The current state of Mages

Yesterday, I was supposed to have written this post, but since I had some loose ends on tanking, I went with those instead. With that safely out of the way, I can attack this subject instead.

First off, I'll do a short introduction and then I'll deal with the different specs and some global issues.

I raid in what I consider to be a fairly normal guild. We have a bunch of really good players, but we aren't exactly hardcore. We don't have minimum attendance and we cancel raids every now and then due to bad signups. We don't have enough people to run Heroic Ulduar on a regular basis but hope this will change when summer and exam season is over. Our current progress in 25 man is Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002 Deconstructor and Kologarn, and for ten-man, every boss up until Mimiron who we are currently working on downing. Myself, I go on (and occasionally lead) 1-2 ten-man Ulduars per week and have so since we started going.

If you are Frost, I reckon you are so by old habit and nostalgia. I wish I was more like you, but I've discovered that the playstyles are pretty much all fun to me and as such, I'm not that attached to Frost that I used to be. If you go to raids as Frost, your raid leader is desperate for replenishment and you are the best person to lose DPS from. You keep only one point in Enduring Winter to not lose replenishment ticks and with that, Water elemental uptime which means even lower personal DPS. The spec only comes in handy in one fight, and that's General Vezax, and then, most likely only ever in hard mode. I'm sorry, but frost does not currently hold any valid ground in PvE content beyond Naxx-10. Frost will most likely not get any PvE love for a long time, if ever. There's very little AoE where Frost could of have shined with ultraboosted Blizzards. Blizzard seems content with having three viable raid specs for mages, and I guess the rest of the specs are in fairly good shape.

For arcane, there's some better news and some worse news however. The good news is that there are several fights with burn phases where arcane really can shine. There's also some high mobility fights and/or fights with lots of target switching. I'll get back to target switching and mobility in a minute though. You will most likely go for a Incanters Absorbtion spec, you lose very little and you have great potential gains in the fights with fire and frost damage. You won't win the meters on any fights, but you can easily fullfil special fight requirements (nuking Razorscale, popping brittle golems and keeping Singed up on Hodir) with a lot less overall raid DPS loss than other classes. For the target switching, you are dependent on TTW for max damage, something that is not likely to be up at all times in add-heavy environments. For off-tanked adds, you might start doing damage for 2-3 casts before the debuff comes up due to various reasons. Your AoE damage is going to be fairly weak, but your Blizzards hit for at least some more than Fires'. All in all, arcane is decent, almost good, but will keep on falling behind due to scaling issues. The real problem is the paradox: IA-Arcane will shine in high mobility/high damage environments, but Arcane overall is dependent on moments to breathe and popping Evocation. I lost so many evos last night I don't even want to count cause I'd probably break out in tears. The fights where Arcane has a good chance to shine is Flame Leviathan (bursting down the turrets), Razorscale (on-demand burst when she is grounded + IA/Flame warding bonuses), Ignis (popping golems, standing in the fire), Deconstructor (nuking the heart) and Hodir (insane haste bonuses + high mobility + IA/Frost warding bonuses). You'll do good on Kologarn (no Scorch for the constant switching, so someone else better bring the 5% crit, hai 2 u warlocks) and Council (some limited absorbtion, fair amount of "stand and nuke" and uninterrupted evos). Thorim is nice for arcane when going in the gauntlet, it usually uses up all my mana and I can evocate while Thorim has his speech, to start the DPS race at full mana again. Freya has a lot of different mechanics but nothing particularly helps arcane, DPS needs to be consistent during all of the phases, but the burstyness is nice when picking off lashers. Start with 0-stack AB on a low-health mob, retarget one with more health for the 1-stack, retarget yet again for the 2-stack and so on, clear the stack with Abarr when you need to run or use it at a tree. Very efficient mana usage and fun to maximise. For Mimiron, the phase shifts and need for burst are good for Arcane, and there's some use to get from IA, but you won't do overall better or worse than any other mage spec bar Frost really.

Another build that might need to use Evocation is Fire, a very mana-hungry spec. I still rarely have issues with mana even in replenishment-less environments, and even when I do go hard oom with small opportunities at regen, it's fun because it was becuase of lots of Hot streak procs, and tossing instant Pyroblasts just makes me giddy. If I could always cast instant Pyros and be forced to wand 50% of all fights, it'd be totally worth it. Fire is definately one of the specs to choose for your Ulduar dual specs. It's top DPS and will continue to be due to scaling, and the (a bit sad) fact that Ulduar loot is basically tailormade for Fire mages. The T8 bonuses, while RNG dependent(as if Fire needed more of that), benefit Fire the most by far whilst Arcane wants to hold on to 2T7 for the mini-trinket since they pop it every cooldown. The gear is littered with hit which is good news for Fire, which needs a whopping 446 to be capped. Luckily, there's 195 hit just on the T8.25 pieces (although the offpiece to throw out - gloves - has a hefty 60 +hit to make up for elsewhere). There's a healthy amount of spirit around, which means you can pick up spirit + SP + haste items and still not ruin your overall stat balance due to lack of crit on that particular piece. Fire will do good in any fight. If you are one-specced, go with Fire, it's the obvious choice. You'll have a trickier time maximising performance on certain fights compared to other specs, but you'll win out in the long run.

Talking about crit leads me on to the last mage raid spec, Frostfire. They thrive on big crits and is the only mage spec that cleary prioritizes crit rating over haste. The playstyle is exactly the same as Fire, only lacking Torment of the Weak and not providing Focus Magic to the raid, plus slightly worse scaling and slightly better AoE. You'll need less hit which means less hit pieces which means more SP/crit/haste. This is also why I've seen better FFB results in my FFB gear than FB results in my FB gear so far - my FB gear can only be hit capped by gimping other stats, whilst I can remain at 368 hit with FFB gear and hit 40+% main nuke crit fairly easy. My arcane spec only picks up 3% hit from talents so the transition from Arcane gearset to FFB gearset was mainly switching haste for crit, and was done as a step towards fully gearing for FB. Time and gear will close the gap. There's not much to be said about FFB that hasn't already been said about fire, however, there are some places where you will have a slightly easier time than Fire. Your AoE DPS will do some good on Razorscale and Freya, your huge crits will be of great help with breaking out people from Hodir's Flash Freezes and on mobility fights you'll have good use of your fairly high damage per casting time. The fight where you will truly shine is Deconstructor. You'll have no mana problems going all out on the heart and still AoE:ing those last adds coming through because the hunter or warlock slacked on their AoE. You hear that, hunters and warlocks? You should DPS the adds, not me! I haven't been the AoE king for like, forever, and I lose a lot of single-target DPS by switching to adds. Don't tell me I'm slacking - it's your job killing them, not mine. Call me when you need a Frost nova.

In conclusion, gear for Fire and keep that as your primary spec. Keep FFB or IA-Arcane as your second one depending on gear, taste and current demands. I'm going with Arcane even though I think FFB would be better ("= higher DPS"), simply because I want my two specs to feel different. Also, Fire and Arcane share the same basic gearing priorities which means I only have to juggle hit - not hit and crit/haste.