Theorycraft: Mages in WotLK

[algol]

Ice Lance is also really CHEAP filler...and with mage crit being what it is, a few of those are bound to crit sooner or later anyway.

[Kulzor]

Ok, what am I missing here... Does Ice Lance not invoke a 1.5 second global cooldown or something? Same with Fire Blast?

I haven't tried Ice Lance, but so far I'm finding
/castsequence reset=5 [target=focustarget,harm] Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage

to be the most effective on damage. At the very least the second Arcane Blast is getting upped damage, so for a 2.5 second spell it's doing good damage. I don't know that I'd say the same with Ice Lance or Fire Blast (without seeing it).

I'd add in a third Arcane Blast, but I don't believe most trash lives long enough then...

[algol]

Of course it does. But if you have 1.5 sec until the next CD anyway...nearly free damage.

[Xzin]

If mages had ANY real boxing survivability in arenas they might be worth playing. They can't heal - shammys can. A single point of weakness (only one healer) in arenas is.... problematic, to say the least.

As it stands now, mages are not likely to do well in WOTLK arenas. That said, in large scale PvP (hi 2 u Wintergrasp/AV) they will most likely, as always, dominate.

[maxel]

I threw together a spreadsheet using base number for spells and some preliminary assumptions for a couple different sequences floating around. I tried to dumb it down as much as possible by eliminating talents so that I can provide a more constant baseline for which adding talents, spell power, and crit rate only helps. This makes the numbers a little easier to understand, at least for myself, by ruling out things that, as boxers, are difficult to utilize in rotations, such as mashing a button when specific events fire like Warlock Nightfall procs.

That being said, based on this information I was able to extrapolate some results. Other rotations could be applied in similar fashion for additional baseline results. ymmv and my numbers might be way off, but maybe it will help people. *shrug*

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...z1Ly368evoyDXA

[Quix]

Ok, what am I missing here... Does Ice Lance not invoke a 1.5 second global cooldown or something? Same with Fire Blast?

I haven't tried Ice Lance, but so far I'm finding
/castsequence reset=5 [target=focustarget,harm] Arcane Blast, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage

to be the most effective on damage. At the very least the second Arcane Blast is getting upped damage, so for a 2.5 second spell it's doing good damage. I don't know that I'd say the same with Ice Lance or Fire Blast (without seeing it).

I'd add in a third Arcane Blast, but I don't believe most trash lives long enough then...

I believe you are talking a standing/casting damage rotation for PVE, & they are talking about insta casts that can be mashed while on the run strafing or sidestepping in PVP. The global cooldown is still there, but you can mash this while chasing someone down. I could be wrong but Thats what I use the arcane barrage icelance fireblast macro for. I would never ever ever stand there to cast Arcane blast (unless I used it with POM.)