Mage DPS Input Requested

[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).