5th slot mage help

[Seeleprime]

Hello everyone,

Recently I've been able to actually pull my five-boxing group together to work as a team so it is a bit of a mixed group. Currently this is my setup:

Protection Paladin
Elemental Shaman x2
Restoration Druid
Fire Mage

The Mage was the latest addition that I moved from another server/faction to join my group so that running heroics would be easier (I was 4 manning most of the eastern heroics w/o many problems, just slow). Currently the Elemental shamans pull 2.5 to 4k or more depending; one is a bit better geared than the other since it is technically my "main".

The mage, however, only pulls about 1.5 to 2k...2.5k on bosses if I'm lucky. It's a weird proc-less fire/arcane build that I was trying out for simplicity's sake, but I would like to up the mage's dps a bit more if possible through possible recommended talent builds.

If anyone has any suggestions on a slave mage build I would appreciate it, I've not try and proc-announcement type add-ons yet but I could use some suggestions on what is good and what is not. I've looked through the forums and found some good suggestions, but it seems like most of the best builds require good to great proc attention focus.

Thank you ahead of time!

My 5 man team is in the guild Hydra on Doomhammer:

Seele, Aje, Moriya, Nekoya, and Zomaki (mage in question).

[Ualaa]

If you have a warlock, I'd sub them in, in the place of the mage.

Mages have three general choices as far as specs.

Arcane, you want 4x Arcane Blast + 1x Arcane Missiles as your rotation.
Fire is dependent on procs, so you'll need something like MSBT (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvt-cmKWWbY&hd=1) to announce procs.
Frost is essentially Frostbolt spam, and use your pet at every opportunity.

In 3.3, the water elemental becomes persistent, which should improve the spec. In general its lower dps then the first two, but more mana effecient. It does get Replenishment for the team, and mana regeneration is nice in heroics. For an all caster (non-heroic) team, the snare/freeze effect is quite nice, but with a tank you don't need that.

[HPAVC]

If your just doing heroics, you wont need the resto druid as resto, go boomkin and in a pinch just have the hybrids spot heal.

I would switch the mage for a destruction warlock. My recent experience with trying mage again has been dreadful, though I find arcane very pretty to look at.

I do most heroics with just a spot heal on trash while looting corpses, on bosses a emergency lesser healing wave / self dual chain heal might be needed. Likely a 'chew soul candy now!' will suffice quite a bit.

[Seeleprime]

Thank you for the reply, I really appreciate it!

I have a 70 lock on my tank's account I was going to level and bump in with the group for doing 5 man DPS in raids (if I can ever find people my time of the morning), but I was thinking of moving it over to that account as well to replace the mage. From what I've read here it doesn't look like they do very phenomenal dps, which kinda bites, but some things are more synergistic than others with multiboxing (hence the pally + 4x shammy groups).

Again, thank you :) I'll play around with a bit to see what works best with my team, might try the other specs, too...might get the lock up as well!

[Ualaa]

A destro warlock should put out as much dps as an elemental shaman.
And then you don't need to manage eclipse procs, but still get the 13% spell power buff.

Mages and Warlocks both bring a fair bit of utility to a team.

[Gadzooks]

I just armoried your mage, so I'm editing my post:

Use your arcane spec. With your gear, you should be doing HUGE dps, and I'll be honest, fire is a pain when it's on a slave. The arcane rotation is dead simple, and rarely screws up.

Look for the /click macros here for arcane, they make a HUGE, HUGE difference - when I switched to /click my DPS doubled on my mage.

My mage has AH specials and crafted gear - ie. crap compared to what your mage has - and she's doing 2.2-2.5k on heroic bosses. Your mage, as arcane, with the right /click macros, should be pumping out massive numbers.

No way a lock would compete, to be honest. I'm not super thrilled with Lock performance post-80, the rotations are too tweaky to automate - stuff either dies too fast for his dots to really work, or he just posts low numbers on fights. Like I posted before, my lock is seriously underpowered, my project is to take a look at him tomorrow and get his dps up. I;m also going to be experimenting with demonology, see what the felguard can do in Heroics, just for giggles.

[Seeleprime]

Well, I took a look at the Arcane Spec and changed a few things on it, then tested it on a target dummy and I can say that my DPS on my Mage went up by about 1 to 1.5k already. I found some /click macros here on the forums as you suggested. Thank you!

http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=25162&highlight=arcane+blast

I still think I'll get my destruction lock up to 80, but she's on my paladin's account, but the idea is that with her and boomkin druid I can be 5 dps for raids (I have some friends talkin about it, nothing solid yet).

Again, thank you for the help!


I just armoried your mage, so I'm editing my post:

Use your arcane spec. With your gear, you should be doing HUGE dps, and I'll be honest, fire is a pain when it's on a slave. The arcane rotation is dead simple, and rarely screws up.

Look for the /click macros here for arcane, they make a HUGE, HUGE difference - when I switched to /click my DPS doubled on my mage.

My mage has AH specials and crafted gear - ie. crap compared to what your mage has - and she's doing 2.2-2.5k on heroic bosses. Your mage, as arcane, with the right /click macros, should be pumping out massive numbers.

No way a lock would compete, to be honest. I'm not super thrilled with Lock performance post-80, the rotations are too tweaky to automate - stuff either dies too fast for his dots to really work, or he just posts low numbers on fights. Like I posted before, my lock is seriously underpowered, my project is to take a look at him tomorrow and get his dps up. I;m also going to be experimenting with demonology, see what the felguard can do in Heroics, just for giggles.

[rulemaker]

Hi

i also added a arcane mage to my mboxing team and i just use this simple macro

/castsequence [target=focustarget] reset=combat/12 [nochanneling] Arcane blast, Arcane blast,Arcane blast,Arcane blast,Arcane missiles
/use Mirror
/use Arcane Power

and i do nearly 2,5-3k dps. hope this helps a bit.

[Seeleprime]

Huh, I've never seen the [nochanneling] tag before. I'll assume that is supposed to keep it from resetting if you're mid-missiles...does it work well?


Hi

i also added a arcane mage to my mboxing team and i just use this simple macro

/castsequence [target=focustarget] reset=combat/12 [nochanneling] Arcane blast, Arcane blast,Arcane blast,Arcane blast,Arcane missiles
/use Mirror
/use Arcane Power

and i do nearly 2,5-3k dps. hope this helps a bit.