In my opinion, the Arcane Mage is the true king of dps. Whether you agree or disagree, plz post your comments so that I might guage my thinking. If there are enough responses, I will give my reason...

Arcane by itself.....NO. Arcane and Fire combined....YES. Dps Kings they are. I have recently respecced my Mage to Fire/Arcane (PoM/Pyro)as to take advantage of Ignite and Incinerate. They add Dots as well as your 2500 to 3500 crits, sure an Arcane can get upwards of 6k, BUT, as my spec now, I need to let my tank get 12k threat before I can even attack. I love the DPS spec so much better. Hope that's what you were lookin' for.

What I think the best the mage is a mix of all three.

Frist Arcane talents to lvl 50.
Do as such:
Arcane Focus, Magic Absorption, Arcane Concentration, Arcane Fortitude, Arcane Meditation, Improved Mana Shield, Improved Blink, Arcane Mind, Prismatic Cloak, Arcane Potency, Spell Power, Empowered Arcane Missiles, Mind Mastery, Slow.

Then ether Fire or Frost to lvl 60.
As such:
For Frost: Elemental Precision, Frost Warding, Frostbite, Improved Frost Nova.
For Fire: Impact, Flame Throwing, Improved Fire Blast.

And then the other to lvl 70. And once lvl 80 comes out, you'll have 10 more talent points to spend.

Yes, that would be the practical of it, but I guess I didn't make it too clear that i was simply talking about the pure dps factor and not its usefulness in raids. I have researched gear and found what I beleive to be the greatest combination for maximum damage and dps. This gear gives 313 intellect and 1,932 bonus Arcane Damage. You could substitute a few different pieces for different specs, but this is a great set for Arcane / Fire as it also provides 1,882 bonus Fire Damage. So yeah, thanks for the replies, and I may go Arcane / Fire, but I will not go PoM Pyro, it just doesn't seem to fit me. I was looking into a Scorch build however that seemed pretty interesting...

Anyways, my thinking for the deep Arcane dps build were as such:

    The Arcane talent tree was designed around Intellect. Having a higher Intellect will provide more mana and allow more spells to be cast. The talents in the tree give you more Intellect (15%) and gives you more damage based on your total Intellect (25% of total = damge). Combine these talents with the Spellfire set from tailoring (7% of total Intellect as damage) to maximize your bonus damage. In total you will have 32% of your Intellect as damage.

          Example: You have 400 Intellect un-buffed. Your talent provides an additional 15% of that giving you a total of 460 Intellect. You then cast Arcane Intellect or Brilliance giving you 40 more Intellect for a total of 500. 32% of that is then converted to bonus damage meaning you gain 160 damage to your spells. When paired against the loss of about 50 base damage from taking the Spellfire gear instead of others you are getting a net gain of spell damage. Total with the aforementioned gear being 2,092.

    Since we are talking pure Arcane, we will be taking Empowered Arcane Missiles netting another 45% of your bonus damage to all Arcane Missiles you cast (albeit at 6% increased mana). This will then be added to our 2,092 spell damage the total being 3,033.4 rounding down to 3,033. The base damage of an Arcane Missile at Lvl 70 is 1,395-1,400. With the bonus damage, every unresisted Arcane Missile you cast will deal a total of 4,428-4,433. The spell deals its damage over 5 seconds thus giving us a grand total of 885-886 dps.

  But then if you want to be completely assured of the fact, you use Arcane Power and grant yourself an additional 30% damage at another 30% mana cost. Therefore, an Arcane Powered Arcane Missile will deal 5,756-5,763 damage and 1,151-1,153 dps. This will cost a bundle, but then again you may have been Clearcasting.

  And I'm not even going to go into critical hits because an Arcane Missile's critical hit applies to each second of damage and not the whole so it would be impossible to determine true dps off a crit. What I can do however is give you the max number to try and impress you more: Are you ready? The grand total for a full Arcane Missile critical hit would be 10,089 damage at 2,018 dps.

Well now that I am done raving over the possibilities I will assure you that my point was mearly that a pure Arcane Mage could produce the highest dps out of all Mage specs, not that it would be useful in any situation. Hope you didn't take me wrong, but i will probably take Fire as my spec for raiding and run a Scorch Mage. But notice also that Arcane gets a 40% threat reduction off all Arcane spells. 40% gives you much more room than either Fire or Frost which only provide 10% reduction. Granted this is probably countered by the fact that you will be dishing out much more dps than both Fire and Frost.

I was arcane/fire, and tried arcane/frost for icy veins.  Loved them both.  but 1 flaw in your thinking.  when going with arcane missles your bonus dmg is spread out for the 1 spell cast, not per missile.

Morg

Yes, I am aware that the damage is stacked on the whole, not every instance of damage, that is how I did my calculations. By refering to Thottbot's Mage page, you can see that a Rank 11 Arcane Missile deals 280 damage every second over 5 seconds adding up to a total of 1400 damage. So thank you for your response, but please be sure to fully read as I quite clearly stated the total damage not the damage every second.

it is gr8 4 dps but it may be worth looking into getting rid of some of the pvp based talents arcane absorption, imp manna shield etc and get pryo because of the low threat factor u can afford 2 do it most times ur pom finishes cool down.
But if u pvp a lot don’t bother u will need the survivability talents.

I actually love the arcane/frost spec because Im able to maximize my crit dmg with 41/0/20. 150% bonus dmg from crits with the AP im looking at 180% stronger Frostbolt crits. Plus Ive got a good crit chance and pretty much crit most of time. And Im still able to laugh at Warriors by kiting them. =D

arcane is a fine spec if you have infinity intellect and never ending mana

good luck with that

i was a arcane/fire(full arcane and up to pyroblast for fire) mage for a little while and loved it for soloing. so i just did this pyro, then fireball now there in 30 yard range so then i slow them, 2 arcane missles, and a fireblast and there normaly dead, and if there not blink and throw in another arcane missles and they should really be dead. i would us PoM and arcane power then a trinket, and i crited a 4668 but this was with pyroblast! the down side to this was even tho i had 9200 mana i would use half of it to kill 1 guy. and in instances i would run out of mana on group of 4 mobs so i would have to use a mana emerald (spelling sucks i know)in the end i went to pure fire because it is actualy much more mana efficant. it doesn't do close to as much dps but yet i can still kill 10 things faster with fire than i can with arcane because i don't have to drink so much. so yes i agree arcane is amazing dps but not very useful. (nice reasoning in comment, 2000 damge a missle)

I like the scorch spec.  Mostly arcane, then imp scorch and crit chance

Jafari
burning legion

na you guys are doin it all wrong man Arc/Fire is not the way to go. The only thing they can do is 2v2 and they cant even do that very well. 2 Pom pyro mages cant do anything as a pally i dont even need to bubble to heal through 2 pom pyros they only take me down 75% healt and thats at 160 resil XD. Pom frost is the way to go, just look at the spec i mean cmon they get 100% bonous from crits from frost talents plus 50% from arcane talents which makes their crits unbelieveable, not to mention when they pop the move that gives em 30% more dmg at the cost of 30% more mana....WOW. my 3v3 team is me(holy pally) a pom frost mage and an arms warrior and we can take ppl down so fast its not even funny

I raid as an arcane gnome mag and honestly i never go oom i dont even need to use pots i have over 12k mana unbuffed. gnomes have a clear advantage in specing arcane buff to the racial but arcane can be as good as a fire mage if not better in dps frost is hard to use in tk ssc hyjal freezing things does affect ur cc and u have to get within ur max range to do it. Arcane has many raid advantages 40% threat reductioin is invaluable i dont even think about my threat anymore 10% hit rating allows u amazing flexability with ur gear and gems as only 76 hit rating is needed to be at the cap which is the most important thing to dps. this allows you to stack more spell damage and int. A simple raid rotation is ab ab arcane missles then follow up with a ab timing it to the debuff. Simple as arcane i out dps everyone as long as im not on sheep duty. but yes 40% threat and 10% hit make arcane superior