Arcane damage is insane in dungeons before 85.Follow

I've noticed that Mage DPS at low levels for most specs is insane.
At level 67, I'm doing around 1600 DPS as frost on a boss (more if they die too quick). In fire, it's around 1400, so Arcane should be around 1K-1200. I'm very curious to see what I do in instances on live when I get Cata, as in Beta I was doing around 10K DPS at level 82 on my 'live' mage.
Mage is fun and exciting again :)

You'd be surprised at how different they all play, while being so similar. For example, I would have NEVER expected that, when I play as fire, the thing I miss most is Ice Barrier.

Yeah, I definitely noticed the issue with movement fights throughout Wrath, it's one of the things I love about my boomkin. Those two BRC runs though, it wasn't just dps. The one I did at 82 I did 38% of the total damage just by myself...

I just hit 85 on my Mage a two days ago, and while I haven't set foot in heroics yet, in Normals, arcane is still ahead of fire for me. Generally speaking, I hate arcane. Mostly for aesthetic reasons, and because blowing things up wire great balls of fire sounds a lot more fun than whatever you do with arcane spells. It's like paper cuts versus a flamethrower in my head. After two full dungeons without getting a single hot streak proc on a boss, I gave in and switched to arcane. It's still annoying me that I'm getting lower numbers than I was at 80, but it should get higher when I gear up.

I haven't tried frost, mostly because I'm two lazy to think about that many procs and what to do with them.

Im doin 14K+ in 10 mans now...as arc..

Life is back to magey wonderful - occasional 100k crits and other happy things!

Damage is a bit lower than other specs - but once you can enuff intll...you can work through it ..

plus I think the patch will reduce mana on AB - ya !

Anyway - bein a mage is fun again !

Vyn

No, but the frequency with which they occur is.

Like I said in my last post, no HS procs on any bosses in 2 dungeons, I'm inclined to disagree (at least from what I've seen personally) whereas soloing while questing and all that jazz, I can go through mobs while rarely casting frostbolt, usually only when early frost is up.

Those quotes are for the best players wearing the best gear, pushing the hardest content. I'm fairly certain that I'm just about average - with any 'above' average coming from a small bit of prep and reading what the boss does.

I don't put too much stock into the DPS numbers like that.

The speedometer on my car goes to 130 mph.... Doesn't mean that the average driver ever sees that.

Oh, the data is of value, but I think that average players make too much out of it...

For example the 3-4 Defense has really swept the NFL over the last few years. But most High School teams don't run it because it's very tough to install if you don't have certain players. (Namely a great Nose Tackle)

Also - those wierd 'full-body' bathing suits have become the norm in all forms of high level swimming (Think Micheal Phelps - Olympics...) But you're average beach-goer or high school Swim Team isn't using them because the difference is only so huge at the extreme margins.

I'm sure that fire is better than arcane. The data tells me so. But I'd like to see the numbers for the "Average Guild"... People who can't do hard modes. People don't die in the fire, but do take two ticks - instead of one or none.



At the extreme margins of skill - the difference is huge. For the rest of us... Who knows?

I mean have you read EJ for the wierd crap these guys do? They go with a full 4 pc T10 bonus prior to the pull - then Pot (For Spell power I think) begin hard-casting Pyro prior to "Agro" by the tank, then before it lands, Gear-Swap, and start drinking to full mana in optimal (Read lvl 85 Gear) in order to front load damage and get combustion rolling fast....
WHO DOES THAT? - That's freaking crazy!


Mean while - I'm standing there in the best gear I have... (Which is just Ok) When the tank hits the mob I count to 3 before doing ANYTHING...

It's night and day... It's Michael Phelps vs my board shorts....

Someone that has a bathing suit just to splash around might not grab a new swimsuit, but a high school swim team might.

You have a cite for that? That seems silly, since the lower version of T11 has 600 more Int(and can use higher quality gems) and would have more crit after reforging than the Heroic Sanctified T10 could possibly have.

Ultimately, I suspect that things like that would only bring up one's DPS for an entire fight by a little(maybe a couple hundred), with the potential to really ***** oneself up making it something that almost no one actually does on real fights.

I'm on the boss immediately after the tank has closed melee distance. We're mages. We have multiple ways to keep the boss from wanting to target us if things go bad, from MI to IB to Invis.

What idiggory says here is rather insightful. Even if we're not world class players, we're still competitors, just amateur ones. If you're watching your meters, if you're striving to do well, you're competing.

If someone wants to be the kid on the high school swim team in the board shorts, then cool, but even a pair of cheap speedos will make a bit of difference at that level of play.

Edited, Feb 9th 2011 12:36am by Poldaran

The problem is that for the average guild there is a wide range of skill between the players. On a server's top 1-2 guilds (figure they are top-500 US/EU guilds) they probably carry 2-3 players that aren't quite at the top of their level [which aren't even really world-class players]. Where in the average guild the better players can probably out damage/dps/hps/etc the other players even at a lower gear level and sub-par spec just because they are better players.

The benefit to the grid is that it takes into consideration the various boss fights (not just a Rawr/simulation of a Patchwerk-style fight of stand and nuke) -- granted I guarantee some of those meters may have been tampered with or cheesed in one way or another (cleaving when unnecessary just for higher dps when it doesn't benefit the raid, etc - think princes in ICC).
- That is to say though that many world-class players do pre-pot and do everything they can to get that last couple hundred DPS out, as when you are pushing for world/server firsts every little bit matters, and if you won't do it then someone else in the guild will so that they can get in on that screenshot.


Edited, Feb 9th 2011 11:24am by Anobix

Eh, movement during fights is only part of it. During ToC, Arcane was king by a decent amount and pretty much all the fights in there had a good amount of movement. I think the only one that didn't was the demon dude. It does seem odd to me that the three specs would match up in damage at lower levels of gear, and then have Arcane get left in the dust once you start getting into your epics and tier gear.