Out of curiousity, what was the proper pve mage dps rotation and spec in late TBC?

[Genooo]

I started playing in 2.3 and a fire mage was my first level 70. I did terrible dps but was still brought to heroics for my sheep, food and buff :P My rotation was spam the hell out of fireball and fireblast on CD and all of my talent points were in the fire tree. I'm guessing there was a right way to do it. What did the good pve mages do in 2.3-2.4?

[teebo]

scorchx3 fb pom fb. Scorch debuff might of come in later, not sure. We also had combust then too right?

[Genooo]

scorchx3 fb pom fb. Scorch debuff might of come in later, not sure. We also had combust then too right?

I remember combustion being in the fire tree forever but I'm not sure if that was a wrath addition or not.

[Adramalech]

scorchx3 fb pom fb. Scorch debuff might of come in later, not sure. We also had combust then too right?

Yeah, but it was a self-buff that granted 10% crit per stack, 10 stacks at start, one stack consumed per spell.

Or something like that.

[Deleted]

Yeah, but it was a self-buff that granted 10% crit per stack, 10 stacks at start, one stack consumed per spell.

Or something like that.

Almost, it gave 10 % crit per stack starting at 1 stack and increased by 1 stack per spell until you had crited 3 times if i remember correctly.

[Genooo]

Another question: Did arcane mages exist in these days? I don't remember hearing really anything about that spec until wrath when abarrage was added.

[Adramalech]

Almost, it gave 10 % crit per stack starting at 1 stack and increased by 1 stack per spell until you had crited 3 times if i remember correctly.

Ah yes, I had it backwards. Honestly it was pretty damn underwhelming considering that you'd lose the buff as soon as you met the 3 crits criteria. Useful, sure, but not very... tasty.

[Genooo]

Ah yes, I had it backwards. Honestly it was pretty damn underwhelming considering that you'd lose the buff as soon as you met the 3 crits criteria. Useful, sure, but not very... tasty.

I also remember endless QQ in those days about how much mages sucked and how warlocks were so much better and how we were only brought for our food/sheep/water, so you're right:P

[teebo]

I also remember endless QQ in those days about how much mages sucked and how warlocks were so much better and how we were only brought for our food/sheep/water, so you're right:P

We had ab and pyro and no cd missles

[zomgDPS]

Another question: Did arcane mages exist in these days? I don't remember hearing really anything about that spec until wrath when abarrage was added.

Arcane mages had a reasonably strong showing in BC. While not as dominant as fire mages (and later, warlocks) in direct throughput, they could still raid reasonably as well as having unique gameplay.


Arcane went through a few iterations of gameplay in BC. It started with the second revision of the MSD metagem, which basically allowed for machine gun Arcane Missiles (the first version of MSD just made spells instant ala PoM).
The 'true nature' of Arcane showed itself in BC as well, that being, the connection between Arcane and mana was formalized in BC.

In BC, Arcane gameplay followed two ideas at its core. Firstly, was the idea of 'gaming' the Arcane blast stack. AB back then would 'speed up' per stack, and you could take advantage of this by starting an AB cast just when the buff was going to fall off, hence maintaining the cast speed bonus into the next cast.
Secondly, was the gameplay that existed in the delicate dance between Frostbolts and fully stacked Arcane blasts (which later morphed into 'mana management' gameplay), where you would keep your AB stacks at maximum, but use Frostbolts as fillers in order to preserve mana. Ideally, you wouldn't be dropping stacks. The goal being, to reach the end of the fight with 0 mana (and as many pots used as possible as well as your gem) while maximizing the number of fully stacked ABs that you had cast.
Add to that machine gun AMs, and it was actually a very unique and fun caster experience (while still being sub-optimal to Fire in raw throughput).

[spaace]

If you were the solo mage, you had to scorch 5x D:

It was pretty much fireball spam, throw those pyros in..

Arcane was used w/4pc T5.. It was mostly viable then..


Who remember AP/Frostbolt?

[Genooo]

If you were the solo mage, you had to scorch 5x D:

It was pretty much fireball spam, throw those pyros in..

Arcane was used w/4pc T5.. It was mostly viable then..


Who remember AP/Frostbolt?

I solo'd just spamming fireball and fireblast, needless to say I died.... a lot.

[Schmeebs]

For the most part fire was the best during BC, a few fights were exceptions, and arcane could hold its own if played correctly or by abusing things like innervates.
For one you actually had to manage your mana if you weren't in a spriest group (which was quite often because warlocks actually gained more dps by being in the spriest group than mages did). Spamming mana pots on CD< or balancing them with destruct pots when you could manage it. Also you had Evocation sticks (spirit sticks) because base Evo didn't give you your whole mana pool, or even a good amount (without any spirit on gear it was something like 40-50% IIRC.

First silly thing that existed for most of BC was /stopcasting macros. basically using a macro that was " /stopcasting /cast fireball" and clipping every fireball during hte last 300 ms or so (latency based) to elimate lag between casts. When blizzard implemented the spell queing system this was no longer necessary (Not sure if it was ZA or SWP that did this)

During t5 there was arcane with 2pc that revolved around a burn during AP, and outside that doing ABx3AmScorch Repeat to maximize dps (the first AB on the repeat would have sped up casting time, but wouldn't cost more mana)later, for a brief period during Black temple they buffed the mystical skyfire diamond to proc off arcane missiles, affect arcane missiles, and have each missile have its own chance to proc. what this caused was mages being able to do pretty amazing dps by spamming machine gun arcane missiles. Only drawback to this is you had to have judgement of wisdom judged on the boss to keep your mana up, but hunters also wanted this as well as spriests so usually your holy paladins were on top of it.
Later in SWP came the Arc/frost weaving of frostbolts and casting as many ABs as possible. This could be even better increased by getting druids to innervate you (mages who were arcane actually would regen so much mana from innervate it was pretty silly) and since by this time druids really didn't have any mana problems, most healers were fine as well, and sometimes you had ferals, bribing druids for innervates so you could do awesome arcane dps and piss off warlocks was fun (I did it quite often on brutallus)

For Fire, the rotation was pretty much keep the scorch debuff up, and spam fireball. Manage mana (gems, evo, pots). It came later in SWP you could start to 'roll' ignites again with certain haste values so mages started using more haste but there wasn't any change to the rotation.

Oh and you played frost for certain fights because of immunities, or for double Iceblock (played frost on our first arch kill because I was in charge of decursing melee and doomfire is gay) many mages specced fire with cold snap for eredar twins during progression for double block.

[Deleted]

Uh i seems to recall the forum dispute between "Fireangel" and "Faxmonkey", which arcane playstyle was best. I enjoyed Faxmonkeys posts btw

[Polarthief]

I'm more curious why you're so curious about 3 expansions ago Mage rotations

[Hasufer]

I recall I played arcane in most end TBC and first and second boss in MH was especially funny - standing close to Jaina proudmore for double spirit(bk then= combat mana regen) and just hammering AB's like a machine gun with the decreased casttime pr cast. This was like the fight throughout, in crit/spirit gear, that was freakin awesome I recall with that build t5 2 and 4 set bonuses able to make it even more nasrty ( 2set; +ab dmg/cost and 4set; spellpower on crit as I recall)
TBC <3

[Swizzle]

Don't forget to note that Arcane wasn't viable before the introduction of the T5 2-piece bonus. It fell off in T6 when the bonus favored Fire, but made a comeback in Sunwell when you could wear 2-piece T5 while still having 4-piece T6 (thanks to them extending tier pieces to belts, boots, and wrist).

Anyway, back in those days, Scorch increased all Fire damage taken on the target. I can't remember if the stack was to 3 or 5 (it's admittedly been too long for me to remember every damn thing), but we were there to really just buff our damage, Destro Lock damage, and Ele Shaman damage. Once that was up, you'd simply spam Fireball.

If you skipped DB for PoM, then you could work in a PoM-Pyro (it scaled much better than Fireball until they fixed the issue with the Improved ______ talents reducing the damage of the spell they were supposed to be improving). If you kept DB for some CC or AoE damage, then you couldn't PoM.

Frost was just spam Frostbolt and summon your Elemental when it was off CD (if you raided as Frost for some reason like A'lar prior to having 2-piece T5).

Arcane, as mentioned by other people, revolved around spamming AB to get to the max stacks, then Frostbolt till the stacks would fall off, then 1 AB again, rinse and repeat (then spam AB if the boss was in execute range and you had your mana CDs up).

[Durahal]

Arcane was op with 2pc T5, the meta gem that reduced cast speed by 1/2 proc and the Ilhoof capacitor totem.

Needless to say, it was nerfed quickly.


But in late TBC... there was no mages in Sunwell.

Warlocks replaced them on cutting edge progression since the buff was provided by the isle daily, there was no need to bring a mage since locks doubled their DPS.

The 'Sunwelling' of mages was fun...

[mrgreenthump]

I remember combustion being in the fire tree forever but I'm not sure if that was a wrath addition or not.

It was a vanilla talent, but it kept changing overtime.. I dont really remember when we got the ignite value over time version.

[Juddalenko]

Secondly, was the gameplay that existed in the delicate dance between Frostbolts and fully stacked Arcane blasts (which later morphed into 'mana management' gameplay), where you would keep your AB stacks at maximum, but use Frostbolts as fillers in order to preserve mana. Ideally, you wouldn't be dropping stacks. The goal being, to reach the end of the fight with 0 mana (and as many pots used as possible as well as your gem) while maximizing the number of fully stacked ABs that you had cast.
Add to that machine gun AMs, and it was actually a very unique and fun caster experience (while still being sub-optimal to Fire in raw throughput).

This is the iteration I remember using - Arc/Frost. The 40/0/21 spec. Used the Arcane tree to get the spell damage & int buffs to make ur blasts hit like a truck, but took points in frost to improve frostbolt whilst mana conserving and grabbed Cold Snap instead of Slow. That was a fun spec - really unforgiving.

Then you'd look at meters at the end of the fight, and see those dang Warlocks with their Shadow Priest batteries just mincing everyone.

I loved BC.

---------- Post added 2013-07-01 at 12:05 PM ----------

arcane was op with 2pc t5, the meta gem that reduced cast speed by 1/2 proc and the ilhoof capacitor totem.

Needless to say, it was nerfed quickly.


But in late tbc... There was no mages in sunwell.

Warlocks replaced them on cutting edge progression since the buff was provided by the isle daily, there was no need to bring a mage since locks doubled their dps.

The 'sunwelling' of mages was fun...

We need more shaman!!!