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This guide is purely for raiding purposes, since I'm a PvE carebear. PvP people need not read further. There are viable raiding specs for all the three spell schools: arcane, frost and fire. I'm fire spec myself, so this FAQ will be more focused on that. The guide is once again up to date with new stuff from 2.4!
(Click on the fancy icon for a link to the talent spec). A usable spec is along those lines, the amount of points in Arcane Focus depending on how much +hit gear you have (more of this later in the guide). A good dps rotation for this spec would be 3x Arcane Blast -> Arcane Missile -> Frostbolt, or Arcane Blast as long as you can, then switching to Frostbolt if you're going oom. It's pretty high in damage output with 2x t5 for the 20% Arcane Blast damage increase, but it's mana intensive and limited to a 30y range, unlike frost and fire (which are 36 and 41 yards respectively). If you don't have 2x t5, you're better off with frost or fire in damage output as well, the only real advantage arcane has against them is the -40% threat.
Just pick the important stuff, there's plenty of points with no good place to put them in. Spam Frostbolt, and spam some more Frostbolt. The damage is ok, a bit less than a deep fire spec. There aren't any encounters at the moment that require the increased survival, particularly now with Ice Block as a trainable skill. It's more of a PvP talent tree, and not many high-end raiding mages are frost specced.
This is a good talent spec, it's probably close to what most fire mages have (and what most raiding mages have overall). Get the fire debuff maxed with 5x Scorch, have an addon like quartz to show when it's running out to make your life easier, then just spam Fireball, reapplying Scorch when needed. Icy Veins adds a nice dps-boost, and a 0/40/21 spec is fairly good as well, giving Cold Snap for double IV usage.
You'll want gear that has +hit, +crit, +haste and +dmg (and sockets) on it. Because of how Blizzard's itemization works, it's best to have gear with fairly equal amounts of all three ([Cloak of the Illidari Council] vs. [Royal Cloak of the Sunstriders] for example of why. They have almost the same item level, but since the Illidari one has 4 stats instead of 3 like Sunstriders, the end result is far better).
Hit:
If you're frost or fire, you'll want to have close to 164 hit rating (which equals +13% chance to hit). Hit is a very good stat damage-wise, but you can only have 99% hit chance against mobs (you have 83% hit chance against lvl73 mobs by default, which the bosses are, and you get +3% hit chance from Elemental Precision), so above 164 you won't get any benefit from it. For arcane spec, depending on how many points you put in Arcane Focus you can go as low as 76 hit rating and keep 99% hit chance. There's tons of +hit in bt/hyjal gear so reaching 164 is easy with that. The Sunwell off-set pieces have less hit on them, so be sure to grab the Tempest Regalia bracers, boots and belt also to keep the hit capped.
Crit, dmg, int, sta & spi:
Crit is nice, especially for fire and frost since they receive a high damage increase from it (2.1x fire, 2x frost, 1.75x arcane). +dmg is of course the main stat, there aren't really any items without it. There's a fair amount of stamina in t6 and you'll want to have that for many of the fights in bt/hyjal. In lower tier instances the Spellfire/Frozen Shadoweave sets are better or equivalent to majority of the gear and a bit lower health doesn't hurt that much. There's enough +int on all gear to have a sufficiently large manapool, so there's no need to focus on it. It does yield 1% crit per 80 int though, which is a nice extra crit boost. Spirit is somewhat useless, since mana isn't a major issue and Evocation is no longer based on your mana regen rate. Imp Divine Spirit buff adds 10% of your total spirit to your +dmg, but make sure your guild's priests have the spec.
Spell penetration & haste:
Spell penetration isn't really worth it, CoE & +16% hit is enough for nearly all fights, so penetration is useless for most of the time (it reduces the target's resistance to your spells, down to 0 resistance at most). +haste is a nice stat, and you can't really avoid getting it with sunwell gear. You'll be sacrificing some +crit for it, but it's not a bad trade-off thanks to the nice stat distribution. Thanks to the change in 2.4, +haste also lowers global cooldown, so it's beneficial a lot more often. The only real drawback is that unlike the other stats, it doesn't increase damage per mana.
Gems:
You'll want to go for +12dmg, +5haste/6dmg or +10haste gems, depending on the socket color. Sunwell epics have really nice socket colors and bonuses that are definitely worth getting. If you're having a hard time reaching the hit cap, you should pick a few +5hit/6dmg gems to meet it. The best option for metagem on your headpiece (if it has the socket) is the [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]. Other options are [Imbued Unstable Diamond] from Ogri'la, [Swift Starfire Diamond] from Spirit Shards, or [Ember Skyfire Diamond].
Trinkets:
There's plenty of nice trinkets to choose from. [Hex Shrunken Head] + [The Skull of Gul'dan] is probably the best combo, though you can't apply them simultaneously anymore.
Enchants:
Enchants are simple, focus on the ones giving +dmg for every slot that has it. +15hit on gloves is also good if you're lacking from 164. I use subtlety on cloak for the minute 2% threat reduction, it's better than the alternatives, though some might find the +penetration enchant more appealing. +6 stats on chest if your hp is sufficient, otherwise the +150health one. Get Boar's Speed on your boots rather than Fortitude, unless you're using the spirit shard meta-gem since the speed enchants don't stack.
Tanking:
For the encounters where you're tanking, you'll want to have epic stamina gear. Best source for this is from PvP, with a few other good items like [Darkmoon Card: Madness] and [Wand of Prismatic Focus] from elsewhere. [Trial-Fire Trousers] with 3x12sta gems in it is quite nice, [Battlemaster's Audacity] can come in handy as well. Don't bother with green gear unless you really really need to, a month or two of casual PvP is enough to get most of the stuff you need for everything currently ingame (around 13k HP buffed is easily enough for now). Also remember that you can grab season 2 arena set with the tier 5&6 tokens from the Sunwell Isle vendors.
Threat management:
As long as your MT is competent, threat isn't much of an issue in most of the fights. [Fetish of the Sand Reaver] is very good, but you rarely need to use it anywhere. Most of the time Invisibility is a good enough threat dump. It reduces threat by 10% every second for five seconds and drops it to zero once you turn invisible. It can take a bit of timing to avoid interruptions, but thankfully you don't need to have the cast finish to gain at least partial benefit from it.
Dealing AoE damage:
This is quite self-explanatory, but I thought I'd point out a few things anyway. Arcane Explosion is the best damage dealer, and it's also the reason for the 2 points in arcane tree for 2/48/11 spec. The range of your AE is increased a bit when you move, so running around the clump of mobs both helps keep the mobs together and makes sure you hit more of them. While you wait for tanks to build some aggro at start, you can use combustion and build the charges untill you crit twice, then unload a blastwave with 70%+ crit chance on the lot of them. Saving Frost Nova and Dragon's Breath for when you get mobs beating on you is recommended, but Blink is a good life saver also (just blink towards the tanks, not away!). Remember that +haste lowers global cooldown now (down to 1sec minimum), so Icy Veins and Bloodlust can add a lot of dps, as well as the [Ashtongue Talisman of Insight].
Professions:
Enchanting for the BoP ring enchants, tailoring for the crafted sets (and after you don't need them anymore, maybe jewel crafting for the BoP gems). The drums from leatherworking are quite good as well, 80 haste rating for your group for 30 seconds every 2 minutes. Engineering if you cling on the hope that Blizz will buff it some day =P (at least the flying mount looks nice). Or just go with mining and herbalism for the money, the difference is quite small. (Pick whatever benefits the raid the most!)
Consumables:
This depends a lot on your own taste. This is what I have currently. Just keep it clean and easy to use. Having a large black bar on top and bottom might look fancy, but it limits your vision a lot. You definitely ought to have maxed out zoom always to have a better feel of the whole encounter.
The few addons i'd recommend as a mage are Quartz for the latency and fire vulnerability tracking, BigBrother to show who broke your sheep and Click2Cast for easier decursing (I've bound shift-clicking the unitframe to decursing). Then there's plenty of addons every raider should have, like a threat meter, damage meter, buff & debuff addon, some bossmod addon etc. Some sort of range check on unitframes is very good for buffing and decursing. wowace is a great source for said addons and more.
Bind stuff you use frequently to keys, don't be a mouseclicker! Get a fancy mouse with loads of buttons so you can bind stuff like autorun, blink and mounting to them.
You'll definitely want to take advantage of the focus-feature. Get an addon that has a unitframe for focus target (such as PitBull) and set a keybind for 'target focus' and 'focus target'. Here's two handy macros:
/cast [target=focus] Counterspell
/cast [target=focus] Polymorph
Keeping track of your polymorph is a lot easier with focus, and interrupting a mob without having to target it is very useful (mostly for PvP, but for e.g. Illidari Council as well). You can also do the same thing for Spellsteal, it can be useful occasionally. Other than this, macros for using trinket slots and /stopcasting combined with Ice Block are quite handy:
#showtooltip
/use 13
#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/cast Ice Block
Try to have a clear picture of whatever the encounter is and remember the important parts of it, then focus on them foremost. For example decursing on Archimonde is more important than finishing that fireball cast, and being slow to Ice Block when encapsulate hits you does needless damage to your party on Felmyst. Anticipate stuff so you can react faster, standing put for a few seconds with Conflagrate coming at you on Ereddar Twins might wipe the raid. Also adjust to the situation, if the priest who's supposed to mass dispell your party on Felmyst dies, you'll want to hug another group instead. A lot of this comes from experience. Mage is overall a fairly easy class to play, big part of the reason why I enjoy it so =P.
That's about it. I left most of the minute theorycrafting out from this, but it's pretty easy to do by yourself with a calculator and some thinking. I hope this guide was of some use for you! I'll update it whenever there's some important new stuff to share. Be sure to browse through the comments for some more discussion and questions answered, and feel free to add your own.
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I'll give to you some pure theoretical(read: some great differences with reality can take place) damage math for 5 mages' PvE specs - these specs just include all the neccessary talents, so don't call me noob(I am tho, lol); not taking in account resists, assuming that you are standing at the place all the encounter(ye, lol). Parenthetically I wrote 2.2.3 patch damage, so you can compare. In AM+AB combo you don't have AB's debuff when you finish AB cast, means 2.5 AB=>5 sec AM=>0.8 sec wait=>2.2 AB=8 sec. BTW, I'm not playing WoW for over then a half of an year already, so there'd be some mistakes.