Empowered Fire

Ding! 80! …Now What? (The Guide)

- Updated for 3.3. Changes have been made to Gear and Spec sections to reflect content in-game.

So you have decided to roll a mage and fate has allowed you to hit level 80. Congratulations!

You made it to the big-time…and now you’re scratching your head. What do you do now? You’ve had fun levelling but now you have all sorts of things to worry about as a new 80 – do you just do heroics? Raid? Run circles around Dalaran? There’s lots of things to consider and all of it is confusing. Sure, you could just ask your guild, but a lot of times people who have been level 80 for a while just point you at Elitist Jerks. This is not always very helpful because it’s tailored for progression raiding and min-maxing. That’s why we’re here to give you some information specifically for the new-to-80 mage (who is interested in PVE). Some of this info has an overlap with Meta’s raiding guide, but I will be explaining some basic things with a little more detail. If you are looking to jump right into raiding, her guide might be more beneficial.

Table of Contents:

• Spec
• Stats
• Gear
• Gems
• Reputation
• Additional Information

Spec

A good place to start making the transition from leveling mage to end-game mage is talent specializations. A lot of people level as frost, which isn’t as viable at the level cap, but you will want to pick a good spec for the type of play you want to engage in. Keep in mind that dual-specialization has been available to you since level 40, but understandable if it’s been too prohibitive to purchase up until this point. Dual-speccing allows you to play around with specs you like, or having one for PVE content and one for PVP.

A helpful mod for maintaining and switching talent specs is Talented. It allows you to save your talents as templates so you can easily switch out to saved specs and back if you so choose, and also allows you to port inspecs that have been created with the Wowhead or Blizzard talent generator.

Frost Spec for PVE (19/0/52)

This is a good place to start out for a lot of people because it isn’t drastically different than a frost levelling build (which usually puts more points into snares and survivability talents) and has a playstyle you are probably pretty used to. I unfortunately don’t have a ton of experience with frost but the gist of it is actually pretty simple. This is good for soloing and heroics, but I’d not really take it into raids farther than 10man content if you want to remain competitive.

Frost relies predominantly on frostbolt and using your water elemental pet. It also provides the Winter’s Chill debuff that acts like Scorch (5 percent critical strike increase against the target). Enduring Winter also provides a Replenishment buff as well, which will restore mana to you and your party. It uses Torment the Weak as one of its side talents, meaning that having a slow or a snare on the target increases your damage by 12 percent: this happens any time a mob is being tanked. Brain Freeze is also nice for getting a mana-free frostfire bolt during your usual rotation.

3.3 has now made a couple changes to frost that should prove to make it even more enjoyable – your Deep Freeze talent works on stun-immune mobs to allow extra damage against them, and Glyph of Eternal Water makes your pet permanent, but without the Freeze ability. This is great for soloing and group DPS.

Frostfire Bolt Spec (“FFB Spec” – Deep Fire/Frost Side Talents) (0/53/18)

If you want to try something a little different, or have been used to playing a fire build, frostfire is a really good deep fire build that you can do on pretty low-end gear. This is a very solid 5/10man build for anyone, especially if you’re just starting to get gear from heroics and 10mans or badge gear. It does fall behind somewhat as you get into more aggressive raid play, however. It has some of the frost talents you might be used to but plus the additional damage that fire talents bring. One of the benefits of FFB spec is that you gain the Precision (3 percent hit) talent from the Frost tree, making it a deep fire build with a lower hit requirement than the pure fire build.

FFB essentially makes the best use of both worlds with its side talents – you get Icy Veins and extra frost damage from the frost tree, and Combustion, Living Bomb and Hot Streak from fire. FFB follows the typical fire build pattern of applying Scorch (Scorch now only needs one application since 3.3), Living Bomb, using your “nuke” (in this case Frostfire Bolt) and then using Hot Streak procs when up.

Fire/Torment the Weak (“FireTTW” – Deep Fire/Arcane Side Talents) (18/53/0)

This is one of the two predominant raiding builds that mages are using right now and for good reason – lots of damage! However, if you are just starting out with quest blues and greens, this is going to be a harder build to swing. Gear does play a lot into the spec you play when you are starting out. Because your fire spells do not benefit from Arcane Focus, it means that you need at least 6 percent hit to be capped for heroics, and 17 percent for raids! Granted, you might have some hit buffs from Misery or Improved Faerie Fire as well as a possible 1 percent hit aura from Draenei if you are Alliance, but that still leaves 13-14 percent hit you need to make up via your gear. FireTTW also has more mana issues than Frost or FFB – spirit will be more useful on your gear for regen but also for extra critical strike damage.

FireTTW has the same boosts as FFB in terms of fire talents – it has Combustion, Living Bomb and Hot Streak. The rotation for the spec is identical to FFB in that respect, only substituting fireball for frostfire bolt. It also includes Torment the Weak, gaining 12 percent damage from snares or slows, which are provided by your tank or other DPS: this is in exchange for Icy Veins.

Arcane (57/3/11)

This was considered one of the “hardest” specs to swing on newly-80 gear but I suspect that it is going to become more popular given that arcane’s mana requirements have been eased quite a bit. Arcane is quite a bit different than any other of the elemental builds like frost or fire. This spec focuses on a lot of spell damage and haste. Intellect is also a pretty good stat for this build but you don’t need to stack gems for it, unlike healers. Hit is pretty much capped for heroics with this spec if you fill out both hit talents. You also get increased spell power, haste and intellect from your talents.

If you have mana problems, it is a good idea to start focusing on using your mana cooldowns.

Arcane now brings a nice passive aura to your party or raid with Arcane Empowerment: you increase your party or raid’s damage by 3% simply by showing up.

Rotations for all these specs are outlined in our raiding guide.

Stats

Usually your spec is going to determine what stats you want to favor ideally on your gear, but most of them follow a general rule:

Hit (to cap) > Spell Power > Haste/Crit > Int/Spirit.

What does this mean?

Hit

Spell hit is arguably a mage’s most important spec. Hit allows you to actually land spells on a mob. The chance of a spell landing is determined by the enemy’s level relative to your own. To be hit capped for heroics, with only level 80 mobs, you only need 6 percent hit to cap. Raid bosses, however, require 17 percent. If you have hit from talents, it reduces the amount you need from the 6/17 percent “cap”. In-combatdebuffs also help. I cap my gear in a raid with consideration that I will always have Misery/Moonkin debuffs up, and a draenei in my party. This means with talents, I only need 9 percent hit. Hit is one of the stats you will have to always pay attention to on your gear.

Spell Power/Damage

This is the meat and potatoes of all your stats. Casters in general benefit from spell power the most generally. Spell power makes your DoTs and spells hit for more baseline damage, essentially, based on algorithims for each spell. Your spellpower should be coming from your gear, but there are consumables in-game that you should bring along with you for raids and heroics that can give you more.

Haste

This is what makes your spells cast faster and reduces the GCD (global cooldown) between spells. Haste is a pretty good thing for all flavors ofmages to focus on, but starting out level 80 gear will not have a ton of haste on it. You can gem for spell power/haste and do pretty alright however. As you start getting better gear, and more spell power, haste goes up in value and becomes more prevalent in what you get.

Crit

Crit is what determines how often you critically strike with spells. Critical strikes are an extra percentage of damage over what you’d normally hit with a spell. Frost and fire mages focus a lot more on crit than arcane, whereas arcane favors more haste. Earlier gear has more crit than haste usually, making it a little easier to gear up frost/fire mages. It isn’t necessary to stack crit in your gems, but having crit on your gear in general is savvy. It is not as important as spell damage however, so if you’re looking to upgrade your gear and you lose some crit rating to gain a lot of spellpower, you should ideally value the spell power first.

Intellect

This is one of two base stats that will turn up on your gear that has some unique properties. Intellect will always be on your gear for the most part and helps build a healthy mana pool (which is definitely good!) Intellect also contributes to your critical strike rating, but it isn’t a significant amount. For arcane mages, however, intellect is a source of spell power, making this stat a little more beneficial for them. Intellect heavy gear can help an arcane mage out by giving them a bigger mana pool and boosting their spell damage, so certain trinkets or pieces of gear might be more attractive.

Spirit

This is the other base stat that will be on some of your gear. It isn’t as useful to arcane mages, unlike INT, but spirit is slightly better for fire and frost mages due to Molten Armor. Spirit will raise your critical strike rating when your Molten Armor is active, so gear having a little bit of spirit over gear that doesn’t will factor in, but it isn’t a defining feature of your set. Talents can help boost a slightly low crit rate though.

Note: A lot of gear will drop that has MP5. Mages do not need mp5 on their gear, and this sort of gear tends to fall as “healer” gear and is in poor taste to roll over a healer. If it is a big upgrade, ask first. Sometimes you can get mp5 gear when you first start out if it is a substantial increase in spellpower and whatnot, but in general, it’s not something you should actively be looking for or picking up past a certain point.

Gear

So now that you’ve learned about your spec and what stats you are shooting for, it’s time to get dressed up. Now has never been a better time to gear a mage, as your options are fairly diverse and relatively painless to obtain. If you already have BOA gear, you can forgo some of the earlier blues but most of the item budget on BOA gear is spent on the XP bonus, which obviously loses its charm at max level.

Most people suggest hitting heroics when you first hit 80, but unless you have a guild that’s very patient and doesn’t mind “carrying” you around, there are non-heroic options for nice gear. Blues are always a good start when learning how to be a mage, and you don’t need full epics to do a good job. When looking for upgrades,don’t be afraid to do some research as there are some easy craftables and drops that are good. Making a “shopping list” so you don’t feel lost is also a great idea.

One of the other problems about gearing a mage is weapon choices – dagger/sword and off-hand or a staff? While staves typically provide a nice chunk of stats all at once, some find main hand/off hand to be a better combination. Typically, go with what provides the greatest benefit to you. Most of the time, I like MH/OH because of the flexibility with swapping for stats I need, but if you get a greater upgrade from a staff, go with it! Another problem is that some slots are harder to find upgrades for, like belts, trinkets and off-hands, so one upgrade might have to last you a while, unless you start raiding right away.

I made a list of some gear that you might want to look into. A good resource for gear is WoWhead (which is what I used with filters). This is by no means an exhaustive list, but some pieces I picked to give you an idea of what to shoot for. Some things I didn’t include were all pieces of a set (such as Blackweave) or profession-only items, which will be discussed under professions.

Rare (Blue items):

There’s a lot of pretty decent blues in order to build up a nice set if you feel cautious about trying to go after epic gear in blues/greens.

Quests:

The Argent Skullcap
Emeline’s Locket
Artuis’ Focus Stone
Mantle of the Intrepid Explorer
Polished Protodrake Cloak
Wristguard of the Bone Witch
Gloves of the Servant
Bridenbrad’s Sash
Snowdrift Pantaloons
Bonecaster’s Endgame
Amberglow Signet
Ring of Temerity
Cannoneer’s Fuselighter
Chilly Slobberknocker
Stave of Youthful Sorrow
Iceshrieker’s Touch

Crafted:

(I skipped listing Frostsavage gear, as that’s predominantly for PVP. If you are interested in gearing for PVP, look it up.)

Silky Iceshard Boots
Hat of Wintry Doom (very good craftable, has a meta gem slot!)
Black Duskweave Wristwraps
Deep Frozen Cord
Silky Iceshard Boots
Sky Sapphire Amulet (PVP item but not terrible)
Ring of Northern Tears
Cloak of Frozen Spirits

Normal Instance Drops:

Static Cowl
Pendant of Shadow Beams
Silken Amice of the Ymirjar
Cape of Seething Steam
Raiments of the Titans
Verdisa’s Cuffs of Dreaming
Lava Burn Gloves
Trousers of the Arrakoa
The Conjurer’s Slippers
Signet of Ranulf
Tome of Arcane Phenomena
Sempiternal Staff
Tome of Salramm
Ancient Measuring Rod

Heroic Instance Drops:

Crown of Unbridled Magic
Forgotten Shadow Hood
Necklace of Taldaram
Mantle of the Tribunal
Ancient Dragon Spirit Cape
Drakewing Rainments
Egg-Sac Robes
Water-Drenched Robe
Savage Wound Wrap
Traditionally Dyed Handguards
Silken Bridge Handwraps
Gloves of Distorted Time
Flowing Sash of Order
Living Mojo Belt
Breeches of the Caller
Slithering Slippers
Cleric’s Linen Shoes
Ring of the Traitor King
Forge Ember
Mark of the War Prisoner (this is a VERY nice trinket if you are missing hit)
Staff of Wayward Principles
Netherbreath Spellblade
Cursed Lich Blade
Telestra’s Journal
Wand of the San’layn

Epic (Purple items):

I omitted items from this set that are only obtained from raiding – that is to say craftables from raid drops, raid quests. If you have the money to spend on these things or are going into raiding, then this list isn’t neccessarily what you’d be looking into. This list also excludes resistance craftables; I see a lot of new mages and warlocks wearing this stuff and it makes me cry. There’s nothing amazing about resist gear, even with gems, that you can’t get better from even blue items like I listed above. Don’t do this, people. It’s bad.

The badge/tournament gear is also omitted – check the specific vendors if you want to see what you can start saving up for.

Crafted:

Titanium Spellshock Necklace
Deathchill Cloak
Ebonweave Robe
Spellweave Robe
Ebonweave Gloves
Spellweave Gloves
Titanium Spellshock Ring
Titansteel Spellblade
Iron-bound Tome

Normal Instances:
Tattered Glacial Woven Hood (ICC 5 mans)
Brilliant Hailstone Amulet
Coil of Missing Gems (ICC 5 mans)
Mantle of Inconsolable Fear
Frayed Abomination Stitching Shoulders (ICC 5 mans)
Palebone Robes (ICC 5 mans)
Bindings of the Wicked
Wristguards of Subterranean Moss (ICC 5 mans)
Handwraps of Surrendered Hope
Cold Sweat Grips (ICC 5 mans)
Marwyn’s Macabre Fingertips (ICC 5 mans)
Belt of the Burning Blaze
Essence of Anger (ICC 5 mans)
Leggings of the Haggard Apprentice
Rime Woven Silks (ICC 5 mans)
Ice Steeped Sandals (ICC 5 mans)
Signet of Purity
Abyssal Rune (This is good even when raiding end-game!)
Blood Boil Lancet (ICC 5 mans)
Splintered Icecrown Parapet (ICC 5 mans)
Chilled Heart of the Glacier (ICC 5 mans)
Coffin Nail (ICC 5 mans)

Heroic Instances:

Gaze of the Unknown
Crown of Ulmaas (ICC 5 mans)
Arcane Loops of Anger (ICC 5 mans)
Kurisu’s Indecision
Very Fashionable Shoulders (ICC 5 mans) (WTF on the name)
Embrace of Madness
Mord’rethar Robes (ICC 5 mans)
Ancient Polar Bear Hide (ICC 5 mans)
Azure Cloth Bindings
Cuffs of the Winged Levitation
Bracer of Worn Molars (ICC 5 mans)
Gloves of Glistening Runes
Suspiciously Soft Gloves (ICC 5 mans)
Girdle of Bane
Braid of Salt and Fire (ICC 5 mans)
Strip of Remorse (ICC 5 mans)
Woven Bracae Leggings
Boots of Crackling Flame
Prelate’s Snowshoes (ICC 5 mans)
Sinner’s Confession
Band of Guile
Annhylde’s Ring
Nevermelting Ice Crystal (ICC 5 mans)
Staff of Draconic Combat
Engraved Gargoyle Femur (ICC 5 mans)
Spectral Kris
Seethe (ICC 5 mans)
Shriveled Heart (ICC 5 mans)
Rod of the Fallen Monarch
Soulsplinter (ICC 5 mans)

The real important thing about gear is that while it helps you gain more stats to impact your spells, it won’t give you magical skills and make you a good mage. Groups will gladly appreciate a mage who has slightly worse gear but plays like a pro. Purples are not automatically the best thing you can wear and being as smart about your gear as you are about your play will make you better. Also, remember to be nice and share your gear with other casters in the group – some pieces are hotly contested between other mages, warlocks, shadow priests, and even elemental shaman and moonkin.

Gems

As you gain better gear, especially in heroics and into beginning raids, there will be a preponderance of gem slots. These should be socketed with the appropriate color gems. Bethy has a good section on gems for raiding in her guide, and those are roughly the gems you should be shooting for. When you first get gear, you might not want to socket with epic gems, especially if it will be replaced shortly. Rare versions of these gems are fine.

As for socket bonuses – you do not need to match the socket colors to gem colors, or complete all bonuses. Most bonuses are not worth it – but when are they? Generally, 5 or more spellpower is a good bonus to socket for, and anything over 7 is a must. Alternate things like haste over 5 or so isn’t terrible, but critical strike is not worth socketing for, since you’ll have a bit on your gear or gems. Hit if you’re under cap is an easy thing to socket for and should be done. Things like spirit or intellect are not worth it.

The only meta gem that a mage should use is a Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. Remember that it requires 2 blue-color gems to activate so keep those purified twilight opals handy!

Reputation

Reputations in Wrath work on a lot of levels – some of them provided a nice batch of rare and epic armor pieces or weapons back before Trial of theCrusader came out. They are still however relevant when it comes to the subject of your character’s gear. The two to focus on are neccesary for casters, and have some perks besides your head/shoulder enchant.

Kirin Tor – All mages start off friendly with Kirin’Tor.

Kirin’Tor rep requires revered to gain the head enchant but it isn’t very hard to work on this rep. All of the daily dungeon quests grant Kirin Tor rep, as well as the normal daily dungeon having a reward object you can turn in for extra rep. If you are a diligent fish and cooking daily quest person, you also can gain a smidgen of rep that way. Jewelcrafting dailies do the same. Additionally, you can gain reputation in normal level 80 instances and heroics with a Kirin Tor tabard that you can buy pretty much at any time by the virtue of being a mage. Pretty keen eh?

As an added bonus for grinding to revered, you also get access to some nice blues and purples if you continue from Revered to Exalted. Jewelcrafting mages also get the Runed Scarlet Ruby pattern and tailors recieve the recipe for Sapphire Spellthread.

Sons of Hodir – This reputation is not as easy.

The reason you need this reputation is for your shoulder enchant. Sons of Hodir reputation is accessible by unlocking a quest chain that takes you through Storm Peaks from K-5 through the Brunnhildr daily to the Sons. To gain access to all the dailies, you have to finish the quest chain, which starts with They Took Our Men. It is a very fun story, however.

You also can do Relic of Ulduar turn-ins if you want to spend the money, or polish off the grind from Friendly to Honored faster. At honored, you can get the Lesser inscription of the Storm, which provides 18SP/10Crit. This is a nice easy pick up, but if you want to continue on to raid, having the exalted shoulder inscription is necessary.

Doing dailies, turning in Relics and now with 3.2, using the Hodir reputation token you can get from the daily dungeon, you can get to exalted a lot easier than before. There’s also a rare spawn item called an Everfrost chip that you can find out in the Hodir region that gives you a nice little rep boost when you turn it in as well. They are little blue shards stuck in the ground like herbs or mining nodes. Note, they are very hard to spot and can spawn almost anywhere in Dun Niffelheim. A gathering mod like Gathermate does give approximate spawn locations however.

Other reputations:

After Kirin’Tor and Sons of Hodir, the other reputations aren’t as important. Wyrmrest Accord has a very nice pair of caster boots at exalted, but it’s possible that by the time you reach that level of reputation you’ll have already received better.

Additional Info

Here are some links to things you might want to research yourself. Just remember that no one is ever going to dislike you for asking questions. The real mage experience at 80 comes from experience and groups, for the most part. Sit down in front of dummies to practice your rotation. Ask questions of your guildmates and other mages you trust. Research!

Glyphs

Macros

Rawr (Gear Comparison Program)

Lootrank

Tags: 3.3-changes, 3.3-mage-changes, 3.3-mages, arcane-mages, arcane-talents, blue-mage-gear, fire-mages, fire-talents, frost-mages, frost-talents, mage-gear-list, mage-gems, mage-spec, mage-stats, new-mage-guide, new-to-80, new-to-80-mage, patch-3.3, PVE-fire, PVE-frost