which build was most popular in whole WOW history for PVE Mage

[barclay77]

Hello guys,
Sorry for your time but i really want to know one thing that keep me in stress.
Me and my old friend have a huge dispute about which build was most usable in WHOLE WOW history (all patches and all raid bosses) for PVE Mage .
Is it true that FIRE Mage build dominate all WOW PVE history than FROST? We dont consider ARCANE build, only between FIRE AND FROST.
Thank you guys for joining.

[Tellof]

Hello guys,
Sorry for your time but i really want to know one thing that keep me in stress.
Me and my old friend have a huge dispute about which build was most usable in WHOLE WOW history (all patches and all raid bosses) for PVE Mage .
Is it true that FIRE Mage build dominate all WOW PVE history than FROST? We dont consider ARCANE build, only between FIRE AND FROST.
Thank you guys for joining.

There probably isn't a straight answer to this. Up until Legion with the introduction of Artifacts, Fire has always been iffy at lower gear levels until you can stack a healthy amount of crit at which point it usually is the contender for #1 spec. Up until that point it's probably between Frost/Arcane. You're probably better off modifying your question to either be limited to only progression, or to include farming and through end of expansion, otherwise you probably aren't going to get anywhere with it.

With that said, you could consider that for a while Frost was considered the "PVP spec" and wasn't that great for PVE.

[Champagne Supernova]

well, depended on the raid in vanilla. Frost for Molten core , Fire AQ, barring one boss. Thanks to boss resistances. Other than that and racking my brain, Fire has been the only viable spec up to MoP, where they both kinda equaled out in terms of viability. Arcane generally was better than fire with low crit levels, so most people stuck to that.

[barclay77]

P.S. Actually we means in progress status raiding .
thank you

[Phookah]

Frost was really only rarely used in progression raiding, its mostly been Fire and Arcane.

[Deleted]

Hello guys,
Sorry for your time but i really want to know one thing that keep me in stress.
Me and my old friend have a huge dispute about which build was most usable in WHOLE WOW history (all patches and all raid bosses) for PVE Mage .
Is it true that FIRE Mage build dominate all WOW PVE history than FROST? We dont consider ARCANE build, only between FIRE AND FROST.
Thank you guys for joining.

that's a deceptice question wich does not contribute to the mage class at all. "Is it true that FIRE Mage build dominate all WOW PVE history than FROST" stop talking in absolutes (only sith do so). stop drinking alcohole, be friends with your buddy, and go to sleep.
edit: arcane hase been a progress specc a lot of times

[Deleted]

By build you mean spec. Build is a specific setup of spec talents. It's probably Fire because people like seeing fireballs, kinda how Death Knight was always impressive to young players and to some extend Demon Hunter might have that effect.

I was too impressed with Pyroblast when I started. The fact it had a slow cast was probably adding to it.

[Rettro]

By build you mean spec. Build is a specific setup of spec talents. It's probably Fire because people like seeing fireballs, kinda how Death Knight was always impressive to young players and to some extend Demon Hunter might have that effect.

I was too impressed with Pyroblast when I started. The fact it had a slow cast was probably adding to it.

He mean raiding stuff. Not Fun


"Frost was really only rarely used in progression raiding, its mostly been Fire and Arcane." - Wrong

"There probably isn't a straight answer to this. Up until Legion with the introduction of Artifacts, Fire has always been iffy at lower gear levels until you can stack a healthy amount of crit at which point it usually is the contender for #1 spec. Up until that point it's probably between Frost/Arcane. You're probably better off modifying your question to either be limited to only progression, or to include farming and through end of expansion, otherwise you probably aren't going to get anywhere with it" - Not far away from the truth

[Deleted]

"Frost was really only rarely used in progression raiding, its mostly been Fire and Arcane." - Wrong

this true for most encounters and by true I mean it was fire and arcane...... that statement is not wrong

[Video Games]

Well, I'll just break it down by tier
Frost in 1/2
Fire in 2.5/3
Fire 4-6
Frost in t7
Arcane in t8-10 till crit cap, then back to fire
Fire in in t11 till they buffed arcane, then arcane till t13 and back to fire if crit capped again if you felt like it, but it doesn't matter with the staff. Although we used arcane for spine still.
Mop sucks who cares but I think it was fire in t16 with crit cap
I think it was frost in t17 and then arcane in t18 till crit cap again and you'd go fire, now it is fire in prepatch still.
It will be fire for t19 unless they buff the other 2, but they don't have the mobility of fire anymore.

So, fire.

[Rettro]

Well, I'll just break it down by tier
Frost in 1/2
Fire in 2.5/3
Fire 4-6
Frost in t7
Arcane in t8-10 till crit cap, then back to fire
Fire in in t11 till they buffed arcane, then arcane till t13 and back to fire if crit capped again if you felt like it, but it doesn't matter with the staff. Although we used arcane for spine still.
Mop sucks who cares but I think it was fire in t16 with crit cap
I think it was frost in t17 and then arcane in t18 till crit cap again and you'd go fire, now it is fire in prepatch still.
It will be fire for t19 unless they buff the other 2, but they don't have the mobility of fire anymore.

So, fire.

So by the way MOp - frost?!. how much we have tier in Mop? And what build/spec mages use when they no have crit cap - only arcan?
So, Frost?

[Video Games]

So by the way MOp - frost?!. how much we have tier in Mop? And what build/spec mages use when they no have crit cap - only arcan?
So, Frost?

There isn't such a cut and dry answer because it depends on how good it was that expansion plus gear levels. My post was to just say that fire has been the most used spec since vanilla for raiding. Whether it be at the start of the expansion or right at the end with crazy gear.

[SuperSirius]

Started to really raid in wrath so for me what I noticed was
t7 - frosfire bolt fire spec
t8 - I saw a lot of mages playing arcane / fire
t9 - FFB again
t10 - Arcane till you were haste/gcd capped and swapped over to fire with like 50-60% haste/crit
t11 - fire ( even more after they made living bomb not overwrite ignite)
t12 - arcane cept fire for alyz(rofl dragonwrath for arcane so broken)
t13 - fire/arcane
t14 - fire till better gear and discovery of scorch weaving to play arcane on every fight
t15 - fire ( at the start as scorch weaving was fixed) then with better gear arcane was back to being better for single target + target swap fights
t16 - fire on most of progression/ arcane was good for most of the fights aswell. Frost had its mastery changed to icicles which made it finally viable to play(you went mastery frost as it provided way more dps and logs proved it over stacking every socket with haste for frost)
t17 (highmaul) - frost was the way to go as fire/arcane was not doing enough damage and literally no crit for fire to make it viable except LB on tectus(blizz made HUGE nerfs to fire in prepatch 90 which fucked over highmaul fire)
t17 later half(BRF) - Once you got 4 piece you went fire/arcane for the whole raid and went whichever was stronger e.g. fire for cleave. Later when the ignite doubling was discovered you could beat arcane on every single fight as fire if you got the right procs.
t18 - arcane/frost at the very start (2/4 piece for frost were extremely strong) at the end with how the ring interacted with gear/4piece arcane's dps was so exponentially scaling your burst would vary from 400K to up to almost 1.5M dps. Fire was good with the right gear and sandmans.

t19 - looks like fire will be better as it does more damage currently and has a ton more mobility and usefulness. although I can see some fights using arcane. not too sure for frost as fire can do it better.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Arcane either in ICC or in HFC for sure.

[Alvito]

You can look at it a few ways, what was better between the two or how often one of them was the best over all. Either way fire wins more often then frost. Until MoP frost hand't been a used raiding spec by most since the introduction of FFB and even then fire was better more often then not. So then you go all the way back to vanilla. It isn't even close I can understand liking frost, but if you actually raided for more time then just MoP to now you would know frost was a dead pve spec for a long time.

[Xires]

Hello guys,
Sorry for your time but i really want to know one thing that keep me in stress.
Me and my old friend have a huge dispute about which build was most usable in WHOLE WOW history (all patches and all raid bosses) for PVE Mage .
Is it true that FIRE Mage build dominate all WOW PVE history than FROST? We dont consider ARCANE build, only between FIRE AND FROST.
Thank you guys for joining.

You don't consider the arcane build? Frost has ALWAYS sucked through most of WoW's history. It didn't even become viable until MoP and even then in later tiers it always ends up falling behind Fire/Arc.
Fire/Arc were and have always been the two specs to use while Frost was always the PvP spec to use.

- - - Updated - - -

He mean raiding stuff. Not Fun


"Frost was really only rarely used in progression raiding, its mostly been Fire and Arcane." - Wrong

"There probably isn't a straight answer to this. Up until Legion with the introduction of Artifacts, Fire has always been iffy at lower gear levels until you can stack a healthy amount of crit at which point it usually is the contender for #1 spec. Up until that point it's probably between Frost/Arcane. You're probably better off modifying your question to either be limited to only progression, or to include farming and through end of expansion, otherwise you probably aren't going to get anywhere with it" - Not far away from the truth

Actually it is very much RIGHT.

[Nitros14]

With two piece tier 5 Arcane was higher than fire in Black Temple/Hyjal. Fire outscaled it again in Sunwell though.

Used to increase arcane blast damage by 20%, was hilarious.

[Dizzeeyooo]

t7 - frosfire bolt fire spec

will forever be missed

[GT4]

Started to really raid in wrath so for me what I noticed was
t7 - frosfire bolt fire spec
t8 - I saw a lot of mages playing arcane / fire
t9 - FFB again
t10 - Arcane till you were haste/gcd capped and swapped over to fire with like 50-60% haste/crit

T9 was arcane with the exception of Anub where you played FFB to AoE the adds (FFB had high Blizzard damage after FS/LB). Having said that, I got #1 Mage on WoL back then playing pure fire on Anub and rotating different ranks of FS instead of using Blizzard so FFB wasn't actually the best spec either.

T10 was Arcane early on and for blood queen (there was a talent giving you SP from absorbs which was huge there). Otherwise fire was slightly stronger once you had proper crit gear.

Going by the strongest specs for each tier, that makes it pretty much FFB -> Arcane/Fire depending on gear and fight for all of WotLK.

[Windirmere]

I think Frost is super Iconic?