My Mage does not have that much dps. Please help

Hello everyone! I'm new here but I started playing Warmane last month. I was able to get to level 80 fast because of the grinds that I've been doing and some help from my friends. Ever since I started playing, I chose Fire spec because from what I've read, it can deal the highest dps out of all mages. It definitely helped me leveling up, and it got me to where I am now. However, when my friends and I tried to do ICC, my damage just sucked. I realized that to be an effective fire mage, you have to have high crit rates which I didn't have. In the end, my lower than 1000 dps fire mage got replaced by an arcane mage, and I'm happy I did. I was able to do on average 1000+ dps and I almost got close to 2000 if not for my weak positioning when I went to raid a dungeon in rdf. However, I still believe I'm not having the dps I know I can dish out. So plsase, anyone have tips or suggestions or even nitpicks about my gear or how I play? I have 3.3k gs btw. Here's my gear: http://armory.warmane.com/character/...ecrown/summary

Also, I apologise in advance if my gear is a mess. This is my first time playing WoW, let alone an MMORPG lol. Thanks!

arcane barrage is a waste of gcd (put the point into incineration)
whats your rotation? 2k dps arcane in icc shouldnt even be possible with 2 fingers on each hand

Did you train your spells at level 80?

Big DPS factor is your gear, or the lack of it.

Here's a link where you can find bunch of mage guides: http://forum.warmane.com/showthread.php?t=231565

My mistake, it wasn't on ICC but on Violet Hold. Sorry

Mate, for low gear You want arcane. Fire needs a lot of crits, honestly You can switch to fire near 6k gs.

For now go arcane. Use 3x Arcane blast -> 1x missle (on proce). When You are safe on mana, do 4x AB -> 1x missle. Remember to use Your cds.

Even low arcane mage can do serious dmg on bosses in dungeons :)

Aim for hit rating, once You are capped for arcane, haste is Your best friend. Buy even uncommon/rare gems and some cheap enchants :)

Change Your trinket cause its for meele or hunter :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Vilya

Mate, for low gear You want arcane. Fire needs a lot of crits, honestly You can switch to fire near 6k gs.

For now go arcane. Use 3x Arcane blast -> 1x missle (on proce). When You are safe on mana, do 4x AB -> 1x missle. Remember to use Your cds.

Even low arcane mage can do serious dmg on bosses in dungeons :)

Aim for hit rating, once You are capped for arcane, haste is Your best friend. Buy even uncommon/rare gems and some cheap enchants :)

Change Your trinket cause its for meele or hunter :D

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Thanks for the tips! I've actually been doing what you said except for the enchants since it's my 2nd profession and I'm working on Tailoring first. Also, may I ask how much dps I can truly deal with the current gear that I'm in. I'm not really expecting anything high but I just want to make sure lol

Tbh it really varies on encounter and actual time spent in combat. If You are paired with good dpses and You jest melt down rdf hc bosses, using arcane power, I believe You can do DPS 1,5x of Your GS as arcane (Of course for now, later in ICC it will be more)

Hello!

So from a quick glance on your gear, your Neck, Chest, and Trinket (Vestige of Haldor) are not caster items, and you should look to replacing them as soon as possible (doesn't matter if your gs decreases, you will pull higher DPS). For enchants, you can also buy Enchant scrolls from the Auction House, but if you find them a bit expensive I don't consider it a must-have before raiding. I will go a bit more in-depth with gearing down below.

On general gearing:
Spellpower > Haste > Crit > Spirit for Arcane. Switch Haste and Crit around for Fire.
You should not care as much about Hit at the moment (your talent gives you enough for heroic dungeons), but keep in mind that you want 7% (with a Draenei in party) - 8% (without a Draenei) in raids, more (13% - 14%) if you switch to TTW-Fire later on.

In terms of actual DPS, a 3.3k-ish mage should deal something in the upper reaches of 2000-3000 on dummies (you can find those in capital cities, do either Grandmaster or Heroic dummies). With proper items you can probably exceed 3000. On RDF HC it really depends because if your party kills the boss really fast, you can either get a too low or too high DPS value (e.g. Arcane would have much higher DPS in shorter fights due to their early burst).

Tip: Make a macro (ESC -> Macros) to activate both your trinkets:

/use 13
/use 14

Yes, there are more advanced macros you can make (you can find a lot of those in the various Mage guides) but this should be a good starting point.

On gearing tip:

1) If you do not have AtlasLoot, install it! (find the version for 3.3.5a). You can use it to browse through reputation gears (explained below) as well as dungeon and raid gears.

2) Join ICC Rep/Reputation farms, where you farm trash mobs for Ashen Verdict reputation. As soon as you hit Friendly you can get a sweet ring from a quest inside ICC (it will be upgraded further with every reputation rank, but it will take a while).

2) Various Northrend faction reputations give you gear with item level of 187-200, and some provide your best Enchants (for mages, these are the Kirin Tor (Head Enchant) and the Sons of Hodir (Shoulder Enchant)).

You can progress through reputation either by doing their questlines (look up e.g. 'WotLK Argent Crusade reputation guide'), OR by equipping their tabards (you can buy tabards from a faction's Quartermaster as soon as you hit Friendly reputation through questing) and going into level 80 dungeons (this means RDF HC as well as Trial of the Champion/FoS/PoS/HoR NM). Except for Sons of Hodir, which doesn't have a tabard (their starting quest is in K3 in the Storm Peaks, called 'They Took Our Men!')

3) You can also gather daily vote points from the site once you have at least 1000 Achievement points ingame. Points can be exchanged with some pretty sweet items (see below).

4) Specific Trinket guide. These are your trinkets of choice at this point (off top of my head, so hopefully I didn't miss anything), along with the way to obtain them
Flare of the Heavens - Vote Points
Abyssal Rune - Trial of the Champions (Normal)
Sundial of the Exiled - 40 Emblems of Heroism (you can get EoHs by downgrading your Emblems of Triumph)
Nevermelting Ice Crystal - Pit of Saron (Heroic)
Forge Ember - Halls of Stone (Heroic)

Flare is particularly powerful, and you will be keeping it (if you choose to get it) until way later, deep into ICC and Ruby Sanctum. Abyssal Rune is better than Sundial for Arcane, the reverse is true for Fire. Nevermelting and Forge Ember are decent alternatives - you can get some use of Nevermelting even into the lategame as a potion of-sorts (before the fight, equip, activate, unequip before fight stars) - but on its own it provides less performance compared to the first three trinkets.

In the process of getting these Trinkets, Cannoneer's Fuselighter is a decent placeholder. You can get it from the Argent Crusade questline while doing their reputation.

Extra: Currently there's an event boss (Ahune) which you can access through the RDF. It can drop good a ilevel 232 Cloak (find the one with SP+Crit+Haste). Doing the boss once a day gives you 2 extra Emblems of Frost (and a chance to get a 232 Staff (also SP+Crit+Haste)), but you can also spam it if you need the cloak.

Wow. Thank you so much for this in-depth guide! I'll definitely include your tips on my gameplay (especially the Argent Crusade questline since I really didn't know about it).