Mages you have 3 specs not just one purple one

[Brandoh]

Don't make it sound like fire is that simple, you'll confuse players on their rotations.

Fire is keeping critical mass up, flame orb up, keeping LB up, Fireball Spamming while Scorch Weaving to keep an eye on your mana bar and to conserve 35% base mana for execute range, while keeping an eye on the hotstreak procs, it's keeping track of your Ignite Ticks, Pyro Ticks and LB ticks to use Combustion ideally. It's attempting to get and time your impact proc up while rolling DoTs on a target to spread to nearby enemies in AoE situations when mobs are coming at your raid party.

LOL?
you can get an add on to watch debuffs
Scroch weaving becomes unnecessary after like 3about 350+ ilvl gearset and with the new patch its gonna be and 3 button spec.
if u cant see proc blow up your entire screen then ur blind.
addon to tell you when to combustion exists.
AoE hard? LB + Blast Wave + Impact = Profit

Stop saying Fire is hard.
Says the fire mage.

[Deleted]

if you look at any other sim you'll see arcane fall behind fire and frost by somwhere around 2k-3k dps. Since there really aren't any just stand still and nuke fights arcane(unless you need the 3% damage buff) isn't worth it in a raiding environment even with the SoW.

Doesn't 3% dmg raid buff covers 2-3k DPS gap ?
Basically you have a choice: fall a bit behind and buff everyone else, or be higher on penile meter a.k.a. recount yourself. So maybe it's just a question how selfish you are ?

[CadetFord2345]

addon to tell you when to combustion exists.

Stop saying Fire is hard.
Says the fire mage.

Fire may not be technically difficult to play, but it's definitely more fun than arcane. You at least have important cooldowns you have to monitor and get to push more than two buttons consistently. As far as combustion, if you're relying on a mod to tell you when to use it, you're bad. Just because a mod says "use combustion now" doesn't mean you should. You should be waiting to get a big crit from pyroblast in order to use it that way you have a high ignite on the target. CombustionHelper and Combustion are not very accurate, at least from my experience. Learn to watch your dots and make sure you have a high ignite, especially from pyroblast, before you use your combustion.

[Mexa]

JW, why are so many of you stuck on arcane? from what I've seen/read/played (up to 73), Arcane is not in the best of places right now. Single-target damage is fine, but damage on the move, aoe, and survivability, the spec is just lacking. Also the spec has changed a lot. Most don't seem to realize that the spec does play differently with the addition of the Mana Adept mastery and the change to AB/AM. My theory is that most people (not all!) who spec arcane are looking for an easy rotation that yields high dps, when in reality the spec just isn't as faceroll as it was throughout ICC.

thoughts?

....flames?

If your talking about HCs when ppl have just hit 85 or maybe arent 85 at all, its because fire requires alot of stats to be better than arcane. Fire is very RNG dependant and when u hit lvl 85 u have about 10% crit chance. Whereas arcane doesnt doesnt need stats to the same extent, meaning arcane is more DPS with low stats than fire, but fire is more DPS with high stats than arcane.

The reason fire was so good in ICC was because u had like 60% crit chance buffed.

but i do agree with u on the part where ppl pick arcane for easy rotation. In ICC, the rotation was ABx4, AM, ABx4, AM etc. Now, its far more complicated, because u want to get as much out of your mana gem and evocation and AB while fighint. That means ABx4, mana gem(specced grants alot of SP) and then u AB spam till 40% mana and evoc up again. And then u save your mana and do it all over when its ready.

[Deleted]

Whereas arcane doesnt doesnt need stats to the same extent, meaning arcane is more DPS with low stats than fire, but fire is more DPS with high stats than arcane.

It is not that much of a difference, because Arcane scales far better with INT. I think if you take Shard of Woe into account Arcane scales even better.

[Deleted]

Because alot of you fail to realize, we play the game for fun. We don't let the community dictate what we should be playing.

I'm frost, not arcane but this! Even if the specc I enjoy does 10% lower DPS or whatever, I'd still play it. A good player can pull it's weight no matter what specc and playing some crappy specc you don't enjoy isn't the way to go.

[Deleted]

I don't think i've seen a single Arcane mage since Cata release...

[Deleted]

I've been thinking the exact opposite

Every other mage I see is either fire because they're doing HCs/raiding, or they're frost, because they're leveling or PvP'ing

I'm doing the exact same thing though^^ fire for raiding, and frost for my dailies/soloing

This, but we have arcane mages in our raids due to the 3% increased damage. That one 25 man is golden.

[Takanasi]

I was and liked arcane in WotLK but with the changes to fire in Cata, it is way more fun. The free scorch that can be used while moving removes all concerns about mana and movement during fights, so you can just concentrate on having fun.

[Brandoh]

Fire may not be technically difficult to play, but it's definitely more fun than arcane. You at least have important cooldowns you have to monitor and get to push more than two buttons consistently. As far as combustion, if you're relying on a mod to tell you when to use it, you're bad. Just because a mod says "use combustion now" doesn't mean you should. You should be waiting to get a big crit from pyroblast in order to use it that way you have a high ignite on the target. CombustionHelper and Combustion are not very accurate, at least from my experience. Learn to watch your dots and make sure you have a high ignite, especially from pyroblast, before you use your combustion.

beside the fact that combustion is like 2-5% of overall fight dmg, and that i dont use an addon myself, it not a very huge deal if u dont combustion on ur highest ticks, wont hurt ur dps that much at all.

As for "important" cooldowns, i can only really think of Flame Orb.

Evo and Mana gem usage to keep up proper mana and a good rotation so as to not go oom, while playing arcane, is much tougher and a bigger hit to dps, then if u dont min max ur combustion.

im not saying fire isnt fun or arcane is, i am just stating that at the moment, being a good arcane mage, has a bigger skill gap.
also i am responding to the people that say "LOL ARCANE EZ MODE FIRE IS TOUGH"

and with 4.0.6, spam fireball and stare at LB bot. games tough huh.

[CadetFord2345]

With 4.0.6 tomorrow, monitoring your mana becomes much less of an issue. It's always good to monitor when you have big crits or not though for your combustion. The difference between using your combustion with a big pyroblast crit and without can literally be at least 3k dps assuming all pyros crit for at least 30k (which is pretty easy with raid buffs and gear).

[Brandoh]

With 4.0.6 tomorrow, monitoring your mana becomes much less of an issue. It's always good to monitor when you have big crits or not though for your combustion. The difference between using your combustion with a big pyroblast crit and without can literally be at least 3k dps assuming all pyros crit for at least 30k (which is pretty easy with raid buffs and gear).

Combustion is about 3-5% of our dps, depending on if u can keep it around 8% uptime.
it has high dpe, and its a nice and fun little cooldown to use an watch, and it does hurt dps if u just dont use it at all.
but if you dont min max the ticks, you aren't gonna be losing 3k dps.

[CadetFord2345]

lol?
is a VERY small chunk of our DPS.
try not using it one fight and see how it gos brah.

Not sure what point you're trying to make, but not using combustion is just dumb. Considering I use mine about 3 or 4 times (if the fight lasts a long time) per fight, that's at least 300k or 400k damage. I was just trying to say that lining up your combustion with a pyroblast crit is probably the best time to use it. I've seen my combustions get as high as 7-8k per tick (which usually leads to over 100k damage for the full duration) when I hover over the debuff on a boss. The best I've done is about a 10k combustion on Halfus which I then spread to the whelps. All of these high combustion procs have been preceded by a pyroblast crit.

P.S. I haven't seen a post anywhere that says not to use your combustion after you get a big pyroblast crit.

[Vempriex]

This. There will always be people who play their spec solely because its "the best." At the same time there will always be people who play the spec they enjoy the most and have fun with.

^ This.

I have played Frost and none other. I have tried Fire, I liked it but I have played frost since I made my mage and I use that spec. more than just "the dps" ego. I play Frost for other reasons and I don't PvP. And my secondary spec. is Fire due to frost immune mobs.

One thing is rare in my raid group is that we had 3 mages all in 3 different specs.

---------- Post added 2011-02-08 at 08:44 AM ----------

I'm frost, not arcane but this! Even if the specc I enjoy does 10% lower DPS or whatever, I'd still play it. A good player can pull it's weight no matter what specc and playing some crappy specc you don't enjoy isn't the way to go.

Indeed. If my RL thinks it needs improvement I will find a way to improve it.

[Brandoh]

Not sure what point you're trying to make, but not using combustion is just dumb. Considering I use mine about 3 or 4 times (if the fight lasts a long time) per fight, that's at least 300k or 400k damage. I was just trying to say that lining up your combustion with a pyroblast crit is probably the best time to use it. I've seen my combustions get as high as 7-8k per tick (which usually leads to over 100k damage for the full duration) when I hover over the debuff on a boss. The best I've done is about a 10k combustion on Halfus which I then spread to the whelps. All of these high combustion procs have been preceded by a pyroblast crit.

P.S. I haven't seen a post anywhere that says not to use your combustion after you get a big pyroblast crit.

i was responding to the way he was trying to make combustion look like a tough ability to use properly, and if not done at the maximum point of crit dots, would greatly hurt ur dps.