Arc vs FFB spec

[histuguya]

i leveled a death knight to 80, got bored and decided to start my mage up again, i've read a lot on FFB spec and understand it, then saw a video of an arc mage in nax, so i was wondering from mages w/ expierence in nax and other raids, which would put out more damage per fight

[arnorian]

Well, on boss fights, right now, FFB is the best single target dps. That most likely will change in the patch. With the buff given to torment of the weak and the slight nerf to elemental precision (fixing the phantom ffb hit bug), arcane/fire will be one of the top raiding specs. As for arcane, it has the potential to be one of the highest single target dps specs, but the rotation is a bit more complicated than that of fire/arcane or FFB, which may lead to a dps loss for some players.

[histuguya]

the FFB rotation is stupid easy, but with the up coming changes, what will the arc rotation be? expect tank to thunder clap, abX3 => barage, missles barrage?

[arnorian]

yeah, you will have to keep the buff from arc blast up at all times to buff the arc barrage, and only arc missile when the proc is up, thats about it. But most simcraft is predicting arc/fire to be on top, but nothing is certain until the patch hits.

[histuguya]

whats the arc fire build going to be? another 3 min boom spec?

[arnorian]

Oh god no, with the buff to torment of the weak, the target (raid boss) will always be considered ensnared, so your fireballs will hit 12% harder. So 18/53/0 will be the arc/fire build, just take up to torment, keeping in mind to get focus magic and clearcasting (duh), and the standard 53 points in fire.

[histuguya]

watch torment just get a hard core nerf with in a month of the patch because hunters feel underpowered by mage dps

[arnorian]

Hunters were nerfed for a reason, they were doing over 1k dps more than similarly geared mages, locks, rogues, etc. Mages, from what I can understand from almsot every blue post about us, are working as intended, if not doing less than expected, due to mana issues (hence the change to pyromaniac).

[Statix]

Don't forget that Fireball will get an additional 6% from Spell Impact in addition to the 12% additional damage from Torment the Weak for a total of 18% additional damage.

[histuguya]

thats 18% just from arcane plus how much +spell dmg from fire tree, cause thats a lot of added damage to fire

[Malentra]

thats 18% just from arcane plus how much +spell dmg from fire tree, cause thats a lot of added damage to fire

IMO, if you want to max your boss dps in Naxx25, get another mage to go Fire/Arc (Fireball) spec, and trade your Focus Magic.  You'll both be +8% crit from FFB spec (3% FM proc, 3% FM, +5% Fireball glyph vs. 2% from FFB glyph) along with higher base damage.  That should give you some really strong dps...as long as you don't run out of mana.   If I remember correctly Fireball uses something like 20-30% more mana per cast compared with FFB.

However I don't think your AoE dps will compete with FFB or Frost, or even a 51/2/18 Arc spec.

One thing I really like is as long as these specs end up doing similar dps, we'll have trade-offs for each one. Just the way it should be.

[histuguya]

i've only done nax once on my dk, and aoe didnt seem like a huge part of the fights so im more or less worried about just single target dps

[Tyguy]

Hunters were nerfed for a reason, they were doing over 1k dps more than similarly geared mages, locks, rogues, etc. Mages, from what I can understand from almsot every blue post about us, are working as intended, if not doing less than expected, due to mana issues (hence the change to pyromaniac).

True, but because of this, mages are now for the most part nerf bait, depending how hunters and rogues look in comparison due to their respective changes. This is coming from a blue post.

[forneus]

fire/arcane won't be so good, molten fury and torment the weak doesn't stack, at least thats how it was looking on PTR

[Statix]

Molten Fury: This talent will now interact correctly with Torment the Weak. Don't know what that means, but I guess they will stack.

[naowin]

ofc i havent tested it out. but i still think ffb will be better off as end game spec.
sure fire/arcane looks nice and are shapeing up atm but thats still mostly due to the inc base dmg it has. fire has recived a 12% inc due to torment but i doubt it still has the same scalability as ffb have atm. :P guess one will have to test it out to be sure but yar thats my thoughts in the matter.

personally i love fireball and would love to have it back as main nuke. :P atleast untill they fix the jellyfish animation on ffb.

[Zehlkatur]

I have made som thinking about this, and is Burnout and Livingbomb better than Ice Shards, im just wondering. I will try out both speccs today and see what my dps meter says.

As u in deceant gear u have a 50%crit on ur FFB i think the critdmg from ffb is the most important as it does the most of ur dmg.

[Topcraft]

I think I need to put this link in my signature :

[naowin]

I think I need to put this link in my signature :

:P dont want to accept that... all my precious gear i gathered for ffb will be somewhat useless as arcane mage

[coldrae]

I think I need to put this link in my signature :

Signed up to ask you about this. When the patch rolled around I specced into 57/3/11 on my own accord, and seeing it (well as I read it) as the top dps spec for mages ticked over in my head. Could you explain to me how to read these charts, or redirect me to somewhere I can learn to get the most out of these charts?
Thanks


armory here