Mage question: ffb vs arcane

[yakitorii]

Hi all - so I levelled my mage to 80 with frost, and enjoyed the survability, but once I hit 80 and got ready to raid, I read up a lot and decided to switch to a fire-based ffb. i've been going along, running heroics and Naxx a few times, and looked at the new theorycraft-o-matic site to update my gear comparison numbers.

I checked out theoretical DPS for my current spec vs for arcane, and it looked like the arcane spec would do about 500DPS more with the exact same gear.

What do y'all think? I suppose I could just respec and try it myself, but I wondered what other lurker mages thought.

Here are the links:
My character at the armory

Theory-craft-o-matic

Arcane spec that TCOM likes

Thanks, y'all!

[Concillian]

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.

[PapaSmurf]

Hi all - so I levelled my mage to 80 with frost, and enjoyed the survability, but once I hit 80 and got ready to raid, I read up a lot and decided to switch to a fire-based ffb. i've been going along, running heroics and Naxx a few times, and looked at the new theorycraft-o-matic site to update my gear comparison numbers.

I checked out theoretical DPS for my current spec vs for arcane, and it looked like the arcane spec would do about 500DPS more with the exact same gear.

What do y'all think? I suppose I could just respec and try it myself, but I wondered what other lurker mages thought.

Here are the links:
My character at the armory

Theory-craft-o-matic

Arcane spec that TCOM likes

Thanks, y'all!

I have also spent time setting up a Lurker Specific raid environment in simulationcraft. The data can be found in the link in my signature. I'd be happy to do the work to get Tareek modeled then we can look at what the best gearing and rotation would be for your mage.

[PapaSmurf]

I have also spent time setting up a Lurker Specific raid environment in simulationcraft. The data can be found in the link in my signature. I'd be happy to do the work to get Tareek modeled then we can look at what the best gearing and rotation would be for your mage.

In addition, ffb specs are very competitive to arcane specs. Instead of focusing on how you can change your spec to increase your dps, time will be better spent trying to improve your rotation for dps. I have added a TareekPractice wiki page in lurkersimcraft so you can get an idea of what dps you should be able to achieve on a practice dummy. You can then get recount and practice your rotation till you are getting near what the simulator says you should get on stationary targets. Simulation craft will also generate weights for your character as well as links to wowhead and lootrank to help you identify the best upgrades for your character.

[yakitorii]

In addition, ffb specs are very competitive to arcane specs. Instead of focusing on how you can change your spec to increase your dps, time will be better spent trying to improve your rotation for dps. I have added a TareekPractice wiki page in lurkersimcraft so you can get an idea of what dps you should be able to achieve on a practice dummy. You can then get recount and practice your rotation till you are getting near what the simulator says you should get on stationary targets. Simulation craft will also generate weights for your character as well as links to wowhead and lootrank to help you identify the best upgrades for your character.

I'll take a look at that sim. I can't seem to link directly, but assuming the 'optimal' ffb rotation of 1 scorch, 7 ffbs, then living bomb, the theorycraft-o-matic site I linked to earlier estimates my dps at around, which is about right for recent 5 & 10mans. I'll check out PapaSmurf's sim site as well and play around with the target dummies.

Concilian, you made some good points about raid vs pve and constant DPS versus total damage per full mana. After I posted this, I saw the same tradeoffs on the EJ forum as well.

Anyway, thanks for your feedback. Any other mages want to weigh in?

(for reference, here are the numbers from TCOM - I'll check out the google code sim and see how they compare to these and to different target dummy rotations)

For current spec:

Single Target Rotations
Rotation DPS DPM MPS
1 LB + 5 FFB: 2057.99 11.22 183.47
1 LB + 7 FFB + 1 SC: 2017.53 11.27 178.96
Frostfire Bolt Spam: 1954.13 13.44 145.4
8 FFB + 1 SC: 1940.02 13.06 148.51

For arcane spec (with IV):

Single Target Rotations
Rotation DPS DPM MPS
Arcane Blast Spam: 2585.14 4.48 576.65
4 AB + 1 ABar: 2551.97 4.61 553.48
2 AB + 1 ABar: 2545.87 4.75 536.36

[Jester]

Not being a player from a "rotation" class per se, I tend to think about things in terms of priority lists. As far as I can tell, for FFB, what you want is something like this, which I cobbled together from memory, but is actually identical to the one in the EJ FFB thread.

1) Hot streak pyro.
2) Living bomb.
3) Keep scorch up.
4) FFB.

Since these things, especially the timing of your hot streaks, are not constant, you can't really count out a rotation, so much as check through the easy list of three each time: do I have a proc, is living bomb up, is scorch up. If the answers are no, yes and yes, then FFB spam.

-Jester

[Swiss Mercenary]

I don't know about how the situation looks at your gear level, but my understanding is that Fireball > FFB, if you're raiding, especially when taking into account the Focus Magic crit buff that you provide to the raid.

The playstyle of the spec is exactly the same as FFB.

Arcane, in my experience, is roughly equivalent long-term DPS to FFB, but when used well, wins out because you can pop your cooldowns during a burn phase/heroism. You do lose out on the 10% raid-wide crit buff if you spec it... Unless you spec Arcane/Scorch, which loses quite a bit of DPS compared to Arcane/Icy Veins.

Personally, I play Arcane because I hate the feel of running the FFB rotation, and we always have a fire mage on hand to provide the scorch debuff.

As for mana concerns, there are none with Arcane. With the 2-minute evocate, and if you use mage armor, mana for Arcane is not an issue. 2-pc Tier 7, if you have access to it, makes mana gems absolutely amazing.


I'm speaking completely about raids, here. In 5-mans, I'd imagine frost-specced Blizzard spam would be the best way to go... But I did notice Arcane to be better the Fireball, due to the reduced need to drink.

As for Arcane specs, this is the spec I raid with.

I find +6 yards on all my spells from Magic Attunement to be absolutely critical... As well as the 60% pushback protection, which gives me 100% protection when combined with Improved Concentration aura. If you don't raid with a paladin, I'd suggest 5/5 into that talent - nothing will gimp your DPS more then pushback on your Arcane Missles. Student of the Mind is not the best talent talent, if I need 3/3 Arcane Focus, due to lack of Hit on my gear, I drop a point from Arcane Mind.

Since I currently have an overabundance of hit gear, I'm thinking of moving the other 2 points from Arcane Focus into Magic Absorbtion or Incanter's Absorbtion (For laughs on Sapphiron/KT).

[Pantalaimon]

1) Hot streak pyro.
2) Living bomb.
3) Keep scorch up.
4) FFB.

Sort of.

Refresh LB before Hot Streak if LB's due to fall off provided you're not in danger of gobbling a hot streak. Hrm, how to explain...

Most often, hot streak will proc while you're charging up a spell. If LB is up for a refresh, that means it will also blow up while you're charging the spell - if the explosion crits, hit your hotstreak at the end of your cast, because if the spell you finished casting crits you'll get another right away. If the explosion *doesn't* crit, you can safely refresh LB, because even if the spell you just cast crit it won't be two in a row so it's not possible to munch a hotstreak.

*pauses for breath* Got all that? Probably not. Yeah, me neither, just something I sort of picked up instinctively:P Doing it that way also supposedly helps with "ignite munching", a phenomenon which is kind of controversial and I've never personally experienced - I just do it for the extra LB uptime.

Also, last caveat: Keep scorch up above everything. Even hotstreaks. Having it fall off means you have to cast it twice instead of once, which is a significant DPS loss. Post 3.1, you'll also have to restack scorch *five* times because you'll want to drop the scorch glyph, so shake the habit now if you can.

As to the topic of Arcane vs FFB vs Fireball/TtW: it's usually all about hit, as Swiss alluded to. Unless you have an atypical crit/haste combination, the specs primary difference is to allow you to take advantage of different hitcaps: you'll want 14% for Fireball, 11% for FFB and 8% (!!) for Arcane, assuming you have a SP/Boomkin along for the ride. 1% less for all three if you're alliance and can count on a spacegoat. Basically, yeah, every mage usually has *too much* hit, hence the prevalence of Fireball/TtW as the "main" raiding spec; I'd love to go Arcane, I really would, but gosh dang if I can't find a way to shed all this hit on my gear.

Edit: Speaking of which, just took a peek at your armory. You're way overhit for your current spec, even without a SP or Boomkin. I'm assuming because you're gemming hit that you don't usually have either, but honestly any more than 14% isn't doing you absolutely anything. If you're serious about Arcane, (and as an aside, given that much hit I'm not sure why TCOM is recommending a spec swap), you'll have to regem and probably drop the mark of the war prisoner to get your hit down to a more reasonable level.

Gem bonuses are rarely worth it; you need two blue gems for your meta, and the rest should more or less always be +19 spellpower; certainly never gem for a socket bonus of intellect, stamina, or hit over cap.

If your DPS is far from "theoretical" levels, I'd examine buffs first before spec - if you don't have a shadow priest or boomkin, do you at least have an undead DK for your +13% damage? Elemental Shammy?