Mage DPS?

At lvl 69 I'm running a pure frost spec. It's very effective on mobs and 1v1 pvp.
Essentially you spam frost bolt. When Fingers of Frost/Frostbite procs, you can usually get off about 2 Ice Lances which are instant cast crits. I can usually nail 3-4 mobs one after the other before needing to evocate / mana up. Frost Nova is definitely your friend, and your water elemental helps a lot too, but I don't use it very often. Stay away from Cone of Cold as it eats mana, and if you DO use it, make sure it's against at least 2 mobs. Don't waste it on a single target. Also be sure to keep your Frost Armour up at all times (upgrades to Ice Armor eventually), and as soon as you get Molten Armour, use that as it boosts your crit. It's also helpful to apply Ice Armor if there are enemy players about, cuz if they attack you they will get a slowdown.

Check on WowWiki for some useful macros as well. One very useful one I use is for polymorph that focuses your target so you can keep an eye on him while you nail his budd(y|ies). Another one is a simple one for Counterspell.. just add in a /stopcasting before casting counterspell. This way you can interrupt your target even if you're in the middle of a long cast. Did the same for Ice Lance so I can get those crits in.
 
/stopcasting isn't necessary anymore?

I'm sure there was a patch that changed the client side spell 'requests'.
 
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I'm 77 and levelling as arcane. DPS is brutal at this stage and I can pull about 1.4k at 77 if i've got good ping and plow through my mana, have pushed it up to almost 2K - all that while running around in greens and blues with no hit rating and still quite a few levels below level cap. In short, while levelling at least I have only ever been beaten once on recount by a destro lock.

I'm not sure what mage dps is like for raiding at 80, but word on the street is that it's pretty much fine. Not better than locks/mages/rogues but slightly ahead of the hybrids.

Mages are pretty ok i think. We don't feel OP and could maybe use a little finetuning but compared to how things were on my shammy, life is good and there aren't many of us around so getting invites isn't nigh impossible (as was the case on my DK).

AOE is pretty much the cookie mages excel at.
Single target nuking... nope.
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Hmm. Depends on spec. Arcane is, quite frankly, somewhat rubbish at aoe but quite strong at burst nuking single targets. Frost and Fire are much better at aoe than arcane but more proc-based when it comes to single-target, where arcane can determine how much dps it wants to punch out (and in the same breath, how quickly it wants to go oom :P )
Blizzard have pretty much stated that 'mages=best for aoe' is a thing of the past. Having played around on my DK as both Unholy and Frost, I can certainly attest to that.

Some levelling tips : Frost is far and away the best to grind with, at least until you get Arcane Blast and can spec down to Arcane Barrage and Missile Barrage, at which point Arcane becomes better at tearing through single mobs (but frost's probably still better in general for survivability).
Fire is rubbish for levelling. Stay away.
 
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Raiding mage here! :D

Mages only start being fun have less down time at level 40ish.

Once you're level 80 it's a whole new game :D I don't play with any of my alts as much as I play with my mage. It's just so much more fun :p

I'm currently one of our best DPS in Ulduar and I push 5.8k DPS on bosses like Freya, Ignis etc.

Stay with your mage! It's really a fun char to play :)
 
Oculate said:
/stopcasting isn't necessary anymore?

I'm sure there was a patch that changed the client side spell 'requests'.
Click to expand...

Yes it is necessary. If you try cast anything while you've got a long cast going, you get 'Another action is already in progress'. The stopcasting kills your current cast and starts the next action instead. Very handy if you need to interrupt that mob healing itself.
 
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