Trading mage for a shaman

I run a pally tank, 2 elemental shamans, fire/frost mage and a holy priest.

My mage's number are LOW. I love the food but the dps is just low. I am considering replacing the mage with another shaman.

I have tried fire, frost and frostfire specs with lots of different macros and talents and his dps falls short to the shamans in trash and bosses in instances. The mage seems like the week link.

Here is his mutilates armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...mar&n=Rhomulus

I recently got him dual spec so I did not have to blow away the glyphs all the time. I have settled on a fire spec.

This is also my most neglected toon.

Any help would be appreciated.

I would try and spec him Arcane, I went from frost spec to arcane and mine jumped about 180% in DPS.

Arcane is definitely a lot more dps. If you can set up the /click macro for 4 AB and then Arcane Missle (missle barrage) it should work nicely. Frost is tough to beat for 1 button spam though. Fortunatly they both gear the same way (spell power and haste - crit and haste are worth about 1/2 of that).

I'd avoid FIre or Frostfire though. they are just too dependant on catching the pryoblast proc's. I have a hell of a time doing that correctly when solo, I can't imagine tying to do it when multiboxing.

I also run my mage as arcane and he has good dps. And with this recent change the dps macro rotation is much more simple and increases dps.

Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds.

Arcane all the way. Only downside to arcane is mana usage, but i believe they buffed it last patch, less mana used, and when missile barrage procs (which should be almost every rotation in this new patch) it costs zero mana. Very simple rotation, 4 AB, 1 AM. I have my main mage dual specced Frostfire/arcane, and arcane is more consistent dps, pretty high, often fighting with my lock for top spot, usually second place though. As frostfire, its even more dependant on RNG. I have a very high crit rating, somewhere near 45-5-% with the shaman buff, so some fights, i do 5k dps, others i barely do 2. It can be difficult to manage the hotstreak procs, especially in an otherwise busy/tough fight, but I manage, I made a button that stops whatever im casting and casts pyroblast, and that seems to work fine for me, I just spam my main DPS key, watch proculas party chat for the proc, and then spam the pyroblast key. My shaman isnt as geared though, but he's getting close dps wise to my lock and mage. Both Mages and Shaman have a lot of potential, and I feel that it's best if you leave your team as it is, diverse. Your mage wants all the spirit gear, and your shaman do not, so if you drop a mage for a shaman, you miss out on more gear.

Keep in mind, mage dps will look like its coming up short if you just leave your DPS meter running the whole dungeon. The have a long wind up time as they have to apply scorch, get an ignite going, and get their instant Pyroblasts before they start cranking out their numbers. Normally on trash, you don't get that far, especially with DPS like shamans who start with an instant, then a quick gauranteed crit, and then a bunch of 1.5 second casts. No wind up time at all. It usually evens out on bosses, I find.

There's also an issue of gear. If your mages gear is lagging behind the others, your obviously going to see a gap in their DPS.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...Kilith&group=1 Try using that spec. It's not the most dps you can get out of a mage but I wanted replenishment. Yours is missing several dps talents and has no glyphs.

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Originally Posted by daviddoran

but i believe they buffed it last patch, less mana used, and when missile barrage procs (which should be almost every rotation in this new patch) it costs zero mana. Very simple rotation, 4 AB, 1 AM.

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I'm sorry to derail the thread but I will anyway.

I saw the change to Arcane Blast but what else changed for arcane? Speciffically what does it mean for mana and rotation?
I avoided arcane because of the mana usage and i could not macro a rotation I was happy with. Is ABx4, AM good enough.
Surely Missile Barrage doesn't proc during every rotation does it? Why not include Arcane Barrage?

Arcane Blast x4 pretty much guarantees a proc for free AM. That's why it's so easy to macro, plus now it uses less mana as it ramps up.

Before the last patch, my mages would proc missile barrage about every other rotation, sometimes less. Now, I often see it proc off of the first arcane blast, and even re-proc again before my rotation even gets to missiles... There's still a chance it won't proc, but without doing the math, Id say it would proc at least 80% of the time, if not 90%. Regardless, you dont want to keep casting Arcane Blast, as you will run OOM very quickly. If you wanted to, you could try doing a manual rotation, AB x 4 then if you proc missile barrage, cast AM, if not, cast arcane barrage.

My mages regularly pump out 4k DPS, and ive seen 5k if I use heroism. Mana usage has greatly improved.

I no longer include arcane barrage, because the stacking of Arcane blast is so much more dps than barrage, so i dont waste the GCD time. It's still a nice spell to cast for movement heavy fights.

I may even try out a /clicker macro for this, something like

/click button1
/click button 2

*button 1*
/castsequence,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,arcane missiles

*button2*
/cast arcane blast

with the right amount of commas, AM should cast often enough to not kill the mana pool. And without a sequence for arcane blast, dps should increase regardless.

You have a 40% chance per cast of Arcane Blast to proc Missile Barrage.
In other words, you have a 60% chance per cast that you will not get the proc.

You can calculate the chance of at least one proc quite easily.
On 1 casts (1.00 - (0.60)) = 0.40 = 40% Proc Chance.
On 2 casts (1.00 - (0.60 x 0.60) = 64% Proc Chance.
On 3 casts (1.00 - (0.36 x 0.60) = 78.4% Proc Chance.
On 4 casts (1.00 - (0.216 x 0.60) = 87.04% Proc Chance.

So a good chance that it will proc by 4 =)

lol so my guesstimate of 80-90% is pretty accurate :)

So what's the chance of a proc on 5 casts of AB?

.077 chance it wont proc, so basically a 92.3% chance to proc. 4 is your best bang for buck due to dimishing returns on the chance and by that I mean it isnt worth casting #5 for a 5% increased chance to proc. I think I will stick to 4AB1AM for now.

Ill have to run some tests and experiment. I also wanna switch my arcane macro to a clicker to see if i can boost my dps even more.

I was looking at damage meters, and noticed that since the patch, a lot more of my DPS has come from arcane missiles. When the procced missiles goes off, it casts it extremely fast, doing more damage in the course of one GCD than an entire cast of arcane blast.

Since the change I haven't had to use mage armor for the mana regen any more, I use molten armor for more crit from spirit. I wouldnt be surprised if 5 AB before the AM would result in higher DPS on a more consistent basis. I was watching some of the crits from AB, and i hit one for 13k 2x in a row, and a 10k right before that. I always felt that casting AM was a DPS loss, and only a filler to save mana, but according to recount, missiles are around 35-45% of my overall dps now. Me and another 5 boxer did Naxx 10 last night, and it was a complete joke with our gear levels now. My warlock did 5k on patchwerk, and my mage hit 4.6k, and my not nearly hit capped shaman did a respectable 3.5k. Only my lock had mana issues, but the balance druid in the group was innervating him lol. I even respecced my lock for soul leech, and hes still my mana hog. And a threat hog too, thank goodness for soul shatter...

@daviddoran

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My mages regularly pump out 4k DPS, and ive seen 5k if I use heroism. Mana usage has greatly improved.

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can you link your 4k dps mage? I'm having trouble getting my average above 2k dps ... i will peak over 3.2k dps when i blow cd's off the start, but settle into 2k ... seems difficult to increase it ..

Also, I'm still not understanding why a /click macro is any better than a straight-up /cast macro ... LFM explanationz ... bring reasons .. checking facts ...

I would think /castsequence reset=6 Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles would work fine for dps.