Fire was still better than Frost at the start of this patch, tbh. It's just that we all had Mastery/Haste gear from T14, which lent itself more toward Frost.
Fire was still better than Frost at the start of this patch, tbh. It's just that we all had Mastery/Haste gear from T14, which lent itself more toward Frost.
Vanilla post BWL was fire. BC was fire, ignoring the small point in time when you got to play arcane due to SCC/TK tier bonus, WoTLK was fire until you had ridiculous ICC gear, Cata was fire for a long time, with periods of arcane for certain fights (Like if you had the legendary / shard or woe, or were progression on heroic spine). MoP has been the only expansion where non-fire raiding (outside excursions in arcane) has been tolerated. And fire if still the spec people are trying to shoot for, even with Frost being acceptable and arcane being pretty decent this tier.
My point is they've always had to balance mages around fire - just like they are now. And they've almost always failed. Being upset about being forced into fire because they are probably going to fail again makes no sense given our history with raiding and spec balance. I don't particularly care which spec they end up making the best, I'll play whichever brings my raid the most DPS. But being all - I can't believe frost/arcane is so bad and fire is so good is pretty fucking mindblowing given the context of our raiding history.
Its pretty easy to dispell that argument, look at hunters, rogues, and warlocks. Try to find out if they've always rolled the same spec.
They're trying to make it so that all specs bring relatively close DPS, and that's what they should do. You shouldn't have to sit on your ass doing something you don't enjoy, in a game. Its bad enough some of us have to do it at our jobs.
Yet pre-AQ it was all frost pretty much.. In BC playing fire was a waste of time really, it never got to a point of being good enough, your time was better served playing another class, In WotLK, If I remember it right it started with Arcane the go to spec, fire being decent in Ulduar, not super good though, then again arcane being better in ToC and Fire pulling ahead again in ICC due to all the crit. In cata it started with Frost in BoT/BWD/Throne then moved to fire for combustion cleave on some bosses to arcane when we got Shard, and then came arcane "fixes" and Arcane was the go to spec for Firelands, and in DS fire started strong due to the redic buffs it got, but after the nerf Fire was better in certain fights for sure, but if you weren't a troll Arcane was as good or better on all fights exept Madness, hagara and Yor'sahj..
So ye your argument kinda goes out the window I guess, Arcane has been more used in raiding than fire since WotLK launched at least if you count MoP into it as well. Frost has been the real lackluster in raiding since forever though.
They really need not to recreate Frost Mastery, but to get rid of the damn Frostbolt debuff. It's terrible for fights we have to keep changing targets, there's adds or there's a lot of movement in one period of time.
Despite your discussion of pre-AQ Vanilla, Vanilla was all Fire when you actually had a choice between the two specs. Fire was not an option in MC/BWL--and not just a "this does less DPS so it's not as viable" not-an-option, but an "all the mobs are immune to all of my spells so I actually do 0 damage" not-an-option. Viscidus is a similar situation.
And the beginning of WotLK was FFB, not Arcane, until 3.0.8 when they buffed Arcane (first too much, if anyone remembers double dipping AB charges with Missile Barrage and ABarr, and then they hotfixed it), and then Fire took over again in Ulduar.
I'm glad someone see's it from my point of view. And in cata arcane pulled higher than fire everytime I ran with fire anyway. Until DS which is when I stopped raiding mid FL.
I just want frost to do around what fire does. Not really hard to ask lol. I don't care if fire does 5k or 10k more. Just bring them AROUND the same dps. So I can shine as frost or fire. Or arcane...But we know how that is looking next patch
Mm, I suppose, but fire did work on some bosses in BWL and MC, and you could frostbolt spam if not anything else as fire, so it kinda worked even before they moved away from the immune bosses..
And I don't really remember anything from WotLK, I really couldn't care abt the rehashed Naxx and played my rogue in Ulduar, I just remember mages being fire in ulduar, and when I geared and switched to my mage as a main again, in ToC incanter's pushed Arcane infront again.. but really it's such a long time ago, and my post was just to say that we have played arcane just as fire much if not more since they decided to make arcane a real spec.. Now a whole another topic is why have other mage specs been awful whenever 1 has been good or really good
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Mm, though they need to fix some things from every spec.. to make it truly a choice on what spec to play. Fire has cleave and mobility, but really weak AoE, target swithing and multitarget. Arcane has multitarget, somewhat decent cleave, substained AoE and target switching, but has mobility issues. Frost has bursty AoE, a bit lower multitarget, and worse target switching than arcane, but no mobility problems.
So it really won't be play any spec, rather play spec that suits the encounter.. And I kinda hate that aspect atm, it's fine for progress(if you have the gear), but when you start farming easyer stuff, you are expected to clear to progress in few hours and there really ain't time to respec 5 times in between.
They would really need to fix AoE, target switching and multitarget for fire. Mobility for Arcane, and frost needs to get rid of the frostbolt ramp up. And then bring the specs to around same single target damage. Maybe even give frost cleave. So you could truly choose a spec and stick with it rather than feeling that you could do the job better as another spec, but you cba, have no gear, have no desire, don't have time or money to respec for that given fight.
I mean sure it's good that specs have weaknesses, but atm those too big to overcome atm. Fire is naturally the strongest atm, cause most of the fights are based on mobility or single target damage possibly with cleave or some other mechanics that suits fire and fairly rarely have some sort of mechanic that makes fire bad cause of it's weaknesses.. or that was how ToT was at least.
But hey that is just what I think abt the issues. Not to mention terrible talents, mandatory glyphs to certain specs and not enough useful glyphs.
I think Fire's abysmal AoE is the only thing that upsets me about an otherwise very enjoyable spec. — Especially looking toward SoO, where there are lots of fights with lots of adds (Nazgrim and KDS immediately spring to mind), in which our lock will just Immo Aura his way to a kajillion DPS while I ... Flamestrike once in a while?
Guys help please. Where could i find the new glyphs on the PTR? Is there a vendor or something, or only the Inscribers? I really really wanna see the Unbound Elemental glyph, but sadly i just can't seem to find it. There are none in the AH aswell. Sorry for stupid question.
Our Incriber can`t learn the new glyph : /
I transferred my DK who is an Inscriber 600 with all possible glyphs in-game already learned. I even crafted a Scroll of Wisdom (the pandaria research tool) ON the PTR and I didn't get any of the new glyphs. How can Blizz recieve feedback on say the elemental, when noone is able to see it? This is retarded.
Glyph item parts aren't implemented yet. You literally cannot get them this build. Just wait.
People whine all the time about Fire. As if Frost with a pet doing dmg for you takes any sort of skill. Arcane is 2-3 buttons and feels almost as face roll as last tier with scorch weaving. I am guessing they are rather bad at Fire so they whine about it so they dont have to play it.
Blizz has a different definition of "viable" than players do. GC's Dev interview at the start of ToT pretty much confirms this. As a long as a spec performs well enough to not get sat, Blizz doesn't care if its dps is not good. GC has even said that players care too much about performance. Will Frost or Arcane be as good as Fire next patch? Probably not even close. Will Frost or Arcane be just good enough for progression? Probably. They simply don't care to make all the specs truly balanced. That's true for every class.
I didn't know if I should be angry, or just laugh at your accuracy. I started as Arcane, which I love, then was asked by my guild to switch to Fire, which was a complete disaster for me (the RNG gods HATE me... there was one instance when I went with 18 casts in a row without a single Crit, and that was about the norm for me!). I'm playing Frost now, because the numbers are really good with the crazy gemming and reforging to get it to work at a decent ilvl, but I will always miss Arcane, and I will always wonder what Fire is like if my RNG were better.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
"Never underestimate the depth of stupidity." Robert Heinlein