Festergut for Mages

[Luke]

To non-mages reading this, important question "Do we have a disc priest in our 25s?"

I've been thinking about how to handle this fight, with the heavy movement and reading blogs; the consensus seems to be that we should just Ice Block through the first pungent blight and blast it as hard as we can the whole time. Most people seem to think if he gets to do another pungent blight that the raid will wipe anyhow, so don't worry about spores at all.

Spec-wise, (for Arcane mages only; I may need to modify mine...) I think that going 4/5 arcane stability or even 5/5 is worth doing. If you are geared at all like me, you have far more hit than you need, so arcane focus is pretty much a dead talent. With our tanks, I don't think we need 2 points in Arcane subtlety; possibly don't need any. This lets us get down to 80% or even 100% pushback reduction on that fight (I *think* that will be okay, especially using mirror image wisely; I'd say go slow at the beginning of the fight to let tankA build threat, then when they swap to tankB pop MI and burn away.)

Finally, and this will require help, on this and other raid damage fights Incanter's Absorption could net us a metric ton of Spell Power. I don't recall if we have a disc priest with us on our attempts, but if we do Power Word: Shield and IA will net us a huge chunk of spell power. (And on fights like marrowgar where there is ice/fire damage we can use our wards to buff ourselves). In the event our mana is allowing it, (and if we are lacking the disc priest) we could also use Mana Shield as part of our burn phase; dunno if the GCD off of that is worth it however. To get points in IA I took them out of student of the mind; Once T8 stops being used that talent becomes really questionable for me, your milage may vary.

Sorry if any of this was obvious to you guys, but it may help someone!

[hung]

Actually, DMG absorption, and any synergy you can get off of it, is very important for the fights we're working on.
Blizzard seems fond of dmg auras right now. Which means consistent (if small) dmg to the whole raid, all the time. If you can absorb that dmg, the healers will love you. If you can buff yourself by absorbing that dmg...

[Luke]

Well, the cost of Mana Shield is way to high to use constantly; that bit would really be a burn phase only kind of thing. If on the other hand we could have a disc priest assigned to the raid heals (esp for the mage group) then there is really good synergy there.

[Camyu]

To non-mages reading this, important question "Do we have a disc priest in our 25s?"

Yes!

[Dengeki]

Nothing costs too much if it is really worth using. There are plenty of ways to get mana back, like stacking 4 mages with a resto shammy or such.

[Luke]

Well, I've never come upon a mage suggesting keeping mana shield up over an entire fight; I just don't know if the GCD+mana loss would be worthwhile. On an arcane spec, mana = damage. Give us more mana, we do more damage; so if you have clever ways of dumping more mana into your arcane mages, we will turn that into more damage! With Power Word: Shield, we get the damage increase without having the cost in mana or time.

It would probably be worthwile to think about mana shield from a helping out the healer standpoint, but there are a lot of variables there. But having the disc priest on raid heals would probably be a low cost way to up mage damage.