Obviously as a US raider I've only been able to do Hodir and Iron Council. But there's three "outdated"-feeling mechanics that stand out on these fights that worry me about mages in Ulduar and future content:
Summary
With all fights in Ulduar so far being in the 8-10min range and having high amounts of raid damage/spell pushback, Evocation is simply too fragile. Evocation is the only mechanic that can "fail" in a raid context due to situations beyond your control and leave the player out of mana, relying solely on inherent regen, for multiple minutes.
Furthermore, the lack of a +hit talent in Fire pigeonholes it in gear in a way that no other caster in WoW is. All casters are being normalized to +3% hit from talents...except fire.
Finally, our threat reduction tools are minimal relative to what every other class has: as TPS becomes more of a concern (a design goal per GC), it will be more and more of a concern -- but only for mages/warlocks. Our DPS potential is irrelevent if, in order to do that DPS without pulling aggro, we require a pocket prot warrior and paladin (vigilance and salv) per mage/warlock on most fights. Because otherwise the only option is to stop doing damage -- which means we won't be able to actually perform at the same DPS levels of the other classes no matter what our on-paper design says we're capable of.
Overall problems
- Unlike every other caster, fire does not have the same access to a +3% hit talent (they're changing warlock trees to give them this, but haven't said mages are on the radar also)
- Other mana users either don't run OOM (low cost or high regen) or have resilient, mobile, and/or spammable mana regen (AotV or Lifetap or Divine Plea.) This is especially an issue on trash, any AE fight, and any fight with periodic raid damage, forced movement, or over 8 minutes.
- Mage (and warlock) threat reduction tools are outdated and not up to par with what other DPS classes enjoy.
- Arcane and Fire are especially bloated: things like 5-point anti-interrupt talents that don't "play nice" (other talents are 70%, working well with concentration aura) and inability to get any toys in Fire are inelegant.
Proposed solutions
1. Add a +hit talent for fire in first-tier arcane (they already totally waste 5 points to go deeper there) or on Improved Scorch
2a. Change Evo to a buff (Innervate/Divine Plea style), remove the channeled requirement outright.
2b. Increase Master of Elements to 60% mana return on crits.
2c. Knock Fireball's mana cost down to 500-550 mana at level 80.
2d. Reevaluate mage AE mana costs in light of the cost of Mind Sear
3. Increase the inherent threat reduction of mages/locks to -30%, or give Mirror Image a "You deal only 25% threat while active" component as well
4. Trim trim trim. Arcane Concentration is but one of several examples of talents that could be trimmed down between those two trees. The result wouldn't be substantially more DPS, but it'd be more pleasant.
Details below the cut.
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StratFu
I have a couple of questions here Kyth. My guild has been looking for a good Fire mage. We've found one willing to go fire, but her talents seem to be 20/51/0 (which, unless I'm mistaken, was a build you showed us around Ulduar). Is that a Frostfire build?
Forgive me if the questions seem noobish, but my main (as you know) is a DK. I've played an Arcane mage before, but not Fire or Frost.
Here goes:
1. Why the shift to Frost? I can completely understand 11 points for Icy Veins, the cooldown and hit rating, but what about Piercing Ice and Frost Channeling? Why all 3/3 points into Ice Shards? What Frost Spells will you be using (besides obvious ones like Blizzard) for main DPS?
2. Now one thing I find particularly interesting in the difference of builds is that you're putting points into Incineration and Improved Fire Blast over Improved Fireball. Isn't Fireball a pretty important basic DPS spell even though it isn't a priority one like the others?
I might have more later, but humor me here!
Article author
No it was me pasting in my frostfire article from the test site into the fire article and not changing everything. I was testing the class guides to see if the issues I was having were with your article or articles in general.
It's updated now and is completely for fire.