Welcome back to Build Shop! After a two week hiatus to spend time with my family over the holidays, I'm back and ready to get down to some good old fashioned discussion about builds. This week we're discussing a Mage build, something that hasn't been done in a long, long time. For awhile now, Fire has been the tree of choice for the raiding mage (though some vets will remember fire-unfriendly MC and BWL). Although Fire isn't the only spec for raiding, it is the build I'm examining today.
So what makes Fire so great? Well, this build picks up all the damage-increasing talents in the Fire tree, some goodies from the Arcane tree, and even gives you a free point to put wherever you want. Hey, no one can say I'm not generous. Alright, so actually I'm not generous, there just seems to be no general consensus on where to put it, so I'm leaving it up to you. Without further ado, let's jump right in and take a look at what makes this build tick.
So what makes Fire so great? Well, this build picks up all the damage-increasing talents in the Fire tree, some goodies from the Arcane tree, and even gives you a free point to put wherever you want. Hey, no one can say I'm not generous. Alright, so actually I'm not generous, there just seems to be no general consensus on where to put it, so I'm leaving it up to you. Without further ado, let's jump right in and take a look at what makes this build tick.
Arcane (10 points)
- Arcane Subtlety (2/2) - Reduces the threat from your Arcane spells by 40% and your target's resistance to all your spells by 10. You likely won't be using any of your Arcane spells too often with this build, but to be perfectly honest -- I'm spending these first 5 points to get to Arcane Concentration, in the second tier of the tree.
- Arcane Focus (3/5) - Increases your chance to hit with Arcane spells by 6%. Again, you probably won't be using Arcane spells that much, but these points were necessary to get...
- Arcane Concentration (5/5) - Easily one of my favorite things ever. AC gives you a 10% chance anytime one of your damaging spells hits a target to enter the Clearcasting state, which reduces the mana cost of your next spell by 100%.
Fire (47 points)
- Improved Fireball (5/5) - Reduces the casting time of your Fireball by half a second. Faster casts mean more damage in less time.
- Ignite (5/5) - Your fire spell crits will now cause 40% of the spell's damage to burn the target over 4 seconds with this talent.
- Flame Throwing (2/2) - Increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards. Being able to stay further away from your target gives you some additional flexibility.
- Incineration (2/2) - Increases your chance to crit with Scorch and and Fire Blast by 4%.
- Pyroblast (1/1) - A fireball on steroids. The increased damage comes with an equally increased cast time -- 6 seconds. Primarily used as an opener in PvP when you can swing it, but not quite as popular in raids.
- Burning Soul (2/2) - Increases your chance to not lose cast time when damaged by 70% while casting Fire spells, and reduces the threat generated by Fire spells by 10%. You shouldn't be taking too much direct damage in a raid, but the threat reduction is invaluable.
- Improved Scorch (3/3) - One of the key talents in this build, Improved Scorch adds a debuff to your Scorch spell that increases Fire damage taken by 3% and stacks up to 5 times. Other magi in the group or raid can help keep this fully stacked at all times, increasing fire damage by 15%.
- Master of Elements (3/3) - Your crits from Fire and Frost spells will refund 30% of their mana cost to cast.
- Playing with Fire (3/3) - Increases all spell damage done and all spell damage taken by 3%.
- Critical Mass (3/3) - Increases your chance to crit with Fire spells by 6%. A fantastic talent, and a prerequisite to Combustion.
- Blast Wave (1/1) - An AoE attack that causes fire damage and dazes targets for 6 seconds.
- Fire Power (5/5) - Increases fire damage dealt by 10%.
- Pyromaniac (3/3) - Increases the chance to crit with fire spells and the mana cost of fire spells by 3%.
- Combustion (1/1) - On a 3 minute cooldown, and should be used with caution. Once activated, this causes each fire spell you cast to increase your chance to crit with fire spells by 10% until you've crit 3 times.
- Molten Fury (2/2) - Another great talent. This one increases the damage you deal with all your spells by 20% once your target drops below 20% health. Great for helping to burn down a target quickly.
- Empowered Fireball (5/5) - Adds another 15% to your Fireball spell damage coefficient.
- Dragon's Breath (1/1) - Fire's answer to Frost's Cone of Cold. This spell causes fire damage in a cone in front of the caster, but also disorients targets for 3 seconds. Not the most useful talent in a raid, but nice to have nonetheless.
Frost (3 points)
- Elemental Precision (3/3) - Reduces the mana cost of and increases your chance to hit with your Fire and Frost spells by 3%.
As I said earlier, there should be 1 point leftover, so you can put it wherever you like. A popular choice seems to be to put it into Improved Fire Blast, but it's up to you!
That wraps up this edition of Build Shop, but I'll be back again next week! What do you want to see on Build Shop? Send me an email with your questions or comments, and we'll talk shop.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
1-08-2008 @ 1:09PM
Sidiousin said...
Sweet, my current build!
Just for sake of feedback, i've got the extra point in improved fire blast. I generally make use of the two fireball, one fire blast rotation on trash.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 1:44PM
William said...
Me Too!! Blood Elf Mage!
1-08-2008 @ 1:10PM
Ryan said...
Interesting timing for this one, considering the new 11 pt Mage talent in today's patch makes this build completely obsolete in favor of 10/40/11.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 1:37PM
Sergio said...
No, the new build is 2/47/11+1.
1-08-2008 @ 1:38PM
Dan said...
Ryan you are terrible mage if you think raiding mages will go that shitastic spec you just provided of 10/40/11. Nerfing fire tree dmg and abilities for IV is not intelligent.
2/48/11 will be the strongest DPS output spec beating 10/48/3 by 2% theorycraft is showing.
1-08-2008 @ 1:12PM
destroyboredom said...
With the 2.3.2 patch today, why not offer up a review of the 2/48/11 build? I realize there hasn't been any testing on the live servers but it is being dubbed the new 10/48/3.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 1:16PM
TotalBiscuit said...
Can't help but laugh at the timing of this article.
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 1:21PM
ismael said...
yes, this is horrible. Look at the mage build all the magi used up until 6 hours ago! Stay tuned next week for rolling ignites!
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 1:28PM
TotalBiscuit said...
I heard that Curse of Elements will allow us to crit on negative resistance values!
1-08-2008 @ 1:24PM
TotalBiscuit said...
Incidently a couple of remarks about some of the more questionable statements in this article.
"Arcane Focus (3/5) - Increases your chance to hit with Arcane spells by 6%. Again, you probably won't be using Arcane spells that much, but these points were necessary to get..."
- Ermm, polymorph and arcane explosion? Aside from fireball, you're going to be using these spells more than anything you've got. AoE and crowd-control are two of the mage's primary roles in any raid environment.
"Dragon's Breath (1/1) - Fire's answer to Frost's Cone of Cold. This spell causes fire damage in a cone in front of the caster, but also disorients targets for 3 seconds. Not the most useful talent in a raid, but nice to have nonetheless."
- AoE is one of our primary roles. Any kind of enhanced AoE is a boon, this includes Dragons Breath. There's a good few mobs which are not immune to disorient effects either.
"Pyroblast (1/1) - A fireball on steroids. The increased damage comes with an equally increased cast time -- 6 seconds. Primarily used as an opener in PvP when you can swing it, but not quite as popular in raids."
- Not at all popular you mean. Many mages don't even bother opening with this, the benefit is negligible.
"Burning Soul (2/2) - Increases your chance to not lose cast time when damaged by 70% while casting Fire spells, and reduces the threat generated by Fire spells by 10%. You shouldn't be taking too much direct damage in a raid, but the threat reduction is invaluable."
- Burning Soul is not about taking direct damage, it's about avoiding dps-loss while taking the frequent indirect/aoe/raid-wide damage effects that many end-game raid bosses dish out.
"Arcane Subtlety (2/2) - Reduces the threat from your Arcane spells by 40% and your target's resistance to all your spells by 10. You likely won't be using any of your Arcane spells too often with this build, but to be perfectly honest -- I'm spending these first 5 points to get to Arcane Concentration, in the second tier of the tree."
- Anyone that's played a mage and raiding with one understands that avoiding pulling aggro in aoe-fests is quite literally, a lifesaver, hence this talent is useful.
For more information on how to use the 10/48/3 spec properly, you might want to look at my Theorycraft Mage Redux shows available at
http://www.wcradio.com/archives.php?selectArchive=472&autoplay=1
and
http://www.wcradio.com/archives.php?selectArchive=487&autoplay=1
Reply
1-08-2008 @ 1:32PM
Mr. Applebutter said...
In your asinine bashing of the original article, you don't point out that the reduction of target's resist is what arcane subtlety is great for. Seriously how often do you go into AOE pulls in something like Kara on the stairs to moroes and NOT pull aggro even with subtlety?
1-08-2008 @ 1:37PM
Cap said...
I'm with you on Dragon's Breath. Many a time has Dragon's Breath saved me (or priests) during a multi-pull when I or a healer pulls aggro or someone breaks a sheep. Those few seconds of disorientation is usually enough time for a good tank to find it and pick it back up again.
1-08-2008 @ 1:44PM
TotalBiscuit said...
I'm sorry, some of us have raided past Karazhan and know that spell penetration is a totally worthless stat for a mage in PvE. (Bearing in mind that you cannot reduce the artificial resistance of a boss past the point that CoE already does, this has been proven to death in raid theorycrafting, go and look it up). May I suggest playing a mage past 10-mans before you make such ridiculous remarks.
1-08-2008 @ 1:47PM
TotalBiscuit said...
Incidently I can't imagine how much your tanks and yourself would have to nub up to pull aggro in raid aoe packs, considering mages are quite able to stay alive when dealing with arguably the worst AOE packs in the entire game, in the form of the Hyjal waves.
1-08-2008 @ 1:50PM
TotalBiscuit said...
But go ahead, call me asinine for providing informed criticism where it's due, this is happy pony cloud land after all where nobody is allowed to say anything bad about anyone else.
I can't imagine what kind of nub tanks and in fact nub mages you'd have to have to repeatedly pull aggro on 10-man aoe packs, when mages are quite able to stay alive on the toughest aoe packs in the game, in the form of the Hyjal waves...
Inexperience shows, you could learn a lot by listening to more knowledgable players, rather than bashing them for pointing out flaws in an article.
1-08-2008 @ 1:51PM
TotalBiscuit said...
Bah, that one actually posted? Bollocks to you and your page errors blogsmith!
1-08-2008 @ 1:54PM
Alkahn said...
Unless I'm missing some boss that is polymorphable, usually you're sheeping/AOEing some form of add which are level 72 and below. That's 6% base chance to miss; you cap out at 64 or so hit rating. If you're a raiding mage you better have that on your gear even without the talent.
I suppose if you change gear for trash and drop your hit rating and up your crit/dmg (I could see that) then arcane focus would be useful, but otherwise I would call it a crutch for the AOE/CC elements of the mage class. You need 2% hit from gear gauranteed because blastwave isn't an arcane spell and elemental precision only gives 3%.
It's a filler talent, let's be honest.
1-08-2008 @ 1:58PM
TotalBiscuit said...
I don't think anyone's really going to dispute that it's a filler talent (arcane's full of filler, as a pure-arcane raiding mage, I can attest to that with a big frown on my face), though not every mob is a 72 elite (though the majority are) and there are a small number of bosses where you are required to aoe, and having that extra +hit can help if you've got the boss in the aoe radius too (hydross springs to mind).
But yeah, it's sucky for a deep-fire mage, but I'd at least like to see the article giving the proper justification for having it, no matter how paper-thin that justification might be :)
1-08-2008 @ 2:10PM
Matt said...
honestly if your going deep enough into fire that your have empowered fireball you don't need pyroblast because they do almost the same damage is really kinda of sad but unless you really feel you need blastwave which isn't that useful in raids either I save your points for something else. Otherwise look at this way you can get two fireballs off in the time it takes to cast one Pyroblast(not counting GCD of course). As for Pyroblasts usefulness in PvP. I'm sorry but unless your on a hill picking people off or some how behind the lines your never going to get a 6 second cast off as a fire mage heck a lot of 1 on 1 fights are over just about that quick.
2-05-2008 @ 6:37PM
Charlie said...
Way to pick a fight =/
You just agreed with the jist of everything that Chris said. =/