Personally, I went for spellpower and haste once I started getting naxx25 gear...bad advice from someone. My dps was always high but as soon as I got hitcapped it went WAY up. Right now, in raid (currently progressing through Ulduar), I am always in the top 5 or 6 (25 man) and always the top mage...sometimes I am top dps over everyone in boss fights. My dps is somewhere between 3.4K-5K depending on the boss. Last boss fight in naxx 25 5.4K
Get hit capped, it takes less for arcane since you get some hit with your talents. I didn't waste the few extra points to get exactly 17% because I'm overcapped with talents..I used that extra space for crit. I have @ 98% hit with an additional 3% coming from arcane focus. My crit is around 23% right now, I lost some crit adding haste gems. For me, at this level of raiding (spellpower comes with gear, enchants and any red gem slot)...I went with hit>crit>sp>haste. But like I said gave up some crit with new gear due to loosing too much haste with the change.
I would post my toons name and link to armory but I got harassed constantly last time so I am not going to do that here. Arcane 57/3/11
I don't run into a lot of mana issues unless the overall dps of the group is low. Most of the time we are all pulling our expected dps and I don't run out of mana, of course 2 minute evocation helps with mana gems.
I don't know a lot about the other specs but have heard you shouldn't even attempt frostfire unless you are hit capped and have 30% crit, I am not sure if this is true or not but our frostfire mage is neither of these things and is lower on the dps list. I run with one who kicks my butt in dps but he is hit capped and has around 30% crit.
