04-10-2009, 04:37 PM
I don't play a mage, but there are three issues to consider:
Personal DPS
Longevity
overall raid DPS
Personal DPS, my understanding of Arcane is that you have a lot more control over the DPS knob, but this comes at the expense of longevity. Arcane is more difficult to play in that there is more decision making in terms of how many AB debuffs you feel are ideal for the sitaution. If a fight has a critical DPS phase you can go full burn that phase better than a FFB mage, then you're more cruising on later phases at lower DPS so you conserve mana. This control is useful for some fights and not useful for some fights. I think (but do not know the math behind mages well) that this results in better overall DPS in the case of being undergeared, but eventually FFB will start catching up with better gear.
In a 10 man format, there often is not another mage, and you have to weigh personal DPS benefits against raid buffs. Currently (3.0.x) mages offer a rather significant +10% crit bonus to other casters in the improved scorch talent. This is a rather massive benefit. Even a shadow priest, who scales relatively poorly with crit, is looking at a 200 DPS boost from that. Moonkin benefit more. This is unreachable without rather major sacrifices for an arcane mage.
So in most cases, a 500DPS personal gain will be completely negated by the additional raid DPS of the scorch debuff. In 3.1 (due out "any week now") will reduce the value of this debuff to 5% crit, so there will be less raid DPS to consider.
Also, the +6% hit in arcane, compared with +3% hit in FFB, so it's potentially easier to gear arcane, which may be important since you are still gearing up. It means potentially fewer less than ideal blues being favorable just because of the +hit on them, and you potentially get more usable item selection.
For spec, I think typical PvE arcane spec runs with 1/2 in subtlety and 0/1 slow, then using only the base 11 in frost (which filler talents you choose are up to you, 3/3 in the +hit and 1/1 Icy Veins are the only required points there. This allows you a few to play with either filling out spirit or adding some pushback resist (1 has to go there if you take one from subtlety). Not big changes, but the spirit will be loosely tied to damage in 3.1 for times you have Molten armor for burn instead of Mage armor for regen.
Forgive any lack of knowledge on mages, but hopefully it gets the discussion kicked off a bit as those who know more start correcting the mistakes I've likely made.
Personal DPS
Longevity
overall raid DPS
Personal DPS, my understanding of Arcane is that you have a lot more control over the DPS knob, but this comes at the expense of longevity. Arcane is more difficult to play in that there is more decision making in terms of how many AB debuffs you feel are ideal for the sitaution. If a fight has a critical DPS phase you can go full burn that phase better than a FFB mage, then you're more cruising on later phases at lower DPS so you conserve mana. This control is useful for some fights and not useful for some fights. I think (but do not know the math behind mages well) that this results in better overall DPS in the case of being undergeared, but eventually FFB will start catching up with better gear.
In a 10 man format, there often is not another mage, and you have to weigh personal DPS benefits against raid buffs. Currently (3.0.x) mages offer a rather significant +10% crit bonus to other casters in the improved scorch talent. This is a rather massive benefit. Even a shadow priest, who scales relatively poorly with crit, is looking at a 200 DPS boost from that. Moonkin benefit more. This is unreachable without rather major sacrifices for an arcane mage.
So in most cases, a 500DPS personal gain will be completely negated by the additional raid DPS of the scorch debuff. In 3.1 (due out "any week now") will reduce the value of this debuff to 5% crit, so there will be less raid DPS to consider.
Also, the +6% hit in arcane, compared with +3% hit in FFB, so it's potentially easier to gear arcane, which may be important since you are still gearing up. It means potentially fewer less than ideal blues being favorable just because of the +hit on them, and you potentially get more usable item selection.
For spec, I think typical PvE arcane spec runs with 1/2 in subtlety and 0/1 slow, then using only the base 11 in frost (which filler talents you choose are up to you, 3/3 in the +hit and 1/1 Icy Veins are the only required points there. This allows you a few to play with either filling out spirit or adding some pushback resist (1 has to go there if you take one from subtlety). Not big changes, but the spirit will be loosely tied to damage in 3.1 for times you have Molten armor for burn instead of Mage armor for regen.
Forgive any lack of knowledge on mages, but hopefully it gets the discussion kicked off a bit as those who know more start correcting the mistakes I've likely made.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.