Patch 5.0.5 - Not about priests this time

I remember my initial thought when I read about the new talent changes was something along the lines of "wee, new changes to get comfortable with, it's going to be totally fun trying to figure out how to heal again". My second thought, when I remembered the amount of alts I tend to play on a regular basis was "omg, new changes to get comfortable with, I am going to suck ass for ages".

I normally enjoy changes like these ones in WoW, I think a game that has been around for so long needs to revamp itself every now and then. Because of this I haven't really minded any of the bigger changes made, whether it was introducing new stats like heal power and spell power, turning heal power into spell power, making intellect count as spell power, mana and crit (and some other things) and then fixing the mana pools. It's all totally ok with me as long as everyone is playing by the same rules. So what if we have fixed mana pools now? I don't mind, since every caster has to abide by that same rule.

But change means re-learning, at least to some extent. And every big overhaul means I need to check and re-understand (if that's a word) every alt I happen to play (and they are many). That is time I don't always have the motivation to put into the game straight away, and an alt I don't play very often can easily be completely forgotten for another one during times like these. This time around my recently dinged level 85 paladin has gotten the temporary ignore button. I was already losing interest in her simply because she is freshly dinged right before a new expansion, and gearing her up felt kind of pointless at this time. But for some reason, the mere thought of having to re-learn holydin made me want to go back to prot, don't ask me why. We'll see about that.

I have checked out a couple of other alts however, all of which are not max-leveled should be noted and I have noticed one thing, the amount of change has varied quite a lot from class to class. Healing priests for instance have not changed overly much, while a class like warlock has changed completely. I'm wondering if this is due to me being the most comfortable with the priest class, making any change less of an obstacle to be than it is on a class like warlock, that I understand and master a lot less, I don't know. Here are some thoughts on the changes made to a couple of classes.

Warrior
My first thought logging in to and trying to tank on my warrior was "oh lord, they have ruined my rotation, how will I ever be able to tank again?". Of course I hadn't really looked anything up, but just jumped straight into an lfd hoping for the best. Things got really confusing when I was lacking Rend and using Cleave soaked up all my hard earned rage. And what is this, most of my skills don't even use rage anymore? HOW OP IS THAT?! I don't know about dps warriors, but for a prot warrior I love this change. Rather than having almost every skill use rage, only a couple of key skills like Shield Block and Enraged Regeneration (if you have that talent) use rage. This means a lot of things. First of all, it removes that horrible moment 22 warriors were suffering from that occurred when someone pulled a pack of mob and you needed rage to get aggro but without aggro you got no rage. Even Challenging Shout required rage! Admittedly, with some practice you knew how to solve those situations without too much trouble, but it did turn into chaos-fest every now and then, especially when every dps in the group decided to dps a different target. Now I can Devastate something in the face at any time and I can see this making tanking a lot easier for newbie tanks.

Lightning bitches!

So they removed Rend and pretty much Cleave for me. My old rotation used to be; charge in, Rend and Cleave at the same time and Thunderclap. Worked like a charm, spreading Rend around the group for that extra aoe damage. Now we've got Deep Wounds baseline instead to replace Rend, triggering off of any of your damaging skills. Cleave is one of the few skills that use rage, and because of this I tend not to use it at all since I prefer to use my rage on damage reducing cooldowns such as Shield Block. I like this change though, giving me a real and important choice between using rage on dps or damage reduction.

One part of me thinks they might've oversimplified warrior tanking a little too much, removing a lot of fun skills I enjoyed using in my regular rotation, but on the other hand I am glad they've finally made mitigation vs damage a real choice for us not just while choosing gear, but also while fighting. And now I can Bladestorm while tanking, how awesome is that! (I will go for Shockwave however, but Bladestorm is tempting just for the lulz).

Warlock
I've had a very on and off relationship with warlocking, going from having mained one briefly in BC (!) to pretty much not looking at it all through Cata. I love the complexity of warlock in BC, lost interest in Wrath when I thought they were too much like mages (ignoring the fact they have pets, shapeshifts and shitloads of cc) and when I tried it again in Cata I found what looked like an sb-spamming spec (demo) and what probably is the most complex rotation I have ever tried to master (destro). I slowly found my way back to warlocking, but it was definitely not one of my favorite alts.

Having played destro the last couple of months (mostly because I thought the other two specs were so boring), I was shocked at the level of change that it had gone through in 5.0.4. Umm, where are my dots? Where is the rotation from hell? My first impression was that destro had just lost two thirds of its skills, but remember that I am playing a lowbie warlock and that a lot of good stuff good just be lying around the corner. At the disappointment of the changes made to destro (which basically meant spamming a dreadfully slow shadow bolt and some chaos bolt) I decided to try out demo - hopefully it would've undergone as much change and hopefully for the better. All I can say is

EHRMAGEHRD METAMERPHERSERHS! That's metamorphosis for you who have trouble reading that. It's like Blizzard just had an epiphany and realized that people play demonology because they want to be really cool looking demons (which totally is the case) and made it possible to be in metamorphosis like all the f*cking time! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

After the initial glee had settled down and I was getting kind of bored of just going into metamorphosis, press Hellfire and sit back and wait, I decided to actually see if I could understand what this new change was all about (except looking really cool and doing aoe all the time). Of course Metamorphosis (which I hate spelling btw) is supposed to be some sort of powerful cooldown, but it does limit your choice in spells which means you have to think about when to use it. You can't just press the button and expect to do awesome damage, as far as I've understood it you need to alternate between forms to get the most out of it. If that is the case, I definitely love the idea. Unfortunately I don't really have the opportunity to test it to the max just doing lowbie instances (where your ability to aoe is what is really valued). Because of this I am curious about re-testing destro again and see if I can figure out how to play that, I feel I didn't really give it a proper chance the first time around. (If you're curious I'm not seeing affliction as an option it's simply because I've never liked that spec). (Ever.)

Mage
Another "ehrmagehrd" is really in place here, but I feel like one per post is probably one too many. Suffice to say, I feel like a flame wielding murder machine on my fire mage and I am completely loving it. Fire has always been my preferred spec on mage. I probably don't have to explain why I don't like arcane (hint, it's always been extremely boring) and although I've never had a problem with frost I just felt like there was a little more oomph in fire (not just damage wise, but visually and esthetically as well).

Fire has had many problems however, being heavily reliant on gear and sometimes what felt like pure damn luck. I could easily sway between awesome dps and shit dps just based on my crit streak, and my frustration would follow suite. Fire mage was so good when it was good and so bad when it was bad. Blizzard have realized this and basically, but not completely, given you control over your own Hot Streaks (that is the magic we need for firey mayhem fun) in a way I think is genius. By giving us a skill that is guaranteed to crit, we're able to get that double crit streak as soon as we get at least crit, simply by using our crit-skill, allowing us to fling out the rest of the arsenal (ie Pyroblast and Combustion). Oh and Combustion is on a way lower cooldown, making it more of a part of our rotation than just that extra bang every now and then. But our crit-skill is also used to spread our dots onto other targets, and with a cooldown on it we need to really think about when and how to use it. To get the most dps out of my fire mage now means having fast thinking and fast reflexes and I am loving it. When my dps goes down the drain I don't feel like I can blame anyone but myself, and the rotation and skill usage is just complex enough to feel rewarding when I get it right and motivate me to get better when I get it wrong. I am totally loving it.

Shaman
So, what happened to my totems? (I wanted to write "Dude, where's my totems?" but I just couldn't) I was pretty bummed when I noticed that the majority of them were gone, but after having calmed down over that fact I realized that I never was a huge fan of totems in all honesty. I've probably had pretty much the same thoughts about them as the rest of the shaman community - they have so much potential, but they just felt like bad versions of other classes buffs. Blizzard have listened and removed, altered and introduced new totems into our arsenal. Some oldies but goldies remain the same, like Searing Totem, some work differently like Healing Stream totem (which works more like a healing cooldown now) and some are completely new like Lightning Capacitor Totem.

With the risk of sounding repetative, I like these changes. I miss my totems in a way (as a lowbie I barely have any) but that is only because they have been with me for so very long. I still remember having to do the totem quests to get them, how you had to carry them around in your bags to be able to use them... Totems now are more like cooldowns or special shaman buffs but it is a change that was needed and a good one. I will gladly vote the totem relocator skill to Best Skill of the Year award right here and now.

Fugly? Or fute...

What about the other changes to shaman? I've only tried resto, since my enhancement shaman is abandoned on another server at the moment, and besides the fact that it is impossible to oom at lower levels healing is very much the same. I have access to skills I didn't have before, like Riptide, but otherwise I don't feel like shaman healing has changed much at all and that's ok - I've got enough to wrap my head around as it is already.

Druid
As a tanking druid I have noticed the same move towards dps vs mitigation change that prot warrior got, only it took me so much longer to get. On my warrior I was used to using Shield Block on a regular basis and quickly figured out how the new Shield Block was meant to be handled. On my druid however it first took me a while to notice Savage Defense was no longer present and then even longer to realize that it had been turned into a mitigation skill like Shield Block (only it gives dodge instead obviously). No wonder I was taking so much damage!

In fact, my druid has suddenly got a whole handful of new mitigation and dps cooldowns (to some part depending on which talent skills you choose) that I barely know what to do with. I press one out of the many every bigger pull, hoping to make the healer a little happier. Most of the time I just feel confused, but I think I am slowly getting the hang of this.

One of the things that kind of disappointed me were the skill choices, where few seemed as interesting or good as they did on other classes. I suppose one of the problems could be that most of the skills are usable in all shapeshifts, so that eventhough they're tweaked to work better for some shapeshifts they do work in all and that makes it difficult for me to find one that I think is useful for tanking. I tried the treants, but they didn't really seem to do anything worthwhile. I tried the Typhoon, but that turned out to be mostly annoying (as I had already suspected it would). It's too many choices but because they all feel pretty meh rather than all seeming so good. That could just be me not grasping the idea completely yet, but I'll get there.

Druid tanking has changed about as much was warrior tanking, and overall I think the changes are ok. It annoys me that I need to spec for the charge, but fine - paladins and dks don't have a charge either (they do have ranged aoe threat skills to compensate for that however!). Druids still don't have a ranged silence which is a quality of life change I think we deserved. Druids feel weird, but not necessarily bad and I think I might just have to get comfortable in these new druid shoes first. It's just proving to take a little longer than for the other classes I've tried so far.

On a closing note (omg, finally) I feel like Blizzard have really tried to bring forward the essence of the different classes and specs, making them feel more separated and special and like you're actually achieving something differently from the next guy. Since I've only tried these new classes on low levels (around 50 and druid on 83) I know there is still a lot more to discover and understand before the day is over. I am definitely liking what I have been seing so far however, and can only hope these classes progress on in this direction. Good job Blizzard, thumbs up from me.

Fire Mage Guide - 4.0.6 Edition

This is a new and updated version of my old fire mage guide that I wrote back at the end of Wrath. Fortunately, fire mages work pretty much the same as they did back then, so you who have read my old version will recognize alot of things. There have still been some small, but important, changes to how fire mages work which I will mention, also the glyphs/gems section is updated for Cataclysm of course.


Table of Content
- Introduction
- Talents
- Glyphs
- Stats
- Gems
- Rotation
- Resources


Introduction
What role does the fire mage have? How does it differ from the other mage specs and what can you expect from playing a fire mage?
More than any of the other mage-specs, fire mage is about dot-damage. In fact it is so important that our mastery affects nothing else. Alot of fire mage talents focus around spreading this fire damage and getting increased stats when more than 2 targets are affected by our debuffs. What does this mean for our playstyle?

Issues
The ”problem” with fire mage used to be that doing aoe-damage is part of our core-mechanics and standard rotations. Some of our most important talents depend on us being able to do aoe-damage. Back in Wrath this was more of an issue, but in Cataclysm there are plenty of fights that will allow the fire mage damage to get to their full potential. Basically any raid boss has some sort of aoe component to the fight, which allow us to get full use of our talents and skills. However, even though this is alot less of an issue now, it still means that playing a fire mage means you have to learn how to keep track of more than one target to deal optimal damage and that you will deal less damage whenever you only have one target.
The other issue with fire mages is that they are heavily dependant on crit, which gives an ”rng” feeling to the class. Your damage output can vary greatly depending on your crit streaks. Increasing your crit will reduce the rng feeling of course, but because of how crit works (either you get one or you don't, unlike haste which always affects all your casts) this is something that may annoy and frustrate players at time. On the other hand this could also be a reason for great fun with the fire mage – dealing decent damage without crits and awesome damage with crits.

Potentials
Fire mage is arguably the best mage spec for moving dps. We have several skills that work while running (Flamestrike, LB, Blast Wave, and Scorch) that are unique to our spec. Fire mages are heavy on the mana, but are also the only mage spec that can cast spells when completely oom, thanks to Improved Scorch. This adds another level of planning to the spec. Because of the fact that Blizzard have designed most raid bosses to work greatly with the fire mage fighting style, fire mages are a really strong class in raiding right now. Fire mages are fairly easy to learn but difficult to master, allowing for great depth and potential. If you enjoy a challenge that really pays off, fire mage is definitely the spec for you!

Talents
Because of the above-mentioned issues, there are also some issues to how we would want to place our talents. Since some talents actually require us to have multiple targets they are essentially useless at any time that we don't have multiple targets. This also means the loss of alot of synergy between talents. There is also some difference between speccing a raiding mage and an instancing mage (this isn't a guide for pvping mages though).

Main Tree
Tier 1
Master of Elements: Although mana has become less of an issue than it was some patches ago, it's still something we have to keep an eye on. Since we really don't want to use Spirit (read more about stats further down) our main income for mana and resources for mana management will be talents like this.
Burning Soul: Because Fire Mage is alot about throwing Fireballs, any cast time lost is dps lost. This all depends on how big an issue you taking damage is. In instances this usually is less of a problem but some boss aoe-mechanics also have spell knock-back mechanics for instance, so even if you don't get actively hit my something you might be passively.
Improved Fire Blast: This isn't a bad talent, but overall we use Fire Blast too little for it to be worth the points.
Tier 2
Ignite: CORE TALENT. You are useless as a fire mage without this.
Flame Power: 3% extra damage straight off is awesome. Exploding Fire Orbs means more aoe damage.
Blazing Speed: You shouldn't be hit by melee or ranged attacks in pve (and if you do in raids you're usually dead anyway). This is a pvp talent.
Impact: This talent is in synergy with the talent Pyromaniac (see further down). One of the biggest contributors to those awesome amounts of aoe damage that fire mages can push out.
Tier 3
Cauterize: Since dying always is the ultimate dps-loss, this is also useful in a pve-setting. Especially in raids where there is loads of aoe damage going around that is unavoidable, and as a mage you might not always be on top priority on the healers list. Less useful for instances, I would skip this talent if you don't raid.
Blast Wave: An aoe skill which synergizes with Improved Flamestrike and Pyromaniac but will still only be useful when there are several targets. No longer has the knockback effect.
Hot Streak: CORE TALENT. There is no point in playing fire mage without this.
Improved Scorch: The usefulness of this talent depends a little on the content you're playing. Less useful in instances in instances where the fights are short enough that you won't oom. As soon as you feel you can handle most boss fights in raids without ooming, you don't need this talent much. Otherwise this is a great talent for mana management.
Tier 4
Molten Shields: This could've been an interesting utility talent for extra movement. Unfortunately the Blazing Speed effect doesn't kick in until after 30 seconds or after your Mage Ward dissipates due to absorbtion, which might make it a little difficult to time properly to actually be useful in pve.
Combustion: CORE TALENT: When used correctly this is one of your most powerful damage dealing tools.
Improved Hot Streak: CORE TALENT: You won't do any damage without this.
Firestarter: Great talent for both instances and raiding.
Tier 5
Improved Flamestrike: Aoe-talent. Synergizes with Pyromaniac, but is only useful when there are multiple targets.
Dragonbreath: Even though it has a limited range, in current raid and instance content there are plenty of opportunities to use this. It is also a prerequisite for Living Bomb.
Molten Fury: Talents like these aren't testable against dummies, but that doesn't make them less good. Great overall damage increase, especially in raids where you can expect your target to be below 35% health longer than in instances.
Tier 6
Pyromaniac: Great talent when you learn how to handle your fire mage. Requires you to have dots up on several targets, which is possible for at least periods of time on most raid bosses.
Critical Mass: 15% extra damage to one of our most important skills is awesome. 5% extra crit to our targets is also good, but often applied by someone else in a raid.
Tier 7
Living Bomb: CORE TALENT. Don't even think about not taking this.

Off Trees
Arcane Concentration: This has become alot less useful since the reduction of mana cost made to several of our most important spells.
Netherwind Presence: Haste is one of our most important stats.
Piercing Ice: We want tons of crit and thus we want this talent.

Raid-build
Instance-build

Glyphs
I won't talk about them all, but the interesting ones (which aren't very many unfortunately):


Prime

• Molten Armor – Is our strongest glyph.
• Pyroblast OR Living Bomb – The Pyroblast glyph gets better the better gear you have. If you don't proc Pyroblast often I recommend Living Bomb instead (thanks to Justin R for pointing this out!)
• Fireball – Increasing the damage on one of your core spells is a good thing.
  

Major
None of the majors change your damage in anyway, so you are pretty much free to choose. Here are some recommendations;

• Polymorph – If you ever intend to cc, this is a good glyph to have.
• Evocation – Being able to self heal in some way is always useful, but remember that the mana component of Evocation still is the main goal of using it.
• [Free to choose] – Any glyph you like.
  

Minor
None of the minors change your damage in any way so you are free to choose any you like. I'd go with Slow Fall, Armors and Conjuring. Arcane Brilliance is also a good glyph for raiding, if you need to rebuff during combat.

Stats
As you might have noted by now, there are four very important stats for a fire mage - Crit, Haste, Hit and Int (and spellpower). Which one is more important?

Hit: Our most important secondary stat. If we don't hit with our spells, there is no meaning in even casting them. Since we no longer have any talents that give hit, we now need 17% through gear (which includes enchants and gems).
Crit: Without any crit our damage falls like a house built of cards. Crit is the very foundation of fire mage dps.
Haste: More haste = more casts = more crits = more damage.
Intellect: Our most important stat overall. Try to avoid trading intellect for another stat if you can help it. We want our spells to do a lot of damage when they hit of course. Nowadays we get spellpower through intellect. Intellect also gives us crit!

Unlike in Wrath, haste and crit are about equally good. Whether you should aim at more depends completely on your current gear, which means that if you want to min max your gear you really have to turn to number crunching or using programs like Rawr to do the numbers for you. Basically, a good balance between the two is what you should aim for. Mastery on the other hand is currently considered the weakest secondary stat, and can safely be reforged into any other stat that you need. In order of importance;

1. Intellect
2. Hit (to 17%)
3. Haste/Crit (Keep a balance)
4. Mastery

Reforging
Use the above priority list to reforge any lesser stat into a better one.

Gems
Following the above rules for stats these are the best gems for us. Going for the socket bonus is overall better now than it was in Wrath, but it still doesn't mean that you should always go for the bonus. A bonus of +10 stats is for example worth ignoring (and putting a pure intellect gem there instead), unless it is 10 intellect.

Blue - 20 intellect and 20 hit Veiled Demonseye, until capped.
Red - 40 Int Brilliant Inferno Ruby
Yellow – 20 intellect and 20 Crit rating, Potent Ember Topaz or 20 intellect and 20 haste rating, Reckless Ember Topaz.
Meta – Burning Shadowspirit Diamond.

Rotation
What makes Fire Mages so much fun is the lack of a dull rotation or spamming of one skill. There will be plenty of Fireball casting, but the better your gear gets the more you have to react to procs and debuffs. To do optimal dps as a fire mage you have to follow a set of rules and keep track of your buffs and debuffs.

1. Keep Molten Armor up.
2. Keep Critical Mass debuff up (unless someone else already is)
3. Keep Living Bomb up. DO NOT CUT IT! Reapplying Living Bomb before it runs out is basically useless. Rather miss a second than reapply too early. It is no use applying it to a target that will die before the debuff runs out.
4. When Hot Streak is up, use it.
5. When Ignite, Living Bomb and Pyroblast debuff are on your target, use Combustion. (There are addons to help you keep track of this. I just use DoTimers).
6. Spam Fireball
   

Skills with certain rules;
Mirror Image: The best time to use Mirror Image depends a little on the fight. Simple testing seems to show that Mirror Images are affected by your permanent stats, like your hit and spellpower. I am still unsure whether they are affected by temporary stats like procs and buffs, they seem however to be unaffected by Bloodlust, regardless of if they are cast before or after.
Impact: How to properly use Impact is a whole school of thought in itself. The best way to use Impact is when you have strong dots on one target among several others. Use Impact to spread that damage to the other targets for great amounts of aoe damage. Remember that Living Bomb only is applicable to 3 targets now, meaning that if you have four or more targets and use Impact on a target with LB, it will remove LB from your current target.

Resources;
Here are some great sites for more reading (if you have suggestions for more, give me a shout and I'll check it out!)
Elitist Jerks - Fire Mage Compendium

Thoughts on Frost Mage Raid Dps

I wanted to try out frost dps in a raid and so respecced my mage frost for a gdkp run. Here are some random thoughts and impressions on frost mage as a viable raid dpser. Remember that all this is based on one raid (and some tests on a target dummy), so this is far from some definite conclusion on frost mages viability in raids right now.

First of all, I did do less damage than in my fire spec. About 1-2k dps less, depending on fight. I did have the proper glyphs, but on the other hand my entire gear was still gemmed and reforged towards fire, meaning I had tons of crit and reforged everything to mastery. I don't think this is the right way to go for frost however. Also I haven't played frost for a long time and didn't have much practice with getting the right skills used with the right procs and all that. Taking this into consideration I am amazed I only did 1-2k less dps than my fire spec.

I'll start with an overall impression - I liked frost. I definitely sensed potential. Unlike fire it doesn't have a rotation, but is purely proc based. You basically spam frost bolts until you get Fingers of Frost (FoF) or Brain Freeze (BF). These two procs open up a bunch of possibilites for how you'd best want to use them. We can either use Deep Freeze, Ice Lance, Fireball or Frostfire Bolt depending on proc, and which we choose is mostly dependant on whichever does the most damage. I found that whenever you can you'd want to use Deep Freeze. Even with my non-awesome gear (it's definitely not bad, but not "up there") I usually did around 40k damage with Deep Freeze. Whenever your DF is on cooldown you use FoF on Ice Lance. Unless you've simultaneously also procced BF in which case you'd want to use Fireball or Frostfire Bolt instead. I actually found that FFB did more damage than FB, and with the glyph you also get a nice dot on the target. Here are some of the things I'd like to discuss however;

Haste seems to be a better stat for frost, definitely better than crit. With alot of haste we get more FoF procs, and FoF will increase your crit chance with Ice Lance and Deep Freeze by so much that you'll easily overcap yourself if you've got over 30% crit, thanks to the Shatter talent. Shatter will increase your current crit chance on a frozen target by 3, which means if you have 30% crit chance you'll get 90% crit chance against frozen targets. Before you drop that jaw though, remember that frozen targets only counts those affected by Frost Nova/Freeze, which aint gonna happen in a raid. FoF makes Ice Lance, Frostfire Bolt and DF count the target as frozen and this is where we'll deal our real damage. Also we have no bonus from crits, besides the extra damage. What you want are as many Frostbolts as possible, which means you'd want a lot of haste. I did also notice however that Frostbolt already has a comparably short cast time and with bloodlust/heroism you'll come very close to cap. You probably don't want to use Icy Veins when BL/Heroism is up because that would be a waste of haste. This means haste is important but still easily cappable (at least compared to fire, don't know about arcane) and we definitely have to keep an eye on this. Also alot of frost dps are from instants, which further makes haste less valuable. The only thing you have to keep track off is speeding up your frostbolt as much as possible, but not so much so that Icy Veins or BL/Heroism means overcapping too much.

Using my über math skills (*cough*) and wowpedias haste information, I've come to the following conclusion;
Haste rating needed for cap (hrnfc) - 3279
Hrnfc with BL - 2296
Hrnfc with Icy Veins - 2623
Hrnfc with BL and Wrath of Air Totem - 2132

But! With the talent Early Frost we are reducing the cast time of our frostbolt to 1,3 seconds every 15 seconds. Bloodlust alone will cap us when we have this cast time, but we only have it every 15 seconds. During 15 seconds we can expect to cast another ~9 casts (with my current haste) which we would want to be hasted. From those ~9 we'd want to subtract instants that'll proc. How many frostbolts can we expect to cast that need haste between each 15 second intervall? I usually get roughly 4-5 Frostbolt casts between each 15 second intervall, with my current haste of about ~650 rating or ~20%. This tells me that haste is important, but like I said easily capped (by "capped" I here mean "put up to a practical amount"). We probably don't want much more than a maximum of ~1000 haste rating.

Frost Mastery is Frostburn which increases damage against frozen targets. In a raid you can only ever hope to increase the damage of Ice Lance, Frostfire Bolt and Deep Freeze with our mastery, which are the only spells affected by FoF. This means our mastery doesn't affect all of our skills, but still an important part of them. The more haste we've got, the better our mastery becomes it seems, but I am still divided as to just how good our mastery is in the long run. On the other hand once we've got enough haste there won't be much other stats to reforge into.

The second best stat to collect, next to capping haste (at around 1000 haste as discussed), and hit of course, would be to smack on as much intellect as possible. I think most mages will get enough hit and crit from using endgame gear, so what we'd want to gem is haste and intellect.

From my limited testing it seems like we should prioritize like thus;

1. Hit (to 17% with buffs)
2. Haste (to about 1000 rating)
3. Intellect

The pet doesn't make much of a difference. Unlike most other pets it brings no buffs or good amount of damage and whether you've got it out or not during a boss fight won't make much of a difference. I see potential in the talent Improved Freeze which makes your pets Freeze skill proc two FoF for you. This means you could get two FoF procs at will by using your pets freeze skill. I didn't try this talent and don't know if you'll get the procs even if you're freezing something that is immune to freezing, like a boss. I am assuming you do, otherwise this talent is purely a pvp talent. If it does work however it brings further depth and necessity of skill to frost dps.

Cold Snap is a lovely talent since it allows you to use Ice Block twice during a fight and Icy Veins one extra time during a fight. Knowing when the best time is to use Cold Snap will definitely make a difference.

When we get BF procs, do we want to use FFB or FB? Like I mentioned I noticed that FFB seemed to do more damage, especially when glyphed. This is because it is affected by FoF. One idea could be to use FB whenever you've got 3 stacks of FFB up already and no FoF proc. This would probably be the ideal damage, but quite tricky to manage. Also you never really know when you'll get another BF proc and you don't want your dot stack to drop either. Tricky indeed.

Although frost mages don't have a good skill to use when running, like fire mages do (scorch) I didn't feel like running was much of a penalty. You've often got some FoF procs to use up and this could be a good time to use your pets Freeze for some extra FoF procs, which will allow you to use instants on the run. Just using an unprocced Ice Lance is basically useless as it deals close to no damage that way.

Mana is definitely less of an issue for frost mages than fire mages. I didn't have much trouble in the various fights we did in ICC. As a fire I usually oom very fast, as frost I think mana consumption was reasonable. I still often had to use Mana Gems, but I never found myself completely out of mana.

These are just some quick notes on frost dpsing in raids. It's not as good as fire or arcane right now, but challenging and fun. If you're currently raiding mostly for fun, and doing fights where you don't need everyone to be at their max potential, I definitely recommend at least trying it out. Mastering frost dpsing seems to be the trickiest among all the mage specs right now and it's really not far behind the other specs (especially not when compared to prepatch).

4.0 Fire Mage Guide (PvE)

Since I couldn't find a nice 4.0 pve fire mage guide anywhere on the internets I thought I would have to do my own. Because of the recent changes done to stats in general and mages in particular I can't guarantee this to be perfectly correct. Also this has not been tested in Cataclysm yet. What I have read about fire mages in Cataclysm, most of this still holds however. Any input is greatly appreciated!

Table of Content
- Introduction
- Talents
- Glyphs
- Stats
- Gems
- Rotation

Introduction
What role does the fire mage have in 4.0/Cata? What can you expect from playing a fire mage?
More than any of the other mage-specs, fire mage is about dot-damage. In fact it is so important that our mastery affects nothing else. Alot of fire mage talents focus around spreading this fire damage and getting increased stats when more than 2 targets are affected by our debuffs. What does this mean for our playstyle?

Issues
In the current content, very few boss-fights include more than 1 target at the majority of the fight. Taking ICC as an example, some bosses have adds which could be used to maximize dps. But in the same way this means as soon as there are no adds our dps drops significantly. One could argue that aoe always will outdps single-target dps, of course. Problem with fire mage is that doing aoe-damage is part of our core-mechanics and standard rotations. Some of our most important talents depend on us being able to do aoe-damage. I don't know how the fights will be in Cata, but I can say that the way fire mages work now isn't optimized for our current content. If you want to top mage-dps, I'd go with another spec as it is now. Fire mages are too dependant on the perfect setup to be at their max potential.

Potentials
Even though things might look glum for fire mages at a first glance, one could also argue that there is enormous potential for fun and awesome amounts of damage as long as Blizzard know how to design the fights (i.e so we at least get an opportunity to use all our skills and talents at maximum efficiency). As soon as the fight mechanics go our way fire mages are extremely entertaining.

Scorch-build?
Some changes to some skills have also made people (EJ Forums) wonder if we're not better off using scorch as our main damage component instead of fireball.
Why a Scorch-build is a good idea;

• Talents like Improved Scorch that removes mana cost from Scorch would probably mean we'll never oom, allowing us to take other talents instead. 
• Talents like Improved Hot Streak are benefitted from more casts rather than slow, hard hitting casts. 
• With the right amount of crit the extra procs from Hot Streak would outperform the potential dpsloss from using Scorch instead of Fireball. Impact is also benefitted from more casts rather than slow, hardhitting ones. It would also significantly reduce our need for haste. 
• With the right talents Scorch is usable while running, making our dps way less affected by movement (of course we can, and should, use Scorch while running in a Fireball-spec as well). 
• It is easier to time reapplication of Living Bomb with a short-cast spell than long-cast spell. 
• Spell interruption is less of an issue.

Why a Scorch-build is a bad idea;

• Fireball does have higher dps than Scorch. With low crit (less than 35-40%), the builds seem to do about the same damage. With ridiculously low crit (less than 30%, you shouldn't even be fire mage then) a regular fire ball spec would probably be better. 
• There is a glyph of Fireball that increases crit-chance with Fireball by 5%, but no such equivalent for Scorch.

I've tried the different specs, using the same gear (and Fireball Glyph) and the Fireball build does deal more damage on a boss-dummy (with my gear about 2k dps more). I think in a raid-setting the easier handling of Scorch spamming could win out on Fireball Spamming however, not to mention you won't oom. With a regular Fireball rotation, and without any mana-efficiency talents like Clearcasting or Master of Elements, I oom after about 2 minutes on a dummy. With a Scorch build I'd probably have to go on for 10 minutes or more (never tried though). This means we have to place dps-talents into mana efficiency-talents, or try to regain mana mid-fight through Evocation. Either way we loose dps trying to regain mana if the fight is longer than 2-3 minutes using a Fireball spec. If this dps loss is greater than the dps gain from using a Fireball spec is hard to say, the specs are undoubtedly close in damage output and might need personal testing. It may also vary from fight to fight. Your stats and gear could determine whether you win out on a Scorch or Fireball build/rotation. Maybe alternating between these rotations is the best solution?

Frostfire Bolt- build?
Frostfire Bolt is alot like Fireball. It deals about the same damage and has the same cast time. With glyph of Frostfire Bolt it might however actually deal more damage than Fireball, in which case it would be better to use this than Fireball. Some preliminary testing seems to indicate that Frostfire Bolt isn't worth using in our rotation however (not to mention to replace Fireball/Scorch entirely). It seems to deal considerably less damage.

Talents
Because of the above-mentioned issues, there are also some issues to how we would want to place our talents. Since some talents actually require us to have multiple targets they are essentially useless at any time that we don't have multiple targets. This also means the loss of alot of synergy between talents.

Main Tree
Tier 1
Master of Elements: Mana is an issue for mages as much as it ever has been. Since we really don't want to use Spirit (read more about stats further down) our main income for mana will be talents like this. If you're interested in a Scorch-build, this talent is basically useless however.
Burning Soul: Because Fire Mage is alot about throwing Fireballs, any cast time lost is dps lost. This all depends on how big an issue you taking damage is. Some boss aoe-mechanics also have spell knock-back mechanics for instance, so even if you don't get actively hit my something you might be passively.
Improved Fire Blast: Fire Blast will be more important to us now than before. Increased crit is also an essential component of our damaging mechanics.
Tier 2
Ignite: CORE TALENT. You are useless as a fire mage without this.
Flame Power: 3% extra damage straight off is nice. We don't get the Fire Orb skill until level 81 though.
Blazing Speed: Since movement seems to become more important in Cata than it has been before, this could potentially become a good pve-talent. For now it is more of a pvp-talent.
Impact: This talent is in synergy with the talent Pyromaniac (see further down). It's usefulness in our current raid-content is limited however, we can only hope this changes with Cata. It does also reset the timer on Living Bomb, which is bad.
Tier 3
Cauterize: Since dying always is the ultimate dps-loss, this could also become useful in a pve-setting. There are several reasons why you could die in a raid - 1. You stood in fire. 2. The raid wiped. 3. Lack of healing. Cauterize will only be truly helpful in the third case (as for the first case, l2p instead ;))
Blast Wave: An aoe skill. Synergizes with Improved Flamestrike and Pyromaniac but will still only be useful when there are several targets. No longer has the knockback effect.
Hot Streak: CORE TALENT. There is no point in playing fire mage without this.
Improved Scorch: Only useful if you're interested in a Scorch-build.
Tier 4
Molten Shields: This could be an interesting utility talent for extra movement. Unfortunately the Blazing Speed effect doesn't kick in until after 30 seconds or after your Mage Ward dissipates due to absorbtion, which might make it a little difficult to time properly.
Combustion: Not everyone likes the changes made to Combustion. I do however. I think it's a great way to give us a nice tool that has to be properly used for us to maximize dps instead of just something to pop at any time for some extra damage.
Improved Hot Streak: CORE TALENT: You won't do any damage without this.
Firestarter: Even if you're not interested in my Scorch-build this is a very good talent. It allows you to be not so useless for when you have to move alot, like Halion phase 2 for example.
Tier 5
Improved Flamestrike: Aoe-talent. Synergizes with Pyromaniac, but is only useful when there are multiple targets.
Dragonbreath: Because of its limited range it is rarely useful in raid-pve. Since it is a prerequisite for Living Bomb we have to take it anyway.
Molten Fury: Talents like these aren't testable against dummies, but that doesn't make them less useful.
Tier 6
Pyromaniac: Very situational. In fact so situational it'll rarely be up in a raid-setting, maybe this will change in Cata. With a Scorch-build this is a less important talent. With a Fireball-build this will increase your damage output alot once it's up.
Critical Mass: 15% extra damage to one of our most important skills is awesome. 5% extra crit to our targets is also good, but generally applied by someone else in a raid.
Tier 7
Living Bomb: CORE TALENT. Don't even think about not taking this.

Off Trees
Arcane Concentration: With a fireball-build this is a really good talent. With a Scorch-build it is completely necessary.
Netherwind Presence: With a fireball-build this is a really good talent. With a Scorch-build it is less necessary.
Piercing Ice: We want tons of crit and thus we want this talent.

Fireball-build

Scorch-build 

Glyphs
I won't talk about them all, but the interesting ones (which aren't very many unfortunately):

Prime

• Living Bomb
• Pyroblast
• [Free to choose] But I'd go with either Mage Armor or Cone of Cold.

Major

• Fireball OR Frostfire Bolt - depending on which one you're interested in using as your main-spell. If you're using a Scorch-build this one is unecessary.
• Molten Armor
• [Free to choose] But I'd go with either Evocation, Invisibility or Mirror Image.

Minor
None of the minors change your damage in any way so you are free to choose any you like. I'd go with Slow Fall, Armors and Conjuring.

Stats
As you might have noted by now, there are four very important stats for a fire mage - Crit, Haste, Hit and Spellpower/Int (haste is less important in a Scorch-build however). Which one is more important?

Hit: Most important. If we don't hit with our spells, there is no meaning in even casting them. Since we no longer have any talents that give hit, we now need 17% through gear.
Crit: Without any crit our damage falls like a house built of cards. Crit is the very foundation of fire mage dps. Not all the spellpower or haste in the world could make up for a nice amount of crit.
Haste: One could argue that the more haste = more casts = more damage. Strictly speaking this is true of course, but that is setting aside all the side effects of our casts. Since a big portion of our damage comes from us critting one has to aim at as many as those hits being crits as possible. Even if we throw many spells, we'd do less damage if they never critted than if we used less spells and they all critted. Alot of crits = instant Pyroblast. Instant is alot of haste :P Hope you follow my meaning here.
Intellect: We want our spells to do a lot of damage when they hit of course. Nowadays we get spellpower through intellect. Intellect also gives us crit! 1 intellect only gives us one third of the crit that 1 crit rating does however, and this has to be taken into consideration.

1. Get the hit-cap (17%)
   
2. Get crit over 40% (at least! But the more the better)
   
3. Get haste over 20% (only if you've got a fireball/frostfire bolt build, if you use a scorch build you can focus on more Crit instead of Haste).

Reforging
Any stat on a gear piece that isn't one of the above should be reforged into mastery since reforging currently is our only source to mastery points.

Gems
Following the above rules for stats these are the best gems for us.

Blue - 20 hit Rigid Majestic Zircon, until capped. When capped it is mostly better to ignore socket bonus and go for Int, Haste or Crit (mostly Crit).
Red - 20 Int Brilliant Cardinal Ruby
Yellow - 20 Crit Rating Smooth King's Amber or 20 haste rating, Quick King's Amber (unless your haste is really low, it is probably better to gem crit though.)

In case you're curious the gems give the following stats;
20 hit rating = 0,76% hit
20 int = 20 spellpower and 0,12% crit
20 crit rating = 0,4% crit
20 haste rating = 0,6% haste (how much this reduces your cast time depends on the original cast time of your spell).

Rotation
What makes Fire Mages so much fun is the lack of a dull rotation or spamming of one skill. There will be plenty of Fireball/Frostfire Bolt/Scorch casting (whichever you happent to prefer), that much is true, but to do optimal dps as a fire mage you have to follow a set of rules and keep track of your buffs and debuffs.

1. Keep Living Bomb up. DO NOT CUT IT! Reapplying Living Bomb before it runs out is basically useless. Rather miss a second than reapply too early. It is no use applying it to a target that will die before the debuff runs out.
2. When Hot Streak is up, use it.
3. When Ignite, Living Bomb and Pyroblast debuff are on your target, use Combustion. (There are addons to help you keep track of this. I just use DoTimers).
4. Spam Fireball/Frostfire Bolt/Scorch

Skills with certain rules;
Mirror Image: The best time to use Mirror Image depends a little on the fight. Unless Blizzard have changed something I'm not aware of, it is still best to try to use Mirror Image just before Bloodlust. Unless the fight is long enough to use Mirror Image several times in which case it is best to use them from start.
Impact: Is not worth using if there is less than 3 targets. If you have between 1-3 targets try applying Living Bombs to all of them instead. It seems like Impact no longer resets the duration of Living Bomb on the target, in which case it is safe to use Impact procs as long as there is more than one target within 12 yards. It is still best to try to keep Living Bomb on all targets if they are between 1-3.

Class Quests - Sunken Temple

One of my favorite instances is Sunken Temple actually, although it is huge and easy to get lost in if you don't know your way around. Few people also seem to know that each class (except Dk's of course) has a special quest for this instance. Most of the quests are quite alike and most of the quests also have some interesting rewards! All the rewards have gotten an overhaul (although that was some time ago too), so some of them are quite good nowadays. Here I thought I'd make an easy overview of each class' Sunken Temple quest and the rewards from it. Is it worth doing for your class or not (which depends somewhat on your current gear of course, always keep that in mind)? I'll do half the classes today, and the other half tomorrow!

Priest
Starts out with "Cenarion Aid" which you get from Ogtinc. After some prequests you get "Blood of Morphaz" which means you have to kill the dragon Morphaz. Easy enough, he's on the regular route to the last boss anyway. As rewards you get to choose between "Blessed Prayer Beads", "Woestave" and "Circle of Hope".
The Beads is a trinket which give 101 spellpower when used (20 sec dur, 2 min cd), and if you lack a trinket slot these could come in handy. If you're good enough to use it everytime it's off cooldown it has a decent use, which turns out to be slightly more than 15 spellpower overall. Nothing fancy, but if you already have a nice wand and rings, this isn't bad. You get a hit trinket in Hinterlands however which imo is better (Rune of the Guard Captain), because I love hit at low levels (eventhough it gives attackpower). In outlands you'll get a better spellpower trinket too (Vengeance of the Illidari), and at level 50 you're not far from Outlands.
The Woestave is a wand that gives some stamina (3) and spellpower (9). Overall better than the beads, considering how useful a good wand is to a priest. That is if you soloplay alot, if you mainly do instances a wand is less useful.
The Circle of Hope is a ring which gives some shadow resistance (meaningless stat at this level) and 14 crit rating, which at level 50 is more than 1% crit. At level 50 there are already plenty of other good rings out there though (like Golden Ring of Power), which means this isn't that good compared to its level.
Overall I'd probably recommend the wand.

Druid
Unlike the most of the other classes, druids get their Sunken Temple quest from Torwa Pathfinder at the entrance of Un'Goro. After some prequests you get "A Better Ingredient", which means you have to find a quest item from the guardian at the bottom of Sunken Temple. This is a little tricker than most other classes quests, because one doesn't usually do the basement part of Sunken Temple. It's alot of time for not so much reward. The guardian has to be summoned by activating stones in a special way which most puggers just can't be arsed to do. Unless you're very good at convincing people to do boring stuff, you'll probably have to ask a high leveled friend for help.
As rewards you get "Grizzled Pelt", "Forest's Embrace" or "Moonshadow Stave". It's clear that they've tried to do one reward for each spec, feral, boomkin and resto. Unless you're dressed in BoA gear, which has a better staff and chest already, these rewards are actually really great, all of them.
The Grizzled Pelt is awesomely itemized for a feral druid, whether you're tanking or dpsing.
The chest Forest's Embrace is really good for both resto and boomkin druids.
The staff Moonshadow Stave is quite nice too with all that crit (14 rating is slightly more than 1% crit at level 50). If you're horde there is a staff from a quest chain in Stranglethorn (starts with "Saving Yenniku" in Grom'gol) which is nearly as good, called Nimboya's Staff. That means you could have the chest and that staff together which would be the best option.
Overallt I'd say go for the chests.

Hunter
Starts out at Ogtinc with "the Hunter's Charm". After some prequests you get "The Green Drake" in which you need to kill the dragon Morphaz (just as priests).
As reward you'll get to choose between "Hunting Spear", "Devilsaur Eye" or "Devilsaur Tooth".
Hunting Spear is a weapon and as a hunter you'll mainly use the stats. It gives mp5 for some reason I don't understand, and a bunch of stamina (I am assuming this is for survival hunters). Because it is so strangely itemized I wouldn't recommend going with this weapon.
Devilsaur Eye is a trinket that gives 150 attackpower and 20 hit rating when used (20 sec dur, 2 min cd).
Devilsaur Tooth is another trinket which gives 5 agility permanently and increases your pets attack power by 200 when used (20 sec dur, 2 min cd).
Both the trinkets are quite good. As with priest you can get a good trinket from hinterlands which gives hit and attackpower permanently, which makes it better than any of these two trinkets. You'll also get a better trinket in Outlands (Bladefist's Breadth), so you can choose whichever of these trinkets you like more at the moment, you probably won't keep it for long.

Mage
This quests also starts in Azshara, but from Archmage Xylem. He can be found along the northern mountain wall where you'll have to ask one of his disciples to teleport you up to his tower. It starts with "Magic Dust" and after some prequests you'll get "Destroy Morphaz" in which you need to kill the dragon Morphaz (hey, alot of people seem to have some sort of grudge against that poor dragon). As reward you'll get to choose between "Glacial Spike", "Arcane Crystal Pendant" or "Fire Ruby".
Glacial Spike is a dagger that gives a small amount of intellect (4) and an interesting (but not very good) proc equip. Your Frostbolt spells have a 6% chance to replenish 50 mana when cast. This means of course that this dagger would only be good for a frost mage.
Arcane Crystal Pendant is a neck that gives 6 intellect and 16 spellpower.
Fire Ruby is a trinket which restores 1 to 500 mana and gives your next fire spell 100 extra spellpower when used (1 min dur, 3 min cd). This means this trinket would be good mainly for fire mages. It does have a minute duration, but only works for one fire spell, so it isn't that good.
Now even if you happen to be a fire or frost mage I'd still say the neck is the best choice. One always tries to go for permanent stats over the "on use" or "on proc" stats, unless of course the on use and on proc stats simply are so good they're worth it (which is especially true for on proc stats). For trinkets I recommend the same ensemble as I recommended for priests a bit up (Rune of the Guard Captain and Vengeance of the Illidari). If you happen to be a fire mage, or just really like to have an extra pot every third minute, the Fire Ruby is a decent trinket though.

And that's it for this evening folks, I'll get to the other classes tomorrow!