Spec Viability and Lack of Frost

[Azobank]

I thought you choosed a class to play. In this case mage. Mage is very viable. It's to be too prescise to ask for that every spec should be best at something. If that situation occur someoneelse will want to do "imba DPS while runing in circles painting hearts with their toes and watching pink flying pigs". Mage is very good. All specs isn't very good. I don't see the problem. If you can't do well enough as frost play fire or arcane.

When was all three specs viable in every fight in a whole tier for any pure DPS class? Myself have no idea just curious if it's a normal state and this only two specs viable is something rare.

[Sw1tch]

It's not about viability on every fight. Obviously that's impossible and it goes against the basic tenant of variety between specs and spec identity. And honestly, Mage is probably one of the biggest classes for spec identity and differentiation. Frost heavy PvP, Fire heavy AoE, Arcane ST. Up until mid Cataclysm frost held that role within the class. But, as balance and modern mmo's progress with time, it becomes obvious that all 3 should have a place in PvE as a certain fraction of each class would prefer all specs to be useable.....Especially in the class of pures. Hybrids are guaranteed to have all 3 specs (or 4) viable in a raid setting as it's the only spec they have of that type (healer,dps,tank) for their class.


Frost is supposed to have a place in mobility,cleave, and burst. Fights like oreg, Hans and Franz, and Kromog *should* ideally have frost above Fire and Arcane. But those fights don't, because mobility between the specs is trivialized by ice floes. Burst is trivialized because each spec has a 2 charge massive burst AoE. And cleave is trivialized because even at 2 targets, fire and arcane are still winning at high ilvls. Not to mention there is maybe 1-2 fights per tier for two target cleave?


Essentially, all the strengths frost should have it currently doesn't have. This isn't about the short term, it's about the long term. It will take actual changes to shift frost from being a jack of all trades master of none to more specialized. It wouldn't take massive changes for the short term. Make splitting ice baseline and increase the % to 75 or even 100. Nerf Fire and Arcane to have only 1 or 2 charges of Ice Floes while Frost has 5. Give Frost Bomb a higher SP coefficient for AoE damage. 3 simple changes and you just dramatically changed frost's viability. And none of these changes will change it's ST damage at all, and only really impact short term burst. It just gives it the strengths where it should have them within the class.

People like Kuni, Lhivera, and I (Had a couple stickied posts on the mage forums for frost guides, and have worked with Kuni/Lhiv) have fought pretty hard since late Wrath for Frost PvE viability and it needs to get all the way there, not just halfway.

[oraz4000]

Okay this is for you to understand what the complaints are about..... because this comes back far too often. It doesn't matter if the spec is on the top 5. If 3 specs are in top 3. The issue is when you should never go for a spec because it's middle of the pack at everything it does (compared to the other two specs). That's a problem. You can say it's whiny, but it's still a problem.

I understand completely im just saying Frost is nowhere near as bad as its been made out to be its completely viable in every situation it just doesn't offer the best results which imo is fine considering its a easier playstyle than Arcane.

I mean what do you suggest? if you look at Blizzard history they are not going to buff a spec because players for some reason refuse to play the spec which offers more.

Mages are in a extremely good position.

[Deleted]

Comparing spec ranks on WCL to each other at this point is plain stupid. People saw the sims and switched to arcane/fire, all that's left for WCL is bad players who do worse DPS than they could.

If blizzard was to introduce a fake patch note announcing they buffed frost by 15% single target, you'd likely see a lot of top 10 appearances just because people believe what simcraft tells them, making people in bis gear switch and try hard. The confirmation bias around mage specs is very strong right now, even though frost is just 10% dps single terget behind the other specs. Maybe it can actually perform better than arcane on some encounters, but we wouldn't know, since all the good players are specced arcane.

[Deleted]

Suggestion: Buff Frost, but nerf Fire AE and Arcane ST damage!

[Deleted]

I mean what do you suggest? if you look at Blizzard history they are not going to buff a spec because players for some reason refuse to play the spec which offers more.

And that, people, is exactly the problem with balancing specs these days on pure classes.

Blizzard: “we have made 2/3 specs okay, so no need to tune the 3rd one. Win!!”
And people swallow it.

Tuning specs is something that should be done on an ongoing base to counter scaling and overall raid fight mechanics. (I realize you cannot be best on every fight, but if almost every fight favors other specs, you have a problem, imo)

So I will tell you what I suggest:
Make Frost the best spec in one area (I think movement is the best candidate here) and/or closer in ST (closer, not better than Arcane) and AoE (closer, not better than Fire)

[Wilderness]

Okay this is for you to understand what the complaints are about..... because this comes back far too often. It doesn't matter if the spec is on the top 5. If 3 specs are in top 3. The issue is when you should never go for a spec because it's middle of the pack at everything it does (compared to the other two specs). That's a problem. You can say it's whiny, but it's still a problem.

Sure, its a problem, but its not a big one. In an ideal world, all 3 specs would be balanced, indeed the different specs in the game would all be relatively balanced with different strengths/weaknesses. But while striving for that goal is great, its never going to happen. Its just not possible. So if you look at it realistically, having 2 specs in the top 5 is pretty damn good. I'd much rather have that, or even 1 spec that's amazing, then have all 3 specs do equally as well while they sit in the middle of the pack.

I'm not saying that people should just ignore Frost because we have 2 strong specs right now. By all means, advocate for some changes, propose some things that might make Frost more useful. But don’t forget about the big picture, which is that we all rolled a mage. Not a frost mage, fire mage, or arcane mage. Mages are in a very good place right now as a class. Everyone likes or dislikes each spec to certain degrees, but if someone is so focused on only playing one spec that they will not play anything else, then they have to be ready to ride that roller coaster because they have all gone through ups and downs – and will continue to do so.

[gallamann]

Sure, its a problem, but its not a big one. In an ideal world, all 3 specs would be balanced, indeed the different specs in the game would all be relatively balanced with different strengths/weaknesses. But while striving for that goal is great, its never going to happen. Its just not possible. So if you look at it realistically, having 2 specs in the top 5 is pretty damn good. I'd much rather have that, or even 1 spec that's amazing, then have all 3 specs do equally as well while they sit in the middle of the pack.

I'm not saying that people should just ignore Frost because we have 2 strong specs right now. By all means, advocate for some changes, propose some things that might make Frost more useful. But don’t forget about the big picture, which is that we all rolled a mage. Not a frost mage, fire mage, or arcane mage. Mages are in a very good place right now as a class. Everyone likes or dislikes each spec to certain degrees, but if someone is so focused on only playing one spec that they will not play anything else, then they have to be ready to ride that roller coaster because they have all gone through ups and downs – and will continue to do so.

This mentality that 2 of 3 specs is top 5 has to STOP. Go look, 99.99% of those top mages are playing either Fire, Arcane or both. By making Frost compete with those 2 specs, you will not change the representation of mages on that list in any significant form.

Same goes with this niche horse hockey, Fire = AoE and Arcane = ST. Specs for pures should never be about what flavor of DPS they excel at, it should always be about the flavor used to deliver the damage. All three specs should deliver within <1% of each other damage, regardless of target count.

Until we start stating this to Blizzard, we will continue to be abused by Blizzard.

[Azobank]

All three specs should deliver within <1% of each other damage, regardless of target count.

Has that ever been the case for any pure DPS class in WoW since release? I don't play many other games, can you mention any other game where that is the case?

This idea that every class and spec should perform within margin of each other regardless of situation flew past me, totally missed that moment when it was decided that everything should perform equal. For me it's natural and wanted that different classes and specs perform different in different situations. I wouldn't want all three mage specs perform equally well on every encounter.

[Deleted]

@gallaman good luck tuning that.

[Deleted]

Now honestly, unless you're in a Mythic raiding team, it really shouldn't matter as much assuming your overall team is decent.

Fire/Frost here, Fire for multitarget fights, Frost singletarget. Yes, Arcane is better, but for Heroic content, it doesnt really matter.

This in itself shows their is a problem. Oh just ignore endgame......................Why Don't you just say yeah it could use a small buf?

Now admititngly if frost is more competitive on lower dificulties bececause than it might be harder to adress mythic problems. But encounterwise you often need more movement on mythic which favours frost and thus might help frost stay good.

I myself had a period I was really lost. While we were clearing Heroic Highmaul I was doing great as frost and was often in top 3. But when we were in the farming stage of full heroic Highmaul I saw me being in lower position, by the end I just couldn't understand why I even read extra guides on frost, improved some cooldown use but it didn't help, while the arcane mage kept creeping up.

Now I get how frost is a more solid spec spec and this raid favours Fire/ Arcane more, Highmaul didn't really favour Fire. But it seems to be more than that. Seems it needs a bit beter scaling buf. Having the strongest set bonuses would have worked. Fire has the problem that his single target is too weak, that is a dangerous aspect to built a weaknes around (I really thought blizzard learned from cataclysm that strenghts are good, weakness is bad).

Now aside from frost needing a buff, I'm also happy to feel incentifised to try the other specs and moving away from frost. It's a bit annoying to regear and more annoying that our guild had a break up so im not really raiding much anymore. Think highmaul had the problem that the gear was too frost favoured.
The bigest long term problem might be that Fire and Arcane like very similiar stats, this is aweseom for gearing but could result in frost always being rated to how it compares to the combined strenght of Arcane /Fire............what do you guys think?

PS: I hate the word viable, it ussually means it needs a small buff. Arn't all dps specs at least viable now a days?

- - - Updated - - -

Same goes with this niche horse hockey, Fire = AoE and Arcane = ST. Specs for pures should never be about what flavor of DPS they excel at, it should always be about the flavor used to deliver the damage. All three specs should deliver within <1% of each other damage, regardless of target count..

Nicely Formulated, I think this is worth a topic of itself.

Should dps specs really be balanced diffrently in flavor of dps (I cal it damage archetype). Or should all archetypes be balanced and just be about how they deliver it (niches). The latter one was how MoP was balanced.
If you go by the former that could be fun but would a pure class using more than one spec performs overal better than a hybrid? It would be stupid if one hybrid spec gets more archetypes than a single pure spec. How is that currently?

I remember in cataclysm first raid tier it was balanced around archetypes. Every damage spec had something they could excell at so every class had their moment of awesome. The problem was everyone also had an archetype weakness that did cause certain issues like a retribution paladin doing single target instead of aoe. On highest raid difficulty you would get class stacking but this happens mainly in the top guilds and not an imbalance in it's phylosphy.

[MrExcelion]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7/#boss=1691

At this current time, it looks like we're not OP on any given encounter as Fire/Arcane but certainly worth bringing to raids with our solid DPS and amp magic. Even on Gruul, where you can pretty much sit still and tunnel the boss the entire time, BM has a solid lead there. Frost is definitely behind but I'm not sure Blizzard sees that as a problem. Also looks like nobodys playing Glad Warrior or Frost DK

[Sw1tch]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7/#boss=1691

At this current time, it looks like we're not OP on any given encounter as Fire/Arcane but certainly worth bringing to raids with our solid DPS and amp magic. Even on Gruul, where you can pretty much sit still and tunnel the boss the entire time, BM has a solid lead there. Frost is definitely behind but I'm not sure Blizzard sees that as a problem. Also looks like nobodys playing Glad Warrior or Frost DK

Keep in mind parse # for that data.

Heroic is a much better data set:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...1&difficulty=4

[Deleted]

Keep in mind parse # for that data.

Heroic is a much better data set:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...1&difficulty=4

HC dataset is distorted by artificially short killtimes towards one extreme and an overabundance of players who are doing it wrong towards the other. Using the 50th percentile for HC parses is how you find out what Faceroll McClicksalot does playing a spec on average, not how you assess whether classes are balanced. You use progression Mythic parses where people can actually reasonably be expected to not be playing like complete asshats for that.

[stabetha]

HC dataset is distorted by artificially short killtimes towards one extreme and an overabundance of players who are doing it wrong towards the other. Using the 50th percentile for HC parses is how you find out what Faceroll McClicksalot does playing a spec on average, not how you assess whether classes are balanced. You use progression Mythic parses where people can actually reasonably be expected to not be playing like complete asshats for that.

but then you also get a majority that plays one spec because it does 10 more dps, so the lower dps specs (even if just a couple hundred lower) are underrepresented

[Jeezy911]

Why are we talking about a PVP spec? Kappa

[Sw1tch]

HC dataset is distorted by artificially short killtimes towards one extreme and an overabundance of players who are doing it wrong towards the other. Using the 50th percentile for HC parses is how you find out what Faceroll McClicksalot does playing a spec on average, not how you assess whether classes are balanced. You use progression Mythic parses where people can actually reasonably be expected to not be playing like complete asshats for that.

As stabetha pointed out, numbers are extremely exaggerated at mythic progression parses. Using 90-99th percentile as a filter is a better indicator. Frost is still lower than average

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statist...y=4&dataset=95