said by Margolis :

personally I like arcane.

simple spell rotation of 3 arcane blasts. then if missile barrage has proc'd you fire arcane missiles followed by an arcane barrage. If missile barrage didn't proc, then you follow the 3 arcane blasts with an arcane barrage. rinse and repeat.

said by Dissembled :

Have you ever played a tank? It's the exact opposite. Stand at max range and don't get aggro.

Being a mage is pretty simple right now. If you want something easy to start with, but not necessarilly the top DPS build, go frost. The rotation is Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, pop elemental, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt....you get the point.

said by xcal78 :

As long as you don't want to raid that works. When you get kicked from a raid at least you know why too!

said by xcal78 :

Yea this works in 3.0.9 - I'm hearing fire looking like the best in 3.1 but till they fix all the bugs it's hard to test or verify that.

said by Dissembled :

He has NEVER played a mage. Would jumping into a raid the very first thing he does even be what you would suggest?

said by Margolis :

that would be quite a change! And would be a good thing. Currently I have yet to see a fire mage that can even do 50% of the damage of an arcane mage with the same level gear.

said by xcal78 :

Arcane isn't the best dps right now per EJ website. I use arcane myself but I like mana regen and the loss in dps isn't really that big right now between FFB and arcane specs. FFB is still the best dps. If a fire mage can't do 50% of the dps they player needs to quite mage and try a new game. I've seen 25 man geared mages pulling 1,400 dps so maybe you've seen some crappy players. 5 minutes on any good mage website will show you arcane or fire is good dps.

said by tekmunki :

The absolute highest dps build right now is an 18/53/0 fireball build, but the untalented hit rating required + the absolute reliance on having dying curse + ids trinkets, requires and absolute best in slot mage to pull it off. I only see about 1 or 2 mages on my own server pull this off, they usually see about 5.5-6k dps.

Second in actual play DPS is arcane mages with totw and pushback reduction. Avg geared DPS 4.5-5k

A close third is FFB, however can easily pass arcane if they have a good night with crits. Arcane is proven a reliable, consistent DPS. Avg geared DPS, 4k on avg, 7k on a good night (usually only one or two bosses see this number) - the crit variance is so high on FFB mages, RNG crittage is not a reliable method to gear once you're at least naxx10 geared.
Boss fights ^ not trash.

Keep in mind, EJ math is mostly based on single target without unpredicted outside variances, mostly using target dummies for verification.

said by footballdude :

A recent parse saw my Chaos Bolts critting 75% of the time. I was wondering how that could be, now I think I have to say thank you to our mage. I know she throws up scorch and frostfire spam. Never knew that would buff other casters.

said by tekmunki :

I agree and thank you.

^ you're basically reiterating what I stated, however I feel it's better to go FFB once at 80 to help the raid as a whole with scorch buffing if the raid doesn't already have someone doing it. Otherwise, yes, arcane it up if you are looking solely at your own dps.