Mage compendium - Part 1: General stuff

Contains:
Stats and their role
Threat management
Talent and armor buffs
Buffs
Gems
Enchants
Bonus set values
Amplify and Dampen Magic
Addons
Patch 3.3 PTR notes

Referenced from posts by: Ashling, Billy, various authors on Elitist Jerks.

Stats and their role

There can appear to be a bewildering number of stats to consider in WoW. Thankfully for mages, there are only a few which really matter. These are Hit, Spellpower, Haste, and Crit. The exact priority depends on spec so read this section in conjunction with the Mage Compendium Part 2.

Hit Rating

This is the main priority for mages, as spells which don’t hit are pretty much useless no matter how much spellpower etc you have. The hit cap for mages is 17% for bosses. There are two talents which provide hit; Precision in the Frost tree, and Arcane Focus in the Arcane tree. Both provide 3% hit and 3% mana cost reduction on spells. Precision affects all spell types, but Arcane Focus only affects Arcane spells. The two talents stack, but will not be available for all specs.

Hit rating requirements are heavily influenced by raid composition; Draenei provide a 1% hit aura, whilst Shadow Priests provide 3% hit rating with Misery, and Boomkin 3% with Improved Faerie Fire. Draenei aura stacks with Misery or IFF, but Misery and IFF do not stack together. In short, when you have all three in a raid, the hit rating provided is 4%, not 7%. The table below shows the hit rating required with each spec and raid buff.

Hit rating requirements based on spec and raid composition

Spec......% after talents..... Rating.....Rating with Draenei.....Rating with SP/Boomkin.....Rating with everything
Ttw/Fire........17............... 446..................420.............................368.............................342
Arcane..........11................289..................263.............................210.............................184
FFB/Frost......14................368...................342.............................289.............................263

Spell power

Once you are hit capped, we need to start increasing our damage. The priority here is spellpower, although at a certain gear level (Tier 9.5) haste comes almost equal priority for Arcane specs.
*(Note from Billy - It is important to consider that spell power is added to our spell’s damage but this damage can be more apparent when using spells such as Pyroblast and less apparent when using Ice Lance. This is so because there is a coefficient by which the spell power is reduced or increased inherent to each spell).

Spellpower is such a priority for mages, that often it is better to stack spellpower gems rather than try to gem to activate slot bonuses. Tools such as Rawr can help in deciding the best combination for your spec and gear level.

Haste rating

When you are sure your spells are doing a lot of damage, the next step is to get them to cast quicker. You do this by stacking haste, which will increase your cast rate. Some specs benefit more from haste, whilst some should prioritise crit over haste. See Mage Compendium Part 2 for the priority stats for each spec. Do remember that the faster you cast, the more you cast, so the more mana you use and also the more threat you generate. Adapt your use of cooldowns etc accordingly!

Crit rating

When we have a decent amount of spell power we can start focusing on increasing the chances that we hit for a lot more. This stat is based on “chance” and “probability” which breaks strategy a bit because you can’t count on it all the time. This is not a problem on boss fights because as they last long, your critical hits will be averaged out. Some specs rely on crits a lot more to do high damage, and thus if you get an unlucky streak, your dps will be lower. Conversely, a sudden run of crits can see you rapidly overaggro, so do watch Omen at all times. A dead mage is no use to anyone.

Intellect

This increases your mana pool and for arcane specs will increase your spellpower. It also has a small affect on critical strike chance. Never gem or enchant for intellect; gear and buffs will provide plenty.

Spirit

This is of benefit to mages in several ways, but nevertheless, sufficient spirit tends to come from gear, so don’t gem for it and it should be your lowest consideration when looking at gear:

Firstly, since 3.1 Molten Armor converts a percentage of your Spirit into crit i.e. 35% of your spirit is translated into crit rating. As a rough indication, at level 80, 45.91 crit rating = 1% crit. When combined with Glyph of Molten Armor (see section on glyphs) this makes Molten Armor the armor of choice for both arcane and fire specs, unless the former is struggling with mana.

Secondly, spirit does increase mana regeneration which is always useful. It can be particularly useful for arcane mages who are struggling on mana as when using Mage Armor arcane mages have a 100% mana regeneration while casting.

Stamina

This is the least important stat and we don’t have to worry about it as it will come along with gear much like intellect.


Threat management

Firstly, a dead mage is a useless mage – staying alive is more important than topping the dps metres. You are cloth and very squishy, therefore one hit and you’re usually dead, and it’s no good yelling at the poor healers. We have a number of talents that reduce threat: Arcane Subtlety for arcane spells, Burning Soul for fire spells, and Frost Channelling for frost spells. Of these, Burning Soul is the weakest, reducing threat only by 10% which is annoying given that fire with a crit streak needs it most. Always therefore watch Omen and manage your aggro – Fire mages in particular.

Mages are lucky in that we have two abilities to help us manage our threat and one panic button survival spell:

Mirror image – a very useful talent, but remember how it works. Mirror image transfers threat from you to your mirrors. This enables the tank to build threat without you pulling aggro off him and dying. Once your Mirrors run out however, all that threat comes back to you. Hopefully by this point the tank has built so much threat that this doesn’t matter, but on some fights you may well instantly pull aggro back unless you warn the tank to taunt in time or use invisibility. If you time your warning to the tank in time, all your threat can be transferred to him so you can then dps to after that without any problems. On fights where you need to go all out immediately, it can be worth putting Mirrors up straight away. As always consider when in a fight you may need Mirrors and ensure it is off cooldown.

Invisibility – this is our friend when we need to quickly dump a lot of aggro. It is basically a 3 second spell that permanently reduces your threat by a certain amount each second. It will be interrupted by any other action. At the end of those 3 seconds, you go invisible which means you can’t cast or see anyone and your target will be lost. Cancelling invisibility and retargeting your target does result in an additional dps loss as well as the 3 seconds waiting out the threat reduction. As a result it is best used secondary to Mirror Image. It does mean however that you stay alive and can dps to your heart’s content afterwards as by then it’s unlikely you will build enough threat again to overaggro the tank. I find that in most cases, allowing 2 seconds to tick and then cancelling invisibility provides a good compromise between threat reduction and dps loss. If you are VERY close to the tank in threat however and the tank, due to the fight, is not building threat quickly, let the full thing run.

Do remember the stages in particular fights (Razorscale landing for instance) where invisibility may well be needed, and ensure it’s available on cue.

Ice Block – our “oh shit” spell. It effectively makes you invulnerable for 10 seconds but it DOES NOT reduce your threat. It has a number of useful functions, including removing many nasty boss debuffs. In this context however, it is a survival tool for when you slip up and pull aggro off the tank. Those 10 seconds will keep you alive and give the tank a chance to grab the mob back. Do watch Omen and be prepared to cast a threat reduction ability when you cancel Ice Block if necessary – no point in putting Ice Block on cooldown only for the mob to immediately chase after you again. You can be healed whilst in Ice Block so it’s also handy for about-to-die moments, to allow the healers time to land a heal without the mob/debuff killing you.

Finally, warriors do have a useful ability, Vigilance, which when cast on you transfers 10% of your threat to them and reduces your damage taken by 3%.


Talent and armour buffs – ours and others

Glyph of Molten Armor: gives a further 20% of spirit translated into crit on top of the normal Molten Armor. With both up for example, 600 spirit (assuming raid buffs) would give 330 crit rating, and thus 7.18% crit.

Glyph of Improved Scorch: gives 5% crit to the raid if scorch is stacked 5 times. However the talent gives a permanent 3% crit boost to fireball/scorch/FFB. Keeping improved scorch up in a boss fight is therefore important to raid dps, but will lower the mage’s dps quite a bit on fast moving fights. Nevertheless, it is never worth taking Glyph of Improved Scorch – the dps drop to do so is even worse than the drop of keeping the 5x stack up.

Warlocks (affliction spec) have an Improved Shadowbolt talent, which enables them to provide a 5% crit buff to the raid considerably more easily than keeping scorch 5x stacked. Improved Shadowbolt does not stack with Improved Scorch. Unfortunately, currently affliction locks do less dps than other specs, and thus we only have one main in the guild at the moment. <Hugs Aia>


Buffs

When raiding with Lazarus we are all expected to bring our own flasks. For mages the flasks will be Flask of the Frost Wyrm and the food buffs depend on our needs. There are 3 kinds of food buffs we will benefit from: hit rating, spell power, haste and should be used accordingly with our mage’s needs. In general, try to use the spellpower food. In most raids feasts will be put down, but this should never be relied upon and all raid members should carry a stock of their own food.

Mages are also expected to bring potions with them. Bring Runic Mana Potions and if you are have no mana problems bring Potion of Speed and use them to boost your DPS though you do not have to do this, it’s a personal decision.


Gems

In general always use spellpower gems, unless you really need the socket bonus or are particularly short of one stat. In full T9.5, haste gems do get close to spellpower gems for arcane for yellow slots. If you are raiding 25 man content with us, it is generally expected that you get the best gems you can and that means the epic ones.

Meta gem – always use Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41285). This needs two blue gems to activate it (see below).

Red slots – Spellpower (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40113)

Blue slots – Spellpower/Spirit (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40133) if you need to activate your meta. After those two, orange or red gems are preferable. Never use intellect gems – you should have sufficient mana from your gear. That, coupled with mana gems, pots, and evocation, should see you happily through fights. The stat return from intellect just isn’t worth it compared to other gems.

Yellow slots – Spellpower/Haste (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40155). Until you get up to Tier 9.5, generally best to still use pure spellpower gems in yellow slots but look at your stats and decide. If you are short of hit use spellpower/hit, but don’t gem for crit.


Enchants

Head: Arcanum of Burning Mysteries (Revered with Kirin Tor) +30 Sp/20 Crit

Shoulder: Greater Inscription of the Storm (Exalted with Sons of Hodir) +24 SP/15 Crit.

Cloak: Enchant Cloak – Greater Speed, +23 Haste

Chest: Enchant Chest – Powerful Stats, +10 Stats (base attributes). There is a school of thought that, with 2 pieces of T9, Major Spirit becomes better than Powerful Stats for a Fire or Frostfire mage. This is because of the crit increase and because the stamina and intellect drop are offset by the T9 gear increase.

Bracer: Enchant Bracer – Superior Spellpower, +30 SP

Gloves: Enchant Gloves – Exceptional Spellpower, +28 SP

Belt: Belt Buckle from Blacksmithing which adds a gem to your belt

Legs: Brilliant Spellthread (Tailors can make it), +50 SP/20 Spirit

Feet: For damage, take Icewalker +12 hit/crit or go for Tuskarr’s Vitality for the Movement increase.


Bonus Set Values

Set Bonus Values heavily depend on your gear level and raid buffs, but the following should be decent estimates to see whether it's worth upgrading sets or use offset items. A 1% damage boost is comparable to about 40 spell power if you want to do a quick calculation. If you want anything slightly more precise - use Rawr.

Spec 2T7 4T7 2T8 4T8 2T9 4T9
Arcane 2% 1% 2.5% 1% 1.5% 2.5%
Fire 1% 1% 2.5% 2% 2.5% 3%
Frostfire 1% 1% 2.5% 2% 3% 3.5%
Frost 1% 1% 2.5% 0% 1% 2%

T9 Robes (Spirit/Hit) are the weakest part, Hood (Hit/Haste) and Leggings (Spirit/Crit) are all right, Shoulders and Gloves are good (Haste/Crit). 4T9 is extremely strong.


Amplify and Dampen Magic

In Lazarus we very rarely use Amplify or Dampen Magic in Boss fights. I have included the tips below from Elitist Jerks on when these spells can be safely used.

“When to use these spells has been a point of discussion ever since the spells have existed. Of course, in a pure melee fight, you cast Amplify Magic on your tanks. But it gets complicated once you have magic damage, on tanks or raidwide, combined with resistances. Quite often, tanks and probably other people will click off either buff with an "It gets me killed!"/"It gimps my healing!" explanation, even though clicking off one buff is equivalent to receiving the other buff.

So, here is a rough guideline to decide which buff is best to use.
* First, check if Amplify Magic actually increases the damage taken. In most of the recent fights from the last year, it doesn't actually increase most of the damage, so you can safely cast Amplify Magic.
* Amplify Magic is only a bad choice, if the targets takes damage very often (ticking auras perhaps), have a significant damage multiplier (Hydross) and magic resistances don't work or matter.
* Even damage spikes and potential one/two-shots are not necessarily bad, since Power Word: Shield and other shields/abilities/talents as well as damage reduction abilities make it very possible that the extra absorption scales better than the extra damage taken.
* So, there is no clear answer, but you very rarely go wrong with amplifying your tanks.”


Addons


Castbar

Quartz: Very popular replacement for your cast bar. Useful for people with high latency as indicates when you can start casting your next spell without cancelling your previous one or getting the annoying “not ready yet” message.

Combat and buff tracking

MiksScrollingBattleText: Can display several different types of combat information in several different ways.

Omen Threat Meter: (Omen2). Essential raiding tool for monitoring threat on your current target

Scorchio2: This tracks all mage debuffs/buffs, Mirror Image, Polymorph, Hot Streak, Clearcasting etc. You can set it to sound alerts, visual bars, or both. I use this in combination with MiksScrollingBattleText to get a wide range of sound alerts.

PowerAuras: Provides visual tools to track buffs/debuffs. Configurable and popular addon

NeedToKnow: Another buff/debuff tracker, which uses bars

Miscellaneous

Decursive: Popular addon to easily track and cleanse debuffs on party/raid members.



Patch 3.3 PTR notes

Classes: General

Area-of-Effect Damage Caps: We've redesigned the way area damage is capped when hitting many targets. Instead of a hard cap on total damage done, the game now caps the total damage done at a value equal to the damage the spell would do if it hit 10 targets. In other words, if a spell does 1000 damage to each target, it would hit up to 10 targets for 1000 each, but with more than 10 targets, each target would take 1000 damage divided by the number of targets. 20 targets would be hit for 500 damage each in that example.

Health and Mana Regeneration: These regeneration rates have been increased by up to 200% for low level characters. As a player's level increases, the regeneration rates gradually reduce, returning to normal rates at level 15.

Spell Mana Costs: These costs have been reduced for almost all lower level spell ranks. In general, if a spell decreased in cost with a higher level rank in patch 3.2.0, that spell now has the decreased cost at all ranks. In addition, spells learned before level 20 with reduced cast times and/or durations have even further reduced mana costs, proportionate to their reduction in cast time or damage.

Talents

Arcane

Arcane Empowerment: This talent now also grants 1/2/3% increased damage done by the mage's party or raid for 10 seconds after the mage gets a critical strike with Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Barrage, or Arcane Blast. This effect is exclusive with Ferocious Inspiration and Sanctified Retribution.

Fire

Blast Wave: The mana cost of this talent has been significantly reduced.
Burning Determination: The duration of interrupt immunity granted by this talent is now 20 seconds.
Dragon's Breath: The mana cost of this talent has been significantly reduced.
Firestarter: When this talent is triggered, it makes the next Flamestrike cost no mana in addition to being instant.
Improved Scorch: The debuff from this talent no longer stacks, and instead can apply the full effect from a single cast of Scorch.

Frost

Deep Freeze: This spell now deals a large amount of damage to targets permanently immune to stuns. In addition, when this ability deals damage it will no longer consume two charges of Fingers of Frost for those mages with the Shatter talent.
Fingers of Frost: This talent now triggers immediately on casting a spell rather than being delayed until the spell strikes the target.
Frozen Core: This talent now also causes Ice Lance critical strikes to reduce the cast time of the mage's next Frostbolt or Frostfire Bolt by 0.4/0.7/1 seconds.

Pets

Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.
Mirror Image: Health on the mirror images has been increased.
Water Elemental: Waterbolt mana cost reduced by 80%.

Glyphs

Glyph of Improved Scorch: Renamed Glyph of Scorch. This glyph now increases the damage of Scorch by 20%.
Glyph of Eternal Water: This glyph allows for a summoned Water Elemental to last indefinitely, but it can no longer cast Freeze.

Refresh and rewrite of most sections.