Well I am glad I installed a new plugin for my blog. If I hadn’t I would have missed this wonderful question from a reader.

“Hey there, I found your site while looking for some spec information for my Frost Mage who raids at times.

In particular I’m looking to find out where to best spend my talent points so I can go with the 127 hit rating and have it be “maxed out” properly.

I have no intention of changing from Frost, and right now I’m actually noticing that on WWS and Recount I’m doing better damage than the Fire or Arcane mages, so I want to squeeze out as much from my spec as possible.Your thoughts? “

Well first off thanks for visiting and I hope you find my suggestions useful. Since you raid spell hit is the “make it or break it” stat for mages.

Warning Theorycrafting:

Spell hit is the percent that you will hit a mob the same level, 1, 2 or even 3 levels above you. As a mage you have a base chance to hit a target PvE or PvP. I am going to talk about the PvE bases as they pertain to our question.

same level = base chance to hit is 96%
+1 level = base chance to hit is 95%
+2 levels = base chance to hit 94%
+3 levels = base chance to hit 83%

1% spell hit = 12.6 spell hit rating

FYI, you can not have 100% chance to hit. There is always a 1% chance for any mob to resist. So you need to shoot for 99% spell hit.

So with that out of the way, there are 2 talent that focus on increasing our spell hit chance, Elemental Precision and Arcane Focus. Both of these are viable for all mages, not only do you have to DPS the boss but you will at times need to sheep those pesky mobs. Elemental Precision is the bread and butter of a raiding mage that is primarily frost or fire. Arcane Focus is where arcane mages get their love.

So where to spend your points? Well I did a quick spec on WoWHead to show you how to take advantage of both spell hit talents and give yourself more raid love.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=oV0yboZZVA0Iof0oiVt

I want to cover a few things on why I did or didn’t take some talents.

• No improved Arcane Missiles: you shouldn’t be getting hit all that much in raids anyway.
• Magic Absorption: I have seen this proc quite often in raids where I resist a fireblast from a mob.
• Magic Attunement: the fight with Gruul is a good example of this. All damage is melee and as he gains groths during the fight damage increase so heals need to increase as well.
• Arcane Fortitude: I have a point in this to help when I farm. You can put the point in Magic Absorption for a 5/5.
• Ice Floes: reducing you cooldowns is always a good idea.

/back on topic

So now that we have spent points to increase our base spell chance to hit. But wait there is more, Shaman’s have a great totem for us, Totem of Wrath. It is basically an extra 3% spell hit. So now you have a 89% chance to hit with your frostbolt, groovy huh? So all you need to do now is get gear, gems and enchantments to finish off the last 10%.

Well there you have it, I hope I answered your question and gave you some good ol’ brain food to boot.

This post stemmed from a conversation I was having with a fellow mage in guild chat today. I was inquiring which set of stats was more beneficial for raids.

I was thinking Set 2, but I wanted to see what other mages and raiders thought. Yeah I know, Set 1 would be more damage, .23% more spell hit and every frostbolt/frost spell heals me. Well I came to the fact I will carry my other shoulders with me to swap out quickly until I get my [item]Gloves of the Aldor[/item], then I can have both set bonus’.

Set 1: 802 bonus damage, 12.43% spell hit, 17.43% spell crit and 2% of spell damage returned as heals
Set 2: 783 bonus damage, 12.20% spell hit, 18.50% spell crit and immune to spell cast(Frostbolt and Fireball) interruption
Difference: 19 bonus damage, < .25% spell hit, over 1% spell crit and the set bonus

So anyway the other mage was telling me that frost mages can’t do as much DPS as fire and arcane and that I should respec and respec my tailoring too. Um yeah right, pony up the money, mats for my spellfire set + respec and you got yourself a deal.

He was saying our top 2 mages in the guild, by which he meant his damage meter, are fire and arcane. Well the arcane mage left the guild. I told him to use WWS as a guide and not a damage meter. He didn’t know what WWS was nor what it did. Even though after every raid our faithful priest puts our WWS in the forums.

I was getting so angry at seeing these people swear by damage meters. You can be proud of your insane DPS and Woot Woot that you are #1 in heroics. When it comes to raiding there is more to understand then just DPS. I love the military term ‘situational awareness‘. It really applies here, I have even stopped mobs dead in their tracks before they reached our healers. If all your are thinking about is being at the top of the DPS list then you aren’t aware that some mob is beating the crap out of your healers. /fail

I even had Recount bug on me and show a full resist from my fireball as a hit.

So I was doing some reading and found a good post from BigBearButtBlogger on this very subject. I don’t mind peopel being all proud of themselves but when someone says, “so-and-so is the top mage in the guild, look at his spec and gear.” Then I pull a WWS and he is in the top ten but there are 2 other mages above him maybe he’s not all that super-duper and you should stop using your know-all-see-all damage meter.

I hope this guy gets a clue and fingures out DPS isn’t what makes the mage. It’s riding that fine line between too much threat and the right amount of DPS.

Well, It had fun trying to figure out what I did wrong on the first test. Let’s just say I had some bad math in my head when I looked at the clock. So I WWS’d the new test and I like what I’m seeing. Below are the images from my test and I am trying to find some “substaintial” information on Dr. Boom. I would love to find a completed writeup on his stats as they pertaint to range DPS tests. The sort of thing I can use to gauge just how he really does or does not compare to real raid bosses.

I pickup up Icy Veins, Cold Snap and Water Elemental.

Ok so this test wasn’t done with neutral damage gear, I was wearing my [item]21869en[/item], [item]21870en[/item] and [item]21871en[/item]. My stats looked something like this: Bonus Damage 891, Spell Hit 12.43% w/talent, Spell Crit 18.95%. I spent 1.5 minute with my damage reaching 1041, thanks to trinkets.

Click for a larger Image

Click for a larger Image

I did gain 149 DPS but that was in part from the Shadow’s Embrace set. I am still getting a 1% miss rate, not to shabby. Icy Veins is quite useful and I added it to my cast macro. It’s a wierd marco to use but it ensures max DPS when it’s available. I am going to remove my testing infrom from the post is did yesterday and make it a Patch in Review kinda thing. I will have my first real test again a boss this weekend. Yay! My job sucks. lol