Mage raiding specs, Arcane vs FFB vs FBTTW

[Gorvena]

Starting this thread for people to post their experiences using any of these three "raid" specs, or perhaps a hybrid spec you have found or developed.

I will post spec links and info later (currently out of town on the laptop), but so far for me the best has been FFB, producing a good 500 DPS better than the FB/TTW that seems to be in vogue at the moment. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but FFB is definitely giving me better results.

No experience with Arcane yet.

Post what is working for you or the mages in your raid.

[Qabian]

I was doing FFB because I dislike Evocation. It's like a pair of shoes that won't freaking stay laced up, and it's way too easy to trip over them. With one replenisher, FFB needs no other mana support whatsoever. Cake. And, you know, fire.

But a lot of deaths before Molten Fury range were frustrating me, so I switched to Arcane, because that way no matter how long I'm alive, I'm contributing the most I can. The... one raid I've done so far has made me feel better about it. I like it. It's flexible. It just takes more concentration to consider what rotations suit the mana situation. And it definitely does more damage than FFB.

I hate FB/TTW on principle. The Frost points in FFB at least are useful. Almost all the Arcane points leading to TTW are almost a complete waste of space and are used only because Torment is what it is, not because they have any value of their own. And I had more trouble with its mana than I ever did with Arcane because the rotations have next to no flexibility. Even if it's technically higher damage than Arcane, it also still has that Molten Fury crutch, and if I'm going to have to deal with that, I'd rather at least have the benefit of eternal mana.

So these days I'm back to Arcane.

[Gorvena]

What's your rotation on Arcane?

FFB is, you know, Living Bomb, Scorch, FB until Hot Streak procs, Pyroblast, keep Living Bomb and Scorch up (unless there's a destro lock, then Scorch becomes optional).

I will have to say that I really like the slowing aspect of FFB for doing dailies so I can afford supplies and repairs on raid night.

[Qabian]

The EJ Arcane thread (http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t42876-arcane_thread/) goes into the rotations in detail.

I usually go with AB AB AB ([mbarr] or abarr) or AB AB AB AM. Then you can just reduce the number of Arcane Blasts as mana becomes more tight, or spam the heck out of AB if mana's not an issue for some reason, with Missile Barrage of course. The more movement in a fight, the more likely I'll use Arcane Barrage rather than Arcane Missiles at the top of the stack.

Edit: Oh, and I don't Scorch as FFB anymore. I usually make some Warlock go Afflic for ISB and cover it, or we'll have a raiding Frost mage with us. It's at least in both their rotations and not extraneous and glyph wasting like Scorch is. The Scorch Glyph can be better used for one of the other things -- Living Bomb, Frostfire, and Molten Armor.

Edit 2: And another great reason to hate FB/TTW, without Precision, it needs a metric asstonne of hit. The spec has no talented hit whatsoever, so some of the benefit you get from having TTW at all is lost in needing to regear and regem to get the hit rate in. The standard Arcane spec has both Precision and gets actual use out of Arcane Focus, which FB/TTW does not. For a while I was over-hit with Arcane even with no hit gems at all, so the way I see it, the other specs make more efficient use out of the item level on your gear than FB/TTW, period.

FFB does lack Focus Magic, which is a 'not entirely selfish' buff. Another reason to find the Fire specs frustrating is that being Crit based, they can get very much sucker punched by the RNG if you have a bad run of luck (and the opposite if you have a good one). Arcane doesn't have that problem as it benefits more from Haste and as many total casts as possible, rather than the hopeful lucky dice giant numbers to keep Ignite happy and get in those free Pyros.

[Gorvena]

Yeah, sacrificing spellpower for hit is one of the reasons I lost DPS going with the trendy spec. So, what is hit cap for Arcane? As I understand it, 290 covers it for FFB.

As for "losing" scorch, we (Treasureseekers) don't consistently have a destro lock, and the only other mage who usually makes the raids is also FFB spec.

[Qabian]

Hit cap for Arcane assuming Misery/IFF, Precision, and Arcane Focus is 8%, so 210. Keeping a couple pieces around to push it to 290 on days without the raid hit is useful of course.

I think Destro don't take ISB these days because they're all fire heavy, but Affliction does? It is pretty frustrating that they would give the effect to the lower damage models or require out of rotation spells and glyphing. Blah. That's when you make the warlocks dual spec just to please you.

Given that you need to take the Scorch glyph, are you sure the Molten Armor glyph is more valuable than Frostfire? The Armor glyph's usefulness scales with Spirit, I believe, but I'm not sure what the math is on when to use one over the other because I'd rather beat up Aquizit until he uses shadowbolts than glyph Scorch.

[Gorvena]

I guess I could test the FF glyph vs. the MA glyph. I'm getting pretty good crit numbers as it is right now though, as crit dependent as FFB is.

[Qabian]

Yeah, the difference between the two is minimal and dependent on your Spirit. It might not be hugely worth switching, as the Frostfire Glyph only gets 2% crit increase, but it also increases the base damage on every cast including not-crits by 2%. You could check how much your crit % goes up in your character sheet when you pop Molten Armor and make the judgment call that way.

[Gorvena]

How RNG dependent is Arcane? I've been having suck luck with the RNG for crits the last couple of weeks and my DPS has reflected it.

[Tiraline]

I don't mean to be snarky, by no means, but what do FFB and FBTTW stand for?

And, may I post about instancing, even if I'm not 80-raiding? Or is raiding at 80 such a different beast from previous instances that input wouldn't be helpful? Not snarking; just asking.

Because I r Frost.

[Gorvena]

FFB = Frostfire Bolt (deep fire with +hit frost talents)
FBTTW = Fireball, Torment the Weak (deep fire/arcane spec)

Please post your observations. I used to be deep frost, but found that I get better burst damage with frostfire. I am considering a dual-spec to have PvP frost as an option though.

[Grayslin]

80 Raiding is mainly different in the difficulty compared to pre-80 instancing. Enrage timers and other raid boss mechanics make eeking out that last few percentage points of DPS actually matter more than it does pre-80.

That said, the fundamentals are the same and maximizing pve performance, even if it isn't AS necessary is still a good thing. The main differences are going to come with the difference in rating requirements to reach hit caps, defense caps, etc.

[Thalevia]

Just confirming what Qabian said. No destro lock has improved shadowbolt cause if they are destro, they are fire. Affliction and/or demo locks will usually pick it up.

[Tiraline]

Hmm. Thanks for the info.

Thus far, I've gotten pretty good results with a deep Frost spec with Arcane touches. Mostly, I play defensive and endurance (I don't like running out of mana, and I run with a prot pally at all times), so when the time comes to go full-out, I may shift my PvE spec to Fire. Just a disclaimer up front.

I've noticed that Fingers of Frost has a tendency to proc whether the target is freezable or not, so I can, under those circumstances, actually get bigger damage off a double-Ice Lance than just rolling with my standard Bolt spells. My current highs are 4250 on a Frostbolt crit (IOW, half the time), and 5000 on a double-shot Ice Lance. Not very impressive to 80's, I know, but when you're 75 and operating with greens, it's always nice to see the numbers go up. (Bonus SP at the moment is over 1000.)

...I would mention the 22K Frostbolt crits on Molten War Golems in BRD, back when I was 50-ish, but that might be considered cheating. :p

And the Replenishment effect from the Frostbolt is always welcome when you don't have a ret pally to hand. I've specced into Arcane Concentration for Clearcasting (useful for throwing Blizzards), and I'll probably pick up Focus Magic because Issachar crits like a crazy person, too.

I don't generally have to stop and drink every five minutes on a three-man SV run, and I can out-DPS a certain 80 ret pally whose name I will not mention...

That's my experience thus far for PvE. Subject to change.

As far as PvP, I can't really say a lot, because Issa and I seldom travel without the other, so we always have back-up. I play a fairly defensive game for a mage, though, so I like Frost. I don't gamble much.

[Qabian]

Xarja does Frost/TTW these days. She does quite well and definitely holds her own. She's not number one, but then neither am I anymore. And she does bring Replenish as well as the need for no one else to pick up Scorch/ISB, which everyone appreciates, and Frost AoE is just plain badass. (Although, for the moment, if you have the full 3 ranks in Enduring Winter and your Frostbolts ever get hasted down to less than 2 seconds, which isn't too hard to do, as Frost should be gearing for Haste and not Crit in order to get more casts overall and more FoF procs, you end up eating the rest of the raid's Replenish with applications of the buff that never actually provide the effect, which is why they're changing its mechanic.)

Fingers of Frost is the answer to things that are immune to being snared. It's designed to work like that. The math has dictated that Frostbolts will always get more bang for your buck out of FoF, but it is possible to sneak in an extra Ice Lance to Shatter combo an extra crit out of FoF if you're on the ball. At this point Lances aren't really viable in PvE except in said extraneous-FoF-cast Shatter combos. Frostbolts should still do more. Unless there's a mobility issue and the instant cast is handy.

Raiding is a fairly different beast from 5-mans, yes. The concerns about Damage Per Second aren't really on the same level, as 5s tend to be more about working with the group that you have, rather than doing the awesomest as awesome possible assuming you have everything you need. The EJ folks (http://elitistjerks.com/f75/) do serious mathings to try and get the best out of raiding, but 5s... don't really have that kind of research community.

There are always random elements in this stuff. The lack of crit dependence for Hot Streak does make Arcane a little more dependable, but there are still elements where you can't do anything about it. Missile Barrage, when it procs, is sweet DPS, especially with Arcane Blast stacks behind it, but it is still chance on cast (rather than 2 crits in a row), so it's possible to go pretty long without seeing it at all, which can be frustrating. But the rotations take that into account with using Arcane Barrage to get some use out of the stacks instead of always waiting for the proc. And sometimes you get a whole bunch of them in a row, which is nice.

And pushback becomes frustrating as well, which is sometimes a timing thing, sometimes just bad luck. It's possible to talent Arcane Missiles so that none are lost due to pushback, don't even have to spend full points in it if there's a paladin running Concentration Aura. But it's not possible to talent Evocation's pushback, and any suddenly needed movement, boss grab, shields down pushback, anything like that can leave you mana starved if it comes down to it. And all of those things can eat a missile channel as well. 'tis the plague of channeled spells generally.

But overall, because Arcane is not reliant on Hot Streak or Ignite to do well, it is less RNG dependent.

[Gorvena]

So, I respecced to Arcane; waiting on a raid night to see how much improvement my DPS returns. I was having major RNG problems, resulting in a 3100 dps night followed by a 2400 dps night and the raid leader wanting to know wtf...

400g aside, I really hope it works better.

[Maithanet]

Blades main raiding Mage couldnt work out his low FBTTW numbers...

Then visited a Mage Trainer.

I facepalmed.

As for my Mage, still only 65, I dont know if I wanna do with them or my Hunter next, if I do do my Mage, I'll let you know.

[Lisbet]

Now I'm not a mage - but I do raid with them - and from what our top dpsing mage says, arcane is GREAT for nax/maly/etc etc tier 7 raiding. Once you hit ulduar full time though the burst damage arcane does doesn't scale nearly as well as ffb or deep fire talent specs will - due in part to needing high sustained damage vrs high burst.

In nax its about the DPS - in Ulduar its about the damage done overall.

[Gorvena]

I got an "Ulduar specific" arcane spec from EJ, so we'll see how that goes.

[Qabian]

I've been doing fairly well as Arcane or at least considerably better than I had been doing as FFB, but I've been able to abuse the hell out of Incanter's Absorption and Frost Warding. I've actually found a lot of Ulduar mages are going Arcane pre4T8.

What you're probably talking about Lis is "in full Ulduar gear" as there is a lot of hit available on certain Ulduar pieces and the 4T8 bonus is definitely a lot better for Hot Streak than for Missile Barrage. I noticed that of the 3 mages Premonition had at their Yogg+0 kill, 1 was FBTTW and 2 were FFB. Now they might've changed specs since then, but there's a definite push for Fire. I was actually a little surprised at having 2 FFB and wonder what the factors were for that.

Still, with the problems with hit rating for FBTTW and the sdlfkjsdf annoying RNG crap for Hot Streak, I am much preferring the consistency of output that comes with Arcane and Haste versus Fire and Crit for Ulduar through the Keepers anyway. Fire is definitely sweet over a long haul fight that gets into Molten Fury, especially as FFB where mana is not even a consideration, but I actually find Fire is spiky as all hell and difficult to get the most out of cooldowns, whereas Arcane is much more smooth when banging one's head against walls.

I was FFB through most of Naxx and it was great. My output with it on first hitting Ulduar was complete crap, though. Damage done overall can really tank on progression fights for Fire when you're working through repeated efforts and never hit Molten Fury range.

[Qabian]

Voila! Someone else wrote it up. Summarizes the basics and the current differences between the specs pretty nicely, though.

Mage Raiding Guide - 3.1 (http://merope.wordpress.com/)

[Irontoe]

This guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-jHePE6m1Y) has some pretty good tips on spec and rotation.

[Okhu]

This guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-jHePE6m1Y) has some pretty good tips on spec and rotation.

What is this I don't even---- FFFFF

[Gorvena]

Voila! Someone else wrote it up. Summarizes the basics and the current differences between the specs pretty nicely, though.

Mage Raiding Guide - 3.1 (http://merope.wordpress.com/)
According to this, Arcane is no longer worth it...

Yes/no? I hate the mana inefficiency of Arcane, but the burst is really good, and I really don't want to have to regem for +hit and go FBTTW...

[Qabian]

Heh, the writer actually said she doesn't play Arcane anymore and didn't want to bother writing up something she doesn't know. However, some people did complain to her that switching from Arcane to FBTTW severely gimped their DPS mainly because of one thing -- hit rating.

Okay, I lied, two things -- also T8. If you have 4T8, Arcane's going to be a waste of time compared to free Pyros. If you don't have the hit rating in your gear to pull off FBTTW without sacrificing gem slots, but you do have 4T8, go FFB. You'll get more bang for your buck.

However, if your gear's at a level where you have neither 4T8 nor the required hit rating to not gimp yourself, Arcane's as viable as it ever was.

Of course, this is advice from someone who doesn't raid/read those boards anymore, but I don't recall any other drastic changes that might affect mage raiding recently. I believe Arcane's getting a bit of a buff in the upcoming patch.

Edit: Oh, except Living Bomb. Yeah... Living Bomb on multiple targets can be... huge or pointless depending on your setup and how quickly your group moves through trash. Still, it's another reason to consider moving off Arcane, but I found the biggest benefit from that was the free Pyros from 4T8 as the bombs go off, so... yeah. Single target fights will be basically what I said above, but anything with multiple targets to play with, which is a lot of fights, Fire gets an extra edge.

[Gorvena]

*sigh*

[Ansha]

Anyone else messed around with Arcane dps since 3.2.2?

Between the extra 18% more damage from the 4th AB (glyphed) stack and the more frequent Missile Barrage procs, I'm seeing a pretty substantial increase in dps and a fair amount more mana-efficiency.

My rotation at this point is ABx4, AP-IcyVeins, AM (whether MBarr is up or not), repeat.

MBarr's 40% proc-rate almost guarantees I have one going by the fourth AB.

[Qabian]

I've heard it's competitive if not better than Fire now, and the people sticking with Fire are doing so as Scorch bitches/style preference. No personal experience, though.

[Gorvena]

I'm seeing an improvemet with the extra AB.

I also replaced Dying Curse with the Brewfest pocketwatch and dumped a bunch of superflous hit for a jack-load of crit.

[Qabian]

Arcane, as far as I know, does better with Haste over Crit because its procs are chance per cast, rather than Hot Streak which is chance per Crit, and when I was doing both, I completely regemmed between specs, but if Crit is what you had lying around it certainly can't hurt.

[Haldren]

Not to mention the crit returns for fire are -much- better than those for arcane. Point for point, haste is a lot better than crit for arcane (Especially once you hit 2 piece T9...my molten armor is worth 10% crit by itself). Crit is obviously better than extra hit, but haste is what you want to shoot for, aside from SP.

[Alphaeus]

I just plain prefer Arcane's play style over fire, and it always felt more dependable than Fire, since I rarely if ever, got hotstreak procs.

[Gorvena]

Yeah, well when I get a haste trinket I'll replace the crit one.

Sure wish I could try out the new rotation in a raid environment... *eyes treasureseekers officers*

[Haldren]

Regular ToC five man. Abyssal Rune. Actually higher rated than a 219 trinket I replaced. Easy as hell to get.

[Gorvena]

Thanks.

[Gorvena]

Got it and almost immediately replaced it with the Maexna trinket...

New question concerning spec: Student of the Mind vs. Torment the Weak. Discuss please.

[Haldren]

No question. Torment. Every tank class/spec has something that will proc it and as an arcane mage, those three points equate to a flat 12% damage buff. Period.

[Gorvena]

Thanks. That's what I thought. Besides, spirit only affects crit, which is, as previously discussed, superflous for Arcane.

[Haldren]

Because I found it interesting and felt like sharing, these are the simulations for 3.3 mage raid dps. Credit goes to Lhivera of Greymane, one of the better mage theorycrafters out there, in my opinion. A lot of this is an attempt to figure out exactly what frost spec will be tops, since Blizzard seems to be making a decent effort in catching that spec up for PvE.


SimulationCraft Results

Numbers are taken from 300-second full raid simulations, one stationary, one with about 10% movement time. 3.3.0 settings are enabled. Note that we're not yet certain that Frozen Core is working correctly in the simulator, and Water Elemental mana is not yet modeled (though in a fight of this duration, that probably doesn't matter). These results are preliminary and will undoubtedly evolve as the PTR evolves and the simulation improves.

The numbers in parentheses are: (X% / Y%)
- X: % of top damage (spec DPS / top DPS)
- Y: % increase required to match top (top DPS / spec DPS)

Stationary Results
10167: 57/3/11 Arcane
10082: 20/51/0 Fire (99.2% / 0.8%)
9713: 53/18/0 Arcane (95.5% / 4.7%)
9664: 0/53/18 Frostfire (95.1% / 5.2%)
8871: 30/0/41 Frost (87.3% / 14.6%)
8631: 20/0/51 BFF Frost (84.9% / 17.8%)
8592: 20/0/51 Frost (84.5% / 18.3%)
8580: 18/0/53 SotM Frost (84.3% / 18.6%)
8566: 18/0/53 Impact Frost (84.3% / 18.7%)
8081: 18/0/53 Frost (79.5% / 25.8%)

10% Mobility Results
9336: 20/51/0 Fire
9211: 57/3/11 Arcane (98.7% / 1.4%)
8978: 0/53/18 Frostfire (96.2% / 4.0%)
8896: 53/18/0 Arcane (95.3% / 4.9%)
8004: 30/0/41 Frost (85.7% / 16.6%)
7769: 20/0/51 BFF Frost (83.2% / 20.2%)
7698: 20/0/51 Frost (82.5% / 21.3%)
7667: 18/0/53 SotM Frost (82.1% / 21.8%)
7667: 18/0/53 Impact Frost (82.1% / 21.8%)
7209: 18/0/53 Frost (77.2% / 29.5%)


Conclusions and Comments

Optimal Spec

What should be the optimal Frost spec? I would argue in favor of 20/0/51 BFF. With perfect play of both Brain Freeze and Frozen Core procs, this spec should beat all the other Frost specs, and most closely approach Fire and Arcane (preferably within 5%, but that's a long-term goal).

This allows the sacrifice of small amounts of damage (dropping a couple points from Arcane, for example) to pick up some Frost flavor in the form of decreased cooldowns or Deep Freeze or an increased snare on Blizzard.

This may indicate that some significant DPS talents need to be shifted deeper into the tree, out of reach of a 30-point Arcane build.

Value of Brain Freeze

In a stationary encounter, perfect use of Brain Freeze increases DPS by some 0.37% - 0.4% (depending on whether Spell Impact is included in the spec).

Even with 10% mobility, Brain Freeze adds only about 0.85% - 0.9% DPS.

This is a very poor return on a 3-point investment.

Value of Student of the Mind and Spell Impact

Each of these is worth only about 0.1% - 0.3% DPS per talent point, and they have virtually identical value, with Student of the Mind being worth very slightly more if the spec does not include Brain Freeze.

Value of 3.3 Changes

The DPS increase of 20/0/51 BFF over the old 18/0/53 3.2.2 build is about 6.7%, with the great majority of the increase (about 85%) coming from the Water Elemental.

Mobility

You'll note that Frost falls further behind the top spec as we add mobility. This is OK, every spec needs a weakness -- but it illustrates why having Frost DPS match Arcane and Fire on the rare stationary fight would not make Fire and Arcane obsolete. They would still outperform Frost on most encounters.

[Gorvena]

10k dps makes me hard...

Hell, when I crack 6k on a stand-and-cast boss fight people yell "HAX!"

[Haldren]

This is all assuming ideal circumstances (zero latency, HA), BiS gear from the current tier 9 content and every single raid buff ever.

So yeah, 10k dps without fight mechanics involved is about where we top out in a perfect world. The World of Warcraft, however, is far from perfect.

All in all though, I love where mages are in PvE. Two specs within roughly 1% of each other that can fight with other classes for top spot overall? No complaints here.

[Qabian]

I'll be interested to see if the coming Frost changes amount to anything. Damage from Deep Freeze on bosses, a permanent elemental, and a haste from Ice Lance Shatters off FoF maybe? I'm not sure it will be enough to bring it up to par with the other two, but it'd be a first in my experience if all three specs became similarly PvE viable.

[Haldren]

Those simulation numbers were done with the perma elemental, though they weren't sure if the new Frozen Core was functioning properly on those.

Even still, getting frost to within 15% of arcane and fire is an accomplishment. I doubt we'll ever see frost anywhere within 10% of fire or arcane simply due to frost's inherent survivability and what effect frost having that kind of output would have on PvP.

They're toying with the idea of having FFB proc off of Brain Freeze instead of Fireball, but it's estimated that it'll be roughly a 15% increase for that talent and they're a bit leery of PvP implications.

Edit: They're not 100% on the Frozen Core change anyway. Stay tuned for further frost changes for 3.3.

[Gorvena]

As my gear improves I get happier and happier with Arcane. Last night on twin Valkyrs in 25 ToC I was topping 11k dps, at times scoring crits of 27k. I know the aura helps, but it still felt so good to be so far ahead of everyone else in the raid.