Getting back into WoW...

[Mighty Bob]

After a 6 moth hiatus I'm finally getting back into WoW. Just reinstalled the client and BC yesterday and catching up on patches.

Anyways, even before I stopped playing altogether I was behind on what the best specs were and on gear drops and stuff like that. Was (and still will be) a rather casual player. Just wondering if anyone could give me some general pointers to get eased back into the game, as well as just how outta date my knowledge of builds is. My main is an Arcane Mage byt eh name of Gheis on Gurubashi server (tried grabbing the Armoury link, but it seems to be down) and I have a little warlock I started on the same server that isn't high enough to show on the Armoury.

Anyways, with Lich King showing up I bet this is outta date, but I was gonna go with an Arc/Frost build for my mage, and an Affliction/Demonolgy set for my warlock. Been hearing things all over that Arc Mages are pretty much screwed with the new talent trees, should I start looking into fire/frost (which I really wanted to avoid, seems like everyones a fire or frost, I liked Arcane damn it...)

On a plus note, my warlock is practically still in diapers and Gheis is only lvl 21 so I don't really have any super gear to get screwed over by the new patch/expansion.

 

[Kayeich]

Eh, I wouldn't worry too much about things like talents and gear. Patch 3.0 is in the PTR right now, so it should be hitting everybody else fairly soon, at which time you're going to want to completely reconsider talents/gear probably. The actual expansion is coming out in just under two months too.

Still, if you are expecting to hit level 70 quickly with both despite being a casual player, things like talents really tend to depend on what you want to do with the characters. Just heroics? Raiding? PvP? Or do you just want general grinding talent advice to get you to 70?

The site, wowwiki, has a lot of good build recommendations for all those things, so I'd just say use one of those builds, and modify slightly based on gamestyle preference.

I'd comment on your linked builds, but I can't access wowhead from work, sadly.

 

[Mighty Bob]

Yeah, I doubt I'll be lvl 50 let alone 70 by the time november rolls in, was more just for my own info. Never popped by WoWWikki, have to look at it, thanks.

And so far I just do PvE, but I'd eventually wanna do some raiding, and to show how generally ignorant I am: What're heroics exactly? Though I doubt I'd be doing either without eventually finding a guild or something.

 

[Ike]

Alrighty.

As it currently stands, pre-3.0, Arcane mages require two pieces of Tier 5 gear to be competitive dps. Fire is just that much better in a raid environment (and frost is that much better, too, in shorter fights), that Arcane mages can't keep up.

In heroics and such, that doesn't matter. Heroics are souped-up versions of the various outlands dungeons, tuned for a level 70 with gear that is mostly from regular 70 dungeons at their easiest (easiest heroics, that is), with kara-minimum gear requirements for the hardest (being magister's terrace). They drop Badges of Justice from each boss, which can be used to buy incredibly kick-ass gear (these badges also drop off of all raid bosses).

Post 3.0, the mage trees will still probably favor fire for raids, because of the extra damage to bosses under 35% life (previously 20%). However, I'm pretty sure the highest rated dps spec in the game atm (as in, the highest dpsing spec of any class in the game) is supposedly a 50/10/11 arcane mage, because of the mechanics of Frostfire bolt. Something like where everyone else is supposed to be around 2k-4k, that spec does 8.5k dps. Not positive, though, but the logic makes sense that it WOULD be a good one. The build is this.

As for warlocks, from the qqing i hear it looks like aff will be the best build, but I don't know for sure.

But for mages... all 3 specs are very viable for raid dps, though they are fucking up arcane blast because they want to see more arcane mages casting missles.

 

[Mighty Bob]

Well if they're wanting more missiles and less blasts they should do something to make it harder to interrupt, or so it the mana cost scales to how long you channel it. Nothing like starting to cast missile then getting cut off 1 sec in, but hey, yer mana's still all gone :rant:

Thanks for the info btw, trying to get as much crammed in as I can before I start playing again, though most of it is for the future. Gonna go look at that build you linked

EDIT:

Completely forgot to ask till now, but what'd be a good addon for more buttons/bars? I generally was just fine with the basic UI but really liked trinity bars, saved me the trouble of cycling through for stuff I don't use all the time.

 

[Kayeich]

The default UI allows you to set up four more bars, iirc. Two atop the normal bar, and two vertical bars on the right-hand side.

If you want something different, an option is Bartender3, although there's honestly quite a bunch.

Bartender3 just basically gives you the option of 10 action bars, and allows you to resize and space the buttons, as well as the shape and number of buttons and where to place them.

 

[Mighty Bob]

Didn't know the default UI let you do that....wonder if it's new or I'm just that unobservant. heh. I'll take a peek at Bartender anyways, just to see what it's about. thanks, now if only the patch would finish loading...cliant was almost 4 gig and it was done in like 3 or 4 hours, but the patch is slow as hell :headbanger:

 

[Scico-Jin]

Didn't know the default UI let you do that....wonder if it's new or I'm just that unobservant. heh. I'll take a peek at Bartender anyways, just to see what it's about. thanks, now if only the patch would finish loading...cliant was almost 4 gig and it was done in like 3 or 4 hours, but the patch is slow as hell :headbanger:

I know what you going through man. My download of the new patch is at 81% and I've been at it for about week. :headbanger: :no:

 

[Solarman]

Alrighty.

As it currently stands, pre-3.0, Arcane mages require two pieces of Tier 5 gear to be competitive dps.? Fire is just that much better in a raid environment (and frost is that much better, too, in shorter fights), that Arcane mages can't keep up.?

In heroics and such, that doesn't matter.? Heroics are souped-up versions of the various outlands dungeons, tuned for a level 70 with gear that is mostly from regular 70 dungeons at their easiest (easiest heroics, that is), with kara-minimum gear requirements for the hardest (being magister's terrace).? They drop Badges of Justice from each boss, which can be used to buy incredibly kick-ass gear (these badges also drop off of all raid bosses).

Post 3.0, the mage trees will still probably favor fire for raids, because of the extra damage to bosses under 35% life (previously 20%).? However, I'm pretty sure the highest rated dps spec in the game atm (as in, the highest dpsing spec of any class in the game) is supposedly a 50/10/11 arcane mage, because of the mechanics of Frostfire bolt.? Something like where everyone else is supposed to be around 2k-4k, that spec does 8.5k dps.? Not positive, though, but the logic makes sense that it WOULD be a good one.? The build is this.

As for warlocks, from the qqing i hear it looks like aff will be the best build, but I don't know for sure.?

But for mages... all 3 specs are very viable for raid dps, though they are fucking up arcane blast because they want to see more arcane mages casting missles.

My two lv 70 mages beg to differ about your pre-3.0 raid suggestion.

40-0-21 heavy-arcane frostbolt spam. higher dps than 2-48-10 fire. almost as much raw damage. mana efficiency through the roof. excellent for raids.

2-48-10 is good for just about anything, though, and fire is an excellent leveling tree if you're uncomfortable aoe grinding. frost is good too though.

 

[Ike]

Alrighty.

As it currently stands, pre-3.0, Arcane mages require two pieces of Tier 5 gear to be competitive dps.á Fire is just that much better in a raid environment (and frost is that much better, too, in shorter fights), that Arcane mages can't keep up.á

In heroics and such, that doesn't matter.á Heroics are souped-up versions of the various outlands dungeons, tuned for a level 70 with gear that is mostly from regular 70 dungeons at their easiest (easiest heroics, that is), with kara-minimum gear requirements for the hardest (being magister's terrace).á They drop Badges of Justice from each boss, which can be used to buy incredibly kick-ass gear (these badges also drop off of all raid bosses).

Post 3.0, the mage trees will still probably favor fire for raids, because of the extra damage to bosses under 35% life (previously 20%).á However, I'm pretty sure the highest rated dps spec in the game atm (as in, the highest dpsing spec of any class in the game) is supposedly a 50/10/11 arcane mage, because of the mechanics of Frostfire bolt.á Something like where everyone else is supposed to be around 2k-4k, that spec does 8.5k dps.á Not positive, though, but the logic makes sense that it WOULD be a good one.á The build is this.

As for warlocks, from the qqing i hear it looks like aff will be the best build, but I don't know for sure.á

But for mages... all 3 specs are very viable for raid dps, though they are fucking up arcane blast because they want to see more arcane mages casting missles.

My two lv 70 mages beg to differ about your pre-3.0 raid suggestion.

40-0-21 heavy-arcane frostbolt spam. higher dps than 2-48-10 fire. almost as much raw damage. mana efficiency through the roof. excellent for raids.

2-48-10 is good for just about anything, though, and fire is an excellent leveling tree if you're uncomfortable aoe grinding. frost is good too though.

Unless you can pull out wws for your arcane frost mage (and an armory link showing him wearing 2piece t5), I call bs.

 

[Souffle]

Frost is great for grinding, lots of crits and I think less downtime, and less risk.

You can hit 70 in about 1-2 weeks depending on how often you play and if you use a decent guide.

As far as warlocks go, post 50, really 55, Demonology is the best leveling tree. Affliction is your raiding spec until you collect a lot of hit gear, then Destruction is your raiding spec.

Not too sure on specs post 3.0 because OOOHH MAN PALLIES ARE FUN FUCK YEAH

 

[Solarman]

Alrighty.

As it currently stands, pre-3.0, Arcane mages require two pieces of Tier 5 gear to be competitive dps.á Fire is just that much better in a raid environment (and frost is that much better, too, in shorter fights), that Arcane mages can't keep up.á

In heroics and such, that doesn't matter.á Heroics are souped-up versions of the various outlands dungeons, tuned for a level 70 with gear that is mostly from regular 70 dungeons at their easiest (easiest heroics, that is), with kara-minimum gear requirements for the hardest (being magister's terrace).á They drop Badges of Justice from each boss, which can be used to buy incredibly kick-ass gear (these badges also drop off of all raid bosses).

Post 3.0, the mage trees will still probably favor fire for raids, because of the extra damage to bosses under 35% life (previously 20%).á However, I'm pretty sure the highest rated dps spec in the game atm (as in, the highest dpsing spec of any class in the game) is supposedly a 50/10/11 arcane mage, because of the mechanics of Frostfire bolt.á Something like where everyone else is supposed to be around 2k-4k, that spec does 8.5k dps.á Not positive, though, but the logic makes sense that it WOULD be a good one.á The build is this.

As for warlocks, from the qqing i hear it looks like aff will be the best build, but I don't know for sure.á

But for mages... all 3 specs are very viable for raid dps, though they are fucking up arcane blast because they want to see more arcane mages casting missles.

My two lv 70 mages beg to differ about your pre-3.0 raid suggestion.

40-0-21 heavy-arcane frostbolt spam. higher dps than 2-48-10 fire. almost as much raw damage. mana efficiency through the roof. excellent for raids.

2-48-10 is good for just about anything, though, and fire is an excellent leveling tree if you're uncomfortable aoe grinding. frost is good too though.

Unless you can pull out wws for your arcane frost mage (and an armory link showing him wearing 2piece t5), I call bs.

Alavir on the Exodar realm
Anaba of the Bloodscalp realm

I don't have wws on either, but I've watched Recount every raid I've done. I'm above fire mages on dps, just below them on raw damage, and I have only had to use evocation ONCE in the last two months, and that was after a battle rez. 40-0-21, no T5 at all. Spam frostbolts and you get 4000-5500 damage crits depending on how many cooldowns you blow.

When I switched Alavir from 2-48-11 to 40-0-21 my dps went up by around 60. Same gear and everything.

tl;dr: my experience says frostbolt spam for t4 > fire spec. I haven't tried arcane blast/missiles rotation with this spec, so I'm not sure how much that would do, but watching my frostbolts go '5500, 2200, 2200, 5500' is fun.

 

[Ike]

Alrighty.

As it currently stands, pre-3.0, Arcane mages require two pieces of Tier 5 gear to be competitive dps.á Fire is just that much better in a raid environment (and frost is that much better, too, in shorter fights), that Arcane mages can't keep up.á

In heroics and such, that doesn't matter.á Heroics are souped-up versions of the various outlands dungeons, tuned for a level 70 with gear that is mostly from regular 70 dungeons at their easiest (easiest heroics, that is), with kara-minimum gear requirements for the hardest (being magister's terrace).á They drop Badges of Justice from each boss, which can be used to buy incredibly kick-ass gear (these badges also drop off of all raid bosses).

Post 3.0, the mage trees will still probably favor fire for raids, because of the extra damage to bosses under 35% life (previously 20%).á However, I'm pretty sure the highest rated dps spec in the game atm (as in, the highest dpsing spec of any class in the game) is supposedly a 50/10/11 arcane mage, because of the mechanics of Frostfire bolt.á Something like where everyone else is supposed to be around 2k-4k, that spec does 8.5k dps.á Not positive, though, but the logic makes sense that it WOULD be a good one.á The build is this.

As for warlocks, from the qqing i hear it looks like aff will be the best build, but I don't know for sure.á

But for mages... all 3 specs are very viable for raid dps, though they are fucking up arcane blast because they want to see more arcane mages casting missles.

My two lv 70 mages beg to differ about your pre-3.0 raid suggestion.

40-0-21 heavy-arcane frostbolt spam. higher dps than 2-48-10 fire. almost as much raw damage. mana efficiency through the roof. excellent for raids.

2-48-10 is good for just about anything, though, and fire is an excellent leveling tree if you're uncomfortable aoe grinding. frost is good too though.

Unless you can pull out wws for your arcane frost mage (and an armory link showing him wearing 2piece t5), I call bs.

Alavir on the Exodar realm
Anaba of the Bloodscalp realm

I don't have wws on either, but I've watched Recount every raid I've done. I'm above fire mages on dps, just below them on raw damage, and I have only had to use evocation ONCE in the last two months, and that was after a battle rez. 40-0-21, no T5 at all. Spam frostbolts and you get 4000-5500 damage crits depending on how many cooldowns you blow.

When I switched Alavir from 2-48-11 to 40-0-21 my dps went up by around 60. Same gear and everything.

tl;dr: my experience says frostbolt spam for t4 > fire spec. I haven't tried arcane blast/missiles rotation with this spec, so I'm not sure how much that would do, but watching my frostbolts go '5500, 2200, 2200, 5500' is fun.

... So what exactly IS your dps looking like, then?

Because while your anectodal evidence of doing ~60 more dps as frost is nice, having real data kind of is the key. (In those reports, if you're too lazy to check out the dps %'s for the mages, Micton is always 2/48/11, hltman is a 40/0/21 build, and in the first two Viperxt is 2/48/11, and in the Vashj attempts is... 10/0/51, I think. Something like that).

Most of the earlier WWS I had have apparently expired, which is kinda lame.

But then, with the WWS you can see the sort of dps that I consider 'good' for mages, and mathematically its been proven that the longer the fight is, the better fire is, whereas the shorter the fight is, the better frost is.


And with 2piece t5, Arcane become competitive with its AB rotation.


And yeah, if you were wondering, I'm Ikefury, and as a semi-intelligent enhance shaman who knows how to itemize (or did, pre-3.0) owns damage charts through t5 content.

 

[Solarman]

On Anaba, my average dps for the last ZA I did was something around 890. Alavir's down around 700 as I recall, been too long since I last played on him to remember. Your mages all outgear mine by quite a bit. I only recently broke 1k spell damage unbuffed with arcane spec. If I respecced out of arcane's insane +damage talents I'd be down around 750-800 +damage or so.

I'll admit, your fire mage has some spectacular dps. But unlike him, I'm not popping evocation/pots/gems, nor do I need elem/resto shammies or spriests to keep my mana bar from going down too quickly. My bar's almost static. And also unlike you guys, I'm not even trying for anything above T4/ZA. Wrath's coming in 2 months, and there really isn't any point.

To put my ZA run in perspective for you, I had NO elem/resto shamans, NO shadow priests, and NO frost mages. There were two fire mages, and while I slightly outgeared them my dps was still >20 higher every fight. And, except for deaths, I never stopped for mana. We had a few changes between eagle and dragonhawk, but by class, our group setup was:

Group 1
40-0-21 mage (me)
fire mage
fire mage/healadin
healadin
pvp-holy priest
Group 2
tankadin
prot warrior
resto druid/enh shammy
surv. hunter
warlock

That's about normal for my 10-mans. If there was a spriest or resto shammy the fire mages might have overtaken me. But they didn't, because unlike me they had to watch their mana drop and drop and drop, and stop to Evocate. Sheer mana efficiency is what my spec's good at.

Show me T4 wws info from people whose gear is about my level. I only WISH I could get 4-digit dps.

 

[Ike]

Meh, I wish the WWS DID save over 15 days old, because quite frankly, only in the last few weeks did we even have any regular raiding ele-shamans, shadow priests, boomkins, and our only resto shaman goes in the healer group.

I suppose we are looking at things massively differently, then, because potting/evocate, to me, are just part of a mages life. Being proud of not having to do it at a sacrifice of around 300-400 dps (Because any dps meter you have WILL be lower then fact, because of how they count downtime. So your dps is higher then whatever your meter says it is) doesn't seem all that... great... to me.


But then again, its your call. I only argued when you said arcane gave you better dps, which it doesn't (not until the 2piece t5 bonus, at least).

 

[Solarman]

If we count downtime (time outside combat) toward dps, everyone's average dps goes down. Recount takes your damage done divided by your time in combat to calculate your dps, which is exactly how anything else should calculate it... well, anyway. I highly doubt I'm sacrificing 300 dps at this level, and with the current 10-mans it really doesn't matter. I'll dl wws for next week if it makes you happy, and post the results, assuming I find a group that wants two mages for a 10man. But somehow I doubt I'll see 4-digit dps for anyone at my gear level other than locks even on that.

edit: huh, just realized that my gear is better than I thought it was, now that I have the Scryer's Blade and the Brewfest trink. Damn.

 

[Ike]

If we count downtime (time outside combat) toward dps, everyone's average dps goes down.? Recount takes your damage done divided by your time in combat to calculate your dps, which is exactly how anything else should calculate it... well, anyway.? I highly doubt I'm sacrificing 300 dps at this level, and with the current 10-mans it really doesn't matter.? I'll dl wws for next week if it makes you happy, and post the results, assuming I find a group that wants two mages for a 10man.? But somehow I doubt I'll see 4-digit dps for anyone at my gear level other than locks even on that.

edit: huh, just realized that my gear is better than I thought it was, now that I have the Scryer's Blade and the Brewfest trink.? Damn.

.... Recount counts the entire battles time, and divides your total damage by it.

However, lots of fights involve lots of movement, and many of them you CANT be dpsing that whole time.

WWS takes that into account, and divides your total damage done by the actual time you were dpsing, ignoring gaps between when you were attacking/casting and times you were not.

Thus, in encounters like, say, Tidewalker, your dps skyrockets up between Recount and WWS.