Is it worth it to switch to Arcane, and When?

[Draeth]

From everything I'm hearing, Arcane is the top-dog of single-target Mage DPS by a pretty good margin, possibly upwards of 1k DPS max output.
I want to know, how true is this? Is it worth making the switch?
My current spec is FFB, so my gear is pretty heavily stacked for crit (40.83% Fire Crit, 45.83% FFB Crit with Molten Armor/AI/talents). From what I understand, crit is a pretty low priority stat for Arcane, since the crit damage bonus is only 1.75 (versus FFB's ridiculous 3.15 - both before the meta-gem), and Haste can compete with spellpower at some gear levels. Also, Arcane's hit requirement is significantly less than FFB's.
Assuming my understanding of gear priority is correct - my gear would then be pretty terrible for Arcane, since I'd be well over the hit cap and have much less than desireable haste.

So, if it is worth making the switch for single-target fights... when? How much haste should I collect? Should I not even consider it until I can build a gear set with the arcane hit-cap and not downgrade anything to do it?

My armory:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...d&n=Serintegra

Edit: As a note, if I do decide to pick up Arcane spec, I'll be dropping my Frost PVP alternate spec, I'm not getting much use out of it anyway, and I'm told most Arcane mages like to keep a fire spec for AoE fights anyway.

[Samin]

Arcane is starter spec and is more forgiving than fire (which needs fucking loads of crit to compete). Haste is not more important than for fire (don't know about FFB)
You don't need specific gear/stats to do well as arcane.
Oh and yes it is worth it, give it a try.

[Draeth]

Haste is not very important for FFB (simply because the value of crit is enormous for FFB), so I have very, very little.

[Keh]

Figured I would need to adjust myself soon too so tested Arcane last night for the first time ever and was our first time on HM 25 Twins. Was pretty fun putting out 20k DPS.. I did not change any of my usual Fire PvE gear except 2 trinkets and a belt. (Pure crit belt too a Haste one.., dropped a hit and crit trinket for Int ones)

I wouldnt worry about your gear knackering your performance much if you can play well with Fire or FFB. So long as you have around 600 haste / 40% crit should be easy keeping up. I still found myself doing better in the long run as Fire though on most fights, AoE or not. Mostly from experience I think and simply managing cooldowns becoming second nature..

[Mizzor]

I still found myself doing better in the long run as Fire though on most fights, AoE or not. Mostly from experience I think and simply managing cooldowns becoming second nature..

Not quite sure what you are saying here...are you implying that you do more dps because you can manage your combustion (1, 3min cd = hardmode) cool down really good...or that you can't do good dps as arcane, because you aren't very good at managing cool downs?

[Armond]

I would switch and start picking up some haste gear. My mage currently has ~350 haste and over a thousand crit just with molten armor and I pull more than my weight on the DPS charts. I'd really love to pick up some more haste (on a related note, ugh @ t9 legs), but that's been tricky for me for various reasons. Grab the two triumph trinkets (or just the +int one if you've got too much hit) and put Black Magic on your kris and you'll be good to go.

Since you've already got enough hit for FFB, it might be in your interests to spec something like this. (Trade a point in Stability to Subtlety if you run with consecration aura all the time or you're having threat problems - I've been having some with our DK tank lately.)

When you start picking up some t9 gear, consider respeccing again. I'm currently running the above build, and I'm planning on picking up one or both of the +hit trinkets from trumph/frost emblems and speccing from Precision to Ice Shards and never worrying about +hit from gear again. (More likely what will happen will be I'll keep both trinkets around depending on what sort of gear I pick up in ICC/t10, but having almost 11% hit just from the trinkets sounds pretty nice.)