Mage...on the dummies I can only get 2500 dps

[Liltuscany]

I am new to RECOUNT and got to where it shows my average dps. It says I do 2500...wth? How do I raise it? I was told one thing, then another. I read all over the web, ask lots of good mages...everyone has HUGE change suggestions.

I am arcane. Is that still the best?

I want to get into ICC, in this lifetime. I keep getting told my DPS is too low. Unless I use mirror image..it's average is 2500. I have Frost gear and the rest is mostly best battleground gear.

I've been told to get rid of everything that has resiliance because it actually hurts me. Really?

I've been told to let my health go down because I need to focus on just spellpower (when getting armor) because I'm to count on healers.

Help, this is so confusing and believe me, I'm trying.
LilTuscany on Nazgrel

[Kazeyonoma]

first off, pvp gear is bad for pve because it has "wasted" stats. namely resilience and stamina. You don't need these ina pve environment, You as a dps, should not be getting hit, so more hp and crit reduction is useless. If you get hit in pve, u'll likely die anyways. So you're better off getting pve pieces that don't waste stat points on resil/stamina and instead give you higher spell power, crit, haste, intellect.

the rotation for arcane i believe is rather straight forward:

arcane blast x 4, missile barrage (rinse repeat over and over and over again). time you cooldowns with important buffs like bloodlust, use mirror images in burst situations (zomg add needs to die now) or to wipe threat? Get as much spell power as possible, reach the pve spell hit cap (17% - talents/debuffs), and i think at some point haste is also an important stat to gain. If you link an armory I can move this thread to the HALP! forum where you can get personalized advice from our community.

[Quinafoi]

I am new to RECOUNT and got to where it shows my average dps. It says I do 2500...wth? How do I raise it? I was told one thing, then another. I read all over the web, ask lots of good mages...everyone has HUGE change suggestions.

I am arcane. Is that still the best?

I want to get into ICC, in this lifetime. I keep getting told my DPS is too low. Unless I use mirror image..it's average is 2500. I have Frost gear and the rest is mostly best battleground gear.

I've been told to get rid of everything that has resiliance because it actually hurts me. Really?

I've been told to let my health go down because I need to focus on just spellpower (when getting armor) because I'm to count on healers.

Help, this is so confusing and believe me, I'm trying.
LilTuscany on Nazgrel

First off, a link to your armory makes it easier than making it so people have to look you up themselves.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...&cn=Liltuscany

You are gemming and enchanting for stamina. While it may be useful in PvP, it doesn't help your DPS at all. Resilience only really benefits you in PvP, it has no effect at all on your DPS. As such it is a wasted stat if you're trying to maximize DPS.

Head
Your helm has no enchant. Should be using one from Kirin Tor faction.
You are not using the optimal caster DPS meta gem, Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. Instead you are using a PvP meta. You are also not even meeting the meta gem requirements to activate the bonus of your current gem.
You have have a pure stamina gem in a blue socket when it would be better suited a Purified Dreadstone.

Neck
You are using a PvP neck piece, stat points wasted on Resilience and Stamina. A PvE piece of equivalent item level would be more benefitial to DPS.

Shoulder
You are using a PvP shoulder enchant instead of a PvE shoulder enchant from the Sons of Hodir.

Chest
You are using a bonus health enchant instead of increase to all stats enchant. The optimal enchant for a mage would be +10 to all stats. You are not a tank.

Belt
Nightmare tear is ok, but since this is a prismatic socket (color irrelevant) it should be your highest dps benefitial cut which will for an Arcane Mage be either haste or spellpower.

Legs
This is a PvP piece of gear, a PvE piece of equivalent level would be better itemized for DPS.
You shouldn't gem for raw stamina really even in a PvP piece. Instead you should use a hybrid cut like Glowing Dreadstone (stamina spellpower) or Forceful Eye of Zul (stamina haste) depending which will benefit your PvP DPS more.
The enchant isn't optimal either. For a PvP caster piece it should be Sapphire Spellthread (50 spellpower, 30 stamina). Briliant Spellthread should be used on PvE pieces.

Feet
Fine here. Tuskarr's is appropriate in any context.

Wrist
Again a PvP piece. If you had a PvE piece of equivalent level it would result in higher DPS.

Gloves
No enchant. Optimal caster DPS enchant on gloves would be 28 spellpower. You however have Engineering so in your case it would be Hyperspeed Accellerators.

Rings
First ring is a PvP ring again. A PvE ring of equivalent level would net you higher DPS. It is however enchanted fine.
Second ring is a strength DPS ring. While you have the spellpower enchant on it, this ring itself gives you no benefit at all other than stamina (which again, has no effect on DPS).

Trinkets
One of the trinkets is a PvP one. While in the case of trinkets, same level does not mean better, there are quite a few PvE options that would net you higher overall DPS. Mainly because the use effect of the trinket is for survivability, not DPS. You want both effects of a trinket to improve DPS to be ideal.
The second trinket since both effects buff DPS stats is alright, of course there are better options out there.

Cloak
Using a PvP cloak. If you were using an equivalent PvE cloak you wouldn't have those wasted stat points on resilience and net you higher DPS. The enchant is fine however.

Weapon
Fine. Correct enchant.
Wand is fine as well.



Bottom line if you're looking to maximize DPS, your priorities are in the wrong place. You're current priorities appear to be PvP survivability.
PvP Priorities <> PvE Priorities

In PvE, survivability is a back burner thought for anyone other than a tank. You don't go out of your way for extra survivability other than perhaps using resistence gear on magic based encounters. Gems and enchants focus solely on your primary duty. In PvP however you have other concerns, not only do you have to kill the other person, but you have to survive it as well. Stamina and Resilience help with that by making it so it is harder for other players to kill you.

[Liltuscany]

Thank you sooo much, this is really helpful!
Okay, that is pretty much my rotation, so I'm good there.

Now, where do I get the PVE gear? I was working on Frost gear. I'm willing to put the time and effort into all new gear (sigh) to getting higher DPS..just where do I focus to find the BEST gear possible?

I do random heroic dungeons and the gear looks well below mine, is that wrong?

[Liltuscany]

**Or do I stick with my armor and just get new enchants and gems?
This gear took a long time to pull together, and I assume new gear would not be something I can just BUY in AH..

[Bashal]

T9 PvE gear sets can be purchased (for mages) from the Cloth Armor vendor in Dalaran. If you bought that PvP gear in Dal, the cloth armor vendor isn't very far away (in a little shop. there's a couple vendors with different tiers of gear. You want the one that sells set pieces for Triumph Emblems).

Most of the heroics were originally designed back when the highest item level gear you could possibly get was ilvl 226, and that was only a few pieces. Most gear available at the time was ilvl 200 and 213. That's why the gear that drops looks so inferior to the vendor gear.

The ICC 5-man heroics drop ilvl 232 gear, which is the best you'll find in a 5-man (Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, Halls of Reflection).

[Quinafoi]

That's a problem with having PvP gear that is higher in item level than your PvE gear. Basically you bought a piece here or there with honor and got a lucky drop out of VoA perhaps, but those pieces are well beyond your current level of progression. You should be running heroics and tier 8 level content at your current progression level, but buy and win tier 10 equivalent PvP gear. Your PvP gear looks better because it is several tiers higher than PvE gear options you have. However, you are no where near prepared to actually be raiding in tier 10.

Your first bet will be to grind heroics and buy mostly the tier 9 pieces in order to fill in gear gaps. Once you have those you can probably start running ToC25 and ICC10 to get either upgraded tier 9 pieces while working on your tier 10 as well.

[Bashal]

**Or do I stick with my armor and just get new enchants and gems?
This gear took a long time to pull together, and I assume new gear would not be something I can just BUY in AH..

Grind out those triumph emblems doing heroics and just buy the PvE gear. Don't bother re-gemming and re-enchanting the PvP gear.

[Liltuscany]

That's a problem with having PvP gear that is higher in item level than your PvE gear. Basically you bought a piece here or there with honor and got a lucky drop out of VoA perhaps, but those pieces are well beyond your current level of progression. You should be running heroics and tier 8 level content at your current progression level, but buy and win tier 10 equivalent PvP gear. Your PvP gear looks better because it is several tiers higher than PvE gear options you have. However, you are no where near prepared to actually be raiding in tier 10.

Your first bet will be to grind heroics and buy mostly the tier 9 pieces in order to fill in gear gaps. Once you have those you can probably start running ToC25 and ICC10 to get either upgraded tier 9 pieces while working on your tier 10 as well.

Okay, I like this, after reading it about seven times (ADD here) I finally understand it. :P Except for what is probably the most obvious: when you say I should be getting 'tier 9 pieces' what are they? Where do I get them? Nothing as far as vendors or drops says "Tier 9" so hopefully the answer is not tooootally obvious.

Also, will I ever need this gear according to this? Is ANY of it 'keepable' as far as enchanting and gemming right now?

*And for legs you put I should get glowing dreadstone (12 spell power and 12 stamina) or foreceful eye of zul (10 haste and 15 stam) instead of my current which is (23 spell AND 12 spell and 10 spirit). Or was this before I made changes today to 2 gems?

[Petninja]

To be honest, a lot of that pvp gear looks to be 264 iLevel. Even though it's obviously inferior to the PvE counterparts for PvE if it's got spell power and haste it's probably not really *that* bad for starting out. The biggest upgrade you're going to gear the easiest is the caster haste trinket from regular ToC 5 man. Abyssal Rune I think it's called. For arcane it's great. The intellect trinket with the on use spell power from emblems will be your other trinket.

The rotation is basically ABx4 -> AM. Try to align all your cooldowns together (stack them), and if you can find out when heroism is going to be popped work them around that. Most people seem to just make a macro with all their cooldowns on it and press it just when combat starts and then pop them when they come off CD again.

Haste and spell power are your most important stats, and even though it's a pretty easy rotation to do the real mastery is in cooldown usage and resource management.


Oh heavens, you have an expertise/strength ring on your. You can find upgrades for that in Karazhan... GET RID OF EET!

[Bashal]

T7 = ilvl 200/213
T8 = ilvl 219/226
T9 = ilvl 232/245/258
T10 = ilvl 251/264+

When we talk about tier pieces, we usually mean the items that give set bonuses (like your pvp gear), but don't have resilience on them, and the bonuses are PvE-oriented. It is also used to refer generically to PvE non-set items of equivalent item level (that also don't have resil on them).

The reason why PvP gear is bad for PvE is because of something called item budget. A piece of gear has so many "stat points" to work with, based on its item level. PvP gear sinks more stat points into stamina, which does nothing for your dps, making them wasted points (some stamina is nice for survivability against splash damage, but there's less on PvE gear). PvP gear also puts stat points into resilience, which means that's fewer stat points for PvE-type stats like crit, spell power, haste, int, spirit and so on.

This is why, with all this high item level PvP gear you have on, your DPS is so low. You can actually do far more sustained DPS with lower ilvl PvE gear.

[Petninja]

Okay, I like this, after reading it about seven times (ADD here) I finally understand it. :P Except for what is probably the most obvious: when you say I should be getting 'tier 9 pieces' what are they? Where do I get them? Nothing as far as vendors or drops says "Tier 9" so hopefully the answer is not tooootally obvious.

Also, will I ever need this gear according to this? Is ANY of it 'keepable' as far as enchanting and gemming right now?

*And for legs you put I should get glowing dreadstone (12 spell power and 12 stamina) or foreceful eye of zul (10 haste and 15 stam) instead of my current which is (23 spell AND 12 spell and 10 spirit). Or was this before I made changes today to 2 gems?

You're going to gem full spell power in red slots, spell power/haste in yellows, and spell power/spirit in blues *if* the socket bonus is good. Otherwise you'd gem spell power in blues. Stamina is never good for PvE mages, the same goes for spell penetration.

[Petninja]

Lastly, make sure you're using your engineering enchants on your gloves. Not the rocket, the on use Haste one. Put that right in your cooldown macro. I can't stress enough how important proper cooldown usage is. If you're getting low numbers on a target dummy and don't use cooldowns you now know why.

[Kazeyonoma]

Moved to HALP forum.

[Liltuscany]

:::whines::: But I don't wanna be move to the halp forum...wahhhh

Kidding. I need halp.

[Zyffyr]

For clarity, the T9 mage items are named "Sunstrider's (item) of Conquest". The 'of conquest' part changes with the better versions, but the stuff you will be able to buy with Triumphs is just the bottom version.

http://www.wowhead.com/itemset=844

Next up, your talent spec.

Magic Absorption - These two points are essentially wasted in PvE. The 80 points of resist are OK in fights with lots of resistable AE going on, but withthe nature of raid healing, the fact that *you* took a little less damage won't mean a thing. Much raid healing is multi-target, so you are going to get healed just as much either way. The mana regain portion of the ability happens so rarely as to effectively not exist.

Better options for where to dump those 2 points (in order of position of the tree, not order of usefulness)
Arcane Stability - you will be taking some damage, so you will lose some cast time here and there. Putting those point here will further reduce that and therefore prevent some DPS loss.
Magic Attunement - extra range on your nukes gives you more positioning options. Not huge, but still more usefull than Magic Absorption.
Incanter's Absorption - not nearly huge as it once was, but if you are using Frost Ward/Fire Ward/Mana Shield anyway you might as well get some extra damage out of it.

On to your current gearing.
Tabbard - At least while you are running instances, put on a Kirin Tor. You need to get that rep up to Revered ASAP.

Head - Meta is now correct. The Spell Pen gem, on the other hand, is wasted. SPen is purely a PvP stat.

Hands - now exactly as it should be.

Belt - as mentioned, Tear is OK but non-optimal. If you are going to use a Tear, it really should be stuck in some Blue socket where you are looking to activate a bonus. Even then, a purifed dreadstone is a better choice.

That STR ring - there are several decent caster rings that drop in Heroics. Or, there is a decent one from getting Exalted with Argent Crusade. Or, Jewelcrafters can make a good one. Beyond those you are looking at Raid rewards, spending tons of cash on Kirin Tor rings, or buying the caster ring with Triumphs (you could also buy the Healer ring somewhere down the line if nothing better shows up after you have everything else you need/want from Triumphs).

The Battlemaster's trinket - the easiest upgrade for that slot would be to run ToC (normal mode), and hope for an Abyssal Rune to drop. Despite being only an iLevel200 trinket, it is still one of the best nuker trinkets around.


Just to make things clear, your Stat priorities for future gear/gem/enchant choices should be as follows :
1-enough hit to remain capped. you are already there, just make sure you don't drop very far below. It is rare for it to become an issue, just be aware of it.
2-Spell Power
3-Haste
4-Crit - don't seek it, but don't ignore it either.

Nothing else is really worth worrying about.

The only socket bonuses worth considering are +Spellpower. Don't bother trying to go for +Crit, +Haste, etc. The Spell Power loss from chasing those will generally outweigh the value of the bonus. Not that you currently have any gear with such bonuses, but for future reference. If you do have a good +SP bonus and it needs a Blue gem, use the Purified Dreadstone (12 SPower, 10 Spirit) - you ate least get some crit off the spirit.

[Liltuscany]

I have 59 frost right now. Should I start switching out my frost points for triumph? More importantly, are you guys sure? Should I switch all my 'frost gear" to triumph? Or just gem and enchant the stuff I have?

I'm not NOT trying to be rude by saying, are you sure. I just have had so many folks give me advice but yours makes a weird sense to me. (:::grin:: The whole...switching from what I thought was 'top of the line' (pvp) to what looks like 'lesser' is just scaring me a wee bit.

[Liltuscany]

Hey, thanks everyone! Thanks zyffer..off to update accordingly.

[Kazeyonoma]

DO NOT give up your frost emblems, no no no no no no, ideally you want to pick uip t10 pieces if you can, save your frost emblems for those, in the meantime (since you can only get so many of them, use your regular badges to buy t9). Oh god please don't convert your frost emblems into triumph ones... NO NO NO NO NO NO.

[Liltuscany]

Thank God you mentioned, seriously, thanks Kazey. That just felt wrong lol