Frost or fire mage for pvp?

[Deleted]

Hi guys,

I'm new to mage, and want to focus pvp, but which spec do you prefer and why? And how does it look in MoP as well. Another question, which race suits the mage best pvp-wise? Undead?

[Blueobelisk]

Undead Horde. I think we all know which race for Alliance.

Fire is thriving this patch with the buffs and is mandatory spec for RBGs and works well with many Arena comps. Some Arena comps you should still be Frost though, depends on team play style, MMR, and other things.

MoP not sure yet, looks like Frost.

[Flaks]

Fire and frost are both very strong and will continue to be in MoP. It's really a matter of preference between constant pressure with great burst (fire) or little pressure with absurd burst (frost).

[wynterlyn]

Hi guys,

I'm new to mage, and want to focus pvp, but which spec do you prefer and why? And how does it look in MoP as well. Another question, which race suits the mage best pvp-wise? Undead?

Currently I play Frost/Fire depending on the type of map and the other team on the smaller maps (I have battleground targets - shows me the other team and their specs). Fire is pretty good for the bigger BGs 40+ such as AV and IoC. Also if there are a few casters I'll tend to stick to Fire.

The thing with fire right now is that even though you top the charts most of the time in damage you rarely see yourself hitting the high numbers. Most of your damage comes from putting dots around and then spreading it with your "Impact" procs. You spend probably 90% of your time spam casting Scorch unless you have time to stand and cast fireball. Even then you don't ever cast Fireball since you don't Glyph for the 5% crit. So most of the time you are simply spamming Scorch on the move and even then Scorch doesn't hit very hard at all. For me it hits around 6-9K. Combustion is pretty sweet but a 2 min CD is not worth it at times.

Frost gives you decent control and has tremendous burst not as RNG as Fire I've personally found. Frost is pretty awesome in the smaller BGs especially the flag capping ones like WSG, TP, Battle for Gilneas and SoTA.

It just really depends on your playstyle most of the time. As Frost you are always setting up yourself to get the most of your shatters. Fire is simply spamming Scorch and praying for a Hot Streak and hoping on top of that Pyro is a crit. Or else Pyro hits like a wet noodle on 4.5K+ resil targets for around 20-25K. I've had 60K shatters on 4.5K+ resilience pretty often.

---------- Post added 2012-08-02 at 09:47 PM ----------

Fire and frost are both very strong and will continue to be in MoP. It's really a matter of preference between constant pressure with great burst (fire) or little pressure with absurd burst (frost).

Kinda what Flaks said. Fire plays very similarly to a Shadow Priest. Its all about maximising your DoT damage through Living Bomb, Impact procs and Blast Wave. It is a high pressure class but lacks burst damage outside Combustion. A good healer will rarely let you have a good Combustion.


Also I should mention that fire lacks survivability and is very mana intensive most of the time when you Mana Shield up. I find myself OOM pretty often if I start casting anything besides Scorch. Frost has pretty amazing survivability and is easy on mana.

[rektbrah]

fire is a lot easier to play than frost, a lot more forgiving.

[Miniskip]

Both are very formidable in PvP, depending on your playing style.

[Raze666]

In MoP i see fire being strong With Cold snap and Frost barrier sweet

[RefridgerateGaming]

Fire is better for RBGs and BGs because of the AoE damage, whereas frost for arenas due to single target

[Deleted]

fire ftw combust dead lol xD cya

[Deleted]

Play fire, all ya gotta do is nova - deep freeze - use scorch for pyro - pyro crit for 40k - combustion - dance - profit!

[yolmez86]

Spammable slow is more valuable than it has ever been with the 8 sec dispel cds. Just saying...

[teebo]

Frost. Pom>ring of frost>shatter>shatter>nova>deep freeze>shatter>shatter>and so on.

[Deleted]

The thing with fire right now is that even though you top the charts most of the time in damage you rarely see yourself hitting the high numbers.

I would say that pretty much every other class in the game right now outright disagree's with that statement.

Fire hit's for very high numbers and not only that but its sustained and you are also able to do this whilst being very mobile. I do not play mage myself but from people i know that do your damage is far from being "hoping for a proc" now and able to be done with relative ease, that's not to detract from the above average players who don their wizardry robes as i'm sure they can do things the average mage cannot however i refuse to believe that currently and at lvl90 on the beta there is a truck load of amazing mages who can do the things your class is doing right now.

The only class i have seen that can bring you guys back from the brink of godmode to reality comes in the form of a Beast Mastery Hunter because they can match your burst and silence/stun you equally.

No doubt some will interpret this as a QQ - It isnt it is merely an attempt to give some perspective on the opinions from the outside in.

[Deleted]

Fire is overall best for RBG's/BGs in my opinion, in arena its Comp based