Post by tecnobrat
I'm a pretty big theorycrafter, and I was just looking at new mage builds for my mage that hit 70 recently.
I play a Paladin as my main now, however I played a mage for over a year, raiding all of the original 40 mans.
I used to play as 31/0/20 back in the day, and I still swear to this day that it was the highest DPS you could get. Simply because AP was amazing, and using the ideals that any mana you have at the end, is wasted DPS. Bringing mana pots, using gems and evoc every boss fight.
Arcane Power being on a 3 min cooldown, means you get 30% more damage 15/180 secs. This works out to a 2.5% increase in dps, except add the fact that you use your trinkets when you pop it, it can be much more than that.
I've been looking at a similar build for my mage now that TBC has hit:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0E00fzxIziZxg0zbcZ0hThe bonuses to this build are:
- 50% more crit bonus on fire crits
- 3% more spell damage and crit
- 30% crit when you clearcast (works out to 3% more crit overall)
- 25% of your intellect in spelldamage
- 25% increase in ignite ticks
- Using AP / PoM + Pyro / Trinket / Flame cap in proper rotations
Basically I was thinking about a rotation like this:
- Fireball until the tank has a good threat base
- Use a Flamecap
- Use your trinket
- Use Arcane Power
- Pop your PoM + Pyro macro
- Spam fireball until AP is up
Repeat
Doing some math, with someone in the raid who has imp scorch .. if you don't have someone, the math is a little off, (not including all of the math here, I can pull it out if people are curious), basically cause of the 0.50% more crit damage (so you get 1.75x the damage on a crit), and all of the other talents, your average fireball with the arcane build is 3467 damage, with 30% fire crit before talents, 550 int, and 1000 spell damage. Same stats for a full fire build, and you are at an average of 3420 damage per fireball.
THEN, add in Arcane Power, plus a proper rotation maximizing the use of AP. And it should be a lot more damage.
Your fireballs in the Fire build should hit for 2115-2337 and crit for 3173-3506, while in the Arcane Build, they hit for 1931-2071, and crit for 3380-3625. And don't forget to factor in Ignite ticks, as they are going to be bigger as well.
Maybe my math / ideas are totally off here, but interested to see if anyone has any comments / suggestions.
Post by Zequel
I've done the math for both specs. Let's assume a well geared mage with 500 int and +900 dmg.
Comparing the 2 specs:
PwF and Pyromaniac cancel out Arcane Instability.
So you're looking at the following DPS talent matchups:
40/18/3Mind Mastery, Spell Power,Arcane Power, Arc Potency
VS
0/48/3Firepower, Molten Fury, Combustion, Crit Mass, Empowered Fireball.
- Arc Potency provides 3% crit over time, Crit Mass is a straight 6% crit.
- Combustion and Arcane Power are just about a wash over time (though AP wastes mana, Comb conserves mana with MoE) You can argue that you can stack PoM/trinket/etc with AP but I'd make the argument you could do it with MF, and have a heck of a lot more time to do it vs. a raid boss.
- Mind Mastery would give you +125 dmg with 500 int, Empowered Fireball would give you (900*.15) = 135 dmg. Note, with worse gear, MM is better than EF.
- So that leaves Spell Power vs. Firepower and Molten Fury. Molten Fury works out to around a 4% increase in damage so +14% to your overall damage vs a 50% damage increase to your crit *bonus*, so if your fireball crits were usually 2500 including the ignite DOT, they'd hit for 2940 - that's a 16% increase but just for your crits. The 14% increase from FP/MF would apply to all your spell hits.
So CM > AP, EFP > MM and FP+MF > SP. The others are a wash. Fire wins. I'm ignoring PoM and Incineration since they're not as substantial as the discussed talents.