How to be a better Mage?

[WowSherri]

I have been reading online about mages and hit cap and everything esle mage.  I am trying to get better at playing my class and I just had a few questions about what I have been reading. 

For hit cap if you have talent points in Precision and Arcane Focus is your hit cap going to be 289 and if you go over that does it help or are you just over geming?

And if you only need to be hit caped at 289 what do we want to stack next?  Haste, spell power, int?  Just some questions for thought.

For those of you in the guild that play mages do you prefer to get your damage from your crit or from having a higher damage that is more constant?

For pve spell damage first and then Intellect and then Stamina so that we can live a little longer when we get hit?  And then where does the haste come into play.  I know that we need to be able to throw our spells out faster so that we are not always in the casting position lol.

[Winchcombe]

I don't know anything about mages, but I know enough about the game in general to say that stamina shouldn't be anywhere on your list of priorities, for gems or otherwise.  As a cloth wearer, you're almost never going to survive a direct hit from anything in a raid environment no matter how much you stack, so it's a waste to worry about it.  To give you some perspective on this, I once had a guild leader demand we stack stamina during TBC in place of ALL other stats.  He was one of the top five worst WoW players I have ever seen.

Also, you don't want to go above your hit cap as that is just a waste of gems, or even equipment if you aren't being thoughtful about your gear choices.  If your hit cap with those talents is indeed 289 (something one of the other mages will have to verify because I'm too lazy to look it up), you want to avoid having 290 if at all possible.  Sometimes you can't really help it, but that can only be determined by sitting down, taking all your options into account, and doing some math.

[Ethics]

i also know jack shit about magery, BUT i know about wow in general too! hit is never something you wanna gem for. its good but a miss here and there isnt going to destroy you ESPECIALY with all the goddamn hit rating on ICC stuff... im sitting at about 360 (100 OVER hit cap) just because i cant get rid of it. haste is good for casters you should be trying to hit the haste cap because im pretty sure 1second casts arent bad for mages. dont know shit about mages and spirit so im not gonna comment. stam is a tricky stat because all gear has it. the ONLY time you would ever ever ever gem for stam would be if you were back in an ulduar hardmode raiding guild before totc came out or when ICC heroics open if youre in a serious hardcore icc25 hardmode guild and even then you wouldnt want a ton extra, reason being there is often alot more and alot higher raid damage and clothies can die fastly. the only time you would ever enchant for gem (other than the +stats enchants) would be on your boots and its only acceptable if the enchant also gives you a run speed boost.

[Vitandus]

Hit > Spellpower > Haste.

[Daemus]

I just looked at your armory Sherri.  If you are running Arcane (I see you are dual specced fire/arcane), then you are way over hit cap.  

You have 422 hit rating, and you only need 289 as arcane.  Your gear alone without any gems gives you 271 hit rating by itself.  I could see you maybe dropping one hit gem in to reach the cap (if you are raiding)...For heroics don't worry about being just shy of the hit cap.

After obtaining your hit cap, you need to focus on Spellpower/haste/crit in that order (like pat said above).  Your haste is just above 18% and I think you want to be around 23-28% haste in toc level gear.

I would re-gem some of your gear and fit in some sp/haste gems (Reckless Ametrine) so you can get some more throughput as well as more haste to help your dps.  You might want to go with some sp/crit as well if you start getting quite a bit of haste so your crit doesn't suffer as much.

Hopefully this helps :)

[Skippy]

Well, first off, it depends on your spec.  I have been tooling around on my mage with a fire spec, and, unfortunately, the hit cap without a Spriest or Boomkin is 446.  For an arcane mage with the proper talents, it is indeed 289.  You want to be equal to that cap, not more, and definitely not less.  If you are over the cap it won't hurt you, but you are missing out on stats elsewhere.

After getting the hit cap, Pat is right on, go for spellpower, followed by haste, crit, intellect, and spirit.  Stamina is certainly handy so you can survive AoE attacks, however don't go for that over the other stats.  I've been a little frustrated in heroics because my haste rating is lagging behind and, in some groups, I barely get a couple fireballs off before the mob is dead.  If you plan on focusing your playtime there, make sure you get it up (however, as arcane, with the increased speed of Arcane Blast after the first one, and the Missile Barrage proc, I did not notice this nearly as often)

[jalor]

The basic trick to arcane is to make sure you finish each fight with the least amount of mana possible with out running out. Arcane is a mana hose the more mana you use the more DPS you cause. The idea behind this is you stay at a 4 stack of AB buff as long as possible and break it occasionally with a missile barrage. The basic trade off with the game mechanics is you trade watching threat(fire spec) with trying to control your mana output. Its all about timing your mana gems evocation and your BE racial ability with the length of the fight and the amount of mana you are using. This is why haste is so important the time it take to get to 4 stacks of AB is super important and this is why arcane mages total damage output is disproportionate to the DPS they put out.

e.g. Right now it take me 2 sec to cast AB with my current haste so I like to look at my DPS as 1/2 my average hit per cast of AB which is a bit of an over simplification but its close. First cast is genearlly 4.5k ish so if it was possible to break the buff after each cast without losing time you would only be pulling about 2.25k DPS the next is usually somewhere between 5-6k maybe more 3rd is 9ish and 4th can be anywhere between 10-20. I am baising this all on my current gear yours may be different but the point is that the longer you keep the 4 stack up the longer you are pulling 5-10k DPS averaging it all together gives you the total DPS. So the more casts at low buff stacks the lower your overall DPS.

As for bosses in 5 mans here is an easy rotation for anything that dosen't scilence or dissaper or interupt your ability to just blast something repeatedly. 4x AB pop instant cast ability to get a quick double shot on the boss for about 30k then pop the increased damage and mana cost ability, icy veins, and bring in the retarded clone army(I do this just to make sure I dont pull threat) AB untill this wears off. if there is anything left (there wont be if the rest of the group is pulling at least 3k) then you will probably have to missile barage and pop evocation the just AB till finish. I can usually pull 7-9k on most heroic bosses now just doing that. Raid bosses are a whole other thing and each is different.

Ok now that you have all that inforamtion that is why its hit(to 289)>sp>haste>crit as everybody else has said

[WowSherri]

Thank you everyone for all the good infomation.  Jalor thank you so much for your insight.  I will be moving things around on my mage now lol and hopefully I will be able to pull a little more dps.