[General] Fire Mages Playing Frost or Arcane

[Shmeh]

Please try to keep the nerf discussion out of it, so I don't have to get banned.

There has been a lot of speculation about which spec will perform the best after the recent adjustment. Just curious how people are doing as frost or arcane, or even fire, and how well you were doing before. Post logs, or just post your numbers, and some kind of assessment of how you did. Just looking for some outside input as I can't try all of them in a week.

I tried frost. I'm not a fan of the playstyle, but I felt like my gear wasn't going to cut it for arcane and frost was my only option. Freeze is really annoying. We had a couple sloppy kills and a derp pull on Lei Shi, overall I'm happy with my numbers for most fights.

My logs from tonight, the second set includes Vizier and Sha. The first has everything else. If anyone is an excellent frost mage, I'd love some pointers based on my logs, I'm sure I'm making some mistakes.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ylokwa151v64ikks/

[Deleted]

I had almost perfect firegear... do not get more than 29% haste in raid at the moment in Frost... absolutely no gear for Arcance... Blizzard ... ed me succesfully

If I get my 38-40% crit in raid everthing is fine, but RNG is horrible as fire at the moment. Sometimes rank 1 in 25m, sometimes rank 12... and everything in between is possible.

I am in 191 gear... does not make fun at all at the moment... will take weeks and lots of money and dkp to get gear for another spec

Imho Arcane is the way to go at the moment if you have proper gear.

[Nezek]

The lastest simulations are showing that Arcane will perform better than Frost with an average item level of 496, however it should be noted that patchwerk style encounters compared to the real RnG of raiding, learning and progressing heroic content is a completely different ball game all together.

[Madruga]

I am curious to that too.

I tried to play Fire yesterday and the results were... underwhelming. I was cosistently bottom of the chart, except for 1 fight where I had a near perfect streak of good luck, and even so the results were not even close to satisfying.

The only question now is... Frost or Arcane?

[Silvy]

I have removed fire from my specialization trees, basically due to the fact that during last week's LFR I had a fireball crit of 17.5%. That's with perfectly optimized Fire gear with an ilvl of 490. That just did it for me, can't believe the Critical Mass nerf...

Anyway, I've regemmed and stacked up mastery for Arcane, hitting about 60%, but it's still only good for fights where there ain't that much movement, e.g. Amber Shaper. Most other fights I've had to go frost because it's better in high mobility fights, e.g. Spirit Kings.

But I don't know, Fire has such an amazing DPS power in high mobility fights, I just can't see the other trees weigh up since the loss of DPS while moving is incredible for both Frost and Arcane.

[scuac]

I have removed fire from my specialization trees, basically due to the fact that during last week's LFR I had a fireball crit of 17.5%. That's with perfectly optimized Fire gear with an ilvl of 490. That just did it for me, can't believe the Critical Mass nerf...

Anyway, I've regemmed and stacked up mastery for Arcane, hitting about 60%, but it's still only good for fights where there ain't that much movement, e.g. Amber Shaper. Most other fights I've had to go frost because it's better in high mobility fights, e.g. Spirit Kings.

But I don't know, Fire has such an amazing DPS power in high mobility fights, I just can't see the other trees weigh up since the loss of DPS while moving is incredible for both Frost and Arcane.

I have heard that argument about Frost before (and I don't necessarily dispute it) but I am curious why Frost is not good at mobility? If you have LotC trinket and are using NT, the only non-instant cast spell in your rotation is Frostbolt, and you can talent Scorch to use on the move (or Ice Floes if keeping up FB debuff is a problem). It would seem, at least on paper, that Frost should be amazing in movement fights. What am I missing?

[Vakna]

68k dps on Will of the Emperor (more than fire pre nerf actually), 135k dps on Elegon, both as Arcane last night, still in full fire gear, full crit gems, full crit reforging.

Think Arcane is pretty win atm.

[reflection]

I switched from Fire to Frost recently, too I have to say that I really like the way Frost plays because it's so fast paced. You've got way more things to do then with the Fire spec. But maybe this is subjective, because I've actually never played Frost in raids and everything is new to me.
What I do especially like is that you are able to burst when it is required not when RNG means that you should burst I myself feel more usefull to the raid.

---------- Post added 2012-12-05 at 03:22 PM ----------

68k dps on Will of the Emperor (more than fire pre nerf actually), 135k dps on Elegon, both as Arcane last night, still in full fire gear, full crit gems, full crit reforging.

Think Arcane is pretty win atm.

Actually those are two bosses that are pretty much shit as Fire imho. On Will Fire never was really good. Small Adds dieing fast has never been good for mages. On Elegon it depends how much you risk. If you can manage to squeeze in some crits and pull combustion on the boss during the sparks phase you will top the meters. I usually didn't do that, because killing the sparks has more priority then going for an insane amount of damage. Additionally these are bosses where you don't have to move a lot. On Elegon you just have to jump sometimes and on Will (if done correctly) you only have to move for the shield guys.

[Deleted]

[QUOTE=Shmeh;19333552]Please try to keep the nerf discussion out of it, so I don't have to get banned.

There has been a lot of speculation about which spec will perform the best after the recent adjustment. Just curious how people are doing as frost or arcane, or even fire, and how well you were doing before. Post logs, or just post your numbers, and some kind of assessment of how you did. Just looking for some outside input as I can't try all of them in a week.

I tried frost. I'm not a fan of the playstyle, but I felt like my gear wasn't going to cut it for arcane and frost was my only option. Freeze is really annoying. We had a couple sloppy kills and a derp pull on Lei Shi, overall I'm happy with my numbers for most fights.

My logs from tonight, the second set includes Vizier and Sha. The first has everything else. If anyone is an excellent frost mage, I'd love some pointers based on my logs, I'm sure I'm making some mistakes.



Hey!

I would like to start of with that my Ilvl is about 5 higher then yours. So that will ofcourse make a difference DPS whise, but the diff shouldn´t be that big, just because of gear.

But as I´ve checked your dps as Frost and mine as Fire. (I played it after the nerf). There is a 10-30k dps win, for Fire. And I am also topping all the bosses in my guild.

So if you ask me, I would still say that Fire is highly competitive, and not bad at all. Maybe better then Frost and Arcane, just because of the high ability to dps while moving, and also because of the enourmos cleave. Don´t really know wheter Frost or Arcane would be better though. But tbh, I will stay with Fire until anyone shows me some real numbers that differs to the better for Arcane or Frost

My logs :worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-5t76zpk8gr7jqant/

[Pyryte]

I switched from Fire to Frost recently, too I have to say that I really like the way Frost plays because it's so fast paced. You've got way more things to do then with the Fire spec. But maybe this is subjective, because I've actually never played Frost in raids and everything is new to me.
What I do especially like is that you are able to burst when it is required not when RNG means that you should burst I myself feel more usefull to the raid.

---------- Post added 2012-12-05 at 03:22 PM ----------



Actually those are two bosses that are pretty much shit as Fire imho. On Will Fire never was really good. Small Adds dieing fast has never been good for mages. On Elegon it depends how much you risk. If you can manage to squeeze in some crits and pull combustion on the boss during the sparks phase you will top the meters. I usually didn't do that, because killing the sparks has more priority then going for an insane amount of damage. Additionally these are bosses where you don't have to move a lot. On Elegon you just have to jump sometimes and on Will (if done correctly) you only have to move for the shield guys.

So wrong. Check WoL, elegon and will are two of the fights with the biggest gap from pre-nerf fire to arcane/frost. Fire dominated those fights.

[royals]

I ran some sims last night for T14 normail BiS for Frost and for Arcane on simcraft. As people are stating and Patchwerk fight that you can stand and cast on as Arcane, it wins. But even just simming light movement Arcane falls behind, and in Helter Skelter its another 20% lower. Try it yourself and see what I'm talking about, as always Arcane is just not mobile, and I don't see the benefit of using it unless you know you can turret for a high percentage of the fight.

[Deleted]

New to mages here, started mine in Cata but haven't really played except for the PvP minigame a little & LFR.

I started raiding as Mage just after the hotfix hit, I had barely just scrapped some crit gear together for Fire as it was the go-to thing.
Did pretty shitty in my first raid as fire, and because I liked frost a lot from my experience with PvP I decided to try it last night in MSV.

Went very good, most of all I really enjoyed the spec and the mobility it gives with proper usage of CDs/Procs.
All of the latter might be a little troublesome to manage for some (an addon like NeedToKnow, WeakAuras, PowerAuras helps a lot to keep track on stuff) but once you get used to the rhythm of it, the spec is a real joy AND delivers good damage. I ran with ~6.7k haste unbuffed (ilvl 484) and Icy Veins & Evocation glyphs as base. Used Invocation on most fights as lvl 90 talent. Switched elemental/Ice Lance glyphs, tried out NT and LB as bomb options (cant use FB due to trinket but probably wouldn't use it for singletarget anyway) and I really can't make up my mind which one I like more. Ice Floes & PoM are both better options than scorch for light to moderate movement IMO.

Number wise I did anywhere between 60 and 70k dps on bosses (90-100k on Elegon), depending on how well I executed, but I know there is huge space of improvement of how I manage CDs and procs and how I manage movement. It was also the first time i did MSV normal.

I'm staying with Frost, and more people who liked Fire should try Frost IMO as the current fluidity of Frost is more alike Fire gameplay pre-patch than current Fire gameplay which is more alike to current Arcane gameplay in that you sit and cast all the time.

[Alvito]

It is hard for me to really judge how much my dps dropped as fire. I picked up a ton of new loot on top of all the gear upgrades with valor and i had a blue trinket I was able to upgrade. So while the spec was nerfed my gear was heavily buffed. I can tell the insane lack of heating up/hot streaks going on and it certainly is effecting dmg/burst at times. Overall though my numbers haven't really dipped much. I can say it would have been fun to run with all the gear I picked up prenerf and see the dmg jump up.

If it comes down to switching I am pretty sure I am going frost due to the gear I have and the utility the slows/snares will give on a few fights. If I were to trust some of the sims I have seen arc seems like the right choice. Then again I just read a post about how to do well at arc and really push numbers you need to reforge your master/haste fight to fight and that is not anything I care to do at all. Seeing how I will already be regearing to a point I am sure as hell not going to be able to pick up gear for my haste arc set up and mastery arc set up.

What I am really dreading is setting up Weak Auras for 1 or 2 more specs. It isn't a ton of work I guess I just don't want to monkey with it at all.

[PPN]

[QUOTE=Liveet;19336225]

Hey!

I would like to start of with that my Ilvl is about 5 higher then yours. So that will ofcourse make a difference DPS whise, but the diff shouldn´t be that big, just because of gear.

But as I´ve checked your dps as Frost and mine as Fire. (I played it after the nerf). There is a 10-30k dps win, for Fire. And I am also topping all the bosses in my guild.

So if you ask me, I would still say that Fire is highly competitive, and not bad at all. Maybe better then Frost and Arcane, just because of the high ability to dps while moving, and also because of the enourmos cleave. Don´t really know wheter Frost or Arcane would be better though. But tbh, I will stay with Fire until anyone shows me some real numbers that differs to the better for Arcane or Frost

My logs :worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-5t76zpk8gr7jqant/

Yo,

i have an ilvl of 480 and i play fire. I put a lot of work in my gear and was very unlucky with lfr (117 rolls, 7 loot...). Well after the nerf i was rly frustrated and felt like wtf. Yesterday i could try it in our raid on first 3 bosses in HoF. I was 2nd on 1st boss, 3rd on 2nd boss, and on garalon 2nd with 100k dps. My guildies have all about 4-8 ilvls more then me so im not so unhappy with my dps.

In the end it will only be again like "OMG arc so op", hotfix ninjanerf and then all qq again about worng gear n shit? no thx lol

So yes i agree with you fire is still nice and competitive.

Negative: Little lower dps
Positive: You feel more appretiated, not only "yeah fire mage topped dps, yawwwn, OP!"

[Alvito]

Actually those are two bosses that are pretty much shit as Fire imho. On Will Fire never was really good. Small Adds dieing fast has never been good for mages. On Elegon it depends how much you risk. If you can manage to squeeze in some crits and pull combustion on the boss during the sparks phase you will top the meters. I usually didn't do that, because killing the sparks has more priority then going for an insane amount of damage. Additionally these are bosses where you don't have to move a lot. On Elegon you just have to jump sometimes and on Will (if done correctly) you only have to move for the shield guys.

Off topic a bit, there is nothing like the shame of being first in dmg/dps by a huge gap only to be the asshole that doesnt kill his spark in time. I have eaten that crow already and did not like it at all.

The built in slow for arcane on Will is also nice to instantly slow the adds down and give everybody more wiggle room to stay on the boss or other adds just a second or two longer.

[Dazzert]

Really enjoying frost, think I'm sitting at 32% in raid haste, and the spec is more fast paced and fun than fire ever was for me personally. I don't think the numbers are half bad either, http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/48...kings/players/

[Shmeh]

Really enjoying frost, think I'm sitting at 32% in raid haste, and the spec is more fast paced and fun than fire ever was for me personally. I don't think the numbers are half bad either, http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/48...kings/players/

Yeah, the damage is alright. My biggest issue is that I don't feel like there is a ton of serious frost mage competition for ranking. I went into our raid with nothing more than a sloppy idea of how to play frost and had a bunch of top 10 parses, and #1 on Blade Lord. I just don't feel as good about ranking as a frost mage as I did about ranking as fire.

[SparkyR]

Fire damage is way low. I'm going to give it one more go tonight then I'm probably going to quit playing since I refuse to switch to arcane or frost.

[Kiry]

I rather like it right now. I'm at the gear where I can move between frost and arcane and be ok. What I need to figure out now is the the spec to play per boss, the obvious ones are figured it's the subtle ones like kings or will.

[Pulski]

I was generally about 10k ahead on most bosses. I got nerfed (according to SimC) 8k DPS. Until it can be shown that I'll do better with another spec, I'll stay Fire.