Level 80 Mage Build Testing

[Geckomayhem]

I tested various Arcane, Fire and Frost raid specs for DPS and mana efficiency. For each build I did three tests total, and compared time before mana ran out, overall DPS and average damage. I did not evocate or use mana gems or pots.

For now, Fire is rather mana inefficient, although Arcane does run out of mana faster. Frost is quite mana efficient and consistently did more dps than any other build.

I tried a Scorch build but it didn't produce as much overall DPS as a deep Fire build. It would be more suited to PvP.

I tried Living Bomb. It uses too much mana to be of any use in raiding, but overall, fire produced better average DPS if LB was kept up on the target. I think I overwrote it a couple of times before the explosion, which didn't help with seeing more accurate overall damage.

The best Fire rotation seems to be stacking Fire Vulnerability with Scorch and then Fireballing until you proc Hot Streak and throw an instant Pyroblast out. IMO, Fire is not worth speccing into for raiding at this point. Unless they make some changes to key talents instead of giving the option of retarded things like instant Flamestrikes, Fire will be fail.

Fingers of Frost is very nice. Dropping a Deep Freeze straight after the next Frostbolt increases DPS a lot, and being able to summon a Water Elemental twice before running out of mana is incredible in terms of DPS and mana regen. I kept up over 1800 DPS on the target dummy. Also, the lowered cooldowns on everything will make running heroics incredible.

Finally, I tried a 0/43/28 Elemental build to see how Frostfire Bolt held up against pure builds' main spells.

Surprisingly, I was putting out almost 2K DPS when I put Fire Blasts into the rotation. I tried it without wasting mana on them and the fight lasted longer, but my DPS dropped to about the same as frost. With Cold Snap up -- so using 2x Icy Veins in the fight (but only one Combustion) -- my DPS increased a little. I was pushing 1900-2,000 near the end of the fight.

Check it.

In conclusion:
It actually looks like Elemental builds are very viable in terms of mana efficiency and DPS, with the introduction of Frostfire Bolt -- althought the spell itself could do with a little buffing. Frost is still the strongest PVP and PvE spec, but with enough crit, an Elemental build could prove to be quite incredible. I had already decided not to go Fire in WotLK. Now, firsthand testing has completely dissuaded me from it. I think I may be Frost for a while and then switch to Elemental when I have built up decent crit gear and see how it holds up in Heroics and Raids.

As a final note, I'm not sure where Fireball and Frostbolt would fit in, but I did reduce their cast times in my Elemental build. If anyone has further insight on this, I would like to hear what other people have to say from experience. My testing was very limited and was only done against target dummies.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

[Raidenwrath]

Well i don't own a lvl 80 Mage, but isn't it better to go for 0/50/18 (3 Points left, LB or CS) when speccing Elemental? That + massiv amount of crit should be way better, because why reaching for Winters Chill and sacrificing Burnout when you got Scorch?

[Geckomayhem]

Well i don't own a lvl 80 Mage, but isn't it better to go for 0/50/18 (3 Points left, LB or CS) when speccing Elemental? That + massiv amount of crit should be way better, because why reaching for Winters Chill and sacrificing Burnout when you got Scorch?

That's a fire build, not an elemental build. It is better to stack Winter's Chill than Scorch because it is much more easily stacked and does not need to be kept up with a particular spell in your rotation. You don't get more crit in a fire build. Frost has a lot more crit bonus overall. With a true elemental build, where there is balance between the two schools, casting Frostfire Bolt becomes your main spell.

After some testing with this, I found that when you do crit enough, it increases your DPS quite a bit because of Hot Streak. I'm not entirely sure how FFB works, but it seems to gain bonus from both fire and frost. I was able to proc Hot Streak on the odd occasion from just one crit. I still think the spell could do with a buff, though.

I can't completely explain it, but the build that I shared, or something similar that gets Fire bonuses (without bonus to Fireball) and Frost bonuses from key talents, works really well if you are able to crit enough to keep your DPS up with those Hot Streaks.

When it comes down to it, I prefer a deep frost build over anything.

I have been unable to test Focus Magic. It might pay to read theorycrafting on it over at Elitist Jerks if anyone wants to know the benefits of that spell for each school. 20/0/51 should prove to be an excellent build under most PvE circumstances, where Frostbolt is your primary spell, Deep Freeze (or the occasional Ice Lance) your secondary and Frostfire Bolt as a replacement spell for Frost immune fights. In that case, any fire mages that happen to be around would be able to stack Scorch for the crit increase.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

Edit: I forgot to address your mention of Burnout. This is not a PvE talent; it is obviously for PvP. I was addressing PvE speccing for a mage. The deepest you need to go in Fire to benefit from an Elemental spec is Hot Streak.

[Ensis]

Created an account just to reply to Gaiwyn...

First, you claim Burnout is "obviously" a PvP only talent... care to elaborate why?? Larger crits are equally desired in PvE content.

Second, you have an unbelievable amount of wasted talent points in that 0/43/28 build you listed.

1) If you will be casting FFB, why do you talent Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt? You will never cast either. Take all 10 points from them and put 3 into Incineration (6% more scorch and fireblast crits... will even help with Hot Streak procs), and for the frost tree, put 2 into Frost Warding (admittedly kinda useless, but better than taking cast time off a spell you may cast 1 time a year). This just freed up 5 talent points and improved your spec.

2) You take Shatter, but do not have Frostbite, Fingers of Frost, or Water Elemental. Essentially, the only time you will utilize Shatter is when you use Frost Nova... but you claim to be focusing on PvE... I don't recall the last time I Frost Nova'd a boss, and even though I can Frost Nova a trash mob: 1) it's just trash, and 2) they don't stay frozen long enough for anything but a single ice lance. Drop Shatter... 3 more points freed up.

3) At this point, you have 8 freed up points, and can easily reach Burnout (which, despite what you say, will be a core talent in all PvE fire builds, and almost all PvE elementalist builds). FFB thrives off of crits, as you noticed. Adding Burnout will make them even larger. To grab Burnout, due to tiers and point restrictions, you'll have to drop Winter's Chill. Place them into Improved Scorch instead for no change (scorch is slightly more annoying to use, but 1 scorch every 30 seconds isn't bad, and with increased crit rate and fast cast rate will increase Hot Streak procs).

4) Due to talent points needed to reach tiers, you can no longer have Cold Snap. This point would be perfect in Living Bomb, which all theorycrafting thus far has shown is a huge single-target DPS increase (even bosses). With the improved mana efficiency of FFB, you should be able to keep up Living Bomb the entire fight. If, however, you truly want Cold Snap over Living Bomb, you could probably go with some sort of 50/21 build, but from all the changes above, you should have a 51/18+2 build that does significantly more dps than the one you listed. I placed points into Dragon's Breath, Blastwave, and 1 into Fiery Payback... those were just a matter of taste, as I had a couple extra points.

What you end up with is:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

You lose:
Improved Fireball (useless)
Improved Frostbolt (useless)
Shatter (useless in non-solo pve, unless you grab Fingers of Frost, which means you have to give up Hot Streak)
Winter's Chill (made up for with Improved Scorch)
Cold Snap (only real loss)

You gain:
Burnout (will increase FFB crits by even more, which will come frequently)
Living Bomb (big increase to single-target dps, and nice AOE ability)
Improved Scorch (makes up for Winter's Chill)
Incineration (6% more crit to Scorch and Fireblast, and increases chance of Hot Streak)
Blastwave and Dragon's Breath (two of the largest damage AOEs in the mage's arsenal, and handy spells when you or your healer are in trouble)
Frost Warding (meh, the mana regen might come in handy)
1 point to put elsewhere

Burnout and Living Bomb will be two very large increases in your raid dps.

If, for some reason, you are adamant about Cold Snap and Shatter, you could do something like:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000
which would do more dps than your build, and less than the one I posted above. It's a matter of playstyle.

[Raidenwrath]

Nice reply, but one thing i'd like to add:
if you want to go for Cold Snap just leave Flame Throwing instead of Blast Wave. As far as I know FFB doesn't benefit from that talent.

[Puffy]

One of the reasons we see alot of the: frost does significant dps now compared to fire and arcane is cause it can keep on casting cause its more mana efficient.

The dps of fire is greater tho and in a raid environment where mana regen is gonna be better (totems, mana regen of Spriest, pally ...) fire will have less mana trouble when solo anyway.

Not saying fire is so nice to mana but alot of the tests saying frost does good dps is cause fire just goes oom. Give fire mana and it's better for dps.

[kontrol]

Hey there guys, I'm finding this topic very interesting and I would like to contribute a bit here. Unfortunatly I don't have access to the PTR so I can't test it for myself but I was wondering if any of you could test this build:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

It is based on the current mage PvE build Deep fire with Icy veins. The purpose is also the same, keep scorch stack up and fireball\fireblast\living bomb all the way through.

Making this build I disregarded all non DPS\ non PvE intended talents, focusing solely on increasing the dps. I also though about not taking LB ( Living Bomb ) but since the posters above state that mathcraft supports it I included it.




Also, if you are experiencing mana problems try this small variation:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

In this build I simply change 3 points in World in Flames for Frost Channeling since the only spells profiting from the former talent are the ocasional Pyroblast and the rotating LB.

Hope I could be of some use, thx guys!

Kontrol

[Geckomayhem]

Created an account just to reply to Gaiwyn...

First, you claim Burnout is "obviously" a PvP only talent... care to elaborate why?? Larger crits are equally desired in PvE content.

Second, you have an unbelievable amount of wasted talent points in that 0/43/28 build you listed.

Sorry, I mistook Burnout for Fiery Payback. I put Burnout into a Deep Fire Build, obviously.

1) If you will be casting FFB, why do you talent Improved Fireball and Improved Frostbolt? You will never cast either. Take all 10 points from them and put 3 into Incineration (6% more scorch and fireblast crits... will even help with Hot Streak procs), and for the frost tree, put 2 into Frost Warding (admittedly kinda useless, but better than taking cast time off a spell you may cast 1 time a year). This just freed up 5 talent points and improved your spec.

Because you need to fill in the first tier somehow. I did ask if anyone knew what benefit they would have. I guess those points could go into the other talents in the first tier, but you do need to look down and see where the rest of the points will go to get to where you want.

2) You take Shatter, but do not have Frostbite, Fingers of Frost, or Water Elemental. Essentially, the only time you will utilize Shatter is when you use Frost Nova... but you claim to be focusing on PvE... I don't recall the last time I Frost Nova'd a boss, and even though I can Frost Nova a trash mob: 1) it's just trash, and 2) they don't stay frozen long enough for anything but a single ice lance. Drop Shatter... 3 more points freed up.

True, but I couldn't see any better place to put the three points, and it would be good for soloing.

3) At this point, you have 8 freed up points, and can easily reach Burnout (which, despite what you say, will be a core talent in all PvE fire builds, and almost all PvE elementalist builds). FFB thrives off of crits, as you noticed. Adding Burnout will make them even larger. To grab Burnout, due to tiers and point restrictions, you'll have to drop Winter's Chill. Place them into Improved Scorch instead for no change (scorch is slightly more annoying to use, but 1 scorch every 30 seconds isn't bad, and with increased crit rate and fast cast rate will increase Hot Streak procs).

If you go this deep in Fire, it is a Fire build. I tested a lot of Fire builds and found that even taking 50+ points in fire you end up not doing as much DPS. But of course, in a raid environment this is different. If you take Imp Scorch over Winter's Chill, you have just made yourself a Fire mage with some Frost points. It's easy enough to stack Scorch and keep Fire Vuln up throughout a fight (if there are no Frost mages present) -- been doing it for a long time.

4) Due to talent points needed to reach tiers, you can no longer have Cold Snap. This point would be perfect in Living Bomb, which all theorycrafting thus far has shown is a huge single-target DPS increase (even bosses). With the improved mana efficiency of FFB, you should be able to keep up Living Bomb the entire fight. If, however, you truly want Cold Snap over Living Bomb, you could probably go with some sort of 50/21 build, but from all the changes above, you should have a 51/18+2 build that does significantly more dps than the one you listed. I placed points into Dragon's Breath, Blastwave, and 1 into Fiery Payback... those were just a matter of taste, as I had a couple extra points.

Dropping Cold Snap removes your ability to chain two Icy Veins together. That would be the only purpose of it in a hybrid build.

Burnout and Living Bomb will be two very large increases in your raid dps.

Yes, Living Bomb makes a difference to overall DPS. However, it is only good in a Deep Fire build, as I have found.

I guess people misunderstood my wording. When I said elemental, I meant trying a hybrid build with a balance of talents between the two, and testing to see if FFB was any good with that build. I would rather go Deep Frost or Deep Fire myself, with 18-21 points elsewhere. I will try it again in a Deep Fire elemental build and see if the added fire damage makes a difference. From initial testing, if going that deep into Fire, you benefit more from taking Fireball improvements and using that instead of FFB, as it seems to lack oomph.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

[Geckomayhem]

As Arcane Fire (21/50/0), I was able to get my DPS up to 2K, and it finished at 1800. I tried it twice and both results were similar. It looks like Fire isn't so bad, even if you don't spec into, or use Living Bomb. In a raid situation, everything is different, including mana management. It looks like Fire could actually continue to be a decent raiding spec. If only they would buff Fireball a little bit.

I want to go back and look at Arcane Frost and Frost Arcane again, to properly compare. I've run out of time now, though. Lunchtime is over!

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

[cabrinha]

Thank you for your feedback, it's very interesting. Actually I'am a PvE mage with a 2/48/11 build and I have absolutely no idea of what will be my lvl 80 build.
This kind of topic may help me very much ^^

I'am waiting your next tries !!

[Spoonguard]

It's worth heading over to Elitist Jerks and checking out the Mage WotLK Talents Discussion thread - there's a load of people number crunching there, testing different builds for the highest DPS/DPM. From that discussion, it's pretty safe to say that Frost falls way behind Fire and Arcane for PvE DPS - it's worth reading but be warned! The thread is around 80 pages long

I personally will be speccing 20/51/0 - http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000 - at 80.

Pros: This gives you arcane meditation which, combined with mage armor and the glyph, allows you 80% mana regen whilst casting, as well as giving you clearcasting, focus magic and spell impact.

Cons: No Elemental Precision so that's an additional 3% hit you have to make up in gear/gems. Also, no Icy Veins, though I would guess (without looking at the numbers) that Spell Impact will be a larger DPM increase than IV would give you anyway

**edit**

After I hit Submit it occurred to me that there was more I wanted to add. I've not had a chance to raid yet as the EU server is awful and it's almost impossible to level through questing due to lag, but I have been playing as 10 (+ talents points when levelling)/51/0 in instances.

Hot Streak procs ALOT and it also seemed to stack on a couple of occasions for me - I was scorch spamming and crit 4 times in a row and was able to fire off 2 instant pyroblasts - not sure if this is intended or not

Fire, as we expected, gets pretty mana intensive - especially if you're firing off instant pyros and keeping Living Bomb up - unless you want to spend alot of your time wanding, you're going to have to pay alot more attention to your mana pool.

Finally, pulling aggro from the tank. I couldn't. Opened up a boss fight with 2 crit scorches and an instant pyro that also crit, and the boss didn't even look at me. I'm currently running in 3 part T6 and around 1200 spell power - the tank was a druid in Karazhan epics

[Geckomayhem]

Thanks for your input, Spoonguard.

I tested 20/51/0 before reading your response and it is an amazing build. I came back to this thread to post my results. I have been to the EJ forums but that stuff is too technical for me. I just like to burn stuff. XD

My build doesn't incorporate Dragon's Breath or Blastwave. I realise that these are great spells to have, especially when you must AoE (and fire bonuses make them great), but there just weren't enough talent points to go around.

Following are the results of my test. I activated Combustion and Mirror Image at the same time to maximise DPS;this was immediately following my initial Scorch stack and Living Bomb placement on the target. They were macroed to begin a Fireball at the same time as well. I renewed Scorch whenever there was less than five seconds left on Fire Vulnerability.

At one point during the third attempt, I got my DPS up to 2,600 -- this was with a lucky Hot Streak while the mirror images were still casting and adding their DPS. The average time per attempt was about 1:20.

Test 1 -- Final DPS: 2,073
Test 2 -- Final DPS: 2,217
Test 3 -- Final DPS: 2,343

If you can overcome the mana issues from using LB and the inefficiency of Fireball despite Clearcasting and Meditation, with Focus Magic in the mix (untestable outside of a group environment) it looks like Fire is the way to go for ultimate PvE DPS. A standard rotation consists of stacking Scorch (if no Frost mage to stack Winter's Chill), placing Living Bomb and Fireballing until Hot Streak procs. Each time LB explodes, finish your current cast and place it again. I always fired off my insta-Pyro (if Hot Streak had procced) before placing it back up, but I'm not sure it makes a difference to overall DPS. Just cast a Scorch before the stack wears off (once again, provided there is no Frost mage in the vicinity), keep Fireballing and watch those incredible Living Bomb explosion crits and insta-Pyro crits raise your DPS like a man on fire.

Another spell you could incorporate into your rotation is Fire Blast, which you could ostensibly do between every second Fireball. Mind you, you do go through mana a bit faster this way. I tried it and the DPS was only slightly better, so it's really a question of mana management. Plus, it's another spell to worry about.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore -- proud to be fire

[Karah]

could u pls try to run a dps test on http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=of0...fVcbRhIuVub0ct build ?
its meant to be scoechspamming build rellying on hot streak proc. but there are no premads on eu servers and im damn too lazy to lvl my mage to 80 ;D

[Geckomayhem]

I already tested a Scorch / Hot Streak build. It falls short of other specs; even Elemental (Frostfire). It did ok; just not as well as Fireball spec.

The biggest advantage of Scorch, however, is maneuvrability. That, and more Hot Streak procs per minute. But overall, the sustained DPS is not as good as more purebred builds.

Gaiwyn of Proudmoore

[Spoonguard]

I did a run of The Nexus at 72 as a 12/51/0 build and hot streak was proccing alot - I currently have around 31% fire crit.

There's a video up on YouTube of the bosses from my PoV. You can see how many crits are rolling in there....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyFA-db72LE

[Torix]

Gaiwyn, have you tested the 20/51/0 build in a raid environment yet? I've been browsing through the gear and it appears that hit is lacking a little. Have you had trouble with resists at all? I would be curious to see what the damage difference would be on a higher level target. Do you think elemental precision could be a deciding factor dps wise on a higher level mob? With the premade gear its difficult to tell as its all pvp based.

If the hit component has remained as important as it was in TBC, 1 point of hit could be worth more than spellpower without question, and if it is indeed in short supply, then elemental precision would offer a VERY large dps increase.

[ramenkoenig]

why dont you take frostbite? i read that wotlk bosses can be debuffed with frostbite, but won't be frozen in place... so you are able to shatter them even without FoF; need confirmation though
if this stays till live that way, my FFB built would be something like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

[Statix]

I really wish they would change the name of Frostfirebolt into Elemental Bolt. The Hybrid spec of Frost and Fire is called Elemental, then why not give the main attack the name of the spec? We have ARCANE Missiles, FROSTbolt and FIREball. Frostfirebolt is just lame...

Anyway, I played on the PTR and I noticed that the Frost tree relies on a lot of procs. Proc of Brain Freeze and Fingers of Frost. For me, it was hard to get a good rotation going, because the procs are very random. No more Ice Lance spamming.

I also played Deep Arcane, which is a very insteresting spec. Arcane Barrage's damage is just a little bit less than that of Frostbolt with at level 70 non PTR, so with Pyroblast added to that (Need to be 71 to have both Arcane Barrage and Pyroblast) there's an insane amount of instant damage.

Both specs were very cool, even though I still missed 10 Talent Points. I really hope Blizzard is going through with the option to have two specs.

[Lefthanded]

MY spec http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000

You will be using frostfire bolt as your main spell so no flame throwing or artic reach neither apply

you will get improved fire blast as a quick attack when the enemy is going to die is going to cast a fear or other attack which will not allow you to finish your frostfire bolt caste.

The rest in the fire tree should be a givin and are clearly the only choices

You will be focusing on a high Crit rating on your mage which will keep you not starving on mana because of master of elements in the fire tree which is why you do not need frost channeling for mana efficency and can stick with shatter

You will get SHATTER though ineffective in most boss fights there are some mainly heroics which have boss mobs and adds which can be frozen this insures your crits on then which is also why you WILL get Frostbite with 3 points you need them frozen

You will have 150% plus increased crit damage with the proper glyphs at 80 and the proper meta gems making haste a 2nd priority 2 crit which means you have to gear correctly each spec in mages have a different type of gear you would want.

Cold snap and icy veins twice during hard fights will make your frostfire bolt caste very quickly and its already frostbolt speed not the longer fireball speed. You want to make sure you crit twice in a row so stack it pryo is just extra fun with your increased crit you pyro crits will be basically the same as your frostfire crits instant frostfire bolt basically with a different burn effect.

who care about dragons breath and blast wave do 1 flamestrike and frost nova/ cone of cold you forget 100% increased crit damage and almost 100% chance to crit when frozen better than dragons breath or blast wave.

what about soloing? ourside dungeons??? well frostfire slows if you have good crit the mobs will NEVER make it to you all 4 of those incomming 80 nonelite trash mobs all commign at once wont make it to you

Why no living bomb you say? simple 150%+ percent crit damage on frostfire bolt with TWO icy veins for 20% increased cast speed and no push back and quicker Hot streak...... or a decent dot through the whole fight hmmmmm frostfire crit/ pyro > dot

Agro problems????
maybe get frost channeling just for extra agro reduction as alt?
NO get a pally in your raid to use his salv move heck make them do their job plus you got invis yo



Draw backs.... dont get to far away you arent a range god

prepare to die in pvp like all fire mages.... but bring the hurt if the dont see ya

[Statix]

What you end up with is:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

Why didn't you put any points in Empowered Fire? That's 15% of your spellpower added to the damage of Frostfirebolt and Fireball. Remove the points from Fiery Feedback and Flame Throwing. For PVE they are pretty much useless. Frostfirebolt has a range of 40 yards and Flame Throwing doesn't increase that. Fiery Feedback is very situational; actually only if your healer sucks.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000