Mage Challenge mode talent choices?

[Invrlose]

I'm using Frost Bomb, Incanters, and Crystal.

For trash, I just use orb on cooldown. If crystal is up I use it with orb.
For single target, it is a DPS increase to save orb for your crystal.
Make sure you're using blizzard on trash packs larger than 5 mobs to get your frost bomb back faster.

Note: Technically, for boss DPS images is the best. But throughout the whole dungeon, incanters simply beats the living fuck out of images.

[Deleted]

Have any mages found it worth taking a Fire spec for the improved AoE, and switching to Frost for boss encounters? As it stands I've been running two frost specs, one with FB/IF/PC (thinking of switching to TV since it outperforms PC for AoE) for trash, and one with IN/MI/PC for bosses, but I'm wondering if it might be better to change my "trash" spec over to fire.

Frost seems to outperform Fire with 6+ mobs now when using FB and TV. Don't ask why though, since I have no clue...

[Deleted]

Any of you guys who did gold, uses 2 frost specs? 1 with fb/if/pc trash and 1 with fb/mi/tv for bosses? Personally i Dislike Pc with frost bomb, but that Might be me.

[Rush042]

Any of you guys who did gold, uses 2 frost specs? 1 with fb/if/pc trash and 1 with fb/mi/tv for bosses? Personally i Dislike Pc with frost bomb, but that Might be me.

It's been confirmed that IN outperforms FB on single target, and that PC outperforms TV on single target. FB/TV are much better AoE talents though.

Edit: I'm running two Frost specs right now, one with FB/IF/TV for trash, and one with IN/MI/PC for bosses. I am considering changing my trash spec to FB/IF/PC, because I haven't managed to find good timings to pop TV without it interfering with my boss cooldown burst, but I think if you managed to time everything out across a whole instance, TV would be ideal. (Trash is just as, if not MORE important than bosses anyway, so maybe using Icy Veins with TV for trash when available, and not having it up for bosses would still be superior)

[Erolian]

Any of you guys who did gold, uses 2 frost specs? 1 with fb/if/pc trash and 1 with fb/mi/tv for bosses? Personally i Dislike Pc with frost bomb, but that Might be me.

I did except change out FB for IN on bosses. I also used TV instead of PC on bosses because 1. it let me pop PC constantly for AoE then spec out of it for TV at bosses when PC would've been on cd 2. I didn't feel like using the infinite FoF during PC "trick" and 3. bc I got tired of tanks running away from PC on bosses.

No idea if its actually optimal or not and you definitely don't want to always swap out of the FB/PC combo on some bosses but I felt like I could burst more often on trash bc I didn't have to worry about having PC up for the boss.

[Deleted]

I have a very hard time believing that spending 10 seconds on spec change is a DPS/time gain (and then there's 10 seconds more on changing back). Respeccing just to pad with IN seems useless to me, MI/RoP I could understand, maybe. I doubt you'll see a 20% or so DPS gain by respeccing, I assume it's in the area of 10% or less and in that case not worth doing.

Concerning frost bomb, it's true you can easily shatter one/two INs. But then you're doing fuck all for the next 25 seconds. Orb/Blizzard/FB is so much more useful because it isn't tied to a single 25 second cooldown.

[Deleted]

Any of you guys who did gold, uses 2 frost specs? 1 with fb/if/pc trash and 1 with fb/mi/tv for bosses? Personally i Dislike Pc with frost bomb, but that Might be me.

I've done 2 gold's so far and using two frost specs which i've listed below. Some instances are trickier to pull off the swap but I map it out based on my bronze experience where its worth while or not. So far so good, albeit it can be a bit of a nuisance (Iron Docks/Grimrail as gold btw)

1 - FB/IF/PC
2 - IN/MI/PC

[Deleted]

I'm 7/8 Gold atm and will probably get last tomorrow, running with holy pal/ret/dk tank/ww monk/mage and I've streamed them all. Fairly shitty comp with 2 melees and without a hunter since they're gods in CMs but still manageable cuz blood DKs r OP.

Been running with FB/IF/PC on all of them and I don't see anywhere where you'd want to go with IN over FB, ever. IN is limited by the cooldown whereas FB is only limited by FoF procs which has amazing synergy with FO and its fairly easy to have FO up for every 2nd pack or sometimes every pack thanks to improved blizzard. FB also has so much better sustained aoe dps than IN has which is something you want for running gold CMs.

If your group need the aoe interrupt IN provides your group is doing something wrong, you'll see way better results running FB over it IMO.

[Dragore]

...

Are you putting FB on PC or boss?

[Deleted]

Are you putting FB on PC or boss?

I've uploaded some of the runs on my youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/phobedddd, where you can see mostly how I play.

I put FB on the crystal because it happens a lot that the bosses might move slightly and your ice lance doesnt cleave, so I just prefer the safe way of doing it. Will possibly change the way of doing it once raiding begins aslong as I know boss isnt going to move whatsoever.