The days of the frostbolt spammers in boss fights for mages has passed. The reason is the Arcane Blast spell. In any fight where you go out of mana you need to start mixing in this spell. It has the best dmg/mana in the mage's spell book at zero debuffs and the best dps and worst mana at three debuffs.
The basic trick of the spell is to stack it up to the desired level (as an arcane mage this is 3 for me but you can use less and still benefit). Then wait for the 8 second debuff to get to within one spell cast away from expiring. Then cast Arcane Blast again. This will give you the improved spell cast speed since the debuff counts at the start of the spell, but since the debuff goes away in the middle of the cast you are only charged the minimum mana for the spell when the spell finishes. This lets you get the best of both worlds, dps and mana usage.
Quark is right in that mage dps is a function of rapid casting. If you get 4 frostbolts off in 10secs that's great but if you have latency and it takes you 12secs, then you lost 20% dps. I use ecastbars w/ latency. It shows a red part at the end of my casting bar which is my latency (or in mage speak, lost dps). I can then try to time into that with a /stopcasting to shave off some of that latency. Sometimes I don't need it because the server is working fine but at other times ....very old MC where I was playing with a 800ms-1sec latency, it made a world of difference. I mostly see big improvements today on Friday and Saturday nights when the server is really full.
On the +hit, +penetration and +spell damage, I've read that people believe that the blizzard itemization is too high for +hit and +penetration stats and that you are better off with the +spell damage. I've lost the reference so take that with a grain of salt and do your own research. I've personally have put some extra +stam on my toon just because the stat is so cheap and keeps me alive in instances. Yes it doesn't make me the top dps mage, but I'm also not dead on the floor so I end up doing better in the long run.
The basic trick of the spell is to stack it up to the desired level (as an arcane mage this is 3 for me but you can use less and still benefit). Then wait for the 8 second debuff to get to within one spell cast away from expiring. Then cast Arcane Blast again. This will give you the improved spell cast speed since the debuff counts at the start of the spell, but since the debuff goes away in the middle of the cast you are only charged the minimum mana for the spell when the spell finishes. This lets you get the best of both worlds, dps and mana usage.
Quark is right in that mage dps is a function of rapid casting. If you get 4 frostbolts off in 10secs that's great but if you have latency and it takes you 12secs, then you lost 20% dps. I use ecastbars w/ latency. It shows a red part at the end of my casting bar which is my latency (or in mage speak, lost dps). I can then try to time into that with a /stopcasting to shave off some of that latency. Sometimes I don't need it because the server is working fine but at other times ....very old MC where I was playing with a 800ms-1sec latency, it made a world of difference. I mostly see big improvements today on Friday and Saturday nights when the server is really full.
On the +hit, +penetration and +spell damage, I've read that people believe that the blizzard itemization is too high for +hit and +penetration stats and that you are better off with the +spell damage. I've lost the reference so take that with a grain of salt and do your own research. I've personally have put some extra +stam on my toon just because the stat is so cheap and keeps me alive in instances. Yes it doesn't make me the top dps mage, but I'm also not dead on the floor so I end up doing better in the long run.
Terenas
Yuri - Mage/Arcane 85 Undead
Thirdrail - Shaman/Resto 85 Tauren
Vicstull - Rogue/Subtlety 85 Troll
Penten - Priest/Discipline 85 Blood Elf
Storage guild Bassomatic
Yuri - Mage/Arcane 85 Undead
Thirdrail - Shaman/Resto 85 Tauren
Vicstull - Rogue/Subtlety 85 Troll
Penten - Priest/Discipline 85 Blood Elf
Storage guild Bassomatic