Mage DPS and scaling

[Gerege]

Hi guys, how well does Mage (Fire vs Frost vs Arcane) scale with gear and how is their DPS compared to other Range DPS? Also are they good in ST and AOE in mythic+ and normal/heroic raiding?

Thanks

[trm90]

Frost is the best raiding spec by a significant margin for ST/Cleave. It has average AoE and can still do a good job in M+.

Arcane/Fire are good AoE specs and are both really good M+ specs.

For N/H raiding, you can do very well with any spec. Once you start pushing Mythic, frost begins to pull ahead, but many people have pulled off decent damage with Fire as well.

[D3athsting]

Fire simply doesn't scale at all! As 7.1.5 dropped i topped meters in EN and first run in NH with bracers and belt, as ppl started to get nh gear i started to fall behind every reset because fire scales like shit

[Deleted]

Arcane has the best scaling from all 3 specs. It seems like u want to on mythic+ and normal/heroic raiding. if that is true u should go for Arcane. Arcane AoE is awesome especially with the nerf trait that boosts our AoE by 20%. Our ST dps is not much worse than Frost, and we are far more bursty aka better on short fights. Moreover, our new golden trait greatly boosted Arcane's cleave.

[Deleted]

Fire simply doesn't scale at all! As 7.1.5 dropped i topped meters in EN and first run in NH with bracers and belt, as ppl started to get nh gear i started to fall behind every reset because fire scales like shit

yeah, the ironic part is that the changes fire got in 7.1.5 was to improve fire's scaling but it only resulted in a 20% nerf overall that should have been compensated through the spellaura. so instead of a 40% spellaura buff which was needed to put fire somewhat close to frost and level with arcane, we got an 18% spellaura buff which was far from what was needed and made fire a useless spec which was sad when most ppl had focused their efforts into fire and essentially had to start over.

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Arcane has the best scaling from all 3 specs. It seems like u want to on mythic+ and normal/heroic raiding. if that is true u should go for Arcane. Arcane AoE is awesome especially with the nerf trait that boosts our AoE by 20%. Our ST dps is not much worse than Frost, and we are far more bursty aka better on short fights. Moreover, our new golden trait greatly boosted Arcane's cleave.

there is literally nothing that would indicate that arcane scales better than frost and whether or not arcane has awesome aoe is literally pointless bcoz aoe rarely matters in current content in nighthold, as only ST and cleave is important in nighthold and in those areas, frost is significantly better than arcane as can be seen on logs, its quite obvious that you're playing arcane and is loving it which is great but stats shows that it cant keep up with frost and is consistently several spots behind frost.

[Obelisk Kai]

Just remember everything here could be invalidated in ten weeks by 7.2.5, so keep an eye on the PTR to see what Blizzard does with our specs

[Deleted]

Just remember everything here could be invalidated in ten weeks by 7.2.5, so keep an eye on the PTR to see what Blizzard does with our specs

idd, we had to wait for months b4 we knew that fire was turned into crap for 7.1.5, so take what we say currently with a grain of salt but imo, i cant see blizz do anything to frost other than fix double ice lancing and then buff frozen touch due o what they said a while back and maybe give arcane a slight buff and fire a significant buff.

[Obelisk Kai]

idd, we had to wait for months b4 we knew that fire was turned into crap for 7.1.5, so take what we say currently with a grain of salt but imo, i cant see blizz do anything to frost other than fix double ice lancing and then buff frozen touch due o what they said a while back and maybe give arcane a slight buff and fire a significant buff.

The problem with that is double ice lance is a bug, not a feature of frost to quote a friend of mine. Blizzard are trying to squelch it because it is a bug, but it is because of that bug that Frost Mages put out the damage they do. There is no guarantee that Frost will be compensated for the nerf.

[Fayenoor]

Now viable is Frost with say Bolvir and Norgannon as only two legos, 4pc and around 891 ilevel (with 875 arcano and w/o whispers)?

[deadman1]

Now viable is Frost with say Bolvir and Norgannon as only two legos, 4pc and around 891 ilevel (with 875 arcano and w/o whispers)?

That depends on your gear for other specs, but honestly most likely yes.

[Fayenoor]

That depends on your gear for other specs, but honestly most likely yes.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...enoor/advanced

is me. I am using the fire belt over Norgannon because of crit for frost at the moment. I only have Bolvir, Norg and fire belt. Yes, I will enchant the cloak, just got it. I do around 400-450K DPS as frost (which seems terrible)

[Deleted]

The problem with that is double ice lance is a bug, not a feature of frost to quote a friend of mine. Blizzard are trying to squelch it because it is a bug, but it is because of that bug that Frost Mages put out the damage they do. There is no guarantee that Frost will be compensated for the nerf.

the thing is, it isnt a compensation tho as the devs have straight up said that frozen touch was underperforming and would get an appropriate buff as long as said buff wouldnt result in IV having a 100% uptime and removing/fixing double icelancing would make it a lot more difficult to maintain a high uptime on IV and even with double icelance getting a 100% uptime on IV doesnt just happen, you still need good RNG. ofc, this is blizz we're talking about, what they say and what they do are usually very different.

[Fayenoor]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...enoor/advanced

is me. I am using the fire belt over Norgannon because of crit for frost at the moment. I only have Bolvir, Norg and fire belt. Yes, I will enchant the cloak, just got it. I do around 400-450K DPS as frost (which seems terrible)

Ok, I have managed to score a Prdaz - so add that to the list of legos I have.

[Jersh]

The problem with that is double ice lance is a bug, not a feature of frost to quote a friend of mine. Blizzard are trying to squelch it because it is a bug, but it is because of that bug that Frost Mages put out the damage they do. There is no guarantee that Frost will be compensated for the nerf.

Double IL is usually worth about 40-80k DPS a fight, depending on RNG. If they took away double IL tomorrow, with no other changes to mages, frost would still be the highest DPS mage spec.

[Grusalugg]

Double IL is so situational. And frost dps doesn't rely on double IL as much as people think. It is still strong without it.

[Obelisk Kai]

Double IL is usually worth about 40-80k DPS a fight, depending on RNG. If they took away double IL tomorrow, with no other changes to mages, frost would still be the highest DPS mage spec.

Very true, but we are on the cusp of a new raid tier. That always mixes up which spec is the best as Blizzard does an inevitable balancing pass.

We have to wait and see.

[sjuk]

They said they were gonna remove double ilance this patch already but didn't. Idk if much else came in between and stopped it or they just let it be for us "pro players" .

If they eventually get rid of this I hope they compensate with the fbolt -> flurry->ilance and you procc and waste another ilance while you fire off your flurry procc, such a waste sometimes and it keeps bugging me lol.

[Deleted]

yeah, the ironic part is that the changes fire got in 7.1.5 was to improve fire's scaling but it only resulted in a 20% nerf overall that should have been compensated through the spellaura. so instead of a 40% spellaura buff which was needed to put fire somewhat close to frost and level with arcane, we got an 18% spellaura buff which was far from what was needed and made fire a useless spec which was sad when most ppl had focused their efforts into fire and essentially had to start over.

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there is literally nothing that would indicate that arcane scales better than frost and whether or not arcane has awesome aoe is literally pointless bcoz aoe rarely matters in current content in nighthold, as only ST and cleave is important in nighthold and in those areas, frost is significantly better than arcane as can be seen on logs, its quite obvious that you're playing arcane and is loving it which is great but stats shows that it cant keep up with frost and is consistently several spots behind frost.

On Mythic, frost may be a bit better ye. But OP is talking about mythic+ and normal/heroic raiding where Arcane is just better than frost

Btw. i don't really get the hype about Frost mage. They pull around 100k more ST dps than Arcane. But they can't really do anything else that tunneling the boss Oo Currently as Arcane mage i can pull that 850-900k dps on Krosus where dps check is 615k so i am much more above the dps check and i don't even have shard, which would be about 100k dps increase. Meanwhile i don't have change my spec to do M+ as frost mages have to

Ps2. Arcane mage was and will be the best scaling spec this won't change :c

[Deleted]

On Mythic, frost may be a bit better ye. But OP is talking about mythic+ and normal/heroic raiding where Arcane is just better than frost

Btw. i don't really get the hype about Frost mage. They pull around 100k more ST dps than Arcane. But they can't really do anything else that tunneling the boss Oo Currently as Arcane mage i can pull that 850-900k dps on Krosus where dps check is 615k so i am much more above the dps check and i don't even have shard, which would be about 100k dps increase. Meanwhile i don't have change my spec to do M+ as frost mages have to

Ps2. Arcane mage was and will be the best scaling spec this won't change :c

tbh i can also say that im pulling 1,2 mill dps on krosus without gloves+bracers but that doesnt make it true, proof is key and if you're on easymode patch duty then frost would do significantly more, in short, anything arcane can do, frost can do better and in the one area that frost sucks which is aoe it doesnt even matter coz aoe is almost an insignificant part of nighthold, nighthold is all about ST and cleave, 2 areas frost reign supreme atm,

you might be right in arcane being the best scaling spec but atm its not better than frost, frost outperforms arcane by a fair margin and thats all that matters, sure arcane might outscale frost in ToS but atm there are no signs of that happening.

[Deleted]

tbh i can also say that im pulling 1,2 mill dps on krosus without gloves+bracers but that doesnt make it true, proof is key and if you're on easymode patch duty then frost would do significantly more, in short, anything arcane can do, frost can do better and in the one area that frost sucks which is aoe it doesnt even matter coz aoe is almost an insignificant part of nighthold, nighthold is all about ST and cleave, 2 areas frost reign supreme atm,

you might be right in arcane being the best scaling spec but atm its not better than frost, frost outperforms arcane by a fair margin and thats all that matters, sure arcane might outscale frost in ToS but atm there are no signs of that happening.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done here u go, 870k dps while not slacking on soaks.

Frost is not that far ahead as people are thinking. Currently, the best mages are playing Frost so that is kind of obviously that Frost will be higher in logs, top guild really know how to make good logs

My RL is overhyped about Frost mages as well, as i refused to reroll to frost, he tried to find few Frost mages for raid group. U know what? He wasn't able to find Frost mage that would beat me in dps. And u know why? Because Frost is much harder to play than Arcane. U have to keep your distance to shatter spells, position yourself much better etc. That is why top players who are playing mages are having such a nice effects as Frost. Medicore or slighty above avarage players won't pull even close numbers.

Moreover, for non hardcore guilds, versatility that Arcane gives is much more important that some additional ST DPS that Frost gives. U will met dps requirements anyway, and being able to perform any role u are assigned to i very important for any guild that is not in top 100.