Well, I finally gave up the GM spot – about time I did, to be honest. It was getting way too stressful for me. Now that the most I’m doing is raid leading, it’s a lot easier on my stress level. I’m not necessarily agreeing with what the new leadership is doing, but it’s nice not to have to worry about the decision-making and just be a regular member again. If things go way past where I can really stay with the policies of CD, then that’s another story – but at the moment, things are fine.
Anyway, on to what this post’s actually about – playing a mage in 4.0. I’ve played around with a couple talent specs – both Fire and Arcane – and I’m pretty happy with the changes that were made. Feels like Mage Armor is the best thing for Arcane right now with the new mastery, which is pretty cool – each spec having its own armor that’s suited to the playstyle and so forth. Neat stuff. Onwards to Fire, though.
After speccing on Tuesday night, I spent some time benchmarking with the test dummies in Orgrimmar, just like everyone else. Pulled around 10k DPS without any uses of my Impact proc, so I was really looking at just a basic Patchwerk-style single target fight. All in all, I’m fairly impressed with the new tools they’ve given us, including the cool Hot Streak proc chance on non-criticals. That said, the coolest talent in Fire tree is probably Cauterize – I spent last night thinking about the bosses with “nuke” mechanics that we can ignore if we spec properly now. Festergut and Algalon, of course, are the first that I can think of. Definitely looking at offspeccing Fire as well as my main spec just so I can have the option to pick that talent up.
Rotation feels pretty much the same as it did in 4.0, with the welcome change that I don’t really need to worry about Scorching now – Pyroblast procs pretty much cover it for me. The only real difference is going to be watching for Impact and Fire Blasting that – whether that’ll come in handy on single target fights, I have yet to see. Combustion changes are interesting – I’m looking for an addon that tracks the strength of my Ignite DoT right now, as it should help a lot – any suggestions?
edit: found one! Check out CombustionHelper, it works great. (of course, this addon had the added side effect of making me worry about Frostfire Bolt. Since I’m pulling 14k DPS on some fights without it, I’m not too concerned.)
Mastery stacking is questionable right now from what I’ve seen. There’s a nice bonus straight from training; if anything, I’m dropping only haste and not crit to pick up a bit of mastery. We’ll see how it turns out. I think it won’t make too much difference until we hit Cata and there’s actually gear with mastery on it.
Pity fire mages are getting a slight nerf soon. Hopefully it doesn’t affect too much.
In other news, the tankadin changes are nice (after 12 seconds – once we get to start pressing our shield of the righteous button, you know, the one that can hit for 40,000) and the new druid tree form that got revealed is absolutely fantastic – although I may have to glyph the old one and switch it in/out depending. I really liked the old treant model too. 
Well, the last I read was all mages are getting nerfed, just fire more than others.
The addon situation is the open question: is it the new ingame Power Auras, Power Auras itself, mage nuggets or will there i need to be a very specific, just for fire mage addon to help with the whack-a-mole rotation. Or an arcane addon that says if your mana is above or below the mana gem plus two ticks [current] steady state goal.
I assume if you only have one pair of T10 and are trying out all specs, then you will have to reforge with each spec? My guess is that fire would be less likely to forge away crit?
Right now, yeah, I am dual-specced Fire and Arcane, and Arcane really feels the lack when you’ve reforged for Fire. Best guess at this point: pick a spec and stay with it. If anything, reforge to Mastery; at least that way you have something for the other spec.
With Arcane, mana actually hasn’t been an issue so far using Mage Armor. Thinking that’ll probably stay that way for a while.
That said, addons: HS and MB procs are really good ingame right now. My issue right now is basically a tracker for Combustion strength. Since it aggregates all your DoT effects on the target, we obviously need LB and Pyro up – but we also need a pretty strong Ignite tick. What we need is an addon that looks at DoT strength and gives us some numbers for Combustion.
Just curious, but what is your talent build for fire, and your rotation?
At the moment, I’m specced 2/31/3, picking up 2/3 Arcane Concentration and 3/3 Piercing Ice. Fire tree’s completely filled out save for Blazing Speed, Cauterize, Imp Scorch, Molten Shields, and Firestarter – none of those are really useful (except Cauterize, situationally) for WOTLK raiding. I also only have one point in Improved Flamestrike.
That build, however, is going to be changing; I plan to drop points from Imp Flamestrike and Imp Fire Blast to pick up Cauterize, and change my points in the Arcane tree from Arcane Concentration to Netherwind Presence.
Rotation hasn’t changed much. Keep LB up, Pyro for Hot Streaks, Fireball filler. Don’t need to scorch anymore as Pyroblast will give you the crit debuff. Still working out the relative DPS values on Impact, but for now I’m not using it in my rotation unless there are multiple targets. Use Combustion when you’ve got LB up, Pyro up, and have a nice Ignite rolling.
OH RIGHT, FROSTFIRE BOLT. You may want to keep the FFB dot (glyphed FFB) on the target too. Brb, reading some theorycraft.
Yeah, never mind about that Frostfire Bolt stuff. Need way more mastery than is possible to take advantage of that.
wait, really? i thought FFB was totally neck-and-neck with fireball these days…
You might be able to make it work. From what I was reading a couple days ago, the DoT tick isn’t really going to be powerful enough (or tick enough!) to make up in Combustion damage what you lose in direct damage from Fireball. This may have changed as mage theorycraft seems to be moving faster than I can keep up with it. For the most cutting edge info, be sure to stop by your local Elitist Jerks.
thank you for the tip about CombustionHelper! i can’t wait to try it out…
Thanks, not sure why but my arcane spec is still kicking my fire specs butt. Guess I need to work on my rotations a little more. It has been a while since I used fire. Do you have suggestions for gemming?
10int/10hit
10int/10crit
20int
If you’re a JC, use 34int Dragon’s Eyes.
I was actually playing around with Arcane last night. Even in my Fire reforge (no mastery) I could get 20k as Arcane in heroics. I really want to test out the spec more, but I’m kinda lazy.
In all honesty though, Arcane may very well be higher DPS on some encounters. I just love Fire so much more!
Hey there- i have been browsing all forums searching for an addon that monitors the live damage of ignite ticks; i.e. one that measures total ignite dmg from that point of time to the next couple of ticks so that i can use combustion when the dmg is high – addons like combustion helper do not do that – i have also tried zaldinars ignite addons but as of 4.0.3 they dont seem to work either (for me at least)- have any of u managed to find an addon specificly for ignite?
thanks in advance
This is a bit late, but sorry, there are no addons that I know of that do that.