Frost instead of fire in raids, is it worth it?

[Deleted]

This post is as much a personal question to help out myself, as it is to try and start a little debate getting some views on the future of frost spec in raids.

After the big buff to frost in 7.1, i have been building up a frost spec beside my normal fire spec, as i think a few of us have done. On single target sims there can be no doubt frost is superior, but fire is still stronger on some fights like Il'Gynoth, Dragons, and arguably some others as well. I also know that many mages will continue playing fire, seeing as they have put alot of AP into it, and probably also have gotten BiS legendaries for it.
Question is do you guys think it is worthwhile for us mages that haven't gotten any BiS legendaries, and have a decent frost spec already to start playing frost as a main spec, seeing as it might be better for raiding in the future?

Side note: This is purely for raiding, we all know that fire is the best spec in mythic+

[Brogar]

Depends on your raid group. Normal/Heroic sure you can play whatever spec you want but I'm pretty sure most mythic raiding guilds will have you warming the bench if you're going to play frost.

[Deleted]

Even if you haven't got any spec legendary yet it's still unclear. Every major or medium patch can bring nerfs or buffs. More importantly this expansion is very hostile to offspecing. That means the spec you pick that gets the most gearing (especially on spec legendaries) might be the one you are soft-gated in. I personally see this trend continuing and the expansion will end with very few people offspecing unless major mechanical changes happen soon (I don't think it will happen and by the end of 2017 there will be talk for a new expansion anyway so whatever we say is mainly a thing for the next 12 months).

As for the specific spec you should use I do not know. It depends on personal preference.

I think it makes sense this expansion to pick the one you think can handle the most.

[Deleted]

Depends on your raid group. Normal/Heroic sure you can play whatever spec you want but I'm pretty sure most mythic raiding guilds will have you warming the bench if you're going to play frost.

Yea but thats the thing. If you have an equal amount of artifact traits, and you dont have any BiS legendaries for fire, frost should be performing atleast as good as fire on most fights, even better on some. So my point is if you wanna play frost and it is equal to fire in this way, why shouldn't you change to it? Of course there some AoE fights like Il'gynoth where fire is favourable, and i don't even know about the Trials of Valor and Nighthold.

[Deleted]

and every leet mage is fire... flippin sheep.

A solid case you got there Mr.hipster.

[gcubeftw]

I raid in a 4/7M guild as frost even before buffed happened. It was rough because the officers and GM tried to "encourage" me to play fire by telling me that if I don't do competitive damage as frost that I either go back fire or find a new guild. With the buffs I'm close or beat our fire mages depending on the fight. I don't have any spec specific legendaries either (Blink chest + neck RIP) so I think you can play what you want to play.

[Deleted]

Im frost we are raiding heroic and im usually 2nd or 3rd in dps, If you enjoy your class and you enjoy it I say play your fave spec, I refuse to play Fire as it's a boring spec and every leet mage is fire... flippin sheep.

Yeah, fuck people who want to do optimal DPS. Literally lmao.

[Deleted]

I raid in a 4/7M guild as frost even before buffed happened. It was rough because the officers and GM tried to "encourage" me to play fire by telling me that if I don't do competitive damage as frost that I either go back fire or find a new guild. With the buffs I'm close or beat our fire mages depending on the fight. I don't have any spec specific legendaries either (Blink chest + neck RIP) so I think you can play what you want to play.

How's your gear compared to that fire mage that you're almost beating? Just out of curiosity

[stevenho]

With the buffs I'm close or beat our fire mages depending on the fight.

Show logs.

[gcubeftw]

Show logs.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...FptnfH#fight=2
This past weeks mythic kills, (dragons i played extremely bad and got slept twice)

[pagepro]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...FptnfH#fight=2
This past weeks mythic kills, (dragons i played extremely bad and got slept twice)

Your logs show me that frost is still inferior to fire in any situation where there is more than a single target. Even when there is a pure single target fight frost still does less damage.

[Deleted]

Frost is really good single target, and ok in cleave fights, even more than ok. My money would be on arcane.
Just from a quick look at the set bonuses, the frost ones are crap. The 2 piece is quite ok, the 4 piece is actual shit. The arcane set bonuses are amazing, and even the fire set bonuses are good. How are they comparing them is beyond me, but since the sets are not out yet, let's hope there's still time for them to change the bonuses.

Arcane so far has great single target and aoe, and it only gets better with gear so the scaling is superb.
Only thing that i am looking forward for frost is the trinket for gul'dan.

I main frost and i am proud of it. Stuck with it trough lows and highs and hopefully will get more love. But from what i am seeing the arcane is the spec to go in the future. Fire kinda stops.

[gcubeftw]

Your logs show me that frost is still inferior to fire in any situation where there is more than a single target. Even when there is a pure single target fight frost still does less damage.

If I had Shard like the fire mages in my group we'd be fighting back and forth on ST and 2T cleave. My point is that OP shouldn't feel gimped for playing frost barring AoE scenarios.

[Deleted]

If I had Shard like the fire mages in my group we'd be fighting back and forth on ST and 2T cleave. My point is that OP shouldn't feel gimped for playing frost barring AoE scenarios.

Pretty much this. On ST fights I'm doing comparable dmg to our fire mags, some times even beating them. I'm 10-15 ilvl lower than them and my Legendary (the boots) is not that good... My dps is about 250k-300k in 860 ilvl gear, depends a lot of the fight. AoE as frost is shit even if you spec into it.

[Deleted]

90% of fire mages are useless and don't know what they are doing, they are only fire for the simple reason of its supposedly the best spec of mage hence why its sheepism also not mr its miss to you.

This is a terrible, terrible argument. It's not even an argument. "It's considered the best spec, so everyone that plays it is a bad sheep"????

Whether frost or fire is better is completely unrelated to who plays what spec. And using "im usually top 2-3 in my heroic group as frost" is pretty useless information, since for every frost mage that's 2nd or 3rd, there's a fire mage who is first in their raid group.

Actually ontopic now:

Assuming your fire artifact and frost artifact are equal (traits/ilvl), and you got no spec specific legendary, frost seems to be slightly better for pure single target & 2 target fights. Fire wins hands down on any add fight.

However, things may change during ToV, and they definitely will during nighthold.

I'm 7/7mythic and started playing frost on a couple of mythic and heroic fights now, and even with my bad frost artifact and trinkets, it can keep up with the fire mages in my guild as well. This isn't an argument for frost specifically, but in my experience it is definitely viable.

For example this heroic ursoc kill (431k dps), where I made a LOT of mistakes (ignore the fire mages here, they are alts): https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

Normal ursoc (470k dps would've been 500k+ if boss lived 10 secs longer) (short kill time, but a bad kill time due to cooldowns coming up as boss died): https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

Dragons of nightmare(467k dps: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

Keep in mind, all these logs are with me just practicing frost, having basically 0 experience with it, bad artifact for it, and bad trinkets for it, so it can do way more than these logs are showing.

[stevenho]

For example this heroic ursoc kill (431k dps), where I made a LOT of mistakes (ignore the fire mages here, they are alts): https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

Let's take Rikh's kill for comparison. At 2:20 into the fight (your kill time) he is 540k DPS. I'm pretty sure you are not going to make up 110k by having better trinkets and playing better.

[NPI]

I do not trust Simcraft, but firemages should check this:
http://simulationcraft.org/reports/Raid_T19M.html

[Deleted]

Thanks for the reply Dutchmagoz

This is exactly why i am in doubt at the moment, because it seems that frost in the future (with traits and legendaries) would be better than fire on single target, and would definently be a viable spec in raids. Reason i'm kinda stuck at the moment is i really enjoy mythic raiding on my mage, but i am afraid that no guilds are gonna take in a frost mage. It also seems that the BiS legendaries for fire (bracers) are a bigger damage increase than frosts, which also drastically affects this, since this is not taken into account on sims for example.

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I do not trust Simcraft, but firemages should check this:

The simulations are the only reason i am considering the frost might become a very viable spec for raiding. To me it also seems that without looking very much into details, it seems that there are not many add-heavy or cleave fights in The Nighthold, i could be wrong of course..

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Let's take Rikh's kill for comparison. At 2:20 into the fight (your kill time) he is 540k DPS. I'm pretty sure you are not going to make up 110k by having better trinkets and playing better.

You're comparing one of the top fire mages in the world, with a frost mage who doesn't even have a decent artifact weapon/traits, and who seemingly isn't exactly used to playing frost, which means his dps rotation wasn't exactly perfect... I'm pretty sure thats a bad comparison.

[Deleted]

Let's take Rikh's kill for comparison. At 2:20 into the fight (your kill time) he is 540k DPS. I'm pretty sure you are not going to make up 110k by having better trinkets and playing better.

The thing is though.... He said has bad frost artifact and the artifact weapon is massive dps boost for frost. I dunno about fire but when I compare frost artifact traits to other classes and specs (shadow, survival, arms), there is a big difference. FROST has so many big dmg increase traits in the weapon you really need to unlock it most of it to deal great dmg.

[Deleted]

After the Blizzcon announcements on Artifact progression, switching from Fire to Frost or from any spec to any spec will be even harder for the majority of players. They announced they are extending the system to more Ranks and to more Artifact Knowledge meaning the last current rank is not the end on AP. Sure some hardcore players, some casual players and some players that RNG brought them class-wide legendaries will switch, but the majority of players will not see the point of switching at all; and we only have about 1 year because after that point the expansion is called old and people are looking forward to new expansions, at which point Legion things start becoming irrelevant.