The Enigma Order

mages are now primary crowd controllers, and should never attempt to do any dps (pve perspective) since hunters and warriors have the nasty habit of breaking cc all the time

you'll get mirror image (three copies of yourself casting alongside you) in Wrath. 'nuff said.

MAGE CAN POLUMORF AN SJOOT FIAH

don't believe em sweter, go mage!

Ice Block is now trainable and Cold Snap has been moved to its former place in frost tree. New 11th frost talent is Icy Veins.
Deep arcane isn't a viable raid spec anymore due to TLC and MSD nerfs.
2/47/11+1 has taken 10/47/3+1's place as the most common fire raiding build due to significant damage increase from Icy Veins, however 0/40/21 does remotely better single target DPS and thus is the spec preferred in top min maxer guilds.
40/0/21 does also competitive damage but it requires a lot more group support and is the trickiest mage spec to play.

EDIT: Nowadays spell haste is the best stat for DPS.
EDIT2: Hit is still better before the cap.

Last edited by Wrion (2008-10-13 13:51:27)

sweter wrote:

Wrion wrote:

2/47/11+1 has taken 10/47/3+1's place as the most common fire raiding build due to significant damage increase from Icy Veins, however 0/40/21 does remotely better single target DPS and thus is the spec preferred in top min maxer guilds.
EDIT: Nowadays spell haste is the best stat for DPS.

Thanks for the info, that's what I was looking for. Just one question: what "11+1" and "3+1" mean? Can you show me any build as an example?

+1 means that the last point's place is up to personal preference.
3/47/11 - This is the spec I'm generally using. I put the last point in arcane focus since the hit is needed in spellsteal/counterspell fights such as Maulgar, RoS and The Illidari Council
0/40/21 - This version of the build is designed for partly fire immune encounters such as Illidan. Besides elemental precision, icy veins and cold snap, all the frost talents are up to personal preference.
40/0/21 - An example of arcane/frost raiding spec, note that elemental precision is bugged and gives +6% hit for frostbolt so the hitcap for this spec is 10% after talents.

sweter wrote:

Hm, You wrote that the deep arcane (40/0/21, AB/FB rotation or pure AB spam) is not a vialable raiding spec anymore because 2 trinkets got nerfed and cos there's alot of new  +haste gear around. I don't exactly get why.  Does fire spells benefit more from +haste? And, if yes, why?

By deep arcane I meant arcane missiles spamming arcane spec which heavely relied on the two trinkets.
Here is what I wrote about arcane/frost :)

Wrion wrote:

40/0/21 does also competitive damage but it requires a lot more group support and is the trickiest mage spec to play.

EDIT: I don't think I ever mentioned haste as a reason for arcane not being viable anymore. If I did though, feel free to forget it :D

Last edited by Wrion (2008-10-13 14:25:58)

sweter wrote:

Wrion wrote:

EDIT: I don't think I ever mentioned haste as a reason for arcane not being viable anymore. If I did though, feel free to forget it

Ah, ok. I've read the whole discussion on the Symbiotic Guild forums, a mage who started it is a brilliant guy. But, as i understand it, his maths and theory is only accurate until wednesday, because of the AB mechanics change (no point rotating AB with frostbolt, AB debuff wears off after 3 seconds).

So, how will You spec when 3.0 goes live? Elemental seems perfect for levelling, and I love what they're doing with all these AOE talents and spells. I'm not using AOE alot, but i'd spec for it just for sheer fun. Just gimme a pala and BoP because all those talented AE, Living Bomb (can the proc crit? , Blastwave, CoC, DB and Flamestrike crits will generate Al-Quaida kind of aggro

When 3.0 hits pretty much everything I posted will be irrelevant but based on what I've read I'd say fire will be mana inefficient DPS tree and frost mana efficient utility tree (imp water elemental) and arcane will be useless as main tree. However, my knowledge is a couple of PTR builds outdated so I might be wrong.
I'll prolly go clearcasting/living bomb til wotlk hits but haven't really thought about my wotlk spec yet.

Tho I'm planning a big reroll for myself back to mage when wotlk hits I haven't taken a lot of time to look over the mage changes. The class itself has allways turned out ok for me whatever the change.