Historically I haven’t been a huge supporter of armor pen builds. While they certainly posted impressive numbers for skilled hunters in very specific endgame gear, the majority of hunters would not have seen those numbers from pursuing an ArP build. Every week I get emails from hunters who read about armor pen builds on EJ or elsewhere and start stacking armor pen gems in their ilvl 200 gear and can’t understand why their dps went down.

However, the gear situation has changed. With triumph gear now being the easy gear to obtain from grinding heroics, frost gear slowly attainable to the masses and the awesome ICC itemization, it’s now possible for the majority of hunters to pursue an armor pen build if they want to — you can even hardcap your armor pen!

As a final note before we get started: even if you have the gear, you may not see better dps from a hunter armor pen build. There’s more to it than just gathering the gear. Also, you can absolutely do competitive dps without an armor pen build, and MM does not need high armor pen or an armor pen build to do fantastic dps.

The Armor Penetration Advantage

I’m not going to go into detail on how armor pen works.Suffice to say that 20% armor pen doesn’t increase your damage by 20%, it just reduces the opponent’s armor by 20%.Armor Pen is useful for all hunter specs, but is most useful to MM hunters who get a bit more of their damage from physical shots, and have talents that boost the damage of those physical shots and combo with armor pen. The armor pen build takes advantage of increased steady shot damage combined with the side effect of piercing shots and the improved steady shot talent.

The Armor Pen Gear

In order for an armor pen build to surpass a standard agility MM build you need the right gear, and there’s more to it than just the armor pen rating. It’s a combination of armor pen, crit, and attack power. In general we try to estimate a passive armor pen rating baseline beyond which you’ll benefit from an armor ben build — we’re assuming that if you have that much armor pen, your crit and AP must be fine too. Keep in mind this passive armor pen floor is the minimum armor pen without gemming for it or sacrificing better gear for it.

Furthermore, at this magical crossover point, you’ll see no statistically viable difference in your dps, even if you’re a bit beyond the crossover. In other words the difference in your dps from the new build is less than the factors of randomness on your dps.

In general I recommend switching to an armor pen model only after you have more than 400 or 450 passive armor pen (that is, without gemming or taking big gear downgrades to get the armor pen). At this point you should see an increase in your dps if you’re doing everything right.

Some other armor pen build notes:

* You do not need an armor pen proc trinket to benefit from an armor pen build.
* Don’t start gemming for amor pen until your passive ArP rating gets around  800. You may even need to wait longer, depending on your gear and playstyle (the exact mark is different for different gear sets).
* Don’t forget to look at leather gear — you will often find better armor pen and agility on leather (at the expense of int).
* Again, MM does not need armor pen to make it a top spec, but at high gear levels MM armor pen builds will outperform non-armor pen builds.

The Armor Pen Talent Build

The idea here is to use Imp Steady Shot to maximize your extra steady shots, and remove imp arcane since you’ll be dropping that from your rotation most of the time. In addition, truly hardcore armor pen builds (such as those hardcapping armor pen) will usually need at least one point in focused aim because they end up not getting enough hit from all their armor pen gear. If you’re still okay on hit rating, you probably want that point in Imp Hunter’s Mark.

In all honesty, most MM hunters pursuing the ArP route will want 3/3 Focused Aim. They want their hit from talents (and the pushback reduction is okay) so they can get ArP from their gear. If you have a choice, ditch your hit gear for ArP gear and put more talent points here. Take them out of Rapid Recouperation, or even Trueshot Aura if you’ve got DKs providing that buff.

Armor Pen Shot Rotation

Armor pen builds also use a slightly different rotation than the standard MM hunter rotation. Specifically, they drop Arcane Shot from their rotation entirely. With high enough armor pen rating and the steady shot glyph, your steady shot can actually do more damage than arcane shot. But even before that point it can be worth dropping arcane shot because of the extra advantage the additional steady shots give to piercing shots and through the improved steady shot talent.

The point at which you’ll see benefit to dropping arcane is again around 400 – 450 passive armor pen rating. And again, we’re assuming that you have good crit and plenty of attack power at that point (which you will as long as you aren’t doing silly things like massive downgrades in search of more armor pen).

Note however that you’ll still want to use arcane shot in the following situations:

* Shooting on the move when aimed and chimera shot are not available
* Shooting adds that don’t have sunder or expose armor on them
* At the very beginning of a fight, before the sunder stacks have been applied

The Movement Factor of Armor Pen Builds

Armor pen boosts physical damage only, and most of the physical damage we do comes from steady shot and auto shot. As a result, armor pen builds are very sensitive to movement.

Most boss fights require movement; however, the movement in most of those fights is predictable and can be planned for and mitigated. This is the big area where the armor pen builds really favor skilled players.

Without question every hunter of every spec should be planning and limiting their movement as much as possible. You want to shoot & scoot — pausing while running to let your auto-shots fire. You want to use disengage to cover larger distances quickly. Managing movement is one of the biggest differences between a competent hunter and a skilled hunter. Hunters with poor movement skills can still do just fine and show nice dps numbers under normal builds, but an armor pen build will brutally punish you for poor (or average) movement skills. The vast majority of hunters to not have good movement skills, as a reference.

This is a big deal, so think long and hard about your movement skills before pursuing an armor pen build.

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Blood is a tree centered around physical damage, while other trees have spells based on magic attack, most of our attacks and damage is from heart strike, our 41 point talent. While we do throw out a couple death coils here and there, the bread and butter of blood is from Heart Strike. As a Blood Tank, we have a generally larger health pool than other Death Knight tanks due to Veteran of the Third War. Blood tanks are also one of  the highest single-target threat producers compared to other tanks. While Frost and Unholy generally have better AoE threat than Blood Tanks, the advantages of having higher single target threat, a higher health pool, and some nice cooldowns outweigh the small AoE threat issue.

Talents

The generic and standard build of blood tanking is a 53/8/10 talent build which picks up all the tanking blood talents while grabbing DPS talents to increase threat. This build does not take any “healing” talents such as Rune Tap and Mark of Blood which are not considered too great for tanking. While it would seem to make sense that a tank that could heal itself for that much would be considered good, the healing isn’t too great and the talent points are better spent elsewhere to do what a tank should be doing, tanking the boss.

Why don’t we pick up Rune Tap and Mark of Blood?

While these talents seem to be useful to provide a self heal, you won’t be able to use them much. Mark of Blood only heals when the enemy hits you and only for 4% of your max life. Most bosses have slow attack speeds which causes you to not even benefit from the full amount that it should heal. With Rune Tap, your healer should be worrying about your health, not you, to actually find the time to be able to use the heal to it’s maximum potential with no overheal is already hard, and having the runes to use the heal is even harder. You should be using your runes to hit the boss, not save them to heal yourself. It’s like a ret paladin helping out with raid heals. It doesn’t work.

Glyphs

Glyph of Rune Strike – Our highest threat producing ability, the more it crits, the more threat we generate. Now who wouldn’t want that?

Glyph of Vampiric Blood – Vampiric Blood increases our health by 15% and healing done to us by 35%, why wouldn’t you want this to last longer?

Glyph of Death Strike – Death Knight tanks don’t have a problem with generating runic power and the more you have the harder you’ll hit.

Rotation

As a blood tank, our general rotation includes of;

Icy Touch -> Plague Strike -> Death Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Death Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Heart Strike -> Death Coil Dump

You also want to Rune Strike whenever you dodge or parry an attack.

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Death Grip – This ability allows you to grip a target enemy and bring them to you. A very powerful gap closer that can be used to bring ranged enemies to you or stop a fleeing enemy.

Chains of Ice – A very versatile ranged snare, this is one of your best abilities. This ability costs 1 frost rune and applies Frost Fever to your target, so it can be spammed to keep an enemy from running.

Mind Freeze – The generic kick, when used during a spell cast, it will lock out any healing from that school for 4 seconds. Very powerful when used correctly.

Anti-Magic Shield – Puts a shield on the Death Knight that will absorb 75% of incoming magic damage and effects. Also renders you immune to the application of dots and other various magic abilities for 5 seconds. Any damage absorbed will give you runic power so this ability can be used offensively and defensively. With a cooldown of 45 seconds, don’t be shy of using this.

Death Pact – Basically a large heal, this ability will sacrifice your ghoul for the cost of 40 runic power healing you for 40% of the ghouls maximum health. Great for a last stand or when your healer is unavailable.

Talent Builds

Currently the best spec for PvP’ing as a Death Knight is Unholy. Sadly the other trees do not provide as much utility and while they can be used, you generally are gimping yourself with other builds. While there are several accepted Unholy Builds, they generally all revolve around the same talents.

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Basic Unholy / Wandering Plague Build (0/17/54) Uses scourge strike / wandering plague. Ideal build for arena and battlegrounds. Glyphs used are Glyph of Icy Touch, Glyph of the Ghoul, and Glyph of Dark Death.

Strategies

Against a hunter: Pop on Frost Presence, keep defense cooldowns up and snare the hunter, death grip when they Disengage and re-apply Chains of Ice. Basically keep him close to you and if he snake traps, blood boil. If he gets you low, try and use Death Pact when Aimed Shot is not applied to get the full effect and it should be an easy win.

Against a mage: A mage is a tricky fight, depending on the skill of the mage. Against an arcane or frost mage, it should be easy prey for you, just mitigate damage when they nuke and interrupt/stun/silence where possible. Against a frost mage, you need to use your cooldowns defensively and grip him when he blinks. Try to gargoyle him to keep the damage on him and strangulate, ghoul stun, and interrupt as necessary to reduce damage. Without heals, it should only be a matter of time until your gargoyle and diseases strike him down.

Against a paladin: A ret pally is similar to fighting another DK, play defensively and mitigate damage and heal yourself with anti-magic shield, etc. Against a Holy Paladin, gather enough Runic Power for a gargoyle and then summon it with a ghoul stun. Try to interrupt a heal to lock them out and effectively score a kill. A fight against a holy paladin is a long fight as they have many abilities that allows them to survive, such as Aura Mastery and Divine Shield which effectively prevents you from killing them.

Against a priest: When fighting a priest, they will try to fear you while keeping dots up on you. Depending on what spec of priest you are fighting against, you will use a different strategy. Against a shadow priest, you need to pump damage into them and blow your cooldowns to stay alive. It’s going to be a close fight as they can fear, disarm, and silence you while healing themselves so you want to use Anti-Magic Shield to it’s full effect. Against a disc priest, the strategy is similar to a Holy Paladin. Get enough runic power for a gargoyle and then blow him up with stuns, strangulate, and Mind Freeze. Save your trinket and Lich Borne for when you are actually going for the kill to avoid being feared. Do not use it at the start of the fight as any damage you do to them without gargoyle up is almost nothing.

Against a Rogue: The rogue will stun you at the start and stun you again. Do not trinket this stun as it will allow him to blind you and thus letting him reset the fight. Start the fight in frost presence to reduce the damage he does to you and after his first two stuns, apply your diseases to him and pop any cooldowns you may have, Ice bound fortitude, anti magic shield, etc, once he blinds you, trinket it and apply a disease to him before he re-stealths.

Against a Death Knight: Start off by applying diseases and then use anti magic shield. This will soak up a lot of initial damage and allow you to get a boost in runic power. Avoid attacking your enemy if he has magic shield up as well. Put up your gargoyle and then play as necessary. Fighting a death knight is best done defensively and try to heal / mitigate as much damage as possible.

Against a druid: A dps druid shouldnt be too hard for you to defeat, pop defensive cooldowns, keep them snared and it should be an easy win. Against a resto druid it’s going to be tough as they generally can outheal your damage and innervate prevents you from winning in a mana burn. The best you could do is summon a gargoyle with ghoul stun and strangulate, pump deathcoils into them and hope they cast a regrowth or nourish that you can mind freeze. If they don’t cast any non-instant spells then you are not dealing enough damage. Beware of nature’s swiftness as well which effectivly allows them to top off with one heal.

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PvP can be a touchy subject for a lot of players, so I would firstly just like to say that this is an interpretation of my ideal PvP Combat build. To be totally honest I have only recently started back doing 3v3 Arenas and I am definitely not saying that it is the best build for everybody or that it will work best in all Arena situations, just that I have found it quite effective working my way up the 3v3 Arena rankings. I’m sure rogue players will be making small alterations to this build in order to suit their playstyle. Also please note that this build is more focused on Arena usage, but world PvPers and Battleground enthusiasts should find this info useful aswell.

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Also please understand that while I’m talking about a Combat PvP build here, Mutilate/Preparation (41/5/25) is definitely considered as the bread and butter of PvP builds currently. You just have to look at the top rated Arena rogues in the Armory. They are all mut/prep rogues. And why wouldn’t they be? The build addresses the heavy reliance rogues have on cooldowns with Preparation, and with Overkill and the Mutilate Glyph it can pump out crazy amounts of damage without sacrificing mobility or defensive capability. Now as good as all of that sounds I have  never been a dagger rogue and always preferred going toe to toe with my opponents using maces or swords. I find that playstyle suits me more and I have more fun with it.

So lets look at the Combat tree. Where the other two trees focus on openers and high burst damage, the Combat tree focuses on consistent white damage to provide high sustained DPS. This is what allows you to have an easier time going toe to toe with mail/plate wearers. Your main goal should be survivability (even though Combat also pumps out great burst damage with talents such as Adrenaline Rush and Killing Spree). So don’t bother with the extra crit in Malice. Crit is important for high burst Mutilate rogues but not so important for a consistent damage build like Combat. With decent gear you should have near 30% crit which is sufficient.

I think the majority of my build is self explanatory so I will not be discussing damage talents in great detail. The talents I will be discussing will mainly deal with Survivability, Mobility and Crowd Control.

Combat Tree

Deflection vs Precision

My first choice was between Deflection and Precision. Here I choose Deflection as the bonus to parry improves survivability and I have already reached the “PvP hit cap” of 167. Putting points in Precision in my case would be a waste as the only benefit would be the 5% poison hit chance, which I don’t think is worth the 5 points when I can just use Shiv. Deflection also allows you to get  Riposte, a handy and very cheap energy skill (10 energy) that does good damage.

Endurance and Improved Sprint

With rogues probably being the most cooldown dependant class in the game grabbing talents like Endurance that lower your cds is vital for your survivability. Endurance will reduce your Evasion and Sprint cooldown by 60 seconds and give you a nice 4% stamina increase. Another big issue for rogues is mobility. Combat rogues especially have issues with getting snared and can be indefinitely kited by ranged classes due to the lack of a distance closer. So it goes without saying that Improved Sprint is an essential talent to grab.

Nerves of Steel

Many people believe that rogues die too quickly in Arena when CC’d or stunned and we are too squishy.Well in comes Nerves of Steel. A great survivability talent that reduces damage taken by 30% while affected by stun and fear. Definitely grab this one.

Improved Slice n Dice

I thought I would mention this one as a lot of people believe that this is purely a PVE talent. How wrong those people are. Regardless if you get this talent or not, you should always try and have Slice n Dice up (especially against mail/plate wearers) as I think the 40% weapon speed increase is priceless. Imp Slice and Dice saves you one or two combo points by making the SnD duration much longer, it also allows you to potentially apply poisons faster to your target (i.e wound poison).

Why no Improved Gouge, Improved Kick, Weapon Expertise, Blade Flurry or Throwing Specialization?

Firstly with Improved Gouge I just feel these 3 combo points are better spent elsewhere. 1.5 extra seconds or 3 talent points into something more useful? Even if I took talent points in Camouflague which would allow me to restealth after an imp gouge, theres not a lot of chances you can restealth in Arena anyway. With Improved Kick, I think 2 talent points would be wasted here as 2 seconds is over before you know it.  Similarly I feel the 2 points spent in Weapon Expertise are more valuable elsewhere.  Most of your attacks should be from behind ensuring your opponents cannot dodge, block or parry. Blade Flurry doesn’t  seem very useful in an Arena scenario as its very rare that you will get the chance to hit two targets at once. Throwing Specialization was omitted due to the recent 3.3 patch nerf which removed the talent’s interruption ability.

Subtlety Tree

Master of Deception

The increase in stealth that this talent provides is a definite requirement for PvP. You get detected very easily without it in my experience. Aggressive hunter pets and humans (which have Perception) for example have very good stealth detection and will more than likely see you without MoD. And of course it is invaluable against druids and other rogues. But please note that most dagger rogues will have Heightened Senses so they will more than likely get the opener on you first.

Dirty Tricks

The added range to Sap that this talent provides is vital in PvP. It definitely makes your life easier with CC’ing. In fact you will land very little saps without it in my experience. Also increases the range of your Blind.

Elusiveness

What a great talent. Reduces your Vanish and Blind cooldown by 60 sec (down to 2 mins)  and Cloak of Shadows by 30secs (down to 1 min). Similar to Endurance, any talent that lowers your cds is worth grabbing.

Serrated Blades

Quite an effective talent against clothies. It pretty much takes their already minimal AC to next to nothing, meaning that you’ll have a much easier time taking them down. The 30% rupture damage bonus is also nice against those troublesome plate wearers.

Setup

Combo points are not as easy to come by for Combat rogues as they are for Mutilate rogues, so getting a talent like Setup is a smart idea and goes hand in hand with Lightning Reflexes. Although Setup has been nerfed ( CP generation is only from your target) I believe it is still a worthwhile talent. You are more than likely to face another melee class in Arena, and with Evasion activated your CP generation should be quite good and may give you the edge over your opponent. Setup also has a magic resistance portion which is a good little bonus but only applies to full resists.

Why no Sleight of Hand or Camouflage?

SoH looks good on paper but in reality the 2% crit reduction on ranged and melee is like adding 80 points resilience against your physical damage. So if you think that you have enough resilience (at least 500 to start with) skip this talent. Putting points in Camouflage when specced Combat, I believe is somewhat of a waste. You are not a subtle assassin but rather a confrontational in-your-face melee, so your reliance on restealth should be a small part of your gameplay as compared to the dagger builds.

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Of course it isn’t as simple as just choosing a tree and filling it with points. There are accepted builds for top dps, and they are as follows (In no particular order    )

(55/0/16)  Affliction

This spec’s strength is the Improved Lifetap which syncs very nicely with the new change to lifetap, and one point in Cataclysm.

(56/0/15) Affliction
This spec utilizes the new buff to Dark Pact, the improved range and lack for the need of LoS makes it much more viable that previous patches. This spec also uses Improved Drain Soul.

(0/56/15) Demonology

This is easily the best Demo build for raiding. This spec will certainly use and abuse the new Demonic Pact, allowing for a very consistent spell power buff for you and your raid.

(0/13/58) Destruction

A straight up, Destro replenishment  build. Soul Leech and Improved Soul Leech should keep your health and mana pool up as well as assist your healers with their Mana-manage-ment.

(0/18/53) Destruction

This is the Imp Machine gun spec. You lose Soul Leech, but you gain Soul Link (For survivability in raids), and Unholy Power, which makes your imp a beast, seriously.

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That all changed in the last patch, and we’re back to Marksmanship as the top DPS spec again.  The Wiki Simulationcraft engine lists four builds for DPS potential:

* Beast Mastery at 9725 DPS
* Survival at 10920 DPS
* Marksmanship at 10964 DPS
* Marksmanship at 11084 DPS

So BM has definitely been relegated to leveling duty once again, which may be because everyone else simply hates the BM pets in a raid.  The other builds are separated by by just 164 DPS, so it certainly doesn’t man Survival is dead by any means, but if all you care about is beating everyone in a raid in DPS, you’re probably going to want that 11k DPS build giving you every possible advantage.

Remember that this build is based on the Simcraft engine, but what what we’ve been able to tell from testing in multiple classes and specs – the engine just doesn’t lie.  My Shaman now hardly ever uses Chain Lightning, and my Mage pushes like 2 buttons.  And it works better than just making things up as you go along.

Talent build (7/57/7)

This spec has been extensively tested and confirmed as one of  the highest  hunter specs in patch 3.3

Priorities

* Flask = Endless Rage
* Food = Hearty Rhino
* Hunter’s Mark
* Pet (Wolf)
* Trueshot Aura
* Aspect of the Hawk
* Serpent Sting
* Rapid Fire
* Kill Command
* Aimed Shot
* (wait for Chimera Shot if Cooldown on Chimera is less than .25 sec.)
* Chimera Shot
* Kill Shot
* Readiness
* Steady Shot

That’s all there is to it.  Kill command when you can, and then Aimed Shot at the top of the list.  Follow Aimed with Chimera and Kill Shot when it becomes available.  If not, pop readiness and then do steady shot.  So it’s really just Aimed shot, Chimera Shot, Steady Shot – Aimed Shot (Chimera Shot if cool-down is up), Steady Shot – Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Kill Shot, Steady Shot.  And you pop cooldowns for rapid fire and readiness when they are available, although you’ll want to wait on the readiness cool-down until after you’ve used both Chimera and Kill shot so they refresh for the next run through the list.

Damage Sources

Pawn Scales

This pawn scale is a little rough, since the engine didn’t spit this out and we had to build it manually, but it should be as close as you could hope for without the programming help.

( Pawn: v1: “Marksmanship”: Intellect=0.519, CritRating=0.893, Agility=1.444, HitRating=0.236, ArmorPenetration=1.116, HasteRating=0.124, Ap=2.837, GemQualityLevel=81 )

So for those of you who played Marks back in the tBC days, now is your chance to go back to your roots.  For everyone else, there at least is a very viable option to Survival builds, although BM is a good 1,300 DPS behind.  I was a big fan of Survival being the top spec, not that the guild will ever let me play a hunter, but it gave me a warm and squishy feeling deep down.  But no matter if a hunter was your first toon, or just another in a long line, this Marksmanship hunter spec will help you Dominate.

Read more talent build guide here.

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Balance

Genesis (5/5) This increase the healing done by all hots. You should really get this in any resto build.

Moonglow(3/3) This is a huge help with mana efficiency in arenas.

Nature’s majesty(2/2) I really only get this because it is a prerequisite to nature’s splendor.

Brambles (3/3) This is a great tool because the increase to thorns is great damage to rogues and other melee.

Nature’s splendor (1/1) The increased duration of all of the spells really add up during the arena. This will help you even more when up against teams with no dispels.

Restoration

Improved mark of the wild (2/2) This buff is already a good buff, with the improved talent, this is a great damage reducer and buffs you healing and your teammates damage.

Nature’s focus (3/3) This will really help you vs rogues in the arena. This is something that will save you and your partners life.

Subtlety (3/3) This will help your hots stay on vs priest and shaman teams. This is great for half of the teams you will face and some of the best points spent in the whole build.

Natural shapeshifter (3/3) This is an ok talent because you will be shifting a little. The real reason you get this is for the following talent.

Intensity (3/3) Now that spirit is nerfed, mana regen is low. This helps make up some of the nerf, but your regen will still be low.

Omen of clarity (1/1) Last time i checked, this is about a 7% mana efficiency up with one point. This is a great point and you should have it with any build.

Master shapeshifter (2/2) This will give you 4% healing for 2 points. This is a great healing talent.

Improved rejuvenation (3/3) This is a highly used spell in arenas, and this improves its effectiveness by a large portion.

Nature’s swiftness (1/1) This spell is great for saving someone after a cc/burst chain. Combine this with healing touch or a regrowth.

Gift of nature (5/5) This is a flat healing increase that is necessary for every build.

Nautre’s bounty (4/5) The extra crit on this spell will proc you living seed. This gives you a little crit synergy and makes crit a little less bad.

Living spirit (3/3) This use to be a great talent, now it is just ok. It is still worth getting for tree of life form and spirit is still the best stat for arenas by a small bit.

Swiftmend (1/1) Combine this with the glyph and you have a relatively cheap instant direct heal that is great in any circumstance.

Natural perfection (3/3) This is a great talent with resilience. This makes you hard to crit and when you get crit, they do way less damage to you. This a must have pvp talent.

Empowered rejuvenation (5/5) This is a great talent that scales with gear very good.

Living seed (3/3) This gives you some crit synergy and gives you some ability to get some huge heals off with crits.

Tree of life (1/1) This hot really helps with mana efficiency in arenas. This is probably the best one point in all of healing in the game.

Improved tree of life (3/3) This armor boos makes you able to sit in tree form and heal in pvp. This is your base of all of your
pvp.

Improved barkskin (2/2) This dispel resist is perfect to mix with innervate. This also gives you a 30% damage reduction on barkskin.

Gift of the earthmother (5/5) This will let you get the 3 stack of LB on your target fast.

Wild growth (1/1) This spell heals quick, so in intense situations, and in bladestorm, this will really help.

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The most popular build and the one I personally use for raiding is the following:(0/16/55)

It has everything a restoration shaman may want and it’s very similar to the other (0/16/55)build which I would also recommend, and the only difference between these two builds is, as you can see, is 3 points taken from Healing Focus in favor of Healing Way.

Healing focus when coupled with a Paladin’s Concentration aura means you never have to worry about spell push back which is quite a huge advantage in the current end-game content as you will find lots of encounters with AoE raid damage which is not necessarily avoidable or just hard to avoid.

The other build give a significant buff to your Healing Way. But then again, you should ask yourself a question: “how often I’m going to use healing wave? Should I prioritize this particular spell?” Basically shaman is a raid healing class and when you heal raid you rarely use healing wave, but for some encounters you may be asked to heal a certain tank in which case you will probably want to improve your healing wave.

There’s one more optional build for restoration shaman: (0/13/58) which basically covers both healing wave and healing focus in at the expense of Elemental Weapon what basically means you lose 30% bonus healing on your Earthliving Weapon.

This bonus increases healing done by each spell by 45 (instead of basic +150 healing power from your Earthliving you get + 195). However, this talent does not affect the healing done by HoTs when Earthliving procs. And what’s more important, this talent also does not scale well as your gear improves, what basically means the more spell power you get from your gear, the less contribution to your healing power this talent gives in percentage terms. For example, at +2000 spellpower, the talent increases your spell power by 2.25%. At +2500 spellpower, the talent increases it by 1.8%.

Now let’s talk about glyphs you’ll want to use for more effective healing.

Let me start with a side note.

Shaman often change glyphs, depending on the boss and their healing assignment. For example, if assigned to heal a single target, you might want to use the LHW glyph instead of CH. It is advisable to carry a few copies of each glyph that you use in your bag and adjust as necessary.

But let’s look at universal glyphs which you will find most effective in 80% of cases.

#1 glyph which is a must have glyph for 25 men content is Glyph of Chain Heal. However, you may find it less effective in 10 men raids and even less effective in 5 men groups. Depends on raid / group disposition.

#2 glyph is Glyph of Earth Shield since your Earth Shield will be quite valuable spell in percentage terms of your total healing done.

#3 glyph will be Glyphs of Riptide, which becomes more and more important as you update your gear to T10. For better understanding of Riptide mechanics and the impotency of this particular spell, see Riptide spell details in Major Abilities section.

Alternative glyphs you may want to use according to situation and healing assignment:

* Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave
* Glyph of Healing Wave
* Glyph of Healing Stream

Glyphs I wound not recommend for using:

* Glyph of Water Mastery– it basically provides additional 30 MP5 which it not to be compared with advantages of the other glyphs listed above.
* Glyph of Earthliving Weapon – increases the base chance of your Earthliving to trigger for 5% (from base of 20% to 21%) which is close to nothing. Leave along the fact that Earthliving is mostly over healing.

As for minor glyphs, you should definitely go for Glyph of Water Shield as it’s the only glyph which will affect your effective healing.

Choose other minor glyphs to your liking. I personally prefer  Glyph of Renewed Life and Glyph of Water Walking, so that I don’t care about reagents for these 2 abilities.

Part 2: Spells and abilities

Let’s now have an overview of shamans’ healing abilities.

Chain Heal

The most topical spell which shaman use for massive healing.

Chain heal jumps to 3 targets (or 4 with a glyph) based on who is missing the most health (by absolute value). If there are no targets in range below 100% it will not jump. The heal can jump back to the shaman if they have taken damage.

Chain Heal got significant buffs in Patch 3.2. Jump range increased to 12.5 yards, from 10 yards. Also, each jump reduces the healing done by 40%, instead of 50%.

Chain heal can crit on any (or all) of the three to four jumps. However, the healing done to the next target is based on the non-crit healing done. Crits from chain heal will proc Ancestral Fortitude.

Many trinkets will proc based on a “direct healing spells” as each jump of chain heal is considered a direct heal.

However, each separate jump do not count as a separate spell and will not trigger trinkets proc based on “each spell cast.”

Riptide

This brilliant spell becomes even more important in T10 content considering T10 2 set bonus and Totem of the Surging Sea.

Basically Riptide is a talent that gives shaman their only instant heal. About 57% of the healing is instant and the remaining 43% is a HoT over the next 15 seconds.

If you cast Chain Heal on someone affected by Riptide, it consumes the Riptide and increases your Chain Heal by 25% on all jumps of that Chain Heal. With T10 2 items set bonus it will additionally grant you 20% spell haste for the next spell cast.

Note, that only a direct Chain Heal will proc Riptide, not the jumps and Chain Heal from other shaman will not proc your Riptide.

You will not be able to cast Riptide and Chain Heal in gear all the time as Riptide has initial 6 second cooldown, so pay keep an eye on the spell tooltip and use the Riptide + Chain Heal bundle if possible in a situation when you would generally cast Chain Heal.

Healing Wave

This is the largest heal shaman can cast. Not taking into account your spell haste, it takes 2.5 seconds to cast (3.0 seconds without talents). Basically the situation when you may find this spell most useful is when you need have some significant healing on a single target (for example when you assigned to a certain tanks’ healing) and in a bundle with Nature’s Swiftness often saves lives.

Lesser Healing Wave

This is the fastest but smallest heal a shaman can cast. In addition, Tidal Waves does not reduce the GCD and thus LHW throughput is capped by the GCD.

LHW is most powerful when a shaman have Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave and an Earth Shield on the target.  You may find it mostly useful when you assigned to a single target healing.

Earth Shield

A shield with 6 charges (8 with talents) that heals the wearer every few seconds while taking damage.

You want to have Earth Shield on one of the tanks all the time.

How much healing the Earth Shield does is based on the spellpower at the time it is cast, not when it procs.

One of the most frequently asked questing is: how does ES affects tanks aggro?

The aggro from healing is attributed to the person who cast the shield starting in Patch 3.0.2. Each point of damage healed will generate 0.725 threat divided evenly among the mobs present.

Protection paladins have a talent called Spiritual Attunement that restores mana equal to 10% of the healing they receive. Since Patch 2.1.0, they have received mana back from the healing done by Earth Shield (and Prayer of Mending). Each point of mana restored generates 0.5 threat.

Earthliving Weapon

This is a weapon buff used by shamans to increase the effectiveness of healing.

Make sure that this buff is always on your weapon. Earth Living Weapon causes any direct heals to proc a small hot called Earthliving on the target.

Earthliving procs off:

* Riptide
* Healing Wave
* Lesser Healing Wave
* Any bounce of Chain Heal

The proc has no internal cool down and can potentially proc off every Chain Heal bounce.

Earthliving will not proc off:

* Healing Stream Totem
* Earth Shield
* Ancestral Awakening
* Glyph of Healing Wave

Ancestral Awakening

This is a passive ability and it works like this: each time you crit with Lesser Healing Wave or Healing Wave or Riptide, you instantly heal the raid member with the lowest percentage of health within 40 yards for 30% of the amount healed (including any overhealing).

As of Patch 3.0.9, this talent benefits from purification, so in practice Ancestral Awakening heals for 33% of the total heal.

Ancestral Awakening cannot crit and will not proc earthliving.

Tidal Force

Using Tidal Force gives you a buff with 3 charges. Each charge increases your chance to crit with lesser healing wave, healing wave and chain heal. Each crit consumes a charge INCLUDING each jump of chain heal. Therefore, it’s possible for one chain heal to use all three charges. Tidal Force is best used with Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave, as they greatly increase the chance for mana returned via improved water shield, and have a chance to proc ancestral awakening (if applicable).

Often used in conjunction with Nature’s Swiftness to increase the size of an emergency heal. Tidal Force has a 3-minute cool down.

Tidal Waves

This is a passive ability.

When you cast Chain Heal or Riptide, you have a 100% chance to lower the cast time of your Healing Wave spell by 30% and increase the critical effect chance of your Lesser Healing Wave spell by 25%, until two such spells have been cast.

Your Lesser Healing Wave spell gains an additional 10% of your spell power, and your Healing Wave spell gains an additional 20% of your spell power. This effect is passive and completely independent of the Tidal Waves proc.

And that’s about it. So much for shamans’ healing abilities.

However, there’s one more spell I can’t pass by, thought it’s not a literally a healing spell.

Water Shield

It’s a very valuable tool for the Restoration Shaman which plays very important role in mana regeneration.

It costs no mana to cast.

It’s important to have it on at all times and refresh it before it expires. I personally recommend to wait until all the charges have been used, but refresh you WSh whenever you have time (i.e. when there’s a lull in healing and you can spare your global cooldown time to put up new charges) .

Improved Water Shield: this talent now has a 10/20/30% chance to be triggered by Chain Heal, and the charges of Water Shield are no longer consumed by this talent.

Part 3: Totems

With help of default totem UI you can customize up to three sets of totems (4 totems in each set). You can now instantly drop 4 different totems on one global cooldown. It still costs the combined mana cost of all four totems.

Most totems affect everyone in your raid or party within 30 yards. The following are exceptions and only affect the 5 people in your party:

* Mana Tide Totem:  Restores 24% of a player’s mana over 12 seconds. 5-minute cool down. This spell is available in restoration branch only and therefore can be used only by restoration shamans (neither elemental nor enhancement will ever go that deep into restoration tree).
* Healing Stream Totem: Amount healing depends on the +spell power of the shaman. Talents boost the amount healed by 45%. A glyph boosts the amount another 20%.
* Tremor Totem
* Cleansing Totem

As you can have only 1 totem of each element at a time, you’ll need to prioritize them.

AIR:

1. Windfury Totem if there is no Frost Death Knight or Enhancement Shaman (who will certainly have it in his set)
2. Wrath of Air Totem otherwise

FIRE:

1. Flametongue Totem if there is no Elemental Shaman or Demonology Warlock in your group.
2. Searing Totem or Magma Totem if you can spare the global cooldown to refresh them and there is no danger of grabbing aggro on phase transitions or aggoing other mobs.
3. Since Patch 3.3.0 Fire Elemental Totem has a 10 min cooldown (down from 20 min) what makes it an excellent option of a fire totem during a boss fights. So, as Jimmy Morrison used to say: “Come on baby, light my fire!”

EARTH:

1. Strength of Earth Totem if there is no Enhancement shaman. Death Knights have a similar buff called Horn of Winter Horns of Winter; however it lasts only 2 minutes (3 minutes with glyph).
2. Stoneskin Totem which stacks with a paladin’s devotion aura.
3. Tremor Totem as needed.

WATER:

1. Mana Spring Totem if there is no paladin for Blessing of Wisdom which is utterly a rare case.
2. Healing Stream Totem
3. Cleansing Totem as needed

Note: sometimes a restoration shaman will need to drop Windfury, Strength of Earth and Flametongue totems even if presence of enhancement shaman in a raid if the raid is spread out to provide additional coverage.

Part 4: To wear, or not to wear

With so many types of healers in the game it’s easy to get lost in many quasi-healing stats.

Let’s see what stats are actually useful for a shaman and prioritize them.

1) Haste rating

Until you have a soft cap of 1269 buffed and Spell power – the 2 most important stats for a restoration shaman. But if Spell Power is an indispensable attribute of any casters / healer piece, haste rating is something you should particularly look for as it occurs less frequently. Also may want to use Quick King\’s Amber for your yellow and blue sockets (unless you need a blue gem for a meta gem bonus).

Spell Haste is calculated after talents.

Taking under consideration that 1% haste = 32.78 haste rating at level 80, arithmetic formulas for spell cast time modified by your haste will look like this:

Spell Cast time modified by haste = basic cast time / (1 + haste rating / 3278)

In most of the raid groups, you will have a total of 8.15% haste before gear: 5% from Wrath of Air Totem + 3% from Improved Moonkin aura (balance druids) or Swift Retribution (retribution paladin)

Haste is multiplicative so the total benefit is 8.15%

The soft haste cap for resto shamans is 1269 haste rating (38.7%). On your character sheet (without raid buffs), you approach the soft haste cap at about 30%. The soft haste cap refers to the amount of haste needed to lower the global cooldown from 1.5 seconds to 1.0 seconds. No amount of haste (including Heroism or Bloodlust) will reduce the global cooldown below 1.0 seconds. It is called a soft cap because additional haste rating will reduce the cast time of longer spells, such as Chain Heal.

Haste Need to Reduce Chain Heal Cast Time at Level 80

2.4 seconds = 137 haste rating

2.3 seconds = 286 haste rating

2.2 seconds = 447 haste rating

2.1 seconds = 625 haste rating

2.0 seconds = 820 haste rating

1.9 seconds = 1036 haste rating

2) Crit rating

Apart from increasing the pure amount of healing, your critical heals will trigger some of your abilities (such as Ancestral Healing and Ancestral Awakening). Regarding T10 set bonus the value of crit rating increased and currently it is prioritized over MP5.

3)MP5

This is a source of mana regeneration, so make sure you have gear with MP5 stat on it. You’ll also find some trinkets (like Solace of the Defeated) very useful for that purpose.

4) Intellect

Raises your total mana pool and also increase you spell crit and spell power. However the value of intellect you’ll find on the gear as a white stat should not be boosted in any ways. There’s no need to emulating a quasi-paladin full-intellect way of gearing.

10 Int = 5.5 mp5 in a five-minute fight if you use Mana Tide and have 100% uptime on Replenishment
Initial mana pool. +181 mana (3 mp5)
Replenishment 100% uptime (1.8 mp5)
Mana Tide (0.7 mp5)

10 Int = 1.8 spell power

10 Int becomes 12.1 Int with Kings and Ancestral Knowledge.
12.1 * 0.15 = 1.8 spell power (Nature’s Blessing)

10 Int = 3.3 crit rating
166.67 int = 1% crit
%1 crit = 45.91 crit rating at Level 80
12.1 Int = 3.3 crit rating

And finally, one important note: DO NOT use gear / enchants / gems with Spirit – it’s basically a waste of stat for a shaman.I hope that helped clear up some of the confusion out there with abilities and stats as the right choice of gear / tanlent build / spells really does make a big difference to your HPS.

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The Spec

This leaves 5 points. Fill them in the following order:

* Intensity: put points in as necessary to alleviate any mana concerns (unlikely that you’ll need this unless you’re quite undergeared and missing Replenishment). Note: if you’re not using 2T9, you should first move two points from Improved Moonfire to Moonglow to get more mana, before taking Intensity.
* Gale Winds: take this if you have any interest in speccing for AoE DPS; this is an enormous boost.
* Typhoon: take this if you like having another instant spell to press, basically. See below for more on potential uses.
* Improved Insect Swarm: Best remaining single-target DPS talent.
* Brambles, Owlkin Frenzy, or Genesis: All of these are very tiny DPS increases. Put any leftover points into one of them of your choice after you’ve exhausted the talent tree of anything else you need.

If you need Gale Winds and Typhoon, and still want the 3rd point in IIS, you can potentially drop one point in Balance of Power to get it (raising the hit cap), depending on what your gear options are. This is a small DPS increase at best; check the spreadsheet if you think it might be useful for you.

Finally, there’s the option to drop 2 points in iGotW or Furor to get Nature’s Focus. This is a tradeoff between pushback resistance and the tiny DPS increase from the other talents. Furor provides slightly more DPS and regen per point than iGotW. But note that you want iGotW if there are no other Druids in your raid (all other specs currently take the talent), or if you want to use the Clearcast-forcing trick described below.

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Talent details

* Genesis: Affects Hurricane and Tranquility. Stacks additively with Moonfury, Improved Moonfire, Glyph of Moonfire, Glyph of Insect Swarm, and Gale Winds.
* Starlight Wrath: Applies before any haste effects.
* Moonglow: Mana cost is rounded down after multiplying. Applies after [Spark of Hope]-type effects.
* Improved Moonfire: This damage bonus, Glyph of Moonfire, Moonfury, and Genesis all stack additively. The crit% bonus does affect DoT tick crits with the 2T9 bonus (PTR).
* Nature’s Grace: This procs off Wrath and Starfire when the spell completes, which is slightly before it does damage and shows a crit in the combat log (due to travel time for Wrath, but also a slight bit of latency in the case of Starfire). This does not proc from Hurricane or Moonfire DoT (2T9) crits, but it does proc from Starfall.
* Nature’s Reach: Stacks additively with the range reduction from [Glyph of Focus] to give Starfall a 21 yard range.
* Vengeance: Due to the odd critical bonus stacking rules, the total damage you’ll see on a crit with this and a Chaotic meta is 209%.
* Celestial Focus: Multiplies with all other haste bonuses.
* Insect Swarm: The 3% hit debuff on the target does not stack with the Hunter spell Scorpid Sting. It stacks additively with all other forms of avoidance.
* Improved Insect Swarm: As with all damage debuffs, Wrath checks for this on arrival at the target. As with all crit% player buffs, Starfire checks this when its cast completes. The Wrath buff stacks multiplicatively with other damage bonuses.
* Moonfury: Stacks additively with Eclipse (Wrath), Glyph of Moonfire, Improved Moonfire, Genesis, and the 4T9 bonus.
* Moonkin Form: The mana return does not proc from Hurricane, Starfall, or Moonfire DoT (2T9) crits. The crit bonus does not stack with the Shaman talent Elemental Oath.
* Improved Moonkin Form: The haste buff grants both melee and spell haste, and does not stack with the Paladin talent Swift Retribution.
* Improved Faerie Fire: The hit debuff does not stack with the Priest talent Misery. The crit buff is active when any Faerie Fire, not just your own, is on the target.
* Owlkin Frenzy: This can proc from physical or magical damage, but many boss abilities which hit the player frequently (e.g. Vezax’s Profound Darkness or Mimiron’s Rapid Burst) do not proc it.
* Wrath of Cenarius: This adds 0.2 (Starfire) or 0.1 (Wrath) to the spell’s spellpower coefficient. It does not apply to the effective spellpower granted by [Idol of the Shooting Star].
* Eclipse: Unlike Nature’s Grace, this procs when the associated Wrath or Starfire crit is processed on the server and appears in the combat log. In the case of Wrath which has a travel time, this results in a significant delay between the Nature’s Grace proc and the Eclipse proc.
* Force of Nature: If casting this immediately after an instant, you have to press the spell key and then click a targeting reticle in the world frame, losing a small amount of time. The Treants will attack whichever mob hates you the most, and can be easily redirected with the pet bar. They have 90% reduction against AoE damage in PvE, allowing them to survive some boss abilities. Bloodlust and Battle Shout, among other things, will particularly improve their DPS.
* Earth and Moon: The personal 6% damage buff multiplies with all other buffs. The 13% damage debuff also multiplies with all other buffs (including the 3% buff from this same talent), and does not stack with the Warlock spell Curse of the Elements or the Death Knight disease Ebon Plague. As with other damage debuffs, spells check for presence of this debuff when the arrive at their target and log damage.
* Starfall: This will not fire stars when your character is stunned, and the buff will drop entirely if you shift into a Feral form. The worst use is against a single target, where you only get 10 stars. Against multiple targets, you will get 20 stars. If those targets are tightly clumped, you will additionally benefit from splash damage.
* Improved Mark of the Wild and Furor: These stack multiplicatively with each other and with Kings.
* Omen of Clarity: Has a 3.5/60 = 5.83% chance to proc on spellcast. Does not proc from and is not consumed by shapeshifting. Gift of the Wild, if cast on 25 people, has a very high chance of proccing this.
* Master Shapeshifter: The Moonkin Form bonus multiplies with all other damage bonuses.

Resulting Spell Coefficients and Damage Multipliers

Some useful numbers to have, when fully talented and raid buffed.

Overall damage multiplier: 1.13 (Earth and Moon) * 1.04 (Master Shapeshifter) * 1.06 (Earth and Moon) * 1.03 (Sanctified Retribution) = 1.283.
Haste multiplier, before haste rating: 1.05 (Wrath of Air) * 1.03 (Celestial Focus) * 1.03 (Improved Moonkin Form) = 1.114. Multiply this by (1 + HasteRating/3279) to obtain final haste ratio.
Crit Chance, before Intellect and crit rating: 5% (Moonkin Form) + 5% (Improved Scorch) 3% (Totem of Wrath) + 3% (Improved Faerie Fire) = 16%. Adding in 4% (Nature’s Majesty), 3% (Improved Insect Swarm) and 10% (Improved Moonfire) gives 20% for Wrath, 23% for Starfire, and 26% for Moonfire, added to whatever you see reported in your character sheet when out of form.

Effective Starfire coefficient: (1 (base) + 0.2 (Wrath of Cenarius)) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.1 (Moonfury) = 1.694.
Effective Wrath coefficient: (2/3.5 (base) + 0.1 (Wrath of Cenarius)) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.1 (Moonfury) * 1.03 (Improved Insect Swarm) = 0.976.
Effective Insect Swarm coefficient, per tick: 0.2 (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * 1.3 (Glyph of Insect Swarm) = 0.333.
Effective Moonfire coefficient, direct damage: 1.5/3.5 * (1.5/3.5 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15)) (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * (1 + 0.1 (Moonfury) + 0.1 (Improved Moonfire) – 0.9 (Glyph of Moonfire)) = 0.0575.
Effective Moonfire coefficient, per tick: 12/15*(12/15 / (1.5/3.5 + 12/15) / 4) (base) * 1.283 (damage multiplier) * (1 + 0.1 (Moonfury) + 0.1 (Improved Moonfire) + 0.75 (Glyph of Moonfire)) = 0.326.

Glyphs

Major Glyphs:
In most situations you will use [Glyph of Starfire], [Glyph of Moonfire], and [Glyph of Starfall].

[Glyph of Insect Swarm] is now much weaker than it used to be (because we have three other good Glyphs). Against a single target, and only if you’re not using the 2T9 set bonus, the potential gain is less than a percent (and possibly zero based on your gear) if you replace [Glyph of Moonfire] and keep IS up full-time. This is generally not worthwhile, since it removes the 3% miss debuff from IS, which is a nearly unique raid debuff (Hunters can provide it, but at a large DPS cost). I’d recommend ignoring Glyph of IS at this point.

[Glyph of Focus] will be worth swapping in anytime you regularly get to use Starfall on multiple targets during an encounter.

Minor Glyphs: none of these add any DPS, so it’s entirely up to personal taste. [Glyph of Typhoon] is the only one that affects combat mechanics, but it’s still up to you whether you prefer it or not. [Glyph of the Wild] can save a little bit of mana if you ever have to rebuff people during a fight, or if you’re trying to force a Clearcast during combat.

I hope this will be a helpful guide for you.

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Arcane (57/3/11)

Floating points: Arcane has the most flexibility of any of the mage raiding specs. Mages converting from TtW Fire to Arcane may choose to sacrifice some points in hit/mana cost reduction (Arcane Focus) in favor of other abilities. Many mages sacrifice hit talents (Arcane Focus) or threat reduction (just one point in Arcane Subtlety gives as much threat reduction as a TtW Fire has) to free up points.

Other places to move points include Magic Absorption (extra survivability with chance of mana regain) or Magic Attunement (increased range, though most raiders — this one included — will insist upon using range talents). Incanter’s Absorption was changed in 3.3.3 so it only procs off of mana shield (which you do not want to use while raiding) or Fire/Frost Ward. A few fights in ICC deal frost damage and you can take advantage of this talent to boost your spellpower at the cost of one of the other talents. I, personally, do not recommend points in Student of the Mind, as arcane mages scale poorly with crit, and the regen gained from the extra spirit is very minimal.

Pros and cons: Capable of doing the most DPS in single-target situations. Flexible rotation to suit varying mana levels. Provides 3% increased damage to party or raid with Arcane Empowerment (does not stack with the buff provided by ret paladins or beast mastery hunters). Does not provide the 5% critical strike chance debuff. Includes Focus Magic to add 3% critical strike chance to another caster. Has a number of cooldowns to provide excellent burst damage. Very low hit cap.

Stats priority: Hit to cap > spell power > haste > crit > intellect > spirit

Boss spell rotation: The short answer is to spam Arcane Blast until these two conditions are met: 1) you have four stacks of the Arcane Blast debuff and 2) you have a Missile Barrage proc, at which point you cast Arcane Missiles. Clear your stack with a regular Arcane Missiles if you don’t have the mana to push through until you get an MB proc. Do not clear your stack with arcane barrage unless you are moving and will not have time to channel Arcane Missiles before the AB debuff clears. You can cast ABarr while running with a clear stack; if doing so procs Missile Barrage, you can cast Arcane Missiles with a zero stack of Arcane Blast. If mana becomes a concern, you can reduce the number of stacks of AB you have before you use the MBAM proc; for instance, you may choose to use the hastened Arcane Missiles when you have zero, two, or four stacks of Arcane Blast. Your rotation will likely vary throughout the fight: the best mages will be those who push themselves to use up every last bit of mana. You can use evocation to restore your mana during a fight, though you’ll want to time it so it benefits from some hastened ability (such as the last second of Bloodlust/Heroism or Icy Veins), or during a phase where you aren’t supposed to be DPSing (such as the air phase of Sindragosa before ice tombs are up). Stack your cooldowns together whenever possible: trinkets should always be lined up with an arcane power, for instance. If there’s a disc priest in your raid who likes you, remember that while they can’t Power Infuse you while you have AP up, you can cast Arcane Power while infused and overwrite (and thus lose) the buff. You can use mirror images to mitigate threat (though see the Tier 10 notes below if you have the four-piece bonus).

Trash rotation: With good gear and assuming the mobs live for a while, flamestrike is the best DPS on trash. You can alternate ranks if you want to be fancy: the dots generated by the two different ranks will stack. Arcane explosion if you’re near the mobs and have chutzpah, though you’ll likely just end up with a pissed-off tank and/or a dead mage.

How tier 10 affects you: It is worth it to break 4pc T9 for 2pc T10. Once you have 2pc T10, the DPS difference between casting a Missile Barrage Arcane Missiles at lower stacks of arcane blast (say using MBAM at the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th AB) and using it only on the fourth stack is smaller: the haste proc from consuming the Barrage makes up for some of the lost DPS. With four piece T10, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using all available cooldowns with Mirror Images. Pop them first, then pop arcane power, icy veins, and any trinkets, and go to town. You can reasonably get in one arcane power while waiting for mirrors to come back up off cooldown, and have another one ready for when Mirror Images is back up.

Fire with Torment the Weak (18/53/0)

Floating points: Since 3.2.2, Combustion is worth picking up. You can sacrifice range (2/2 Flame Throwing) for increased regen (Arcane Meditation), more crit (Student of the Mind), or more resistance with the chance of mana regen (Magic Absorption). Depending on what you’re raiding, you may also want to pick up the AOE talents, Blast Wave and/or Dragon’s Breath.

Pros and cons: Capable of excellent DPS in fights with multiple targets. Can provide the 5% critical strike chance debuff to target via Improved Scorch. Rotation is extremely simple, with only one cooldown to manage. Very RNG dependent. Includes Focus Magic to add 3% critical strike to another caster. No hit from talents, so extremely high hit cap.

Stats priority: Hit > spell power > haste > crit > spirit. (At higher levels of gear, you will benefit more from haste than crit; the opposite is true as you’re gearing up.)

Boss spell rotation: For single target situations, cast living bomb, scorch if necessary, fireball until Hot Streak proc, then pyro. Resume fireball spam. Keep living bomb on the target at all times — if living bomb fades as you get a Hot Streak proc, it’s generally better to reapply living bomb before pyro. Scorch every ~28 seconds to keep the debuff up if necessary. Combustion is your only cooldown — if your tank has good aggro, blow it (along with any on-use trinkets) when your living bomb(s) and scorch still have a long time before they need refreshing — the ticks from Living Bomb will benefit from (but not consume) Combustion, and you don’t want to waste the damage modifier reapplying Scorch. Before 3.3.3, you’d want to hold off casting Pyro while Combustion was up (as Pyro didn’t benefit from TtW), but now you can DPS normally with Combustion active. Use mirror images to mitigate threat if you don’t have 4pc T10 (it at least gives your tank a second or two to taunt) and add a teensy bit more DPS. For multiple target situations, casting living bomb and maintaining it on multiple targets — particularly if those targets are grouped for the AOE explosion — will be a net DPS gain. It depends on the average lifespan of the mobs: the adds or sparks on XT will not help your DPS, the tentacles on Yogg-Saron will. Knowing the fights and your raid’s strategies is going to be the best indicator on whether or not you should be dotting up other targets.

Trash rotation: Pick two or three mobs and put living bomb on them. For mobs that will be alive for a while, cast Rank 9 Flamestrike, then Rank 8, then spam Rank 9 until the bombs explode. If the lol’bombed mobs live for 12 seconds, the explosions will generate great DPS. If your raid DPS is high and you finish off the mobs before the explosion, you’re out of luck. It’s a matter of knowing your raid’s DPS output and the health of the trash mobs (Ulduar mobs aren’t worth it, ICC ones usually are) and planning accordingly. Have fun.

How tier 10 affects you: It is worth it to break 4pc T9 for 2pc T10. With 2pc T10, your boss rotation won’t change, but you might want to weave in pyroblasts on trash to proc the haste buff, making your next flamestrike faster. With four piece T10, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using all available cooldowns with Mirror Images. For fire mages, that just means combustion and any trinkets you might have. Depending on the length of the fight, it’s probably worth it to save your second combustion to use with your second images. For really long fights, you’ll want to pop combustion every time it’s up, and save your trinkets for mirror images.

Frostfire (0/53/18)

Floating points:  Typical variations include dropping the points in Flame Throwing and putting them into improved trash DPS (Blast Wave, Dragon’s Breath) or trash control (Improved Blizzard). The two points in Improved Frostbolt are to make sure that if you do take Improved Blizzard, you aren’t inadvertantly rooting the mobs with the blizzard’s chill effect. Note that Flame Throwing does not give extra range to frostfire bolt.

Pros and cons: Provides the 5% critical strike chance debuff to target via Improved Scorch. Very RNG dependent. Extremely mana-efficient. Capable of doing good DPS with beginning raiding gear. Lower hit cap than Ttw Fire. Uses cooldowns (Combustion and Icy Veins) for burst damage.

Stats priority: Hit > spell power > crit > haste > spirit.

Boss spell rotation: For single target situations, cast living bomb, scorch if necessary, frostfire bolt until Hot Streak proc, then pyro. Resume frostfire bolt spam. Keep living bomb on the target at all times — if living bomb fades as you get a Hot Streak proc, it’s generally better to reapply living bomb before pyro. Scorch every ~28 seconds to keep the debuff up if necessary. Depending on the length of the encounter you may want to blow Icy Veins and Combustion if you have it at the start so it’ll be up again by the end of the fight; otherwise, you’ll want to save it until the boss is within Molten Fury range. Wait to use Combustion when you won’t need to refresh Living Bomb or Scorch — the ticks from Living Bomb will benefit from, but not consume Combustion, and you don’t want to waste the damage modifier reapplying Scorch. Use mirror images to mitigate threat (it at least gives your tank a second or two to taunt) and add a teensy bit more DPS. For multiple target situations, casting living bomb and maintaining it on multiple targets — particularly if those targets are grouped for the AOE explosion – will be a net DPS gain. It depends on the average lifespan of the mobs: the adds or sparks on XT will not help your DPS, the tentacles on Yogg-Saron will. Knowing the fights and your raid’s strategies is going to be the best indicator on whether or not you should be dotting up other targets.

Trash rotation: Pick two or three mobs and put living bomb on them. For mobs that will be alive for a while, cast Rank 9 Flamestrike, then Rank 8, then spam Rank 9 until the bombs explode. If the lol’bombed mobs live for 12 seconds, the explosions will generate great DPS. If your raid DPS is high and you finish off the mobs before the explosion, you’re out of luck. It’s a matter of knowing your raid’s DPS output and the health of the trash mobs (Ulduar mobs aren’t worth it, ICC ones usually are) and planning accordingly. Have fun.

How tier 10 affects you: It is worth it to break 4pc T9 for 2pc T10. With 2pc T10, your boss rotation won’t change, but you might want to weave in pyroblasts on trash to proc the haste buff, making your next flamestrike faster. With four piece T10, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using all available cooldowns with Mirror Images.

Frost with Torment the Weak(18/0/53)

Floating points:  Frost has a lot more flexibility now than it once had. If your raid doesn’t need you to provide repelenishment, drop the point in Enduring Winter. Cold as Ice isn’t really worth it: you will not need a lower cooldown on summoning your water elemental (he’s permanent with the glyph), and fights won’t last long enough for a reduced CD on Cold Snap to matter. Okay, maybe the Lich King fight lasts long enough for it to matter, but if we’re bringing frost mages to Lich King then the 30% damage buff is probably already in place and who cares what you do. (Sorry, frost mages, I have to rag on you a little.) Since 3.3.3 lets frost mages use their brain freeze proc to cast frostfire bolt in addition to fireball, there’s not much point in taking the Spell Impact talent: frostfire bolt is better DPS than fireball (even fireball with the talent).

Pros and cons: The weakest of the mage specs in terms of pure damage. Can provide replenishment via your frostbolt from Enduring Winter. Provides the 5% crit debuff more easily and consistently than fire or frostfire mages (or warlocks, for that matter), as it is applied with your main nuke. Includes Focus Magic to add 3% critical strike to another caster. Superior DPS on trash. Extremely good mana efficiency. Much better survivability (magic resistance and Ice Barrier). Lack of talents like Molten Fury mean you can frontload your damage instead of waiting for optimal settings to use cooldowns.

Stats priority: Hit > spell power > haste > crit > spirit.

Spell rotation: First priority is stacking Winter’s Chill to 5; this can be done with just a few pure frostbolts. This is easiest to do by blizzarding the boss; however, this is a personal DPS loss and probably not worth it to do in anything but a 25 man raid. Make sure your water elemental is out, pop icy veins, and start frostbolting your head off. When you get a Fingers of Frost proc, you’ll want to cast Deep Freeze immediately, and cast it every time you’re able to do so. Watch for your Brain Freeze proc (called Fireball!) and use Frostfire Bolt — not fireball — when you can. You can use Cold Snap to pick up another Icy Veins during the fight. Given how much haste mages have now, you will want to stagger Icy Veins with Bloodlust/Heroism to avoid bumping against the GCD cap. Ice lance is actually a DPS loss to cast even if FoF is up, so don’t bother. Casting ice barrier is a DPS loss, but if it can save your life, go for it.

How tier 10 affects you: It is worth it to break 4pc T9 for 2pc T10. With 2pc T10, your boss rotation won’t change (and I’m sure you’ll be hitting GCD cap at times), but you might want to weave in frostfire bolt on trash to proc the haste buff, making your next blizzard faster. With four piece T10, you’ll want to make sure that you’re using all available cooldowns with Mirror Images: icy veins, trinkets, what-have-you.

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