What spec are you starting 5.4 with

[onemanaleft]

"bring the player not the class" might apply to trade chat pugging, but in top 100 progression its "bring the optimal comp and specs to 1. survive and 2. beat berserk"

[Saegno]

Decided to go with arcane. Fire getting nerfed and how boring I find playing it now helped to sway my decision.

[Deleted]

That makes zero sense. A 15% disparity in damage, you cant over look that, its the same player and the same utility. So Blizzards favorite saying is not applicable here.

There is no 15% disparity...

[Kenbud]

There is no 15% disparity...

oh really? lets take a gander at WoL top parses

Jin'rokh - Frost : 365k Arcane: 455k - 20%
Horridon - Frost: 419 Arcane: 539 - 23%
Council - Frost: 336 Arcane 441 - 24%
Tortos - Frost: 364 Arcane 552 - 35%
Mag - Frost: 250 Arcane 347 - 28%

Do i need to keep going? I didnt include fire because we all know what fire's top parses look like..

[onemanaleft]

while looking at top parses is never a good indicator of the specs performance, its still probably accurate to say that arcane does about 20% more than frost, has almost the same amount of movement, and stronger multidotting + sustainable AOE, if this were an overall fire vs arcane its tough to say for dmg for each fight but, as of right now with the current frost vs arcane, its probably about 20%

and i see the mastery changes for frost as a nerf, its basically 2% per mastery to JUST frostbolt/frostfire right? thats about 0.8% dmg increase per point of mastery, still a terrible scaling stat youll be forced to stack after double soft capping in tier 16 gear, and arcanes superior scaling will probabyl widen the gap to as much as 25%+ by heroic 5.4 gear

[Zatetic]

So you are saying you are going to blindly agree with vykina and blindly disagree with those who actually played arcane this patch just because he is vykina?

While I agree that arcane isn't "miles ahead" of fire on the ptr it is very strong right now and has it's strengths, especially for fights with lots of adds and lots of cleave.

And getting two NTs out on secondary targets to cleave the first is as strong as having two NTs on your primary target, and with the amount of damage our bombs do, this is worth it.

this seems to be the part he doesnt understand about NT. You arent just cleaving off your primary target, youre also cleaving onto it ergo multidotting nether tempest = single target dps gain.

[SinR]

my shaman until I get my Legendary Cloak

then...

well fuck I don't know

[Zatetic]

I'm kind of torn between fire and arcane. Due to work and time restraints I haven't been able to get on the PTR to test out the content. I know at first people were saying arcane wouldn't be viable due to the amount of movement but that was before the RoP change.

I've done both specs for this heroic tier and would easily be able to play one or the other next tier for heroic progression.
I would LOVE to play arcane again as fire is getting old and the nerfs to it for 5.4 make me hesitant.
If arcane is not just viable but competitive/better with/than fire for at least 80% of SoO then I will swap to arcane.
Any mages who have actually tested on the PTR want to chime in? Pref ones without sand in their vaginas.

Pretty much, if you can play tortos as arcane, no fight will give you a problem in SoO.

[Saegno]

Pretty much, if you can play tortos as arcane, no fight will give you a problem in SoO.

Good to know since I already decided to go arcane. I have done 9 of the 10/13 H I have as arcane, so I don't expect any issues out of SoO then.

[Argussonn]

Only good guilds wipe at 1-3%.

Nah, I used to be in guild with like 1900 rank and we wiped on 1% quite a lot. We even wiped on 0% few times.

Regretfully, I went from frost to fire a couple days ago and that will be the spec for next patch, the difference in dps started to be too big.

However, as soon as frost gets some decent scaling I'll get back to it - I like it most (with a small margin over fire).

[jupei]

i think arcane is save choice to start with in patch 5.4

[TacTican]

Too used to Fire at the moment. As I haven't touched Arcane since patch 5.2 I know I'll suck horribly while trying to reacclimate myself to the spec, so starting off with Fire. If the DPS difference between specs becomes too big to ignore then I'll change.

(Yes, we're a supercasual guild that hasn't downed Lei Shen normal yet, but someone has to make up for the DPS who can't break six digits and it sure as hell isn't going to be the majority of the DPSers.)

[Kenbud]

while looking at top parses is never a good indicator of the specs performance

How so? its scumbag for scumbag. Best RNG for best RNG. Top parses shows you exactly what a spec is capable of especially on a fight like Jin'rokh, granted Tortos not so much. There is no way to get an exact gauge so top parses is really all we have when comparing upper limits. They are the "best" players in the best gear putting up the best possible numbers the spec can. I like to look at overall instead of top 100 but again this is flawed due to the wide range of ilvls that play each spec, 99% of them are not able to push the spec to the limit.

[Saegno]

How so? its scumbag for scumbag. Best RNG for best RNG. Top parses shows you exactly what a spec is capable of especially on a fight like Jin'rokh, granted Tortos not so much. There is no way to get an exact gauge so top parses is really all we have when comparing upper limits. They are the "best" players in the best gear putting up the best possible numbers the spec can. I like to look at overall instead of top 100 but again this is flawed due to the wide range of ilvls that play each spec, 99% of them are not able to push the spec to the limit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT1bp9ujQEE

Push it to the limit, the liiimmmiiiitttttt!

I'm gonna have to put this in my raid tunes library now.

[Delath]

Liking the way arcane looks and feels at the moment so going to stick with it

[Kenbud]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT1bp9ujQEE

Push it to the limit, the liiimmmiiiitttttt!

I'm gonna have to put this in my raid tunes library now.

I support this 110%.

[Deleted]

this seems to be the part he doesnt understand about NT. You arent just cleaving off your primary target, youre also cleaving onto it ergo multidotting nether tempest = single target dps gain.

I don't think you understand, it is not a single target DPS gain outside of 4 stack fishing, see post #63.

[Spliff]

I still don't know what spec I'll be starting 5.4 with. After being Fire the whole tier (other than Frost right at the beginning for a few fights) I switched to Arcane a couple of weeks ago for our first Ra-Den kill and decided to play it this week for most of ToT except for Council, Tortos, Megaera, Animus and Lei Shen - and it's been fun. I had forgot what it was like since I hadn't touched it since T14 scorch weaving.

Fortunately for me, I am happy to play any of the specs and will most likely play whichever ends up doing the best numbers. I'd quite like Frost to be top for once tbh (dreaming, I know), it always seems to be in the shadow of the other two specs number-wise.

[Foliuss]

I will be playing Arcane if Fire doesn't see any other changes.

[Deleted]

Do you guys think they're really done with the numbers for the patch?
As of right now it feels like frost will be low enough for me to have to switch fire/arcane which really troubles me...
A FB or BF-FFB buff would feel nice if I'm honest, I don't want to feel I'm seriously hurting my guild by playing frost.