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  1. #81
    Warchief Akraen's Avatar
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    You have to consider where that guild is though and how well they're playing to begin with. We're 8/14H, and as frost I'm having no problem trouncing over everyone. That's not to brag, it's just to state that it's doing just fine. If this were Dragon Soul obviously I would be singing a different tune :P

    A guild sitting at 13/14N, or 2/14H, or 8/14H probably has other shortcomings to get over - maximum possible DPS isn't the issue, nobody or very few people in their raid are likely anywhere near it anyway.

  2. #82
    I guess the way I play, I can never see any reason why (unless there's some absolutely required utility provided) you'd want to do less DPS than you possibly can. Saying "oh well it doesn't matter any more so what's the point in playing optimally" is something that just doesn't compute for me.

    Also you continue to talk about how much you're destroying the rest of your raid, perhaps linked to the fact that you have far more gear to them?

    On a slightly unrelated note, what's with people in your guild using FCoR? I've barely seen it touched elsewhere. Is there some lesser known thing about it which makes it incredible?

  3. #83

  4. #84
    Considering how much you seem to value specific target DPS I wouldn't have expected you to like this trinket as it's basically just some extra padding to throw in there (doesn't damage your main target). Same reason I don't use Nether Tempest on Galakras anymore, there are no issues with how fast the little adds die it's all about how quickly you can get down the Shamans etc. Why waste a trinket slot for some extra padding? Anything else would yield much better single target results.

  5. #85
    Quote Originally Posted by Akraen View Post
    This is basically it. The "best" spec is the one you play the best. Then it's up to the raid leader to decide if you're worth bringing. A raid leader who insists you play spec A when you'll always perform better with spec B is a dumb raid leader attempting to micromanage too much. It worked in Dragon Soul, but not now.
    Vykina's point, the point of others, and it's a point I agree with, is that you are a mage. You aren't a frost mage, fire mage, or arcane mage. You are a mage. None of the 3 specs are so overly complicated that you can't be prolific with all 3. The best spec, then, would be the one that does maximum DPS, assuming you are equally masterful at all 3 specs.

    At various times, I also have played all 3 specs masterfully, although as you may guess by my name I prefer fire.

    What you are you doing, Akraen, is trying to justify what is a preference as evidence for performance. Preference ≠ performance. If you would be willing to admit something along the lines of "I'm willing to sacrifice minor but meaningful dps to play the spec I prefer," there would be no argument. People have been making that tradeoff for as long as wow has existed - and it doesn't just refer to frost, but also at various times to fire, BM hunters, sub rogues, destro locks, etc.

    Frost is not a special snowflake in that greater proficiency will simply equalize your dps with fire and arcane.

    As long as you are willing to admit that, I think you'd find that the greater mage community that recognizes this wouldn't have an issue. The issue is that claiming a certain spec is equivalent when it maths out, tests, and logs lower, means that your words are seen as more like blind fanaticism, instead of objective evidence.

    Regarding the OP's guild, it really all depends on what their goals are, and what they are willing to do. My guild's main raid team is currently 11/14H, 17th ranked 10 man team in the US (west: 79), and their mage is fire. There is zero chance they would allow him to go frost - even though that is his preferred spec. In that type of guild, no, frost is not viable. This guild also requires all it's dps classes to go troll (if possible). In that type of progression, every .1 dps on every progression encounter matters.

    OP's guild is US 422, West 1322. OP is also human, instead of Worgen or Pandaren; other races on ally side of certain members with equal PVE score are also in non-optimal races, meaning that squeezing every single last drop of DPS is also not a requirement of his guild, and preference matters.

    So in this case, I would say that Frost is good, and based on the current makeup of OP's guild, frost is definitely viable and just fine for heroic progression in his case. In my opinion, your raid does not have standing to ask you to change to arcane.

  6. #86
    Quote Originally Posted by Akraen View Post
    You have to consider where that guild is though and how well they're playing to begin with. We're 8/14H, and as frost I'm having no problem trouncing over everyone. That's not to brag, it's just to state that it's doing just fine. If this were Dragon Soul obviously I would be singing a different tune :P

    A guild sitting at 13/14N, or 2/14H, or 8/14H probably has other shortcomings to get over - maximum possible DPS isn't the issue, nobody or very few people in their raid are likely anywhere near it anyway.
    You're 5-6 item levels ahead of almost your entire guild and you get TotT'ed on almost every fight with a rogue in your logs. Not much to brag about there.

  7. #87
    Quote Originally Posted by Thobrok View Post
    You're 5-6 item levels ahead of almost your entire guild and you get TotT'ed on almost every fight with a rogue in your logs. Not much to brag about there.
    hes talking about world frost mages not just his guild lol. akraen has his shit together dude/

  8. #88
    Quote Originally Posted by Not Againnn View Post
    hes talking about world frost mages not just his guild lol. akraen has his shit together dude/
    Mmm, no. I'm pretty sure he's talking about his guild. Ya know, considering this statement was directly after talking about his guild. That being said, the only person who can tell us for sure is him.

  9. #89
    well I didn't have 15% tricks uptime and have the same equipped ilevel, and am most definitely 30-40k higher in our (private) tuesday logs on nazgrim and juggernaut.. and am 249k ahead on shamans (did 376k, #3 frost) due to not being dead from standing in toxic storm, but maybe it was a dc.

    played arcane for everything else so idk

    mastery trounces haste on most of the fights in the instance, outside thok and maybe protectors and galakras where NT is a ridiculous amount of your damage. I don't use NT on nazgrim because key adds shouldn't be alive long enough for NT to even get a full duration off, and I'm unsure if NT cleave gives him rage if an add with it is next to him in d-stance.

  10. #90
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    DPS is affected by a lot of variables - the raid DPS, gear, personal skill, reaction time, encounter mechanics, RNG, TotT, 'rotation' mistakes, encounter mistakes (death), internet connection, your computer, maybe some more that I can't think of right now. At the end of the day, it's hard to give solid evidence that one spec is better than another, nor is it enough to say "I play Frost and I'm #1 DPS in our guild!", so isn't this all rather pointless?

  11. #91
    I think the point is more the one-two combo of him using the "I play frost and I'm #1 dps in our guild" argument when he's getting dedicated tricks from their rogue the entire fight, something I hadn't noticed doing brief log comparisons in the past. It pretty much invalidates every last post he's made in this thread, and likely everything he's had to say for the last month or so.

    I haven't gotten tricks since like, firelands. It's considerably more useful being put on tanks around swaps or on players launching huge burst cooldowns like ascendance.

    This isn't to say that frost is bad, I play frost and do quite well with it, usually pretty high on our damage meters, sometimes at the top. But I never say "I was our top damage on fight X, clearly the spec I am playing is the best", that would be utterly idiotic.

  12. #92
    Field Marshal zandiy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Akraen View Post
    Some encounters, it's flat out the best.
    Can you tell me on which fight is frost is better than arcane or fire?

  13. #93
    Warchief Akraen's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by zandiy View Post
    Can you tell me on which fight is frost is better than arcane or fire?
    Thok, Siegecrafter, Garrosh

    - - - Updated - - -

    Yes, I am a mage. I've played fire and arcane. I wish this game wasn't so damn tedious if we're supposed to be switching all the time. When you change dual specs it should also do your reforge profile and everything if that's going to be their design.

    If we're going to go down the road of "you're a mage" then we're going down a path of huge criticism of developers. Why even have specs at that point? This is a crucial problem with any non-hybrid, because you can't apply the same argument to the Guardian druid who doesn't want to play Balance, can you? Do you? Where's the line? At this point, why not go back to my original comment: if you want to help your raid the most, be a destro/aff lock.

    I don't think those of you still coming at me really even read what I type. I don't know why I bother with you anymore. At this point the only things I'd have to say I already said multiple times in multiple posts. So attack me, whatever.

  14. #94
    Field Marshal zandiy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Akraen View Post
    Thok, Siegecrafter, Garrosh
    Thok
    fire http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/play...25H/Fire_Mage/
    frost http://worldoflogs.com/rankings/play...5H/Frost_Mage/

    http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Thok_...10100000000000

    Since heroic logs aren't viable lets go with normal
    Siegecrafter

    http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Siege...10100000000000

    Garrosh
    http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Garro...10100000000000


    I see frost on bottom average and top dps on every fight, how is it better than arcane/fire?
    And im not attacking you at all, i just wonder why you think frost is better on any fight.
    Last edited by zandiy; 2013-10-26 at 03:09 PM.

  15. #95
    Akraen, I think people aren't reading what you type so much anymore because you come out flailing aimlessly and attacking others in the community with no clear plan.

    You attack players considerably above you in skill, profile and progress because they don't play the spec you like during progression.

    You post a pretty chart of how effective your damage was to various mobs compared to other players in your raid, which of course it will be when you're getting tricks the whole fight. This does not make the spec look good, it makes you look bad.

    I cannot say I would be so daft as to log myself on Norushen then go, "hey look I did top damage to adds, frost is the best!" when other players' damage isn't recorded while you're down below.

    If you want to help the frost spec at this point the best thing you could do is just give advice and keep your opinions out of it.

  16. #96
    Warchief Akraen's Avatar
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    You're a lovely human being critique.

    I didn't make this an argument. I didn't make this a problem. Pewpewblast asked me to weigh in and give my opinion.

    That's the entire premise of this post. He specifically asked me, not any of you, to give an opinion on why frost is good.

    So maybe you all should stay out of it? If people begin to see me as a fraud, then they won't ask for my advice anymore.

  17. #97
    Deleted
    I'm not quite sure how this thread got derailed into all of this again. Akraen is getting tricks from his rogues (maybe BECAUSE he is the top DPS in the guild?), so what? All this talking has just forever been an entirely fruitless circle of accusations and misunderstandings. It always escalates into spheres that weren't ever intended. Basically, as soon as someone tries to argue for the strong points of the Frost specc, it is assumed that he is trying to prove that Frost is the one and only specc to play. Obviously, it puts people on the defensive if they are forced to argue against accusations like that, so arguments become personal, points get twisted and the facts are pretty much lost. I wouldn't so much blame this on Akraen or anyone else, as on the very structure of these discussions.

    This is why we need to stop arguing like this. There is zero merit to any of it, we just reurgitate everything over and over. Take zandiy for example: It has been expressed countless times why comparing logs of top-parses isn't even close to valid when comparing speccs. It is not even a point worth arguing anymore. Yet, I understand why you felt the need to post it: Akraen made a statement that you deem to be factually wrong, you decided to correct him. We get it. You both are being defensive and snappy and overall not much help to anyone.

    By this point, no one even really cares anymore. I think everything has been said. What would be useful is to do what right now, only very few mages (Akraen and pete amongst them) seem to keep doing: Keep on testing, and providing data. It's always just going to be a subjective view, but that's ok. If more people did that, we could get a good and decent image. It doesn't help us when everything someone posts on here is only ever compared to Vykina, when every point of view is instantly shredded by a misguided zeal. Instead, keep on testing, keep providing information.

    For one thing, it would be nice to have actual information on how to play our speccs properly (which is barely even set in stone these days, and that is just a disgraceful state of affairs for the whole mage class and its theorycrafting). For another, it would be nice to have that information applied out in the real world, to collect proper data, to actually learn something from this. Right now, when I want to compare speccs, I will have to compare the input of maybe 20-ish good Frost mages, running roughly 20 different setups of gear, trinkets, gems, reforges, glyphs and priorities, against the input of hundreds of Fire and Arcane mages whose setups I cannot even begin to compare. It's just chaotic, and quite pointless.

    Discussions like in this thread (and in so many others) could help with at least clarifying some of the "soft skills" of each specc, and giving some hints and tips on how to play that work for some people, but instead people go back to making arguments about absolute truths none of us actually possess. It's really hurting the class, and it should stop.

    tl;dr: Overall, we know close to nothing about our own class. People should stop fighting about it, keep the discussion open and try and get as much solid info out there as possible.

  18. #98

  19. #99
    Quote Originally Posted by Ilya View Post
    For one thing, it would be nice to have actual information on how to play our speccs properly (which is barely even set in stone these days, and that is just a disgraceful state of affairs for the whole mage class and its theorycrafting).
    How to play frost:

    Get hit cap. Gem / reforge to 9522 (single target) or 9498 (multi-target 3+) haste. All mastery thereafter. Int mastery in orange, mastery in yellow, hit mastery in blue. If choosing between crit and haste beyond stated caps, choose haste. Avoid crit if possible. If on a fight that has 3+ targets which you plan to multidot where NT is going to be 40%+ of your damage, and all targets will be close enough to one another for NT to cleave three or more ways, get to 12043, or 12684 haste, or just spec arcane.

    Get T16 2pc. 4pc isn't bad, use it if available, or use 3 warforged offpieces if those are available, either is about the same. Get bindings and toxic totem, but black blood isn't bad. ToT trinkets aren't bad if you have nothing else. Get gear with the most sockets, the most haste and the most mastery.

    Use living bomb single / 2-target, NT for more. Use invocation. Use blazing speed or ice floes depending on fight / playstyle.

    Use glyph of water elemental, glyph of icy veins, and glyph of splitting ice.

    - Use frost armor.
    - Keep invoker's energy buff up.
    - Use frozen orb on CD. If engineering, macro gloves into it. Make sure you fire it in a direction where it will be hitting something for its full duration, the more targets the better.
    - Put bomb up. Put bomb on everything available that will live the bomb's duration.
    - Frostbolt when nothing else available to cast.
    - Use brain freeze immediately when available, but don't cancel a hardcast frostbolt if the proc occurs midway. Finish the cast before using it.
    - Use fingers of frost charges on ice lance when available.
    - Make sure your pet is alive and casting at your target.
    - Use pet freeze on cooldown on rootable adds when you have no FoF charges to get some, then use them.
    - When meta gem procs, or you gain bloodlust or some other buff that significantly boosts your haste, reapply mage bomb if it has less than half duration, unless the existing mage bomb was applied with trinket procs or the same level of haste buffs.
    - Use icy veins together with frozen orb, and try to use them when you have a major trinket proc such as bindings or toxic totem's, or a potion up.
    - Use mirror images on CD.

    That's literally it. I guarantee the majority of high parsing frost mages on most SoO fights follow this to the letter.

    All this arguing and nonsense over haste and multidotting and DPET on 3 targets versus 5 and which heroic warforged offpieces are more optimal and whatnot is pointless.
    Last edited by Libretto; 2013-10-26 at 06:28 PM.

  20. #100
    Warchief Akraen's Avatar
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    And I emphatically disagree with Critique's gearing method as being "the only" method. The arguments for haste are strong, and as I've said countless times, it isn't a noticeable difference in DPS because the DPET gain counteracts the damage lost.

    And nobody, under any scenario, needs Glyph of WE.

    His rotation is correct, though.

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