The current state of Magery, Pre-Raid

I have a love/hate relationship with new expansions. It's exciting to me to play with the new spells, stat weights, etc that come out with any expansion because it feels like I have a knack of figuring out how to squeeze more out of my experience/knowledge of my class and get to share that with others. I hate how my character seems less powerful (for lack of better terminology) than before. I understand the why (less crit/haste etc) but it still makes me feel less like the good player I know I am.



The spec that feels the least impacted is frost. It seems like it's in the same spot it was before the expac. Extreme survivability, kiting is extremely simple, and it still hit's reasonably hard. The haste buffs in frost are superb, in my current gear (avg ilvl 343) my frostbolts are casting at 1.2ish seconds and my Deep Freezecrits for over 80k on boss's, I even had one crit for over 250k while attempting Omnitron Defense System. The elemental is pretty powerful and doesn't seem to ever die unless directly targeted, which is a plus.



Fire is pretty weak at the moment. I'm hitting as hard as I was hitting in ICC with the 30% buff, but without the crit rating to support it, I'm actually running oom really quick. The guild was working on Omnitron/Magmaw this past week and I was constantly surprised at how low on mana I was. In my current gear, I'm sitting at 26% crit and was getting very few Pyroblasts. I don't think, at the current level of gear, that we can obtain gear/reforge gear to get enough crit to make Fire viable, maybe with the T11 set bonus'eses this will be viable.



Arcane is in a wierd place, methinks. I am constantly dumbfounded by the mastery bonus of arcane and am amazed at the mana regen of Mage Armor. I think (and this is a personal opinion, to reiterate) the mastery bonus is upside down. I believe it would be better played where a mage does more damage the closer to zero their mana pool is, which would let a mage walk the fine line of keeping their mana pool low to do more damage, or walking a mana tightrope, so to speak. I'll admit, I'm having a hard time finding that switch between nuking and regening mana. I really think that Blizz is going to nerf the mana regen of Mage Armor, but who knows. I feel like I could dps at a decent level for hours



for all the mages who don't know what to gear for at the moment, all one should be concerned with is hit, followed by hit, and finally hit. I tell everyone, "until you are hit capped, nothing else matters". Missing is something that should make you die a little on the inside. Once you hit the hit cap, I'm not sure there is enough itemization to make any stat better than the other. I've been reforging mastery into what's not on the peice, i.e. my chest has mastery/crit on it, I'll reforge the mastery to haste.



I haven't really had time, except when I'm at work, to do some serious research into the extreme min/maxing of each spec, but I plan on remedyin'g