Not being that happy with my current dps, I went hunting on the mage forums.
This link
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.htm ... =282399094 is about maximising dps. Its a little out of date (no icy vein spec, which does give better dps but isn't great mana-wise for long boss fights). Most of it is common sense tbh, but I've pasted in below the spell rotation suggested (think we all do this anyway) and the suggestion regarding casting.
"3
. Use this non fancy rotation: scorch x5 then fireball spam, scorch when debuff is about to wear off.
Once scorch debuffs are up, you can also do fireball fireball fireblast if you have extra mana to burn, like a boss below 20% or if you for some lucky reason have 3 shadowpriests in your group etc.
Notice that /stopcasting doesn't work after a fireblast, since you cannot stop global cooldown, so your results might wary abit. If ping is bad, I'd suggest to allways stick to just fireballing.
4. This is mostly overlooked, but read carefully. Either get an addon that does this for you, or, make a macro for your fireball (and scorch if you're feeling skilled) with /stopcasting then /cast <highest fireballrank>
Hit this macro with between 0,3 to 0,1 sec left of your current spells castingtime. (dependant on your ping, practice to get it right)
(Quartz seems like a popular addon to track your ping and knowing when to /stopcast)
No matter how good ping you think you have, this will help. You can squeeze out 10-20% more dps if you're skilled. (unless pherhaps if you live in Paris and have a cable directly into blizz HQ)"
I think I'll get Quartz, try it out and let you know. Slight pain to have yet another addon, but if it helps a lot its probably worth it. General fireball/scorch rotation once scorch full up is apparently 8 fireballs to 1 scorch, or 5 to 1 if a lot of interupts are expected in the fight. If I'm understanding the stats mich linked to properly, my ratio in the gruul fight was not that at all which indicates I was missing the scorch cd too much and having to fully reapply - most of this was due to his wonderful knockback, but still room for improvement. Nature Cast Bars btw does enable you to see cd on scorch no matter who casts it, so useful for several mages trying to keep it up.
There's also the
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t18441-mage ... al_thread/ page, which has some useful though overly technical information.
And, for those of you with a really technical mind, here's a spreadsheet link which helps work out which stats/gear/whatever are best for you
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t10907-vont ... readsheet/ (don't ask me how it works, I haven't had time to figure it out yet...)
