question about mages in 4.0.6

[Brianmage]

WAs fire better at all ilvls? or not until like 359s or so?

Also, if it wasnt better till 359, what spec should I have been in 4.0.6?

[Deleted]

Pretty vague question to be honest; from a pve perspective atleast near the start of T11, I do recall Frost being superior with very low levels of gear due to good base damage relying on cooldowns, procs and an easy to reach stat soft-cap, but its dominance was limited to only a few fights, with fires utility, fight longevity and endurance winning out as soon as you had a few epics to your name.
IIRC, arcane was a no-go until you either had SoW, BiS, or needed the damage on Sinestra.

[Brianmage]

Pretty vague question to be honest; from a pve perspective atleast near the start of T11, I do recall Frost being superior with very low levels of gear due to good base damage relying on cooldowns, procs and an easy to reach stat soft-cap, but its dominance was limited to only a few fights, with fires utility, fight longevity and endurance winning out as soon as you had a few epics to your name.
IIRC, arcane was a no-go until you either had SoW, BiS, or needed the damage on Sinestra.

Okay thanks, so after 4epics from rep, and the rest 346s, fire and frost will basically be equal, possibly fire being a bit ahead?

[Therdin]

At the start of T11 content fire and arcane were not ideal for raiding due to the fact that blizzard in their infinite wisdom decided to make the mana cost of fire so retardedly high that scorch was your main attack; FB oom'd you out in about 30 seconds.

Once you got better gear (about 1/2 - 3/4 359 gear) fire played better. Towards the middle of T11 blizzard finally decided to listen to what every single mage that was in beta had said, and what every single mage in live was saying... and lowered the mana cost of fire to make it the ideal spec.

[Brianmage]

Okay, thanks!

[-Raer-]

Early T11 had you scorch weaving with fire. Once you were in mostly 359 and partial 372+familiarity with encounters tipped Arcane to higher numbers. From what I remember I was Fire up until I had full 359, then I tried Arcane and it pulled better/more consistent numbers.

[rogoth]

to answer ur question as fully s possible, please excuse the wall of text inc, it may crit u for MEGA DAMAGE!:


in terms of raiding at cata launch as a mage, frost WAS the raiding spec to be, it had very mana efficient spells, the rotation was variable between sustained casting dmg, and insta proc dmg (brain freeze+FoF), however, with the way the mastery worked, stacking it at release meant u would one shot anybody inside a deep freeze in pvp, because health pools were ~30-40k less than what they are today in full pvp gear (also the lvl of resiliance wasn't as high so player dmg mitigation was less aswell), so blizz nerfed the mastery fairly quick sharpish.

The only reason fire was used this early on, was because blizz had failed miserably with spell costing for arcane, yes u could be arcane, but u would only get ~6-7 arcane blast casts at 4 stacks before using all ur mana, and not being able to regen that mana up to lvls where mastery was usable, as the max mana pool at the time in pre raid gear was somewhere in teh region of 105-110k, at this stage even fire had major mana issues with spell costs being way too high, but the advantage was being able to talent scorch to be free of mana cost, and in the very early days of release, most raiding mages, myself included were speccing into the arcane tree quite heavily in order to gain clearcasting (which redusces teh cost of your next mana spell by 100% if cast within 10 seconds), as fireball mana cost was insane and you couldn't reliably cast it long term as u just didn't have the regen tools available to keep mana at high enough lvls, so the "scorch weave" rotation was born, use fireball to a point, then swap to scorch for a period, then back to fireball (ofc u did everything else normally like apply living bomb + hot streak pyro on proc etc), plus with the way the all new combustion worked, on some fights it was just too damn powerful not to be fire, fights such as magmaw on his head down phase, or halfus heroic because of the dot spread potential with the increased dmg removing the need to focus dps off the boss to kill adds if the combustion was strong enough, and spread properly, and then u had the increased movement that fire offered for fights like atramedes where u were constantly on the move (assuming u didn't use the bug where u could avoid a certain mechanic altogether), or on ascendant council, where it just wasn't viable to stay stood in one place for any extended period of time in case u got selected as a lightning rod, or in p2 when u had to get the various buffs to mitigate the lightning/earthquake effects etc.


in terms of was it better?, yes and no, at the gear lvls we started at, it was horrible, went whole fights not seeing a hot streak, and the only pyro cast was the pre pull hard cast, but due to the other 2 specs being almost unusable either because it wasn't possible to cast many spells due to cost, or the severe nerf that frost had, yes it was the best as it was the only spec we could use in a raiding environment that could not only provide competetive dmg output, but it was also one of the most versatile at the time, and as i say, there was a fair few fights where being fire meant that u could provide a massive boost to the raid group by simply playing well.

[Imnick]

Are you playing on a private server?

[Brianmage]

Are you playing on a private server?

umm, maybe.. are PS illegal to talk about on mmochamp?

[Vynistra]

umm, maybe.. are PS illegal to talk about on mmochamp?

While I can't answer the question...
I giggled immensely as it was like watching a child get caught doing something naughty.

[Brianmage]

I like the wall of text .

Looks like I am going fire, thanks for the input.

[rogoth]

umm, maybe.. are PS illegal to talk about on mmochamp?

not the last time i checked, i'm assuming the poster asking this question is curious to know why u want to know about the state of mages at cata release and what relevence it has on the game we are plaing on live atm

[Brianmage]

not the last time i checked, i'm assuming the poster asking this question is curious to know why u want to know about the state of mages at cata release and what relevence it has on the game we are plaing on live atm

yes, exactly!

[Gamdwelf]

Dudes frost was best in T11\

Well before Deep freeze got nerfed.

[Brianmage]

Dudes frost was best in T11\

Well before Deep freeze got nerfed.

Ya, but 4.0.6 pretty sure after DF nerf

[rogoth]

Dudes frost was best in T11\

Well before Deep freeze got nerfed.

yes, but if my memory serves, (not having trawled through patch notes to find exactly), it was in 4.0.6 that frosts mastery was nerfed, 4.0.3 and 4.0.3A being the cata pre patches, 4.0.4 being cata release, and 4.0.6 being a "fix it" patch. could be wrong so happy to be proven wrong as i say i am not 100% but thats what i seem to rememebr

[Brianjosel]

yes, but if my memory serves, (not having trawled through patch notes to find exactly), it was in 4.0.6 that frosts mastery was nerfed, 4.0.3 and 4.0.3A being the cata pre patches, 4.0.4 being cata release, and 4.0.6 being a "fix it" patch. could be wrong so happy to be proven wrong as i say i am not 100% but thats what i seem to rememebr

I think you are right. But Frost was strong as far as mage specs go back in 359 gear, before those nerfs. You saw many of the top world first guilds running with Frost mages. Paragon's heroic twin dragons vid has an easily identifiable Frost mage in it. Premonition's heroic 25 man Chimaeron kill is done from the point of view of a Frost mage. Just to name two vids.

I don't think Frost really starts to fall behind until current raid tier gear levels, and the legendary. My mage is in all raid finder and valor gear, and his Frost damage sims pretty close to his Fire damage.

[Gamdwelf]

I think you are right. But Frost was strong as far as mage specs go back in 359 gear, before those nerfs. You saw many of the top world first guilds running with Frost mages. Paragon's heroic twin dragons vid has an easily identifiable Frost mage in it. Premonition's heroic 25 man Chimaeron kill is done from the point of view of a Frost mage. Just to name two vids.

I don't think Frost really starts to fall behind until current raid tier gear levels, and the legendary. My mage is in all raid finder and valor gear, and his Frost damage sims pretty close to his Fire damage.

Main problem was that its scaling wasn't as good as arcane, but it was better than fire untill they did the fireball and pyro buffs, and the fact that the staff didn't work well with frost more than anything else.