Pre-Cata 4.0.1 buildsFollow

Thanks, Anobix. I think I took 2/2 imp fire blast and 3/3 netherwing presence instead of 3/3 burning soul on the PTR, because I tend to use fireblast quite a bit when moving (Halion purple phase, running to/from spores, PP, etc), but it's good to see what others are thinking about specing. I haven't kept up with many of the other class changes, but isn't there another class who is also going to help the raid with pushback?

edit: no, that's probably not right, I'd have to take at least 1 in burning soul...I'll take a look at it later tonite.

Edited, Sep 30th 2010 5:36pm by Trilliandent

In my experience, playing without pushback resistance is an exercise in frustration.

This is what I've come up with...

This is what I came up with for Fire at 81. It's designed around Scorch.

I love the new Scorch; I love that with talents the damn thing is FREE. I love the free pyroblasts too. I especially love using Scorch with CDs.

The thing with the 4.0.1 spells is they hit a LOT harder. Using an ad-hoc build, I did around 5400 DPS, which given my relatively crappy build and total lack of experience with fire, I feel is petty good for level 80.

Frost at 79. Typical Frost stuff.

And finally Arcane at 79.

Anybody that does not take the Mirror Image minor glyph for Fire or Arcane should have their mage licensed revoked.

I think I forgot to switch it out in my frost build, and I'm too lazy to correct it. Oh well, imagine you're turning stuff into penguins or monkeys. Make it monkeys, penguins are too cute to kill. I don't like monkeys, so blast away.

Yeah, it just looks so fun.

Leveling as Arcane won't be too bad once you hit 20 and get Arcane Blast. After that, it's just gonna be crazy.

For me, Frost just seems to be the least interesting of the builds right now.

While scorch is great and all.... the spell doesn't scale at all compared to the other spells. Using normal spells I hit around 10k dps relatively easily on a target dummy (at 80 on the PTR, without proper glyphs). I'd only use scorch if I had to (no mana left) or moving with fireblast on CD, and LB and Instant pyro unavailble.

Edited, Oct 3rd 2010 9:29pm by Anobix

Fire Build looks good but I will probably skip Improved Scorch in favor of Improved Flamestrike. With Cauterize and Ice Block I don't see myself being in the situation Anobix described much. Improved Scorch would be more useful on content that is really difficult (with no AoE) or unfamiliar.

The Arcane build looks ok. For now there aren't many choices but it's a nice tree to sub in.




Mobs have respectable health bars and kiting gets old when it takes 15 scorches to score a kill. If you're indoors, or in an area densely populated by mobs, fuggedaboutit. Another problem is that Molten Armor doesn't seem ideal on the way from 80-85. Mana is a concern and TB and others have ranted about needing Mage Armor, particularly in dungeons where scorch spec will be comparatively weak (gogo Improved Flamestrike/Pyromaniac).




I'm most excited about Frost. It's always been a great leveling tree and it's only gotten better with a permanent pet, streamlined FoF mechanics, and even better crowd control. It's a really fun spec but the utility wasn't enough to make up for the loss of damage in most groups. They seem to be bringing those two into balance for Cataclysm and it's exciting.

I plan on using a frost spec like this. My understanding is the extra chill effects from Piercing Chill can proc FoF and Brainfreeze so it seems like a solid talent for anytime you're fighting 2+ enemies. Improved CoC also seems like a strong talent for leveling. Depending on how tight mana is, it may be worth dropping Arcane Concentration all together and getting 2/2 Imp.CoC and 1/2 Ice Shards. Nearly every time you cast Blizzard you'd get two FoF charges and an instant, free, high crit % FFB.

Edited, Oct 6th 2010 12:20pm by CatPredator

Haha, I'm sure scorching will be fun. I will be trying it in PvP and undoubtedly it will work into some fire builds for end game, during which time I may use it for dailies and such. But for leveling I really enjoy frost's ability to lock down so many mobs. It's the best way for a Mage to take on 3+ foes at once (although it seems Mirror Image can now tank pretty well for those times when Fire/Arcane mages pull too many friends) and that's where I get my kicks leveling Mage.

I assume most of us are level 80, and will be 81 within a few days of getting the expansion.

For starters, you need to spend the points somewhere to get to 31. It's really the best option if you're planning on doing PvE dungeons/raids as frost.

Ice Floes is purely situational, Improved Cone of Cold is likely to be useless thanks to mobs being immune to that sort of thing, and Piercing Chill, well...I don't really see much of a need to slow more than one mob down. If I pull aggro, then chances are that whatever I'm Frostbolting is already chilled, and if I'm pulling aggro because of Frostbolt, only one mob is coming after me. Second, it only applies to crits FROM Frostbolt, so yeah....the damn thing's already chilled, if you pull aggro in a dungeon because of Frostbolt and more than one mob comes after you, then chances are that the tank and the healer are already dead, meaning it's times to Blink and Invis. There really isn't a better place to put the two points in a strict dungeon/raiding building. I don't see a need for the two talents that improve Ice Barrier, because if I have to rely on that, then the tank's not doing his job, and if the tank isn't doing his job, then the healer's most likely going to die first.

I thought this would have already been up here, but as it isn't:

Totalbiscuit did (and is doing) reviews of all three specs' PvE capabilities in Cataclysm. Obviously Cataclysm is a bit of a different ballpark from Vanilla, but there might be a couple of heads' up things that apply very much so to level 80 raiding that some of you might find interesting in regards to this thread. Namely the fact that he's currently pulling WAY more DPS as frost than as fire (~7500ish vs 5500, and that's without Deep Freeze damage as it stuns target dummies instead of damaging them).

Fire - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjhdJedV4-Q
Frost - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3HbjJcc1Oc
Arcane has yet to be uploaded.

Part one is an overview of all three talent trees which might not be too interesting to watch for you guys; it's basically him going "Well this talent is a PvP one, so you'll skip those. This one is great damage, so this is a must" for all three builds.

Oh yes, obviously there's gear differences and all - I just thought it was a decent benchmark seeing as all his mages are the same in gear and he's doing 1-2 minute rotations on target dummies.

A mage from my guild did point out the fire+crit thing to me though, and yes, that does make sense. It would however be lovely if frost was actually a decent raiding build for once, as it sure looks to be fun.

I will most likely be dual-speccing fire/fire for 4.0.1, getting one spec that has more aoe/cleave talents and another that skips them depending on the fight. Arcane jut doesn't look to great to me right now. I may try out frost eventually, but with my gear set and from what I've been reading fire seems to be doing good dps with 264/277 gear (same as current).

The rotation is possible to change (depending on your glyphs)
If you glyph: fireball, molten armor, ffb
1) Critical mass maintenance (Via Scorch if required)
2) HS Pyro
3) LB Maintenance
4) FFB DoT stacking to 3 and refreshing if casting a Fireball would cause it to drop off
5) Fireball

If you don't glyph FFB then the third glyph will most likely be LB. Come lvl 85 it definitely won't be Pyroblast until much later in gear (current blues give you all of 15% crit I believe).


To update my builds:
AoE/Cleave: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#o0oZdfhrk0RMsfoc:zbosRMzVm

Single Target: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#o0bZfshrk0RMscoc:zRosRMzVm

I need to do the math/read up on the math between glyph of living bomb and molten armor. I'd guess that MA is still better, but LB has been a high % of our dps, and it may be more worth while in the aoe/cleave build as well.

For 85 I would most likely just fill out haste+arcane concentration.

For the single-target rotations I was pulling about 12k+ dps solo on a target dummy (without glyph of FFB so that wasn't included).

Edited, Oct 11th 2010 8:24am by Anobix

Has there been any word on a post-patch frost PvE spec, btw? We've got a mage in the guild who intends to try both frost and fire and spec whichever ends up being better.

25man ToC run I was fire and my guildy was arcane, I consistently did about 2-3k more dps than he did on the fights/pulls (same gear level).