Post by Tit on Dec 25, 2014 11:21:56 GMT
Mage Guide for 1.12.1
Table of Contents
Talents
Consumables
Stat priorities
Pre-raid Gear
Enchants
Addons
PvP
Talents
For 5-man instances and 20-man raids, my preferred spec is the max dps Fire build:
Fire Combustion: 17-31-3
There are certain mobs that are resistant to Fire in the blackrock mountain instances, but just use frost spells against those mobs. Enjoy playing Fire while it lasts, because the moment you start to venture into Molten Core, you won't be playing Fire anymore for a very very long time.
For Molten Core and Blackwing Lair the only sensible option is frost. There are 2 frost-options. The Winter's Chill-stacking spec, and the Arcane Power-frost spec.
Winter's Chill: 18-0-33
Arcane Power-frost: 31-0-20
Winter's Chill adds 10% crit chance to all Frost spells from all mages in the raid. It is a must that there is atleast 1 mage in your guild who joins the raids with these talents. It is a common procedure that the newcomers in the guild gets asked to spec Winter's Chill while the better geared mages use the Arcane Power variant, however having some of the most experienced mages use Improved Blizzard is probably the best way to progress through the Suppresion Room in Blackwing Lair, and should not be left in the hands of the newcomers neccesarily.
Having all mages spec into Winters-chill Spec (or some variant) can also be useful when your guild is trying new content where there is raid-damage involved. Having Ice Barrier and Ice Block will take some stress of the healers. The longer the raid survives, even if you're not getting the kill, the more up-time you have on the encounter to learn and adapt to the mechanics.
For Ahn'Qiraj Temple and Naxxramas you will be using Fire Combustion in most of the raids. For some fights, frost talents really help out, but if your guild has started naxxramas, you hopefully don't have much use for tips on what to spec anymore, so let's just skip that.
Consumables
Depending on which raids you are doing, some of these consumables may be considered over-extending a little bit. However here's a somewhat full list of the consumables that i bring to AQ40 and Naxxramas raids:
Standard consumables:
Flask of Supreme Power
Brilliant Wizard Oil
Greater Arcane Elixir
Elixir of Greater Firepower
Mageblood Potion
Nightfin Soup
Major Mana Potion
Limited Invulnerability Potion - drop all aggro temporarily, can be a repairbill/raid saver.
Extra for specific encounters:
Flask of the Titans - instead of supreme power
Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops - instead of nightfin soup
Demonic Rune - for long fights these are better than mana gems
Spirit of Zanza - requires zul'gurub honored reputation
Greater Fire Protection Potion - ragnaros, grand widow faerlina
Greater Nature Protection Potion - several aq40 bosses and few in naxx
Greater Shadow Protection Potion - c'thun in aq40
Light Feather - anub'rekhan
Elixir of Fortitude
Rumsey Rum Black Label
Stat-priorities
Chance to Hit:
As a caster you will -always- have 1% chance to miss with your spells.
Vs target of your own level: 4% chance to miss. 3% chance to Hit is needed for cap. (pvp)
Vs target of your own level +1: 5% chance to miss. 4% chance to Hit is needed for cap.
Vs target of your own level +2: 6% chance to miss. 5% chance to Hit is needed for cap.
Vs target of your own level +3: 17% chance to miss. 16% chance to Hit is needed for cap.
Raid Bosses are considered level 63 when calculating hit. Therefore you need 16% Hit in order to be capped on raidbosses. You will gain 6% chance to Hit from talents, so the last 10% must come from gear.
Being Hit-capped can be a hard nut to crack with blue gear. You shouldn't sacrifice too much Spelldamage in order to reach the Cap. Before you are in AQ40, you can easily get away with around 5-6% Hit from items.
Remember that the Hit-cap is only needed for bossfights. As long as you have the talents, you will basically be safe on every trash pull you do. Your polymorphs or Counterspells will not be resisted (or well only 1% of the time) so consider +Hit as a purely dps-stat which has no importance in terms of cc resists etc.
Spelldamage:
Your primary stat for your damage. As a caster you do not benefit from stats the same way as melee dps do. 20 agility for a warrior is 1% crit. However we need 59.5 intellect to gain the same 1% chance to crit with our spells.
Bottomline is that intellect isn't worthless, but it should be sacrificed in order to increase spelldamage in almost all cases.
Any item without +spelldamage is basically a throw-away item. Don't bother collecting the Magister-set unless you want to turn it into the Sorcerer-set, but even then it's alot of work and time to do that quest-chain. You would probably have better items in the end if you spent the same time doing 5-man instances.
Chance to Crit:
Chance to Crit is a great stat. For Frost it is just as valuable as Hit, and should be considered of same value in terms of dps.
For Fire, Chance to Crit is slightly more effective than Hit. The more spelldamage you have, the more you will benefit from 1% additional chance to crit. As fire you will do 210% spelldamage on a Critical Hit, and have a chance to replenish the Ignite timer should you also get a Critical hit on consecutive spells, resulting in a massive damage increase when you have multiple crits in a row.
It is alot of work to figure out the theorycraft behind the +crit vs +hit. And if you're really interested in how to figure that out, then i advice you to download the addon: Theorycraft. But as a horribly-simplified rule of thumb for pre-raid geared mages i'd say:
As frost:
1% Hit = 10 spelldamage
1% Crit = 10 spelldamage
As fire:
1% Hit = 10 spelldamage
1% Crit = 13 spelldamage
So what you want to do when looking at an item is to convert the Crit and Hit into spelldamage and then compare it to another item. Whichever item has the highest amount of total spelldamage, use that one.
Stamina, Intellect, Spirit and Mana/5sec:
Stamina is allright, but don't overdo it. In most raiding situations, if you're taking damage it means you're standing at a wrong spot. Whatever stamina that you end up with after prioritizing solely on +spelldamage items, is what you're going to end up with. Don't worry about it. Don't pull aggro and don't stand at a bad spot, and you'll be fine.
Intellect grants 1% chance to crit for every 59.5 intellect, and increases your mana pool with 15 mana per intellect. Seen from a dps-point of view, this is not a very useful stat. Get whatever intellect you can from your best possible +spelldamage items and that will be fine. Compensate with Major Mana Potions if you're going out of mana.
Spirit and Mana/5seconds. Well, these stats are absolute garbage in my oppinion.
I'd say that 1 mana/5 seconds is equal to 1 spelldamage. Others may disagree, but fact is that there are just not many fights out there which lasts so long that you end up going out of mana.
Spell Penetration (reduce enemy resistance):
Mobs may have resistances to one or more types of spells. In Molten Core there are a lot of mobs who have high fire resistance or even immunity. You will be frost in Molten Core so this don't matter much.
Raid-bosses will have resistances to every school, and that means a part of your damage will be lost if you do not have stats which can reduce enemy resistance. Examples: Robes of the Battleguard, Ring of Swarming Thought
More info on spell resistance can be read here: Spell Penetration Guide
A simple rule of thumb is that each 10 spell penetration adds 2.5% DPS increase on average (assuming the mob has any resistance in the first place since it isn't possible to reduce enemy resistance to below 0).
Here's a spreadsheet:
Note: some spells like polymorph, counterspell and others will either do their full effect or none at all. For those spells, their chance to resist is the "average dps lost" percentage.
Pre-Raid Gear
Since the two first 40-man raids will be done with Frost talents, we'll have the Pre-raid gear items fit that pattern.
Without donations, rep-farming or drops from the summonable bosses which can only be done as part of the T0.5 quest-chains, this is what your pre-raid BiS list would look like:
Get any gears from vendors (T1,T2,T2.5,T3)
Enchants
Helm: Arcanum of Focus gotten from doing the Libram of Focus quest. If you got Spellweaver's Turban or something better, then definately go for the Zul'Gurub Enchant: Presence of Sight
Shoulder: Zandalar Signet of Mojo - requires Exalted Reputation with Zul'Gurub
Cloak: Subtlety*
Chest: Greater Stats - semi-rare enchant. Alternatively you can use Major Health to compensate for the low amount of hp from bloodvine gear
Wrist: Mana Regeneration or Superior Stamina
Gloves: Frost Power* or Fire Power*
Legs: Arcanum of Focus gotten from doing the Libram of Focus quest. If you got the Bloodvine Leggings or better then definately go for the Zul'Gurub Enchant: Presence of Sight
Boots: Minor Speed is my preferred choice, others may go with Greater Stamina or Spirit
Weapon: Spell Power*
* = Rare-enchant. Drops from bosses in Molten Core or Ahn'Qiraj.
Addons
Pretty much any raiding guild will require you to download and install these 3 addons:
KLHThreatMeter (KTM) - Keeps track on your aggro
Decursive - Makes removal of Curses from the raid much faster. Priority-groups can be set
BigWigs - Timers and Warnings for pretty much all encounters.
And other useful addons you may want to get familiar with:
CT_raidAssist - Basic raiding Addon which keeps track of groups, buffs and other stuff helps you moniter the raid.
C'thun Warner - Gives a visual button on your screen which can help you position yourself better during C'thun encounter in AQ40.
Improved Error Frame - Prevents addons from doing pop-up error-messages which blocks your view during combat. Must-have if you're using C'thun Warner.
ItemRack- An addon which can equip a set of items with just 1 click. Very easy to configurate.
Recap - Keeps track on Raid DPS, with alot of functions for configurations. Standard Damage-meter addon.
Theorycraft - Will analyze your equipment and give you information about your spelldamage and helps you compare items.
Bonus Scanner - needed to use Caster Stats
Caster Stats - Adds a section for spelldamage effects to your Character Screen box.
Buffalo - Makes all buffs visible when fully buffed (standard UI only allows you to see a certin amount of buffs), and lets you re-position them and configure the layout.
Player versus Player
Mage is a fun class in PvP because the talents you've got affect your playstyle and their differences are quite big.
If you came to this part of the guide to get tips on good builds for battlegrounds, then these two are my favourites:
Improved Counterspell + Ice Barrier
17/0/34 db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#obxVbobZZVVGhsbtho
+ Ice Barrier absorbs both physical and magic damage, making warlocks actually killable without a 3 minutes cd.
+ Ice Block and Cold Snap adds an arsenal of escape-ways, which really help out if you're running with 2.5k health. Or if you are overgeared and like being a ranged tank.
+ Shatter, which opens up for "Frost Nova -> Frostbolt -> Cone of Cold" which can be a great burst even with average gear.
+ Improved Blizzard is a talent that many frostmages avoid, personally i never PvP as frost without it because it adds the strongest slow of any class. Standing on the roof and using Blizzard down onto the balcony or flagroom can make some serious damage if the opponents are on heavy defense. Healers will be overwhelmed by the damage and have to choose which targets to heal, and when doing so usually never have time to move out of the blizzard slow which is also non-dispelable.
+ Unless you spec Arcane Power, this is probably the best spec to defeat Shadowpriests, Warlocks and Hunters, which are the 3 main counters to Mages.
- Paladins with Blessing of Freedom can make it very hard to finish off a flagcarrier by yourself, as you have to set up a burst which requires Frost Nova. Shamans can purge (remove) your Ice Barrier away and frostbolt won't be useful because of earth shocks (interrupt) short cooldown.
- Your primary damage spell has a 2.5 seconds cast-time, and you will be very vulnerable to spellpushbacks while ice barrier is not up.
Presence of Mind + Pyroblast + Blastwave
21/30/0 db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#obhVrofoZxTGzr0ux
+ PoM + Pyro is great Burst and don't take any build-up.
+ Blastwave is like a mixture of Cone of Cold, Fire Blast and Frost Nova. Is more forgiving than Cone of Cold because you may miss with Cone of Cold even if the target seems to be standing right in front of you, which does not happen with Blastwave. It's also an additional instant-cast to your burst rotation which makes a big difference.
+ Scorch does not fly through the air to reach the target, you may be able to do some damage before the enemy spots your location.
+ Scorch only has a 1.5 sec cast-time. You also have talents to reduce spell-pushbacks, which makes a huge difference.
- Lack of Survivability. Most of the times if you kill that Shadowpriest or Warlock with your cooldowns, you still die to the DoTs afterwards. Hunters eat you alive unless you have very good gear.
Thanks to Royalcoil for aweosome guide.
Regards,
Wonderwall.
Table of Contents
Talents
Consumables
Stat priorities
Pre-raid Gear
Enchants
Addons
PvP
Talents
For 5-man instances and 20-man raids, my preferred spec is the max dps Fire build:
Fire Combustion: 17-31-3
There are certain mobs that are resistant to Fire in the blackrock mountain instances, but just use frost spells against those mobs. Enjoy playing Fire while it lasts, because the moment you start to venture into Molten Core, you won't be playing Fire anymore for a very very long time.
For Molten Core and Blackwing Lair the only sensible option is frost. There are 2 frost-options. The Winter's Chill-stacking spec, and the Arcane Power-frost spec.
Winter's Chill: 18-0-33
Arcane Power-frost: 31-0-20
Winter's Chill adds 10% crit chance to all Frost spells from all mages in the raid. It is a must that there is atleast 1 mage in your guild who joins the raids with these talents. It is a common procedure that the newcomers in the guild gets asked to spec Winter's Chill while the better geared mages use the Arcane Power variant, however having some of the most experienced mages use Improved Blizzard is probably the best way to progress through the Suppresion Room in Blackwing Lair, and should not be left in the hands of the newcomers neccesarily.
Having all mages spec into Winters-chill Spec (or some variant) can also be useful when your guild is trying new content where there is raid-damage involved. Having Ice Barrier and Ice Block will take some stress of the healers. The longer the raid survives, even if you're not getting the kill, the more up-time you have on the encounter to learn and adapt to the mechanics.
For Ahn'Qiraj Temple and Naxxramas you will be using Fire Combustion in most of the raids. For some fights, frost talents really help out, but if your guild has started naxxramas, you hopefully don't have much use for tips on what to spec anymore, so let's just skip that.
Consumables
Depending on which raids you are doing, some of these consumables may be considered over-extending a little bit. However here's a somewhat full list of the consumables that i bring to AQ40 and Naxxramas raids:
Standard consumables:
Flask of Supreme Power
Brilliant Wizard Oil
Greater Arcane Elixir
Elixir of Greater Firepower
Mageblood Potion
Nightfin Soup
Major Mana Potion
Limited Invulnerability Potion - drop all aggro temporarily, can be a repairbill/raid saver.
Extra for specific encounters:
Flask of the Titans - instead of supreme power
Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops - instead of nightfin soup
Demonic Rune - for long fights these are better than mana gems
Spirit of Zanza - requires zul'gurub honored reputation
Greater Fire Protection Potion - ragnaros, grand widow faerlina
Greater Nature Protection Potion - several aq40 bosses and few in naxx
Greater Shadow Protection Potion - c'thun in aq40
Light Feather - anub'rekhan
Elixir of Fortitude
Rumsey Rum Black Label
Stat-priorities
Chance to Hit:
As a caster you will -always- have 1% chance to miss with your spells.
Vs target of your own level: 4% chance to miss. 3% chance to Hit is needed for cap. (pvp)
Vs target of your own level +1: 5% chance to miss. 4% chance to Hit is needed for cap.
Vs target of your own level +2: 6% chance to miss. 5% chance to Hit is needed for cap.
Vs target of your own level +3: 17% chance to miss. 16% chance to Hit is needed for cap.
Raid Bosses are considered level 63 when calculating hit. Therefore you need 16% Hit in order to be capped on raidbosses. You will gain 6% chance to Hit from talents, so the last 10% must come from gear.
Being Hit-capped can be a hard nut to crack with blue gear. You shouldn't sacrifice too much Spelldamage in order to reach the Cap. Before you are in AQ40, you can easily get away with around 5-6% Hit from items.
Remember that the Hit-cap is only needed for bossfights. As long as you have the talents, you will basically be safe on every trash pull you do. Your polymorphs or Counterspells will not be resisted (or well only 1% of the time) so consider +Hit as a purely dps-stat which has no importance in terms of cc resists etc.
Spelldamage:
Your primary stat for your damage. As a caster you do not benefit from stats the same way as melee dps do. 20 agility for a warrior is 1% crit. However we need 59.5 intellect to gain the same 1% chance to crit with our spells.
Bottomline is that intellect isn't worthless, but it should be sacrificed in order to increase spelldamage in almost all cases.
Any item without +spelldamage is basically a throw-away item. Don't bother collecting the Magister-set unless you want to turn it into the Sorcerer-set, but even then it's alot of work and time to do that quest-chain. You would probably have better items in the end if you spent the same time doing 5-man instances.
Chance to Crit:
Chance to Crit is a great stat. For Frost it is just as valuable as Hit, and should be considered of same value in terms of dps.
For Fire, Chance to Crit is slightly more effective than Hit. The more spelldamage you have, the more you will benefit from 1% additional chance to crit. As fire you will do 210% spelldamage on a Critical Hit, and have a chance to replenish the Ignite timer should you also get a Critical hit on consecutive spells, resulting in a massive damage increase when you have multiple crits in a row.
It is alot of work to figure out the theorycraft behind the +crit vs +hit. And if you're really interested in how to figure that out, then i advice you to download the addon: Theorycraft. But as a horribly-simplified rule of thumb for pre-raid geared mages i'd say:
As frost:
1% Hit = 10 spelldamage
1% Crit = 10 spelldamage
As fire:
1% Hit = 10 spelldamage
1% Crit = 13 spelldamage
So what you want to do when looking at an item is to convert the Crit and Hit into spelldamage and then compare it to another item. Whichever item has the highest amount of total spelldamage, use that one.
Stamina, Intellect, Spirit and Mana/5sec:
Stamina is allright, but don't overdo it. In most raiding situations, if you're taking damage it means you're standing at a wrong spot. Whatever stamina that you end up with after prioritizing solely on +spelldamage items, is what you're going to end up with. Don't worry about it. Don't pull aggro and don't stand at a bad spot, and you'll be fine.
Intellect grants 1% chance to crit for every 59.5 intellect, and increases your mana pool with 15 mana per intellect. Seen from a dps-point of view, this is not a very useful stat. Get whatever intellect you can from your best possible +spelldamage items and that will be fine. Compensate with Major Mana Potions if you're going out of mana.
Spirit and Mana/5seconds. Well, these stats are absolute garbage in my oppinion.
I'd say that 1 mana/5 seconds is equal to 1 spelldamage. Others may disagree, but fact is that there are just not many fights out there which lasts so long that you end up going out of mana.
Spell Penetration (reduce enemy resistance):
Mobs may have resistances to one or more types of spells. In Molten Core there are a lot of mobs who have high fire resistance or even immunity. You will be frost in Molten Core so this don't matter much.
Raid-bosses will have resistances to every school, and that means a part of your damage will be lost if you do not have stats which can reduce enemy resistance. Examples: Robes of the Battleguard, Ring of Swarming Thought
More info on spell resistance can be read here: Spell Penetration Guide
A simple rule of thumb is that each 10 spell penetration adds 2.5% DPS increase on average (assuming the mob has any resistance in the first place since it isn't possible to reduce enemy resistance to below 0).
Here's a spreadsheet:
Note: some spells like polymorph, counterspell and others will either do their full effect or none at all. For those spells, their chance to resist is the "average dps lost" percentage.
Pre-Raid Gear
Since the two first 40-man raids will be done with Frost talents, we'll have the Pre-raid gear items fit that pattern.
Without donations, rep-farming or drops from the summonable bosses which can only be done as part of the T0.5 quest-chains, this is what your pre-raid BiS list would look like:
Get any gears from vendors (T1,T2,T2.5,T3)
Enchants
Helm: Arcanum of Focus gotten from doing the Libram of Focus quest. If you got Spellweaver's Turban or something better, then definately go for the Zul'Gurub Enchant: Presence of Sight
Shoulder: Zandalar Signet of Mojo - requires Exalted Reputation with Zul'Gurub
Cloak: Subtlety*
Chest: Greater Stats - semi-rare enchant. Alternatively you can use Major Health to compensate for the low amount of hp from bloodvine gear
Wrist: Mana Regeneration or Superior Stamina
Gloves: Frost Power* or Fire Power*
Legs: Arcanum of Focus gotten from doing the Libram of Focus quest. If you got the Bloodvine Leggings or better then definately go for the Zul'Gurub Enchant: Presence of Sight
Boots: Minor Speed is my preferred choice, others may go with Greater Stamina or Spirit
Weapon: Spell Power*
* = Rare-enchant. Drops from bosses in Molten Core or Ahn'Qiraj.
Addons
Pretty much any raiding guild will require you to download and install these 3 addons:
KLHThreatMeter (KTM) - Keeps track on your aggro
Decursive - Makes removal of Curses from the raid much faster. Priority-groups can be set
BigWigs - Timers and Warnings for pretty much all encounters.
And other useful addons you may want to get familiar with:
CT_raidAssist - Basic raiding Addon which keeps track of groups, buffs and other stuff helps you moniter the raid.
C'thun Warner - Gives a visual button on your screen which can help you position yourself better during C'thun encounter in AQ40.
Improved Error Frame - Prevents addons from doing pop-up error-messages which blocks your view during combat. Must-have if you're using C'thun Warner.
ItemRack- An addon which can equip a set of items with just 1 click. Very easy to configurate.
Recap - Keeps track on Raid DPS, with alot of functions for configurations. Standard Damage-meter addon.
Theorycraft - Will analyze your equipment and give you information about your spelldamage and helps you compare items.
Bonus Scanner - needed to use Caster Stats
Caster Stats - Adds a section for spelldamage effects to your Character Screen box.
Buffalo - Makes all buffs visible when fully buffed (standard UI only allows you to see a certin amount of buffs), and lets you re-position them and configure the layout.
Player versus Player
Mage is a fun class in PvP because the talents you've got affect your playstyle and their differences are quite big.
If you came to this part of the guide to get tips on good builds for battlegrounds, then these two are my favourites:
Improved Counterspell + Ice Barrier
17/0/34 db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#obxVbobZZVVGhsbtho
+ Ice Barrier absorbs both physical and magic damage, making warlocks actually killable without a 3 minutes cd.
+ Ice Block and Cold Snap adds an arsenal of escape-ways, which really help out if you're running with 2.5k health. Or if you are overgeared and like being a ranged tank.
+ Shatter, which opens up for "Frost Nova -> Frostbolt -> Cone of Cold" which can be a great burst even with average gear.
+ Improved Blizzard is a talent that many frostmages avoid, personally i never PvP as frost without it because it adds the strongest slow of any class. Standing on the roof and using Blizzard down onto the balcony or flagroom can make some serious damage if the opponents are on heavy defense. Healers will be overwhelmed by the damage and have to choose which targets to heal, and when doing so usually never have time to move out of the blizzard slow which is also non-dispelable.
+ Unless you spec Arcane Power, this is probably the best spec to defeat Shadowpriests, Warlocks and Hunters, which are the 3 main counters to Mages.
- Paladins with Blessing of Freedom can make it very hard to finish off a flagcarrier by yourself, as you have to set up a burst which requires Frost Nova. Shamans can purge (remove) your Ice Barrier away and frostbolt won't be useful because of earth shocks (interrupt) short cooldown.
- Your primary damage spell has a 2.5 seconds cast-time, and you will be very vulnerable to spellpushbacks while ice barrier is not up.
Presence of Mind + Pyroblast + Blastwave
21/30/0 db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#obhVrofoZxTGzr0ux
+ PoM + Pyro is great Burst and don't take any build-up.
+ Blastwave is like a mixture of Cone of Cold, Fire Blast and Frost Nova. Is more forgiving than Cone of Cold because you may miss with Cone of Cold even if the target seems to be standing right in front of you, which does not happen with Blastwave. It's also an additional instant-cast to your burst rotation which makes a big difference.
+ Scorch does not fly through the air to reach the target, you may be able to do some damage before the enemy spots your location.
+ Scorch only has a 1.5 sec cast-time. You also have talents to reduce spell-pushbacks, which makes a huge difference.
- Lack of Survivability. Most of the times if you kill that Shadowpriest or Warlock with your cooldowns, you still die to the DoTs afterwards. Hunters eat you alive unless you have very good gear.
Thanks to Royalcoil for aweosome guide.
Regards,
Wonderwall.
