World of Warcraft: Life as a Mage in 4.0.1

This article seems to cover the new mage stuff pretty well:
http://www.manaobscura.com/2010/10/the-mage-4-0-compendium/

more info:
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104767-fire_cataclysm_discussion_updated_4_01_a/
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104277-arcane_cataclysm_discussion/
http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t104774-frost_cataclysm_discussion/

FIRE
This is the fire build I'm currently running :
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#o0oZdfhrk0RRsfoM:zVbskMomV
- Another option instead of mage armor is to spec into improved scorch and spam that for free to help mana issues.
- There are definitely some points you can move around based on personal preference. Cauterize is cool and can save your bacon. You don't dps well if you are dead. If Cauterize triggers you should immediately ice block to remove the burning or if that is on CD pop mage ward and/or mana shield to give your healers more time to get you topped up. Molten shields and Blazing speed are mostly for pvp so leave those off. I left off improved scorch b/c mana wasn't really an issue. I picked up firestarter because I like the flexibility of dpsing while on the move. Impact goes with improved fireblast and I like the range. This really is more for aoe so it's not exactly optimized for single target dps but impact is so much fun. I'm loaded with haste so I took a point out of netherwind presence and kept two in piercing ice. As you can see I made some sacrifices in single target dps for range, mobility, utility, and survivability.
- Glyphs (note glyphs are currently kind of messed up and aren't catagorized correctly): living bomb, mage armor, pyroblast | molten armor, fireball, evocation | slow fall, arcane brilliance, monkey
- Mana burn is higher than before but wasn't an issue at all in lower ICC. Threat seems higher than before and I think higher than arcane so pulling aggro especially in larger trash mobs can be an issue.
- I'm not sure what the best way to reforge yet. I regem'd like 7 gems and reforged one piece of armor to get to hit cap. Make sure you replace any spirit gems you have. I went with more crit since I'm pretty haste loaded coming from arcane. I reforged my one other piece that had spirit into crit. Would mastery have been better?

Single target rotation:
- scorch, living bomb, flame orb (when you get to lvl 81 in cata). There is a school of thought to open up with living bomb and then scorch. The trade off is having living bomb up earlier (It's your #2 source of damage) at a potential loss of crit ticks. Either way I doubt this makes a huge difference.
- spam fireball
- renew living bomb AFTER it explodes
- hot streak proc -> pyroblast (which also renews scorch debuff so if it proc's often enough you'll never have to scorch again which is usually the case. The debuff lasts 30 sec)
- You want to stack as many big dots as you can before firing combustion. So wait for at least an ignite proc and probably a big crit like a hot streak pryoblast before firing off combustion. So remember ONLY fire combustion when the target has these DOTS: Ignite, Living bomb, and Pyroblast. I use power auras classics to help track ignite for me. I guess DoTimer would work too. Just found this: CombustionHelper which is all kinds of awesome. Install it now!
- I've been playing around with CD timing. I think it's best to blow everything you have except combustion. Get some BIG dots going, get that hot streak proc pyroblast, and then hit combustion for the biggest combined DOT.
- Spam scorch, fire blast and maybe flamestrike if you have the mana to keep dps up if you have to be moving.
- impact proc -> fire blast if the boss has adds. For single target encounters just ignore impact. Working in the fire blast when there is no movement is an overall dps loss.
- I found this nice flow chart that is pretty close to what I do.

AOE rotation:
- blastwave. If it hits 2 or more targets you get an automatic flame strike. Otherwise flame strike. If the fight is short you might try spamming flame strike 3-4 times. The idea is that the initial hit from flame strike is big enough that it overcomes clipping the dot but it's a big mana drain.
- living bomb 3 targets. I highly recommend mage nuggets to keep track of how many living bombs you have going.
- if impact procs then make sure your target has at least living bomb and fire blast immediately. This will automatically spread living bomb and probably get your 3 max. If you get lucky you might have a hot streak proc too so you can work pyro in there which would also get spread around by impact. But most of the time don't bother fishing for hot streak b/c impact will probably wear off before you get it. UPDATE: apparently there is currently a bug that prevents pyroblast! from spreading with impact.
- spam fireball

- You can pretty much stick with molten armor and burn for a good 8 min maybe. If you get below 10% mana and all gems/evoc is on CD then you might consider switching to mage armor. With the glyph you will actually GAIN mana while still spamming. This was on dummies so in a raid environment I bet mana is even less of an issue.
- On glyphing MI: The fireballs they cast do hit harder but take long to cast. It's about a wash as far as dps goes.


FROST

level 80: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#obbZoZff0hsIszMo:MmoMkqomM
level 85: http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#ohhZbZffMhsIszMo:MmoMkqomM

Single target rotation:
frostfire orb (level 81) , pet freeze, deep freeze
when fingers of frost procs: deep freeze if off cool down otherwise ice lance
Frostfire bolt when brain freeze procs preferably with FoF.
don't forget pet freeze whenever it comes off of cd but make sure you use up any stacks of fingers of frost first.
spam frostbolt.

This actually looks pretty fun and might be even raid viable.

- The current flavor of the month is definitely fire, and I'm really enjoying it. Frost still lags a good 1-1.5K dps behind fire. I tried arcane briefly (build I'm using). It's still very bursty so for very short fights (< style="font-weight: bold;">Custom UI
- Fire requires a slightly different UI than arcane. I've setup power auras classic to track combustion, ignite, and Critical mass. I let the built in power auras take care of impact and hot streak. I then use mage nuggets to track living bombs. I really like the counter. I'm experimenting with DoTimer to track things like blast wave and flame strike dots.
- A few addons I use seem to be abandoned so I've switched them out. Cowtip -> startip, elkbuffbars -> satrina buff frames, and sexycooldown -> coolline. Pretty much everything else I use has been updated.
- One thing that really sucks though is blizzard now prevents addons to toggle off buffs by right clicking. This affects both elkbuffbars and sbf. If you use the default buff/debuff frames it works fine but I hate the default buff frames. The alternative is just create /cancelaura spellname macros.
- I've been trying out some new grid plugins.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gridstatusdungeonrole.aspx
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid-status-raid-icons.aspx
and this so I have more places to display the icons:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/grid-indicator-side-icons.aspx
- NOTE: There is currently a graphics issue where if you change your bottom viewport you will get weird results with water on the 2 highest settings. Just set water to fair or lower and you'll be fine. Hopefully Blizzard fixes this issue soon.

UPDATE 12/3/2010 (4.0.3a)

- I dropped star tip for tiptac. Star tip is just too buggy.

- Carbonite has a really neat map but it's a really big heavy addon. I disabled a lot of the other stuff though but I do like the map. Just don't merge it with your minimap!