this is how to fix arcane

[:1]1. Make arcane blast buff work on ALL arcane spells again. This rewards a mage for finding the opportunity to get quick casts in during a mobile fight. Plain and simple. Also allows us to, overall, maintain higher dps while managing our mana = better conserve phase.

2. Make arcane missiles castable while moving. fixes a !@#$ ton of both of raid and pvp mobility issues by offering us, flat out, more mobile damage without making any significant mechanic changes.

3. Buff the damage of arcane barrage by 20%. This is our definitive ability when we choose the arcane talent tree. Make it worth something. In PvE this will make our mobile damage non-piss poor. With arcane blast buff stacking, you will see your spec-defining ability actually hit for nice numbers. In PvP, when an arcane mage gets trained he has very little tools at his disposal; a harder hitting arcane barrage would be a very solid addition to his arsenal.

4. (pvp only) Redesign time warp and make it cast Slow on your target and all targets within a 15 yard radius of your target. 1 minute cooldown. For arcane mages, there will be a talent that reduces the cooldown by 15/30/45 seconds. (Keep in mind with 4.0.6 changes, Slow is an 8 second debuff.)This would make arcane mages infinitely more useful in BG's and arena, but not be OP enough to keep entire crowds locked down because it could be quickly dispelled. (or if priests are present as in all rated BGs, mass dispelled). As it is, time warp seems almost useless as virtually every PvE encounter will have a shaman that can provide heroism/bloodlust. Mages can't use their new 85 ability in PvE or even PvP anymore with 4.0.6, so why do we even have this crappy ability, copied from another class? Giving us something fresh and interesting!

5. (pvp only) Make Improved Polymorph cast it's stun on the target not only when it is broken from damage, but from anything - if it is dispelled too. Polymorph already gets almost instantly dispelled in 2k+ arena brackets whenever it lands, and this would give arcane mages a little bit of very much needed control. The stun should DR, of course.

6. Make Presence of Mind affect your entire party, and cause your spell to be free to cast. PoM is currently a very underwhelming 10 point talent that has virtually 0 pve impact and not nearly as strong PvP impact as when it was introduced in Vanilla (where people had LONG casts that did heavy damage). This would give PoM at least a decent "oomph" to raid DPS as it could provide up to 5x the PvE benefit as it currently does, and would make it a staple cooldown for arena as a way to quickly heal, damage, or CC once every 1.5 minutes (but with coordination needed).
bump for the cause of legit awesome changes.
or (pvp only) roll frost.
Edit: Nevermind. I was a moron.
some good points and some hilarious ideas
bump
Great ideas. One thing though. We're topping DPS charts right now as fire PVE, and ROFLSTOMPING as frost pvp, why does the most OP class right now have a QQ thread? Still, great ideas, you get my vote.

1. Make arcane blast buff work on ALL arcane spells again. This rewards a mage for finding the opportunity to get quick casts in during a mobile fight. Plain and simple. Also allows us to, overall, maintain higher dps while managing our mana = better conserve phase.

Good.

2. Make arcane missiles castable while moving. fixes a !@#$ ton of both of raid and pvp mobility issues by offering us, flat out, more mobile damage without making any significant mechanic changes.

Good.

3. Buff the damage of arcane barrage by 20%. This is our definitive ability when we choose the arcane talent tree. Make it worth something. In PvE this will make our mobile damage non-piss poor. With arcane blast buff stacking, you will see your spec-defining ability actually hit for nice numbers. In PvP, when an arcane mage gets trained he has very little tools at his disposal; a harder hitting arcane barrage would be a very solid addition to his arsenal.

If you really wanted some PvE applications with this you'd have to make it auto proc AM because shooting one thing then running would net less dps than being able to cast something the entire time moving and following it with a nuke.

4. (pvp only) Redesign time warp and make it cast Slow on your target and all targets within a 15 yard radius of your target. 1 minute cooldown. For arcane mages, there will be a talent that reduces the cooldown by 15/30/45 seconds. (Keep in mind with 4.0.6 changes, Slow is an 8 second debuff.)This would make arcane mages infinitely more useful in BG's and arena, but not be OP enough to keep entire crowds locked down because it could be quickly dispelled. (or if priests are present as in all rated BGs, mass dispelled). As it is, time warp seems almost useless as virtually every PvE encounter will have a shaman that can provide heroism/bloodlust. Mages can't use their new 85 ability in PvE or even PvP anymore with 4.0.6, so why do we even have this crappy ability, copied from another class? Giving us something fresh and interesting!

TW was given to mages so raids didn't have to be forced to take a shaman. Its a quality of life thing for 10m raids.

5. (pvp only) Make Improved Polymorph cast it's stun on the target not only when it is broken from damage, but from anything - if it is dispelled too. Polymorph already gets almost instantly dispelled in 2k+ arena brackets whenever it lands, and this would give arcane mages a little bit of very much needed control. The stun should DR, of course.

Or make it stun the dispeller if dispelled and stun the target if broken from damage.

6. Make Presence of Mind affect your entire party, and cause your spell to be free to cast. PoM is currently a very underwhelming 10 point talent that has virtually 0 pve impact and not nearly as strong PvP impact as when it was introduced in Vanilla (where people had LONG casts that did heavy damage). This would give PoM at least a decent "oomph" to raid DPS as it could provide up to 5x the PvE benefit as it currently does, and would make it a staple cooldown for arena as a way to quickly heal, damage, or CC once every 1.5 minutes (but with coordination needed).

Depends on application here, would it last until the mage uses his PoM or just 1 cast? Cause if it was til the mage used his PoM he would be brought to afk and survive throughout a fight.
Most of these are good ideas and I support this thread.

For PoM, though, it would just be a lot easier to simply reduce the cooldown to around 30-45 seconds or so. 2 minutes for a single instant ABlast is lame, but every 30 seconds would be decent.

Most of these are good ideas and I support this thread.

For PoM, though, it would just be a lot easier to simply reduce the cooldown to around 30-45 seconds or so. 2 minutes for a single instant ABlast is lame, but every 30 seconds would be decent.

Yeah, but then you're looking at instacast polys in pvp. The world will dRown in qq tears.
Deleted by Boombones

Fire - Criticism Welcome

[:1]Let me just start off by saying, before you armory me, yes, I will be getting Power Torrent when I can afford the crystals, and have a Volcanic Deck waiting for 5/6th, whenever the Faire is.

Alright so, onto the subject at hand, I'm fairly certain all my gemming/enchanting/reforging is right, and my spec is basically cookie cutter bar 1 point (Dropping 1 point in impact for 1 point in AC, for that little bit of added longevity on some longer fights, personal preference, really).

But I don't feel like my DPS is quite up to where it should be on your average fight.
I've gone full pure int gems in all slots where the socket bonus doesn't meet or exceed the amount of int gained otherwise (Bar my legs, as 60 + 20 hit + 20 crit works out to be more valuable than 80 int, according to Rawr and Simcraft).
I've reforged the lesser stat on every piece of gear that didn't have hit, to hit, it being our number 1 stat after int and all.

And I believe my enchants are right, if possible, enchant for int (I don't currently have the crystals for int to bracers and such), if not, then hit and so on down the priority list.
The only exception to this being my boots, as the slight move speed increase is quite useful, especially on fights like V&T, strafing out of Theralion's fire patches.

I'm sitting on just above the soft haste cap for an additional Combustion tick, coupled with the %5 spell haste buff.

And with all this I only seem to be pulling about... 15k? On average, depending on Hot Streak RNG of course, I can generally peak around 22k if I'm fairly lucky, and I know Fire isn't all about consistency, but 15k just seems a tad low.

Anyway, any advice would be appreciated, and sorry for the odd structuring, I really just typed it all out as it came to mind, so it's kinda jumbled up. :P
i agree i dont do enough dps fix me
I'm not complaining I'm not doing enough. Just asking for criticism.
But thanks for the troll post.
Glanced over it, looks okay.

It's difficult to evaluate performance without logs.

Can't help you unless you post some.
Yeah, I was thinking that, I'll update this post with logs on Wednesday.
Like I said, my DPS is fine, at least for normal modes, just wanna make sure I'm getting the most out of what I've got.
your kit looks fine and it sounds like you're doing what you should be doing for your equipment level. my only criticism is your choice in trinkets but as long as you say you have volcano on standby that should work out eventually.
Alchy Stone + Volcano is a nice combo if you don't have the Bell...

Definitely ditch the mirror.
Yeah the Mirror is just what I had to replace a terrible green trinket.
Volcano is sitting there in my bags taunting me till the faire :P and should have the bell fairly soon.

Is Improved Flamestrike a need for Fire PvP?

[:1]I've been reading through my talents in depth for awhile now. Originally I was going to put 2 points in Improved Flamestrike for extra DPS, but I noticed that it's only useful when there are only 2 people affected by Blastwave, and you may not have that situation happen all the time.

Is it worth putting 2 points in the talent? Or should I rely on a different AoE spell like Arcane Explosion?

Thank you for your time :)


I can't speak for arenas, but I love it in battlegrounds

Personally, I prefer the talent more for the instant cast flamestrike more than adding the flamestrike effect on blastwave (also nice) but it gives the fire mage another trick to use on the run. Sometimes scorch isn't your best option. I like to drop the flamestrike while running if there are multiple people in the area or steathies and hope they don't talent to defend against AoEs.

In the larget battlegrounds it usually isn't hard to make sure you hit at least 2 ppl w/ your blastwave either..

As a fire mage, my main AoE is Living bomb, ignite prics and impact. I use flamestrikes to hit a lot of people and get impact procs more often to spread my dots.

Alliance teamwork

[:1]Alliance teamwork, a miracle at best and a strife and improbability at the very least. To all Alliance, for the love of everything dear to you, please stick together and to the brilliant 'leeroys' out there who run in to multitudes of Horde, did you honestly think you were that skilled that you could wipe out 6-8 Hordes single-handedly AND capture the flag / cap the base? If that's your idea of winning a battleground or farming honor points then you have another thing coming. I am always polite when trying to suggest to my group to stick together and almost always either get the finger, a troll spamming caps in response to me or no one says anything and we lose anyway. Before you tell me to shove it, or complain about my gear, please consider that I am doing my very best to gear up and that we all start somewhere. So... Should I make a macro asking Alliance to stick together or will I just be wasting my breath? Any (polite and civil) suggestions on how I / we might be able to overcome this issue and start working together?
I would try and bring friends with you that know how to follow directions. It could help, as there will be less clueless people running around. I gave up on trying to instruct others, as they either won't listen, or I'll get very nasty responses (then again, I deserve it for typing rather than fighting)

But, if you really wanted to try and get others to listen, try and call out INC's and who has the flag, and call out healers! Surely, they won't ignore that....I mean, if you call out their healer, that HAS to be useful information!
You don't. Assuming that the unwashed masses even considered looking here in the first place to learn, they're all illiterate apes that can only smash their face against the keyboard.

So, a moot point.
I think it's a waste. I always call out incs and tell people where the EFC is going, whatever it takes to get people moving in the right direction but sometimes...a lot of the time, actually...my information is ignored...

I've asked for people to defend towers until they cap in AV only to be ignored every single solitary time. I've lost almost every AV match I've entered because everyone rushes past the towers and then stands around flirting with Drek. The Horde comes in, defends Galv, recaps all their towers, and still manages to down ours in the process.

I've asked for people to defend me when I'm carrying the flag in Twin Peaks and been ignored a good portion of the time, too. One match, I had no defense at all. None. My entire team clumped up in mid like smelly dog crap so I ran up to get the flag myself. I said "help" in BG chat 3 times. I even began to run towards my group and ping the map to try to get their attention. Not once did anyone move in my direction, even when I was within sight. After 4 deaths trying to get the flag, I tabbed out of the game to surf the forums. I'd had enough. And yet, this team that was so stupid had the presence of mind to report me AFK...but didn't have the presence of mind to leave mid for over 15 minutes... So I ran back in, hit someone with Ice Lance, ran away and disappeared. I wasn't about to take the debuff for that, they had to have been the worst team I've ever seen.

The examples of stupidity continue on to SotA where no one will get demos. Everyone will clump up at the yellow gate and leave the demos sit. Only one or two here and there will go out and I'm like really?.... Then you've got WsG which is the same as TP. The only BG I've had good experiences with is Gilneas. I don't know why that is...

Sadly, I've had so many experiences like this that I'm kicking myself for going Alliance. I'd be kicking my brother for talking me into it if he weren't 300 miles away...that'll have to wait until Easter break...
Horde: a teeming crowd or throng : swarm
Alliance: an association to further the common interests of the members; specifically : a confederation of nations by treat

And yet....

When to switch over to Fire Spec?

[:1]So I've been an Arcane Mage since I hit lvl 80 back in WotLK and I'm thinking about making the switch to Fire now for PvE purposes. Sadly, Arcane is just too broken to use right now.

I have checked multiple forums and boards but I thought that asking actual players would be a better approach since the information is different depending on the source. My questions are simple:

1) At what point (gear-wise) should a Mage start making the switch over to Fire? Should Mages wait until they are fully geared in 5-man heroic items (blues), or wait until they start collecting more raid-level items (purples).

2) After Int and Hit what is the current stat priority for Fire Mages? Back in WotLK everything was proc-based with Fire and those procs were all based on the amount of Crit. Is that still the case post-4.0.6?

3) What are the current rotations for single-target and AoE situations? I know the basics of both, but I have heard so many different strats here so I'm just trying to get a feel for what most Fire Mages are acutally using based on what they have seen work best since the patch this week.

**Please do NOT respond to this post if you're going to troll...I would actually like to learn something here, and I'm sure I'm not alone.**

Thanks for reading and I am looking forward to your feedback.

Best PVP Professions for a mage

[:1]What are the best professions (in your opinion) to take PVP wise for a mage?
Can't go wrong with Jewelcrafting...+67 Int Red Gems are the bee's knees.
I've been rolling JC'ing/Engineering. They're a nice combo.

What else should I be doing to gear up?

[:1]So every day I'm running at least the random heroic for valor points and running every quest I can in Tol Barad.

But it seems like once I've finished all the dailies, I get bored waiting for the next heroic to queue up. Is there something else I should be doing to gear up?
Farm gold to buy a Darkmoon Card: Volcano. Trinket is your weakest slot by far, and that's the best trinket any mage can have access too. I see you're an herbalist, so wouldn't be too bad to just mindlessly farm while you wait for queue to pop, yeah?