staying frost or switch to fire

[qyietstorm]

I notice a lot of mages switch to fire after they hit 510-515+ ilvl. Simulationcraft shows an almost 20k difference for frost over fire. Is there any good reason for me to switch to fire or am I missing something? This is in general, not boss specific.

Thanks

[Grumash]

Well if you can stand in a rune of power all fight and never move and do a perfect rotation, then yes, frost is better. Name a fight that you can do that though...

[Deleted]

Well if you can stand in a rune of power all fight and never move and do a perfect rotation, then yes, frost is better. Name a fight that you can do that though...

I think you are talking about Arcane. The question was about Frost and Fire.

[Deleted]

Well if you can stand in a rune of power all fight and never move and do a perfect rotation, then yes, frost is better. Name a fight that you can do that though...

Wait what? Why would you use Rune of Power on Frost and use Invocation on Fire? Invocation is just as good on Frost as it is on Fire.

[royals]

Wait what? Why would you use Rune of Power on Frost and use Invocation on Fire? Invocation is just as good on Frost as it is on Fire.

He was using some sarcasm there. Basically he is saying this:

If you can stand still, maximize your level 90 talent and turrett away then yes frost will be coming out ahead of fire. If you have to cast while moving, cleave, perform various jump through hoop mechanics (Like this tier) equal skill and gear 515+ you should come out ahead as fire.

I've seen plenty of frost mages rape meters and I am a proponent of the spec, but I believe the above is a decent translation of what you two were trying to communicate.

[valliant13]

here's a question though, i prefer the fire playstyle over frost...does it only start taking off at high ilvl? I will most likely only ever do LFR on my mage so that is why i ask

[Dreadii]

here's a question though, i prefer the fire playstyle over frost...does it only start taking off at high ilvl? I will most likely only ever do LFR on my mage so that is why i ask

You can go fire if you want, but with the higher ilvl you will have alot more crit and the spec will be more enjoyable for you.

[epip]

Any 515+ Fire mages doing good damage care to share thier (raid buffed) stats?

I have been collecting Crit gear (currently frost) and my MrRobot stats (as fire) are:

ilvl: 520
Int: 22,630
Mastery: 22.75%
SpellPower: 34,701
SpellCrit: 36.86%
SpellHaste: 19.29%

Current slots with no crit:
Wrist
Boots 1x gem slot
Waist (current waist is apparent BiS though - Cord of Cacophonous Cawing TF) 2x + 1x gem slots

Trinks:
Unerring Vision of Lei-Shen TF
Volatile Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault


Think this is good enough to switch back to my beloved Fire spec yet?

[chrisnumbers]

Think this is good enough to switch back to my beloved Fire spec yet?

I think it's plenty.

[Deleted]

Think this is good enough to switch back to my beloved Fire spec yet?

I started playing fire with 34-35% crit raid buffed, and found it fine. I've got 40% now in mostly normal gear, so you should easily get there too.

[Daniwa]

I'm at 512 itemlevel and been fire since 505. (frost before that). around 510 itemlevel I'd say it's situational from fight to fight what specc wins over the other, but I'm mostly fire on every fight now to get the real hang of it, as I'm improving gear every raid pretty much. I did 350k dps on council, while I was down at 120k-ish at magera. So I'd say, go with what you want

[Deleted]

350k, eh? That's probably 100k higher than most of the top ranks for fire mages vs Council on WoL. Very impressive.

[Daniwa]

relax your sandy vagina, I was meaning to add "in the first 2 minutes due to cleave"

Good job being angry on the internet

[Deleted]

relax your sandy vagina, I was meaning to add "in the first 2 minutes due to cleave"

Good job being angry on the internet

Please explain why you think he was being angry, he actually said "very impressive".

[RickJamesLich]

I think some people are switching over to fire entirely way too soon, I'm figuring you want to be close to about 520.... also, if you got a lot of mastery pieces (almost all the VP stuff is hit and mastery), fire won't work too well, you definitely wanna get a lot of crit pieces first (obviously lol).

[Deleted]

This isn't a flame at the OP - but imo just play what you enjoy... I really don't get this min/max crap - the vast majority of people that come here aren't going to be pushing top 100 guilds etc, so why make such a big deal about whether one spec does a *potential* few k more than another.

I would think its way more important for you to understand mechanics and play to the best of your ability not whether one spec is potentially better than another by a small margin. Frost and Fire are fairly even ANYWAY until stupid crit levels - so unless you are in full hc gear why does it matter.

A good player will do good dps in either spec because they can adapt.

[Deleted]

ilvl isnt that important, and 520 would be stupid, you'd have to be almost full 522 to be able to switch to a spec !?

This mean fire would be viable almost only at the end of this tier (normal mode), and thats if you are lucky on the drops.

34~35% is viable, but sub-par of frost if you don't know how to play it correctly. I have 34% crit and you can feel you just need 1/2% crit more for it to be really fun.

[Saegno]

Any 515+ Fire mages doing good damage care to share thier (raid buffed) stats?
*snip*

Ilvl 516
Int 20,305
Mastery 26.02%
SP 32,142
Crit 37.40%
Haste 16.35%

Current slots sans crit :
Wep(2h horridon staff >_< )
Legs(Thunderforged Jinrohk pants)
Boots(shitty 483 RF hit mastery ones)

Trinkets :
Volatile Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault
Wushoolay's Final Choice 522



Edit- The only trouble I'm having with fire instead of frost is consistency with my DPS. Frost was fairly even from one week to the next where as if I get unlucky with ignite and hit a shitty combustion, or go on a pyro dry spell I get DPS under what I was managing with frost. On the flip side, if I land a nice combustion and get RNGifted I pull ahead of my frost numbers.

[royals]

Any 515+ Fire mages doing good damage care to share thier (raid buffed) stats?
*snip*

ilvl: 514
Mastery: 22.95%
Int:: 18603
SpellCrit: 37.7%
SpellHaste: 15%

Edit: Did this at work, not looking at the computer, Raid buffed numbers may be off slightly (For haste mainly)


Current slots with no crit:
Wrist: Double Hit
Boots Hit/Mastery
Neck: hit/mastery

I'm still wearing 3 496 items and it is killing me slowly inside on some of the drops weve got in our raid But fire feels more than fine currently for me.

Trinks:
Breath of the Hydra TF
Volatile Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault

[Katelina]

I was actually having the same question and I'm pretty confused right now about what to do. First and foremost, here is my armory:http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Jarret/simple

I've been Frost since WotLK (although my mage was just an alt then, but I had so much fun with it then and in Cata as Frost, bring back damaging Deep Freeze ) but recent guild activity has had me bleeding for decent gear. As you can see, I have exactly 0 tier pieces equipped at the moment because they had tier priority for other people, and I have been just receiving pieces no one else wanted. I have in my bags 3 pieces of tier 14, 496 chest and gloves and 487 shoulders. I love Frost and I still do respectable dps with my current gear, but I don't know if going Fire will bump my dps up quite a notch, especially since (I think?) Fire suffers less from having no tier and T14 was pretty big for Frost.

If you were in my situation, with this current gear, would you either stay Frost (and perhaps take T14 2 set, possibly 4 set by griding Sha of fear lfr with coins?) or just bite the bullet and go Fire?