06-07-2006, 11:02 PM
First of all, our guild's best mage in terms of dps is a fire mage. People who think fire mages aren't good for raiding are living in the Molten Core and partially BWL dark ages and don't see that things are changing rapidly. I and a lot of my guildmates are seeing the writing on the wall for ice mages in terms of how they've been able to skip out on the massive mob resist fights that fire mages have experienced. In Naxxramas, there will be many frost fights, and mobs themselves are going to have a lot of frost resistance. Ice mages who don't collect -resistance and +hit% gear are going to be in for a shock. This is especially true since ice spells tend to be binary -- i.e. there are no partial resists. You either hit fully or you cause zero damage.
Back to your build, I can't really give you specific directions on your build, because I haven't played a mage enough. I can say, however, that all of our mages, and especially our two resident fire mages, were jumping for joy over how much damage they could dish out on the test server without pulling aggro. We play Horde, so we don't have the benefit of Blessing of Salvation, so the experience of being able to go nearly full out and not pull aggro was an incredible experience for them. (The Tranquil Air totem is not very practical for a variety of reasons). Basically, Burning Soul and Frost Channeling eliminated the need to spend points boosting arcane missles. The reason people used Arcane Missles at all in the past was how aggro efficient it was, but if you can get nearly the same aggro efficiency using your more damaging and mana efficient fire and frost spells, why use arcane missles at all?
I'll try to find out our fire mages' intended specs to give you an more specific and knowledgeable suggestion of what to do, but I believe they plan to spend more points than you have in the fire tree and less in the arcane tree. One thing you might consider is that sacrificing some of your mana pool in order to get more damage might be helpful. For example, if instead of getting 10% more mana, you get 10% more damage, you'll still deal the same amount of damage after expending one mana bar, but you'll kill your target faster. Plus, your potions and mana gems will get an effective boost in their power, because you can deal more damage for the mana that they give you. Plus, in an aggro limited fight, if you can deal your damage faster, then you can stop and regen mana for a longer period of time and still ride that ever present aggro line.
Back to your build, I can't really give you specific directions on your build, because I haven't played a mage enough. I can say, however, that all of our mages, and especially our two resident fire mages, were jumping for joy over how much damage they could dish out on the test server without pulling aggro. We play Horde, so we don't have the benefit of Blessing of Salvation, so the experience of being able to go nearly full out and not pull aggro was an incredible experience for them. (The Tranquil Air totem is not very practical for a variety of reasons). Basically, Burning Soul and Frost Channeling eliminated the need to spend points boosting arcane missles. The reason people used Arcane Missles at all in the past was how aggro efficient it was, but if you can get nearly the same aggro efficiency using your more damaging and mana efficient fire and frost spells, why use arcane missles at all?
I'll try to find out our fire mages' intended specs to give you an more specific and knowledgeable suggestion of what to do, but I believe they plan to spend more points than you have in the fire tree and less in the arcane tree. One thing you might consider is that sacrificing some of your mana pool in order to get more damage might be helpful. For example, if instead of getting 10% more mana, you get 10% more damage, you'll still deal the same amount of damage after expending one mana bar, but you'll kill your target faster. Plus, your potions and mana gems will get an effective boost in their power, because you can deal more damage for the mana that they give you. Plus, in an aggro limited fight, if you can deal your damage faster, then you can stop and regen mana for a longer period of time and still ride that ever present aggro line.