Gimped for PVE

While I think that going 10/48/3 is really the only true way to not gimp a mage in pve, I had plenty of success as 40/0/21. Having AP for burst in pve can be a waste and a blessing. In most of the boss fights in TBC the tank has to establish a certain amount of threat before you can start dps (Shade of Aran & Gruul being the exceptions). Even after the initial wait period AP would get you above the tank or at least too close for comfort. So by the time you can finally AP the fight is almost half way over. Having AP for enrage timers and the last 10% of a boss's health can be the difference between a clutch win and just another wipe.

When to AP in raids was always question for me and eventually I made my peace with it. Now that I am 17/0/44 I don't think I will be raiding anything, but Kara in the near future (not that I plan to). I did a SLabs run last night that saw my mana pool take a beating. I was oom way too much and my dps dropped like crazy on bosses who were immune to frostbite and obviously shatter. Trash was much easier with my new found kitting abilities, but that is really pointless (trash is always easy).

It is a good thing I retired from pve for the beaches of pvp, because I would be spending a small fortune on mana pots for raiding. No worries, I can pop my gems, drink and evoke in arena if need be.

Arena Notes
Broke 1800 finally with my 3s team this week, we are still only doing 10 games a week which doesn't scratch my arena itch. We had a scheduled 5s time last night that never came to fruition, hopefully we can get our matches in before the coming AV weekend.