my heroics. After the last talent reset I went 0/53/18 and am debating an 18/53/0 TTW build. Frost just isn't competitive atm, and even without using the instant pyroblasts I still saw a ~100-200dps increase.

I have sounds turned off on all my slaves, so I guess Power Auras really is the best bet.

[Elektroz]

For my mages i was full arcane and used pitbulls buff frame to display missile barrage procs so I could use them individually on each of my 3 mages. Doing this I have managed to get as high as 3x 6000+ DPS on a heroic boss wearing almost half blues half heroic/naxx boe epics. Granted that was before 3.1, I never even downloaded the last patch to see what I'd do now.Did you ever incur any mana problems or have any mana issues whilst playing with this powerful arcane spec? I feel like the arcane mages in my guild are always going oom within a matter of minutes.

[pinotnoir]

Spec frost and spam frostbolt and use your elemental. Check out my mages spec unless they cleared it. His name is Icewine on magtheridon. I cant remember if his spec is still there or if it got refunded and I didnt respec. No need to monitor anything and you use 2 buttons. One for your frostbolts, and one for your coldsnap/elemental.

Spec got wiped. Here it is
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0qcz0cZZAIcckfu0czgbsx

[kadaan]

Frost is simply not competitive with FFB/Arcane/Fire. 18/0/53 is the highest dps frost spec and still lags a good 15-20% dps behind to 18/53/0 or 57/3/11.

[Greythan]

I think its well known that frost isn't competitive when compared to arcane/fire while using optimal procs/sequence/timing. My point is that frost is a very simple spec that requires the least micro.

I'd be curious to see how frost compares for five boxing purposes. I know I've simply gone with the simplest setups for my three casting DPS to minimize micro needs (shaman - elemental, warlock - demonology, and mage - frost).

[kadaan]

How is frost less micromanagement? Fireball/Frostbolt/FFB specs all require micro with either Hot Streak of Brain Freeze. Frost has THREE cooldowns to use (Icy Veins, Water Elemental, Cold Snap) where FFB has two (Icy Veins and Combustion) and Fire has only one (Combustion.)

You should give Fire a shot ;).

[pinotnoir]

How is frost less micromanagement? Fireball/Frostbolt/FFB specs all require micro with either Hot Streak of Brain Freeze. Frost has THREE cooldowns to use (Icy Veins, Water Elemental, Cold Snap) where FFB has two (Icy Veins and Combustion) and Fire has only one (Combustion.)

You should give Fire a shot ;).
Frost is Frostbolt at start until finish. You dont take that shitty talent to give you a free fire spell cast. Icey veins can be in your dps macro and cast with frostbolt and /use 13 /use 14. Your elemental and coldsnap is on the same button. Press it and your elemental comes out and fights for 1min. Press it 2 more times and your elemental comes out for another minute. You have 2 buttons to press for dps. 1 of them is just to summon your pet. I dont think it can get any easier. The dps is not horrible and it beats watching for procs.

What frost mage would want 8 points in fire? Fire is worthless especially the first talents for any frost build. You would be giving up 3% crit and 12% damage increase to snared targets. Frostbolt snares so thats 12% damage loss.

[Havelcek]

I was frost for a long time but saw a good 500 dps increase by going to arcane. I run a mixed group so I need to keep things as simple as possible.

#showtooltip Arcane Blast
/use 13
/use 14
/castrandom Icy Veins, Mirror Image
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/castsequence [target=focustarget,exists,harm,nochanneling] reset=combat/target/4 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles

character is Havelnostra on Lothar

[Greythan]

Pinot response covers my post.

Interesting arcane DPS macro. Might have to try it sometime. How's mana management with that spec?

[Havelcek]

Pinot response covers my post.

Interesting arcane DPS macro. Might have to try it sometime. How's mana management with that spec?Its not bad. I have my shaman drop a mana totem and maybe every 4th trash pull I will Evocate. I always use Judgement of Wisdom from my pally which seems to help.

[daviddoran]

for less dps intensive stuff, use a sequende of 3 arcane blasts, then arcane missiles, followed by an arcane barrage. For boss fights, I manually rotate, doing a varying amount of arcane blasts then missiles, and barrage (trick is to cast barrage before the last missile volley hits, and its supposed to receive the + arcane damage from the buff) I always try and make sure my mana gems are up, and I have the glyph that increases mana received and buffs spellpower whenever I use gem. I evocate every cooldown, except on movement heavy boss fights, so i dont waste it (grr on heigan, cast it right when the cast time debuff came on, and wasted it, unless i wanted to stand for 20 seconds evocating...)

I also love evocating when the shammys blow heroism, it goes crazy fast. I also glyphed for self heal on evocate, which can come in handy, and takes a load off of the healers.

I'm need to respec out of pyroblast and into icy veins/improved blizzard. 3x Pom Pyros is fun, but does little more damage than my arcane rotation. I can still do PoM FFB, or PoM ABlast.

[pinotnoir]

Back when my 3 mages were arcane I found it to be a pain in the ass to use arcane missles. The channeled spell would cause my mages to drop follow. The bg's were fun when I had them all using instant cast spells. They could run around like retards spamming dps instant cast.

[DLoweinc]

FYi with the arcane castsequence macro posted earlier my mage is doing 3k dps on bosses with heroic gear (half heroics half blues) and will come close to 4k with heroism. (This is heroic bosses).

[moog]

What tool/addon are people using to calculate their DPS?

[DLoweinc]

Recount